Hello again, blog. How've you been?

It's been a month and... 6 days. Awesome. A testament to the previous month, I guess. Updates:

1. I dealt with more stress than I expected, and also found out that A) I want to continue studying art, and B) my ceramics professor has been one of the largest sources of stress and negativity in my life since coming to IWU.

2. My contract with ORL (the Office of Residential Life) ran up this past saturday at 1:00 PM. I am no longer an RA.

3. I recieved 3 separate misdiagnoses from IWU health services to a mystery ailment during may: A cold, a bad cold and finally, seasonal allergies. After my symptoms worsened, I went home for a day to see the family physician, who informed me that I had a respiratory infection. 3 weeks and one bottle of antibiotics (and countless doses of tylenol) later, I'm fit as a fiddle.

4. I moved from my tiny closet room in Munsell to my subleased apartment over the course of about 8-9 hours, and I only had help moving two items: a fridge and a tower fan. The fridge not because of weight but sheer size, and only up one and a half flights of stairs (helped by my roommate's boyfriend), and the tower fan because he just grabbed it. I'm very proud of my self-sufficiency there.

5. After said moving, I came home and will be here for a week.

6. When I return, I'll be coming into my gainful employment for the summer: working at IWU's dining hall, serving people using our campus for conferences.

7. I can sing a B flat in full voice! And it didn't sound like death! Two half-steps higher than I previously believed. Hooray for my bari-tenor existence.

So yeah. That's the big stuff shortened down into 7 points. As usual, I'm beginning to idealize the upcoming months (and semesters) far beyond what their reality will be, and I'm working on combating that urge. I do know that this summer will be FANTASTIC in terms of my vocal development, since I'm taking two separate sets of lessons with my voice professor (private lessons: she lives in-town [note to self: email her to set up lesson times]). Work will probably be a bitch and a half to get used to and to gain footing, but I plan on getting through it.

TANGENT! My random musical obsessions: Andrew Bird, Guster, Vampire Weekend, Duffy and Dvořák's 9th Symphony

FURTHER TANGENT! I've seen Star Trek 3 times now, and it's fantastic. Checkov is adorable and my favorite. I've also seen Up with my dear friends Sara and Maggie, which was undoubtedly the best decision of my past few weeks, as Sara bawled during the movie (appropriate) and all three of us made fools of ourselves laughing raucously during the showing (also appropriate). Do yourself a favor and see Up no matter who you are, and if you enjoy action movies at ALL see Star Trek. Forget what you think about it, just go see it.

EXTRA FURTHER TANGENT! This blog is probably pretty boring if you don't know me. A recent comment my brother made to his to-be sister-in-law: "I like your blog because you write about interesting things." Jealousy. I mean, I set up this blog to be self-indulgent crap, right? So would I be doing my original intention an injustice by changing the content of my blogging to cater to more viewers? For that matter, who cares? I don't expect anyone to really read this blog anyway, so what does it matter?

Back to relevance. Wait, what relevance?

Smooches,
Joe

P.S. STEPHANIE NUDELMAN IF YOU READ THIS, I'M SO SORRY I DIDN'T SPEND TIME WITH YOU THIS MAYTERM AND I WILL ATTACK YOU WITH THEATRE-MAJOR-ANNOYING LOVE THE MOMENT I SEE YOU!