And it continues…

What a great day!

After a long, somewhat tiring, but very rewarding day, I’m sitting at home in my sweats watching Will & Grace. The water for my angel hair pasta is just starting to boil. And I have nothing else to do tonight except catch up on cellist Joshua Roman’s blog. I met him after his Glen Ellyn performance. We talked briefly about his blog and about where he’s headed next. Wish I could’ve chatted more with him but there were plently of other people standing around waiting for their turn to chat with him so I just told him how much I adore watching him play and flashed him my best smile before I returned to the city.

He’s quite the handsome chap and such a talented cellist! And SO down to earth! I’d love to watch him perform again. (And if he proposed, I’d marry him in a heartbeat!)

I was a bit late to Conducting class today. I stayed up late last night listening to MASSENET’S Werther and fantasizing about the day when I’m able to sing beautiful music like that. But at the moment, my voice isn’t ready for such large endeavors just yet. I woke up an hour late and ended up arriving 20 minutes late.

After choir rehearsal, I accompanied my good friend Graham on his quest for the perfect tie for his opera costume. As we rode the brown line to Damen, we discussed boys, singing, more boys, and more singing. Graham is one of my best gay friends and quite the talented tenor!

At around 6pm, Graham went to opera rehearsal and I met up with my friend Nathan, a new gay friend and also a very talented tenor. We grabbed dinner at Subway and Caramel Apple Ciders at Starbucks and discussed our dreams of opera stardom. It was then that I received one of the best compliments in quite some time, especially during a time of ongoing vocal insecurities. When you’re part of such a great music program in Chicago, it’s easy to compare yourself to your other talented peers. And it’s easy to lose yourself. You start thinking that you need to look like them and sound like them, be more like them. But what happens to you?

Nathan said. “The most important thing is to stay true to yourself. You have all the physical attributes of a good opera singer. You reek of elegance and musicality.”

I tried not to smile too much as we walked back to the music school to catch the 8pm faculty recital, featuring my beast bass-baritone voice teacher and his Metropolitan/Lyric Opera mega Mezzo wife.

On the way there I texted my new friend Christian, a freshman tenor–extremely charming, extremely handsome, and one of the most beautiful voices I’ve heard here in a while. Lately he’s been having drama with the other freshmen involving some comments and false accusations that landed him in the Dean’s office. We ended up meeting and sitting together for the recital. Now we’re texting about how ridiculous the politics of the school can be. I’m making him feel a little better about himself because although he put on a happy face when he sat with me during the recital, I knew it’s been bothering him for a while. I know Christian to be such a good man. And I know he just needing some pep texts tonight. And we’re arranging our schedules to grab coffee sometime in between classes.

Wow, already 11pm! I’m exhausted! Gonna whip up a delicious chocolate egg cream beverage (milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup! Frothy, bubbly chocolatey delight!) and call it a night. Here’s to a wonderful Monday and a glorious rest of the week.

Life is so beautiful right now!

Current Music: Colbie Caillat – “Fallin’ for you”

Wow I haven’t updated in about a month and a half. So much has happened since then. During my last post, I was on the right track to finally finding myself again. I know it sounds ridiculous but for anyone who’s been through a devastating breakup, I know you understand.

Heartbreak can be powerful enough to paralyze you, especially if you lost yourself in the relationship. It took me a long time, about 8 months but I am COMPLETELY over him.

I never thought it would happen but it happened after I got back from LA. I was spending a week in San Antonio before heading back to Chicago. I found an old journal that I kept exactly 3 summers ago. I spent the entire night reading it and I realized:

1. There were so many events and conversations I forgot about…important events and conversations that made me feel beautiful, powerful, confident, and that I could do anything!

2. As a result, I was so much more optimistic about life. I was more confident too.

The next morning I woke up and said to myself: ENOUGH. How LAME is this? How lame is he? I’ve done better in the past and I can do better in the future. Sorry, you were a great boyfriend but we just didn’t fit perfectly. I wanted to try. You didn’t. What more can I do? Goodbye.

When I returned to Chicago I felt completely rejuvenated and excited about the future. I must’ve been sending out great vibes because great things started happening to me.

