gorgeous day: reredefined

It's Mugenday! but I don't have a good Eito icon yet, so we're just going to go with Tokui wearing a loud shirt, y/y?


Still on a Yamada Tarou kick, so a clip from episode 10 (no subs (though guys, guys, Japanese drama DVDs come with Japanese closed captioning and it's so awesome *_*)). Not the one you'd expect from me when I say "episode 10", I think, but ( because I love Tabe Mikako so: )


My head's been hurting for the past few days and no matter how much acetaminophen I ingest, the pain won't go away. It just won't go away. (Did I mislead you with the title? Ha! You should know that if I were talking about the song, it'd have quotation marks around it!)


I tried to break my $100 bill at Starbucks today, but the lady at the window was like, "Uh, no." Actually, to make myself sound like less of a jerk (but also to make the story less interesting... damn), I'll explain what actually happened: I roll up to the window in my brother's classy dinked-up Saturn that doesn't have power steering and rattles in places I didn't even know cars could rattle, classic 80s hits blasting from the radio, and ask all friendly and polite-like if they'll take a $100 bill. I make nice conversation with the lady briefly, etc. etc. And then I buy my drink using my debit card, lug the car out of the drive-thru, and go home. All's okay with the world.

Except for the part where I still have a headache.


Feel like being productive today. I think I'm going to try to tie up some loose Honor Council ends or practice violin or something. (Three hours later, Inez wakes up from an impromptu nap. A single tear trickles down her cheek.)


( ETA: a series of edited-to-adds in which Inez gets really angry and then talks herself out of her anger )

Current Facebook status: "Inez literally cannot sleep anymore this week if she wants to get all of her work done. Ahaha."

Not an exaggeration (though the laugh might be sarcastic and/or desperately hopeless). But after tonight I'll have three portions finished (Chinese end-of-the-year nonsense (a total of five parts, are you kidding me?), Japanese test, and quartet recital). After that I'll have my Japanese Nationhood test (actually an essay, due Friday) and my Chinese Revolution test (on Friday afternoon) + research paper (due Friday faaaaaaaaack). And those are all going to be really enormously difficult to finish/be prepared for, so.

The quartet recital was actually last night. Instead of going in the usual black 'n' black, we decided to go with a "crayola" theme, so I wore purple (including the purple PJ pants that I got grass stains all over when I played Wink on Saturday), Halley wore blue, Evan (female) wore pink, and Katie wore orange. We were freaking adorable.

This time on top of Mendelssohn, we played "Tango Ballet" by Piazzolla. People seemed to like it because it was strange and different. (The entire recital was a conglomeration of strange and different music, including a percussion ensemble and a weird duet involving various blunt objects for two string basses.)

When we got out of the concert, it was raining something awful. I didn't care, though, so I walked slowly back to the apartment, wrung out my hair and clothes, and promptly fell asleep because I'M STUPID. Around 3am, I woke up, talked to Will (who'd just gotten home) for a bit, considered my workload for the rest of the week, and realized that I'm pretty close to screwed.

But! I can pull it off if I don't sleep. So. No more LJ for me until Friday at 5pm, which is the time by which I'll hopefully have triumphantly trounced my second semester of junior year.

GO NEZZIE GO GO GO.

(No comments. I am, as they say, keeping my eyes on the prize.)

. received some lovely Christmas cards from athena8 and reposoir. They definitely put me in a good mood when I got them. Thank you, dears!

. finished my final final at 6:27 this morning. It was a three-hour essay test, which means that yes, I started it at 3:27, but I laid down for about 15 minutes in the middle because my body was sore. (See below.)

. played Wink for the first time last night! For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Wink is a Quaker wrestling-type game in which you have two concentric circles with people in the inner circle trying to kiss a single person in the middle of the circles after they're called up for being a part of a certain category. The people in the outer circle try to hold the people in the inner circle back. Both circles can't stand. Basically, you have a dozen people rolling around on the ground, trying to crawl (or to keep people from crawling) to the person in the middle. It's good times.

