Long time no post

October has been a crazy ass month. I'm so happy it's almost over, you don't even know.

To recap, at the beginning of the month Yasu died and the university held a memorial service, which I attended. Then I got sick. In fact, I started getting sick the day of the memorial service and it just kept getting worse. Monday, I was told that I had a virus and should stay home for a couple of days. It started getting better on Tuesday, then got massively worse on Wednesday, so I dragged myself back out to see the nurse. Turns out it's flu. In fact, turns out it's swine flu. So I spent the rest of the weak utterly miserable and sicker than I've been in years. It sucked and I missed a full week of class and had ridiculous catch up to do.

But I survived, got an A on my second math exam (no idea how, considering I only studied for an hour and a half before giving up, but I'm not complaining), wrote a crap paper about Browning's "Caliban upon Setebos" (but apparently everyone sucked, because the professor is making all of us come in separately for private meetings about the sort of analysis he's looking for - at least I have a reason my paper was terrible), and my two biology quizzes weren't too bad.

Unfortunately, Voce, which should be a nice constant because I love choir, is also problematic right now because Christine had to take an emergency leave of absence for the rest of the semester. Something happened to her son, involving brain damage, so she's taking time off to help take care of him. We're all really worried about her, and this is all totally understandable, but it resulted in us being handed over to Dr. Long, the head of the choral department and conductor of Chamber Choir. I have some issues with DL, and have for quite some time, mostly related to the condescending way he talks to Voce, like we're little kids who shock him every time we perform well. It really gets on my nerves. But he's a very good conductor and the only other concert this term is Christmas in Hudson Hall, which is his big program, so it was going pretty well. In fact, after two weeks I'd made peace with the fact that we were going to be working with him and, while I seriously miss Christine, it was cool.

Then the university powers that be decided that DL can't have that additional 5 hours a week. So, they brought in an outside conductor to work with us Mondays and Wednesdays, with DL keeping our Friday rehearsal. It's... interesting. And so far from ideal it's ridiculous.

I'm just praying Christine's son makes a good recovery and she's able to come back. If we're stuck with a situation like this next semester, I'll cry.

In happier news, I've figured out what I'm doing for Halloween - there's a group of people going up to northern Portland to this sort of Halloween theme park, with all ages trick-or-treating and rides and haunted houses and other awesome things. And I'm going as Lucheni, from Elisabeth. It's an easy costume and my love for Takarazuka is well-established, so it's perfect.

In case you're not sure on character names, Lucheni is the one in the black and white striped shirt:



I would totally go as Der Tod, except that costume would be crazy difficult to put together. Lucheni is doable.

Oh, also? The fact that everyone who's watched my Elisabeth DVD thinks Mizu is ridiculously hot both amuses me and makes me happy. It's like proof that it's not just me.