let's see how much of this crap i have actually retained.

so this is just going to be me using my readers, as a way of studying.......i'm just going to vomit information in this post.

louis armstrong is basically know as the father of jazz. he played the cornet and the trumpet AND he sang.

He was born in New Orleans. He had the chance to join Kings Oliver’s band in Chicago and stayed with them for a while before branching off and doing his own thing.

Some more well known pieces of his- “now you has jazz”, “hot like this”, and one more that i can’t remember

Bix Biderbecke was the white verision of Louis Armstrong. pretty fantastic trumpet player.

Benny Goodman had a great big band band and played a song for some movie called “sing sing sing”

Scott Joplin played the “Maple Leaf Rag”

Django Reinhardt was a phenomenal jazz guitarist. he injured one of his hands, the hand that plays the chords, in a fire and learned to play guitar with only two finger.

Nat King Cole, well…everyone knows who that is, i should hope. He sang and played “Unforgettable” and my personal favorite “When I Grow to Old to Dream”.

“Trading Fours/ Eighths” is when throughout a song, each musician plays a four to eight measure solo. basically taking turns.

“12 bar blues” are what i call “stereotypical blues”. you count through them, going ONE, 2, 3, 4, TWO, 2, 3, 4, ETC” till you get to twelve. the Beatles white Album is an example of this.

Syncopation- when notes are accented right before or right after the actual beat. “accenteing off beats”

and then i have to be able to name song songs just from listening to them, and i have to know theory, which is easy for me because i have taken piano and some sort of music somthing for a REALLY LONG TIME. theory shouldn’t be a problem.

but yeah…this is what i can remember. so maybe i’ll do alright? i hope so.

i hate midterms.

i hate exams in general.

mid terms. how about no? let's ramble instead.

mid terms are upon us. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

somebody shoot me now.

 i don't do well with exams. i had my first meltdown of the semester on tuesday. the fact that i started school in august and it's now october and i JUST had a meltdown over school--things are looking up in the my world of emotionalness.

my midterm schedule is as follows: i had a spanish exam today (not exactly a midterm, but an exam all the same.), a music midterm on monday, a midterm AND a paper due on tuesday, and then another exam the next monday or wednesday. i don't even know.

so needless to say, i'm a bit stressed. and yet with all that, i'm taking the time to write a blog post.

priorities people.

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i’m taking a jazz and american pop music class this semester.
thought it would be interesting. BUT NO. it isn’t.
although we listen to music all the time, so that’s not bad.
but i’m not a huge fan of jazz, which is ok because my teacher admitted that jazz is an acquired taste. and he is a DIE HARD jazz fan. like he plays gigs on the weekends. and travels to New York a few times a year so he can listen to jazz. he travels up there  JUST TO LISTEN TO JAZZ.
any ways…while he said jazz is an acquired taste, this is the one song we have listened to that i have fallen in love with.

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is it weird that i just made and entire playlist on youtube that consists of songs i need to know for my jazz midterm?
is it weird that it’s public?

first almost all nighter.

i stayed up till 2 am. working on homework.
mid terms are next week.
i’m proud to say that since school started (Aug 23), i have not had to pull an all nighter of any kind until now (October 10).

i take great pride in that.
i also go my sleeve caught on the door of Starbucks.
i also have no idea……yep. not sure what was going to come out there.
i am so sleepy. like what?
i see a purple unicorn dancing across me work desk right now, that’s how tired i am.

 and 2 am isn't much of an all nighter, but it's the closest i have ever come since starting college minus the anthropology final debacle of spring 2012.

you should go read about that one. it was pretty great, and much more entertaining.

the thoughts that stem from a simple pedicure.

my mother and i went to have a pedicure over the weekend. this was my first experience having a professional pedicure. the young lady that did it was awesome! she was very gentle and my toes turned out lovely.

anyways. some things were flowing through my mind as this gentle Asian girl worked on my feet. she didn't talk much, because her English was poor and anytime she asked me something i would either have to ask her to repeat, or just smile and say "yes. sure."

so in the mean time, instead of conversing, like my mother was trying to do with the person working on her feet, i would read my magazine, and look over to see what she was doing. now. it's not that i didn't trust her. it's that i was not really sure what went on during a pedicure.

speaking of which, did you know that after they lotion up your legs, they smack them? not a painful smack, but more like a pounding. either it's to wake up your legs, or.....i really don't know why they do that. but they do.

and i'm ok with it.

back to what i was originally saying. anytime the pedicurist and i made eye contact, we would smile at each other. i guess that was our own way of conversing. and i'm all about smiles. i think just day to day, people need a smile. but even though i say that, you have to be careful who you smile at just anyone. obviously, some people will be stupid and take it the wrong way.

