Well here goes my next paycheck:

Anthropologie Babergh Dress, $188

The price makes me cringe, but the material and details make the dress worth it. Thoughts?

By the way, I've been great! Perhaps too busy, but my filled up schedule just makes the week go by faster, and I feel like I earn more after working so hard. I'm learning so much from Tom Carr, the School of Music's new sound engineering guy, who taught at Berklee College of Music. I've been managing the recording studio here and have been working many concerts -- I finally feel like I am getting the education I expected when I first got to college, and this happy feeling couldn't have come soon enough! I am right where I want to be. ^_^

I am now co-principle of Symphony's viola section, working on Bach's 2nd violin partita (arr. for viola) and Miklos Rozsa's Intermezzo for viola. I've been taking lots of pastoral pictures of some great scenery, and I've been working on some new dresses that I think will go great this Fall. Grisha and I are doing well, and my friends are so good to me.

I used to think that I was growing up too fast, but now I think I am doing okay. But it's also my favorite time of the year, and I'm probably just falling in love all over again. Ah, Fall!

Photos of memory and the process of songwriting

1. My room; 2. My room; 3. Justin's farm in New Market; 4. Justin's farm in New Market; 5. Justin's farm in New Market; 6. Justin's farm in New Market; 7. County fair; 8. Grisha in the attic; 9. Katie and I, listening to Abba; 10. Concert hall

I was cleaning out my computer and found a few photos that I thought were beautiful, either by the composition or the meaning behind the event. Together, these photos probably will not make sense, but I like it that way. Life does not make sense.

---EDIT --

The other day while at work I was thinking about a song on mandolin. When I came home I picked up my mandolin and starting playing the chords, and as it turned out the words I conjured up in my head did not fit the actual chords when sung out loud. I didn't feel like the combination of words and music were speaking the same language, or communicating the same message, making the entire creation ineffective. I'm still searching for a formula, and I don't mean that I want my music to be formulaic, but that I want my music to communicate emotions in the most turbulent and unexpected way possible. How does one compose a piece that when exposed to the ears the listener feels like he has been suspended in space and time while colliding into a wall of nothingness?