1. All the wonderful people at music school that inadvertently shut out during my strange anti-social relationship-absorbed period are now my greatest friends! I simply returned to school with a beautiful smile and hung out in the lounge and asked them about their lives during my free time…soon I was hosting and attending some amazing parties (this past weekend we partied with a Lyric Opera Baritone superstar!)

2. I started making amazing vocal breakthroughs and I am currently in preparation for my recital!

3. I’ve been attracting more attention from the opposite sex…I’ve been walking with confidence, dressing for myself again (not to impress anyone else but what makes me feel good), fixing my hair the way I like, doing my makeup the way I like…which brings me to say…

THANK YOU MAC Lipstick in Diva! It was my first fall makeup purchase when I began switching from my summer color palette to fall colors…I was looking for a dramatic, deep red burgundy matte lipstick and after much trial and error with NARS, Laura Mercier, Shiseido, and Chanel (the experts at the counter tried their best to persuade me that I can wear bright reds but I just wasn’t feeling it) but I found the PERFECT shade at the MAC counter.

I made my purchase this past friday afternoon and wore it to the party with a sexy Lyric Opera superstar and his friend from the Ryan Opera Center who couldn’t take his eyes off me for most of the party…also, I made a fabulous new gay friend, one of the freshman vocalists. Our introduction:

“Hi, I’m Stella M“

“Wow, you’re beautiful! Hi, I’m Christian “

We spent a big chunk of the evening discussing cuties at the party. Speaking of these cuties…Both the superstar baritone and his ryan opera center bass-baritone friend are both in their 30s. The beautiful thing about being in your 20s, as the majority of the attendees at the party are juniors, seniors, and grad students at the music school, is that flirting and dating older men becomes less of an issue. We’re all adults here now. I would totally consider dating both of them! Or at least having them around as good friends and gorgeous arm candy when I go out

ALSO…one of my musical colleages, also an older man, has not been shy about revealing his attraction to me. Lately we’ve been spending some time together. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a sex thing, although I found when he kissed me goodnight that our chemistry is out of this world…but it’s more of a mental connection. Isn’t it fun to be desired?

Hm…who knew that a tube of lipstick could be so life-changing?

Haha, actually it’s just this newfound confidence. But MAC is assisting me so wonderfully!

Ladies, don’t be afraid to wear dramatic red lipstick, especially for fall and winter. It’s classic and beautiful, it’s just about choosing the right shade, making sure your hair looks great as well, and wearing it with confidence.

Vacay soon

Current music: John Legend, Evolver

Business calculus is finally done! I just finished packing for my upcoming 2 1/2 week vacation before school starts again in September. I don’t leave til Saturday morning but I decided to do my packing a couple days early because tomorrow, actually later on today I’ll be running some last minute errands, then after my gay bff Matt gets off from work at 5pm we’ll go out for some chinese food, hang out at my place and drink really delicious Portuguese wine, then go to the movies to see that British comedy “In the Loop.” Then we’ll probably continue to hang out and talk about his latest boycrushes til 3am.

That’ll give me a couple hours of snooze time before I hop the train for the airport at 5am.

Flight leaves at 7:30am, stopover in Houston. I’ll be in San Antonio by noon.

On Monday we’ll be driving to LA and staying there for the rest of the week, then back to San Antonio the following week.

A serious undertaking.

Picked up the Gabler edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses today.

Got my friend K to join the Ulysses bandwagon and start reading it too.

The Irish Lit professor I emailed said he teaches a Ulysses course every 2 years but his next scheduled one is during the 2010-2011 academic year. I’ll be done with college by the end of this year. I haven’t officially met him but I saw his picture on his faculty profile and he definitely lives up to that awesome stereotype of the Literature professor who rocks a Mr. Rogers sweater all year around.

If only I had an extra $200 to drop. I’d register for the Ulysses seminar at the Newberry Library. Wednesday nights from 5:45-7:45pm, a total of 10 sessions. But alas, I have neither the money nor the schedule allowance.

Either way, this’ll be a fun adventure. Here we go.

Reading Ulysses for the first time!