why do i get so distracted, even in a blog post?

well, i don't know exactly how we got on to this, but the the awkward yet, reassuring "smile conversation" that we had reminded me of the time a spent in china. and that's not just because of the fact that an Asian girl worked on my feet. i think it was the way we communicated with one another through our body language. that's basically what i had to do to communicate with those who knew little or no English at all.

i was talking with my mother about it that evening and got very teared up over the fact that i wanted to return to china. not permanently, unless God shows me otherwise. but it made me remember how i felt when i first got home and started recuperating from the jet lag. and for weeks and months after that. china had taken a piece of my heart.

little did i know that after a year, it would still have part of my heart.
i hope and pray that God allows me to go back someday.

in the mean time, i guess that i should start telling y'all about it. i started shortly after i returned home, but never finished telling the blogger world about it. i suppose a year is a long enough wait, don't you?
in the mean time, here is the first post.


this was quite the long-ish post, now wasn't it? if you stayed a read my entire thoughts and ramble, you are fantastic in my book.

it's thursday again.

...two of your best friends and your mother blindfold and kidnap you. the ending was happier then the beginning though. don't worry.

... you make any kind of accidental loud noise in the library. it echos.....very loudly.

...you almost walk into someone and while moving out of each
other's way, he does a little jumpity thingy. you are not a boxer. stop bouncing back and forth like on. honestly.

 ...a friend from school knows it's your birthday, and starts
serenadeing to you IN THE LIBRARY.

 ...the same thing happens at your other job, and you get chased into
the bathroom by another serenader.

...you're school mascot is a sandshark and one of the profs. comes
up to the front desk and asks you "how do you sand a shark?" um...i don't know.

 ...you find a book entitled "who moved my cheese?", in the psychology section. i moved you're cheese. guilty.

... your shoes keep tripping you up, ESPECIALLY when you walk by someone.

two decades.

well, today is my twentieth birthday. i share this day with beyonce', or so i was told. 

um....yay for me? 

i think? 

anyways, today i really didn't do anything but school and work, which does stink with it being your birthday and all, but this past weekend totally made up for it. :)

what had happened was (and all good stories start out this way)...my friend, Danielle, tells me, not asks me, but tells me thursday night that i am going to come spend the night at her house sunday night. because i enjoy her company, i say "sure."

well sunday comes around, i pack the way i would normally pack for a night at a friends. myself, along with Danielle, Abigail, my mom and some other lady-friends go to lunch. danielle, abigail and myslef head back to the church afterwards, where the surrounded me, tell me to take off my glasses and proceed to put a blind fold over my face.  then after about an hour and many twists and turns, we finally stop driving (also after a bathroom break for SOMEONE and one other stop). 

does the blind fold come off then?

  nooooooooo.

my mom pulls me out of the car and starts leading me somewhere.

then she takes the blind fold off, i put my glasses on, and i find myself in the presence of what used to be three of my very good friends that i have grown up with. these three have turned in to very handsome citadel knobs! 

i haven't seen them for a month, so the fact that we were able to see then while in charleston was so great. such a pleasant surprise!

the beginning of my weekend really stunk like poo, but this made it so much happier.

the best friend and myself. 

the other best friend and myself.

and still another dear friend and myself.

dani and the boys.

and then we spent the next day just walking around downtown charleston, which is something i love to do. charleston is one of my very favorite places.

at the waterfront park in charleston, sc.

the whole litter of us beaufortonians.

thank you to my mom for making this happen. thank you to the nicholas's and Wes for making me happy for my birthday. thank you bray and zach for also making me happy. thank you danielle and abby for kidnapping and torturing me. 

you all are pretty dang fantastic and know how to make a girl feel special. 

:)

the weekly awkward moments are back!!

alrighty y'all.

school is back in session. and that means, for me, it's time to be awkward again. and i'm excited about it! yay for awkward!

... i'm going to turn 20 next tuesday (wink wink) and i'm fangirling (and i have loved them since they started but now it's just alot more) over a boy band. i get you thought it was going to be one direction. NOOOPPE. it's those attractive fellows in the link above. don't you judge me. there are alot worse things to listen to out there. and i justify it with the fact that they are either two-three years older then i, so "i have a better chance" then most of the teeny boppers out there. hahahahaha.......awkward.

...one of your two english profs. mixes up a miracle that jesus performed with something completely different. professor said, "locus's to fishes", whereas, correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe it was "water to wine."

...the other english professor, when talking about a project and saying that if we are "a control freak and have to have everything our way, that we need to get over our d*** selves move on. yep, he went there..