. want to start taking private violin lessons again. The reason I stopped is because they stressed me out too much during the year, but I really miss, you know, being good at the violin. I still play in the orchestra, and my quartetmates are back from abroad next semester so I'll be doing chamber music again, but it's not the same as hunkering down and working hard on a piece for yourself.

. am headed to Japan in two days! I'm hoping to do my laundry tonight (after stopping by at a party to see some of my friends for the last time before they're abroad next semester) and then pack tomorrow. Getting everything together in time is going to be a little tough, but I'll try.

Last night we had our spring semester orchestra concert. My stand/life partner Halley invited me and our quartetmates to dinner with her family at San Pietro, a nice restaurant on the Main Line. It was tasty. :D The concert was fantastic -- Halley won the concerto competition, so she played the Barber with the orchestra (gorgeous piece... please listen to it if you have access to it), and then we played Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky. What a terrific concert... I felt so good about it all afterward. And I cried a little in between when Halley returned to her seat, 'cause I just felt so proud of her that I couldn't help but tear up. Oops. ^^;;

So today the paycheck for last month's slaving away at my part-time jobs (Career Development Office and Phonathon) went through, so I went ahead and ordered some equipment for my violin:

Pirastro Obligato Violin Set-Loop E-4/4 size-Med. ($47.04)
Ebony Violin Tailpiece - 4/4 Size ($5.20)
Gold-Plated Hill Style Violin Fine Tuner 4/4 Size ($4.72)
Chinrest Tightener ($1.99)
Hill Peg Compound ($6.99)
Total: $65.94

Some of you know more about stringed instruments than others, but suffice it to say that I'm completely revamping my violin. I'm removing three of my fine tuners so that I only have a fine tuner on the E string, and I'm getting new strings (which generally I get pretty often anyway, but I'm hoping the Obligatos will warm up my violin a little more because they're synthetic... my violin's just so bright). I'm kind of retrospectively regretting not mentioning it to my private teacher first, but I've been itching to change everything for a while now, and they're all changes that he'd approve of anyway, methinks. So it should be okay.

Now if only I practiced...

Yoinked from Rue... ( Stalker meme! (comments screened) )


In other news, I spent a bunch of money on classical music recordings on Amazon.com (specifically, chamber music I've performed ('cause I'm a nostalgic flake) and Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole + Saint-Saens violin concerto). I love classical music. I could probably live on classical music alone.


Tuesday night dinners are spent at Japanese table, where we talk in Japanese about culture and sing songs. Last night we sang Kimi wo Nosete from Castle in the Sky. :D Apparently we sang the song from Kiki's Delivery Service the week before, but that was Halloween and therefore the night during which I got candy from strangers.


I'll be selling off doujinshi (all ToriShishi, yeah), auction-style, once I figure out which ones I'm willing to sell. I'm not in any dire need for cash at the moment, but I kind of want the cushion. Oh, and I need to stop spending money.

So I'm at work... with nothing to do... so I'm just dawdling online. Don't you love these types of posts?

I have some fics to write/finish and some fansubbing to do, but I really can't do any of that on corporate time (especially without my fic-writing/finishing or fansubbing programs and equipment), so I guess I'll just type some uninteresting stuff for a bit.

We had quartet rehearsal last night... Oh, how I've missed my quartet... We picked our way through old "favorites" like Euphonic Sounds and Clair de Lune (and our comfort music, Brandenburg), and we transposed Canon in D into C (usually we do it in Eb (or, well, D)) and sight-read some Borodin just for kicks. And Elizabeth got me plates/cups/bowls (all matching) for my dorm room at Bed Bath & Beyond, where she apparently ran into Alan and Brian(...?!), and Alice brought yummy baked goods, of which I had some orgasmic banana bread. I haven't had banana bread for such a long time... ^_______^

The stitches in my mouth are coming out, bit by bit. It's kind of gross and sort of distracting and pretty frickin' TMI, actually, but I find that as each piece comes out, my headache and toothache lessen. :O

Ah, I'm going to deposit a bunch of pennies ($20+) in the bank today. The teller is going to smack me. I'm looking forward to it.

So Kamakari's finally blogging again. Still no pictures, but whatever. He's cute. And Jiroh Takuya has pictures of him on his blog, so it's all good. :3

And I think I had something to say about Tenimyu, but I forget what it was now. :(

Diki's home.

