Semi-obligatory periodic update.

Grad school is awesome. The town of Macomb is horrendously stupid and I would never live here on purpose if not for school. My grad school profs have been nothing but supportive and awesome, and I'm learning a ridiculous amount of everything. Clarinet studies are going better than they were at the start of the semester. I've finally gotten better at managing my time in terms of making sure I practice every day. Amazing how much better you get when you actually dedicate time to your craft. Also, I've added another major in musicology because 1) I'm okay at clarinet, but by no means good enough to make it a career of any sort and 2) I guess I'm actually pretty good at writing academically about music. My research class has been awesome, basically we read scholarly articles and write responses to them, while learning about methods of research. I've really enjoyed it, and done reasonably well in it, so my advisor wanted me to think about doing musicology, but it didn't take much convincing. I'll be able to finish both degrees with just an extra summer. Deciding to pursue both oddly reduced my stress level significantly; instead of worrying about how on earth I could ever have a reasonable job teaching/playing clarinet, it opened up a whole new of road of both teaching and playing, but also teaching music history, doing research, and writing. Perfect for the university level. So now I'll get to/have to do both a recital and a thesis, which is amazing and terrifying all at the same time. As far as clarinet things go, I finally have a student, who's making awesome progress. He's in high school, but has only played clarinet a few years, so it's a challenge to find things that are playable, but not lame. Learning to teach is an interesting process, but it's finally becoming rewarding. Performance-wise, it's really nice to have a few other grad students here, who are better than me, and who I can learn from. 

Otherwise, life goes on. We're figuring out the whole wedding planning and how to pay for it thing, slowly but surely. I'm more enthused than I was before. We'll beat the commercial culture of weddings yet. 

We might take in the neighborhood cat that practically lives on our doorstep now. We've given him a blanket and a box to hide in, now that it's bitterly cold and winter's approaching. I think the cat actually likes us. We'll see. We're calling him Fritz.

See? How could we say no? :)

So yep, that's life right now. 

A little over a month left in Lancaster. Less than 3 left in PA.

Bring it!

Relaxing on a Friday night, listening to classical music, getting some grad school work done. Just like how it used to be. I like it :)