i love popsicles. especially ones made with real fruit, like raspberries.

i opened my last box of new reeds this morning. :-) They were all a little hard. :-(

oh! I know i said there were lots of lasts coming up, but here's a first:
I'm walking from Starbucks to class (i had some spare time this morning so I finished the homework at Starbucks). On Fullerton Avenue, one of the busiest roads on the North-ish Side of Chicago, walking toward me on the sidewalk at 8:15 am is: A goose. A mother goose (not joking). AND her 8 little goslings (that's the word for baby geese, right?)!!!!! They were waddling down the sidewalk! They were SO SO SO adorable. that is the first time in my life i have seen random wildlife, particularly with small wildlife following closely behind, walking on the sidewalk in a city. yay! :-)

I almost forgot:
I learned a new word yesterday. "Ganked". it apparently means stole. (as in "someone ganked all the keys"--this is an actual sentence that came from a coworker relating the story of all the keys to the school of music being stolen from the drawer of the front desk.)
And, I learned from reading my guestbook that anna thinks I talk a lot. hmm.

so. Tonight I played my last ever Wind Symphony concert. It was also the last time I ever have to play the Eb clarinet. yay! It was high, it was loud, it was fast, it was quiet, it was "emotionally distressing" (the piece was about the invasion of Prague in 1968), etc. It went well. And now it's over.
so. I'm in the pub, afterwards (my fave pub, GB). None of my usual Thursday night friends are there. I'm at the bar, I've just ordered a drink and I've been there all of, oh, three and a half minutes. Nolie (the bartender) comes over and says the guys across the bar have bought me a drink so he'll just get me another when I'm through. Excellent! I look over....there are three Yugoslavian (I found that part out later) men, about 50-65 years old, winking and making kissing noises at me across the bar. I smile, raise my glass, say thank you, and resume watching the wrap-up of the day's baseball games. The Mariners won today! As did the Cubs! excellent!
So...I got a free drink! Then...a guy comes over to talk to me. His name may or may not have been Rob. HE offers to buy me a drink too! oy! I had to turn him down, however. We had a chat...then Calum appeared and I watched him play pool for a while before going home at 1am, remembering that I have class at 8:30am. But it was a good evening! ;-)

This week coming up is full of "lasts". It will be my last week of undergraduate study, my last week of clarinet playing (in any serious manner, anyway), my last DePaul essays, etc. Just to warn you...I'll try not too be too nostalgic and whatnot.

btw: the trivia question was "during what season do the most births in the US occur?" and the answer was "summer"--go figure. What else do people have to do around the Christmas/New Year/Valentine holidays? Interestingly, only one person in my family has a summer birthday really--Mom is at the end of August. hmm.

My favourite people today are at Caribou Coffee on the corner of Clark and Arlington. I got the trivia question right and they gave me 10 cents off on a FABULOUS new drink called a "Vanilla Cooler with Andes Mint Mix". I love it! frozen, creamy, vanilla-y, minty goodness for a hot hot day. excellent!

today I'm concerned about this and desperately want to know if there's any way to do anything about it.

I'm thoroughly amused, however, by this.
as sparky would say: "huh."
Perhaps I'll go on a fast and send all my food to Zambia. Perhaps the Palestinians should send some cheese snacks. ??

woohoo! I got this to be working just the way I want...for now anyway. More cool stuff to come, clearly. I'm supposed to be at work right now. should really go there, I suppose. oy.

I guess you should know some stuff about me. I'm Teri...I'm from the West Coast of the US (Washington State...my parents live in the town where they grown Washington Apples. yep, apples. LOADS of them. nothing but apples and mexican food...) but I currently live in Chicago. I'll be moving to the Atlanta area at the end of the summer for school. I am VERY nearly done with a clarinet performance degree, and that's good! only a couple more weeks to go. yay! I have two parents, four grandparents, two great grandparents, some aunts, some uncles, two cousins, one brother, one cat (I share her with my family, really), and three fish (mom killed off two in the last two years!). They all live about 2000 miles or more from me. This is fine--we argue a lot less when we don't share space. That's enough for now, as I should be writing a paper, not the details of my life.

Huh. This is a new cool thing that I've started here! It is a fabulous new way for me to procrastinate. I really should be writing an essay right now about a "battle plan" for a career in music after graduation. Good thing I'm not planning a music career--that makes the essay easier to write! ha!
I don't quite know what I'll write here, but I'll prolly just journal my life, post quotes and thoughts, random ideas, and other stuff from my brain. Maybe the weather--if it ever changes from cold or hot. There's nothing in between.
So this is my new toy. I hope it amuses you, as well as me. :-)