February 2007 Archives

Anyone else think that song with Will Ferrell and Jack Black was simply brilliant?

What better way is there to spend an evening than listening to around 80 minutes of 12th Century Croatian chant?

Ok, so I could probably think of a few, but the concert I attended tonight was quite spectacular. I heard Dialogos perform The Vision of Tondal as part of the Friends of Chamber Music series. Now I enjoy chant, but the thought of listening to that much non-stop was a bit daunting. I'm pleased to report, though, that being a mystery play, the plot was very intriguing, and what little movement and lighting there was proved quite effective.

If you want to hear some samples, you can check out these two from their CD of the same music:

Sample 1 - Sample 2

Unfortunately, these mp3's are far too compressed to give you an idea of the power and clarity of their voices. Moreover, nothing could ever compare to seeing it performed live in a beautiful cathedral. It was almost enough to make me want to become Catholic.

If you don't know already, I am a piano student in a conservatory, and within that department, I am definitely in the minority as a white, american-born student. As such, when people meet me for the first time, I sometimes hear, "Oh, I just assumed you were Korean/Chinese/Asian." With a name like Andy Lee, that's bound to happen every now and again, so I'm used to it.

Today, however, was a totally new experience.

I was meeting with a violinist and cellist to play in a piano trio this semester, and they both mentioned that they figured I was asian. What's more, the cellist told me that her teacher not only told her that I was asian (where he got that info I'm not sure), but also that, where I came from in Asian, it was common for students to adopt 'American' names.

Who knew?

I'll have to go introduce myself now, I suppose. :)

Allow me to introduce to you The Slanket. Basically, it's a giant fleece blanket that has sleeves. How awesome is that?

To quote the website:

Sometimes you want to read a book, channel surf, eat popcorn or play a video game and it is chilly in your house, apartment, teepee, igloo, or whatever you call home. It is hard to lie on the couch or in bed and read a book without your shoulders and upper body exposed to the elements. So cover up with THE SLANKET, the best fleece blanket with sleeves, and you will be wrapped up snug like a toasty burrito in the middle of winter!

Go get one. And get me one too. Please. No seriously. I'll do a little dance.

I was browsing Wikipedia and found that the US fertility rate is estimated at 2.09¹, which is to say that the average woman will have 2.09 kids in her lifetime. (There's no telling where the internet will take you.)

So, I must be weird, because I want 5 kids. Yup, 5, not 3. I will grant you, that after the first one I may decide that zero is a much more managable number, but for right now, I really think I want five kids. You see, Carrie's dad is one of six, and my mother is one of eleven, so we have tons of family during the holidays. Even more odd, though, is that our families get along quite well, so it is a lot of fun to see them all together (but a pain in the butt logistically).

So what do you think, am I crazy?

I was feeling sick this morning around 4:30, so I came downstairs to watch some TV. On the early news, I heard a story about a Peter Pan Peanut Butter salmonella scare. So, if I wasn't feeling sick, my wife and I probably wouldn't have heard about that and could have, in turn, gotten quite sick.

So, yay for being sick?

Carrie found this video on YouTube and I thought it was worth sharing for three reaons:

1) Nostalgia

2) An appearance by yours truly in muppet form

3) The line, "What are you? Are you some kind'a weirdo?"

Enjoy.

(Remember kiddies, despite what Han Solo may tell you a parsec¹ is a measurement of distance, not time.)

What costs $499, comes with 5,195 parts, each of which must be assembled by hand, doesn't ship until Oct. 1, and is completely drool-worthy? The new LEGO Ultimate Collection Millennium Falcon™, that's what. I don't care how nerdy you think I am, this is totally going on my Christmas list. Indeed, perhaps I should make it the entirety of my Christmas list. That'd be good.

From the website:

Build the ultimate Millennium Falcon!
This is it - the biggest, most spectacular LEGO® Star Wars model ever! Straight out of the classic Star Wars movies comes the Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's famous smuggling starship. Every detail of the modified Corellian Engineering Corporation YT-1300 freighter is here, all constructed to scale with LEGO minifigures. At almost 3 feet (90cm) long, it's the ultimate centerpiece to any Star Wars collection!

