in other news ...

I forgot something in the good things list yesterday ... These photos are from the other week but it still makes me happy to look at them and know that some people actually DO something. Hilarious, Fältbiologerna!

What if I'm not her?

You have heard me say this so many times that you're not going to believe it, but here goes ... I'm sick. Again. These never ending colds I have been getting since August are really starting to annoy me. And I'm worried, too. I've got nine concerts, with both solo and choir performances, in the next two weeks. And the way I'm feeling (and sounding) now, I won't be able to sing for at least another week, maybe more. It's weird how a normal cold can destroy so much of life - mostly school work of course, but stuff I do for fun as well, like choir singing. And what if I don't take all my points? What if I FAIL? what are my teachers going to say? What am I going to do? I've always been en duktig flicka, the perfect student. what if I'm not her any longer?

It's no fun at the moment. I have looked forward so to this December, I love singing all the Christmas songs, but now I don't know at all what's going to happen, how I'm going to solve this. I can't even plan a solution. I hate that. I am used to getting double and triple booked, but I can always plan my way out of that one way or another. If only I knew when I'll be able to sing again, so I could plan it somehow! But I don't and I can't. And I'm worried.

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The few glimpses of light ...

- The boyfriend, who takes exceptionally good care of me when I'm sick: cooks all my meals, hugs me all the time, looks at me as if I was the most beautiful thing on earth even though my nose is redder than Rudolph's, and buys me chocolate. Hm ... come to think of it, he does all these things for me when I'm not sick, too. but it's even nicer now :)

- Letters. A lucky coincidence (or the hand of God! Who knows!) made it so that I got letters from several of my favorite letter writers during the past week. That was very well needed and appreciated.

- På Spåret. I love På Spåret. The new season started last night. When people ask me what TV shows I like, there's only one answer: I only ever watch one, and it's På Spåret. (It's on English Wikipedia! Look!) It's about travels and places and stuff ... and it's just nice. No one gets humiliated. No one is mean. People just laugh and tell jokes and have a good time. And I also like it because I sometimes manage to figure out where they are going before the contestants do. :)

- David Eddings. It's lightweight fantasy, it's entertaining and it's about another world in another time, so I don't have to think about this world and its worries at all.

- Good songs, new and old. Anyone want a mix CD? I have some found some real goodies lately.

- I have enough money saved up to survive next semester even if I don't get any money from CSN (that's partly why I'm worried - if I don't take 75% of my points this semester, no money from the state next semester). At least for a little while. (So I shouldn't be worried. But I'm worried anyway.)

- We have nice sunsets here.

Truth be told, I'm rather proud to have gathered up so many good things on a day like this. And I didn't even include the sour cream & onion chips that Anders (who lives here as well) promised to buy for me today.

a few snapshots from this past week

Great food and happy people at last Sunday's party with the chamber choir



Chocolates I bought for the boyfriend (and me)



Getting off the tram at Korsvägen on my way to school



Lunchtime at the Academy of Music and Drama



Pancakes for dinner! Monster wants dinner too.



On my way home from church this morning

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I intend to be a better answerer to comments I get from now on. I don't know why I've been so bad at that ... When I comment on someone else's posts, I like it when people reply :) So so will I!

shuffle minibook

Whenever I feel like making something, but don't know what, I make a shuffle project. I've been doing them for years; it all started several years ago on my homepage, where I made html pages for different songs. Then blogging came and killed all the personal homepages, and so I moved on to paper and glue instead.



A shuffle project is, as you may have guessed, based on the shuffle function of whatever you play your music with (iTunes and my iPod, for me). I just put it on shuffle and do something (a page or collage, mostly, but they can be drawings, paintings, photographs, anything you could think of)) based on the song that comes up next. And then the music keeps on playing, and when you have finished that page - no matter if you have heard five or twenty songs since you started - the next page will be about the next song you hear. (There is always the possibility of not using a song if you don't feel like it. I wouldn't want to force myself to use a song if I don't like it.) And then I keep going like that until I'm done, or more likely, until I should be going to bed.



One of the things I like about it is that I get a theme, a starter, something to get me going, but from there I can do whatever I want. I can think of so many variations on the theme! Colors, materials, photos, no photos, drawings, anything.



