The New Semester

Oh dear... New semester. New schedule. New stress. New coping mechanisms. New fun. New people. New challenges. New addictions. New opinions. NEW NEW NEW!!!

I got cast in Three Penny Opera as Mrs. Peachum, the wife of the king of the thieves and beggars. I'm double cast, which I'm not happy about. But it's okay. They did it to open up the educational opportunities for everyone.

Dating someone...  I daren't say "dating" yet. It's been what... six dates.
Date one: Gay bar, easy place to meet, easy place to escape from if he turned out to be yick, as it was a blind date. He showed up in a hat, that I made him remove, he was trying to hide a bad haircut. Adorable.
Date two: Coffee/Appetizers at a local diner. We wound up sitting there talking for 2 hours. Got all the heavy stuff out of the way. His kids. His ex-wife. Baggage I suppose people could call it... refreshing, the honesty. He was so nervous when he showed up. I can tell, because he uses bigger words when he's intimidated and sometimes the sentence syntax is so confusing that there's no real point to the sentence. It's adorable.
Date Three: Movies at his place. Sunset Boulevard. An Italian murder mystery. No kiss. Thought there would be a kiss. Hold hands. Arm around. Nervous. But fun. Laugh together... watch together. Oh movies, the best date ever, just an excuse to sit closer than normal. heh!
Date Four: I take him to dinner at the little italian place. Again... 2 hours talking in a restaurant. Walks me to the door. I preemptively hug instead of good night kiss on accident. UGH.
Date Five: He cooks dinner. We go to a recital. He meets the second family, the music department. No gay vibes say friends. Cute and quiet they say. I agree... Hi, this is scott. scott, this is the music department. We leave, hold hands to the car. Watch movies...   Double indemnity, Once. get the kiss...   ride home... make plans for the next meeting...

Friends are asking. What do I tell them? dating? I ask. Yes... Dating. Official. Talk to him for 45 on the phone...   too busy to meet up in person. I hate my schedule. Can't wait to see him again. Ugh. don't want to be the weird girl... but really look forward to next meeting.

plans cancelled - sick mister.
Has the kids this weekend.
Tomorrow night date night again.

Two tickets to Avenue Q. A surprise in March. It's all going well... I don't want to jinx it. hmmm... hope it all goes well.

Loves, Nanette

15 books

Okay, so I was challenged by my dear friend in English 102 to make my 15 books list. 15 books that changed my life or that I still think about and process. If you choose to accept this challenge... don't spend too much time thinking. They should be pretty fresh if they're truly influential. 


1) The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster, taught me the beauty and power of language. Encourages imagination... Always avoid the doldrums! 
2) The Perks Of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky, the truest main character I've ever read, it embraces the difficulties faced when growing up what you consider to be "normal."
3) Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen, No matter your age, you can always live adventurously. 
4) The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-time - Mark Haddon, I still count red and yellow cars. 
5) An Abundance of Katharines - John Green. Tangible, loveable characters. Characters so excellent, by the time I was done, they felt like my own personal friends. 
6) Invisible Monsters - Chuck Palahniuk, May I never give in to my selfish, vain, egotistical desires, and may those who do, read this book. 
7) Paper Towns - John Green, He combines metaphor, symbolism, character, timing, and readability into a giant pot of NEVER-WANT-THE-BOOK-TO-END goodness.
8) Skipped Parts - Tim Sandlin, A life changing book about the drastic growing up of a young boy. Refreshingly, naive.
9) The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls, Always a good one when feeling broke and financially mismanaged.
10) Peace Like a River - Leif Enger, Delightfully human. Associated with so much good in my life... Might someone see me the way Reuben sees their stand-in mother.
11) Don't Call Me Ishmael - Michael Gerard Bauer, Human. Insecure. Beautiful.
12) Diary - Chuck Palahniuk, Suffer for your art.
13) Anything by Rohl Dahl.
14) TBA
15) TBA


Please Share yours!
Loves,
Nanette

Beethoven's 9th - round one

Hell has begun. Concert and chamber choir have begun rehearsing the symphonic work: Beethoven's 9th symphony. It is exciting and wonderful of course, but it's also swine flu season. Our rehearsals are missing 1/5 of the people that should be there. But it should be fine.

Just returning from the land of the dead (recovering from my own bout with the flu), rehearsals are killin' me. After rehearsal I'm supposed to have an hour with my accompanist, Carol, for private lessons. Put some time in with her today... and panic. Lost a week of practice and it was like sight-reading some of it for the the first time. Harrowing. Panic. Fear. Throw that on top of being behind in almost every class now... how does one catch up on all this?!?!? (slowly, the answer is slowly).

Well, lessons are on wednesday. I know what I'll be doing tonight after work (aka 10pm until midnight). And this weekend. Aside from carving pumpkins and maybe seeing if there is a way to get to Taylor's show. USU is performing Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (a personal favorite).

Must get in gear. Must get on ball. Must get this wagon train a'movin'! Time to look alive. The invitational is over. The swine flu is over...... Must put on my running shoes and race to the end.

Loves, Nanette

p.s. Got my English 102 essay back today 19/20. One of the highest scores in the class. Eat it! :)

Picking up where we left off...

Oh my heck. Blogging again. To be honest, it's been a nice break. I've been living life fully... and getting things done. It just so turns out, that when I blog, I'm usually avoiding some other horrible task. At the moment it's reading 100 pages of music history and writing a monstrous english essay.

Also, writing is usually a super emotionally draining thing for me. It's usually pretty depressing to state my reality. So in the past year, I've been just living it up. Having a good ol' time. Here's to trying it over.

Today's stuff is accompanied by the looming of an entire middle school being disappointed in me. I forgot to leave 50 tickets at the box office to be comp'd for them. Dr. A just sent me the email asking for an explanation.

uhhh... Explanation.

I picked up the tickets. Was going to leave them in his box. Linda says give them to Dr. A at rehearsal. Rehearsal goes up in smoke. Tickets stay in my green binder of doom for the two days and get COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN... as they are on my to-do list of doom that I never got to the bottom of.

But I ran a good invitational? Don't beat me? I feel like a giant sphincter.

Don't forget to watch me on youtube. Nanettenielson2000.

Nanette