[01/08/08] It isn't an orchestra without sex.

I have the formal tonight, so I should be doing some things so I can get ready - we don't have afternoon classes. But my hair and makeup appointment isn't for another 2 hours and 45 minutes. So I basically need to have a shower and all that jazz, maybe paint my nails before then. Mum suggested that I sleep, because of the concert last night, but I don't want to sleep. I'll probably be at Heather's until about 1:30 in the morning, but whatever. I actually need to eat some lunch. We're having a three course sit down dinner tonight at the formal, so maybe it can wait.

So, the concert. We have an all day rehearsal at Robert Blackwood Hall, which is at Monash university. That's always a hoot. Well, sort of. Instead of having a massed singing item for the finale, we had it for the opening, and from what people have told me, it was fantastic. I asked my dad about it and he said "Didn't you see it?" and I didn't see it because I was in it. What was after that? I think it was the junior school choir. I didn't get a program. I wonder if someone in my family received one. That would be useful rather than trying to remember everything.

Mr Hall has been great for music in the junior school. All the students were enthusiastic and the preps were adorable. So junior choir, which is years 3 to 5 (I think, so much has changed) sang something, and then some song about a princess and a dragon. This was great, because there were adults dressed as a princess and a dragon running around on stage. (It is quite windy outside. That is completely irrelevant, but oh well.) Then the junior school choir and the mini singers, which is prep to year 2 did a Sound of Music medley. I swear, this was the best concert ever. The preps were so cute that I was actually almost in tears, and Mr Hall got us all joining in with singing Eidelweiss.

After that, Kimmy made the music captain's speech as she is music captain (no duh, I'm very good at stating the obvious), and I'm glad she kept in the bit (we went through it with her) where she called the senior choir old and wrinkled. Then there was the Donald Redding orchestra (junior school) who played the Muppets' Theme which was fun, but it should've been faster. Then I think was the Cripps choir (year 6-8, our school's weird) who were good. Actually, they sang Eleanor Rigby, which was a bit high, but it was awesome because Amadeus Strings played with them. Then Amadeus played some piece that I can't remember the name of, or never knew because I don't have the program.

The last two ensembles onstage for the first half were Melodic Minors who sang the Teddy Bear Picnic. <3 that song still. My mum thought that it was a bit much to have 13 and 14 year old girls singing that song, but psh. It's a good song, who cares how old you are? I love that cartoon they used to have on the ABC to that song. There was also another really awesome one for "we all know frogs go La de da de da". Oh yeah, and there was Wind Symphony, who have always been good, but for some reason weren't as good this year. Maybe it's because of the new conductor (who is great for Stage Band), who chose an uninteresting piece.

After interval it was all about the senior school. Stage band was first up, but I honestly have no idea how they went because I was backstage with Swing Choir and we couldn't hear them. Being on stage is really different to being in a small room (once again, I state the obvious quite well) because the sound travels more, so what we were singing didn't sound as good to me as it did in rehearsal. Either way, both You Can't Stop the Beat and Defying Gravity got good responses from the audience, so I think they liked it. Senior Choir ran smoothly (I think, once again, it's hard to tell when you're performing). Koristers sounded amazing, as always. All their songs were A Capella actually.

Then there was Menuhin Orchestra, sans Sarah, because she's been sick. We don't think she can come to the formal tonight either. That was when I said "It isn't an orchestra without Sarah", and Emma thought I said sex. Hence the title. Anyway, the orchestra played one of Rachmaninoff's piano concertos for the finale, with Kim being the piano (or the person who plays it). She is honestly amazing. I am in awe of her. You know how you buy one of those classical CDs and the piano just sounds flawless? She plays like that. And when you look at her play, she does all the arm stuff that concert pianists do.

It was a good night, and we had fun at the rehearsal too. Let's just say that I was pushed off a couch, Em was then pushed off the same couch and fell on top of me, Ariane was on a sugar high and we sang 500 miles very insanely. I must be off now. I might have some lunch and then think about starting to get ready.