In 1 week I’ll be in LA. It’ll be a nice vacation from an entire summer of Business Calculus and Management classes. My mind is working in overdrive but it’s not exhausted completely! I’ve been doing some summer reading…delved into some history of the Spanish empire, and lately I’ve been enjoying Tolstoy’s War and Peace. But there’s 1 book that has really been bugging me for over 4 years–since that AP English class my senior year of high school–Ulysses. I still remember that day. My witty, funny, nerdy-chic teacher (I’ll just call him Mr. C) went on a James Joyce tangent in class…he briefly touched on Dubliners but his true affinity for Ulysses was quickly revealed…the man was jumping up and down in the middle of the classroom, saying how Ulysses was one of the most, if not THE most difficult piece of literature that existed thus far, but definitely a rewarding experience and a staple of Modernist literature.

I didn’t think much of it after that day, although I did read his other recommendations soon after I graduated high school: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being–both personal favorites that weren’t part of the curriculum. Loved them both.

Yesterday I went to Borders to pick up Kate Morton’s The House at Riverton–a gift for my grandma in LA. She has quite the voracious literary appetite and loves Kate Morton and Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb among others.

There it was, on the shelf. Ulysses. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, taunting me. When are you going to read me?! You know you want to. You chicken.

Last night I couldn’t shake the urge. I had been telling myself that I would just end up completely overwhelmed. Or uninterested in the subject matter. Or too busy–yeah right. My curiosity kept pulling me in. Later that night, my gay bff Matt came over and we chatted about our most/least faves in literature. Anything Oscar Wilde, we both love. We both almost read Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale but never got around to it and then eventually lost interest. We both still haven’t finished Catch-22. His current obsession is Charles Bukowski poetry–Slouching Toward Nirvana. He had me read through a few poems last night and they’re very good! The entire time I kept thinking about Ulysses. I knew I wouldn’t have an easy time understanding it. It’s not something you can just breeze through without re-reading a few sections, and it’s probably something I would have to read again and again.

The entire time I spent trying to dissuade myself from reading it, I only ended up persuading myself. After hours of asking myself: Why should I? The only answer that I could come up with: Why not? I read articles, reviews, and an entire blog about taking on the challenge of reading Ulysses in one year–specifically author Richard Lewis. Great blog! http://readingulyssesforthefirsttime.blogspot.com/

As far as which edition to read, I knew all about the Gabler-Kidd Joyce War which is still going on today. Mr. C went into great detail about Ulysses’ publishing history. He read all three editions: the original 1922 text, the 1961 corrected text, and the Gabler edition. The original 1922 edition continues to be an intriguing puzzle to him. Makes sense. It is the least read out of all 3…well, 4. Apparently there is a “Reader’s Edition” which actually alter’s Joyce’s text to make it more accessible. Seriously now? Not an option. I emailed a Joyce scholar/Irish Lit professor from my university and asked him which edition to read and got a prompt response:

The James Joyce Quarterly lists both Gabler editions (the three-volume one with critical apparatus and the one-volume edition, both published by Garland) as “standard editions.”  It also lists the Random House edition, 1934, reset and corrected 1961, as one of the “standard editions.”

I have all of these editions and don’t much care which one I use to teach as I’m aware of the differences between Gabler and Random House.  These are imperfect, not definitive editions.  There will be no definitive edition, which is somewhat appropriate for a novel that incorporates a literary version of Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle.”  A down-to-earth reason for the lack of a definitive edition is Joyce’s palimpsest composing process, the results of which caused innumerable errors on the part of the French printer in Dijon who produced the first edition of Ulysses.

Many universities, including an upcoming Newberry Library seminar on Ulysses, currently use the Gabler edition because despite the controversy surrounding it and the fact that all existing editions are imperfect, many scholars also believe it to be the best and most reliable edition of the novel.

I think it’ll be a good book to take with me on my 2 week vacation before school starts. I probably won’t have as much time in LA cuz I’ll be touring the entire time but when I’m in San Antonio the following week, I’ll definitely have more than enough time.

Also because it’s smaller, lighter, and thus much more portable. My copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace is wonderful but quite the heavy brick. I’ve been lugging it around in my tote for the past 2 1/2 weeks and my shoulder aches have returned :-\ ooh.

