[ 01-24-05 ] [ 2:55 p.m.]
[ Shaking off the rust ]

Well, I was talking about doing a new layout, and here it is. I opened up mmlove after I got back from class, looked at it, and nearly got sick with all the pink. I dug around in my picture files a little bit, and when I stumbled across this picture, I had to laugh. It's from the New Year's party my friends and I had at the bowling alley, and I was being "artsy" and took this picture. And as for "know thy balls"... well, I hope that's self explanatory. I wanted a cute, fun, perky layout, and I got it. And I'm happy.

I'm also really tired. I went to bed at a somewhat decent hour, especially for me, but my roommate's alarm clock woke me up at 6:30, and then the snowplow woke me back up at 7:30, and by the time my alarm went off at 8:30 I was only dozing. On a normal class day (Mondays through Thursdays) I have the luxury of waking up at 9:30 at the latest, but today I needed to go to the Thomas Fine Arts building and practice a piece that was due for my piano class.

I know that by the end of the semester, I'm going to be really attached to my piano class and the people in it. These are people like me - with an appriciation of and a knowledge of the musical arts. You can't get into Piano 4 without being at least somewhat advanced at the piano, and so it's nice to be around people of the same skill level... sort of.

It turns out that I am incredibly rusty. I haven't had piano lessons for probably about two years, so the need to actually read music and learn pieces has decreased dramatically. As most of my friends and family know, I write my own music. I've continued to play the piano after quitting lessons, but I don't go back and review the things that I've learned over the years. I write my own songs, and in the case that the university is paying me to write music for them, a score. Stepping back into what I've figured out are basically group lessons, I realized that I was going to have to put in extra work to be able to keep up. My ability to sight-read music has become almost nil in the two years that I haven't been practicing that skill.

Over the course of the semester, each person has to choose three piano solos and perform them for the class. I've already decided on a sonatina by Diabelli and Joplin's "The Entertainer" - (doing "The Entertainer" is pretty much a freebie, since I've played it before for competition, but I haven't practiced in a while so it'll take some work to polish it up.) I'm thinking I might bust my ass and also learn Joplin's "Pineapple Rag" for the third solo - depending on whether or not my professor makes us choose different genres.

All in all, I'm thoroughly enjoying my piano class so far, even if I am having to knock off the rust.

More tomorrow.

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