peering out from my coffee cup

Somthing about getting up this early sometimes makes me feel kind of introspective. I've been getting up at 5 this quarter still to have coffee with Anna, but most of the time I am so tired that I have to go back to bed when she leaves; I get too tired and my eyes hurt and everything makes me feel like having a nervous breakdown, so I try to remedy that when I get the chance. But last night I got something close to enough sleep, and I have to leave soon myself to cram for a lesson, so here I am.
Lauren posted one of these in her blog, so I'm going to be a copycat :-)

Things I feel good about:
1) I am almost done with Civic, and then I get nearly a month off.
2) The conductor at my school told me the other day that "he liked the way I play the viola, and that was his final decision." I'm not sure if he was being entirely sincere or what exactly that meant, but it was at least encouraging.
3) I checked out a book recently called "Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses" that sounds fascinating.
4) All the people in my new quartet are super awesome and nice, and we all get along really well. And we're playing great music!
5) It's been mostly sunny lately :-)
6) I've been much better about practicing on my own this week, making sure I make the time to actually do that.
7) I will have at least one job next year for sure.
8) I've been oddly freaked out lately by the fact that I'm getting grey hairs, and finally I feel a little less weird about that.
9)I got a letter from Greta recently for the first time in a while.
10) Soon, I won't have to play Mahler 1 again for a long, long time.

Reasonable goals for the semester:
1) Have a decent graduate recital
2) Not get chastised by the Civic conductor again
3) Finish my damn cookbook zine! It's all printed out, I just ran out of energy to gluestick it.
4) See Jesse and Lauren maybe?
5) Not spend too much money either at restaurants or bars
6) But, visit a few more of the places that get good reviews in the weekly Reader
7) Visit Milwaukee, see the state of Wisconsin for the first time
8) Use my Nalgene bottle without letting it sit full for too long and get gross-smelling again
9) Play the whole Brahms quartet that my group is working on
10) Finish at least a few more good books than I have so far

Fantastical goals for the semester
1) See Tegan and Sara after they miraculously decide to re-route to Chicago on their tour
2) Play my whole recital for memory
3) Play even one piece on my recital from memory :-)
4) Write and publish a paper on RuPaul and the gender issues in his music
5) Control my cheese-eating mania
6) Actually talk to any of the drag kings
7) Visit Erica in Argentina
8) Get a mohawk, despite my highly visible and rather formal job
9) Watch Democracy Now! every single day
10) Become a gourmet chef