day 5

Tomorrow I am 19!!!

Tomorrow I may end this detox… maybe… it all depends on if there is or isnt any cake on offer at dinner.

Today brought no bad symptoms… I felt great all day and added a new dish to my restaurant menu… chili non carne… it’s chili con carne but with no meat and extra veggies. As Carne means meat, the title is therefore appropriate to the dish. My younger sister even liked it which i didnt expect. I made her and my dad a traditional chili con carne because i didnt think they’d have a bar of my vegetarian dish but little did i know that she was game to try it and liked it. She told me to make a restaurant and have this as a feature dish –  Served on a potato jacket with corn chips around the side.

I think this blog is beginning to take a turn for the worse. It appears to only be speaking of food – but funnily enough it is doing exactly what i’m wanting it to do… share my thoughts. I find myself thinking about food when i’m not eating or cooking it. Not in a way that makes me want to eat it, but in a way which makes me want to google new recipe ideas and then experiment with my own ones. I think i need a hobby. Or i just need to go to melbourne everyday again to practise. that’s what i’m missing.. i have no drive to pick up my sax which saddens me because its brand new and beautiful.

Ok, so tomorrow’s plan – wake up and have birthday events early before mum and dad go to work. Then go back to bed for 2 hours. Be awake at 9. Do practise for 2 hours. Clean mess in room which i am bound to create. Go out for lunch with ccg people. Come home and do more practise.. minimum of 1 hour. soak reeds. Relax and then go out for tea with family.

Anyway, im off to bed

Signing off as an 18year old!

day 4

Today i woke up with a headache…. ewww and it was cold so that makes everything worse. I think i woke up sometime in the early morning say 7am and decided to turn on my electric blanket  because when i woke again at 9am, i was nice and toasty!

Currently wrapped in a blanket with 3 pairs of pajamas on and a dressing gown i think i may safely assume i am a wimp. I never have and most probably never will enjoy the icy colds of victoria and its days and weeks like this that make me feel nostalgic for the 18 degree winters of Port Macquarie.

I have also realised something else today… if all else fails, owning a restaurant would be cool.. infact being a chef that owns a restaurant would be more awesome. I like to cook. When I cook, things tend to turn out right. When I cook without recipes, things turn out alright. I’d even go as far as saying they’re better than when I use a recipe. What can I say, it must be my creative finesse which allows me to create good food without the help of a book.

For example, my broccoli soup today. All the recipes said to use cream and milk which i am not allowed to have this week so i threw them away and solved this problem myself. So what did i have? broccoli, cauliflower, 1 carrot, loads of potatos and vegie stock. Sounds reasonable. The carrot was used as nourishment for cooking and not in the soup itself but everythign else i threw into a pot and boiled until it was mashable. Then out came the  potato masher then the blender and voila! we have soup. And it was good.

The point of all that was to say that if this music thing doesnt work out the way i hope it will, I can always just open a restaurant which can host an array of gigs for my muso friends… Who wants to be the first performers?

Detox is going well too… I dont crave sugar or meat or diet coke, but i would LOVE a cheese and chive scone from bakers delight. Its my staple when working in werribee and i missed my fix this week

until tomorrow

day 3

la la la

not tired, full of healthy food and feeling fine. Although i could use an energy boost or some milk.

Today’s food desire = ice-cream with hot chocolate fudge – OMG MACCAS SUNDAE!!! mmmm

i don’t know what to say about today… had teaching in werribee and my students played in a concert for thir parents. We had plates and plates of yummy biscuits and slices and cakes and donuts and cordial in cups and it was fabulous… or so i was told. The chocolate chip cookies nearly had me but i’m proud to say i didnt eat any.

Wow this is getting so boring and i still havnt hit half way yet. Funny thing is that i’ve actually gained weight since starting this detox. I don’t know how actually… its kind of odd. I’m going to cook soup tomorrow – we have cauliflower and broccoli and pumpkin.. i’m sure thatd make for some interesting flavours.. oh and potato. I think i may just have some fun with this tomorrow…..

day 2

hmm… i thought you were meant to feel hungry and dodgy whilst doing this detox thing… i guess it is only day 2 but with all the fruit, vegies, tea and nuts available to me i just keep eating them!!!

pfft who cares about diet coke when you can have green tea!!! And LOTS of it!!! and fruit… I love watermelon and grapes and apples… and CARROTS!!! It’s like i’ve just discovered a whole new way of life! Called healthy foods!!!

The only downside so far has been a headache around lunchtime. And eating too much at dinner… I cooked veggie soup for lunch which was fabulous! and then sweet and sour vegies (with chicken for the others) for dinner… i could really get used to this life!

So day 2 has definately been easy and i’m feeling happily full of good food.

