Luggage

Believe it or not, but I think that Saturday was finally the official end of the airport saga.  Of course not many of you know that it continued on that long...  If you didn't know, let me fill you in.

If you didn't already read about my day/night on Tuesday, this will be confusing to you.  In order to catch up, please read this.

I did  end up sleeping, from about 4:30 to 6:00, when I woke up by chance just in time to catch the first bus from the airport to Broomfield.  As soon as I got on the bus, I fell asleep and woke up by chance just in time to get off of the bus to hop on the other bus to my house.  

There was slush everywhere.  It was nasty and cold and gross.  The bus driver let me off just past the bus stop because there was a mountain of snow in front of the actual stop.  I stepped off into a puddle of slush.  In my ballet flats.  That are about as far from waterproof as shoes come.  It was cold and wet and gross.  And I had to walk 3 blocks in that.

By the time I got home, my jeans were wet to the knee, and my feet had hypothermia.  If that's possible.  And I was still so so so tired.  I plugged my phone into my car charger, went inside and emailed my parents to inform them what had happened, and fell into my bad.

A few hours later, I woke up and began the process of getting my luggage and $200 back from Frontier airlines.  I don't want to get into all of the gory details, but let's say this: I made probably 30 phone calls, talked to 5 different people, spent literally hours on hold, and left lots of messages and emails.  Nothing was more frustrating, though, than trying to get in touch with baggage services.

I called and called and called and called, and they would not answer their phone.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, sounds exactly like when I lost my keys and called RTD endlessly to no avail, right?  Apparently Coloradans, along with being flaky, don't answer their phones.  After trying ALL day Wednesday, and all morning Thursday, I gave up and decided to just go back to the airport to talk to the baggage people in person.

Kenny, being the smart guy that he is, suggested that we take the bus and drink on the way.  So we did.  Nothing over-the-top, mind you, but we did drink.  I was normal while I talked to the lady at baggage services, but it took a lot of fortitude not to freak out when she relayed what she knew: Despite the fact that I had canceled my flight long before then, and the fact that I wasn't even supposed to be on the flight, they sent my bag to Fargo at 11:00 Wednesday morning.  I understand that they were probably trying to save time and money by sending all bags to Fargo on one flight, but that is really not helpful to me, seeing as how I canceled my trip.  Then, after I had given her my information, she told me that they wouldn't be able to deliver my bag.  Why?  Because I was late arriving to the airport.  Never mind the fact that the bag never should have been sent or that I had called her office 30 times trying to tell them not to send it, or even just to talk to a person...

Whatever.  Finally, on Saturday morning, they called me to tell me that my bag had come back.  5 days after I was scheduled to fly.  So I took the bus to the airport one last time and got my life back. 

And I think that's the end.  I think.

Anderson

I know that it seems like a random name for a blog, but really it isn't.

I don't know who the Andersons are (were?), or what they do (did?), or what their connection to the music school is (was?), but they donated a lot of money to the College of Music.  There are a lot of Anderson scholarships given out every year.  A lot.  I don't know how many.  

Okay, I'm basically uninformed, in case you didn't notice.  But not completely.  Let me tell you what I do know.  

The non-voice departments give out their Anderson scholarships in some way that doesn't involve a competition (which I don't know).  The voice department, though, gives out their three $2,000 scholarships by means of a competition.  

Last Thursday, 15 or so of us competed in the preliminary round, which was judged by CU Voice faculty.  Seven of us, including me and Kenny, were selected to continue on to the Finals, which are tonight, judged by people from the outside.  And 3 of us will walk out with $2000 in scholarship money.

I'm pretty excited to have been chosen for the finals.  The only bad part of the whole deal is that it's formal.  Very formal.  For the participants, that is.  It left me a week to buy a dress, find jewelry, shoes, hairstylist, etc.  Yeah, I didn't go through all of that, actually.  

I feel like a bride.  You know: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue?  Well, I did buy a dress (thank goodness for credit cards and having multiple occasions to wear it), I'm wearing an oldish pair of shoes that I own, I borrowed some pretty spectacular earrings, and... well, I don't have anything blue.  And I'm doing my own hair.

In any case, I'm performing first, singing the same Schubert that I sang for my studio placement audition, as well as a piece by Amy Beach, which I sang for opera auditions.  Kenny's performing second.  

