special edition

I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of posting two days in a row. But I just have to!! This website requires a whole post all to itself!

Enjoy the Tuesday afternoon hilarity! Take the tour. And I suggest you don't eat while reading.

love Meagan

is it really over

"Little Shop of Horrors" is officially finally over. It must be. We had our cast party last night. Now the show has to end, right? I loved doing this show. It was definitely the best band and the most...drama-free...cast. I know that sounds funny to call a group of actors drama-free. But if you work in theatre you know what I mean. There were a few oddballs but no one totally whacko or wanker. No wankers. That was nice. And the BAND ROCKED! Even when the sound system was acting possessed and the singers couldn't be heard during some songs the band was entertaining enough on its own (don't EVER tell the actors I said that!)! Anyway. Good music. Not difficult music, it's just that we had seven skilled and relaxed musicians that honestly love to play.

The party was good. Pretty mellow with much singing and not much wine. Unusual. With some parties much wine comes and then much singing! We did all the gay-love songs from "Rent." Lots of "Into the Woods" and "Godspell" songs and a couple songs shamelessly promoting our upcoming "Les Miserables"! Tanya sings On My Own so amazingly. Sadly, none of the guitarists pulled out my guitars. :-( Poor guitars. They only get played when we have parties. So I know they'll get tuned at least every few months or so.

My student Aaron was our keyboard player for this extra week of Little Shop. He did an awesome job. I knew he'd be good, but I wasn't sure how free he'd feel to just really jump in and fit with the band. But he jammed with them way better than I do. It was fun, while slightly awkward at times since he is in high school and I am his teacher, having him around. He even came to the party and stayed for four hours and played for a lot of the songs. It was nice not being the only accompanist at the party. I think he has a very different view of his teacher now. I haven't quite decided yet if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Katie gave us a little book for people to write or draw in whenever we have parties. Everytime she comes to visit she reads it to see what she's missed out on. So sorry, Katie, we forgot to have people write in the book again! And this would have been a perfect setting to have it just circulating around the house.

Bush is talking about mass graves on TV right now. :-( It is not fitting with the light-hearted nature of my blog. Perhaps I will talk about more serious things next week.

love meagan

fight

I just had a fight with Mike. A disagreement, let's say. No. It was a fight. Voices were raised. A door was slammed. Lightly slammed, nothing rattled. Just shut harder than necessary. Does that still count as a slam?

I don't like it when we disagree strongly enough to get mad. It happens so rarely. Usually one of us is just like "okay, whatever, it doesn't really matter." Because usually when we disagree, that's the way it is--it doesn't really matter. The things that are really important we generally connect well on. And this thing didn't really matter either. Well, I guess it sort of came down to money. Which is, statistically, the number one issue couples fight over. Which is stupid.

It started out just talking about Connect the Dots and the struggles the company has in the community with discrimination and then ended up being not just a friendly discussion about the homophobic Grants Pass but morphed into being about them not paying me fully. I guess that bugs him more than I thought. I hadn't realized. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I love my husband lots. More than music and Madeline and Poco and strawberries and chocolate and martinis and Debussy and lipstick and Sondheim and Diet Coke and anything else that is a favorite thing of mine.

love Meagan

remember me

Hi. Remember me? It's been a while. I sort of forgot I had a blog. Sorry blog. Sorry faithful blog-readers. If you exist.

I played piano for three hours yesterday. Awwwwwww. So nice and inspiring. Even if all I was playing was Joplin. Connect the Dots is doing this big fancy schmancy wild west fundraiser dinner thing so I was practicing for that. I hope it will be good. The fundraiser, I mean, not my playing. I know that will be good. :-) Connect the Dots needs some funds raised.

Well I don't have anything exciting, deep, meaningful, or funny to write. The end. For now.

love Meagan

clean face

So I had a bit of a quandry amongst myself this evening. I was invited to this Arbonne Essentials Skin Care Party type thing (think Mary Kay, Tupperware, Avon, etc. that sort of thing, but Arbonne is all natural botanical stuff.). The reason I was perplexed was because the host of this party is one of my most favorite people and the sales person/consultant is one of my least favorite people.

infidelity

I went on a date tonight...with someone other than my husband!!!

It's not as exciting as it sounds. Well, I mean, not as...scandalous...as it sounds. I'm just trying to fool you into thinking I do scandalous things. :-)

It was a date with my ten-year-old piano student, Maddie. I play this little game with some of my students in which they have to reach a certain amount of points--32 to be exact--and when they get to 32 we go out to dinner and to a concert or show or something, no matter how remote, music related. Usually the way they get points is by answering a trivia question I give them to research for one week. Not always trivia, but music history, theory, all sorts of things. It was really fun. The final question for Maddie, as she neared the 32-point goal was "Why exactly is the goal 32 points? Isn't that a weird number? There is a musical reason why I chose 32." Other questions were ones they have to look up if they don't know, but could easily find (they all have a list of fun music websites) like "What is Alberti Bass" or "What was the relationship between Beethoven and Czerny" or "How does the standard blues scale pattern differ from a major scale pattern?" And some of them were bigger projects like one student created a music resume, another memorized finger four for all scales. Stuff like that. Pretty varied. At first I tried looking online for music trivia-type stuff but didn't find anything very useful so I had to get creative all on my own! I think I did okay. I think I'm pleased with myself with this little experiment.

