A Day in the Life of Michele: Part II

I tried really hard to re-upload the pictures to this post... but not only am I incompetent when comes to blogging, I am also lazy. So, here is the condensed version. I eventually made it home that night and my roommates and I threw a dance party in our basement to celebrate Tina's birthday. Happy birthday Tina! (She's the one with the wild hair):

A Day in the Life of Michele: Part I

The story goes like this: about 20 min. before I was ready to go to school today, I was rummaging around in my backpack and in a distracting moment decided to step outside to check the weather. After confirming that it was indeed a nice day out, I turned to open the door and it was locked! After a few seconds of panicking, I looked down and realized that I just happened to have a purse on my shoulder, which contained the following things: two pens, 7 old receipts, a demo cd, some loose change, and my camera.

So, the only thing for me to do was to walk to school. I live about four miles away. Thankfully I had my shoes on! It was about one hour before my oboe lesson. As I was walking up Melrose Ave, I happened to come to a bus stop. There was a woman waiting there, so I decided to wait with her and see what happened. So, for the first time in the 3 years of living in Iowa City (I'm ashamed to admit this) I stepped foot on a bus.

It was fun! I think I'll do it again. The bus took a very round-about way to get to campus (as most busses do) and finally it dropped me of by the Main Library.

The people behind me were less happy about riding the bus than I was. They should try locking themselves out of their houses.

The library is still a long walk from the music building, so I took some other fun pictures along the way.

This swan was very beautiful, and seemed to feel threatened that I was taking its picture. I got as many shots as I could before I got scarred that he was going to come after me. This is the most inetersting one.

That's the beautiful Iowa River behind me. It's not so beautiful when you get close up, but from the bridge it is tolerable.

This tree was infront of the Museum of Art. Its leaves were entirely green except for this one patch of bright red.


This is delightful use of a little hole in a sidewalk.

This is my locker in one of the hallways of the music building. I would post more pictures of the building, but they all pretty much look like this. Add to this picture the heavy scent of coffee and perhaps you can imagine the place where I spend most of my waking hours.

Luckily, I made it to school with about 10 minutes to warm up for my lesson. This is what the practice rooms look like. Picture me playing the bassoon or oboe in a room similar to this three hours every day. Depressing, isn't it?

I showed up to my lesson a few minutes late, only to find Dr. Huckleberry and Mark goofing of, as usual.

Halfway into my lesson, this happened:

Mark spent about 10 minutes talking to some guy who was more important than me (but I didn't mind, because I didn't feel like playing the oboe today anyway).

Mark has a huge collection of postcards. There is a whole other wall not in this pic. He even has one of the Salt Lake temple.

Right after my lesson is reed making class. Hello, oboists:

The reed room is another place where I spend many hours widdling away, trying to make the perfect reed (I still haven't made it yet).

Hello, bassoonists! (Professor Coelho likes having his picture taken--can you tell?)

Football season is here

Yesterday my roommate and I decided to ride our bikes to the stadium to witness the great exodus:

What you may not be able to see in these photos is that 90% of the people in these photos had beers in their hands.

And I thought BYU fans were overzealous...

Cowboys and Indians?

I found this shot of Uncle Ron in a file of old family photos. I like this picture because it captures the tension of that brief moment right after your older brother steals your chocolate-chip cookie and right before you shoot him. I hate it when that happens!

Year in Review

Hello World,

In case you are interested, here is my life in review since January.

The semester in started out with an amazing concert by the amazing (Iowa musician) William Elliott Whitmore, of whom I have been a very loyal fan of ever since.

SPRING BREAK!!! This year for spring break I packed up my car and drove down to Springfield, MO to visit my long-time pal Larzipan Foster. She was working on her master's degree in speech language pathology. Here we are looking very sisterly at her ward's "Missionary Blitz":

Trying to be artistic?

My recital was in May. Check out my totally awesome recital flyer. You wouldn't believe how many people came just because of this flyer.

This summer I said good-bye to the ol' Pontiac Bonneville (AND my Wyoming plates!) and HEL-LO to a new 2007 Toyota Corolla. Good-bye, Pontiac!



I only did one week of Arts Share camp this year. It was the most exhausting thing ever, but worth it. Just look at those faces...

In June I went to Kentucky to teach at the Foster Music Camp with Elizabeth Ann. I have now officially been to bluegrass country.

Here's a picture of the beautiful green jello salad that I made for our branch's multi-cultural food night. yum... I'm so domestic.



For my birthday our singles branch went on an overnight trip to Missouri to go on a mini Church history tour. They made two cakes for me! This one was yummy carrot.




This is Josh at our picnic at Far West

What these pictures don't tell you is that it rained cats and dogs the night before and I ended up (somehow--I don't understand it) with no sleeping bag in a very leaky tent. It was so wet, in fact, that many of did not go to sleep at all (including moi)! But you can't tell from those smiles, can you?




And here's another one of my *festive* culinary creations...


After three long years, we finally moved out of the duplex. Tina and I decided to go out with a bang (a.k.a. double giant slip n' slide)

You think that looks like fun? Wait till you get a load of this:

Oh wait... it gets better... (yeah, I know--the friends I have.)

After that I went home for three weeks to teach at the Young Musicians camp and hang out with my family. Here are a couple of my fav's from Uncle Brent's reunion:

peas in a pod


















Jaron and I took each others' portraits.










And my favorite part of every family reunion...

Jam session!!


"So many years of wisdom in her face" were Aunt Clea's words when she saw this picture of Grandma. I hope this ends up in a frame somewhere.

A Coat

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

William Butler Yeats

The Angel

I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!

And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.

So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten thousand shields and spears.

Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.

--William Blake, Songs of Experience