Today I discovered the artwork of Charley Harper, known for modern wildlife prints, particularly some really stellar bird prints.
I spend the majority of my free and work-time focusing on auditory stuff, so it's always nice to get excited about something visual. And nothing is better than birds. Apparently Charley Harper had a close association with the Cornell Ornithology Lab, a place I fully intend to visit while I'm in the upstate, Finger Lake-ish vacinity.
In related news, I know what I'm getting my sister for Christmas.
Last night I dreamt that I was moving. Again. That is not a dream I hope to have ever again.
So yes. I have finally made it to Rochester and gotten settled in and all that stuff. Everything is good. Very good. Surprisingly good, in fact. So many people I've talked to say they don't like this town. Yes, I know the winter weather is a part of this. yes, I know it snows a lot and stays around for a long time. But so what?! Illinois winters aren't exactly the most fun, either. And if I can get away from those stupid ice storms for a little while, GREAT. But it's not just the weather. I've heard people whine that there's nothing to do here, and no good places to eat, that it's ugly. Having grown up and subsequently lived in two other college towns in mid-sized towns in the Midwest, I am observing that there is actually a lot to do here, and more than do, to see. There's a lot of interesting history here that I've known about and learned about since talking to my uncle who lived here for quite a few years. There are all these ridiculous houses and buildings that make me have to suppress a serious spaz attack involving my camera. I don't know. I'm all about the seeing. I've been having a great time going running up and down East Ave every morning (also for the physical activity factor), and look forward to expanding my runs to other places once I can run more than approximately 2.5 miles. Stupid stupid period of stagnation that kept me from running known as moving.
But there are restaurants and shopping and the Erie Canal and Eastman School of Music and RPO and the lake (which is clearly a nice-weather thing) and HIKING ever so close, and while I've hardly done any of these things, I'm really excited that they're there, and something C-U and B-N didn't have quite as much of to offer, especially in the hiking/outdoors department).
So surprisingly it's been an easy move for me, emotionally, once we actually made it out here. Usually I cling to old things and make life hard for myself, but I feel like I'm going to do alright in this place for the next two years, despite some of the ruckus I was making before the move (yeah, there was ruckus, it just didn't end up here, fortunately).
One thing I do miss terribly are campuses. I love campuses. You can walk in them. And I love the walking. I don't know. The landscaping and architecture of these plots of land dedicated to academia have always been omnipresent for me. They're a comfort, something I can always find some good and pleasing aesthetics in no matter where they are. I've always had one closeby. Wandering through residential areas just isn't the same. Neither is photographing. I'll make do.
I guess there's also the crime. Still, worse places to live for that, by far.
I may also miss people and things. But whatever.
Now I'm just looking forward to studying like mad and passing out of remedial courses. Ugh. And being employed! Or so I hope, anyway. MAN, do I hope.
But now prepare yourself for the story of why I will probably never own any other vehicle besides a Ford.
Warning: this story is long and contains excessive amounts of words in all caps.
Last Thursday morning, we (my mom, dad and i) left Illinois with one Aerostar with seats removed and packed to the extreme and one Focus wagon packed to a moderate amount. The plan was to drive all 12 hours to Rochester that very day, stay overnight in Rochester and then move me in Friday morning and head out to Boonville/Steuben/wherever that afternoon once we'd finished.
It was a good day for driving. Nice weather. We'd been sailing smoothly for about 9 hours, trading off with driving here and there as there were three of us and two cars. Additionally, my car was feeling pretty awesome after an expensive trip to the dealer to have new breaks, struts, and some spring under the front of the car put in. We'd just driven through some pretty bad Cleveland rush-hour traffic and made it to the slightly less crazy side of Cleveland. My mom was driving, for whatever reason, and we were following my dad in the Aerostar. All of a sudden my mom says "something's wrong!" I go, "with my car?" She says, "Yes! I'm not getting any power. Call dad!" So I call dad, and tell him the car isn't getting any power and we're pulling over and he says he'll get off at the next exit and double back to find us.
My mom pulls over, right before an entrance ramp to the interstate. The car officially dies. My mom tries restarting it and every time it starts but dies immediately. My dad apparently exits the interstate and drives back towards us on the service-road, where he leaves the Aerostar with its blinkers on and then walks to meet us on the side of the interstate. He tries starting the car a couple times only to not, and then calls AARP (p.s. I am covered by the AARP and thus am covered for towing up to 100 miles). The AARP says they'll have a tow truck come for us in less than 52 minutes and they'll call us to be sure.
