it's been a long week

I got donuts in class today - our teacher had bet us that we couldn't do an assignment without making a certain mistake, and promised to bring us donuts if we did. Promise me sugary treats, and I turn into a little kid. At least I managed to eat it without smearing the cream filling (!!!) all over my face. At least I think I did.

Also, I like glazed and poofy better than cake-style donuts.

This has been such a long week, and I'm not really sure why. It's the middle of winter, it's snowing all the time (no one warned me that getting snow up my nose was a danger of coming to school up here) it's gray and gloomy all the time. Falling snow, though, is so beautiful - all the little white specks in the sky reflecting light, swirling and falling and rising and dancing like wild bacchants, unpredictable and so light-seeming and floating and so many of them. I performed in studio class, a piece by a German composer dedicated to a Spaniard based on Scottish themes. My practicing, though, has been haphazard.

One of the students set off the fire alarm Wednesday night by cooking bacon. I had just finished showering, and put on clothes and grabbed my shoes and coat and instrument and shivered in the cold for a while. Watching all the people coming out of the building was like an anthill that had gotten kicked in - people were running up and down the stairs, coming out of their rooms then going back in and grabbing something - an instrument, warmer clothes, keys, wallet - and running out and then huddling in a mass outside the building. Without my contacts, everyone looks more or less the same - I'm only able to pick out my friends by their relative heights and builds as they cluster together.

I wish I had a vacuum cleaner of my own. I borrowed a friend's tonight, and dusted and vacuumed my room, and then borrowed another friend's Swiffer and mopped the floor. It feels so nice to have the room clean.

I lost my colored pencils the other day, the day I went to a visiting artist's recital which was probably one of the best performances I've ever seen. Everything about the performance - how she moved, her facial expression, the way she put her bow on the string - everything created the perfect atmosphere in which the music could exist. Her playing, of course, was superb. I wish I could find my pencils, though.