Things that have made me laugh...

Here are some things that I have found quite hilarious the past couple of days that I believe are worth sharing.

1. In Biloxi at a Christmas tree place a sign that said, "Fresh Reefs and Garland." Coral reefs? Barrier reefs? REEFS!?

2. On my way back to Baton Rouge I got caught behind a car being towed. On the back windshield of the car this was written: "CAR IN TOWN"

3. Tonight was the holiday/end of the semester celebration for all of the residents in the Basic Sciences Residence College. The received gifts from the college of Basic Sciences that included a Darwin book, grapefruit and oranges, and YAMS. No worries though, they gave them instructions on how to microwave the yams so they could eat them in their residence halls.

I went to mass tonight...

and the church didn't burn down.

It was the first time that I've voluntarily been to mass in 3 years. I still don't agree with all the the Catholic Church is hollering and won't ever, but there's something comforting and really powerful about the mass to me. It's all that old school training, I suppose.

As George Michael so eloquently stated in 1987, "Cause, I gotta have faith."

Gettin' It.

1. Things you never want to overhear in a dressing room: "I had to fight to get this thing on, but it actually looks cute on." No, I never saw you in that garment, lady, but I have a feeling that you did not look cute in that outfit.
2. I bought leggings today...to go under a dress...I'm going to hell.
3. My bitterness for football season is back. I need the library on Saturdays. Go get drunk somewhere else tailgaters.
4. I just scheduled my last semester of grad school and therefore my last semester of schooling FOREVER or for a very long time. It feels good. I'm so done with school.

Dear real world,

I know you aren't friends with a lot of people, but I sure would love to be your friend. I'll buy you a drink(s).

Sincerely,

Jacqueline

Dear Cough,

Please stop beating up my vocal folds and preventing me from singing.

Thanks,

Me

P.S. Can you also tell Robitussin that they are NOT non-drowsy? I'm gonna tear their asses up for the false advertising on their box.

Reasons why today was bangin'

1. Laying in the grass on the parade grounds for almost 2 hours. Score. Give me fall weather, sun and some grass and open skies and I'm the happiest lady in the world pretty much.

2. Kick ass 2 hour practice session. I still feel like I'm swimming in new music though, but slowly but surely it's coming

3. Deciding to walk back to my place instead of hitching a ride tonight after practicing because of the awesome weather which led to...

4. The Michaud siblings almost running me over in a crosswalk on campus, which then led to Lauren realizing it was me and screaming...which led to me stopping in the middle of the crosswalk...which led to me almost getting hit by another car...which led to me almost getting hit by a bicycle..which led to Lauren jumping out of the Jeep...which led to an awesome Jeep right with Lauren and her brother. The combination of ridiculousness/randomness/Michaudness made me happy like whoa.

5. Discovering John Daker's friends on youtube. No seriously, I laughed my ass off. If you love John Daker go look up the sextet and his friend Pearl Gross on youtube NOW. And if you haven't ever watched John Daker, look up "My name is John Daker" on youtube NOW. You will not be disappointed. If you don't laugh, you are dead to me.

Ugh, and now it's almost Monday. Early morning Monday meetings should be banned. Work, test, presentation, rehearsal, more work. Can I graduate yet?

I don't know if it's the weather or what, but today I had a very strong urge to go to mass. I haven't been to mass voluntarily in, I don't know how long, 2, 3 years? I ended up not going because of practicing and studying and what not, but now I still really wish I would have gone. WEIRD. Is my come to Jesus moment going to happen?

I also can't decide if I should go to Millsaps Homecoming this weekend. Of course I want to, but I don't know how much it will stress me out if I do go. However, there's the Auburn game this weekend here and I have a ticket, but I think I might be over the craziness/fun of football games here. Decisions, decisions.

Maybe I'll start posting in this thing more regularly? Who knows.

Love Boat

Late night studying for midterms makes me really sad. Not because it's for a terrible Classical Music History survey class and I'm tired of learning about this stuff and ready to graduate, but because it makes me miss Millsaps like whoa.

Late night studying in Ashley's recliner, all nighters in the library, ranch fries with the PKC ladies back when Aladdin was actually 24 hours and sketch, the Atrium, sweet Jesus I miss living in the Atrium, and so much more. I know this post seems really lame, but I don't care. I'm tired and procrastinating so it's about to get lamer. I miss being somewhere where I know I'm cared about and loved. At Millsaps I always knew that even without my family and without a significant other I always had someone close by who legitimately cared about me and would do anything for me. I have some great friends here in Baton Rouge, but for some reason it's just not the same. As the ever eloquent Dean Katz said that faithful day at the Millsaps Night in Columbus, "Ole Miss might be the battleship of Mississippi, Mississippi State might be the tug boat of Mississippi, but Millsaps, Millsaps is the love boat of Mississippi."