In the meantime my Dad calls a bunch of people, such as our hotel, and Heller Ford back at home because they know us on a more friendly basis (though actually they probably also know us on the basis of "your used car has ANOTHER weird problem?") to try and ask if they can look up the nearest Ford dealer. I sort of laugh, like "ha ha! we are such a family of car foibles!" and call a couple friends to be like "ha ha! guess what?! i'm stranded on the side of the road with my parents outside of CLEVELAND! Isn't it HILARIOUS?!"
I was actually probably trying to ward off frustration with being thwarted from moving to Rochester and also the fact that my car was clearly trying to tell me something. Something like "I've been taking diligent notes on all the other used cars in your family and we are going to have so much FUN together now that I'm right at 60,000 miles!" My parents on the other hand basically thought this entire occurrence of car-deadness was a good laugh, and an adventure. I guess this was comforting for me in some way. The fact that something so much worse could have happened. Also the fact that they've dealt with so many stupid car occurrences throughout the years that one more is not a surprise, but also clearly inevitable (it's funny to me that packing and moving one of their kids makes my parents understandably stressed and frustrated, and yet a car set-back while in the process of moving is a laughable thing). My mom spent a good 15 minutes telling me some other great car stories, and it actually helped to calm my inner woes.
So we wait for our tow-truck, the driver of which calls us a couple times through the next 52 minutes to try and figure out our exact location. My Dad A highway patrol-man also pulls over to check and see if we're okay, the Cleveland police, and some guy in a truck who just wants to see if we're okay. My Dad thanks him but informs him the tow-truck is on its way, and then laughs and asks if he knows where the nearest Ford dealer is. Then the guy pulls out his FORD MOTORS BUSINESS CARD, hands it to my Dad and says "Why yes! I actually work for Ford!" Ha freaking ha, right? But then the tow-truck pulls up and the guy knows right where the nearest dealer is anyway.
And this is a funny story. Because there are no seats in the Aerostar except for the front two, but there are three of us, but we need to follow the tow-truck kind of right then. So we all run to the van, climb in, with my Mom and I SHARING THE PASSENGER SEAT, seatbelt and all, and it's probably all kinds of illegal but we manage to get there. I just wish I could have gotten a photo of this part.
We show up at the Ford dealer, and it's just after 7pm so we figure they're going to be closed. But no! No! They're open until 8pm! My Dad talks to a service person, telling him what the car was doing and saying he suspects it's the fuel filter or pump. The really awesome service guy says that if it's either of those things they'll have to order a part that probably won't be in until Monday. Which spells "failure" for moving and my parents ever getting back to Illinois. Until they basically offer us one of their dealer cars for us to use and return on Monday when we come to retrieve my car. SAVED!!
The Focus is emptied out in the parking lot so we can transfer everything into the loaner car (a Ford Fusion, which is freaking gigantic for a sedan, as it easily fits all the stuff that was in a Focus station-wagon). In the meantime, 8pm rolls around and the dealer closes its garage door. Some dark, nasty storm-clouds with occasional zaps of lightning are rolling off of the lake, headed right towards us. And it turns into a race to load the car with all the crap, especially as my mom is choosing this moment to be OCD and extremely meticulous about the whole ordeal of loading the car. It actually reminded me of that part in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in which the Pevense's were in the home of the beavers and have just discovered the White Witch is probably coming after them and Mrs. Beaver is running around grabbing random things and asking "do you think it's possible to take the sewing machine?" and everyone else is like "omgwtf can we please leave?!" It wouldn't be a huge deal but there are things like musical instruments and a PRINTER sitting out in this parking lot. But we manage everything and climb into our respective vehicles right as the rain and hail begins. Hooray.
Everything else goes fairly according to plan. We end up staying overnight just on the border of PA and NY and getting to Rochester around 10am and unloading and then driving further east and eating lots and lots of food for the next two days, with a little bit of rainy weather on the side. Word also came through that the problem with the car was in fact the fuel pump.
Monday we ended up back in Cleveland by 11, where I retrieved my car, which they had actually WASHED in addition to replacing the fuel pump. What service. And the whole repair only cost $660. Yeehaw.
And so concludes the story of why I will only ever own a Ford. Because when those foreign cars break down in the middle of nowhere as they so often like to do in our family? Or even when they break down in town, those foreign parts and their labor charges. Bad bad news. Good service is also nice.
