It's always darkest before the dawn

I mentioned somewhere that I would put up photos of my container garden so here it is with other random things, cut so that you can choose to look at it.

( SPRING and things )

This is the best that my garden has ever looked! I am really hitting my stride this year.

So I live in an apartment complex that has had a barely functioning laundry. Each week a new sticky note would appear on one of the washers or dryers. It was like a bad joke. This has been dragging on for months. Finally yesterday I was beginning to wonder if I would need to go to this place in town, Laundry Lounge, as we were down to four washers and five dryers for the entire place, when a man materialized and fixed all of them in under an hour!

This made my week. I have never been so excited to do laundry.

Also, it is Sergei Prokofiev's birthday!! (Well, they changed from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar so...it is mostly his birthday.)

I am listening to all of his piano sonatas. I am on No. 8 of 9. :O
For anyone interested, I will stick links below to various recordings!

I really like his 5th Sonata . Here is Gergiev conducting his Fifth Symphony with a toothpick because he is a little cray cray. He is brilliant though. The second movement of this one sounds mechanistic. I love it!

And here is one of my favorites: Sarcasms! It's solo piano stuff where he has a bit of fun, a little too much fun? I just love that he wrote something "sarcastic".

Finally (cause I would be on here all day), I really like Tales of An Old Grandmother. The first piece is so wistful. It makes me think of the fading light on tall buildings. I want to play this one!!

More "what I've been up to" stuff on a separate post though it isn't drastically exciting. Mainly practice, work, errands, procrastination, mad plans, and tv shows. :)

Random question of the day: do you all drink tea and if so, what kind(s) of tea do you like? I really like Earl Grey and Russian Caravan. And how do you take your tea? I am a little tea mad.

What an amazing Saturday after such a lackluster Friday evening. The afternoon was lovely yesterday, but I began to feel more and more tired and sore (in the throat). I felt the front of my throat and it was a little swollen. Cue freaking out. Spent the rest of the evening on the couch watching Shiro Neko videos and feeling a little down. I awoke late cause Saturday. Colin wanted me to leave and give him a couple of hours to himself in the house. I was a little hesitant but I threw on a blazer and jeans after switching out of one of my new dresses and cycled down the path with my bag full of Russian books, counterpoint, and a hardcover journal that I write in once a week to sort of check in on myself, life listening to The Strokes on my iPod. I had no clue where I was going, but I wound up on this one path just past the library on campus. It is the perfect combinations of sunshine and shade. I was grateful that I changed because the ground was hard and it was still a little chilly. I sat there listening to music, reading last week's entry and then writing a new one occasionally sketching tree branches. It was lovely. When the music stopped, I just sat there and listened to the surrounding art buildings humming and the birds for about an hour.
Cycled past people sunning themselves by the lake and proceeded with haste to WF to relieve my bladder. Got a snack and a coconut water and wandered for a little bit. Hung out in the arboretum listening to Brahms' Violin Concerto in D. Watched the birds and this ridiculous ginger cat that I once tried to collect and take back to his oblivious caretakers on a rainy afternoon last year. My throat felt a bit better and was noticeably less swollen! Hooray! It was so nice lazily taking in the sights and listening to tunes. Felt so good to be alive watching the sun glint off the trees, the water, the people walking past. It was like the town was my backyard, I felt so at home. Colin texted to apologize for pseudo kicking me out but I was well pleased. Sitting there listening to music rekindled my resolve to not waste any time with writing and with music, but also to get a grip. I set a rough date as a goal for having everything together, how I get there is up to me complete with marathon work periods and days here and there of rest and slacking. I need that freedom at least to maneuver in time and space. So by May 2016, I want to have a first draft of the novel ready (or perhaps what I mean is a revised version that could be ready to show to someone) along with considerable improvement on the keyboard and with musical studies. I want to have written something or be really exploring composing.

I ran into my folks on the way back, sprinted to the house to use the bathroom again and then went back out to meet them back at WF. Listened to Petrushka. It is a little weird and sort of sad, but I love it. On the way back I lost sight of them behind me and so lingered by Hart Hall and these poplars that I like. Sat on a bench for someone named "Jennifer" who passed away several years ago by the looks of the bench, probably within the last ten. She couldn't have been more than thirty-something. I patted the bench and told her that I was sorry that her life ended so soon.

By the time I made it back for the second time (and saw Colin and Callie on the path this time), I was pretty tired. It is a little before eight and I am exhausted. My throat is a bit better, but still a little rough and I was out all day. So nice though. I want to look at Russian, but I need to lie down a little first.