christmas break current events...

wow i haven't blogged in so long! for over a month! hopefully i'll have a chance to update this thing a little over christmas break. so um...ok here are some current events:

1-got through christmas concerts, gigs, my violin jury, and finals...
2-got home for christmas break yesterday morning after being stuck in seattle airport for awhile due to weather...my dad came to rescue us cuz our flight to kelowna was canceled...we got a flight arranged to vancouver for friday morning, but instead my dad drove 6 hours to seattle to pick us up, got there in the middle of the night, turned around and we headed home...
3-one of my suitcases got lost on the flight from minneapolis/st. paul to seattle...so i'm waiting for it to get here, and in the meantime i have no shoes cuz they're all in that suitcase (i was wearing some of ali's shoes on the trip home), so anyways, for now i have to rely on ali's shoes till my suitcase finds me...
4-kelowna is very cold and snowy! yay! right now it's around -20 degrees, but fluctuating up and down between -10 and -30...
5-i have an organ now! our church got a new organ, and one of the organists at our church got the old church organ, and so she gave me her old organ! i've been playing it tons since i got home...very extremely fun!...
6-i got a viola loaned to me from the music department at southern since i'm playing viola in a quintet next semester, so i brought it home and am trying to learn my part for the trout quintet...
7-i'm freezing constantly cuz my room downstairs does NOT really seem to get warm no matter if the heat is on or not...
8-ty moved to the room downstairs across from my room (he used to be upstairs)...so now we're just across the hall from me...it's pretty awesome having him down here...
9-it's hard not having my own car here and having to plan things out all the time since ali's, tyler's, and my cars are all at southern and we just have my mum's car and my dad's truck here...to split between 5 people...
10-i still have basically all my chrismas shopping left to do...so i have just a few days left to get everything!...

well merry christmas to you! have a great holiday season...

oh and here's a picture of tyler piggy-backing me to my room last night when i was too tired to walk down by myself, haha...you can tell from my eyes being basically shut that i was sleeping before this...i fell asleep upstairs and woke up enough to get down to my room...

remembrance day and poppies...

this video was created for remembrance day in memory of the veterans who served in the war...by honoring them with 2 minutes of silence, as is practiced at 11:00 am on november 11 (remembrance day) in canada...



this is another remembrance day video that reminds us to wear our poppies (a canadian tradition) because of the poppies in flanders fields...

an example of how to unsuccessfully chop wood...

this is me trying to chop wood at tim's brother's place during midterm break...as you can see, it didn't produce the desired results...

the art of art...

im at work right now, and mildly wishing i was somewhere slightly more interesting. so i thought to myself, why not share something from psych class with you all?
these are drawings from the dutch graphic artist escher. he is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs (a method for printing using a plate or stone with a completely smooth surface) and mezzotints (a printmaking process, technically a drypoint method). these feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations (to quote from wikipedia, haha). so anyways, his drawings are very strange, and like mentioned above, impossible to real life. so i'll share some with you and you can see if you can find the impossibilities of them...

#1



#2



#3



#4



#5



#6



-now, if you look at #1, you will see that the water leading to the waterfall is going uphill instead of downhill...
-in #2, you don't know if you're looking upwards, downwards, or straight ahead in the picture, and also, the cones hanging in the open spaces are hanging from all different directions...
-looking closely at #4, you will see that the pillars are all mixed up, from where they are connecting from the top to the bottom...
-#6 is a still a mystery today...did escher draw himself holding the ball and being reflected off of it, or is he drawn from inside the ball looking out? his left hand is holding the ball, but in the picture in the ball, his right hand is the one that is outstretched...

of course, there are probably many more things to notice and realize when you study the pictures more closely, but these are some of the ones we discussed in class...

if you want to look at more of escher's art, go to http://www.mcescher.com/...

a blog post about something...

i need to post again...but i don't know what to post about!!!!!!!!!! this is a real dilemma. i had an idea and i completely forgot about it...and now i can't think of anything else. what would interest all of you blog-readers? i don't know how many ppl actually read this, but i'll just pretend that it's so popular that i have a million viewers on a daily basis! pretending can be fun sometimes. so anyways, now that i'm pretending i have a million viewers, i have to make sure to catch all of your interests! now how can i do that? that's a tough one. let me think for a minute, or two or five or so.....................................................................
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........................ok, maybe i'll tell you a little about my musical life this semester. first of all, i'm learning the barber violin concerto, which is amazing! if you want to listen to it, here are the links:

-1st movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=t2ifFuF3FoQ&feature=related
-2nd movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=uql9IV5M_j8&feature=related
-3rd movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=p_cbnyWG4Fo&feature=related

currently i'm learning the 1st movement, and man i love it!

so besides that, i'm also working on a bach gigue and it's going pretty good. i like bach, but i'm continually liking him even more and more all the time, especially throughout college. both on piano and violin. so anyways, i'm sure some other pieces will come along soon, but those are the two main ones for now.

speaking of piano...my piano teacher has a bunch of new piano majors to teach this year and wasn't able to fit some of the non-piano majors into his teaching schedule. and the other piano teachers aren't exactly the type of options that i'm looking for, since they tend to teach students that are more at a beginning-learning level. so we'll see if i can take piano from my teacher again next semester, and if not, then next year. in the meantime, this semester i'm taking organ lessons instead! i had my first lesson this past thursday, and it was really cool. the lessons are on the really big and awesome pipe organ in the college church. it was really cool to play using the pedals, and i was kinda getting the hang of it by the end of the lesson. so i'm doing some exercises to get used to the articulation you need to play the organ with, and to get used to the pedals. then i'm also starting two preludes. one of them has a pedal solo, which is gonna be so fun to learn! so i'm pretty excited about it. the main thing that i'm sad about is stopping my streak of taking piano lessons from when i started when i was 6 until i graduated from college, since i can't take lessons this semester. at least i'll have my streak of taking violin lessons from when i started when i was 3 till i graduate from college. plus i'll be getting some organ-playing learning and experience, which will be good and also hopefully beneficial. oh and i'm also sad cuz i learned the 2nd and 3rd movements of beethoven's pathetique piano sonata last year, and i love the 1st movement so much and started learning it on my own this summer, and i was ready to work on it in piano lessons this year so that i could know the whole sonata. but now i'll just have to keep working on it on my own until i take piano again.

so here are the links for the pathetique:

-1st movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=lq4G3KRAuXc
-2nd movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=n2nG1bt7IBM&feature=related
-3rd movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qRkr7WgQ_Y4&feature=related

i call the 1st movement the alex macarthur song...because i always heard this guy alex macarthur playing this song in his piano lessons or practicing it when i was at the music school where i used to take violin lessons at home before college. so ali and i dubbed it the alex macarthur song. the main alex macarthur part that we remember him playing is the fast part after the descending chromatic scale. i love that part so so sooooo much! when i play it, i get thrilled to the bone. i played that section constantly throughout the summer, haha.
anyways, i call the 2nd movement the milo and otis song...doesn't it sound like the milo and otis movie music?

now for symphony...we're playing the hary janos suite by kodaly, which is really cool. especially the 5th and 6th movements. so here's a link:

-5th movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=zSv5CvhOEsA&feature=related

i can only find a good one of the 5th movement...too bad cuz the 6th is really cool too.

we're also working on beethoven's 7th symphony. here we go with the links again:

-1st movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=s1qAWcd4rr0
-2nd movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtPVEuAbzM&feature=related
-3rd movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Td3mRRne39I&feature=related
-4th movement: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=VLkZvsp62iU&feature=related

alright well maybe that's enough music for now. i hope you enjoyed at least one of them! bye...

cheek puffs...

so this summer i had a dream...i don't remember much from the dream other than that it had one aspect very similar to anne of green gables. remember thomas, rachel lynde's husband? well, my siblings and i always used to laugh whenever we saw him on the movies, (which sadly, was very seldom). so the reason why we laughed at him is because of this, if you'll take a look at this picture of him:



he had cheek puffs!!!

well, getting back to my dream...in my dream, i had cheek puffs too! although mine weren't white and fluffy like his...they were long and silky and sleek! like this:



haha...well they didn't look exactly like this since i have basically no drawing talent...but hopefully you get the idea. so anyways, i remember thinking in my dream how hopeless the situation was because even if i shaved them all off, i would still have stubble on my face...and then they would keep on growing back. when i woke up, i frantically rubbed my cheeks to make sure there were no puffs there, and when i realized none were there, naturally i was relieved. so there's the story of my cheek puffs dream...as much of it as i can remember...

wow i'm back at southern...

describing:

S-tudying...already
O-utstandingly beautiful campus
U-nlimited potential for this year
T-oo hot and humid outside
H-ousekeeping now cleans my shower!
E-nviable new room in girl's section of guy's dorm
R-eams of new freshman
N-ew wellness center building almost completed

it should be an awesome school year! so far it has been at least...

ramblings and thoughts and questions...

i don't really know what this post is about yet. i thought maybe for once in a long time i should actually write something instead of posting a video or pictures or something to that effect. so, maybe i'll just ramble until i can think of a clear focus and goal for this post. in the meantime, have you ever wondered what life would be like if there were other added dimensions? such as if there was not only male and female, but also a third gender...symale? i don't really know. but wouldn't that just turn the whole entire world in a completely different spin than it is now? how would marriage work, or would we even have marriage? if we didn't, how would we repopulate the earth? it's all very confusing and mind-boggling. on a lighter and even more pointless topic...what if there was naturally a different style of hair? instead of just straight, curly, wavy, frizzy, and i guess corkscrew...what about diamond hair in the actual shape of diamonds hanging from your head? or maybe having naturally jagged hair that looked kind of like lightning bolts? can you even imagine how hilarious that would look?! i'm sure everyone's thought of the possibility of having only one eye in the middle of your face...so i won't dwell on that one. but what about if we had ten more letters in our alphabet? that would completely change our whole language...not to mention the fact that i can't even imagine what other letters would be like and what they would sound like. i hope one of them wouldn't be a rolling-your-r's sound because i wouldn't be very good at english then! one of the ultimate wondering in my thoughts, however, is what if we were incapable to feel or show any emotion. this world would be the most boring and unworthy place to live. emotion is what connects us to other people. we can detect what they are thinking through their emotions and feelings. if we had no emotion, i guess that also means that we also would be extremely limited in our methods of communication. you would have to directly tell someone what you were thinking, but even then, since you have no feeling, you wouldn't be happy or sad and etc. you could think thoughts such as, "i'm going to go outside now," but it wouldn't be linked with any reason other than that's what you decided to do. not because you felt like it...because you don't have internal feelings. i'm not talking about feelings such as the sense of touch, but feelings in your brain...being exuberant or bored or ecstatic. all in all, i'm glad that God thought of all these issues when he created this world. and if only a few differences in our world could throw it off so much, think how many trillions more He had to think through to make our world work. it's pretty amazing! just imagine how much MORE amazing heaven will be and how many more things God has and will think through to make it spectacular! it will be something i don't want to miss out on, and i hope you don't either! so i guess this is where my thoughts have lead me...hopefully at some point throughout this thing my rambling became an actual focus. in any case, i think wondering is good for the mind. once you wonder once, it becomes addictive and your brain gets flooded with many more wonders. see where your brain leads you when you allow yourself to wonder...i dare you to try it...

pictures pictures pictures...

self-explanatory title...pictures mostly from the past few years, but also some from many many years ago...

water water everywhere!...

episodes from 3 different lakes in one day...

at the bottom of the sea...

wow!! ok so here's the story...when ty got an mp3 player years ago, one of the songs that came on it was "at the bottom of the sea." we found it quite amusing...especially the "swim-swim-swimmy-swim- swimmy-swimmy-swim-swim"...(etc.) part. so anyways, one day i researched the song and found out that it was one in a collection of songs by this guy ralph. he writes and performs songs for kids, and i found this video of "at the bottom of the sea" and thought it was pricelessly hilarious...so maybe you will too...
and check out his awesome (haha, not...) website at http://www.ralphsworld.com/...

my life on video...

a mix of random video clips...and i guess that's about it...

a peek into the life of me!...

so i made and put together this movie...clips of me and my family and my house and instances and etc. also on it is the answer to an earlier post on my blog!! the one entitled 3 green lights. i said maybe i'd let you know if we got 3 green lights on the way to work...and we DID the day i took that part of the video! WOW!! but only on the way to work...not on the way back...so a total of 3 out of 6 lights. ohhhhh so exciting...i know. haha. and also, i know the ending is really corny...but anyways ya have fun peeking into my life...

whipped cream...

ali squirting whipped cream into my mouth at fairmont...

laughing baby...

hahahah ok so i stumbled across this awhile ago and have been trying to figure this out...his laugh is hilarious...but more importantly, it's IDENTICAL to this midget actor who was on 7th heaven years ago for a few episodes. i swear, like nobody else in the world can have a laugh like this, but this baby doesn't look like a midget at all. and also i have no idea who that actor was and can't find him anywhere when i try to research it. so ya anyways i can't figure it out. BUT, enjoy this laugh!...