I love a good challenge. And I think it’ll be a very rewarding experience. I think it’ll be more rewarding if I get others involved. I just sent a text to my best friend from high school, K, asking her if she wants to read Ulysses too. We were both in Mr. C’s class that day he went on his James Joyce obsession tangent. Since high school ended and I moved away from San Antonio we still kept in touch. Often times we’d tell each other about an awesome novel that one of us had heard about and soon the other would be curious too. So we would both race to our nearest bookstores, buy the novel, and text each other plot/character commentary as we read. Also, she’s the only other person I know who would be anbitious enough to dedicate time to Ulysses and stick to it.

So, for anyone else who reads this and would like to start reading (or re-reading) Ulysses, join me!

Self-indulgence…in moderation?

I think that one of the most rewarding aspects of spending one’s summer taking 2 challenging courses at my university’s college of commerce (which are necessary for my degree completion…in November!) is one’s right to self-indulgence. Moderately? Define moderately.

It’s been a wonderful summer, though lonely at times, but I get through those lonely days.

After a couple summers promising myself that I would read Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” I finally decided to tackle the genius work this summer. All 1,000+ pages of it. While doing my research for the best translation, I read alot of 5-star reviews that told me not to be intimidated by the length, assuming me that Tolstoy keeps everyone engaged from the very beginning. I picked it up earlier this week for a bit for my summer reading. I really can’t stand chick-lit. I tried to get into a couple chick-lit novels but I can’t get past the all-too-familiar summaries about the power-femme who has it all–the 5th avenue apartment, the flashy job, designer everything, head-turning good looks, and the perfect guy until her world is somehow shattered by some devastating circumstances. Suddenly, power-femme is left to wonder…does she really have it all? Etc…etc… I did try to read a couple of those but I could never get past the first 5 pages…too boring or even worse,  cleverly written but appallingly trite.

A perfect summer beach read for some. But not for me. If I sound like a snob, I don’t mind. I must say that I haven’t exactly tackled all the great literary classics, but I have read alot of great and less-than-stellar literature. Personal taste, I guess. But for the rest of this summer, I’ll be lost in 19th century Russia, during the Napoleonic Wars.

On Thursday, I had lunch again with my classy gay friend Shane at Lavazza Cafe on LaSalle. Italian Baguette and a bottle of Pellegrino. I might go back there sometime this week for a specialty drink. During lunch we talked about his Development internship at the Chicago Opera Theater (and hopefully I’ll be interning there too this fall), books we’re currently reading, my commerce classes, and a possible trip (sometime in the very near future) to Wisconsin to tour the New Glarus Brewing Company and pick up some of that famous Spotted cow and Fat Squirrel beer–only available in Wisconsin. Hmph! I’ve been wanting to try it for a long time. I’ve heard amazing things about it.

Well as far as my self-indulgence goes, lately I’ve been sleeping in til at least noon on most days (My classes are in the evenings) Yesterday and the day before I was ill (extreme extreme fatigue, throbbing headache, mood plummeted to a low…I suspect a migraine was the cause, so I slept in til 3pm today and it was worth it. Felt much better today. For the past couple days I’ve been ordering out Chinese food…I don’t think it was too self-indulgent of me since I was too weak to leave my apartment. On most days I go to Trader Joe’s to buy fresh ingredients and frozen goods and spend the day cooking something delicious for myself.

Spent most of today on the phone with my parents who checked up on me to see if I was feeling better today.

My sleep schedule is messed up so I am currently still wide awake and watching one of my favorite Italian films by Roberto Benigni–La tigre e la neve. I adore the Benigni-Braschi on-screen and real-life pairing. Vittoria, Nicoletta Braschi’s character, wears a beautiful lemon quartz pendant on a gold chain throughout the entire movie and I instantly fell in love with it. On a whim, I bought one online. Not knowing the designer, it took me a while to search for one that looked exactly like it–the same cut, color, and style. Found the perfect one from a custom jewely designer and I didn’t spend too much. Pretty reasonable. It should arrive sometime this week.

Might be visiting LA during the first week of September. I’m excited. Hoping that I’ll run into Katy Perry while I’m there!

The Art of a relaxing Friday night in

So I think I’ve mastered the art of a relaxing Friday night in…or any night in for that matter. It was a rather self-indulgent day, with the exception of a couple errands to the bank and the post office. I had a strong feeling that my gay bff would ditch me again for yet another lame college freshman house party and get plastered by 11pm so I knew I had to make this day my own.

