Things I Did This Weekend

Friday - Saw my first opera ever, "Tosca." Loved it. It was so deliciously over-the-top. The villain was great. Hanging out with the gang was a lot of fun. If only parking downtown wasn't such a hassle.

Saturday - Went to Greg Papst's memorial service. He knew my parents, was my first director at CYT, and beyond that was one of the warmest people I've ever met. It's difficult to describe Greg. He's one of those people you'd just have to meet. Larger than life is about the closest you can get. Having taken several classes from his wife, Kari, I wanted to go and express my support and condolences to the family. He was taken so suddenly, a serious diagnosis of stomach cancer back in August... There is one less amazing Godly person in the world now.

I also went to the SJO's tribute to Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, which was awesome. I hadn't been to an SJO concert in a really long time, and my friend Christina really wanted to go so I was happy to oblige. The first half of the night was awesome. I ran into half of my old high school jazz band standing in line to get tickets! These were kids who were playing in the band as junior highers and freshmen when I was a senior. It was so cool to see them still involved in music and jazz and to be spending their night at the concert. Then, we ended up getting in for free! We already had one comp ticket courtesy of Brent, but the lady at the ticket window literally wouldn't let us pay for the second. She just told us to go in and enjoy the show! Wow! Then, I ended up running into Mr. Griffing, who I had sat next to at Greg Papst's memorial service. Weird. The concert was amazing. I wish the second half of our night had gone as well. Christina wanted to get dessert, so I realized that Ella's was just a block away and since we hadn't had to pay for our tickets I didn't mind paying $5 for dessert. Unfortunately they charged us a $5 cover charge which I wasn't expecting, so we ended up paying a lot more than we expected. Poor Christina's dessert wasn't even that good. AND there was this weird drunk guy sitting at the table next to us who was dancing around and being a spaz... Plus we realized it was a lot later than we thought because of Daylight Savings time. Oh well.

Sunday - Whitworth Orchestra Concert. It was all the winners from the concerto competition, and was pretty impressive. The orchestra has really improved since it started, and the concerto winners all did very well.

So, lots of music, as usual. I just can't stop. What will I do when I can no longer get student ticket prices?