• go to the bank to deposit graduation money
• pay bills
• e-mail voice teacher re: scheduling lessons at her summer studio
• scrap/revise resumes (music & real life jobs)
• look up professional orchestras & choirs in the Portland and Salem areas for soloist & choral singer jobs
• look up local businesses for “real” jobs (I say this half-facetiously)
• make a playlist
• figure out what I want to do for post-baccalaureate studies (I am now officially in my gap year)
• start thinking about where I want to live this coming fall (hugely dependent on the job and post-bac business) and who I would like to live with (hajna??)
• listen to Russian opera

• last Tuesday I met a couple of girlfriends at Powell’s to take advantage of the store-wide 30%-off sale, then went to dinner at Papa Haydn’s with the best friend.  The guy sitting alone at the table next to us told me I had a wonderful giggle, and suggested the two of us write a blog together because we have a joy and a fascination for life and are good story-tellers.  This isn’t the first time this has happened: for some reason, when the two of us get together people get sucked in to our conversations and have something to add to it. It is surprisingly not intrusive or uncomfortable.
• I laugh inappropriately loudly in public places when I am with close friends.
• I drank three cups of chai tea this afternoon while watching at least 10 episodes of Parks and Recreation. Oops.
• it’s still weird not having hair and it startles me every time I look into a mirror. My head gets cold.
• last Thursday I went to Night Strike with my dad and the boy. I didn’t really know what to do, so I served cups of coffee and hot chocolate to the guests while they waited in line for food or clothing or hair cuts. I also talked with a man named Kevin who seemed really sweet and had some stories to tell, and I hope my dad and I run in to him again this week.  I’ll probably talk more about this after I go a few more times, because at this point I still feel overwhelmed and over-privileged and anxious that I should be doing more.
• started working with my dad in his shop. It’s really cold and I hope I don’t accidentally bring several hundred pounds of equipment down on my head or something. But it’s good. I borrowed my little brother’s flannel work shirt on Monday and it looked like I was wearing a tent.

• stay in bed until 10am
• make coffee with coconut milk and toast with jam for breakfast
• stay in pajamas until late afternoon
• practice piano and vocal rep. for 1 hour
• go to the bank
• go to sister’s house & play with the nephew
• online class homework
• read

filed under “friday through sunday kicked my butt but at least i only have to do this 8:30am to 11pm school and work marathon weekend thing one more time” and “THANK GOD FOR A DAY OFF”

• Underwhelmed and disappointed by Dimanche and Other Stories by Irene Nemirovsky. Then I noticed that Suite Francaise and Fire In The Blood, her fantastic novels I’ve heard so much about, are translated by someone else. I bought Dimanche because I’ve generally found that short stories are the best introduction to an author’s work (for me), but that’s not the case here. I should have known better about the differences between translators. Oh well.
• I got The Cat’s Table (Michael Ondaatje’s newest novel) for Christmas, but I feel like I have to save it for the summer, for congruency’s sake.
• My dad cracked one of his ribs a few weeks ago (wrestling with a friend… idiots), so he hasn’t been able to work and is finding more time to read the books my brother and I gave him for Christmas (Ishmael, My Ishmael, 1984, Brave New World, The People’s History of the United States). When I come home from work or am just hanging around the kitchen or living room, he reads excerpts or entire chapters out loud to me. It’s really awesome and kinda makes me feel like a little girl again.

(besides Tumblr, because that’s a given)

• “Caring For Your Introvert” article (again)
• INFJ TypeLogic profile
• INTJ TypeLogic profile
• Postcrossing
• fascinating article on the differences between Eastern Orthodox and Western Orthodox (Roman Catholic and Protestant) translations of the Bible, specifically the of Hebrew words for “Sheol,” “Heaven,” “grave,” “pit,” “fires of gehennom,” etc. all mistranslated to “Hell/hellfire” in all Western translations since the Great Schism in 1054. Eastern Orthodoxy understands “Heaven” and “Hell” as spiritual states of mind within an individual, while Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity understands “Heaven” and “Hell” to be physical places outside of the earthly realm Which has has a hell of a lot of implications (see what I did there?) for how mainstream Western Christianity operates and has never made sense to me because if Christians truly believe that God is the entirety of existence and that we are saved by grace and love, how could there be a “hell” that is void of Him and why would He put his beloved there? And now I’m connecting that with all stuff I learned and read and talked about in my agrarian philosophy class last year about dualism and the Enlightenment Period and how we are spiritually sick in our division from Creation and any real connection to God… to be elaborated on later… maybe.
  