Hilarious car-stories to come. I'm just checking in to say that we got all my junk up to my apartment in Rochester, and that now I'm on top of Starr Hill Rd. I'll be back in Rochester tomorrow after first driving to Cleveland. Long story.
Also? It's taken me a while but I think I love The Smiths.
I get worried and frustrated when people can't take the time to take care of themselves, even five minutes to eat breakfast or at least drink some damn water or something. It's worse when it's a family member who doesn't take advice or orders from ANYONE. And when we're driving TWELVE HOURS in one day.
On the plus side, apparently I'm blogging again.
Anyway. See you in New York. If nobody dies first or anything. Ugh.
If only you could see the amount of crap that is loaded between one Ford Aerostar and my station wagon. If only you could see. I would have taken a photo but nobody was in the proper mood for photo-taking during this process of loading things into cars. So much stuff! And it wouldn't be so bad but it's TWO CARS. I think it was the futon that did it in. I am so going to sell that thing next time I move, because I really don't want to own things anymore.
Also, tonight I was reminded that sometimes I take being yelled at by people like parents way too personally, after a fairly long period of not being yelled at. Sigh.
But on the bright side, I had major happy moments with my parents when we went to Ming's II for dinner. SO MUCH AWESOME SEAFOOD. Seriously. I'm glad I eat more seafood than I did two or so years ago. Things like mollusks. Mmmmm, mollusks.
I just realized it's kind of weird that I'm so willing to eat mollusks but I still have major issues with cephalopods. But then again maybe that's because they're EVIL.
Anyway. I'm probably in denial about the fact that I'm about to move away from Central Illinois for the first time ever, if you don't count that whole Iowa thing. It's still pretty Midwesty out there.
Moving is proving to be somewhat harrowing. I mean, duh, it's moving. But moving out of one place and into another and having to sort through a bunch of stuff in between is really making this whole thing into some big stressful...THING, a thing that isn't going to be over with for about another three days.
And then there's all this random STUFF I need to do that isn't exactly moving-related. It's list time!!!
1. Send out my freakin U of Rochester health form before they decide to not let me come to school.
2. Email my landlord people to let them know of some of the weird problems I found when I was moving out (leak under sink! problems with windows! dust that replenishes itself completely after 24 hours! man, good riddance).
3. Go to bank. Cash checks. Have money.
4. See people. God. I want to see people, a lot, but I simultaneously sort of wish everyone would go away so I could just move and not deal with it. I mean, that's not true. But I don't like just "seeing" people. I would rather spend an ample amount of time with people instead of just a "Hi! ... Bye!" sort of thing.
5. Finish packing. Damn. Almost forgot that one.
So naturally I start the day by blogging. Go me.
Oh. Right. I need to mention my cello adventures of the last week. I was in Chicago for a few days back there and took my cello in to have an adjustment. Because things were sounding funny, or I guess not sounding as much at all. So I went in, and of course the source of the cello's issues were not going to be fixed by an adjustment, especially because it looked like a small crack was starting to form next to the bridge. Because apparently the soundpost was too tall and my bridge legs too long. So I left it there and took a loner cello, thankfully, because the next day I got a call informing me that my bridge's feet actually concave, thus not fitting exactly on the cello and not really causing any good sound.
SO I GOT A NEW BRIDGE (and soundpost). And it wasn't exactly cheap, but DAMN was it worth it. It's like the same cello but more. One of the only complaints I heard about the instrument when I was trying it three years ago is that the sound is just a little closed in and that it would get better. And it sort of did. But some kind of bridge-related switch has been switched on and now the thing is as open as you can get. Well, probably not, but MAN.
I also started watching Battlestar Gallactica while in Chicago. Damn, you guys. If only I had a little more time right now.
Anyway things. I'll probably next blog from Rochester.
I think everyone can agree: moving sucks ass. And I'm not even done with it yet.
One thing that's brightened my packing and hauling days is Why?'s new album, Alopecia, which I purchased a few days back and seem to be completely unable to stop listening to. I'm not sure if I like it as much as Elephant Eyelash. Why? is almost making a Dismemberment Plan-esque transition into music that's just a little bit more palatable and accessible than previously and pleasant than past stuff. Which is good. But sometimes I just like to be weirded out. Right? The lyrics are still the same level of obscurity, though.
This is a new favorite song and the video only encourages me to like it more.