This Exclusive First Edition set includes an individually numbered Certificate of Authenticity, sealed within the product box, available only until the first production quantity is gone! Don't miss out, pre-order yours today!*

• With over 5,000 pieces, this is the biggest LEGO set ever made!
• Model is built completely to minifigure scale - minifigures can sit inside and man the controls!
• Landing gear provides a stable base for model to stand on!
• Ship is over 33" long, 22" wide and 8" tall! (84cm long x 56cm wide x 21cm tall)
• Radar dish rotates and elevates and boarding ramp extends!
• Top and bottom quad-laser turrets rotate for realistic play!
• Cockpit top can be removed to access minifigures!
• Includes 5 minifigures: Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa!
• This special set also includes a display card with detailed ship specifications!

Gimmie gimmie gimme!

So UMKC is not cancelled for today. Funny, here are some other colleges listed as closed:

Blue River Community College
Central Baptist Seminary
Faith Bible College
Heritage College
Johnson Co Community College
Longview Community College
Maple Woods Community College
Park University
Penn Valley Community College
University of Central Missouri - Warrensburg

Given those, and the other 219 closings in the area, I'm not anxious to try my luck getting to school. My first class isn't until 4:00 pm, though, so maybe if things are better I'll give it a go, but I'm not holding my breath.

As of 6:25 am, CST, there are 200 school closings in the Kansas City metro area, save the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Normally, one shouldn't expect a college to close, but ours is a commuter campus, and does tend to close with the schools in the area.

(Cue Jeopardy theme song.)

Apparently, one of the people living in my house has not seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, so we are absolutely watching it this evening.

It's funny, as I think about this movie, it really creeped me out as a kid. Remember that Nazi-face-melting part at the end of the movie (who knew you can't stare directly at really old dust), that used to give me nightmares.

My absolute favorite part of that movie, though, has to be when good ole Indian Jones shoots that guy after he displays all those sweet sword moves. I didn't realize, though, that that move was not in the script.

According to imdb:

The infamous scene in which Indy shoots a marauding and flamboyant swordsman was not in the original script. Harrison Ford was supposed to use his whip to get the swords out of his attacker's hands, but the food poisoning he and the rest of the crew had gotten made him too sick to perform the stunt. After several unsuccessful tries, someone made the off-handed remark, "Why doesn't he just shoot him and get it done and over with?" Steven Spielberg immediately took up the idea and the scene was successfully filmed.

I have but one thing left to say, "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?"

So Carrie is off at Bible study, and I have the house to myself. Naturally, I'm inclinded play some wii, especially since I've already had my lesson for the week, but I have a cat on my lap, and I'm not inclinded to make him move. (Everyone collectively now, "Awwwww...")

So, what should I do. I am going back and adding tags to my old posts, but that gets boring, so I decided to settle in and listen to my favorite radio program: This American Life. Now, even if you aren't an NPR junkie like me, I think you'll enjoy this program if you give it a chance. Everyone enjoys a good story, and this is one of the best places to get them. Mmm... warm kitties and good stories. :) Sounds like a great night in.

Pictures from The Kansas City Star. Article at Reuters gives a good account.

A few of you may have noticed that I had begun to add tags to my entries. Sadly, as I began that process I ended up messing a whole bunch of things up, causing me to have to basically 'restart' my blog. In the process, I decided to move to a MySQL database server instead of movable type's default. The good news it that now I have no more building errors. The bad news is that the tags are gone. I will hopefully get some of them back later this evening.

I got a piece of mail today that I found to be rather disturbing. It was a jury summons. A jury summons for me smack dap in the middle of my busiest semester ever. It shouldn't be too big of a deal, though, I'll just ask for a deferment for after the semester is over. (Let's keep our fingers crossed.)

In other news, it looks as though Kevin Costner might actually be making an interesting movie again. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Ok, so I'm definitely only 24 years old, so I apologize to my elders for everything that I'm about to say.

Last night I was studying for a rather large piano lit test that I took this afternoon (which I poned, by the way--no, I'm not hip enough to use a word like "poned"), and I was completely exhausted by 11:00 pm. My brain was checking out. I pushed through until about 1:00, with some obvious blogging procrastination, and then wasn't able to get up with my alarm at 7:30 to get in some more studying. I don't know what's wrong with me.

