Life Update (It's a doozy)...

A few strange things happened this week.

Okay, a lot of strange things...  The strangest of them all, though, are as follows:

• I didn't blog for over a week. Shame on me.
• People still checked out my blog to see if I had written.  Go you!!!

However, those are minor things in comparison to the roller coaster that has been Raissa's life recently.  I'll do my best to sum them up below.

Last week brought a lot of hype with the much-anticipated and yet much-dreaded Holiday Festival.  I had (obviously) never been in the Holiday Festival, but had heard a lot of bad things about it from upperclassmen.  Thinking about it, I mean, what good could possibly come from 300-400 musicians in the same room, at the same time, putting on the same concert 4 times?

I thought that the JC Christmas Concert was a hassle and time-consuming, what with a dress rehearsal filmed by PBS crews and having to do your hair and makeup the same way two days in a row so that they could take cuts from the rehearsal and the live performance.  Ha!  Not even.

The HF involved one 3 1/2-hour rehearsal on Thursday night, which was awful.  Standing for almost the whole time, rehearsing instead of running pieces, people not paying attention, dealing with "Betelehemu..."  It was awful.  We performed on Friday night, which was pretty bad again, but it was nice to sing for a sold-out crowd of 2000.  We performed Saturday afternoon to yet another sold-out crowd.  (Guess who forgot to put their phone on silent and received a phone call during the concert.  If you guess me, you're right.)  They fed us, we drank a little, and had a Saturday evening concert, which was also sold out.  Then, we had a sold-out Sunday afternoon concert. In all, we performed to over 8,000 people. 

It really wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.  There was a great variety of music, what with an orchestra, brass band, percussion piece, monster choir, small choir, and a few soloists.  My riser buddies made life interesting, and there was never a dull moment on the risers.  Sure, it sucked to stand for an hour and a half without moving, but whatever.  That happens.  And we didn't even have to sing well half of the time because of the audience sing-alongs. The audience loves the show and come back year after year.  I love watching crazies in the audience.  It's highly entertaining.

What did suck about it, though, was how gosh darn much of my time it wasted.  I was in the monster choir, composed of like 200 students, so really, I was useless.  No one would have noticed if I wasn't there, and I wasn't really necessary.  Not that I'm saying I want to stand out, but it makes one feel unimportant in a choir of that size.  And I got absolutely no homework done.  At least it was the weekend before the week before finals week instead of the weekend before finals week.

In addition to HF, I had to attend orientation at BR, where I was hired as a shift leader at a new store that is opening in Superior.  This job, even though I haven't actually started yet, has been a run-around ever since the interview, and as soon as I find something better, I will snatch it up.  I had the interview in October and the owner-manager told me that I was a top candidate.  I expected to start working within a few weeks.  A few weeks went by, and I heard nothing, so I emailed and still heard nothing.  I did another job search.

I finally got an email saying they would like to hire me, but that the store where I would be working wasn't even built yet, and that we would be training soon.  Well, here it is, 2 months (almost) after my interview, and we finally started training last weekend.  Saturday morning, I had to be in Longmont (a 20-minute drive) by 8:30 am.  I got there to find that my co-workers are literally all high-schoolers (except one).  F. M. L.  I was talked to as if I was one of them: slow, stupid, and shy.  I'm not any of those things.  Well, slow sometimes.

We did the same thing on Sunday at 8:30 am.  I was told we would be working store hours during this week in the Longmont store, but when I asked her when and gave her my schedule, she said we wouldn't be working because of the weather.  When a schedule was finally made, I was scheduled to work during a time I specifically told her I couldn't work because of final exams starting THIS Saturday.  It's not been fun. 

Monday brought a surprise of its own.  I came home to a very upset roommate.  Her department had randomly decided that hall directors with roommates had to get rid of the roommates.  Presently, there is no rule against it, and they have known that I have been living here since August, but it only became a problem this week.  Why?  I don't know.  If the department had their way, I would be out on the street right now.  I apparently pose a security risk or something.

Surprisingly, I wasn't freaking out about it.  My dear friend Kenny recently broke up with his boyfriend and has been looking for a roommate, so I knew that I had that option.  Christina told me to wait until Thursday (today), so that they could make a definite decision.

I waited.  Today came, and they have decided to write a new policy for hall directors that requires that their roommates be either family members or domestic partners. Because I'm not Christina's domestic partner and because I have no desire to turn lesbian in order to stay in this apartment, I have to move out.  The department wants me out as soon as possible, but Christina said I could stay until after Christmas break.  I'll probably move out at the end of next week.

Kenny is staying in a condo in Broomfield, which is about 10 miles from Boulder.  It's not nearly as convenient for many reasons:

• I'll be commuting to Boulder daily (but we plan on carpooling).
• It's an unfurnished place, so I'll have to buy some furniture (unless anyone has anything they'd be willing to donate and deliver to CO for me).
• It's not nearly as convenient as living on campus because I'll have to get everything done during the day and won't be able to make random trips to the music building or library.
• My house was very centrally located for my friends, and a great meeting point.
• It was nice not to have to drive home after a night of too many teas.
  

However, I do think it will be awesome to live with Kenny.

• He's from SD, and we get along splendidly.  We already know where each other is every minute of every day, so this won't be weird at all.
• Rent will be about the same.
• I get to park right by my building instead of a 10-minute walk away.
• Broomfield is closer to work (if I keep my job at BR).

It's been pretty stressful, what with finals next week (starting Saturday) and random tests and recitations this week.  But there is never a dull moment in CO.  I hope to continue to update all of you more regularly this week, because there are some exciting things ahead!!!

Thanks for reading during my hiatus!