I'll be blogging from here: JacquelineinAustria while away on my trip. Check it out!

Bebopping

Bebopping around the Gulf Coast has been exactly what I've been doing. Practicing/learning music, teaching voice lessons, and working 2 days a week at the South Mississippi AIDS Task Force. Oh, and of course loving my Netflix subscription.

So my aspirations of becoming an aerobics star ended. It's just too damn hot, y'all. However, if you need instruction on how to appropriately jog/walk around ones neighborhood just hit me up. I also haven't gone to the Beau in my sparkly red dress to find a man yet either, simply because I can't fit in my sparkly red dress anymore (and if anyone that is reading this can fit in something they wore when they were in high school then go eat a cheeseburger immediately). Besides, there's no time for all of these things anymore because I leave for London in 13 days! 2 nights in London, flying to Munich, busride to Salzburg than 5 weeks of schooling in Salzburg. I'm nervous as hell.

Biloxi

Ok, so I haven't updated in a while because I'm back at home in Biloxi and things just aren't interesting. I'm not about to bore you guys. Well, maybe just a little bit if you're bored enough to be reading this.

Ok, so this is a little ridiculous, but it totally made my day. While running/walking the OS/Biloxi bridge I saw dolphins! 2 of them. Ok, so maybe that seems not exciting to you people, but I live somewhere that I can see dolphins on a regular basis and I think that's pretty damn cool. So there.

I'm really enjoying just hanging out with the fam. I'm just giving voice lessons and working one day a week at the AIDS task force. My last summer of freedom and I'm loving every minute of it.

38 days until I leave for Europe! Play on, playas!

Half of a Master

Thanks for all of your replies. I guess I'll just try putting on my deodorant after I get dressed, but changing up my morning routine scares me a little.

I'm officially done with my first year of grad school. I'm halfway done with my Masters. Weird. I rocked out my jury, got cast in the fall production, got a sweet job as a GHD, and I finally think people know I go to school there. Basically the past month has made up for the terrible past 9 months.

So I don't leave for Austria until July 8th and I got a job with res life so I have to move out of my house at the end of this month and move back home for June. No one will hire me for a month so what should I do? Here are some of my ideas:

1. Use my netflix account until my brain turns to mush
2. Brush up my aerobics skills and train to be the next big aerobics instructor star (why isn't there a reality TV show for that?)
3. Find a sugar daddy at the Beau Rivage
4. Abuse and overuse my parents' 50 bottle wine cooler
5. Relish in the fact that this is the last month of my entire life that I can be completely bored and lazy. (a la summer 2006)

Yes, I think I will do all of these things. Please feel free to add any other suggestions.

DeodoRANT

I have a problem with deodorant. Without fail I always get it all over my shirt. Because I'm so used to it I usually don't even bother getting rid of the deodorant stains because I figure everyone else is used to seeing them everyday.

So I'm asking you, my faithful blog readers, what is the trick to putting on your shirt without getting deodorant stains on it?

"Singing is like a prolonged orgasm."

This is what my voice teacher told me Tuesday in studio class after I sang. That is not in my private voice lesson, but after I sang in front of our entire studio which consists of about 20 people.
She then proceeded to ask, "Does this analogy work for you?" I feel like my voice teacher is encouraging me to be sluttier? This would be great advice if every male in the school of music wasn't gay or questionably gay. So I'm now working on singing like I'm having a prolonged orgasm. I'll keep you guys updated on how that works out for me.


I really should stop drinking before recitals. What else is a girl supposed to do when she gets out of a 4 hour rehearsal and has merely one hour before she has to go to the millionth required voice recital she has to attend this semester and the school of music is conveniently located next to a street lined with bars? Having drunken conversation while trying to pretend to be sober with my voice teacher at a recital, however, is mildly embarrassing, but mostly highly entertaining.

Jank

According to Urban Dictionary the definition for the word jank is as follows: adj- broken; unnecessarily redundant, superfluous, or meaningless; stupid or ridiculously moronic; bootleg or of questionable quality.

This is also my facebook status currently because people in the school of music at LSU have no idea what this word is! GASP! It's been a regular part of my vocabulary for a long time now and I dismissed the first funny looks I got when saying it here, but at a party Saturday night after saying it in front of a group of people and all 4 of them asking what it meant I was in shock. They instead use words like, "totes," short for totally. I'm scared because I think it might be slipping into my vocabulary and I'm trying to resist with all my might.

So people who do not know or use the word jank I have this to say to you: That is JANK!

Candy wrappers.