( Yaaaay. :| )

Good to have you back, Diki. T___T


It was crew prank night at the musical last night. Pranks included, but weren't limited to, filling a piñata with rice instead of candy and replacing a recorded cue with a sound clip of what I think was the Wicked Witch of the West laughing maniacally. We could hear the cast (onstage and off) and crew laughing the entire time. XDD

Afterwards, I watched about 1.5 bands at Battle of the Bands and then went home. Spent a heinous amount of time online (and now I don't even remember what I was up to), went to bed pretty late (early). And I did stuff this morning, too, but I don't really remember what I did then either. Listened to MabeRajio after I came back from teaching, edited Blood+, then had to help unpack.


Diki and I just watched the first episode of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuu(uuuu)tsu. Cute. XDD Reminded me of this Pokémon spoof, so we watched that afterwards. And now I have the musical to play for. Again. =_=;;

Can't wait for prom (six days and counting)... I'm so excited... ><;;

( There's a fine, fine line... )


And hey, my mother apparently found my soulmate. Mommy's coworker's son, a senior at Penn, is going to study chemistry at Notre Dame. He also wants to study east-Asian languages in anticipation of studying abroad in Japan.

Oh, and he started an anime club at school.

O_o;;;;;;


Mew, remind me to read your essay later. I have to go now... I think I'm going to be late for call. ><;;


Ayu-chan, ♥. ^^

Short little update (even though I have nothing to say) simply because I think I'm addicted to LJ. Do they have a support group for this? "LJ Whores Anonymous" or something?

Sick yesterday. Edited Blood+, took a shower, and crawled into bed around 17:30; freaked out when I woke up at 22:00 and noticed that my lights were off in my room (I never go to bed with my lights off). Then realized that I was being a freak and that I forgot to turn my lights on before I went to sleep. So yeah. Turned my lights on, went back to bed.

Appointment with the fake!dermatologist dermatology nurse this morning. He got all annoyed when my dad asked, on behalf of my mother, for the Latin name for whatever's going on with my face (the rash-thing). =___=;; Went to my dad's office afterwards (before I actually went to school) because I had some homework that I never did while I was completely incapacitated the night before.

Was supposed to take my calc test after school today, but I also had a PM for being late to school. So Wojo gave me my test to do as a take-home test, [three dots arranged in a triangle] I have calc, micro, and apologetics take-home tests to finish. By tomorrow.

... which wouldn't be a problem if I didn't have to play for the musical. But I do. Rehearsal today and tomorrow from 17:00-21:00. So no time for three take-home tests. Or homework. Or fansubbing. Or LJ. Weep, weep.

Mm, I think I'm going to be late to rehearsal. ._.

Well, Evelyn wanted it. :D And Fiore likes violin music, so that's two. XD Oh, and Rae hasn't heard me play for a while, so that's three. \o/ The quality (both of the recording and of what was recorded) sucks, but this is what I'm sending MIT. They'd better frickin' like it.

This took an enormously long time to record (several hours), and it turned out to be a six minute clip. Blame 1) my being a perfectionist, 2) my not having touched the piece for months, 3) my having played the piece atrociously when I had touched it (definitely not kidding - it's my worst performed solo to date), and 4) my taking frequent fanfiction breaks. ><

It all sounds pretty seamless (though badly played), and there's this one part where I do this big long set of chromaticky stuff almost perfectly except for one majorly noticeably false note. I was near tears (not really, because I still had more to record)...

So yes, if you want the "acoustic version" (funny to think of it that way, though it can be argued that pianoless/orchestraless = acoustic) of the first movement (yes, it ends in a minor key; it actually goes into the second movement instead of just finishing) of the Bruch Violin Concerto a la yours truly, feel free to download it:
right-click, save as, AHHHHH!!

Yes, it's an enormous file (~30 mb), but it's getting "late" (and my father wants his laptop back...), so I can't reencode it as an mp3 right now. Besides, the plugin I usually use to encode things as mp3s requires stereo tracks, and since it's a mono recording... Yeah. :/