SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!

I took my last (okay, my only) final today, and I'm officially done. I have to turn in the grades for the class I assist, but other than that, I'm free as a bird. Tomorrow is the annual faculty/student softball game and I once again wish I could make a bat come into contact with a ball at will. I made a deal with the secretary (my boss)--she'll hit the damn thing and I'll run the bases for her. With her bum knee and my complete lack of hand/eye coordination, I think we'll make a good team. Or else I'll just watch the game with a bag of chips and a beer...

And so another academic year has passed. For so long now I've thought of years in terms of school semesters; I always feel more like a year is over in May than in December. I think the beginning of spring has something to do with that too. Because if you think about it, it really makes more sense that way...spring is the time of birth, of renewal...shouldn't that be the start of the year?

And at the same time that the flowers are blooming, the school year is ending and I feel that wonderful sense of freedom that I'm sure everyone remembers from grade school. It's the last day of school and you get off the bus and you're just grinning from ear to ear because it's SUMMER and the next fall seems so far away it'll never actually be a reality...and you run home not because you want or need to be home but just because you're so excited to be free that you just can't walk but you have to run.

And now more than ever I'm relishing the idea of an academic life; I love the academic schedule, the atmosphere of learning and gung-ho freshman and even jaded seniors and bitter graduate students. I don't love the superiority or snobbery, but given the chance, I could certainly learn to understand and deal with all of the downs along with relishing the ups.

So, two more years of getting through the curriculum and I'll be Dr. Curly Su and I'll forever be able to 'press 1 if you're a doctor' on the answering system at Walgreens.

And so Wildflower approaches. I'm excited, but I'm also pretty damn nervous. The one thing I'm not nervous about is the race. Two years ago I never would have dreamed I would be saying this, but an Olympic distance triathlon no longer seems like anything I have to worry about...and I'm so bewildered at how far I've come in the past two years. From finishing second-to-last in a Sprint tri to finishing an Ironman in less than two years; it's pretty freaking bizarre. So this race this weekend? It'll be fine. I won't set any records; I probably won't even break my previous Olympic PR since the other races I've done were much (MUCH) flatter, but you know what? I really don't care at all. I'm really just going out there to have fun, and on race day I'm convinced I'll have a blast.

But I am still nervous. I'm nervous about getting out of here, and I'm nervous about meeting a whole hell of a lot of you guys that I feel like I know but I actually don't, and I'm nervous about seeing people I used to know very well but I moved and now I don't know if I can even call them friends...and that last bit really makes me sad but there isn't much I can do about it because there has been such a bewildering chain of events that just seems irreparable.

And so all I can do is muster whatever comfort I can from a song I used to sing at camp...

We can't return,
we can only look behind from where we came,
and go round and round and round
in the circle game.

Back in the saddle!

The news of the year: I got back on my bike. On Saturday, I rode 30 hilly miles through the metroparks in Cleveland.

And you know what? It was fun.

I realized something. At that IronMan bike course, I burnt myself out. Yeah, I had done my hundred mile training rides; I had even done hilly 100 mile training rides. But 112 miles through the Alps? It was hard. Too hard. I didn't have fun on that bike course. Since June 25, every time I thought about getting on the bike, I thought about that course. It was as though that was all I had ever ridden. All those wonderful, fun rides I had done previously had all disappeared. My entire biking experience felt summed up by that impossibly hard IronMan bike course.

And so I didn't want to get back on the bike. I taught spinning, but I didn't bike. We had some gorgeous weather, but I just couldn't make myself bite that proverbial bullet and pump up my damn tires.

I brought my bike everywhere, expecting to ride. My bike came along with me to Vermont, it came to Philadelphia, it went back and forth between Cleveland and New Jersey several times, and it came camping in Pennsylvania...but all it did was sit on top of my car and catch bugs with the head tube and aero bars. All year my bike was in the entry of my apartment. There it gathered compliments from visitors (it's a hot looking bike), for my purposes merely served as a coat rack and a balancing tool for attempting to put my shoes on without sitting.

I felt guilty every time I walked in the door, but I still just didn't feel capable of riding.

But I signed up for triathlons this year. I am a triathlete. I have to bike.

So, this past weekend I went to Cleveland. I went back to my favorite route, where I first learned to bike, where I fell a record number of times learning how to manage my clipless pedals. I got back on my bike, and I had fun. The course is hilly. There are some rollers in the beginning, and then two pretty intense hills towards the end, but I had a blast. I met new bikers along the way and rode faster than I thought I could, and I was happy that I could hold up just fine. I had a great time and I'm looking forward to biking again. Lesson learned...as Nike would say...Just Do It.

Now, to find pleasant courses to ride in New Jersey...