I'll let you know how it goes.  Wish us luck!

The Long Commute

For my seventh birthday, my parents bought me the Laura Ingalls Wilder book series.  I don't know what possessed them to do such a thing, but I could never put them down.  I can't even count how many times I read them when I was young.  I was so obsessed that I made my family go to their homestead museum in De Smet, SD during a family vacation.  They hated every minute.  I loved it.

After Thanksgiving, I was talking with my pianist, and she had said that she had read one, "The Long Winter," while she was home during Thanksgiving break.  I thought to myself, "What a fantastic idea," and decided to read the series while I was home for Christmas.  Between drinking, knitting, drinking, puzzles, drinking, and drinking, I didn't really have time to read a whole lot.  However, I brought the books that I didn't finish with me to CO so that I would have some entertaining reading for my life.

I just finished "The Long Winter."

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That story has absolutely nothing to do with this blog topic, other than that I stole the name of the book for my blog title.  Ha!  I make myself laugh sometimes...

Some know and some don't that I was kicked out of my apartment in Boulder at the end of December.  They didn't really have any good reason for kicking me out other than that they didn't want me there, but I left without a fight.  Luckily, at about the time I was getting kicked out, Kenny's ex-boyfriend was moving out of their condo in Broomfield.  Broomfield is a suburb of Denver, approximately 15 miles from Boulder.

Fifteen miles is not that far.  At least, not by ND standards, where cruising speed is 68 on a 65, and highways are void of things like traffic, potholes, car accidents, and stoplights.  Yes, stoplights.  I'm not kidding you when I say that highways here in CO have stoplights in the middle of nowhere.  There is nothing more annoying.

The road that I take to Boulder doesn't have stoplights, but it does have traffic.  Let me tell you: it has traffic.  Sometimes it takes me 45 minutes to go those 15 miles.  And that's on a clear day.  I haven't experienced snow/ice yet, but Kenny tells me it's even worse on those days.  Ew.  Now, I could take the bus, but I can't park for free at the park and ride because I have ND plates, and it takes even longer to get to Boulder by bus.

Because it now takes me more than 7 minutes to walk to class every morning, I have to get up that much earlier in order to get to class on time.  I have class at 8:00 am twice a week and at 9:00 am twice a week.  That equals getting up at 6:00 and 7:00 at the latest.  If you know me, you know that mornings and I are not friends.  Not even close to friends, so that is less than ideal. 

After fighting traffic to arrive in Boulder, I have to find parking.  Because I have class so early, it's generally not too difficult for me to find free, off-campus parking, but it's not too convenient, either.  It's just a hassle.

Let's not even talk about how stinky it is not to be able to go home in the middle of the day to take a shower, or a nap, or to eat dinner.  Most days, I bring lunch and supper with me. There hasn't been a day yet that I haven't spent more than 12 hours in Boulder.  But it's not worth coming home in the middle of the day, and especially not during rush hour traffic.

The current condo is cheaper than the old one per month, but we have to pay utilities and I have to pay for gas for commuting.  Blech. 

Now, there are positives to the new place.  My room is much bigger, I have a bathroom all to myself, there's a piano at home.  Oh, and of course, I have a fantastic roommate who entertains me daily.  Next year, we'll be living the high life in Boulder.

No, not that high life.

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!

A very Denver adventure

Last week, I learned that Jen had friends coming from Connecticut.  The plan was to head to Denver on Friday night to party it up downtown.  No one said anything to me about the plan changing, so all week I assumed it was the same...

Then, on Thursday, I asked Christina what the plan was for Friday night, and she said, "Oh, well, I'm going to stay at Jedd's and go to his parents' house on Saturday, and Jake and Holly backed out, so I don't know what Jen and her friends are doing."  Basically, they decided not to go to Denver, but forgot to inform me.

Kenny and I had been looking forward to going to Denver all week, so we decided to go without them.  We invited a bunch of our friends from CO and just hoped someone would come with us.  But even if no one else wanted to come, we were still going to go.  

The afternoon began with us heading to the largest video rental place in Boulder called "The Video Store."  We have to watch five operas for our Italian diction class, so we rented two, and decided to buy a bottle of wine to get a start on drinking before we headed to the city.  We found a liquor store (where someone asked us if we were "together"...haha), hoping to buy some Asian plum wine that Kenny likes, but they didn't have it.  We settled on a red blend and some vodka, and hit the road.  

