I love my mom.

My mom always knows just what to do and say. Here's the e-card she sent me:

We delight in the

beauty

of the butterfly,

but rarely admit the

changes

it has gone through to

achieve

that beauty.

Maya Angelou

And then she wrote:

Hope today is better than yesterday

and not as good as tomorrow.

Love ya,

Mom

I swear, the woman is never at a loss for exactly the right words. I wish I could write like that. Just know what to say to make someone smile. And not just from some stupid remark, but something really meaningful. She's always so amazing at that. Anyway, since you read this mom,

thank you, and i love you.

Yup today was that day. What a crappy day.

Today is that day...

Drum corps people will have an idea what I'm talking about. The day when went to bed a little stressed about school, and then you wake up really freaking out. It's cause you've realized, you're not on tour anymore. The real world has come crashing down around you, and it sucks. You realize as much as you think you've been doing your homework and keeping up, you haven't.
It's really just a state of panic.
I hate this day.
It happens every year.
The day I wake up and realize I have no idea what I've been doing for the past few weeks, but homework may not have been one of them. And then the more I think about it, the more I remember that I have been doing homework, and this makes me panic more. If I have been doing homework, what happened?!? And where am I gonna find time to do more homework?!!?

But have no fear, at least in my third year of this cycle, I know that I will get it all done, eventually. This too shall pass, and I'll go back to being normal neurotic Alison instead of panic'd frazzeled Alison. (There might not seem like there's much of a difference, but I swear there is.)

Oh how I want to go back to being on tour! I could handle the stress of moving 170 people about the country so much better than this!!!

I found my lost wallet!!!! Well, Tom's found my wallet that I lost at Kampus Korner. Only thing missing is my EMU ID. It doesn't work, so it's not going to get anyone very far.

Also, I'd like to thank DTE for whatever happened to the power in my apartment. We had no power for some 36 of the past 48 hours. That's longer than the big black out. Anyway, it's back on, so I'd rather not jinx it. I would like to thank Martin and Mark for letting me stay at their place so that I could shower with the lights on all the way, and not half candle, half power. Oh and thanks to them, my shower was also very warm, which was something that was lacking from the water at good ol' ambassador west.

Thoughs for the day:

No one is ever suprised or sad when Eastern loses. I wonder what it's like to go to a school that has a good football team?

I listened to a bit of a cd that my mom just bought, and I think I'm now afraid to get old.

A free trip to Florida in the middle of the winter would be awsome.

I don't like it when people are amazed at what you can do even though you're a littler person. Yes, if I wanted to, I could march with a sousaphone. Now get over it.

Sky Captian and the World of Tomorrow is a great movie! The story line was pretty good, and it's just amazing to watch knowing that they filmed everything in front of a green screen. It's really quite amazing!!

What I learned in school today...

When cops take down someone that they just caught robbing a local store, they will pull their guns and go running and yelling through campus. They will also drive their cars, sirens blazing, on the campus.

Yeah, so I walked out of Pray-Harold (main classroom building on campus) today to find the cops running toward the music building with their guns drawn. I decided to take an alternate route to the music building. It was a little frightening. Just one more thing to prove to me that yes, I might just go to school in the ghetto.

Well, I guess it made for an intereting part of my day, and I now know that the cops around here are pretty efficient at running down suspects.

I have a cold and I don't like it at all.

Oh, and sorry for the complete lack of substance in the blog lately. I just want to start feeling better!!!!

FDT, I love it!

Anyway, what a day. I've dropped or lost everything you can imagine today. (Well, everything but my horn) And, this cold is just attacking me! But I'm going to be positive, when I wake up it will be all better. Yeah, that's it, the cold will be gone when I wake up.

Oh, and yeah for the start of law and order!

Yahoo for trying to get better at pool, and having a great teacher I might add. I still suck, but at least it has been made a little more fun for me.

Weird weekend. Good, but weird. I guess some people were really never meant to be friends. For the first time in my life, I get the distinct feeling I should stop trying to be nice to someone. Weird.

Yahoo!! I decided that I was going to try and run 2 miles every or every other day. In the past week I think I've run like 10 miles in the last week! At some point I want to find a short run/walk thing to go do. You know like a 3K or something. Nothing too long, but I'd like to say that I did it. I'm still the slowest runner in the world, but it's working for me.

Well, I haven't dyed my hair since high school, and I was getting bored with my hair, so I decided to give it a shot. It's just hair right? Well, it turned out ok. I thought I picked a color pretty close to my hair color, it really looked like it on the box. It turned out quite a bit more red than the box. I figure it will tone down in the next few days. I have to admit though, it is kinda a fun color!

Also, advertising execs. are getting much better at making you want the product that they are selling. Maybe it's hypnosis...

If you get to cut my program, does that mean I don't have to do your homework anymore?

So, I went to my first SOFD (Social Foundations) class the other day. (For those of you that don't know, this is another class we have to take for the college of ed. that doesn't entirely fit with my subject.) Like every other class, we were given a reading assignment. Ok, no big deal.

So I begin reading. And everything in the paper sounds great. That is, until I got to the part of the paper where, in order to reach the principal's great idea of no more than 15 kids for each teach, they got rid of all "non-essential" type teachers and programs. This included sports, phys. ed. and music.

Oh, but don't worry, they have an english teacher that teaches some music to all of the kids. And at this school in East Harlem band is an after school program.

What?? That's great, make music an afterschool program in a place where the kids cannot necessarly afford instruments!

The school's curriculm had been reduced to Humanities in the mornings, Science and Math in the afternoon. So, if the kid wanted to be something like, an architect, the school would find a way to get them something like an internship. How do they handle a kid wanting to go to college and play the cello? You can't just send them out for that, let them see if they have interest in it and have the pursue it further in college! They have to audition for that!

Also, it actually saves the school money to have some kind of musical group. It can be choir, which requires only music and a teacher. That teacher can have 90 kids at one time! Get a band program in there and the same thing happens.

The principal who designed the school was striving for a school in which everyone felt safe. Safe from the outside and safe to share ideas. A school where the kids all knew each other, knew one teacher very well, and where that one teacher knew the children's parents. A place where the kids learned to work together on solving problems. All of this is already a part of any music program.

Ok, so now we've gotten past my disertation on why music is good in schools, on to what disturbed me the most...

This teacher, by giving us this article to read, just made it ok for 5 classes of new educators to get rid of a music program when they need a little more money in their school! Who knows how many of these people might go on to become administrators of a school some day.

So, I very, very politely bring some of this up to my professor. Instead of badgering him with all of this, I simply inquired as to how the principal delt with kids that were interested in music. He didn't really know, but then let me know I should realize that when the budget gets tight, music teachers are one of the first to get fired, so I should get used to this reality of my chosen profession.

Like I didn't know that. It may be the way things are, but that does not make it right. Isn't that what he just got done trying to impress upon us., just cause schools have always been run the way they are doesn't mean it's the right way. But apparantly that rule only goes so far...

You may also want to look here...Batman Villains

Adam and I just came up with a brilliant idea, and some of you will be needing to go here and do some research...The 1966 Batman TV Villains

What the...

Maybe there are somethings in life that I'm never supposed to understand.

School started again Wednesday. My last year. Yikes!!

It seems like everyone has run away from campus for the holiday weekend. It's so lonely here!!