Beautiful Whiteness Falling from the Sky

There are beautiful flakes of snow falling outside my window. It's just lovely. I'm so glad it's winter! I think I might get a 'real' Wisconsin winter finally this year - the last two have been relatively mild. The lakes are even freezing over (at least at the edges) already. I'm hoping for a solid freezing of the lakes for at least 3 months this year, like it's 'supposed' to be.

Christmas is coming! This is the best time of year.

Another hat to wear

I recently was introduced to a product called MonaVie. It is a blend of 19 fruits, covering many different pigmentation colors and using fruits from around the world. Each batch is tested for traces of pesticides/chemicals that could be harmful when ingested, and uses the highes quality ingredients. What you get from this yummy drink is a highly concentrated form of fruit - allowing you get the nutrients you need for health on a cellular level. It's not supposed to cure anything, but people have experienced a range of effects on their health, ranging from improved sleep to mental clarity to relief from chronic aches and pains - among others.

The effects I've felt include the improved sleep (I've not slept so well in years; particularly since being on Lariam while on SST in Cote d'Ivoire over 5 years ago!), mental clarity (particularly in terms of simply having energy to really think about tough questions in my life), increased energy overall (I have energy to get up and exercise almost every day!!), and a curbed appetite (so that I can willfully and gladly control portion sizes to what is more appropriate for health). I also don't crave junk food (pizza especially, since I don't crave desserts as much with my sugar sensitivities) which is a new thing for me!

So I decided to become an independent distributor of this product. I believe that it's making me healthier. My father-in-law said last night, "you really look good! There is more life in your eyes" and that meant a lot to me, that others can see a difference. Brandon even admitted that he notices that I have more vitality. I see it making a difference for my mom, and continue to hear stories from others that I am learning to know through the company. If people can't get on board with this product, I hope they at least make changes to improve their health by eating more fruits and vegetables. That alone would be beneficial to them.

If you want to learn more, just ask me! I'm always eager to share.

You know spam is really bad when...

This morning, one of my work tasks was to clean out my boss's e-mail in-box (she's away on a business trip to multiple music educator conferences). Normally, she gets a LOT of spam/junk e-mail (on the scale of 300+ per day). So this process takes quite a bit of my time!

I have to say, though, that sometimes the e-mails are rather amusing. Many come masked as "System Administration: Mailer daemon failure" and stuff like that (as if my boss would be sending notices about viagra, etc, to people she doesn't know/e-mail addresses that are absolutely ludicrous).

The funniest domain name that I saw today was "@alibaba.com". Because of the movie "Aladdin" I started laughing... It just struck me as funny.

I'm glad I don't get as much spam as she does, though, no matter how amusing it may be. Ultimately, there are about 5 or 6 basic e-mails that come through. Don't people have better things to do with their time?!

Listening

So I've been listening to my school colleagues over the past 4 weeks. We've sung for each other in Master Class and in Diction class (and will continue to do so throughout the next two years in various capacities). I am so amazed at the level of artistry that so many people have. There are people who, in their first year of a Master's of Music in Voice Performance, have what I consider to be a professionally full and rich sound. Already. I wouldn't be surprised if they could win roles in opera auditions if they went out for something in Chicago or New York yesterday. Even some undergraduate students have incredible, rich, full, and well-connected and well-placed voices with amazing expression. I wonder, hearing them, what they hear in my voice - and what my professors hear that allowed them to accept me into the program!

I'm not saying that I feel like a horrible singer, but I know that I don't have a huge voice (even though it's gotten a lot bigger, and a lot more solid, over the past two years). I don't expect to ever make a living doing opera, but it would be nice to get paid singing oratorio, or for weddings (and funerals?), or in churches, and to be part of an ensemble that gets to play concerts at least once in a while. I'm thoroughly enjoying learning music of Buxtehude and his contemporaries in my "Collegium Musicum" (early music ensemble) class - I feel comfortable with the repertoire and my voice doesn't get tired singing it. I hope that I can strengthen my voice to do operas in small venues, because it's so much fun! My internal reactions to hearing my colleagues, though, make me question whether those things will feel "enough" for me. I like to feel like I'm at the top - I'm kind of used to it (maybe not always in music, but in general I've always had a sense that I can do more and be more than the average person... and I feel like that sounds horribly arrogant, and it feels that way to admit it, but I don't feel like the arrogance is a part of that sense - it's just how I think I'm wired). So will I get enough satisfaction from singing the things I love to sing, even if it's not what most people in the world will ever appreciate listening to?

The musings continue...

An interesting perspective on me!

So apparently I'm "balanced"... anyone think so?!