So tonight Maddie and I went to Hometown Buffet (100% her choice!)then to the jazz ensemble concert at SOU. As always, it was a fantastic concert and it was so fun to be there with her. She's a very cool kid. Very interested in all aspects of music. AND we both in for free, which makes me happy too. Yes, I want to support the music department, and scholarships, and blah, blah, blah but, whatever. There are philanthropists to do that. I'm too poor actually being a musician. I've been feeling more and more lately like I don't know anyone in the music department since I've graduated so when I went to the box office tonight I totally expected to have to buy our two tickets. The people working the box office I sort of know, not really, just by name and face (Nick and Kate) so I was so pleased, surprised, honored, and all those good things when I whined "Do I really have to pay?" and they gave me two comp tickets!! Yay!!! Thank you Nick and Kate!

All Poco does is sit in his water these days. I'm slightly concerned about him. He's going to get moldy.

love Meagan

for erin

Here are some lovely quotes for Erin to steal for her blog...if she wants... :-)

"It is possible to play piano without passion - but why?"

"In Bach's 48 I frequently see biological mechanisms and scenes, cells dividing and reproducing, fish swimming and eating one another. What he actually thought two hundred years ago while putting pen to paper neither interests nor concerns me; even if I did know it would probably hinder rather than help."

"Music is quite unlike spoken language in this capacity for metamorphosis of meaning. I wonder if this chameleon property is itself a criterion of goodness in music?"

neglection

Oh, my sadly neglected blog.

It's been over a week! Over a week since I've written anything. That's because Mike is in town. When he's home I don't get to spend any time at my computer without him around. It's not that he wouldn't want me to have this silly little blog or anything like that. And it's not that I'm crazy-distracted when he's home by all the crazy-love (hee hee). It's just that I know I'd be embarassed by it if he knew. So I don't write anything when he's around. And when he's home he's always around. That's not a bad thing. I like having him around. I love him. I think we have the perfect marriage. I know that sounds conceited. Oh well, that's the way it is. I was talking with Jacob about it yesterday; he was asking about Mike and I and how we get on, and I was explaining things to him I was realizing once again that, yep, our relationship is pretty damn healthy. Except that we really like hitting each other. Hitting. Slapping. Pinching. Biting. Whatever. If you know us, you know that that's not as bad as it sounds. It's all in fun.

I met Eric at Chadwick's tonight. Yay! My long-lost-friend Eric. There was a time when we were really close friends. Like practically the best of friends, I'd say. But I guess a lot of that friendship was just based on the amount of time we spent together. With jazz choir, musicals, piano, etc. there were several months there when we were working together practically every day so that's how we became close. When he moved away I really think the only reason we stayed friends was because of that duo-piano recital we were working on. Since that ended (exactly a year ago now) we haven't really had a reason to be friends. I don't like that. I like to be friends with someone just because it's worth sharing your life with that person. And he is worth that. But I guess we both have to make the effort. Tonight was a good time. Lots to talk about. Nothing real deep, but not shallow chatter and idle small talk either. Since he got divorced we are in such different places in life and I worry that will separate us even more than the physical difference of his moving to Chico. I hope not. It's not like I can only socialize with married people. Not at all. Mike and I have never had that kind of relationship.

warning!!!! subject change!!!!

Poco loves baby food! That's exciting because for the last two years of his life he hasn't eaten anything except pre-packaged "Turtle Food Pellets" and bananas. And one of the fun things about turtles is that they should be able to healthily eat anything that people eat. But he refuses to eat any fruits and vegetables besides those bananas. So I bought some organic baby foods at the Ashland Food Co-op on Sunday. And he loves it!!!

We had our meet-&-greet for The Fantasticks tonight. It went pretty well. It's a great cast that I'm really excited about. Also, I love working with Ed. It's such a relief from the time spent with Daniel in casting for Les Miserables. They are just two very different men. With Daniel, life is a struggle and art (theatre) is an escape from that struggle. With Ed, life is what you do and the art (theatre) is inspired by life. At least that's the way I feel about the two. It's very weird working with these two very different directors at once. Even weirder is the fact that Daniel is in the cast of The Fantasticks! Already he and Ed have butted heads over vision, blah, blah, blah. Oh boy. I just make music. That's all I like to do.

Madeline is the noisiest goldfish in the world.

Good night.

love Meagan