My kingdom for a date

I had to watch a boring video for one of my classes, so I figured I'd take a dating quiz I saw on another friend's blog to make the time go faster. Here are my results:

Your dating personality profile: Practical - You are a down-to-earth individual who is not impressed with material excess. You care about the stuff of like that really matters. Religious - Faith matters to you. It is the foundation that you build your life upon. You trust that God has a plan for you. Big-Hearted - You are a kind and caring person. Your warmth is inviting, and your heart is a wellspring of love.

Your Top Ten Traits 1. Practical 2. Religious 3. Big-Hearted 4. Intellectual 5. Liberal 6. Athletic 7. Adventurous 8. Outgoing 9. Traditional 10. Sensual

Your date match profile: Practical - You are drawn to people who are sensible and smart. Flashy, materialistic people turn you off. You appreciate the simpler side of living. Religious - You seek someone who is grounded in faith and who possesses religious values. You believe that a religious person can enhance your life. Shy - You are put off by people who are open books. You are drawn to someone who is a bit more mysterious. You want to draw him out of his shell and get to know what he is all about.

Your Top Ten Match Traits 1. Practical 2. Religious 3. Shy 4. Athletic 5. Big-Hearted 6. Intellectual 7. Conservative 8. Traditional 9. Funny 10. Adventurous

The two strangest things to come out of this are that "sensual" is in my top ten traits, and that "funny" is almost last on my top ten match traits. I suppose it's not very realistic to expect a truly representative profile from answers to multiple choice questions. If you know any practical, religious and/or shy available men (preferably bearded) let me know.

October stuff

I'm currently in Beaver, Utah on tour with the Utah Symphony. This is a very high profile tour, with visits to such big-name cities as Ephraim and Richfield in addition to Beaver. It's kind of a funny little trip, actually. Today we drove down to Richfield, played a one-hour school concert, drove to Beaver and checked into the hotel by 3:00 and had the rest of the day free. I took a sorely-needed nap (I still haven't recovered from my trip to Michigan), ate some food, watched the most recent episode of The Office (U.S. version), and now am going to practice for a while. Tomorrow will be much the same. Last week I was out of school because of fall break and this week is mostly taken up by this tour, so it feels like I'll have been out of school for two weeks. Life is tough.

Being on this tour makes me feel how I usually do when I play with the symphony: I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this. Not in an incredulous this-is-so-lame-I-can't-believe-someone-is-paying-me-for-this kind of way, but in a sense of true amazement that I get money for playing my viola. When I lived in Michigan I had a lot of orchestra work and got exposed to the professional (or semi-professional) scene. I was always amazed at how catty people got and how much they found to complain about. I was just glad and amazed to be getting any money at all for this, and to have people paying to come to the concerts. It was my first time playing in orchestras for money and even now, three years later, I haven't gotten over the novelty of it. It's nice work if you can get it.

As previously mentioned, I went to Michigan last week during my school fall break. It was perfect timing because I got to be there for the week leading up to the big shared birthday. Adam was born on my 20th birthday, October 19th 2001, and I enjoyed being with him on our special day (which was mostly his special day, and rightly so--it's way more exciting to turn 6 or 7 then 26 or 27) when I lived in Michigan. When it came time for me to move back to Utah in 2007, Adam was sad (as was I) but when we'd talk about me moving away he'd always end the conversation with, "But you'll always be here for our birthday, right Les?" How could I refuse?

Before my trip I bought a digital camera at Costco (my first) in anticipation of taking lots of cute/memorable/funny pictures. It turns out that I've been so used to not having a camera that I never remembered to take it anywhere (or even out of my suitcase). I ended up taking a few pictures on my phone, though, which actually has a pretty good camera. Here are a few:

I took this the first day I was there. Esther was still getting used to me, which may explain her apathetic expression.



She cheered up soon afterwards, though, and loved having me take pictures of her on my phone. Here she is doing the famous "Peace out, dude!"



She is a beautiul little girl.



We had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner one night. Eli made his into a work of art.



Since I took a picture of his I had a take a picture of everyone else's too.





We took a trip to Jenny's, a cider mill near Dexter with heavenly pumpkin donuts.



It was so great to hang out with my Michigan family for a week. It makes my little apartment in SLC seem all the quieter, for better or worse.

A new leaf

Maybe I'll start posting more, maybe not, but I figured I should at least inaugurate my new URL with something. I don't have time to write anything really profound or informative, though, so I'll just go with a few free-association things.