an angel??...

well this past Sabbath, ali, ty, my dad, my friend rachel, and i went up to my uncle's cabin in the mountains. we took our quads and dirtbikes and took off on one of the trails up there. we made it through this really fun trail that i had only been on once before (last summer). when we got to the end of it, instead of heading back to the cabin right away, we decided to go look at this other lake that ali and my dad had been to before. we got there and took some pictures before starting on the way back. well, me and rachel were on a quad together, and we were the last ones to get going cuz i had to put the camera away. i tried to tell ali and tyler to wait for us cuz we weren't quite ready to go yet, but they didn't hear me and they took off. anyways, by the time we got going...they were nowhere in sight! usually we wait for each other till we're all ready to go, but i guess they thought we were right behind them. so we decided to go back in the direction that we had come since that was the way to get back to the cabin. we thought that they were just a bit ahead of us and would be waiting for us. we drove for awhile and didn't see them anywhere...then we found ourselves at a fork in the road that we didn't remember from our way to the lake. we realized that we had taken a wrong turn, so we turned around and decided to go back to the lake in case they had gone back there to find us, but in trying to do that, we took another wrong turn that led us to a different fork in the road. (needless to say, i didn't know this particular area very well, and i also don't have the best sense of direction in the world...haha). so anyways, we were completely and utterly confused at this point...had no idea where we were or which road we should take or what we should do, and we were all by ourselves. at that very instant, i looked up and saw this guy on a motorbike. i hadn't seen him come down the trail, but all of a sudden he was just there. he was like "are you lost?" and we were like "yeah we're kinda confused about where we are." well he talked to us for probably about 10 minutes, helping us figure out where we had been, which wrong turns we made, and how to get back to the lake we were just at and also my uncle's cabin. he was extremely helpful and knew the area really well, and he told us if we got lost again to just call "help" and he might hear us and come help us again. we decided to go back to the lake just to see if they were there looking for us, and if we didn't see them there, then we would take the logging road that the guy had explained to us was the road we had come from on the way there, which would eventually get us back to the main road that led to the cabin. we thanked the guy a lot and turned around to head to the lake. rachel said later that she didn't turn around right away, but she did after we had started going and she didn't see him anywhere behind us (even though he had said he was heading in the same direction). we had to wonder...was this an angel? he seemed to appear right when we were the most confused and had no clue what to do, he knew exactly where to tell us to go, and he told us to call help if we were lost again. how could someone on a bike hear the word help through a really big forest? maybe he was an angel that was right beside us the whole time. we don't really know, but if he wasn't an angel, he was for sure someone sent from God to help us when we needed help. well anyways, we didn't find them anywhere at the lake, so we headed back on the logging road which took us back to where we came out from the first trail we went on. luckily i remembered how we got back to the cabin from that trail since i been on it last summer. there was one place that i couldn't quite remember if we were supposed to keep going straight or take this trail that veered off to the left, but rachel reminded me that the guy said the logging road would take us back to the main road, so we kept going straight until we came to a distinct place that i remembered from last year...cuz last summer we had gone through this insanely huge puddle and gotten really dirty, and i saw the place where the puddle had been. then i knew we were on the right track. we finally made it to the main road and saw a sign for dee lake, which is a lake just after crooked lake, where my uncle's cabin is. man i was relieved at that point. my only concern was that my dad and ali and tyler were probably out looking for us and i didn't know how they would know that we had made it back, since we had no way to communicate with them. when we were pretty close to being back to the cabin...we saw my dad and tyler on the other quad. they were just gonna start going back on the trail to find us. we were sooo glad that they weren't out on the trails looking for us, since it was really close to dark by that time. we explained to them what had happened, and they told us they had blindly followed ali as she was exploring a different trail to waste some some time while everyone was getting ready. they thought that we were right behind them, until ali turned around to go back in the right direction. they got ahead of us when we took one of the wrong turns, and we had probably just missed them by a few minutes. once they made it back to the cabin, ali stayed there in case we came back, and ty and my dad headed out to find us. that was when we saw them on the road, so we all headed back to the cabin and told ali what had happened. after our little adventure, we made a fire and had some hot dogs before driving back home. we told them all about the random guy that was there, and they also thought it was quite possible that he was an angel. either way, someone helped us find our way back...otherwise we might have been stuck out there in the dark. so anyways, that was my experience from the weekend. the end...(and sorry it was so long!)...

so here are some pictures to trade off for all the words...


she must go in!...


on the first trail...


muddy lips from quading...


making a fire after we got back safe and sound...

ben mulroney...french overpronounciation...

i found this video that "vote for the worst" made of canadian idol host ben mulroney over-pronouncing french singers names...



and whoaaa...i just found out that ben's birthday is march 9...only 1 day before mine! man, sooo close to being birthday buddies with a former prime minister's son! but oh well...