(For all you doubters out there [no way she really hasn't ridden since last June], here are the odometer readings before and after my ride. The extra 3 miles on the before pic comes from the walk back to the apartment after the race. [No, I didn't walk the 3 miles...I took a cab and my all too accommodating non-racing friends walked my bike back for me.] Oh, and my bike shoes? I should have taken a picture; they were still in the transition bag provided by IronMan France. I thought they would be too moldy to ever wear again, but they survived. My gloves, on the other hand, didn't fare so well. I'm not sure any washing machine can save them, but I'll try.)



Keep on riding!

Fuck this flute shit.

(comic from Piz-iper Hesterly, the fabulous fiancee'--thanks to my favorite Pipe-Cleaner!)

Too much classical music lately?

If not, check out the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra's concert last Friday. I'm playing piccolo on the percussion concerto (that high screeching noise? that's me), and principal flute on the Elgar, so when you hear flute on that one, it's probably me...

Even though not great, our school orchestra is decent. We have some strong sections and some weak ones, but I think our overall performance last weekend was pretty good.

The percussion concerto is very cool, and the Elgar is pretty although slightly cheese-mageese. Elgar wrote each variation to personify his many friends. One funny one is about a woman with a stutter; another is the movement entitled ***, which was about woman with whom he was having an affair. Subtle, eh?

Enjoy!

(PS: No empty tracks or long pauses this time; the recording guy did a good job!)

I can't seem to get out there...

Here's part of the new post I just put up at Zipp Cycling.

I swore this year would be different. I swore I would ride.

I still will. This summer, in the mountains of Vermont, I will ride. I have to ride. I'm signed up for a Half Iron-Man and then a 101m race, and I have to be able to ride a bike.

I have the Wildflower Olympic race in less than 3 weeks and I have yet to get on my bike since last June. June 25, to be exact...the day of my IronMan.

Again??!

This was emailed to me from the important people a couple of hours ago:

"According to emergency management officials, Middlesex County has received
nearly six inches of rain and more than 650 people have had to be evacuated from
their homes. The county and the City of New Brunswick have, until further
notice, declared states of emergencies.

Although Rutgers' roads are passable, access to campus has been severely limited
due to flooding of roads surrounding the campus.

Flooding in the Raritan Basin is expected to recede tomorrow. In order to help
expedite clean-up and recovery, classes on all campuses in New Brunswick and
Piscataway will be CANCELLED on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Offices and departments
will be open."

That's great and all, but I'm trapped in my apartment (cause yeah, the roads
aren't open), and frankly...I'm a little bored.  What, exactly,  am I supposed to do?

Movies, homework, practicing, reading, fooling around online (if you emailed
me today, chances are you got a response within minutes)...

I've done it all...but they really only entertain for so long, you know?
Another day of stir crazy entrapment? I might actually prefer school.
Might. Key word.

And here's a question for you...is the pomegranate related to the tomato?
Because I just had a glass of pomegranate juice and it tastes suspiciously
like tomato juice, and I'm not sure how I feel about that...

and PS:  Blog-block is officially over, a new leaf is turned.
I actually want to write again!

How is it that I didn't know?

School is canceled today. There is no class to TA, no orchestra rehearsal. I've been in the library listening to music since 8:06, trying to catch up on everything I didn't do in the weeks before my recital. It's now 10:16 and I just found out there is no school.

Why is it that I now want to just go home and sleep? It's the perfect opportunity to completely catch up and instead I'm tempted to just hibernate.

Maybe it's the seemingly-never-going-to-cease downpour, but I think it's more that I before I had a deadline. I had limited time to complete certain things, and so I was doing them when I could. Now? I have all day. I might as well just go back to bed. I'm suddenly very tired...

But, never fear, I'm going to stay here in the library for at least a little while longer. I'll try to finish 2 weeks of assignments (and then I'll only be down 3...ugh!).

It's wet out there; I'm safe here in my little cubbyhole in the basement of the library.

RAIN DAY!!! YEAH!!! I haven't had one of those since I was in high school in Louisiana where flooding was the norm and we were allotted several days per year of expected road closures due to too much freaking water.

I heard this is one of the first times Rutgers has actually canceled classes. I'm proud to be part of history in the making...

My dad and sister...it's a good thing I take after my mom...

In the Process...A Doctorate of Musical Arts Recital

Click on the picture and you'll be able to listen to my recital! The person who recorded it messed up the tracks just a bit (added unnecessary tracks during pauses, left way too much empty space between movements), but the order is the Mozart Andante in C (one movement), Reinecke Undine Sonata (4 movements), Vivaldi G Minor Sonata from Il Pastor Fido (4 movements), and the Liebermann Sonata (2 movements).