I took a small road trip to Reno last weekend to visit my wonderful friend Eileen. My car, which I had previously named Animal but now is seeming more like a Telly to me, performed admirably, getting an average of 35 MPG and faithfully piping my iPod tunes throughout the whole trip. The only downside is that Telly doesn't have cruise control, but I'm ok with that. Here's a picture of my favorite road sign in Nevada:



My second favorite was one for a town named "Shafter" but I didn't get a picture of it. My trip to Reno was full of delicious food, healing of back pain, beautiful scenery, and nice people. Thanks Eileen!

Earlier this month I attended the Salt Lake City Greek Festival, which was held at the cool Greek Orthodox cathedral on 300 W. 300 S.



I've looked forward to this since last year when I couldn't go because of a recent surgery. I had lots of delicious food (including my first good experience with dolmathes) and hung out with good friends. And saw a poor lamb roasting on a spit:





That's about it for now. Maybe sometime I'll tell you all the exciting tale of starting my DMA program, but you'll all just have to wait. And keeping with the spirit of my previous funny/weird title posts, here's a link to an article along those same lines. Many thanks to my good friends Heather and Royce for sending it to me.

Sayonara!

Last week I took the plunge and quit my horrifyingly tedious job which was sucking the very soul out of my being. It took me all of about 12 hours to go from my first thoughts of quitting to telling my boss I was leaving. Once I actually began seriously considering it, it was obviously the right choice. So, in honor of ending my near year at Backstage Library Works, here is the final installment of silly/funny/weird stuff I stumbled across in the card catalogue.

The titles:

• The rueful mating
• Utilization of surplus prunes
• How to be happy though pregnant
• Short addresses to persons who are without hope
• A nostalgia for camels
• Sportin' ladies: confessions of the bimbos
• Squirrel talk
• Almost everything you hear about snakes is untrue
• The romance of mining
• Reindeer husbandry
• The star-spangled beaver
• The unsuspected but dangerously tuberculous cow
• Terrestrial slugs
• Sinister tennis
• Urology illustrated

Organizations I wish I belonged to:

• New England Society for the Improvement of Domestic Poultry
• American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

Funniest mis-reading of a card:

• East Indies hand-written, which looked like "East Undies"

Weird plot summaries:

• A little old lady decides to help her detective son and sets out to find the clown who is missing from the circus.
• A small girl wants to be something important, but can't decide whether to be a jester, a knight, or a king.
• While trying to please his mother, a boy turns himself into a variety of animals.
• The Golem, a clay man made by the Rabbi, saves a small village synagogue from some evil creatures from outer space.
• An awkward elephant stops day-dreaming when he finds that all his time and interest is devoted to a flower garden.
• With the aid of his good buffalo, a Japanese boy works to replace the copper bell he lost in the river.
• Five mushmen, related to elves and such, push themselves up from Down There to see if they can survive Up Here, set up headquarters under an oak tree, and live their pioneer existence, avoiding That Cat and keeping dry so they won't melt.

Duties of a doctor of music

Dr. Richards, I presume?

For those of you unable to read between the lines of my last two blog posts (which encompass 6 months of my life and contain very little real information), I thought I would announce that I've decided to attend the University of Utah in the fall for a Doctor of Musical Arts program. This was a long and arduous decision for me to make (as anyone who had to listen to me blab about myself and my brain during that time would know) but I'm feeling better and better about it day by day.

If you look in my blog archive to November-ish 2006 you'll see that I decided to bag music as a career and be a librarian. This is hardly news to most of you. In the year since my graduation from the U of Michigan I've been working two jobs: one as a data-entry-type robot at a library company and the other at the Springville Public Library. These two jobs have helped me figure out what I want and what I definitely DON'T want. I've really enjoyed working at the Springville Library. That is one of the few things I will be sorry to leave when I go to SLC.

I've also had a few opportunities to sub with the Utah Symphony, which I've been very grateful for. It's helped with my perception of the music world in a couple of ways: 1.) It makes me feel more like it's possible that I could be competent in that world, and 2.) It takes a little bit of the feeling of impossibility away from the thought of being able to make it as a musician. It's also fun! And it pays well!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want it all. I don't think I'd be satisfied just being a librarian for the rest of my life nor would I feel content with just being a musician, or at least being a musician the way I had previously gone about it. So I'm looking for ways to mix it all together, and I think they are two areas that can be very complementary. My future professor(s) at the U seem to think so as well and are very supportive of my interest in both areas, which is a major reason why I chose to go ahead with the program. My plan as of now is the do the DMA and a Master of Library science program at the same time, meaning that when I'm done with school I will have two masters degrees and one doctoral degree. Slightly pathetic. But as the judge said in the film What's Up Doc?, being a doctor in music doesn't mean anything if you can't fix a HiFi.

President Hinckley, we love you