[31/07/08] In which I ramble a bit about universities

Wow, I was just reading the part of the msn conversation last night that I missed because my mum was yelling at me, and it was seriously the best part >_> All because I asked if Byron was staying over. He did. Anyway, there was a town at Kat's house, Noosa at Lizy's house and I had Rocky over as well. I don't know why I'm saying any of this, as Kat is the only person who reads this blog and she was there, therefore she knows all of this.

Yesterday we got our VTAC guides on what subjects/scores we need for different university courses, and a little book that tells us the ENTER for what I think is every university course offered in the country. They should've done New Zealand too. Maybe they did, I didn't pay that much attention.

Anyway, there are some interesting things I found out. Because of the Melbourne Model, which is basically that if you want to do medicine, engineering or law you have to do an undergraduate degree first, like in the USA, a Bachelor of Arts at Monash has a predicted ENTER of 99.00 WTF? And Melbourne's has gone down to about an 85. Why are people so scared of change? If you really want to go to Melbourne (whose BA is ranked 7th in the WORLD) you go to Melbourne. Which is what I'm looking at at the moment - I'm interested in their courses and it's in the city. Also, Melbourne University is the oldest university in Australia and some of the buildings are beautiful. There's even this courtyard that I swear the WB ripped off for the Harry Potter movies (I know it's probably some English university, but I'd like it to be Melbourne).

I think VCAA needs to look at changing the way VCE works. I wonder if they're trying to fit so much information into our heads that they explode. Because Unit 3 is twice as long as Unit 4, but we still have the same number of SACs. So we pretty much have this term to do a shitload of study before exams, and half our weekend is going to be taken up by uni open days.

And that's all I'll say for today, as I have to get ready to go to the concert rehearsal which is at Monash uni. Huh. I think I may be back there on Sunday for an open day! I can't afford to, I have three SACs next week.

[29/07/08] I hate the last choir rehearsal before the concert

This time of the year (2 days before the concert) is generally when the head of music is so stressed that you'd rather not deal with her, but she's the choir conductor and there's choir rehearsal so you kind of have to. I hope she didn't find out that Kim hadn't written her music captain's opening speech thingy. Though that's because we were in a spare and we told her not to write it. We had Swing rehearsal at recess and Anna brought her 2 year old son in who is sooooooooooooooo cute. She also told us that for his second birthday party they hired a ball pit and were considering having a whole room with a ball pit. I think that this is an excellent idea. So far the rooms in my future house (the ones I'd like to have) are one with a ball pit and a library.

Oh I did an exam today. Well, not the listening. It was the Alliance Francaise written exam. I wonder if we're doing the oral. It'd be nice to know if we are. But is there time? We don't even have French for the rest of the week due to the rehearsal on Thursday and finishing early because of the formal on Friday. Why must everything be on at once? Because Monash uni's open day is on Sunday - they're currently my second preference university, and one of the top 8 in the country. Along with Melbourne, ANU and some others. Interesting. There's a site that lists Australia's Top universities and where they're ranked in the world. The thing is about ANU is that they're really good and it's much easier to get into their courses because they're in Canberra. I don't think I could go to uni in Canberra though. That would suck.

What else did I want to say? Omg, epic win happened today. Every second Wednesday afternoon we have this PD double period in which year 11 and 12s are talked at, and for the first time in the history of my school, we have been given the afternoon off. To study. We were all in shock.

Year 12: o_O O_o

This of course means that I finish early every day this week. Epic win!

And this is something that only Kat needs to read, as it is in regards to the strangely nerdy strangers. If there are people who owe a punishment should we just set one for them all to do? If so, what should it be?

Anyway, au revoir, I must go and do a maths test before tomorrow.

[28/07/08] Girl most likely to "blog about it"

I think that's what I'll put down as my 'Girl Most Likely To' tomorrow. The sheets are up in the study area. I think they were put up today. Some of my friends want me to put something else, which I won't put here. If my parents read my yearbook and saw that, I don't know how they would react. And also because blogging is fun. I still haven't finished writing my Central diary, and no one is surprised about that, which is strange. By day... whatever it was when we had the dance party in Priscilla (wow, that could be interpreted the wrong way). Though there were a couple of dance parties, so I don't know what that day was. Anyway, when we were having the dance party, Wendy asked if I was writing about it in my diary. Either way, I'd better finish it soon, because otherwise I'll forget what happened.

