%title Ranna update.
%date 2006-01-29 23:05:02
:diary:livejournal:fossils:

All I've been doing recently is angsting here, so I figured I'd actually say what's going on.

School's going okay.  My classes aren't as bad as they seemed the first week of school, so that's good, but some of them are still going to be a pain in the butt.  The only one I'm really not liking is Low Brass techniques, though I haven't been that often.  I just.. don't really dig the idea of sharing a tuba with two other people.  My schooling in the US class could be better, but I'm liking it better as time goes on.  I just need to remember to pick up the packet of readings x.x  First bit of 'field work' starts on Wednesday: the whole MuEd Practicum class is gonna go to FCHS to watch a band rehearsal or something.  Should be interesting.  Got my songs for studio: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel - <em>Das Meer erglänzte weit hinaus</em>, Giacomo Carissimi - <em>Vittoria, mio core!</em>, Samuel Barber - <em>Now Have I Fed and Eaten up the Rose</em> from "Three Songs", Lully - <em>Bois Epais</em>, and Jean Sibelius - <em>Svarta Rosor</em>.  English, Swedish, German, French, and Italian @.@

Work's going to be much better now, though it's a shame that I work the AM shift both Saturday and Sunday.  At least I get Monday and Tuesday off.  No more shifts with certain supervisors (or, at least, very few).  And I still get paid money to work with food.

Got a few projects in the works, even though I have so little time to work on them.  For music, I'm still poking at <em>Der Kübelreiter</em>; I'm thinking of adding a narrator, but I can't decide if I want the narration to be in English or German.  Also, still have the Keats Cantata in the works, though I'm still toying with the idea of whether I really want to have it be for chorus and windband, or just chorus and piano.  Oh well.  Also still toying with the idea of film scores.  There are some other, smaller projects, like a few Kafka songs, Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite for SSAA and brass choir in the original Greek, and a goofy waltz I was planning on singing for studio, but never really got started on.  My goal is to be more cognizant of what I'm writing instead of relying so much on what it sounds like in Sibelius.  I'd really like to get my stuff performed someday..

The project I had in mind for NaNoWriMo is still there, and I'm still planning on writing the story out into a novella or something.  It's kinda-sorta semi-autobiographical, which places it somewhere in the gay, modern, nearly-fiction category, with leanings towards <u>Catcher in the Rye</u> style slice-of-life, college life, and music textbook categories :D  I'm such a geek..  I still need to straighten up a "Foxes and Milkshakes" and maybe send it off to some publisher of furry smut somewhere, if I can ever stop blushing about it.

If I ever get back into programming, I've got an idea left over from back when that was my thing.  It's something like a Wiki, but not quite.  It's a content manager with several parts, including a semi-unique way of organizing files, and of dealing with filetypes.  If anyone other than myself remembers, it's like an improved mix of CollMan and DocMan.  Hehe.. that was forever ago c.c  I don't know if it'll ever come to fruition.

I'm still fooling around with food.  My recent interests are braising and (still) breadmaking.  Since I've been back from FC, I've made some whole wheat bread for the house, as well as some braised pork in a white wine and rosemary sauce with potatoes and onions.  The latter is particularly good served in little french bread cups :o9

I've sorta stalled out on brewing, though not because my interest has faded.  Rather, I've run out of carboys to hold mead in progress, and bottles to hold finished mead.  Actually.. if I get off my lazy butt and wash some bottles, I should have enough for a batch or two.  So far, in the works, I've got: two gallons of prickly pear melomel, one gallon of coffeamel, one gallon of vanilla metheglin, one gallon of sack metheglin, one gallon of spiced cider, and half a gallon of persimmon mead.  There's some stuff left in bottles, as well.  Once I bottle some stuff, I've got plans for more lemon-lavender-rosemary melometh, as well as some other things I.. uh.. can't remember right now.  I also really, really want to get started on beer; I totalled everything up that I'd need: equipment kit plus 5.5 gal. stockpot, recipe kit for honey brown ale, and three cases of bottles come out to about $190 with free shipping.  Maybe once I get money straightened out with work.  I've got some other ideas for what kinds of beer to brew.. I want to try the juniper rye ale, an IPA with some toasted malt a la Papazian, and a bitter.  And a mild :o9

Anyway.. er.. I guess that's about it.