Music Memory

I practiced the piano this morning for the first time in about 2 years. My mom brought some of my old piano books to me last week, and this morning I head a break between my classes and no homework to do, so I went to the little practice rooms in the basement of the HFAC and played for about 45 minutes. Have you ever been to one of those practice rooms? They have them all grouped together with very little sound barriers between the rooms. Well, if they did have sound barriers, the other people were playing REALLY loud. And since you know that everyone can hear you play, you feel really self-conscious while playing. I mean, the people in the practice rooms are all music majors or emphasizing in piano performance or something. So I played pretty quiet at first, but eventually got louder and louder. At the end I was rocking out on Beethoven's Pathetique as loud as I could, even though I was making tons of mistakes.

The interesting thing I noticed is that when I played the songs I learned 8 or 9 years ago, the same thoughts and feelings I had at that time also came back to me. For instance, when I played a certain part of one song, I instantly remembered the smell of noodles from my piano teacher's apartment. I also remembered watching the animated Starship Troopers TV show, which had this song as it's theme song. I remembered playing this song on the piano in my old church building in Berlin and how one of the notes in a crucial part of the song was badly out of tune and it always sounded like I made a mistake. I remember being worried about my classes in high school. In another section I remembered sitting at the piano in the room with the gold ceiling and my mom saying, "Practice that part five times before moving on!" And I still had trouble with that part.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting how the music acted like a little time capsule so that I'll always remember the feelings of being 15 years old.

Just look at this watch

It's so confusing that it's cool.

See how it tells time here.

A Successful Life

Katie bought the fun version of Life at D.I. the other day, and we've played it at least 5 times already. I lose most of the time. I'm not sure why. I just end up paying for box tickets to the World Series and producing a music video for a rock band. I think it's funny that success in the game of life is determined by how much money you have. Sure, you get tokens for doing things like "going fishing" and "playing a family game" but those tokens are just converted into money at the end of the game.

On the back of those tokens are things you have accomplished, showing you what a successful and full life you've had. Here are the things that make an abundant life...according to Life. You can consider this my to-do list:

1. Climb Mt. Everest
2. Invent New Ice Cream Flavor
3. Run World Record Mile
4. Solution to Pollution
5. Nobel Peace Prize
6. Humanitarian Award
7. Invent New Sport
8. Build Better Mousetrap
9. Pulitzer Prize
10. Swim English Channel
11. Design New Computer
12. Cure the Common Cold
13. Compose a Symphony
14. Paint a Masterpiece
15. Write a Great American Novel
16. Win Dance Contest
17. Lifetime Achievement Award
18. Open Health Food Chain
19. Save Endangered Species
20. Family Horse Wins Derby
21. Become President
22. Toy Invention Wins Big
23. Discover New Planet
24. Find New Energy Source

The back of the box says that there should be 25 tokens, so I guess we're missing one. That's OK; I'll just make my own:

    25. Write a blog post every day for a year

Duvets vs. Bidets

I wouldn't get these two things mixed up if I were you. It happens to me all the time. It leads to some awkward thoughts. For instance, Katie was telling me about a "cute duvet cover" she saw online the other day and an image of a cloth covered bum-rinser came instantly to mind.

"Oh gross!" is what I thought, then I looked at the computer screen and saw a bed cover. Whew. Close one.

I've never actually used a bidet before. There were a few on my mission, but I was too scared to try them out. Do you face towards or away from the wall? How do you dry yourself afterward? You probably wouldn't want to use toilet paper right afterward because then it would just disintegrate in your hand...

Hard Interview Questions

I went to the Pre-Professional Office today to get some pointers on preparing for my upcoming optometry school interviews. The girl at the desk gave me four pages of questions written in size 4 font. The questions listed on the paper are some of the hardest interview questions I have ever read. Here is a sampling:

• Why should we offer you a place at our school?
• What stimulated your interest in a health care profession?
• If you want to "help people," why not choose a career in social work, law, or teaching?
• Is there anything you would like to brag about? (This question was listed in the section called "Maturity.")
• Describe a face-to-face meeting in which you had to influence a highly emotional individual.
• How would you redesign the health care system?
• What are three things you would like to change about yourself?
• If an AIDS patient was bleeding profusely from a laceration, what would you do? What if you do not have gloves? What if you have an open sore on your hand?
• What is the most difficult problem you have ever faced in your life?
• How would you rank the following individuals with regard to priority for a liver transplant? 1) A young woman whose family can't afford the operation, 2) A 45-year-old ex-sailor whose liver was damaged by alcoholism, and 3) a 75-year-old retired executive who has indicated that he will be a very generous donor to the hospital if he gets the transplant.
•   And my favorite question: What is the solution to terrorism?