As an undergrad, it seemed that I could produce any number of late nights and early mornings, all for the sake of finishing a paper and/or studying for tests. As it is now, I just don't have that drive. I have to plan out writing and studying, and heaven forbid if I get 6 hours of sleep or less a night. Also, I can remember specific semesters where most days I'd be working from about 8:00am until midnight, with breaks only to eat and maybe catch a quick nap. I'd do this for weeks on end, but now, I just can't. I doubt it is that I'm getting older, so much as it being my 7th year of collegiate work is just plain wearing me out. *Sigh*

In related news, I've decided that I'm going to learn to appreciate coffee. :)

Well folks, this is my 300th post and I must say that I'm both surprised and excited to have made it this far. Sure, it only took me 3 years, 6 months, and 13 days to get here, but in that time quite a lot of things have happened to me.

First, though, some basic statistics:

• I've been blogging for 1,230 days total
• I post an average of every 4.1 days
• I've written 105,687 words in that time (including this post)
• I average 352 words a post or 86 words a day
• I've had 19,627 hits to my site
• Average hits per day: 16

So, what has happened to me in this time?

Well, for starters, I started dating, got engaged to, and eventually married Carrie on May 28, 2005. One of these days I'll go back through some of those older posts and have a whole category to the story of our getting together. Oooh, maybe I'll get that done for Valentine's Day. I smell some brownie points coming my way.

I've lived in 5 different places in these last 3.5 years, which includes a few weeks crashing at a friends place for an August interim, and had 7 different roommates in that time.

I've taken two major hiatuses (or is it hiati) from blogging, the first from March 2004-July 2005, and the second from Nov 2005-March 2006. The first, though, was not nearly as long as it seems, as I lost most of my posts from that time due to a server crash. Indeed, I would have reached 300 posts a while back were it not for that little mishap.

I've owned 9 hamsters, all of which are now dead. Only 1 died of natural causes, living to be 2.5 years old.

I've gone from owning 0 cats (and not planning on getting any) to owning 1 cat. To quote the new sitcom I've seen advertised, "Marriage is all about compromise. I didn't want to get a cat and she did want to get a cat, so we compormised and got a cat." The cat did not kill any of the hamsters.

I have earned two degrees, the first being my B.M. (not the medical term) and second my M.M. I'm currently working on my D.M.A. and a second M.M. in Music Theory. I apparently enjoying being in college. (I'm procrastinating as I type.)

I'm now on my third computer. The first computer was my trusty G4 400Mhz tower, which is still running the latest operating systems (thank you Apple). Then I moved to a G4 MacMini at 1.25 GHz, before finally upgrading to my new MacBook, cranking in at 1.83 Ghz with dual cores.

Ok, so for some more nerdiness, I'm now on my 5th server in that time, if you can believe it. That's what happens when you host your own site for a while. I think I'm on about my fifth design for this website as well, though I can't be certain of that, especially given hours and hours of tweaking and changing.

I've held 5 jobs in that time, which are: Professor's Assistant, High School Accompanist, Gelato Scooper/Barista, Private Piano Instructor, Freelance Webdesigner. Only one of those came with health insurance. :)

Speaking of which, I lost my appendix during this time. Oh, to think that I had an appendix when all this began. Let me tell you, having Appendicitis is no walk in the park.

I've gotten addicted to/overcome an addiction to Oxycodone. I'll elaborate more on that with more appendectomy stories, but long story short I never did take the drug illegally, or even refill my prescription, for that matter.

Let's see, what else, what else? I've given 3 full recitals during this time, with one on the way much too soon. I'm on my second gaming system (Gamecube - Wii) and iPod (3G to Video). I still don't own a cell phone. I've had my car busted twice and it's broken down on numerous occasions. And last but not least, I've tried to grow facial hair only once, and it didn't go so well.

Well, that's a brief summary for now. I'm sure I'll think of some other things later, but those will just have to go on my 301st post.

Thanks for reading, it's been a lot of fun so far.

I suppose procrastination pays off in odd ways.

Carrie had the suggestion for this post, and I daresay that it is a good one. You see, last night, Carrie got tired pretty early and wanted to go to bed, so I joined her and read for a while. It is in this hour or so of sleep that Carrie did some of the oddest things.

The first was after I sneezed rather loudly a few times. She picked her head up in a panic, and said,

"Wh.. what was that?"

"It was just me sneezing. It's ok. You can go back to sleep."

"I thought it was the kitty." (He sneezes sometimes. We think he might be one of the few cats that is tragically and ironically allergic to cat dander.)

"No, just me."

"I thought you were laughing."

"No, just me sneezing, go back to sleep."

None of this she remembers. The second incident was when the cat came to sleep by her face, as it often does. (It does not sleep anywhere near me as I trained it from the first day to associate sleeping with me to getting politely dropped onto the cold floor.) She then said the following, and quite lucidly, I might add.