Neither of us had really eaten lunch, and we still aren't used to the eleveation, so starting to drink at 5:00 while I was making supper probably wasn't a great idea, but the idea of wine and "Tosca" just seemed too fun not to drink. 

I decided to make a dish my mom used to make sometimes, but hasn't in a while.  I had some stovetop stuffing and chicken breasts, so I thought I would bake them together to make a delicious supper.  Then, after reading the recipe, I realized I didn't have any cream of chicken soup.  I was really worried about the stuffing getting too dry in the oven without the soup, so I used the best substitute I could think of that I had on hand: ramen noodles.  (I may not have been sober at this point.)  So I added a batch of chicken-flavored ramen to the the stuffing and chicken and popped it in the oven.

In the meantime, Kenny and I were still lining up people to come on the trip, trying to find what buses to take, how to get to the bars we wanted to go to, etc.  And kind of watching opera.

Before we knew it, the whole bottle of wine was gone, and we were definitely not sober.  It was like 6:30.  Very easily the earliest I've ever been that drunk.  The chicken/stuffing/ramen went well with instant garlic mashed potatoes (or so I thought).

Finally, after me taking a shower that I've been told was the longest shower in the history of the world, which to me felt like the fastest shower I've taken since I moved here, Richard, Kenny, and I headed to the bus stop. 

The bus ride to Denver took about an hour, during which time we may have been those people, talking loudly and joking around a lot.  When we finally arrived at Union Station, and it was cold.  I mean cold cold.  With flurries.  Soooo windy.  Kenny, our navigator, led us down the street.  After about a block, he was like, "I think we have to go the other way, because I'm not sure we can cross the tracks here."  Okay, turn around.  We finally crossed the tracks and backtracked about a block.

We had distinctive plans to go to Sing Sing, an infamous dueling piano bar, and we knew it was on 19th street, just not exactly where on 19th.  So we got to 19th, and turned right.  And walked 3 blocks before Kenny knew that we had gone too far.  Thank goodness I keep my GPS in my purse.  We soon became those people on the street in Denver, not knowing where they were or how to get to where they needed to go and using Mr. TomTom for directions. 

Mr. TomTom told us that we had to go 3 blocks in the direction that we had come from.  Yes, that's right, we basically walked right past it.  So we had to turn around (again) and walk INTO the wind to get to Sing Sing.  It was F-ing freezing.  But it was warm in Sing Sing!!

After paying the $7 cover, we chose a table directly underneath a fan blowing cold air.  Not helpful.  So we moved again.  And again, we were right under the fan.  So we moved again.  And commenced drinking long island teas.  Again.  haha... 

Let me tell you more about Sing Sing, the dueling piano bar.  Tons of fun. Two pianists take requests (and tips) to play whatever song.  Usually, they have raunchy versions of the songs that have the whole crowd cracking up.  They invite people onstage for their birthdays, anniversaries, etc, and sing to them, make them do crazy things, etc.  Very funny.  Occasionally, the waitstaff jumps on stage (and onto the pianos... ack!) and dances to a choreographed song.  Hilarious.  And they have buzz buckets, which are exactly what they sound like.  I didn't get a picture of one, unfortunately, but I did get a picture of the boys drinking from one:

Richard, Dennis, and Kenny with their buzz bucket straws

Eventually, as you can see, Dennis joined us, and we took Jello shots from giant syringes.  Shortly after, Liz and Will joined us, and we became those people in the bar, who were singing really loudly and were the only ones standing up and dancing.  Thank goodness we were kind of in the corner.  In true Raissa fashion, I took my stupid heels off in the bar because my feet hurt.

At some point, my phone died, so I have no clue what time it was when all six of us climbed into Dennis's little car to go to Pete's Kitchen, an all-night diner on Colfax that's pretty popular with the bar crowd, I guess, considering the police were just hanging out there.  We ate some 4th meal, and Dennis agreed to drive us back so that we wouldn't have to take the bus back. 

A pretty fun night, considering it was planned on such short notice.  We plan on doing it again.  When it's not freezing cold.

I woke up at 1:00 this afternoon to see an inch of snow on the ground here.  Lame.