Today I woke up at noon, spent the next hour answering some emails, checking my Twitter homepage, and reading some news articles.I spent the two glorious hours after that taking my sweet time to get ready.

Walked to Borders today with a $25 gift card in search for a loooong summer read I can really get lost in. I’ve been devouring fiction novels pretty fast these days so I decided on a non-fiction subject that I’ve always been curious about but never had the time to lose myself in. Bought a book called “Empire: How Spain Became a World Power.”

After that I walked to the grocery and bought some Portuguese wine, this fabulous sparkling water called Blu Italy, and the ingredients to make a wonderful Pear and Blue Cheese Salad that I had at Cafe Nordstrom with my classy gay friend Shane earlier this week. When I got home, I prepared the salad (romaine and mixed baby greens, candied walnuts, pear cubes, crumbled blue cheese, and a champagne vinaigrette–a real summer treat for the taste buds!) and watched Brideshead Revisited. Good…intense…all about love, loss, and Catholic guilt. I am Catholic so it’s real stuff for me but a little too intense on the guilt-trip.

Currently, I’m baking a chocolate souffle and watching Under the Tuscan Sun on tv. After that, I’ll spend the next couple hours reading about the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire before bedtime sometime before sunrise.

This is why I love summer.

Almost there!

OK, 2 more finals to get through tomorrow. Musicianship and piano. I can do this…after cramming about 9 chapters of medieval and renaissance music history in my head. Not too bad.

So, I ended up picking up the Elixir scores from Dr. K today. Still waiting on Shane’s answer but I’m sure it’ll work out. Turns out, the company is able to cover Shane’s gas money. Woohoo! Hopefully it works out.

I am EXHAUSTED! But I have to power up with some coffee and start studying for this damn final tonight.

Dad and grandma fly in tonight too…in time for Saturday’s commencement.

I am contemplating a hot fugde sunday from McDonalds…maybe later.

Friday, please be here already

It’s 11pm on Wednesday night. Currently…

About to start the last essay question for my arts management final…naturally this is the biggie. I haven’t read the entire question but from what I skimmed over, it looks to me like I’ll have to plan the budget for an entire season. Yippee! Why did I wait til the night before to do this? Oh well. I figure it won’t take me more than 2 hours…IF I don’t get distracted by Facebook. Thank goodness I got rid of my Twitter account. I’d be tweeting up a storm about how I want Friday to be here.

I simply cannot pull an all nighter and spend most of it on Facebook and various blogs, even though I’ve done that all day and still managed to get 95% of my final paper done. I have to get some sleep tonight because of my ear training final tomorrow at 8:30am ewww! Then I’ll be practicing for my piano final for a couple hours, then heading out to Sephora to buy some makeup for Saturday’s graduation ceremony (the music school commencement is at the Lyric Opera!!! How fab-hot is that??? Someday in the near future I hope to be making my operatic debut on that very stage…but one step at a time), then going down to the pool for some laps, then spending the rest of the day studying for my Musicianship final.

Friday, I have my musicianship final from 8:30-10, my piano final from 11 to 11:30, and after that I am done! Baccalaureat mass at 4pm, then heading back downtown to check out the amazing happening at the Grant Park Music Festival

Hmmm…11:15am. Still no text from Shane. Shane text me back and say YES to singing in Elixir this summer! For the same reason I want to sing in Elixir this summer…I don’t care about the money! This is professional stage experience!

OK seriously, I need to finish this final and get to bed. Ugh.

Yowza!!!

I can honestly say I’m feeling great! I’m in the middle of finals week and I have a huge arts management paper to do today and an ear training final at 8:30 tomrrow morning but I wouldn’t be a college student with senioritis if I didn’t take some time to procrastinate. And it’s been a while since my last entry. Roughly a month. So…here we go.

The spring opera, The Mikado, went well and everyone had so much fun! In case I didn’t mention it here before, our director decided to go with modern Tokyo street culture instead of 18th century Japan. So…think Harajuku girls instead of school maidens, record industry mafia in place of noble Japanese lords, and the mob boss instead of the emperor of Japan. It was insane! And so much fun!

