California Trip

I was fortunate enough to take a trip to California with Lisa a couple weeks ago. 4 days, 4 nights. I am fortunate that:

1) I had money
2) I had time

It is good that I had some money to pay for an airline ticket and other fun stuff while in California. It is good that I only work part time. It is easy for me to arrange my schedule so that I can go do fun stuff once and a while.

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The main purpose of the trip, for me, was to audition for the California Institute of the Arts. Lisa's main purpose was to see her best friend Katherine, who lives in Roseville, a suburb of Sacramento. Since my audition was in Berkley (about 1.5 hours from Sacramento), Lisa and I stayed with Katherine.

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Tuesday.

The trip began on Tuesday afternoon, when Lisa picked me up and we drove to Omaha to stay with Lisa's friend Gretchen. Before getting onto the interstate, Lisa and I bought some chocolate and some scratch tickets. I also ate a whole box of some Special K bars. In Omaha, we went to eat at The Michael's, a Mexican restaurant in the Old Market. Too bad they didn't give us free chips and sals.

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Wednesday.

Lisa and I had to get up at 5 am. We ate some granola bars. I had to clear off the ice from the window's, so Lisa suggested I use some de-icing spray. It didn't work that great. A half mile later I had to stop the car and get out to scrape the ice.

Good flights. In the Denver airport we got some kind of breakfast calzone. There was a Mexican place, too, where we decided to go on our way back. It was awesome to see the mountains as we flew over them. Clear skies pretty much the whole way.

Got to Sacramento. Katherine and her brother picked us up at the airport. Went back to their house. Did some stuff. I did about an hour of practicing while Katherine and Lisa went somewhere. Went to the grocery store with Lisa, Katherine, and her friend Esaw. He is from Honduras and had a cool accent. The grocery store was nice, probably the nicest one I had seen before. Had some cake for snack when we got back. Bummed around and talked for a while. Ate some nice pasta stuff for supper. Watched Ping Pong Playa in the evening.

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Thursday.

Got up. Did some stuff. I don't remember what.

Ended up going into Sacramento to watch the very depressing movie Revolutionary Road. Felt depressed afterward. Drove to the old market area of Sacramento. Walked around for a while deciding where to eat lunch. Ended up going to a place called Fat's. The waiter was out of control. Once he got mad at something, and walked by going "gosh!" Stuff like that. Went to a candy store. Pretty much everything was $3.75 for a half pound. Was planning just to get the free sample, but ended up buying $6 or so on candy. Ate a lot of taffy. Also went to a hat store, where they sold hats.

Went to the capitol building. Stood outside of Arnold Schartenegger's office, hoping that he would come out and we could give him a high five. There were a bunch of news people outside his door, so we thought that something big was going to happen. Unfortunately, Arnold uses a different door, so we didn't see him.

Outside the capitol there are orange trees. Homeless people, or vagrants (as Katherine's mom calls them), collect oranges and eat them, so we decided to do the same thing. I managed to swat one down from a tree. Some others came down, but they fell in the mud, and turned out to be nasty looking, with their cuts spilling out and all.

Found another tree around the side of the building. These we were able to get down. I had to jump and grab at them. We ended up chucking oranges into the tree to get others down.

There was some mud that was hard to see. It was dark. Black mud, it was, just like black ice. Lisa stepped right on it and fell into a sitting position. It was as if she was sitting down for a picnic, except that she fell in some mud. Her right leg was covered. She had to go back into the capitol to clean it off. I walked around outside a bit, hoping that I wouldn't be attacked by a vagrant. I picked a white magnolia for Lisa to make her feel better. It later fell apart.

Got back to Roseville. I don't know what we did later that night.

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Friday.

Woke up and ate some breakfast, probably an English muffin-egg-cheese thing. Then we went to this quarry somewhere and walked around for a while. Esaw and I turned into mountainmen and went down into the pits and clambered around on the rocks. I wanted to find a cave, but did not.

Then we went to a small town, the name of which I have forgotten. There were many little stores. I bought some rocks at one store, and these little pewter figurines of some gold mining people.

After we got back to Roseville, I went for an 8 mile run. Running through the neighborhoods was okay, but when I had to run along a busy road, the quality of the run took a nose dive. Half way through the run it started to mist a little bit. My hands got sort of cold, but it wasn't too bad. The tempterature was in the high 49s, so compared to Nebraska it felt like summer.

In the afteroon, Lisa and Katherine decided to go to the mall. I sensed that it would take them a long time, so I decided to not go and practice instead. But, I couldn't get in the mood to practice, so I just sat and talked to Katherine's parents for a while, then went upstairs and played some Call of Duty with Katherine's brother and his friend. I was sort of out of pracitce, so I didn't do too good.

