Sunday, August 9, 2009

Friend Farewells

Oregon will always be my home for a few reasons. 1) I was born and raised here. 2) All of my family lives here (with the exception of Ashley and Jared, but they're moving back asap) 3) and my best friends are here.
However, the third reason is becoming less of a stronghold. Right after their wedding Stephanie and Keith moved down to Corvallis. Not too far away, but not convenient. Sean is staying in Montana this year. Brent is going to Costa Rica until December or January. And the toughest one: Lydia might get a job and move to Walla Walla.
It sounds like it's going to be a great job. She had a successful interview. I just wish she wouldn't have to live four hours away. While it wasn't what I was looking forward to, our friendship can certainly handle another distance. At least this time it is less than 1,000 miles.
This weekend Brent had a going-away, weekend-long, boating trip on Lake Billy-Chinook. It was so much fun and Brent's friends from his paramedic program were really great people. Mark was home from Belgium so he was able to come, fortunately. We camped out at Cove Palisades camp ground. It was pretty posh and too comfortable to be camping, but it had a great view of Mt. Jefferson and perfect for our trip. Lydia, Cat, and I drove up on Friday and joined everyone else on the boat in the afternoon. We were certainly exceeding the boat's capacity with nine adults on the boat. I went intertubing and unfortunately got two massive bruises on each buttcheek when I decided to sit in the tube rather than lay on my stomach. The next day I got up with the early crowd and headed down to the lake at 8:30 for the clear, wake-free water. From then until noon, I had managed to try wake boarding and knee boarding, though neither were a success. However, I was successful at somehow managing to lose my brand new Sigg waterbottle overboard. I had heard a thunk and thought it hand fallen into a cubby on the boat or under the seat, but I do believe it hopped out and is now floating on the lake. After a full day of boating, we were all wiped out and sun-burnt. Each night we'd walk out to the edge of the canyon and watch the sunset behind the mountains.
It was such a great trip! I hadn't been on a lake since the last time Brent took me boating summer after senior year of high school. I love being in the water. In fact, the best part of all the water sports is when I fall in (minus the possibility of losing ones shorts, the one time thunder thighs do come in handy). I even would jump in when the boat would stop for changing of riders.
This weekend was a wonderful last hurrah of summer!

Minnesota, my second home

My summer has had a few surprises so far, but nothing too extraordinary. Two weeks ago I had a wonderful week in Minnesota. My friend Kaitlin picked me up from the airport and we got to chat and have dinner my first night. I started by visiting my friend Lauren who was in production up in Alexandria. Then I had a chance to drive down to campus and chat with my old voice teacher. I met up with Angela, my host teacher from student teaching. My last night I stayed with Emily, one of my fellow Hoyme staffers. And of course I spent as much time as I could with my old roommate and "favorite", Abby.
My main reason for heading over this time was to see my friends Stephanie and Nick get married. Steph was a fellow music-ed major and she took my place in our Minneapolis apartment. In fact, I ended up staying with her at the apartment for a few nights. I even got to sleep in my old tiny room under the stairs. Steph's bachelorette party was thursday night. The best part by far was going to the dueling piano bar and having the piano player serenade Steph while she sat up on the piano. Steph asked me to read at the wedding. They picked some good ones. It was such a great experience for me. Surprisingly there was no choir, but when the organ cut out for that third verse of a hymn, there was most definitely 4-part harmony happening. It was small, but I knew almost everyone there. After the reception, us Oles moved the party to the cow where we continued to catch up and just enjoy our time together. It was especially great to see Cindy who had been in Germany for the last year.
I headed back to Oregon after Abby and I spent a day with our friends Hannah and Levi, who were married at the end of May this year. It was so good to be reunited with everyone. I wish I could have both Oregon and Minnesota all in one place. It was nice to visit, but Oregon will always be home for me.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Kitchen creativity

For the past couple days I've been busy cooking in the kitchen. While it is a lot of fun and exciting for me, I'm learning still that I am not perfect and things go wrong all the time. I've been wanting to make my own spring rolls for the longest time (the fresh ones, not fried). However, I accidentally bought lumpia wrappers. They didn't have spring roll wrappers at A-Dong Market. I considered throwing everything out, but decided to go for it and make lumpia with the prepared vegetables instead. I added tofu to it as well. lumpia can be served fresh, but it isn't that good and it falls apart very easily.
Yesterday, I didn't plan on making anything, but I just had to do something in the kitchen. So before Lydia came to pick me up for ultimate frisbee I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies.
Tonight I wanted to try three different recipes. They all are very different foods. I made a shrimp and spinach salad, sweet potato fries, and beet/blue cheese deviled eggs. The only one that seemed to be completely successful was the deviled eggs. They are pink in the middle because of the beet puree and the blue cheese is just a nice dash of zip. The shrimp salad was quite good (Cooking Light recipe). However, I had to improvise on the dressing when the stopper/spout on the olive oil bottle decided to fall out giving me more than the 1 Tablespoon needed. The sweet potato fries were my attempt at making them better than my mom. Her fries are always soft and never crispy. I sliced them thinly with my mandoline, hoping this would improve on crispiness factor. Alas, they just burned faster. I think the only good way to make fries is by actually frying them. That's why they are called fries, not bakes.
There are other deviled egg recipes on chow.com (my new favorite website). I'd really like to try the wasabi and roe deviled eggs:
http://www.chow.com/stories/11747
I also received help as to how to peel a hard-boiled egg. Every method I've tried has been a failure with me taking huge chunks out of the egg white. This is a fool-proof method: http://www.chow.com/stories/10879
If you have the time, just check out more from chow.com. I really love watching the obsessives videos (especially the sake, absinthe, and offal ones).