So, through some hilarious circumstances involving my car and some suspension issues, I ended up having to drive our Ford Aerostar back to Urbana this week. Basically meaning that I am pretty much moving out. By myself. Which is hilarious and sweaty. So far I've managed to realize that I have no upper arm and ruined a somewhat awesome pair of jeans through an incident I don't want to talk about. Hooray.
Okay, but here's my question: how have I managed to acquire so much CRAP during the last three years of living in this place? I mean...really. I think most of all, it's the convenience of living so close to home. Because it meant that every time I went home, I could bring something back with me. Plus, the desire to fill those built-in bookshelves in my living-room. Those things rocked. Maybe that and my need to compulsively save everything school-related. Like readings I'm never going to read again. Man.
But anyway. I've learned my lesson. Because I hate stuff. And having to move it. And so I am going to not take so many things with me to Rochester, and vow to myself to throw things out, even if they're things that I once found useful reading in class.
It's also hard juggling packing things and trying to hang out with people. Stupid people.
Anyway. The moral of the story is....don't own things.
Yeeeeeah, I need to update this thing. Even if it's about mundane things.
Okay then!
Mundane thing # 1: In order to consolidate a good deal of space and embrace this 21st century, I'm ditching my ridiculously old TV with built in VCR. Yeah, that's right. I'm getting rid of my kind of large collection of VHS tapes. But come on, I couldn't just abandon all that MST3k I taped through the years, could I? So I'm transferring it all from VHS to DVD, thanks to our DVD recording machine.
I'm doing it manually, too, because I sort of want not have to rewind through the really bad local ads that Sci-Fi seems to love so much. The only problem with this is that I have to sit through the whole episode in order to pause the recording during the commercial, and if I walk away from the TV for more than about 30 seconds, I tend to miss the commercial break, and then end up with about a minute or so of commercial break recorded onto the DVD. DAMMIT. Why must I be a perfectionist?!
I should probably focus on other mundane things. Like practicing and studying. But I guess packing and sorting right now is kind of the big stupid thing in my life. And I guess waiting, too. I hate waiting.
So...heh. If you've known me for longer than I've been at the U of I, you may be somewhat well acquainted with the fact that I don't deal well with transitional periods of the location-change variety (if you would like specific proof, just read the August 2003 archives, before about the 23rd or so! Hahaha, so young).
I mean, I don't know. The whole moving to Iowa City for my first year of college was a pretty huge ordeal. I freaked out a lot. A LOT. A ridiculous amount. Probably an understandable amount for a fairly quiet girl who had lived in one place all her life, headed towards a big-ten school. And rightly so, as it took MONTHS to feel not weird and alienated. But moving to Illinois? Was a little different. The most painful thing dealing with that situation was deciding I wanted to actually transfer there, which was a heart-wrenching and impossible decision that went on between basically the months of April and August of 2004. Which is a long time. I think once everything was final about moving to Illinois, it was just a relief to have made a decision, and in comparison the moving wasn't so bad. It helps that home was no more than about 45 minutes away.
But I dunno. If you know me, you also know that I have this weird existential attachment to location, which happens no matter where I live. The problem is that I don't believe I'll get attached to a place while I'm still focused on an old one, and it takes a while to like a new place. And there's also some weird requirement in my head for me to get completely nostalgic about the old place, even before I leave it. Yes, that is happening right now.
So Rochester. It's the furthest from home I will ever have lived, in my life. And transitioning into the new and unknown of music schools is always a little terrifying. And everyone I talk to seems to say that Rochester sucks. So today, and really the last couple days, I've been freaking out. A lot. I think when I realized that I actually have a limited amount of time here and with people, after a phone-conversation with my mom about moving out of here, I lost it. And I may have cried. And I may have eaten ice cream. There's no way of knowing. But I freaked out. Why is location so important? Why does it matter? It's not like when I leave here it will cease to exist, or I will fail to appreciate other places! More than anything, though, I don't want this to be like before. Like when I was 17. I don't.
But you know something? I've decided not to freak out. Anymore. I'm currently not. I currently feel fine and just like I really need to study and pack stuff. Rochester! It's upstate New York! My family is from around there! So what if people whine about it? I definitely found it to be pretty aesthetically appealing when I visited there. Heck, I got the impression that Rochester was kind of COOL. If not a little crime-ridden and probably very cold in the winter. I definitely know my teacher is awesome. I definitely know a handful of great people at Eastman already. I definitely have a place to live and an excellent roommate. I definitely will not be living in some crappy dorm situation where there are loud people yelling outside my door until 3am every morning when I have a 7:30am class. I am definitely only going to be living there for a maximum of two years. And HIKING! There is HIKING in Upstate New York! And I have an ice-cream maker! Oh, man!! AN ICE-CREAM MAKER. What else could I possibly need in life?!