When Lisa and Katherine finally got back, we went to In and Out, this sweet fast food place that looked like it was right from the 50s. There were only a couple items on the menu: hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, fries, drink, shake. That's the way it should be. Just a few choices. The prices were cheap, too. I got a cheeseburger and fries for just a little over 3 dollars. The place was packed, with mostly loud teenagers. When they left, it suddenly got quiet. Right before we left, I tried to climb a pillar that was outside the building, but couldn't get a grip.

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Saturday.

Audition Day!

Woke up early so we could go to the coast. I had never seen the Pacific. Stopped at a little beach called Muir Beach. Hearing the roar of the ocean is wonderful! Clambered on some rocks while Lisa and Katherine did some other stuff. I ended up climbing up a huge hill, grabbing onto roots and plants so I wouldn't fall and roll into the ocean. Rolling into the ocean would be bad.

Had to leave only about an hour after being at the beach. How sad it was to go! I wanted to stay, to make a tent out of some logs and stuff like that. Maybe live like a wildman. But no...I had to do an audition.

Lisa and Katherine ate Subway, but my stomach did not feel like eating real food. I had a granola bar, I think.

•••••

The Audition.

The audition was in Berkeley, at Maybeck Studio. When I got to the door of the venue, I could see in the window a person playing piano. Evidently he was auditioning. I slowly crept in and looked around for the check in. There were two people over to the right so I went and talked to them. It turned out to be no one from CalArts; it was a girl and her mother, the girl who was auditioning for voice. Evidently, it was rather poorly organized.

For my audition I played the Rossini, Stravinsky, and a piece by Miklos Rozsa (I had already played this piece, so I got it out couple weeks or so before the audition in order to make the requirement of 3 pieces). The audition was incredibly relaxed, and the woman who was listening to the audition treated it as an interview as well. Between pieces she asked me questions and such. All the pieces went great! I started off with the Stravinsky, and the sound of the clarinet was almost captivating as the wood walls, ceiling, and floor made for very impressive acoustics. I think I played it the best I had every played it...and I think the person from CalArts really liked it. When I looked after the piece, she was smiling broadly. The Rossini went well, too. My tonguing had been getting quicker, as I had been practicing the final section at 144 bpm. The Rozsa went pretty good, too, except I sort of messed up on the last measure. It was a quick run from low E to high E, and I somehow managed to overshoot it and end on an F. I blame it on sweaty fingers, but maybe the person from CalArts thought that the piece was supposed to end that way (she is, by the way, the instructor of improvisational techniques).

Last week I drove up to Minneapolis to audition for the Boston Conservatory. I played parts of the Weber Concerto 1 and an etude by Miluccio. During my warmup, I was nailing everything, but during the audition things didn't go as well as planned. Probably 85 or 90% though, so it wasn't all bad. I just didn't feel as good about it as the CalArts audition.

•••••

After the audition I was feeling pretty good and happy.

Then we went into San Francisco and did stuff. There is a lot to say, but I'm not going to say it. Some things we did:

Went to Pier 39
Went to Lombard Street
Went to China Town

Pier 39 had a lot of restaurants and stuff. There were sea lions, also. Lombard Street was really crooked and weird. Fun stuff, it is. China Town had a lot of Chinese people. We went into one grocery-type store and looked at all this weird dried up stuff that looked like skin. I guess people eat it, somehow.

There are a lot of hills. My legs got tired. Some people were running up and down the hill training for something. We passed by a "park" thing...which was basically an area that was all cement and had fences. There was a guy kicking a soccer ball at a wall. Depressing.

For some reason or another, SF was not as great as I expected. Maybe it was because I was hungry and my legs hurt.

I carried Lisa's and Katherine's purses for a while. People probably thought I was a native of SF.

•••••

Drove home. I wanted to go to In and Out again, but was too tired. Woke up and went to the airport and came back to NE.

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Dang, this California trip was awesome! It was incredible! I will need to go back sometime. Truly, yes.

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If there is anyting else you want to know about the trip, please ask me and I will elaborate. Thanks for reading! There will be many more adventures to come!

Confused, Glasses

I was confused today. Once, I thought that it was Monday. Later I thought it was Thursday. Then, I thought it was Sunday night.

All wrong. It is Saturday night.

Drugs?

Only if they put some in the Burt's Bees Wax I have been using.

•••••

I hate it in those old movies when there's some librarian chick who wears glasses, then this guy who wants to have sex with her will come up to her and look at her and take her glasses off, then say "you look better this way," and then for the rest of the movie she doesn't wear glasses.

At least you get to see her stumble around a bit, though. Not everything is lost.

Cold

It is cold here. -6 degrees. There is no wind. If there were wind it would be in the -20s, at least. What is this? Minnesota?

Rubic's Cube

Rubic's Cube takes up a lot of my time. That's why I haven't been posting lately.

I bought a 3x3 and now, having done it for a month, am ready for the next challenge: a 4x4. After that, a 5x5...eventually, it would be awesome to get up to the 7x7. This is it (it is actually a V-Cube, not a Rubic's Cube):