What a Weekend!

What a rewarding weekend! Good friends, GREAT music, great learning experiences. Lots to go home feeling great about!

Hopefully videos will follow soon! I have to somehow get from VHS to DVD to Computer to Blogger. We'll see how it goes!

VACATION!!

Well, it probably won't be that much of a vacation, since I am conducting in the masterclass, but I do get to fly to Houston, where the weather is supposed to be rainy all weekend, but that's a step up from snow! AND, I get to get out of Provo

I am really looking forward to this masterclass, I haven't been critiqued in my conducting for a very long time, and I can't wait to work with great people like these folks:

Marguerite L. Brooks: Professor of Choral Conducting at Yale University

Robert Sund, conductor of the Swedish choir Orphei Drängar

AND

The Houston Chamber Choir

I'm looking forward to it! Hopefully I have some great pictures to share with you!

P.S. I finished the second (or first) chapter this morning! There's plenty of room to improve, but at least its on paper! 21 pages!

Writing...writing...writing

So today I wrote the first ten pages of my dissertation.

They need serious help.

But they are written! I have a goal of getting the first draft of my dissertation written by May 1st so that I can hopefully graduate by August. It is a relatively ambitious goal, but I am feeling like I can make it happen!

So, my intermediary goal was to have the first two chapters written by the end of January. They should be the easier chapters since they are both different aspects of literature review (one on the British sentiment towards imperialism, and one on the writing about Elgar and Imperialism).

The goal within that goal (yeah, my life is a whole world of interlocking goals) is that I write the first chapter (well, actually it'll be the second chapter, but it's the first one I've written) by the end of this week! On top of it all, I leave on Thursday morning for the Chorus America Masterclass in Houston, so I have to have the first chapter written by tomorrow!

I started writing today (I spent a whole week reading up on the last bit of the books I needed). I started off great! the first couple of pages turned out great, but as the day went on it just got worse and worse and it became more difficult to have something worthwhile to say.

BUT! The accomplishment is, I have 14 pages written! That's more than 1/10th of my paper! I'm all about that!

I'll finish up the first (er...second) chapter tomorrow, and hopefully it comes out better!

Facebook....

I gave it up.

Perhaps crazy, perhaps not, but I think I got tired of being perpetually connected to a bunch of people who I don't really know. Anyway, this is perhaps my new place to post my stories. So follow me HERE, not on facebook!

Woodworking!?!

So...as many of you may have noticed, I have been in desperate need of a hobby. However much I love school, teaching voice lessons, and reading a lot of books every day in preparation for writing every day. (BTW, May 1st is my goal to have a first draft of my dissertation done! Crazy, you say? I agree!). I decided that I would probably really like woodworking, my grandpa on my mom's side made all sorts of awesome gadgets and gifts for us, and I would love to follow the tradition. So my big requests for this Christmas included tools. I got an awesome set of basic tools from my brother, and my father-in-law gave me some absolutely awesome tools. That, together with a great gift card to Home Depot from Santa, prompted me to use the rest of my break to start my (hopefully) long career as a woodworker!

We needed a shoe bench, particularly with the crazy snow and the salt that got tracked regularly into our living room. I decided that would be a good place to start. Its basically a one shelf bookshelf, right? It turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. You can't quite sit on it, but it holds shoes fantastically!

The unfinished shoe bench

Another angle: I added a little lip halfway through construction!

(actually the result of my not being able to cut straight on the other shelf pieces)

After I had built this one, we decided that we needed another end-table/bookshelf typed thing to go between our new chair (purchased on New Year's Eve) and the couch. So I used the same

plans, made it about half as long and a 1/2 foot shorter.

The great story behind all of this was the things that I learned about staining. I only remember staining one other time in my life (I think it was a door with Dusty) and I'm thinking I wasn't very successful at it. So I was excited to try again with my new 28-year-old sensibilities. Turns out they're not all that sensible:

Lesson 1: No matter how cold it is outside - even if you don't have a garage, or a back porch, or a basement - DO NOT stain in your kitchen. Even with all the windows open, you and your wife will end up with really bad headaches and not be in very good moods. Your wife may even retreat to the bedroom, shut the door, and fall asleep for several hours. (You'll be glad to know I came up with a way to make our laundry room - a small hut at the back end of our complex - into a "garage" without causing too many problems for the launderers in our complex.)

Lesson 2: When the can says to wait until the first coat has completely dried before adding another coat, they mean it. I got a bit impatient with the shoe bench and did the second coat while it was still a bit sticky. We ended up with some REALLY uneven spots (see pictures below) and an overly dark color, but it still looks very nice!

This is a close up of the horribly uneven part of the stain. Looks pretty bad! Fortunately a pair of shoes is always on top of it!

The smaller one. This is how it should actually look when one waits the entire time before doing the second coat of stain!

I'm going slow, and doing things that actually make sense for us (seeing as we don't actually own a home yet), but I think I'm going for a kitchen table next! I've got some ideas for how to do it, and it doesn't seem TOO horrible! Here's hoping!

Sick Day

Man, I hate these days. It started hitting me yesterday evening (AFTER we had selected our first Christmas tree) and it took control of my life all day. We're thinking I caught it from Whitney, since she's had a cold since almost the beginning of the week.

I find that sickness (besides a great time to catch up on all the fun television shows) somehow makes me look at my life in a little better (albeit somewhat delirious) perspective. This particular sickness got me to realize how lucky I am, I have a wonderful wife. (Who, by the way, even though she felt under the weather, still took care of me, made me meals, even gave me a back rub!! What a woman!) I have family that cares for me, a great job, a great plan for my future career, a wonderful ward, great friends.

I've spent so much of my life trying for something more, something better, even with myself. On one level, I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but I think in some ways it has really dominated my life to the point that I am unhappy with wherever I am. Now I want to see what is wonderful and then patiently working on making it more wonderful!

Here's the tree! First fresh one I've had in awhile!

New Conducting Post

Be sure to check out my most recent conducting escapades!

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