Brightening Your Day

A friend of mine was having a bad day and I found this online. I don't share photos unless I actually laugh out loud and I love this one:

 

The Huffington Post shared these uplifting quotes today, these were a few of my favorites: 

Life Lately: Traveling & Music

Our current show at the college is Becky's New Car by Teven Deitz. This is our set and I love it! The actors are doing  a great job and every show I try and take a picture of the set. It's built by faculty and students and a lot of muscle work and brains goes into it!

Life has been super busy lately. Well, for those who know me, it's always busy, always packed, and I'm always doing something. This time though, I went to Seattle and days were packed with different things in order to see people I don't get to see enough. There's never enough time to do everything though. I mainly went home because my grandma turned 90 and I was invited to perform a recital at my alma matter. It was great being back in the PNW and the day I arrived was beautiful! Even better, I spent it with a great friend and her son at a park by the ocean.

Thursday

Redondo Beach

The night I flew in I got to have dinner with my mom and grandma. We went to our favorite Mexican restaurant. I love fajitas and decided to try the vegetarian ones. This is how much food I got!!! Holy bananas, people! Two FULL plates, ridiculous though actually a good deal. I got FOUR full meals out of it. 

An obscene amount of food

Driving home we had a great view of The Mountain, not that this picture does it justice.

Mount Rainier, April 2013

Friday

I spent with family. I got to see my best friend and niece and she is so cute!! Since I don't like to post photos of people without their permission on my blog, you'll have to enjoy these photos of mini-golf that night with friends. I even got two hole in ones!!

Saturday

My family went to Vashon Island to celebrate my grandma's 90th birthday. We had a delicious lunch, I love me some clam chowder!!! And I had a salad on the side.

My grandma was surprised with this little birthday cake and it was so cute, the surprise on her face. It was sad though when she started crying, wishing my grandpa was still there to celebrate with us.

 

Sunday

I drove over the pass to CWU where I taught a flute/ piccolo masterclass and performed a solo recital. It was so much fun and I'm grateful for everyone's support. I took a ton of photos with friends/ family and they're all uploaded on my Facebook page. 

Photo By: Chrissie Chang

Monday

I drove back to Seattle and got stuck in this weather for almost the entire drive:

 

Yes, that's snow, and a lot of it. That's the mountains for you.

Monday night I flew back to LA. My mom, being awesome, gave me some Greek meatballs to go, heck yeah! They were so yummy. Impressively, I didn't them all before I got on the plane. ;)

I wouldn't say that I fly a lot, but I do fly frequently. I flew with Jet Blue again and loved the experience. Having dealt with so many airlines, it's nice to have the little sensitivities, like blue chips instead of peanuts, or nothing.

Overall, it was a wonderful trip home and I'm so glad that I was able to see everyone that I did. I have some truly amazing friends and it's always good being back in familiar stomping grounds. I went back to work Tuesday morning and it's been busy ever since! More recitals to play, more teaching, and always: MUSIC!!

Upcoming Flute Recital

I am so excited to go home next Thursday!! I will be able to celebrate my Yiayia's 90th Birthday with family and get to see as many friends/ family as I can pack in a short trip. There's never enough time to do everything, see everyone that I want.

I am excited to see my niece too, it's always too far in between visits and she's growing up so fast! On Sunday, I will drive to Ellensburg where I have been invited to teach a masterclass. That evening I will be performing a recital (CWU, Music Department, Recital Hall) at 6:00pm. I love planning programs, this time I will be playing works by Taffanel, Clarke, Debussy, and Taktakishvili.

I hope people come, I'm so excited to go back to my alma matter and share music with friends and family who've been supportive along the way.

Later This Week

Wednesday:

Turned out to be a great day though I have to share the early morning phone I call I received. While the caller was nice, it was the structure of her initial interaction (which had happened about 3 times previously) that annoyed me:

CALLER: Hi, this is Maria. *long pause* (me waiting for her to continue or....)
......really, that's all you're going to give me? Not only is Maria a little common but yeah, I know a crap load of them and a little more info would be very useful.

I texted my trainer this morning, and apparently, Maximus is a name for auto-correct. Well, I usually just type butt but was thinking... hmm, that may be a bit crass this early in the morning. Since maximus was autocorrected to be capitalized I see that I have two options:

1. I'm saying that I have an abnormally large butt of which I should defend, which I don't believe to be all that maximus, or
2. I believe my butt is better than other people's and therefore, when referred to, deserves capitalization.

I wish Mary Tyler Moore had never gotten plastic surgery.

I wish it were common courtesy that if you shared an office right next to someone, with no real barriers in between, they wouldn't be on speaker phone for 45 minute conversations. 

Found this great photo:

Thursday:

By 6:30am today, I was already in a grateful frame of mine by realizing how much I make myself laugh. If laughing at yourself and not taking things too seriously helps preserve life, then I'm all set :)

It was brought on by another awkward moments for which I seem to have daily. You know when you put your mascara on and a few seconds later you sneeze? It's freaking hilarious, because if you've done it once you know that you will now, one or both of my eyes, there will be little hash marks from the wet mascara. Maybe one day I'll do it on purpose and tell people I'm doing a feminine version of the black marks football players put on.

Today will be another day I enjoy a George Takei photo. Today:

Tuesday Randoms

Tuesday Randoms:

• I dropped my reusable Starbucks mug last night *sad!*
• Today I spilled iced tea all over everything in my bag. I don't mind that some stuff got wet but one of my books is pretty damaged :(
• Anyone else watch Storage Wars? I'm thinking that if you were a hoarder with expendable $$ it would be a great way to increase your stash of cr@p. It's fun to watch though just to see them gamble on what may or may not be in the boxes.  It's entertaining when you have an idea how much certain things may be worth (ex. musical instruments) and you hear them talking about how much it may be worth. Yeah, umm... no.

I am so excited to go home to Seattle in just 9 days!! I'm grateful I get to be with family to celebrate my Yiayia's 90th birthday. I am also teaching a masterclass at my alma matter and performing a recital. So excited to see my friends and family!

www.flutingmiller.com

Reflecting

I found this online and keep reading it as it's hard to not get mad at the world and the horrible things people can do:

The Good Outnumber You And We Always Will

By: Patton Oswalt

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patton-oswalt/patton-oswalt_b_3088337.html

Funny College Course Offerings

Can someone please explain to me how a college can offer ASL... online? And apparently jiu-jitsu? Freaking awesome!  (Video-based classes I'm assuming but funny nonetheless.)

This week was fill with..... those awkward moments when:

1. You see the spider, after you sit down to pee.
2. Showering, then using mouthwash,  then spitting it out only to have your hair come down resulting in spit all over and having to shower again :)
3. Showering and realizing in your domesticity you washed the towels and forgot to replace them, thus creating the fun Olympic event of the mad-dash to the linen closet. haha

On a completely different note, it breaks my heart sometimes, ok, a lot of times, when my tutoring students can't seem to get themselves together. It's hard for me to not want to walk them through each step of their homework but I have to realize that at the end of the day, they have to want to learn, they have to want to improve their educational situation. I can only do so much. I do my best to help teach them study skills, teach them how to plan out their evenings to get homework done. I have to remind myself that while I've always been self-motivated, I have to try and help them schedule their time.

I'm so excited, A. and I get to see Green Day in less than a week!