Summer.
Wait, what?

Seems like the universe pushed the fast-forward button on everything, and now here I am, sitting in my house in the opposite end of the state, typing away at something non-scholarly. How good it feels!
Adjusting back to normal life (school being the opposite of normal) is going slower than I thought it would, though. I need a summer hibernation, not a break.
But summer will prove to be busy, so if anybody would like to buy me coffee so I can stay awake for it, please do.

I plan to work on German by reading some young adult novels ("For fun?" the librarian asked), hoping to absorb some good grammar by osmosis. I also am trying to keep up my Swahili after not speaking it for quite some time. Prepare to hear a really strange mix of things when I talk. You've heard of Spanglish, right? My Deutsch prof says English+Deutsch=Denglish. And here I am, throwing one more thing into the pot of linguistic stew, trying to sound comprehensible speaking what comes out as Swangdenklish. Es ist sehr mgumu sana, mensch!

My attitude towards piano practice this summer: Attack! Charge! Show no mercy! And other piratey-sounding things.
I will also be awkwardly practicing conducting in the mirror while blasting choral music in the background. Gotta get ready for choral conducting class with a Grammy-winning professor somehow.

Compose (and finish) some things. Finishing is the tricky part. Please remind me from time to time that I should be working on something...

But all of this is trumped by my continued search for a job. My options are limited, because I've been accepted to the Adamant Music School in Vermont, where I'll be studying piano for three weeks (!), so I need to work around that, and because I don't have a car. If it was safe for a small redheaded female of my age, I would pack my bag and start riding the rails with my guitar, Woody Guthrie-style, working where I can. But let's face it, I would probably get stabbed by hobos and gangsters. I also imagined cutting my hair and selling it, like Jo March in "Little Women," where her sister Amy so tactfully exclaimed, "Oh Jo, your one beauty!" and made enough money to buy a train ticket. But then I saw "Les Miserables," where Fantine, played by Anne Hathaway, sells her hair in desperation, and then promptly dies in poverty with a few less teeth and a lot less dignity. I haven't hit that point--yet. So, if anybody hears of anything--and I mean anything--that sounds like a promising opportunity for me, let me know. Trying to keep my energy level up in the face of the constant "no" I keep hearing proves more difficult than I thought.