Is there a rule that once you turn 50 you have to start carrying around some sort of hard candy in your purse? Every Sunday at church there are always multiple interruptions of someone between the ages of 50-90 making crinkling noises as they open up plastic candy wrappers. Has anyone ever seen someone younger than this feel the need to always have hard candy in their purse and open it at the quietest moments?

The only good thing about insomnia is being up to watch Saved by the Bell.

I think I might just burn my planner. Oh, wait.

So the reason I haven't written in a long ass time is directly correlated to the fact that I can't read my planner there's so much shit in it. I look at it everyday, freak out a little bit, take a deep breath and conquer. Doesn't this defeat the entire purpose of a handy book to help plan my life?

I go straight from class to a 3 hour opera rehearsal to 3 to 4 hours of work. I know, whine, whine, bitch, bitch, but no one will actually listen to me so I'm going to write it down in my blog, ya'll. It really isn't bad at all; I just stay tired most of the time which is the suck.

Spring Break is coming up next week (Amen, Hallelujah!). Thanks to Jesus sporting some of my paycheck every week and my spring break falling on holy week, I'll be hanging around BR most of the time. I have so much freaking music to work on/learn that I'm really ok with that.

I feel like I laugh all the time, so surely hilarious things occur in my life everyday, but I can't ever remember them to write and share with the 3 people who actually read this.

In honor of St. Paddy's Day...

2 of my favorite holiday related videos:

Where da gold at?

The Leprechaun Brothers sing Danny Boy

Mac n' cheese and Pinot Grigio...

With a little cookie dough and some brownies on the side. The people at Winn Dixie must think I'm crazy. Really, by saying they probably think I'm crazy I really just mean they don't see through my "I've got my shit together" facade.

I, Jay See, refuse to put myself through another NATS competition in my entire life. Seriously, ya'll if I ever mention to any one of you that I'm even THINKING about going to NATS again tell me to straighten the fuck up and get real.

Not only did I not place, but I also got a (my first) speeding ticket on the way there. FML.

Tights are not pants.

Tights are not pants.

Please click on the link for more information.

I beg of you people, PLEASE.

Globetrotter

Who's going to frolick around Europe this summer and study at Salzburg College in Austria? MMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Economy, schnomy, I'm going to spend a shit ton of money this summer and I don't even care. (Granted it will be supporting other countries' economies, but it's all interconnected, right?)

I plan on backpacking for about 2 weeks from June 30-July 11 and then study German, Lied, and opera at Salzburg college in Austria July 11-August 13. Take that never being out of the country before!

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chung Lei

..Is the best $7 you can spend. It's hilariously entertaining (whether intentional or not). Some memorable quotes include:

"Only in darkness do all the colors become one."
"Your father has been the milk in my business, but even milk has an expiration."
"Sometimes you have to stand even when standing is hard."

Oh, and everything that came out of Chris Klein's mouth. If Jennifer Hudson can win an Oscar so can he.


Also, Daylight Savings can kiss my ass. Stop robbing me of my sleep you jerk!

Moodiness

Remember how I said I was happy in the last post?

Tonight I had a snickers bar, a Little Debbie cosmic brownie and a half a bottle of Chardonnay for dinner. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm doing in music grad school.

This blog just got real. BAM!

Why do I love TLC specials so much?

Mermaid Girl? World's Fattest Man Gets Married? The list goes on, but I'm obsessed with watching all of them.

I had my first NOLA Mardi Gras this year, and my first Mardi Gras in four years, and it was crazy fun! So maybe I had a little panic attack on Bourbon, but nothing an hour stay in the hotel and another drink(s) couldn't fix. My proudest accomplishment of the 2 day trip? Not destroying my voice, or at least nothing that drinking enough water to make me pee every 20 minutes couldn't fix. Maybe I am learning something in grad school!

I'm happy. I want a puppy.

What?

A second mysterious phone call from Millsaps. I wish they'd leave a voicemail or call when I'm not at work. WWWWWWeeeeeeiiiiirrrrdddd.

A ghostly day.

In my performance craft class yesterday my professor came up with a very interesting exercise for us. She asked one girl in the class to think of a song that she was currently singing and create a dialogue about the song. Weeeeeeeellll, the song she chose was about a ghost who haunted the grave of her dead child. After the girl made this dialogue up about the song she decided to let the girl do the dialogue again except actually portraying the mother and she asked me to be the child, with a chair as the grave. If all this isn't crazy enough, what dialogue comes out of my mouth playing the creepy, dead child? "It's ok, mother, I'm with the angels." WTF. Two of my friends immediately started convulsing from trying not to laugh. Two of the voice faculty found out about my "performance" and saw me at a recital later last night and quoted me and followed it up with some ghostly noises. Sometimes, I feel like they just keep me around here because they think I'm entertaining.