• Pinterest

good grief

• composer love: Arvo Part
• favorite thing said to me so far today: “collect some spoons so that you can make it through your day.”
• cashmere cardigan (that i scored on clearance and i’m never taking off): if my brother asks me one more time if there is a little red dot on it, i’m going to pinch him. hard.
• free tire rotation. woot.
• happy hour at McMenamins last night with the best friend. double woot.

• finish my other to-do lists

1. Birds of America - Lorrie Moore
2. Breakfast At Tiffany’s - Truman Capote
3. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (re-read)
4. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read)
5. The Hunger Games, book one - Suzanne Collins
6. The Hunger Games, book two - Suzanne Collins
7. In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
8. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
9. Too Much Happiness - Alice Munroe
10. Salvation on Sand Mountain - Dennis Covington
11. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
12. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
13. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
14. The Unquiet Earth - Denise Giardina
15. Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
16. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Unfinished / savoring slowly:

• The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
• The Captain’s Verses - Pablo Neruda (poetry)
• The Cinnamon Peeler - Michael Ondaatje (poetry)
• Jayber Crow - Wendell Berry
• Musicophilia - Oliver Sacks
• A People’s History of the United States - Howard Zinn

I am very aware that this is not an impressive list. It’s probably the most I have read in a single year since high school, however, so it is a step in the right direction.  Some of these were read in my American Lit. class (in addition to a few short story and poem anthologies), but they are novels I would have eventually picked up on my own anyway.

*note: the only book I forced myself to finish out of sheer stubborness was the Faulkner; everything else here I would recommend wholeheartedly. Life is too short for books you don’t like.

• breakfast at zell’s with the best friend (yay!!!) at 8:00 am (why???)
• finish christmas shopping
• resist temptation to buy books for myself
• pay bills
• register for spring classes
• help mama clean house for guests

• finish reading Salvation On Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (totally fascinating! totally weirding me out!)
• eat an entire box of aplets & cotlets
• feel absolutely no guilt for eating an entire box of aplets and cotlets

• the research paper of doom is done. done. done. done. all i have to worry about now is christmas concert weekend and one final exam next week, and i’m home free.
• my university’s gigantic christmas concert extravaganza is in four days and half the choir doesn’t know their words. so much rage. i know it will all come together by friday, but tonight’s dress rehearsal was extremely frustrating.
• i have a voice lesson on wednesday. thank goodness. i need it.
• as soon as this term is over, i will spend an entire week in bed watching audrey hepburn movies and finishing reading the hunger games trilogy and nabokov short stories and neruda poetry. that’s it. well, and probably christmas shopping. fine.
• i make awesome song playlists.
• twining’s english breakfast tea + cream + brown sugar = caramel-y comforting goodness
• god loves cockroaches more than i care for most humans.

• i have a manageable checklist of things to accomplish tonight
• i figured out what has been triggering all of these migraines for the last month or so
• best friends are the best
• lovely, whimsical new photography showcase on the walls of my favorite coffee shop
• taking up  one of the “big” tables all by myself and not feeling guilty
• in ten minutes I will take a study break and treat myself to thai food down the street, then go nest in the library for the next several hours to accomplish things on the checklist
• my entire day before 3:40 tomorrow is free, which means more time to work and do laundry
• i can do this. this week is not insurmountable.
• i have people who encourage me to succeed and who give me perspective when i start to fall into a panic spiral

i am thankful for:

• ALL THE GLUTEN-FREE THINGS (organic turkey, crepes, stuffing, mashed potatoes & gravy, pumpkin cheesecake, apple pie, pecan pie)
• a patient, loving mama who made all of said gluten-free goodness
• my liberal arts education
• this song my music theory professor posted on my facebook wall because it reminded him of me
• no-shave November progress photos with siblings (it’s a lot less horrifying than it sounds, i swear)
• fleet foxes, mumford & sons, the swell season
• people who make me laugh
• toddlers that smell like shampoo and bananas
• the ability to stay vulnerable and honest and myself when the world gets me down, instead of becoming tough and jaded
• baritones
• scholarly sources on sherwood anderson *cough*
• andrea gibson
• my discovery of spotify
• a job that pays (a little) above minimum wage and gives me some flexibility with my schedule
• all the things i take for granted because i am a privileged first-world white person
• being able to recognize that i’m privileged
• people with worldviews different from my own
• growth
• things that challenge my beliefs and preconceived notions about how the world works
• the maturity to recognize when a relationship is unhealthy and simply draining on my time and energy
• green tea with ginger
• rain storms
• hair the color of autumn leaves
• the richness and beauty of close friendships
• accidental video-chat with my oldest sister
• the “edit” button