When Andrew the God of Diaryland was having server problems, I couldn't update. And then when the servers were all back online and no one's diaries were screwed up anymore, well, I had sort of forgotten to bother to find out if I was back up or not. You don't do things every day, you forget.
I took piano lessons from my mother until I was about five years old. They were sporatic because in that time I got a brother, and because I would go back and forth on wanting to learn. All I really gained from it was an ability to find middle C, and I can still play the five finger version of the Winnie the Pooh theme song. I can also play several five finger versions of various British television show themes.
In second grade I took up the violin and played that until my sophomore year of high school. By myself I can play just about anything, as long as it's a melody I know. For some reason I play very very well by ear and not very well with sheet music. I can read music all right, it just doesn't sound like music in my head. But if someone else plays it with me, I can play just about anything. That's how I faked my way through the youth symphony.
I never really got much in the way of exposure to music theory. Before my private lesson teacher refused to give me lessons anymore she tired giving me some. I remember having to do a lot of things with sharps and flats, and key signatures, but absolutely none of it stuck.
All and all, she and I had a pretty bad relationship. I wouldn't practice nearly as much as I should and she really resented it. When she told me she wouldn't give me lessons anymore she made it out like I was just such a horrible person who wouldn't practice and had no respect for the craft that she was dropping me. I found out a couple weeks later from another kid who took lessons from her that she was actually moving out of the state and had quit with everyone. I suppose I deserved it.
This was in high school, when the orchestra was just about as bad as the private lessons. While I had no nickname for the lesson teacher, I did call the director Dragon Lady, all but to her face. She was absolutely tactless, condescending, and I can't believe she had two kids my age who turned out mostly OK even if she was their mother. She felt that because we were the best high school orchestra in the city we ought to play "difficult" music, meaning we played the full versions of Vivaldi, Corelli, Barber, and Brandenburg rather than arranged. And we ought to play it in double time. For some reason, playing things fast was supposed to show how well we could play it. I do not understand that theory to this day.
I quit orchestra because of theatre. Theatre people were nicer, funnier, only occasionally expected me to be at school at seven o clock in the morning rather than once a week, and did not make me dress up like a member of a Barbershop quartet.
We wore these my last year. I don't want to take the time to put the picture on here, it's hideous. Well, actually, it isn't that hideous all by itself, but the result when an orchestra of fifty people wear them and half of them do not fit... I'll just let you envision that. For some reason, Dragon Lady decided that we needed to look more "uniform" than all blacks or black and white. More uniform than the city symphony, of which she was a member and cast it up to us (like any of us were old enough to get in anyway). It was a heated topic for a long time, and only got passed because Mrs. Lucas, mother of four of the kids in the orchestra, was really for it. Dragon Lady loved all four of them, even though only one of them could actually play. So, they were on the same team and the rest of us lost.
We were the second laughingstock of Large Group Music Festival. A nearby small town with really ugly uniforms who also couldn't play for shit beat us for both categories, but we were second and knew it and hated it. In the long run it's turned that orchestra into a real crap organisation, nobody who is any good really wants to be in it.
I have my violin here. It hasn't been touched for four years now, and I sort of miss it sometimes, but when I think about it, I don't want to get it out and replay old Brandeburg concertos.
On the wedding front, I've had some time to think over exactly what it is that bothers me about the whole thing. It's not that other people are trying to make me do it their way, because that isn't the case. His parents nor my parents are saying "do it this way or else". My mother has said she'd be just as happy if we did run off and just get married like she did. I assume this is because then she wouldn't feel pressured to help pay for it.
Anyway, no, the problem is trying to convince everyone involved that we want is what we want. I've been reading all the columns that say, "just tell everyone what you want, and why, and they'll be OK with that". I have loads of trouble doing that right now, and I realised that that's what's scaring the piss out of me. I don't know how to tell people that Nathan and I are going to do what we want, and that it's going to still be a wedding even if I don't wear white (something I said from the first I wouldn't do), even if it's not done by a pastor (and it's proving to be a pain in the ass to find someone else to do it), and even if we do write our own vows.
Nathan, however, has no problem in this department. As long as I relegate all the diplomacy involved in this goat rodeo to him, I'll be fine. I suppose part of the problem is that we're still so far off from the actual thing that there's a lot of time to think ... worry ... get paranoid about things.
That was more history than recent news. In recent news, the Box Office has begun the "Jesus's Ladder of Literacy" competiton. Friend Shua has made Jesus into a sort of Box Office mascot. He says Jesus visits him in the Box Office all the time, and he can't believe no one else has ever seen him. The goal of the competition is to read more plays than Jesus (or at least more than any of the other members of staff). I'm winning at three, but I want to get a few more read this weekend, just to make sure no one will catch up to me.
I get really competative about reading because I can read about twice as fast as an average person. I like those speed reading commercials on television because I can read the page almost faster than the computer cursor can. I've never taken speed-reading in my life.
My list thus far is Tammy Ryan's The Music Lesson, Shakespeare's MacBeth, and Ionesco's The Bald Soprano. Now I'm off to read Anton in Show Business by Jane Martin and maybe The Ride Up Mount Morgan which might be Arthur Miller or might be Lanford Wilson, I can't remember.