I am SO SICK of choir rehearsals. I think I worked out that I have something like 9 days out of 10 in rehearsal. I get a break on Wednesday unless Barnesy decides that we need to have another rehearsal. And then I'm at Monash University all day Thursday. My sister's got something that night, so she can't come to the concert, and my dad may still be in Canberra. His company's working on that nationwide broadband plan that the government is trying to set up. Not that he owns the company. I'm fairly sure he doesn't and that the people who started it are still working there.

The formal is on Friday and I'm still kind of 'meh' about it. I'm not looking forward to it, but whatever. I'm sure it will be a blast. Predrinks are at 6, and my hair and makeup is booked for 4:30, so that should be interesting. Also, I have no idea what's happening afterwards. Yay for disorganisation! Which reminds me that I must be doing my French homework now. You wouldn't think that I got home 2 hours ago.

[27/07/08] I swear I had a title for this post.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to "Leah blogs about nothing in particular!" Today's topic is flutes.

I was thinking about what to blog about yesterday, and I was just looking around the room in the music school, and there was a poster titled "The Selmer Pictorial History of Flutes". I am not even joking. I didn't realise that one could have a pictorial history of flutes. Though it was really just pictures of about 11 different flutes/recorders, and then something about each of them. I want a piccolo. That would be fun. Though piccolos are so deafening that maybe all I need is a whistle. I imagine that they would sound exactly the same.

That was in the 'brass room', where all the lessons for people playing brass instruments are supposedly held. Though when I learned French Horn (shut up), those lessons weren't held there. French Horn lessons actually made me depressed. I have never dreaded going to anything so much in my life. And that teacher was weirder than my year 9 art teacher. Because we had to skip class to go to music lessons, and the French Horn teacher was only there on Mondays, I almost always missed out on French. Then I tried to stop going to music lessons, which was okay, because . Then my mum worked out that it was clearly making me miserable, as I spent most of the week in tears because of it, so I got to stop.

What other interesting things have happened there? I'm talking as if Room 10 in the music school is this interesting place. It's not, so far as I know. I do know that Mr Musk left, which was unfortunate, due to the giant crushes that Em and Priya had on him in year 9. I think that he moved to the same school that Priya did. Oh well, there was a blog post that clearly was about nothing! And I moved on from flutes. Mainly because I don't know anything about flutes

[26/07/08] SUGAR HIGH!!!!!!!

Hell, I've already blogged today for Jane on Nerdy Strangers. But because I am a blog addict and on such a massive sugar high, this needs to be documented. WOOP WOOP WOOP. Jane will be thinking "God this chick is fucking crazy, she should be locked up". Or that's what any sane person should think about me right now. I'm in a strange mook* I have never been drunk, and in my current state, I worry about what I would be like drunk. As we all should. You should see my wide eyes. And now it's time for dinnerz. Pizza-izza-izza!!! That's what I do to words when I'm excited. Must be off! *whooshes*

***

I don't know if I still have a sugar high, though I will admit that I had quite a lot of fun when I was. I was literally running between my room and the kitchen/living room. If you look at the twitters I made... wow. I can only say that I have not had one of those moments for a while. Though the last day of Central before breakfast was a bit like that. Randomly doing the nerdfighter sign when no one knows what it means is fun, though I wish I knew some nerdfighters IRL.

You know something about Hairspray? I can never get sick of it. It's more the opposite. We spent the better part of two hours in rehearsal for choir today learning choreography to "You Can't Stop the Beat", so when I got home and was horrified at the state of the football, I put on Hairspray. I've only watched it four times, but I listen to the soundtrack a lot. When my familamilamily (I've decided that that's better than the word family. Some words just sound better when you repeat the middle part) came home from the football and I was quoting it and singing along they asked how many times I'd seen it. They should be worried about watching Rent with me though. I haven't seen that in ages.

Sometimes I wish I lived in musical land, so long as I don't drift over to Fleet Street to see Sweeney Todd. Also, the Chaser's segment "If Life Were a Musical" is one of their best, so I'm putting a clip here.