Also bought a dinenrware set for the new apartment today!!! YAY!

detox day 1

Since january this year I have developed a sort of dependance on diet coke. Well not just diet coke, anything of the coke or pepsi vaieties; diet coke, coke zero, coke, pepsi max, pepsi etc…

This is and has been concerning me for about a month particularly after declaring a day about 2 weeks ago “diet-coke free” during which i had a nanny nap at 1 in the afternoon. Being a person who tends to be able to last a day or more without sleep I began to realise the effect the consumption of said drinks have had on my health. So much so, that I believe I have a case of addiction.

In order to curb this addiction I have decided to partake in a detox. I have been researching various diets and am going on an all fruit, vegies and natural products detox. This means no dairy besides natural yoghurt, no meats, no confectionary, soft drinks or anything processed. With fingers crossed, my dependance on softdrink will be over by the end of the program…. 7 +days depending on how i’m feeling.

Today is day one and its feeling good. I love fruit so have been snacking on it as told i am allowed to. No strange side-effects yet but oddly enough i havn’t had a craving for diet coke and its 9:00pm. Chocolate on the otherhand….. Not only were they giving us free chocolate at my Seussical the Musical rehersal, when i got home, Dad whipped out a block of cadbury dairy milk and ate a whole line in front of me. Grrrrrr…… luckily the family isnt home tomorrow or i’m sure i’d be convinced into returning to my confectionary-consuming ways.

Bear with me for this week. I am blogging as an experiment just to see how my moods and attitudes change whilst on this detox. I hear some crazy stuff can happen so i guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Until next time

NB to self: buy jasmine green tea… yummy AND good for you

It’s HERE!!

The exciting news is finally here!

my brand spanking new selmer reference 54 kookaburra collector’s edition alto saxophone (say that 10 times fast i dare you). All i can say is that my life is pretty much complete. For those of you who havn’t had a chance to try one out, i recommend it highly, even if you are (unfortunately) not a sax player. it’s pure magic… In my lesson with Michael today we were both just in awe of it… so much so that he asked me if he may hold it.

Stay tuned for some photos soon…

…

watch this space for more

exciting news…..

CFI and being sick…

Today was a good day.

I had the day off due to being sick. This isnt necessarily a good thing on its own but when combined with the rest of the events which took place as a result of not being at college being sick was a small price to pay for a great day.

I woke up at the usual time of 6am with the intention of actually going to CFI. I hadnt missed a lecture or Tute yet and was attempting to endure the whole semester’s lecture series, even having turned up to one still partially drunk from the huge night before.

So this morning the alarm went off and as i awoke from my sleepy state i noticed my throat was feeling as if some little gremlin was in there sandpapering my tonsils off. I took a deap breath and suddenly a great bark emerged from my mouth as my lungs tried to clear themselves.  Needless to say i then decided i was going to have the day off. 

I put on the kettle and made my breakky whilst trying to decide how i could best convince my mum how unimportant CFI was and how i really didnt need to go due to my previously unblemished attendance rate. This proved to be an easy task as i was unable to talk and mum must’ve felt sorry for me because i was forced to use a blunt lead pencil on a shiny piece of paper to convey my message. Note to self: have a pen and normal paper on hand at all times for said occasions.

Anyway, the point of all that was to say that I successfully avoided my first CFI lecture and tutorial. The weird thing about it is that i now realise how completely pointless the class is.

So the other good things that made my sick day worthwhile were;

1. MOVIE WATCHING; I managed to watch 3 movies today… Pirates of the Carribean 1 +2 (in preparation for the release of #3) and Click starring Adam Sandler. I put the heater on, grabbed a blanket, some food and reclined on the lounge completely relaxed and happy. Its a classic sick day task… watching as many movies as you can be bothered to.

2.SAXOPHONE UPDATE: Eric from brass and Woodwind was meant to call yesterday but didnt so i thought i’d ring them today and see what the progress on my new sax is. As it turns out, they’re getting it shipped from france especially for me and it’ll be here in 2 – 2 and a half weeks!!! I’m so excited!!! goodbye yas-62, hello selmer kookaburra!!!

3. INSURANCE: Also managed to get some quotes on sax insurance which is a plus because then i won’t have to worry about anything. I didnt realise people would actually insure against accidental loss and damage. Do they realise how clumsy musicians tend to be on a whole? I’m not saying all muso’s are unco, but i know i can tend to be and we dont have the best reps in terms of physical activities and damage control.

4. JELLY: Made Jelly and it was good. Havnt had it for years but the strawberry crystals called out to me from the back of the pantry and within an hour of it being set, there was no more jelly to be found. Yum.

So i’ll be off. Dad booked a Formula 1 motel room for me for tomorrow night in the city and i need to go and pack for my overnight holiday in melbourne. If anyone has any ideas for stuff to do an a thursday in the city… i.e. gigs to see or places to go, let me know.

