Well, I changed my strings today and suddenly life had color. I think I might have been WAY overdue for an A and D string. Its nice, because a lot of things sort of fell into place today. Tomorrow morning I"m leaving for Lenox for another lesson with Sato. I'm going to leave a lot of time to fight the potential holiday traffic. After the lesson I'll stop in Ware and visit Aunt J. 5 days and counting until the audition! All the excerpts seem to be settling except for brahms piano concerto and the blasted La Mer (but only because I hate to practice La Mer).

Ok, off to bed.

Well, its been a while since I last posted. My summer has been pretty uneventful but strangely busy! I am preparing for the Springfield symphony audition (which is now next week! YIKES) and although I've been prepping most of the summer, I feel strangely unprepared still. I am such a mental case.

Last week my Uncle Jerry died unexpectedly. This was very sad as he was only 55, and going through some rather stressful and sad things, and there were many people that needed closure with him that did not get it. R and I played all the music for the Funeral Mass, and we were so happy to be able to do it, but the experience was sort of tiring and overwhelming. I had been planning on going to Lenox to see Sato and have a lesson on Monday or Tuesday and now its been pushed to this Saturday. Needless to say, not a lot of audition prep was done when we were driving back and forth to Boston. Our rehearsal in the church was also a little hard, as the fire company decided it test the fire alarms while we were playing in the Balcony (next to the fire alarms).

Yesterday I drove to Portland, ME to play for the principle of Portland Symphony to get my name on the sub. list. The lesson went fine, except for the fact that I really didn't have a chance to warm up before I had to jump into Dvorak Concerto. Since I've had 2 surgeries on my hands, a warm up is necessary or else my arms just freeze up. Yeterday I believe I drove 8 hours in all and came home exhausted. Today I was hoping to practice a lot but ended up just recovering from the here and there of the last few days.

Tomorrow is a practice day. No phone, no distractions. Saturday I am going to Lenox (maybe a stop at the coffee shop??) and Sunday I'm going to play in 3 Masses with R to get myself playing in front of people. MOnday is practice, tuesday morning is Ken and Wednesday is the audition. After that I'm going to take a few days off, go to the Lake with R and Lucy and maybe drive up to Vermont with Aunt J. Beyond that I want to sleep and get myself back to gether for (hopefully) my new job (tehe) and the next round of auditions.

Lastly, Health care. Ours is so expensive BUT It seems in Mass we can buy it due to the law here. Hm..I"m looking into it!