This summer, there’s a good chance I’ll be singing in another opera, Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” (The Elixir of Love)…but this all depends on if my friend Shane still wants to do the show. There’s been some complications with this entire process and I think it’s entertaining enough to share here…

Rehearsal room 103, exactly 3 weeks ago: I arrived a little early at opera rehearsal, pretty much because I had nothing else better to do. I started helping some of the other harajuku ladies stack some chairs and move them aside. Il Maestro called me by name and asked me if I would be available over the summer to sing in the chorus of another opera he was directing at DuPage. He was in desperate need of tenors and he wanted to know if I would be willing to sing on the tenor part (for $200 pay). Il Maestro told me to get in touch with Dr. K, the chorus master for Elixir, for the full rehearsal schedule. Dr. K is also the assistant choral director here so we go way back. So I emailed her but the response I got was less-than-stellar. Turns out, the Elixir chorus budget has been spent, she specifically does not want any women singing on tenor, and she doesn’t need any more women in this chorus. So…quite the bummer for me and Shane, my tenor friend. I forwarded the email to Il Maestro and he apologized for the miscommunication…he was not there in the time between not having enough people and then having too many people! But…I decided that I want to sing in this production…somehow…this time, with the women because I figured….as a mezzo I can definitely sing as low as the boys can but I’d rather be wearing a skirt when I do so. So, later that week, it clicked that I should email the producer of the opera, whom Il Maestro introduced me to earlier that week at the Sunday performance of The Mikado. 4 days later (yesterday) I got a response saying that she would like me and Shane to sing in this production but that we wouldn’t be paid because the chorus budget has been exhausted. So it would be for the professional experience. Naturally, I wanted to jump at it but then I realized that my decision depends on Shane’s. Initially, I planned to carpool with Shane. Otherwise, I have no other way of getting to DuPage. I COULD take the Metra back and forth but the cost adds up and once I get to the Metra station I have no way of getting to the theatre.

So, Shane and I got another email from Dr. K saying that if we still wanted to do the show, she’d bring some chorus book for us on Thursday morning.

This morning I texted Shane about it and he said…

1. Since he finished his finals early, he’s at home in Wisconsin chillin out for the rest of the week before he returns to Chicago in a few days

2. He received the emails but he’ll read them later

3. He’ll get back to me tonight with his decision because he has to email his voice teacher first.

So………………………..here’s hoping that his voice teacher responds promptly and gives him the go. And here’s hoping that Shane actually gets back to me tonight and says YES, and doesn’t back out. Because Shane is my other gay BFF and we had a conversation before (back before that unfortunate email about the chorus budget being exhausted) about how excited we were to do this opera together.

I’m a little nervous though, IF we do go through with this, chorus rehearsals have already started and we’d be pretty behind. Also, the first run-through with Il Maestro is next Saturday the 20th. And after getting the chorus music tomorrow, I have finals to study for and a graduation ceremony on Saturday so I wouldn’t be able to start learning the music til after that…oh and I start my summer courses on Monday…yeahhh….so I’ll have a week to learn the entire chorus part. And I listened to the entire opera last week and the chorus sings a hefty chunk of the opera! Makes me a little nervous, not sure if I can learn and MEMORIZE it in time. And in the meantime, Mum is still breathing down my neck about money and respect. OK.

Often, opera singers have to drop everything and replace someone in a production and there are people who learn and memorize entire lead roles in 2 days! So if they can do that in 2 days, I can learn and memorize the chorus part for Elixir in one week.

OK…time to get back to this damn final.

Things that make me happy

Right now I am in the music school lounge. I have a large coffee with me. And this laptop. I have the corner couch all to myself. This makes me happy. Doesn’t even matter that in about 2 hours I have a huge musicianship presentation and test that I am not done studying for.

I’m feeling really zen right now and at this point in my life, I cherish those brief moments.

What I know.

I know I am a smart and beautiful person who is, like anyone else…with patience and learning, capable of anything.

Oh and Happy Earth day. Tomorrow is also Shakespeare’s birthday and I happen to be re-reading Much Ado About Nothing…Happy Birthday Willy Shakes! And Friday is Arbor Day. Busy week!