Moral of the story? I don't have a career playing a creepy, dead child.

Later in the day I had a mysterious missed call from the Millsaps hotline. Ghostly coincidence?

Netflix

If I don't finish my Master's it's because our house just invested in a Netflix account.

Roomie #1 just asked me to help him shave the hair on the back of his neck. I love him, but that is NOT in my roomie description.

Germaphobia, is it really worth it?

The annual "crud" outbreak began to occur about 2 weeks ago in Baton Rouge, so me being the germaphobe that I am began taking "proper" precautions. I literally only used my elbows and rags to turn things on and off and open things, took a cold eeze every 2/3 hours, drank a shit ton of water, had gross dry hands from washing them every 30 minutes and where does it get me?

Sitting on my couch with the crud.

However, when I am sick I feel like I deserve treats so I tend to gorge on chocolate. This is an amazing thing.

On a completely different note, cops have been standing around the LSU campus with speed reader radar thingies. Did you read that right, STANDING. Yes, Mr. Police Officer I was running late for class and was going 50 in a 35, but you were STANDING with your speed reader thingie so you could only shake it at me. Thank goodness our tax dollars are going to good use.

And on another note, Louisiana legislature does not want to include the HPV Vaccine as a part of women's health insurance because it will promote promiscuity in young women. Hmm, maybe we should stop selling condoms and birth control because that could promote promiscuity too.

I want cake.

Alarm Clock Tango

Every morning at 1380 things go something like this:

6:45am- Roomie #2's alarm clock/cell phone goes off followed by the pressing of the snooze button.

7:00am- My cell phone/alarm clock goes off followed by pressing snooze.

7:02am- Roomie #1's alarm clock goes off. THE MOST ANNOYING SOUND IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. IT IS POSSESSED BY EVIL DEMONS AND IS THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. He precedes to SLEEP THROUGH THE MOST ANNOYING SOUND IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and I begin to wonder why in the hell I even pressed snooze. Then either one of two things happens: 1) I painfully sit in my bed for what seems like eternity (and what is actually probably 1 minute, maybe, or 2) I drag my ass out of bed walk in his room, go to his bathroom (where the evil demon lives) and turn off his alarm clock. After this I am so adiment on sleeping until my snooze ends that I go back to bed.

7:05am- I get a text from Roomie #2 saying "Hey, do you want to shower first or can I jump in?" I usually sleepily reply with "Go for it."

7:10am - My snooze goes off and I wonder why I put myself through this every morning. Someday I'll just get up when my alarm initially goes off at 7am and I'll be a much happier person.

So what I'm asking you is how does one stop being such a light sleeper or how does one even become one in the first place? I feel like this is the ONLY motherly instinct I will ever have. The first week I lived at 1380 I woke up every single time the air conditioner turned on because my air vent rattles a little. This is just ridiculous, people, ridiculous.

Hey, hey, hey!

I've had some blogging days in the past, livejournal, xanga, etc., but I feel like this is a good point in my life to start a new. I'm pretty sure this blog will end up boring anyone who comes across it, my life in Baton Rouge is anything but exciting, and my writing skills leave much to be desired (hey, give me a break, I've been studying staves and music notes my whole life).

See, now that I've finished that first paragraph I'm already wondering why the hell I started this thing because I have no freaking clue what to write about.

Oh, I know!

I've been discovering lots of new and interesting (and some scary) things about myself this year thanks to my amazing voice teacher. I'm 99.9% positive that she is from another planet and has magical powers. Star trek pin capable of "beaming her up"? Check. Yoda dolls decorating her office? Check. Believes antibiotics are killing society and scolded me for going to the doctor even though I couldn't sing for a week? Check. Daily clothes have themes? Check. (My favorite is a tie between her Korean outfit and her cowboy outfit. Fringe anyone?) Before an audition telling me she will do a trance for me? Check.

She has given me the best advice of my entire life. Of course she tells me it in the context of singing, but really it's great life advice. "Just Eff it!" and "You just have to stop caring about what you sound like all the time." and my favorite was last semester when she said, "You just need to let go and do something daring! Ooo! Lets take the entire class bungee jumping!"

I only wish you could hear her high pitched magical voice. I'm in one of her classes called Performance Craft too. Ya'll, it's the best thing in the entire world. I get credit for going to a group therapy session twice a week where we all sit around and talk about our feelings and then dance them out to world music. "Dance like your judges! Dance like your inner child! Dance like your higher being!" It's trippy, ya'll, real trippy and I love every second of it.

If it wasn't for her then I'm pretty sure I'd ran as far away as I could, well, not too far, because I recently found out that my inner judges tell me I'm a complete wimp and I listen to them too much.