Today I, for the first time in about four years (and SciFormal doesn't count, because they were necessary and extremely conservative), bought earrings! Three whole pairs of them. To be honest, I have hardly worn any fun earrings since grade 8, when I wore a different pair almost every day. I still have my cockatoo earrings and my pastel-blue screwdriver earrings from then. These aren't that wild -- I'm working my way back up -- but it's nice to have something dangly and jingly next to my chin again.  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 10:28 p.m. @ 

 
Christmas Eve went well. I know I posted on it, but that was before the "midnight" service (I still don't see why they had to move the midnight mass up to 10pm). My brother and I played for the 20 minutes before the service, and since it was new music, and we didn't have much time to rehearse with the organist before hand, I was pretty nervous. However, I wasn't nervous by the time we started playing, and with the exception of the organist messing up at the start of one movement, it went really well. Also, I got to dress up, which I love to do. Red velvet, in honour of Christmas.

Christmas morning was quieter than usual. My sister is still stuck in LA (darn Americans and their immigration problems), so that made things a bit different. We didn't even put up a tree this year, because it was too strange doing it without her. However, we still did the big family dinner thing -- I ate SO much! I made the cocktail sauce, and the scallops, devilled eggs, and dinner rolls. We also had shrimp, lobster, glazed ham, mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, five other kinds of vegetables, two salads that everyone was too full to eat, and don't even get me started on the desserts! Then there was the wine with dinner, and my brother and I BOTH got scotch for Christmas, so naturally we had to have a tasting party for that. Plans are already in the works for dinner on New Year's Day. It should be quite the event, since we're going to have everything then that we didn't have time to make for Christmas dinner. (Steamed wontons, hors d'oeuvres, etc. Mmmmm)

Oh, and I saw Susanna Remenyi today. (My former harp teacher.) She's going to be on TV. OMNI.1 on Jan 3 at 12:30, or something like that. I'll have to get someone to tape it for me, since I'll probably be on a bus to Kingston then. It might not be the most interesting thing for those of you who don't speak Hungarian (for the record, neither do I) but she does get to play something on it, and she's a really good harpist, so I'm going to watch it anyways. Oh, and she wants me to dig out the video of me when I was 9, playing the harp at Sick Kids with two friends.... they made us wear angel wings. *sigh* I was probably annoyingly cute. Of course, poor Justin was probably cuter. (He was less than impressed with the idea of fairy/angel wings than we girls were. lol.)  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 8:34 p.m. @ 

 
Whew. Long day. First was the orthodontist appointment, which was both painless and pointless. Then I made it home in time to get back on the subway to go to rehearsal for carolling. We sang through everything once, vetoed the usual carols which we don't like singing, and then had dinner, while reminding everyone how to play Nurtz. Dinner was amazingly ridiculous (not surprising, considering whose house we were at). However, once we sorted out the problem of the non-meat sauce and stopped throwing noodles around, it settled down somewhat. Sort of. Ok, not really. *laughs*

Carolling was fun, wet, and cold. In that order. We didn't get any doors slammed in our faces this year, and we also collected $108.31 for charity, which is pretty good for only being out there for an hour. The houses with kids were, as usual, the best ones for singing at. Another memorable favourite was the house with the Queen's Commerce grad from '87. (As per usual, I wore my jacket.) My least favourite house was the one where they said (somewhat peevishly) we've already given money to charity this year. Ummm... yeah, it's not like we asked you for anything. We just like singing. Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas. Blah. It was very negative. Meh. I'll just think of all the happy houses who liked hearing a few carols and meeting some new people. Even with the rain and all, it was fun. (I have a new appreciation for porches... especially those with porch lights!)  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 12:56 a.m. @ 

 
Yesterday I had zero Christmas presents. Today my shopping is almost done! *phew* My feet hurt like you wouldn't believe, and I'm a bit scared to total up the credit card bills (which I will do in an hour or so) but I'm good at budgets, so it shouldn't be too bad. I also went to the dentist this morning, and to rehearsal this afternoon, so I'm not doing anything else today, except hang out online and maybe play some more Darkstone. (9 more levels and I win the game.)  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 7:07 p.m. @ 

 
Went to see LOTR:ROTK last night. It was so good! If I had any money left, I would go see it again. Poor Riz had to meet all my weird friends in one go, but it went better that it might have gone, since they were mostly occupied with the movie. (If you thought they were strange last night, you should see them in party mode. *grin*) After LOTRs, we (Thea, Phia, etc) had a brief "discussion" about our schedules for carolling, and then went our respective ways. Tried to find an open coffee shop downtown (see Riz's blog on that) and ended up at the Coffee Time across from my house. Had a very yummy strawberry-jelly doughnut and went to bed at 2am. Had to get up this morning, so I ended up sleeping all afternoon. Rehearsed with Alex to get ready for rehearsal tomorrow. Things are getting really busy and I still haven't started shopping.

Oh, and I saw Taddy today. We're trying to convince her to convince her parents to let her stay in Toronto for the 23rd, so that we'll have at least one soprano in the carolling group. Now that she's done exams, she looks less terrified/stressed, which is a very good thing. Plus we made her eat food. We had McDonalds for lunch, and there was this old, scary-looking woman who kept giving us dirty looks and mumbling about rowdy kids, and she even got up and moved her table further away from ours at one point... Taddy totally shocked everybody by making a point of stopping by the lady on our way out and saying (very pointedly) "Have a Merry Christmas." We died laughing. Fun stuff.  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 9:20 p.m. @ 

 
I'm on my way home! I had to sit on my suitcase to get it closed, but I fit everything in. It's kind of odd thinking that the next time I'm in this room will be for my last term of my degree program. I even put my new schedule up on the wall. (I also put my January calendar up, but it's very scary-looking at the moment, so I might take it down again and just pretend that I am going to have a nice, not-busy month.)