House Hunting

As some of you may be aware, both myself and Tori have been in search of living quarters in melbourne. This is a fairly tedious and gruelling task as apparently every other uni student who doesnt already have a place to live has the same idea and wants to live in the same areas as we do.

This hunting has led me to draw some fairly drastic, but fair, conclusions about real estate agents, advertising and house hunting in general.

1. Don’t trust a website. Just because a house looks great in the 1 photo showing the front of it, doesnt mean that it will be liveable inside. A perfect house may turn out to be a money pit with door-less bedrooms, black, diseased showers, kitchens that look like, well, nothing, chickens running loose in the never mown backyard and a blackened roof from cigarettes. Oh and i guess holes in between the wooden walls is a bad sign too.

2. Real Estate Agents suck. At this one house i checked out with my dad the real estate agent was late. He drove into the driveway in his black BMW in excessively formal attire and smirked at the 12 or so people that had gathered to inspect the property. This property was the dump i previously described so i guess he knew that we were all in for a major shock and probably thought we were ridiculous. So there he was, knocking on the front door waiting for the occupants to let us in. Once we were inside, he just stood there,  at the door, watching with delight at how easily people can be sucked in by false advertising. Not only had he described this place in a very enticing way, he acted as if it was going to be hard to get because they’d had a “large amount of interest”.  At the end of the day, he knew he could just get back into his Beamer and go home to his large house and feel good about misleading poor uni students into potentially spending their earnings on a place that would be better served by a wrecking ball.

 3. Talk to the others who are looking. This just makes it easy to laugh at how ridiculous the house was, once you leave and walk back to your cars, and also confirms that it really was as bad as u thought it was.

CONCEPT:  5/5   – actually looking at a house can provide you with a deep insight into what you can get for the money you are willing to pay and also allows you some fun stories to relay to others when conversations get dull… “hey (insert name), have you ever been house hunting?”

INNOVATION: 2/5 – not really a new concept as such, just provides a new way of looking at estate agents and their consciences.

SATISFACTION:  4/5 - I thoroughly enjoy looking at these dumps. It makes you realise just how lucky you are with what you’ve got. And on a selfish note, you get to laugh and be completely stunned at how some people actually live.  A 5/5 would be actually finding a house to live in.

EXECUTION: 3 /5 – Finding the place can be a challenge, but after careful planning and mapping, it can be an adventure into new places.

FUN FACTOR:  2/5 – Whilst it is fun to look at squalor,  i can think of many other things i’d much rather do, like sticking my head in the freezer on a hot day.

OVERALL:  6/10 – These excursions can be fun, particuarly when with friends or family who are generally very clean people. You get some very priceless expressions.

 This is the house that Jack built (or needs to demolish)

altissimo does my head in!

Its just one of those things i wish i learnt many many years ago. 

i dont play tenor but u get the idea. actually u probably all know what it sounds like anyway seeing as the vast majority of you have been near a saxophone trying to extend their range.

Mick’s got me learning a Sonata by Margaret Sutherland and its got a very high sextuplet run in it which i’m finding difficult to read let alone attempt to play.  The rest of the piece isnt too bad, actually its qute reasonable and when he told me to learn it i just thought, “ok, give me a week or so”

3 weeks later and i’m stuck on that STUPID run!!! gah!!!! just play already!

In other news, i have discovered that the back right side of my gum is splitting to make way for a tooth. At least i think it’s a tooth…It sure feels like one. i’m off to the dentist on monday to see if my fears will be confirmed.  If my wisdom teeth have decided to appear after 3 years of resting in my jaw near a nerve causing previous dentists to not want to take them out i will not be happy! in fact;

imagine the computer is the dentist and the fat man is me. Not literally though. And i probably wouldn’t do that in reality. But anyway, i’ll be annoyed. It possibly explains a few issues i’ve been having lately that have just sort of appeared with the splitting gum. I squeak. Its as if i’m biting on the reed while i’m playing which i most certainly am NOT doing! I can’t figure it out! I hate teeth, so if i cant get rid of this squeal and i’m forced to go study something else i can guarantee you it wont be dentistry!

There’s a girl who plays trumpet at college and she just got her wisdom teeth taken out and she’s not allowed to play for a few weeks… in other words, she sits in class and then leaves, no practising, no lessons, no bands…. BORING!!!

OOOOoooh and to make playing even more fun, my ligature is crap! I borrowed michael’s and i realised just how crap mine actually is! So now i have to spend more money and time in the city because its not just something i can buy and assume will play well. Thats where i went wrong before. I bought it through recommendations and a need for a quick fix. ARGH!

so i’m going to go make a salad coz cooking doesnt require skill!