I successfully finished my first semester back in school! I had forgotten, though, that I usually get sick at the end of a semester... normally my body waits until after exams, but the exam system here is different than it was at Goshen, so this time I got sick as soon as classes were over. Luckily, I didn't get sick on the last day of class, when I had to sing an aria for Italian class!

Now I have about 25 projects on my list for the summer. They range from spring cleaning my house to making long-overdue wedding gifts to some friends and family, to canning and freezing the vegetables Brandon is working on growing in our garden. I have to say that I will look forward to having so many fresh veggies, but I'm glad that he doesn't mind doing the outside work. I'm also determined to de-clutter my storage... I've gotten most of the way through two boxes of memories and old school notes (yes, from middle school and high school even!). There were also about 5 books that I think are my dad's in one box... I'll have to see if he still wants them. I don't remember putting them in. I'm not sure I've ever thought that books on accounting or statistics would be helpful to me - certainly not when I packed up these boxes five (?) years ago... maybe my mom found extra room and put them in when she was packing up the house in Batesville.

I actually did some outside/yard work over the weekend. But that's mostly because I want to get rid of the giant pile of dirt sitting in our driveway. We got the dirt mostly to fill in holes from fence posts (yay, no more ugly fence!!) but there is rather a lot left over. Ten cubic yards goes a long way for our little yard. I'll be very happy when there is grass growing again.

Work now consumes more of my time than I'd thought... but that's okay. I'll get to take off more time in August when all the workshops are over! :) It's nice to be able to leave at 2:30 or so again... I've missed that!

Snow in April

Have you ever looked out your window to see the snow moving in all different directions? That's the view I'm getting today. Sometimes it even looks like it's snowing "up"!

Although it's April 11, we may be getting up to a foot of snow by the end of the day. I kind of hope that it snows so much that the busses stop running and schools close. That way, I don't have to teach this evening. And that would be good for my study time since I have another Italian test tomorrow.

You know, even though it's April and I'd be happy for 50-60 degree weather (so I could run outside), this snow is still pretty! :)

a little complaining...

I really wish that I was more motivated to study right now. I think that I'm less motivated because I'm not at ALL used to ten weeks straight of school (who ever thought of putting spring break 2/3 of the way through a semester, instead of halfway?! seriously), let alone going to school and working full-time. It's tough. My heart goes out to people who work full time, go to school for time (which I'm not), AND have kids. I don't think I could handle that! (and don't plan to)

I'm looking forward to spring break next week! And Lisa Rose and Jeff are coming to visit - hooray! :)

Thin Ice

Last evening, I ran for the first time in several weeks. It took me a long time to decide whether I was going to be "responsible" with my running time by studying Italian vocabulary on a treadmill, or if I was going to to break free from that type of academic discipline and enjoy the almost 50-degree weather by running outside. In the end, the lack of shoe quality at home (my home "running" shoes are worn out, and keep losing foam from the inside of the heel because the cloth covering the foam is worn through) directed me to running inside on a treadmill. I think I learned a lot of vocabulary...! And I still enjoyed my run.

However, the weather these days keeps getting more and more beautiful. The birds are singing, I can often leave the house without five minutes of preparation (coats, hats, gloves, scarf wrapped just right,...), and the world sounds refreshed and newly alive to itself.

Yet as it warms up, the ice fishers who persist in venturing out onto Lake Mendota - where the ice is visibly thin! - boggle my mind in their audacity. Perhaps they know more about the behavior of ice than I do, but they seem to be challenging nature's course by continuing to go out there. And seriously - what is the pull of ice fishing, that people want to sit on the ice with a string through a hole in it?! Someone please explain that to me.

Speaking of fish - as Brandon and I walked in a park on Sunday, we crossed a bridge that was over a rather shallow creek. I've never seen so many dead fish suspended in ice (or on top of it, in some cases) in my life. That will probably be a very smelly area once the ice melts all the way.

Anyway - I hope everyone is enjoying the weather in their area, and that it's at least as beautiful as it is here! How are you experiencing spring?

Brandon and Andrea should switch jobs

(Andrea's musings!)
I'm not one to appreciate a strict adherence to stereotypes or gender definitions, but when it comes to who is the talkative one among us, I have to admit that it is me. Somewhere I read that women tend to talk 25000 words per day, and men closer to 10000. I realize that that is not true across the board (life could be boring and overly predictable if it were so!), but I have to say that I generally like to talk a lot more than Brandon.

