It is Actually Friday

Truely though? I can't believe I survived this week. I shouldn't say that though because it isn't technically over, but I can't believe I still have the capability of breathing after this school week. First off I officially started tutoring my students at the reading center. So far so good. I am now a certified Woodcock Test administrator so this week I did that with all my kids. Next week I will actually have lesson plans to teach. Enough with boring work.
Yesterday was crazy crazy. I didn't get home from school until 11:59 on the dot. On minute from curfew. When I say I got home from school at 11:59 I mean it literally. No hanging out with friends or food breaks. Straight up work from 7:30 until then. And I only went home once and it was for an hour to do clean checks. I'm not looking for pity p.s. However now I know the semester has officially begun. I've already re-adjusted to spending 15 hours a day at school. It's normal for the average music major, at least up here. Good news though. Last night at 9:30 we had our Broadway Revue audition and my group made it! The performance is next week Friday at 7:30 in the Kirkham auditorium. Also, today we had auditions at 4-4:30 for the Barbershop competition. I'll explain this because it's a little weird the way it is organized. Okay so.....the second week of school (this is the end of the third today) people form barbershop quartets and pick music. Then everybody registers their quartets in the music office and sign up for a clinician session. The sessions were in 15 min long blocks on Tuesday this week. 15 minutes isn't enough time to do squat and we only had two weeks tops to learn our music perfectly so we definitely needed more than 15 minutes. Moving on. Today and tomorrow is the actual festival and this afternoon the quartets auditioned in front of the clinicians, our vocal jazz teacher, the dean of the music department, and most importantly (and the most intimidating) the actual invited world renowned, international gold medalists, barbershop quartet "Storm Front." Holy crap. They are ridiculous. Every quartet has a set time to audition between 3 and 5. Then the list of who is singing and at which performance (there are three. 2 tonight and 1 tomorrow) is posted at 5:15. The first concert begins at 6. Crazy! It's so intense because you practice like a mad person for two weeks straight everyday for this one audition and you don't even know whether you'll be performing or not. Messes with peoples minds I tell you. Anyway so last year there were only about 5 quartets so we all got to sing. This year there were 18. Needless to say not everybody got selected to perform. Now, don't think I am getting a big head because I am not, and I am not bragging either. But, my quartet was the only group selected to perform two shows....and they are both the sold out ones! Exciting right? We were stoked. And we feel really blessed, because we didn't feel prepared enough. Our act made up for some of our singing, because I'll admit we are pretty funny. So we performed tonight at 6 and we go tomorrow at 7:30. Cool beans dude.
Now another story. The picture of me wearing those glasses....well those were the glasses I was going to wear for the show, but they didn't look dorky enough. I knew I had a pair of big ugly sunglasses somewhere under my bed and luckily I found them. Popped the lenses out of those suckers.....and then I realized that the only part of the glasses intact was the actual glasses part. The two side ear things had both broken off. Time to get creative. I found a side of another pair of glasses and a handle from some kitchen utensil and electrical taped them to the glasses. Perfection really. And quite resourceful.
Alright something other than barbershop. We had our first opera scenes singing rehearsal and it was smashing. Kris, the lady in charge, was very impressed with me and Rachel for being prepared. I would hope she would be though. We worked our tushies off to get ready. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH the Lost season premiere. WHAT?! It was brilliant. Loved it. Wow. I had to watch it on my computer the next day due to me being at school at horrible hours.
I was supposed to have a vocal lesson today but poor Norman couldn't come because of the snow. The roads were pretty sketch. Slush everywhere. Speaking of slush. In Rexburg they don't use salt on the roads. oh no no no they don't. Here they use red rocks. Little evil, red evil pebbles that stain everything they touch. So this morning I am walking from work to class at 9 AM. The rock man is driving behind me. They drive these things that look like the result of a zambonie and a driving lawn mower having a baby. The back of the blasted machine literally shoots out rocks. Really fast too. Like a tennis/baseball ball pitching machine. Dumb kid is going to burn. He drove right next to me.......honest about a foot away....and he didn't turn off the machine so I get pelted with rocks. A lot of red rocks. Flying at my shins 100 miles per hour at close range. I have bruises now. Stupid. I'm going to go eat cereal now. Peace and Salaam. OH and I will post pictures and hopefully a video tomorrow.