Author: Sarah

All I planned to do was add some stuff to the music page… But somehow, I decided it would be a good idea to change the structure of my site a bit. All I’ve done so far is change my journal location to a directory. I’ll probably do this with the rest of the major sections of the site. Right now, though, my battery is running low, and I don’t feel like finding my laptop plug, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. (But check out the music page – there’s some info about my upcoming performances!)

I’ve been quoted! Pretty neat. Other than that, I’m having a blah day, despite the gorgeous sunshine and the promise of slightly warmer weather. I think I need to start going to bed earlier. I’m just too sleepy to be in a good mood!

Ever since I started playing horn again, I’ve been obsessing over lip balm. Let’s see… I have a tube in my horn case, one in my coat pocket, one in my knitting bag, one on the kitchen counter, and one in my laptop bag. I can’t go three minutes after a rehearsal or practicing without putting on chapstick. This is probably not healthy…especially since I recently found a Chapstick flavor, vanilla mint, which is quite lovely. I don’t know, though, is wearing lip balm constantly any worse than wearing lipstick?

I try very hard to exercise my right to vote, but this year it’s going to be tough. I lean towards being a Democrat, which means as the uninformed voter that I am (I know, that’s bad), I tend to vote along party lines. For one of the state assembly seats up for grabs this year, though, the Democratic candidate has managed to annoy me to the point where I wouldn’t vote for her if she were the last politician on earth. Seriously, we’ve gotten about 20 mailings, three recorded messages, and two door-to-door visits (thankfully, we weren’t home either time). The irony of it is, if she’d never sent a thing to our house, I would have voted for her, since she’s the Democratic candidate. Now I have to go read up on the other candidates. I suppose while I’m there, I’ll check out the rest of the races, too, and maybe be slightly better informed this year. :P

Well, now that it’s practically winter, I finally updated the little pictures on my blog to be more fall-like. Oops. :)

I’ll admit it, I’m a field band nerd. :) Of course, it’s been 10 years since my last field band event. (No, I won’t make you do complicated math, I graduated high school 10 years ago in June, and I was 17, so that would make me…26. For the next 5 weeks.) Last night I went to my brother’s last field band championship – he’s a senior this year, and he’s lead snare – at the Dome in Syracuse. They had just moved up a class from the one they won two years in a row. They didn’t win (ok, they took last place) but they looked and sounded great! (Can you tell I’m proud of him?) I took a whole roll of film, which will hopefully come out since I haven’t used film in about 2 years… I also picked up a tote bag with a french horn on it. Yay! Now I can carry my band music in style. I did need the new bag, really, honest and true! My band folder was too big to fit in my normal music tote, or really in any of the tote bags I have. Honest. It has nothing to do with my bag addiction.

…did we just start it or end it? I can never remember. Anyway, instead of getting my lovely extra hour of uninterrupted sleep, I got woken up at 2 (or 3, depending on which clock you looked at) by a frantic doorbell. My first thought was that the house was on fire and someone was trying to wake us up. But I have no way of seeing the front step without opening the door, and I couldn’t bring myself to open the door. Especially with the way Molly was reacting – I’ve never heard her growl quite that seriously before! Turns out after talking to the neighbors, it was a prank – it wasn’t just our house. Surprisingly, even the pumpkins on the front step survived the ordeal…and I’m planning on installing a peep hole in our front door for next time.

I’ve never hit a deer. Until last night, I’d never even had a very close encounter (which is amazing considering I’ve been driving back country roads for 10 years now). Deer are really, really, stupid. I suppose I should know this from the fact that a deer ran into the back passenger window of my parents’ mini-van when my brother was driving several years ago. He didn’t hit the deer – the deer hit him. The dumb deer last night chose to run between two approaching cars that were oh, maybe 200 feet apart and going 40 miles per hour…one of which was mine. We both managed to stop. We were probably 20 feet apart by the time we did, and the deer passed right between us. And thankfully, the person behind me wasn’t tailgating, so when I hit my brakes he didn’t rear-end me. (Although, I figured it was better to be rear-ended than hit something in front of me – especially in the wagon, where the rear of the car is way behind me, and I couldn’t remember if there are airbags in it or not.) At least I know my brakes are good. We all figured out that we were still alive, there weren’t any other deer in the immediate area waiting to jump out, and moved on. I think I’d like to avoid encounters that close from now on, though – aside from the risk of injury and damage to the car, I’d feel truly awful about killing such a beautiful creature. Even if it is dumb. :P

I know. It’s only a Halloween costume. But it was the first time I’d ever put a zipper into anything…and it came out terrible. I knew I could do it better. So last night I ripped the zipper out (carefully) and put in a different zipper, with the proper type of zipper foot. What a difference! Of course, I still haven’t hemmed the thing, which might have been a better use of the time, but how long could a hem possibly take, anyway? Well, at least I’ll know the zipper looks good, even while I’m tripping over the skirt! :)