Ten Little Chances to be Free

OMG, the Nomenclature des voies de Paris database is back online! This thing was my best goddamn friend when I was researching Les-Mis-related locations in Paris, I was so incredibly sad when it died, and now look! Back online and shinier than ever! Have been playing with it for the past fifteen minutes, clearing up some minor questions about the location of the Café Musain. (Was v. confused about references to the rue de la Harpe in the vicinity, but the database made it clear that the rue de la Harpe used to extend south almost to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and that it was absorbed into the boulevard Saint-Michel. That has been minorly bugging me for ages.)

The Paris university system is CHAOS I TELL YOU. I have a provisional list of classes to choose from, but minor details like class times, locations, and which professor is teaching what are either unavailable or buried in the labyrinthine web sites of Paris VII. Other minor details they haven't decided yet include when class sign-ups take place and when classes start. Some girl in another department of Paris VII has already started classes, but most of the departments are all "lol guys still recovering from all the strikes last year, will give you details... sometime."

But! I possibly have a voice teacher. elyse24601 and I will go to see her on Wednesday. To celebrate, we bought a bunch of extortionately expensive sheet music (seriously, guys, printed materials are SO CHEAP in America, you have no idea), holed up in my apartment because I have a piano and I'm alone for the weekend, and started learning the Flower Duet from Lakmé. I haven't sung in ages, my voice is rusty, and I keep jumping to the soprano part because I sang it in a recital years ago, but it was so much fun. We were producing mad-crazy overtones and generally being awesome.

Orientation period is over--we had exams for our orientation classes today--so now begins a week of chaos and tumult and possibly class sign-ups if we're lucky. And good riddance to the orientation; it was a disproportionate amount of work to the credit given, and being in class from nine to six every day didn't exactly encourage us to go out and explore the city. I might end up enjoying our week of chaos and tumult more than the past three weeks.

Re: Lausanne, some of the charges have disappeared from my card, but I still haven't had an email from them and I still can't find my order in my account on their website. Should probably call them tomorrow and demand what the fuck is going on, lest I end up having to buy a shitty seat at the last minute. And yes, I'm going, the train ticket is bought.

Obviously I have gone completely off my nut, because I've spent several successive evenings looking up information on parrot ownership. Even though I absolutely do not need a feathery bundle of terror in my life, my parents would kill me, I'll be going back to school at some point and won't have a stable living situation, and I'd have to save up for a while to afford the initial expense. Not to mention that apartment-hunting once I'm on my own will probably be hard enough without, say, a conure or an African grey in tow. But--they're so awesome. And intelligent and obnoxious and fascinating and my boss has started teasing me for getting all excited whenever we end up boarding a big bird.

And yes, I have pulled some April Fools pranks slightly less lame than rickrolling musicals.net, but they're all IRL. My mom TP'd the hallway between my room and my brother's and then laughed like a loon when we each blamed it on the other. XD But I got my revenge: I baked a completely normal spice cake and left it in the kitchen with "Happy April Fools Day!" written in icing on it. The suspense made a much better prank than anything I could actually have done to it.

I'm totally tempted to go audition for this. Looks like it'll be fun and fairly low-key, which is good because it would be my first audition for any non-school show. Now I just need to spend the next ten days agonizing needlessly over preparing 16 bars of operetta. Which shouldn't actually be too hard--yay for being in the Mikado my last semester--but I'm rusty. ;)

Went up to NY on Saturday--for the first time since January--to see Jeff in SITPWG. Which is a great show, but it didn't really grab me--honestly, I was just there for Jeff, and to hang out fangirling with mmebahorel and lady_iphigeneia. Jeff is adorable; he came out the stage door before the show to say hi and was bouncing up and down and dancing with excitement that he got to go on. ♥ Also adorable onstage, at the stage door post-show, with Nikki, and just in general. Jess and I drove up together and spent the whole four or five hours chattering about fannish things, then more over a lunch of utterly delicious hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese food, and then over dinner with Jenn, and then we went to Starbucks and geeked out for about four hours before somebody finally noticed the time. I somehow managed to lose my voice during all this chatter, and wound up singing along to the PRC in baritone register on the way home. Oooops.

Is there to be no end to my productivity?

Finally managed a half-decent recording of myself: me singing "Your Daddy's Son" from Ragtime.

And then I pouted because I had no backing track for "The Sun Whose Rays are All Ablaze" and I always go sharp when I do it a cappella... but then I realized the whole thing gets played in the overture! Lucky me. And so I also have a recording of me singing "The Sun Whose Rays..."

Audacity is ♥

You know what beats the shit out of minimum wage? Busking on the Metro. Seriously, I have a running "I'm a vocal performance major, which means I'm going to end up singing for change on the subway for a living" gag, but if I hit rush hour I can easily make $15-20 an hour.

The downsides are that it tires my voice out enough that I can only do a few hours at a time, I occasionally get harassed by security and I'm still not sure if it's allowed under protected speech, and I lack the motivation to kick myself into doing it on a regular basis. But if I can overcome the last bit, earning enough money for the road trip will be a piece of cake. And it's loads more fun than being a cashier, and I found a station with amazing acoustics.

Am royally pissed about being told off by the security guard though. Apparently "soliciting and panhandling" aren't allowed on the Metro, but they can't stop people from randomly bursting into song due to First Amendment free-speech protection. The question is whether standing around singing and holding out a hat, but not asking anyone for money, counts as soliciting. I'm inclined to say it doesn't, because busking on the Metro is fairly widespread and I've seen crotchety jerks online complaining about the fact that there's no way to stop it, not to mention the few cities who do try to ban it are in legal hassles right now... but I didn't argue when I was told to go away. Was ready to throw in the towel anyway, and too tired to cause a stink. Will probably go into a giant freedom of speech snit if they try it on me again.

Voice teacher decided I was far too tired to do more than ten or fifteen minutes of Mozart, so we were dicking around with Les Mis stuff instead around the end of the lesson. She then proceeded to tell me that she hadn't been at all familiar with I Saw Him Once/In My Life/A Heart Full of Love but that it was very pretty, and that if this had happened two or three lessons ago she might have put the love montage in the recital for the vocal performance class I'm in. But it's too late now, as she's already assigned scenes.

*facepalm* That would've been fun, dammit.