The moral of the story is that while I am generally kind of laid back about life, when it comes to transitional periods like this I definitely build them up and make them into these emotional and unnecessarily dramatic things, before they actually even happen. Screw that. For serious. I shouldn't care. I shouldn't let it get to me and I definitely shouldn't let it affect my relationships with people.
So I'm not. Going to do that anymore. And I will check in about my level of freaking out as the weeks progress. And if my mother even tries to freak me out by reminding me of everything I need to do while I'm actually just trying to get it all done without thinking of it? I will just plug my ears and sing a tune. A happy tune. Like this happy tune!! Hah! Peter Buck playing the Banjo! So happy. Oh, man.
I need to start accomplishing things more and watching How I Met Your Mother less. Just a plug for that show, YOU SHOULD WATCH IT. The first season is somewhat tepid, but crazy things start happening in the second, like the writers of the show seemingly just inserting purely hilarious material into it and it flowing much better. It helps that Neal Patrick Harris is kind of the man, and that I have a girl-crush on Alyson Hannigan.
I need to tend to my photos. It's a dire situation, really. I have over 600 photos on my camera's SD card that I have yet to transfer, but the bigger problem is all the photos already on my computer I haven't even transfered yet, along with all the damn music I have that's taking up all this limited SPACE. And so, I think I'm going to be getting myself one of these numbers. SO SHINY.
I wish more than anything right now that I didn't have to make life harder for myself than it actually is. I wish I didn't have to torture myself through speculation. I wish I could just kind of enjoy things as they are.
No, I did not contract some third awful sickness and die. I am alive!
But lo, Colorado College finished and I wrote nothing. Shame on me. The thing I notice about these absurd and busy summer orchestra things is that there's not enough room for me to do much else but play the cello and go a little crazy inside. This is how sparse my blog would have been during YOA had I actually had regular access to the internet.
Oh. Wait. This is pretty much exactly how my blog looked during YOA. Huh.
Anyway. Colorado College was a vast number of things. Amazing. Ridiculous. Frustrating. A learning experience. An eye-opener. An annoyance. It was definitely the best string quartet experience I've had, possibly ever. A great deal of that is probably due to luck, as truly functional string quartets are seemingly kind of rare, and definitely something I don't think I've experienced since I was perhaps 16.
The whole orchestra thing was...yeah. That was a great learning experience in terms or repertoire and playing with amaaaaazing players and being forced to sit principal even though I may have recently established that I haaaate sitting principal. It was an eye-opener, though, in that it's made me realize that I do not want to play in an orchestra for a living, and that if that's how I feel, I should really like, stop playing in these summer orchestra things! Because they're so long and make me so tired and drained and misanthropic. I'm not saying I'll never play in an orchestra, ever, or that I will definitely never do a summer program with orchestra again. But I really need to investigate musical things that are closer to what I would like to do for a living, in the future. Maybe.
But anyway. Colorado College ended last Tuesday. Wednesday morning I got up early and dropped another cellist off at the Denver airport on my way to Daniel's! Yes! I was yet again a member of Dan Beahm and the Invisible Three! For like, five days! And also crashed Daniel and Erika's extremely excellent house for that long. Basically, we ended up playing two shows and recording cello parts for 9 songs plus one very random track that will be used for dancing. It was a good post-crazy-festival time, especially because the kind of tedious and very specific work that goes with recording parts for an album is something I love. Even if we're working on something and I go "this one note is weird and sounds wrong" and Daniel goes "oh, but this note is weird and sounds so VERY RIGHT." Those are actually some of the very best moments, somehow.
I was also fed very very well during this time.
And now, I'm back. And that drive was long. And I saw cowboys. THREE OF THEM. And the Midwest is so very humid.
But it's weird. Because Colorado was really beautiful but very dry, and for some reason it was light and airy because that moisture was missing. There's something about the smell of that humidity and the severity of the moisture in the air in the Midwest that makes this summer. That was missing before. So now it must be summer.
Also, I am transferring more than 600 photos from my camera. The incredibly sad part is that these photos are from over two months ago, and very few are from Colorado. Again, I blame the busy schedule and weird lack of energy.