I'm going to spend the next few weeks coming up with some great answers to these questions. And I'll be sure to forward my answer about terrorism to Robert Mueller. I'm sure he'll like to know the solution to terrorism.

7 pounds lighter

Warning: this is pretty gross.


I'm pretty sure I got food poisoning last night. It was the first time I threw up in well over two years. I don't recommend using this as a weight loss technique. The worst part was when I woke up at 2:00 and ran to the bathroom to throw up yet again, but didn't quite make it. I should have left the toilet seat up the last time I used it because the moment I entered the bathroom I knelt on the floor and threw up all over the toilet seat. The problem with that is that our seat acted like a ramp and shot the throw up all over the entire bathroom. It soaked everything--the bathroom rugs, the underside of the sink, the plunger, everything. It was so gross. It took about 40 minutes to clean up, but I felt much better afterward. And after a 5 hour long nap this afternoon, I feel perfectly fine now.

Yo

Katie here.  Bryan's feeling... uhh... not well.  So when I asked him if there was anything I could do to make him feel better and he requested that I write for him on his blog, I figured it was the least I could do.

And probably the least is all you should expect from this post.  I don't really have any interesting facts to tell you about.  Especially since I already spilled what I know on how a sewing machine works. 

...

(Still not sure what to say...)

Well, I guess I'll just tell you about my ego.

So we were out with Bryan's family again tonight.  They've been in town for a couple of weeks, but tonight was our last bit of family fun time before they head out.  So, naturally, we ate junk food.  Bryan's mom put in a request for a bite of local ice cream, so we took a little walk to do just that.

When we got there we all noticed her right away.  The girl who writes Nie Nie.  She was in line with her family for ice cream.  Just a regular person.  Just like us.  I'll admit we did whisper under our breaths, "Do you read Nie Nie?"  "Yes!  Shh!"  and "That's the girl who..." but we did try not to be pests.  And after our initial whispers we kept quiet and didn't bother them with paparazzi stares.  After all, we're all just people.

As a side note, I, by the way, have always felt this way.  That we're all just people.  I've never understood idolizing celebrities.  I mean, I'm sure I do it to some degree, but I've just never understood having posters of other people on my wall or running up to someone to get their autograph.  I don't know.  I've just always felt strange about treating celebrities like they're more interesting than I am.  But maybe that's just ego.

And that ego definitely came to visit me tonight.  Because after seeing Nie Nie the thought eventually crept in... "I wonder if someone is standing behind me in line here gawking, 'That's her.' and 'Do you read Notes From A Ver...' 'Yes!  Shhh!'"

I don't think this happened.  For one, I am not that popular and I am fully aware of that.  And also, I think of the few people who do read my little blog, probably not very many of them live local to me.  And of the people who do live near me and read my blog, I would honestly be surprised if there were any who I didn't already know personally from outside of the blog world.  Also, I don't think I'm anywhere near as cool or recognizable as Stephanie Nielson. 

All this aside, I did get a nice ego boost from my in-laws the other day.  We were sitting around chatting and the topic of all our little blogs came up.  They asked approximately how many views I get on my blog per day and when I answered "Oh, usually about one to three hundred," my mother-in-law (shocked) asked, "One hundred to three hundred?"  "Yeah," I replied (nonchalantly).  This was followed by a moment of awe and shock from my in laws.  ...During which I felt quite conceited.

Don't worry.  The I-am-wonderful attitude quickly dissipated.  Namely when I tried to think of a good ending just now.  And all I came up with was what you're reading now.  Meh.

Maybe you should all pray that Bryan gets feeling better so you don't get stuck with me again tomorrow.