A blog of faith, science, music and random thoughts

I have a cold or something. Before I went to bed Monday night, my throat began to feel a little bit scratchy, and in the days since it has gotten worse and worse, but not bad enough to really affect my mood, speech, horn playing, etc. Today, however, is much worse than yesterday. It’s improved a little bit over the day, but this morning my throat felt worse than I remember it feeling in a long time, and I was coughing up lots of junk. While certain singers I know of would be thrilled by the fact that they can sing up to a fourth lower than they can on a normal day, I have to speak up more than I want to in order for people to understand me with my deeper, quieter voice. I haven’t played horn yet, but am not looking forward to horn ensemble for that sole reason.

At the moment, I am eating lunch, but I just woke from what was nearly a two-hour nap. I wish I could go back to sleep and just let myself rest and recover a little, but life isn’t going to slow down for me. I have some calculus homework due this evening at 5:00, before horn ensemble, which I need to do. That shouldn’t take too long (it’s only three questions), but I also need to get moving on my lab report for chemistry, which is due tomorrow, and prepare for tomorrow’s experiment, which involves steam and fractional distillation. So I have a few things that I need to do before I go to bed tonight.

So on top of all of that, there are of course other things on my mind. As you may have noticed, I was getting pretty excited about this semester and playing in wind ensemble. Last night I found out that I am going to need to pick between playing the last orchestra series of the year or in wind ensemble. A week and a half ago, my teacher informed me that, somehow, the wind ensemble’s concert and the last orchestra concert were schedule for the same day, at basically the same time. The wind ensemble concert starts at 3:30, and then orchestra starts at 4:00. We tried to figure out a plan where K (another horn in both groups) and I played the wind ensemble concert and then drove over to play the second half of the orchestra concert, or to see if there was any way either concert could be moved.

As I was told last night, there is evidently nothing that can be done, so now K and I need to pick which concert we’re going to play in. As much as I hate skpping out on wind ensemble, especially because I like some of the pieces we’re playing a lot (Grantham’s “Southern Harmony“, Hazo’s “Perthshire Majesty“, Newman’s “Blow it Up, Start Again” and a world premiere) I think I’m all but decided that I’m going to pick orchestra. The program for that concert is the Triumphal March from Moussorgsky’s Mlada, a Mozart piano concerto, and then Shostakovich 5. I’ve been wanting to play Shostakovich 5 for years, and it was one of the reasons I was so intent on auditioning for orchestra (as opposed to wind ensemble) when I saw the schedule. And unless I decide to become a professional musician, this is likely the only chance I will have to play the piece ever. I don’t think I can give that up. Despite being basically decided, finding out that I would have to choose was definitely the low point of my week, if not my whole semester so far.

Well, I should go get some work done. I’m hoping to go to bed as soon as possible after core group meeting tonight, but in order for that to be early, I need to put a dent in this lab report.