3 green lights...

SERIOUSLY...how hard can it be to get 3 green lights in a row??? everyday on the way to work, my siblings and i try to get through the 3 traffic lights while they're still green...not to mention having the same goal for on the way home...for a total of 6 green lights in the day. now, that doesn't sound so hard, does it? no, i don't think so either...especially because it's not even like a super busy section of the city or anything. but usually we either end up getting like 3 red lights, or what's even WORSE is when you get all but one. oh that is just so maddening! and yes, i know it sounds like quite a stupid game, but you should try it...it can actually keep you quite entertained!...

and just cuz i know you're SO interested...here's the view of the roads...


View Larger Map

maybe i'll even let you know if we get lucky enough this summer to get 3 (or 6!) in a row...

you know you're a music major if...you get this joke...

Three notes go into a bar.

C, E-flat, and G go into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, but we don’t serve minors.”

So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished; the G is out flat.

An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough. A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, “Excuse me. I’ll just be a second.”

An A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor.

Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, “Get out now! You’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight.”

The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says: “You’re looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development.” This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and stands there au naturel.

Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he’s under a rest.

The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility.

On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless. The bartender decides he needs a rest - and closes the bar...

memorial cup breaks...

on sunday, may 25, the spokane chiefs won the chl memorial cup...when the captain receives the cup and then is about to pass it on to a fellow teammate, low and behold...it breaks and falls to the ground...hahaha...poor captain...

towel expansion...

this little tiny mint looking circle was supposed to turn into a towel when placed in water...so naturally we thought that meant a regular normal sized towel, which we found quite impossible...therefore, we decided to try it out, and to our surprise...(watch now)...

beginning...



ending...



alternate ending...



it was a cloth, not a towel...

the ultimate canuck sacrifice...

this video was one of the winners of last year's search for the ultimate canucks fan...

weirdo girl violin accident...

i found this crazily hilarious video...make sure you watch until the end...and catch the girl's expression as she...CONTINUES TO PLAY! (for quite awhile)...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=StBe3m4gI2g...

dorm shopping...

so, to explain...this is a video series of shopping in the dorm...in the giveaway boxes...we found some AWESOME treasures...don't you think?...

arrogant worms...

enjoy a song by the patriotic canadian musical comedy trio-arrogant worms...this song is entitled "canada's really big"...
ooo and especially enjoy the part of the video that says "the rest is kinda bumpy"...

update on assassins...

ya...i got out around #22 or something...so i made it almost into the last 10. so ya, i was assassinated in a very sneaky way. anyways it was fun...and a girl ended up winning so yay!...

assassins...

........iiiiiiiiii'm still alive in assassins!! (currently)...yay! i got my first target and now i'm onto my second one...if ya wanna know what this game is all about, click the link below...anyways 32 people at southern began playing assassins today, (monday, april 7/08), and a bunch of people have already been assassinated...so we'll see how far i can get...

http://sassins.com/assassins/rules...

beware of the socks...

check it out...

click the danielle link on the side of my page to check out my friend's blog about buxtehude posted on april 3/08...

homestar runner...

click the link below to watch the strong bad email cartoon about trogdor on the homestarrunner.com website...

http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html...

and then click the next link to listen to the answering machine of marzipan...when you get there, click the forward arrow twice to listen to message 4...

http://homestarrunner.com/answer12.html...

spa water commercial...

a commercial we made on the bus ride to brussels during orchestra tour...filmed by ali...

live from the rijksmuseum...

a hello to tim's family on the video maker at the rijksmuseum in amsterdam. the video got cut off before it was done though...

candy throwing...

one afternoon ali and i were bored in our room, so we thought up a new contest...candy throwing...we decided to see who could end up with the most candies that landed on the bunk bed after throwing handfuls backwards behind our backs...here is a video of me throwing candies at ali...i think i threw them too hard and hit her in the face...haha...