Love affair

Can someone please explain that secret, or usually not-so-secret love affair we all have with books and coffee? They go hand in hand. Barnes and Noble and Starbucks brew, Borders and Seattle’s Best. When I’m in a bookstore perusing new fiction and enjoying a novelty espresso bevee to the sounds of Diana Krall’s latest, the world softens a little bit.I prefer that to any cocktail anyday.

I still miss Windsor. And I’m still hoping that we can be together again. But this time on our own is important for both of us. And you never know what will happen tomorrow. It’s not really worth exhausting yourself over until it comes.

Long day today and I couldn’t be happier to be at home in my pink PJs. I just finished my stats homework, and Good Eats is on Foodnetwork –Alton Brown just made a creme brulee. Yum. Tonight I plan to finish this great international mystery I bought a couple days ago. Tomorrow after ear training, theory, and stats I’ll be heading to my favorite Near North B&N to pick up another mystery for me to lose myself on my Friday flight to San Antonio.

Spring has arrived…just waiting for the weather to catch up.

3 months ago, I was in a bleak place. Literally, mentally, emotionally. I desperately wanted to hibernate until spring.

Well now it’s spring. Sort of. It’s still chilly but I don’t mind. The sun is out again and I’m starting to feel like my old self…well, not quite. Not my old insecure self. I’m starting to love ME again. I’m not sure when it happened but I guess it’s true when they say that time heals everything.

I’m not over Windsor. Not at all. We’re still meeting up every 2 weeks for lunch/dinner and a movie. The spark is still there but it’s important that we both grow on our own, even though we care for each other very very much.

The good news is, I don’t cry about it anymore. I haven’t cried in some time.

I still miss him like crazy even though I cherish the moments we do spend together. He commented on the situation, saying that the time we’re spending together now is so much more…focused and well-spent than alot of days we spent together in the last quarter of 2008. That’s when things started to go downhill and we lost individual selves.

I’ve learned to accept what each day brings, not worrying myself about the future although I do have m questions of where all this sparse yet valuable time spent with Windsor will bring us in the future.

This is a man I still love very much and I will love for the rest of my life and beyond.

I still remember what he said to me not too long ago, on one of our lunch dates. “I love you, I never stopped.”

Still, I’m slowly learning to be happy on my own. There was a point in time when I basically forgot about my own life. I forgot that at one point in time I was excited to wake up every single day to study music and sing. I forgot alot of things because all I wanted was to come home and be with him. Spend every waking moment with him and fall asleep in his arms. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way but when that becomes your life, your entire existence…you often forget that it’s not all about WE and US. I still exist as an individual and so does he.

At this point, I won’t even call myself single. Not only because of the fact that I’m still very much in love with him but also because I’m not even entertaining the thought of even just browsing the market. I have loads of stuff to figure out and a long road of self-discovery.

On my way to a theatre in Lincoln Park earlier, I passed by the bar where Windsor and I had an argument that resulted in a severed relationship 1 week later. It wasn’t just because of the argument but of things that built up over the course of 6 months.

But I’ve already gone over all these details in my head. Enough of this.

I’m keeping myself busy with school, opera, my internship, and reading some great mysteries in my spare time although I could be using that time to catch up on sleep.

I’m flying home to San Antonio on Friday morning for Easter weekend. I’m looking forward to it as a time to relax and rejuvenate. I do love living in Chicago but it can be quite exhausting. A different environment is pleasantly diverting.

Time to go back to reading and possibly get 6 hours of sleep tonight.

Spring Break

Well, good news! I’ll be in the spring opera next quarter. I’m one of the schoolgirls in The Mikado. Yay!

Also, I am addicted to sudoku now. I remember the craze that swept the nation 2 to 3 years ago and for that reason, I never gave it the time of day. But it really is a brain workout! It’s great.

Going to Vegas on Tuesday!

OK, I won’t be writing much tonight. At the moment I’m talking online with my friend J, about relationships. He’s going through a breakup with his boyfriend as well…same reasons why Windsor and I broke up so I understand his situation completely and because of that, I have many useful, relevant insights.

It’s so relaxing to have a break from classes right now. I can stay up late, sleep in, relax, and rest. Winter quarter is always exhausting and fortunately this was my last one. Right now, I’m devoting all my attention to IM, sudoku, The Brady Bunch on TVland, and some grape juice. This is what I call multi-tasking