When will they learn?

Freshman Music Majoring 101: All songs are pieces. Not all pieces are "songs." I schooled my students on this very basic yet important concept at the beginning of the year, but it seems Kevin needed a gentle reminder. Though, as you know, I am exceedingly hesitant about interacting with students on Facebook, I thought this particular comment and its subsequent thread was justified.

Hoppy Easter!

 Greetings from the Easter BBunny!

Nomz. Brioche French toast with yogurt, strawberries and maple syrup with organic (no sadness!) chicken and apple sausages. Scott insisted last night that he did not like French Toast. So I made this for our Easter breakfast in order to show him that he was wrong. I was right. Thanks to my morning cup of coffee, this meal is no longer with us. I miss it already.

Toot toot.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging-hiatus for this moment of Ysabel tooting her own horn:


Student 1: "Ms. Sarte, do you know what you're going to be doing next semester?"

Ys: "That's a good question. It's all one big question mark."

Student 1: "Oh really?"

Ys: "Yes, I'm sure you've heard all about the education budget cuts that are happening everywhere. For the university, the first thing that will get cut is the adjunct budget, which..."

Student 2: "But you teach so many classes! What are they doing keeping you adjunct?"

Ys: "Yeah, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way."

Student 1: "But you're freakin' amazing!"

Ys: "Aw! Thank you..."


So, if I get laid off at the end of the year, at least I'll have the love and admiration of my students. I wonder if the landlord will accept rent payment in the form of positive course reviews? Blergh.

In other news: DO NOT make up for the fact that you are getting out of a rehearsal at 9pm by eating dinner from Chipotle at 10pm. Because you will wake yourself up from sleep six separate times from tooting.

Question.also:Don't read any further.

Is it weird that my poop just now was orange?

An actual pleasant weekend: filled with productivity, socializing and a little Schmooblin-abuse on the side.

Hey, I've finally discovered the secret to having a Sunday that is an actual day of rest (except not really still) instead of a pre-Monday filled with test grading and lecture preparation: staying up until 3am on a Saturday night to do your work instead! Yay!

No, not really "yay" but we had an enjoyable Saturday nonetheless. Schmoobs invited several of his marching band/drum corps nerd friends over for food and adult beverages, so we spent our first seven conscious hours racing about town running errands and racing about our condo getting our place clean, fresh and presentable. Nothing says "you're getting old" than having your heart go pitter-patter when Schmooblebuns purchases a new steam mop and then getting to use said steam mop on your kitchen and dining room floors. Here's the running commentary as I was using it:

"All right. Let's check this baby out."
"Ooh! I think it's working!"
"Oooh! I see the steam!"
"Wow, look at how fast this thing works."
"Hey hon, this thing obliterated BB's petrified turd smear in a flash!" (not kidding)

And lest we start feeling TOO much like a couple of old senior citizens, in lieu of filling our empty dining room space with something sensical and functional like, say, a dining room table, we just purchased a giant $5 plastic bucket at Target and filled it with ice and booze as the centerpiece of our dining room instead.

I fixed a giant batch of my super awesome homemade guacamole (huge hit), some baked salmon (gigantor hit) and a mixed greens, apples, walnuts and goat cheese in balsamic vinaigrette salad (big hit except for one person). Hey, speaking of the salmon, apparently the girlfriend of one of Scott's friends, Lisa, loved it - and, as it turns out, that was her first time eating fish. Like, EVER. I'm not sure who was more surprised: Lisa, after realizing that fish actually was delicious; or me, for actually meeting a human being who had somehow gone through the first twenty-five years of life without ever eating seafood once. Anyway, good times were had by all and BB unsurprisingly whored herself out to every new human that walked into our home.

Like the burgeoning old people that we all are (and tired, overworked music educators), everyone went home before midnight. And then I proceeded to take out my notes and laptop and work on getting my lecture material for the week prepared for three hours. Yeesh.

Totally unrelated: Do you remember how I premensied for a million days last month? As to be expected, my body decided to pull a 180 this time around and I started noticably PMS-ing just this morning. As we were driving BB to her bi-monthly salon appointment, I informed (warned) Schmoobs that I was suddenly feeling exceedingly hormonal, but that it shouldn't last very long. "So, I'm probably going to be mean to you for the next ten minutes, okay?" And then I proceeded to forcefully use my hand to cover his mouth when he decided to start saying words when I didn't want him to speak. Hahaha. Sorry, Schmoolinbops. Then at lunchtime, I got my Monthly Confirmation That I Am Indeed Without Child and now I am fine again. *sigh* Woman bodies are so weird.

Four more weeks of classes before finals week and then the end of the semester! Woot!

Woot for summer!

And woot for arts education and adjunct budget cuts and possible unemployment!! (Blagh!)

Kill the Wabbit!

I'm posting this because 1) It's awesome and never gets old, and 2) I'm trying to figure out how to lift it out of the Interwebular ether so I can convert it to an MPG so I can then embed it into my Keynote presentation for class tomorrow, and I think I will be able to do so if I can paste the html code and then download it off of this site. Or something like that.

(Why is every single version of this cartoon on Youtube overdubbed in Spanish?!)

What's Opera Doc?
Tags: What's Opera Doc?

Wineadryl hangovers are no joke.

Last night, to celebrate the end of yet another illuminating week teaching the young fertile minds of the north Texas music education world, and also to celebrate the arrival of another blessed PAYDAY, I decided to forego our usual baked salmon dinner and splurged on a big Chilean Sea Bass fillet at the fish counter. Verdict: SO GOOD. I did a simple olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder rub, then baked in the oven at 450 degrees for 15 minutes and it came out like a dream. I also accompanied with a giant heap of roasted broccoli, but that's neither here nor there. Oh! And I also replicated this salad we got last week at a nice restaurant in town: mixed greens with a simple vinaigrette (I just did balsamic, honey, salt and pepper), topped with sliced green apple, roasted walnuts and goat cheese. Incredible.

Anyway, this was all to tell you that I treated myself to a glass of white wine with dinner, since it seemed to call for it. And then, about an hour after we finished eating, I decided that the allergies that I had been battling for the past two days was no longer something I wanted to deal with. Despite taking a slightly increased dosage of my usual regulating asthma/allergy medication, I still felt like I had rolled around in giant piles of pollen all day and was sneezing my brains out. So I took a Benadryl.

Fast forward to an hour later, and I was lying in bed only partially conscious, convinced that I was hearing didgeridoos coming from the kitchen. It was just the hum of our ceiling fan.