A Disclaimer: I wasn't all that happy with my recital as a whole. I was going to just upload the movements I thought went well, but I decided that was kind of lame and I should just suck it up and be honest. So, here it is, complete with finger blips, out of tune passages, and my flute slipping off my face at the end.

For now, some pictures...

I have trouble talking about races immediately afterwards (unless it was the absolute perfect race, and does such a thing exist?); likewise, I can't seem to muster up the right words to talk about my recital yet. Soon, I promise...

(Like the title says), for now, here's the photo description... (sound to come shortly too!)

An article worth reading (or at least scanning...)

Pearls Before Breakfast

Joshua Bell is one of the world's greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played it for spare change, incognito, outside a bustling Metro stop in Washington, would anyone notice?

And the countdown is over...

My recital is today...at 4 pm. Wish me luck...

(I hope I can figure out how to post the CD later this week. That's if it goes well, of course. If I bomb, I won't try. I'll pretend it didn't happen. 'Recital? What recital...?')

Maybe not exactly what my professor expects...

As assigned, I went to the music library and watched one of the two available videos of Strauss' Salome. The one I watched was of the Royal Opera, with Edward Downes as conductor. The singers were Maria Ewing as Salome, Michael Devlin as Jokanaan, Kenneth Riegel as Herod, Gillian Knight as Herodias, and Robin Leggate as Narraboth.

I went into the library feeling ridiculously horrible. I didn't want to watch the opera; I didn't want anything to do with music. But, I guess even that emotion isn't particularly true, because despite feeling like I'd rather crawl into bed and never come out, I made my way down into the doldrums of the music library and got myself to sit down at a TV/VCR. So, I guess something in me wanted to listen, or at least not fail a class or drop out of school...

In the beginning of the opera, I thought it was all pretty damn stupid. Over dramatized, and pointless. But of course, that's not at all specific to this opera; it's opera (and maybe life) in general. I just sat there with my eyes glazed over, staring at the screen. I was reading the words and the headphones were on; I was absorbing, but not listening. I was doing the best I could, but that wasn't all that great.

Then somewhere along the way (I'm not sure where or what the turning point was), I actually tuned in to the music, and forgot about myself and my own drama. Perhaps that's the point of all the overly complicated operatic stories; they're so far fetched that they make you forget about your ordinary problems. I mean, when you watch a Princess fall in love with someone from the depths of a big hole, and then do a strip dance, ,my simple problems seem to diminish in importance.

And maybe, just maybe, the assertion that music and the arts may not save lives, but are instead what people live for...well, maybe that's actually true. It's a nice thought; I'd like to think that I'm contributing what I can to this earth. So much of my time is spent with a long stick of metal; I sometimes wonder what the point is. I'm reasonably intelligent (except when bombing midterms), and a lot of times I feel like I'm not giving back what I should. And so, why music? It's frustrating, unrewarding, and doesn't really help people in the way that doctors and other professions can. Why music? I've written so many essays on the topic, attempting to figure out what it is in me that continues to compel me to take this road. All I've really figured out is that sometimes it touches me deeper than anything else ever has. And then of course sometimes it bores me more than anything else ever has...but obviously the love runs deeper than the boredom, or I wouldn't still be here, getting yet another useless degree.

And so my problems are still there; music will sometimes be an escape and sometimes will feel like a fix, and then other times it will be the source of the problems. But the truth is that no matter what else comes in and out of my life, music has been the constant; the one thing that has always been there for me. I think the reason I keep at all of this is because I'd like to one day be able to share my appreciation for music to other people. If even one person manages to forget about his or her daily struggles because of my playing, then it's all worth it.

I guess this isn't really the kind of paper you want. I did like the opera; I know it reasonably well because it's a common flute excerpt. The performance I heard was great. Maria Ewing has such a distinct, disturbing look about her; she was perfect for the part (and, she still has a pretty awesome body--I hope I look that good when I get older!).

I look forward to learning more about this opera...

So, sometimes things actually do work out...

Dear Susanna,

I am pleased to tell you that you have been accepted to participate in the Manchester Music Festival's 2007 summer Young Artists Program.

This e-mail serves as official confirmation, and I would ask that you please acknowledge this e-mail and let us know that you will in fact attend the Festival this summer.

We look forward to working with you.

Thank you,

Ariel Rudiakov,Artistic Director
Manchester Music Festival, Inc.

Happy Passover!

Happy Passover!

What part of 'I like my hair long' did she not understand??

(I'm not really mad; hair grows back. And, I guess by the nature of getting a hair cut, your hair will, in fact, get shorter...it's just always a shock to the system. Now, maybe if I got my hair cut more than twice a year, it wouldn't feel so jarring...)