Day 34 | Tuesday, February 3 | 2009

Red Tea...

Today has been pretty productive though I still feel discouraged.  I just wasn't made to be motivated in this frigid existence.  I rode my bike into town today and that was invigorating and made me feel alive but I still feel bogged down by everything.  Today I worked on a recording for Alex -- he wrote a song for Stacy and her son Ser (sp?) -- and it is almost finished.  I'm going to give this recording to Christine who, in turn, will give it to Stacy in time for her birthday this Saturday.

I had my first tutoring session today and it went well.  My student's focus is in Music Theory -- a pretty fundamental level -- so I tested the waters to see where I was at too.  It all seemed to go pretty well.  Most of her questions were surrounding scale notation and identification and scale degree concerns.  Most of the time spent was a run through key signatures, staff notation, and devices that could help her memorize some of the order of sharps and flats.

Tonight should be a lot of fun -- Caitlin and I are going to vegan cooking (happens every Tuesday night and Friday afternoon) and I don't have a whole lot of homework although I should really try to make a lot of headway on some projects that will be relevant in the near future.

Here goes nothin.

Day 17 | Saturday, January 17 | 2009

A nice rest...

It seems like today has been infinite.  Today started out in a very nice way by sleeping in and being woken up with the sunlight seeping into my room.  Rem and Amanda were both out of town and the dogs were not too loud so it was comforting to get to relax and wake up at about 9:30.  Afterward, Caitlin and I had breakfast at Casa Nueva and then I showered packed and hit the road to Cincinnati to meet up with my parents.  My parents have just recently (as in yesterday) moved back to Ohio after living in Switzerland for the past five years.  My meeting them in Cincinnati is a welcoming gesture and also to help them in any way I can.

We spent most of the day at retail stores looking for deals on washer/dryers, televisions, and furniture.  I meant to get some schoolwork done but it just didn't happen.  We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant called Carrabba's.  Carrabba's is kind of like an Olive Garden type of place -- probably a national chain -- but it still has a nice flair to it that is comforting.  I ate lasagna that was very (and perhaps too much) filling.  We spent most of the meal talking about the future -- as it pertains to what I will be doing in the next year or so.  One thing is certain that I need to fulfill my Spanish major requirement of studying abroad.  The difficult thing is that I need to figure out where and when this will happen and how it will work out in relation to the things most important to me -- my relationship with Caitlin and also my living situation(s) and my other degree of Telecommunications.  

Nothing is decided right now but something that is likely is that I will study this Spring in Cuenca, Ecuador.  Regardless, I will be doing a lot of preparation work this week to figure out my future in the next year or so.  

Additionally and somewhat unrelated -- it is really cool that Beans with Garlic is starting to take a life of its own.  Since I have installed a tracker on the site, I am able to see where visitors come from (not the identity of the visitor) but I have noticed people coming in from Ohio, Minnesota, and even England!  To all of those people, I want so say Welcome!  Thank you for finding me and I hope that you come back regularly to check in on me.  Feel free to leave comments or just peruse at your own discretion.  

I am also excited for Beans with Garlic because there is a chance I could get basically a steal on a new camera tomorrow.  Because my parents are buying a lot of appliances for their house, the retail store they are purchasing from also sells cameras.  I have insisted to my father on the possibility of negotiating a price slash on a Nikon D90.  This may or may not happen but we'll see.  If not, I'll continue to shoot on my trusted D40.