Well, I guess that's it. In less than four hours I'll be in Toronto. Lord of the Rings is tonight. Then it's open concert season for a little while, and I might be headed up to Ottawa for a few days. Ooooh. And shopping! I get to go shopping soon! :)  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 12:23 p.m. @ 

 
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Ok. I feel better now. Thanks.  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 10:13 p.m. @ 

 
Maybe I am fond of the Halleluia chorus, after all. I just got the mark for my final practical conducting exam, and I got the highest mark in the class! 91%, even though the choir was annoying and messed up. I guess my prof decided that my cues, etc, were good after all, even if no one was paying attention to them. That means I'm pretty much guaranteed a 90 in that course! Yeay! One good mark to send to law school.

I practiced my violin for 2 hours today. I guess I was fairly productive. The Bach is sounding really good, and I did some work on the Bartok. I think maybe I need to listen to the Bartok a bit more before I will improve on it. I'll do that tonight on the way to rehearsal. Now that Riz has gone home, it's not as if I have anything to do other than practice. *sigh*  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 5:42 p.m. @ 

 
Additional news: My sister found a drummer for her band. I expect a cd of original music for Christmas. Especially if you make me play for your friend. :P

Also, just for fun: http://theonion.com/3949/tips.html  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 11:07 p.m. @ 

 
Halleluia chorus AGAIN. That piece is becoming the bane of my existance. The rest of the Messaiah was ok, though, even though the soloists aren't very good. (Fortunately, there's no one left in Kingston to come to this concert.) Poor Melinda (concertmaster for this one) has a cold, and the trumpet players decided not to show up for rehearsal -- not that I blame them, since they only play in something like 3 movements.

Other than that, I got my flu shot today. My arm is only sore if I raise it above my head, although I'm not sure why. Got started on the financial aid applications. It's really depressing to know exactly how much you make per year vs. how much you owe. Dropped Riz's pie off at his place, and went out for wings. I ALMOST ate all 15. Sort of. *grin* I plan on being productive this week. We'll see how much I get done by the end of it.  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 10:06 p.m. @ 

 
Today's list of accomplishments are as follows:
1) I shovelled the steps -- even though it's still snowing.
2) I caught another mouse. (ick!! This time I didn't have to pick it up, though. *phew*)

So... yeah, that's about it. I was going to go shopping, but it's cold and snowy out there. I think I'll take a nap instead. *snooze*  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 1:32 p.m. @ 

 
I'm done! *dances around the room* Nothing but concerts, practicing, and relaxation left for me. I love those exams that require actual thinking, in the sense that you're interested in what you're doing while you do it. I even think I did well on the orchestrating/arranging stuff, and the Dvorák questions were fun to answer (especially since it's a piece I have played before). Thanks Riz for making me study. I only forgot one term, although my prof is going to laugh when he sees it, since it was a technique that I even demonstrated to the class. The good news is, that's potentially the only mark I'm going to lose on the exam.

After the exam all the music students hung out and talked about movies and Christmas parties. I got invited to one, and I might even get a ride home for the 20th with Barb (who is a really nice french horn player), which will save me money. Music students are, in general, friendlier than commerce students. It was a nice celebratory way of finishing all of our exams together.

So, now I have 15 minutes for my hands to warm up (I forgot my gloves again) and then I'll head down to the dress rehearsal for the Christmas concert. With luck we'll get to leave early again, and I can come back here and eat the chocolate liquere thingy my prof gave us and enjoy one more year of making it through exams without completely burning out.  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 6:17 p.m. @ 

 
Just a quick note thanking Thea for her conscientious editing of my boring history paper. Five down, one left. As of noon tomorrow I will be free!! Until next term, of course.  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 6:02 p.m. @ 

 
Four exams down, two to go. Two concerts left. I would consider that to be a really busy schedule, but it's nothing compared to this week. I'm just going to sit back and coast to the end of term. :)

It's Christmas special time on TV! Ack!  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 9:30 p.m. @ 

 
I'm surrounded by geniuses. First QuantumSkyline wins the Dev Hardware contest, and then my brother gets credits from Princeton. I'm not allowed to say anything bad about Princeton and bugs which cause certain programmers at U of T to have to take the time out of their day to fix their... well you get the picture. So I'll just say I'm so proud!   - posted by Purple Mangos @ 4:34 p.m. @ 

 
Another wonderful day. This was supposed to be my horrible term, but instead it's turning out to be the best ever (so far). Yesterday was my last day of classes -- yeay! In 401, they handed out the end of term "awards" for best joke, etc. and my team was awarded the best presentation. In honour of that, the prof gave us a bottle of "ginger ale," *wink wink nudge nudge* After that class, in which my exam schedule was finally sorted out, I had history. Got my essay back (85=A+) which puts me in a really good position going into the exam. After that I took some time of and went to dinner with Riz, followed by watching Sixth Sense (and I didn't freak out!) and Die Another Day. A long, happy, and satisfying day.

Well, gotta get back to my boring group meeting now. They didn't even remember to bring the champagne... I mean "ginger ale."  - posted by Purple Mangos @ 3:37 p.m. @