I hate it when you do that thing where you were going to write something but then you get distracted so you can't remember what you were planning to write. Oh yes. We realised that our choir song is about Doctor Who. I wonder if I can find a clip of it on YouTube. Actually, it was composed fairly recently, so I'll be surprised if I can find it. No, I can't. And it's a choral piece; not what you normally find on YouTube. Woop woop woop! I will be off now in my Tardiiiiiiiiis! *clicks fingers and the Tardis door opens*

*Enters Tardis, which disappears making Tardis sounds*

So maybe my sugar high hasn't worn off. All I know is that the earrings are sparklarklarkling.

[25/07/08] Thank goodness the internet is working

It’s really a bugger when you want to blog but you’re at school where blogger is blocked. I would twitter now, but I can’t log in. And my phone has no credit and the company that did the phone credit machine went ‘kaput’ as my mum said. But on the bright side, all my twitter followers are back. I just checked my page. I’m in the school library and there is a bunch of annoying year 11s using the other computers for psychology. Why am I blogging? Because I feel like it. (the real reason: I'm an addict).

***

I don’t like these school keyboards; the backspace button is too small. Or maybe it’s just because I’m used to my laptop. I need a new laptop. I came to the library because I thought there would be free computers, which there are. And then I talked to Justine. Am I the only student in the school who calls the librarians by their first names? (The year 11s are talking about their formal and CLC which isn’t for another month. Then again, we’re talking about the formal, but that’s not for another week. Though I guess we were the same last year. I’m still not looking forward to the formal.) Anyway, the librarians. Justine is Em’s aunt, but she still calls her by her teaching name. Justine and I were talking about the Premier’s Reading Challenge and censorship. Good stuff. (Alex just came in. If I knew her better, I would probably get along with her. The link is to her books. Yes, she’s an author, and I’m incredibly jealous.)

Geography was fun this morning. We’re doing all this work on population, and Katie made the comment about Kenya’s fertility rate in 1975, which was 7.9 children per woman. I told her that I was happy with my 6 children, and she actually believed that I had 6 children so that was hilarious. That girl has her moments. Like the Muhammad Ali thing. It’s always the Friday morning double that she’s like that.

Will I write more when I get home? Maybe, but now I have to get through four hours of choir rehearsals. Let’s hope that it’s fun…

There's only so much choir rehearsal that one can endure without going insane. Four hours straight is pushing it. Actually, even one hour is pushing it, as we went crazy. But I'm getting ahead of myself. At the start of lunch, as many Central people as possible were gathered together so that we could "push Priscilla", meaning "take a photo of us pretending to push Pearco's car with Priscilla's signs on it at lunch time and make sure that the teachers don't see us leave school, especially without our blazers". Freya actually went back to get her blazer, the good school captain that she is.

So then there was slightly less than four straight hours of choir rehearsal. Swing was fun, and there are some issues over the pronunciation of "can't" - we do it American for one song and English for another. Then in choir, Barnesy was having to reteach the choir Come and Sing, and the soloists (me included) went a bit crazy, and Ariane was being the "voice of reason". She told us that Barnesy would crack it at us, and she did, but we were having too much fun for that to be an issue. And then Mr Hall came in! He's a bit like Mr G from Summer Heights High, but much more awesome. He's nice and not selfish.

And then the middle and junior school choirs came in so that we could practise the opening. The junior girls are adorable, and when we were mucking around with our uniforms (meaning buttoning our blouses up completely - yes, we're rebels. Though no one does up their top button or the one on the collar, which I swear was designed for suffocation), they started copying us! When I say 'us', it sounds like I was involved in this. Unfortunately, I wasn't, merely an observer. Also, the junior girls get to wave flags in the song, and when we file off, we take the flags from them because they have to stay on stage and sing their Sound of Music medley (yes, I will be singing along). You think little kids are bad with flags? Try year twelves. And it's only the first week back.

This time next week I will be at the formal. I'm still not entirely looking forward to it, but as I'm going to be spending the next 7 days with people from school, I may get excited. It had better be warmer than this, because otherwise we will all freeze. It won't be warmer. Why do schools decide to hold formals in winter? Kat, you should have a good answer to this. I told people your marathon runner joke and they loved it.