Yucky February

Hannah is right....I'm slacking on the blog postings lately....

I've had a really long, rough, busy February. February is never an easy month, especially as I now am officially in my mid-twenties. Another birthday, another year older, still in school, blah blah blah. This February though was officially rough.

Here are some things that happened that made Feb 2009 a stressful month:

1. Orchestra. We performed the 2nd Elgar Symphony on Feb 10th. Leading up to it, I thought we would NEVER pull this concert off. I was concertmaster, and it was completely exhausting, yet beautiful music, but after every rehearsal I would be in some pain and would barely be able to concentrate on anything else for the rest of the evening. The concert ended up going well enough, but it was a long road to that and a pretty tiring one, at that.

2. Theory class. This class I am taking, officially called "Theory Pro-Seminar", is tough. The first three weeks entitled writing out and analyzing about ten Bach chorales per assignment. And they weren't short chorales, either. The first one took me 9 hours to do, and it just got harder from there. I spent the first weekend of February working on them every waking minute that I wasn't in rehearsal - on the train, on the bus, during a pops choir concert that Molly played for (I sat in the back where there was some light). Its easier now, but its going to get hard again real soon, and I'm terrified.

3. Freelancing. I played with Firebird (a new music group here in Boston) this month over a rehearsal/concert period of about three weeks. We had a ton of rehearsals, I played a LOT, and there were four concerts total within that time period, one of which was in Amherst, MA, about two hours west of Boston. I really enjoy playing with them, and it was a lot of fun, especially the two concerts we did of rock music at a bbq restuarant, but it took a lot out of me, and my bow, which lost a lot of hair due to the style of music we were playing.

4. Illness. I had some kind of flu for three days, during which time I played a full day of collaborative piano rehearsals, a choir concert, and had Firebird rehearsals. I had a fever and developed a bad cough, which is taking forever to go away. I did cancel some things, like quartet rehearsal, and Molly and I postponed our birthday party, but had to keep going for everything else. It was awful.

5. More illness. Four days after I was feeling better from whatever I had before, I had a chicken salad sandwich and began pucking 6 hours later. I was sick every hour for about twelve hours through the night, finally slept for two hours, and then had to get up and head to Amherst for the Firebird concert. I have never had food poisoning so bad - it was really terrible.

6. Recitals. As of last weekend, I no longer play for student recitals. I had two this month, and they both were stressful and very time consuming. Actually, maybe the second one wasn't so time consuming, because everyone was sick and rehearsals and coachings kept getting cancled, but it was still a lot of work. I asked to get paid, and I was, but even that may not be enough to be worth my time to do them. I don't need the experience anymore - so unless you are such a good friend I consider you a blood relative, I won't play.

Fortunately, this past week has been much nicer. I'm finally getting my energy back enough to go to step aerobics in the morning, I had time to practice, and I got to go to Davids Bridal with Heidi and Finnis yesterday morning so Heidi could buy her bridesmaid dress for Holly and Tony's wedding. Its beautiful on her - she looked stunning. And, of course, it gave me the opportunity to add to my list of Davids Bridal locations I have visited: Syracuse, Rochester, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston.

I'm not the only one who has had a hard month, either. So here's to March, warmer weather, and good health!