This one (see the images larger on my flickr page is a minibook that I wanted as cheerful as possible. It is quite unusual for me to use colors as bright as these - I'm more into plain yellow, red and blue when I use bright colors, and not so much magenta and turqoise. But it was fun nevertheless. Anything that will widen your perspective and make you try something you haven't tried before is a good thing. I used only photos that I had already printed - I have a leftover box for them - so they are from completely random occasions, but that is part of the fun. For me they still match the song I was working with, and that is the point (this time. It doesn't have to be).




I made this minibook a little while ago, and now, as I write this, I already feel like making another. A jazz themed one perhaps?

2004 pt. 2

The rest of the 2004 photos (the one with me laughing is taken by Lisa). I took so many photos back then. Most were bad, but I cared less. How do I get back into that way of thinking?

2004

I looked through all my photos from 2004, to choose which ones will go into albums (that's where I am right now - more than four years behind). And while doing that, there were some photos that made me feel "oooohhh". For different reasons. Photos I had forgotten about, photos I've had on the wall for ages, photos with beauftiful colors, photos with people that are still my friends, people that I loved but don't even know anymore (I met one of the friends shown below on a street yesterday and tried to say hello, but he looked right through me. I guess it's what happens) ...

I guess most are here for no apparent reason other than that they made me feel soft, warm and/ or melancholic inside. So here they are ... some photos from 2004, chosen by nothing other than feelings in my stomach. All taken with my dear Nikon Coolpix 2100 (those were the days!).

happy things

(Photo from last week's choir recording ... and yes, that's me. We were all really tired at this time! :) Taken by Karin.)

Happy things:

+ Our choir concert on Sunday (Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen and Requiem by John Rutter) is going to be so great. The music is plain lovely, specially Lux Aeterna which I adore almost (but not entirely) as much as O Magnum Mysterium by the same composer. Do come if you're in the neighborhood! 18:00 at Härlanda kyrka.

+ Coming home from school and seeing that my four best blogging friends have all posted something during the day. And that all of them wrote about something nice and beautiful in their lives. It just makes me so happy.

+ That I'm going to see Ron Sexsmith live with Lisa & Hanna tonight. Yay!

+ Only two weeks until Christmas!

+ Calling CSN (in short, that's where Swedish students get/ borrow money to pay the rent while we're studying) and not having to wait in line. And then talking to a woman who not only was very nice, she also admitted that their mistake was their mistake - not mine.

+ I've gotten some lovely mail this week. Katie sent me this amazing collage (can you believe it?), which she knew I loved (because I have favorited it on flickr :)), and it totally made my day. (Thank you!) I hope to get some time to write a whole bunch of letters and/ or cards soon. Real mail is a fabulous thing!

I'm hoping to be able to blog some more than I have lately ... It's been rather busy around here, like I said. Keep your fingers crossed!

a busy week & frosty leaves

It's been a busy week! From nothing to hundred over one night. I've been teaching singing at a high school in Kungälv (part of my education) all day, and in the nights we've been recording a CD with my choir. I know recording sounds like a lot of fun but basically it's just hours and hours of really hard work. It's fun afterwards though. Recording in a studio like I do with Sebastian is easier ... and requires much fewer takes!

At least I have a couple of hours off now. Tonight it's six more hours in church (we happen to rehearse in a church which has one of the best recording acoustics in town, so the technichians have moves all their stuff (and that's loads of stuff) there) and then I'm teaching the beginners/ intermediate lindy class all weekend. So not much sleep.

But all in all, this is a lot better than what was before! I so prefer this busyness to the uninterested nothingness. If it has to be one of them. Which it doesn't. It will slow down a little, soon. I'm teaching at the high school for three weeks but have tried to clear the evenings off as much as possible to get some room for rest. It drains you of all energy, this teaching thing. But I learn a lot.

What else to say? I'm still loving autumn, enjoying every second. And soon, soon it's Christmas! Three weeks until Advent. And I'm starting to feel like creating something again. Not sure, but there might turn up something created here soon. I'm going to have to get back into the weekly themes to get something done, though ... So many ideas!