I've always loved words. I remember having long conversations with friends and family, not to mention with myself inside my head, about specific words - how they sound, what they mean, why they matter or not, why the bother us or not. And I generally like to find the best word to describe things and situations - which sometimes results in me using a lot of words. (I also can follow complex grammatical structures with specific punctuation in my head, which is another story, and often leads me to use very long sentences!) So now, I jump at the chance to write, no matter what it is I'm writing (I often have to "beg" for writing projects at work, even though my boss knows and appreciates my writing and use of language). I credit a lot of my writing ability to my British English teacher, Mrs. Pearson (3 years in her classroom, hearing at least once each year about American being an "ugly, lazy way of speaking English" !), but also to my parents who willingly (I think?!) read and edited several drafts of high school English papers, no matter how late it got.

So now: I think Brandon and I have the wrong jobs on the basis of words. He is in a lab, where people coordinate and work independently yet very much together and in each other's proximity. I work in a place where each person has their own office. Mine is all the way at the far end of the building, and people don't come down the hall for anything unless they need something specific from me - and then they disappear again. We don't even have a common "break" room, or even a common bathroom. Each pair of offices has its own bathroom. People furnish their offices (and bathrooms) with a microwave, mini-fridge, snacks, mugs, coffee pot - I've even seen a toaster in one person's office! So we isolate ourselves, making it difficult for me to get to know anyone (besides my boss) at any level, because most people I see just at the departmental meetings that happen (I think) every other month (maybe less frequently). When my boss is gone (as she often is), it's not uncommon for me to go through the day without saying more than 500 words, less than 100 together at any one time. (I'm including ALL words in that count!) When I get home, naturally I'm ready to chat (despite the fact that I may not really have anything from my day to talk about, unless I taught lessons). If Brandon didn't have to talk at all in his job, and I got to talk a lot maybe we'd be better balanced for our evenings together. :)

If anyone has job suggestions for me (for after I finish my Master's Degree in voice, of course!), I'm really open.

Good news!

Last evening Andrea was greeted (at the Memorial Union, where she'd been working on a group project) by Brandon jumping up and down! Guess what that means!?!

Brandon was accepted to vet school!!! He'll have orientation starting August 20, with classes beginning August 29.

We're so excited, and so glad to finally know the general course of our lives for at least the next 4 years.

I think there is a conspiracy against our mailbox.

Yesterday, we didn't get any mail at all! Not even the annoying "Shopper Stopper" junk mail (advertising homes for sale around town, and with lots of grocery store inserts for grocery stores that don't make sense for us to go to because they're farther away and more expensive than the one just a mile from our home).

My theory? Brandon's letter for vet school either (a) hasn't been sent from the vet school yet, or (b) got stuck inside someone else's junk magazine, and was tossed away. It's so rare that we get no mail at all...

On the upside, I did dream THREE TIMES during the night (and it was a short night, because I watched an Italian movie for class) that Brandon got an acceptance letter. And my dreams have an odd regularity with concrete things like this of coming true (who's doubting his acceptance anyway? not me!).

So if anyone wants to see a kind of funny Italian movie (I relied on the English subtitles, but I understood more of the stuff I heard than I'd thought I would) that is set in the 80's with a bizarre ending, try to find "Notte Prima Degli Esami" (the last nights before the final exams). It's the story of a bunch of students who are preparing for the huge exams that students take at the end of "high school" and all the teen stuff that goes along with life (drugs, procrastinating, knowing more about sports than literary history, love, family...). The exams are a big deal, and pretty much make or break their life - and include both written and oral components (oral exams agains a panel - maybe like a doctoral dissertation defense style?). They remind me of the stress level of the British GCSEs and A-levels (for Harry Potter fans, that would be the O.W.L.s and the N.E.W.T.s), but having never completed those I can't really compare. Sometimes I wish I would have had to finish at least GCSEs. I think I would've learned to work consistently better that way, rather than leaving stuff till almost the last minute.

Which reminds me - I have a paper due Tuesday. My first paper since I graduated almost 3 years ago. Do I still know how to write a paper?!? I think so. I did a some research about 4 weeks ago, but I really haven't done anything since then - at least nothing that includes a written paragraph, or even a sentence... oh well! I'll work hard on Friday and Saturday.

But for now - I just have to wait and be patient for the end of the day, in hopes of Brandon's letter arriving in the mail.

It's Wednesday, March 7, 2007 and we're still waiting...

"Rumor" has it that vet school acceptance letters were sent on Friday. Brandon heard this from a colleague at work, and this colleague is engaged to a woman who works in the barns of the vet school (who also applied), and her boss affirmed that letters were sent Friday. Neither Brandon nor the other girl received letters as of Monday. Brandon still didn't get his Tuesday. We're trying to be patient... but I (Andrea) can tell he's anxious because he went to bed soon after 8pm last night to just read... that doesn't really happen. Ever.

I'm thankful that I already know that I'm officially in school! Now to just get financial aid figured out....

I don't think this is a typical "first entry" for a blog. Oh well. I thought it would be fun to have something more to distract me and to keep in touch with friends and family.