"The kitty is standing on my face."

(Proceeds to move and pet the kitty.)

"Hey kitty." (no, not 'hello kitty,' that'd be a trademark infraction, or something) "You came to join me early tonight."

After this she pets the cat some more and then they both adjust a bit and go to sleep. Again, none of this she remembers. One of these days I'll be able to record some of this and have solid proof, but until then, you'll have to remain amused by the stories.

Once again I found myself awake on a Saturday morning around 5:30 and unable to go to sleep. So what have I been doing for the past 4 hours? Well, for one, I uploaded a bunch of Carrie's old blog posts, individually, after I (oops) broke her blog while trying to get mine uploaded to the same server. Heh heh?

During that time, to amuse myself, I listened to three episodes of This American Life, which is easily my favorite radio show.

When is Nintendo going to get me my Contra?

I figure if I'm going to be getting back into blogging, I had better update my About Me section. Also, I realized that I never have finished my appendectomy story, so I think I'll be getting back into that. Podcasts? Yeah, I don't see that happening again anytime soon. I suppose I'll have to find some other niche to go on my home page. So, let me know what else you might like to see around here.

(Obviously, since I don't allow comments on my blog anymore due to terrible spam problems, this is mostly intended for my facebook friends or those with the motivation to email me directly.)

P.S.

I'm quickly approaching my 300th post, and think I'll do bit of a retrospective of everything that's happened to me in these last 3+ years.

As I'm sure everyone has heard by this point, the IPCC has decided that humans really are contributing to global warming.^[1] On one hand, this is well timed with the changes in the US congress and what seems to be a real will of the people to have something done. On the other hand, this is very poorly timed, as it is just about the coldest time of the year for 88-90% of the world's population^[2]. Seriously, why don't they just wait 6 months and publish these reports in the dead of summer. I dunno, but warnings about global warming might be taken even more seriously in 100° weather. I'm just sayin...

It seems as though Nintendo has given me one of the titles I wanted through the virtual console: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The funny thing is, I've already beaten this game twice. I played it for many hours with a friend on the original SNES back in the day (I can't imagine how many hours we spent on that game - and yes, I often used friends for their consoles when I was younger, I'm a bad person, I know), and when I got to college I downloaded the ROM and beat it once again. So now, I think I'll download it once more (this time legally) and reminisce about old times.

Now, they also put Contra III on the virtual console, so hopefully the original Contra is not too far behind.

I was looking at my blog and noticed that right beneath my blog motto "Because it isn't healthy to take yourself too seriously," I have a post about the health ramifications of getting stressed out. Note to self: try to relax a bit.

too stressed

So, apparently this semester is starting to get to me a bit. Here's a brief rundown of everything on my plate for this semester:

1. Teaching Piano - only a handful of hours a week, but cuts into evenings
2. Piano Lit - wasn't too bad last semester, but we're having to learn a lot more repertoire this time around
3. Medieval Music - As with any history course, reading and writing
4. Romantic Music - Same as above, except way more reading and writing
5. Chamber Music - Learning Beethoven's Op. 1, no. 1 - approx. 30 minutes
6. Trombone Recital - Accompanying a trombonist for his masters recital - approx. 60 minutes of music
7. Masters Recital - My own recital, on April 28, with another hour of music

It's getting to the point that all this stuff is interrupting my sleep. Not so much the "I can't get to sleep because I'm worried" version, so much as the "Waking up at 2:30, 4:30 and 5:30 without cause" version. Of course, this only makes things a bit worse...

Is it May yet?

There are many joys to being married, and one of them is waking up next to your spouse. That being said, in the winter things can get a little bit tricky during the night (especially if you're a cheapskate and leave the temperature at 64° from about 10:00 pm until 4:00 pm the next day). You see, I tend to be a bit of a cover hog, which is ironic since I tend to be more warm-blooded than my better half.

I have a theory, though. You see, Carrie and I have a wonderful agreement that when it's time to get to sleep, no more snuggling. It's just too awkward if someone falls asleep and the other wants to move without waking the other. Anyway, Carrie doesn't adhere to this rule too well once we are asleep. I guess my side of the bed tends to be warm, so she cozies right up to me. In the process, she brings all of her covers with her, to the point that when she goes back to the other side, I'm hanging on to everything she brought over. So, I don't think it's all entirely my fault, but I'm having a hard time convincing her of that. :)