Sunday, July 5, 2009

4th of July

Today I drove down to Eugene to hang out with my Bach Festival YCA co-workers from last year. It is always much further south than I anticipate. It's not quite like driving to Corvallis. I got there towards the end of their last rehearsal. As I was trying to find my way around the remodeled music building I ran into Angela, one of the other singers from Salzburg. She was singing with the festival choir again. Another person I was surprised to see was Sonja. This is her first year singing with the festival choir. She was in Ole Choir with me but we got to know each other a bit more when we both sang in the church choir at IHM in Minnetonka. When I was talking to her, I of course mentioned my plans to move away from teaching and go for performance. She was very enthusiastic and totally understood. Everyone I have talked to has been very supportive. I'm always a little hesitant to tell people, especially people I've known through choir and education, that I don't want to be a choir teacher right now. I was getting high-fives and people say "go for it!" or "awesome!" It makes me feel really happy.
Of course I saw some of my favorite people: my fellow chaperones from last year. It was so much fun to just goof around with them again. We all ate dinner together in Barnhardt and of course laughed over and over. After dinner, Chelsea and I went to Prince Puckler's ice cream shop. I had been craving one of their chocolate-dipped, frozen bananas with nuts. Chelsea was my roommate our first year of YCA. She chaperoned last year. I just love hanging out with her. She has a very positive and uplifting spirit. I call her my future neighbor. Last year when walking around Eugene's Saturday Market I told her that I would love to live next door to her. Today, we talked a lot about how much we've grown over the last year with our post-college experiences. She's been working on a farm in upstate NY that hosts outdoor school children.
I then got to pose as a YCA chaperone as we loaded the buses to their performance in the park. The kids sounded great. I didn't recognize too many because it's a very new group. Only 1/3 of the group returned this year. On the bus rides i got to chat with Cole, a fellow Ole alum and the choir teacher at LO, and Peter, a student from South Salem who I'll be working with at St. Paul's in the fall.
Which reminds me... I got a job! It's part time, but it'll take care of health insurance and loan payments. I will be the assistant director for the music ministry at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. They have some of the best music in Salem. It'll be a great opportunity for me. The director also volunteered the church for me to teach voice lessons in. That's going to be so helpful.

Things I Liked about today: (almost everything) chatting with g+g Zielinski, seeing YCA people and just picking up where we left off, seeing people I didn't think I'd ever see again, frozen banana, good conversations, my awesome blueberry pancakes, and cleaning up the kitchen

Things I didn't like about today: mosquito bites, almost falling asleep on I-5, I smelled by the end of the day

Latest song: "Cecilia" by Refice- an opera about the life and death of St. Cecilia

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

New Summer

Well... it's a new summer. 2009 is here. I've never known how to appreciate summer vacation until now. After teaching middle school choir for 6 months, my brain, body, voice, was ready for the summer. I learned a lot from my experience at Parrish M.S.: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now is not the time for me to continue teaching in a classroom. While I have the chance to pursue a singing career I need to take it.
The summer started with one of my best friends getting married. Stephanie and Keith tied the knot on June 20th with a beautiful mass at St. Vincent's, the church where we all met through youth ministry. I was a bridesmaid and sang throughout the wedding. Though I had been looking forward to it for over a year, it was a relief to be over. I felt like a zombie by the time we cleaned up the hall. I never thought wearing heels all day, singing, and smiling could be so exhausting.
This summer I've been teaching music for the musical at CET. It's a great show written by the director, Greg Bowers. He's been composing it for the last two years. This will be a world premiere. The show is called Lewis and Alice and it goes back and forth between Victorian England where Lewis Carrol is telling his story and Wonderland. You really should come and see it: Thursday and Friday, July 23rd and 24th, 7:00 PM at South Salem High School auditorium.
My position at CET is very part-time and I only need to be there for two hours each day. I've had lots of extra time to practice voice lately and get some exercise in. It's my goal to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year. I love the Group Groove class at the Courthouse. It's an aerobics class with a lot of fun dance stuff. The other class that I like is called Group Centergy and it's a lot of yoga and pilates strength training and balance. I need to head back to a spin class as well.
I used to exercise in the evenings, but now I have a conflict. Every night but fridays and saturdays, I have rehearsals for My Fair Lady with the Pentacle Theatre, our community theatre. It's fun being in the chorus, they let me sing soprano and I'm so excited to start dancing.
I had a wonderful voice lesson yesterday, though today I'm frustrated with my voice. We picked out new literature and surprisingly a fair amount of it is coloratura stuff. Not at all what I thought I might audition for grad school with. But it works. I have much more agility than I thought. I don't know if I'm ready to tackled the big stuff, but I can handle cadenza stuff and trills. This week she had me look at "Villanelle" by Dell'aqcua "Ach, Ich Ful" from Die Zauberflote, an American art song by a new composer, an aria from Die Fledermaus and one from Ballad of Baby Doe. She's trying to pick out stuff that will show my high notes as well as the strength in my lower range.

Things I liked from today:
riding the scooter around town, learning some dance steps for the play, pear soda, successful shaving of the legs in the locker room, group groove, seeing my cousin, singing

Things I didn't like today:
Saigon Vietnamese restaurant, going to TJ Maxx three times, getting pelted by bugs when driving the scooter, getting frustrated with certain phrases in songs, cramps, my room is still a disaster area and it's spreading to the living room

Song of the Day:
"I'm Getting Married in the Morning" from My Fair Lady