Our Senior Jazz Combo at school consists of me (bass), Liz (trumpet), Colin (tenor sax), Crag (piano) and Euan (drums); we originally had a guitarist, but he’s gradually dropped out, either because of lack of interest or laziness. Or both. Point is, we decided to busk on the band rotunda in the middle of Howick’s main street as part of our band practise for a paid gig we’ve been booked for on Friday 27th at a rotary club. We drifted in at about 8.30am for half an hour’s warm up, and somehow, miraculously, we made over three hundred dollars between 9am-12pm. It ended up being $64 or approx. $21/hr each, which honestly isn’t bad for a band practise.

Thanks to that though, we’ve now been booked to play for: another rotary club, a 1st xi soccer game (which we probably won’t end up doing), the restaurant across the street from the band rotunda… and possibly more, I wouldn’t be surprised if our dear HOD forgot to mention it; after all, I had barely stepped into the music department for two seconds last Wednesday before he bombarded me with:
“Where on earth have you been?!”
(me) “Uhh… what do you mean… where have I been?”
“Production orchestra band practise! You haven’t been to ANY!”
“What production?!”
“The Sound of Music of course!” (it’s the school musical this year, it’s on next week, might I mention).
“But sir, I’m not in the production band this year?”
“Yes you are!”
“You never told me.”
“Well I’m telling you now! Here, come get the music…” and with that he headed into the office, rummaged around and shoved a tatty booklet of music under my nose.

I immediately tried to explain to him – continuously, for three days – that I couldn’t do it (1/ because I’d like a life this year; 2/ I have waaay too much stuff on at school – I’m spending up to 12hrs at school, 6.45am-6.45pm & 3/ it’s bound to clash with something) but to no avail. So now I’m stuck with spending my next two weekends as well as my already extremely-long weekdays at school. Argh. Not to mention, I had to spin around in circles asking four other people until I finally found someone to cover me on the night of the 27th, since dear Sir is completely ignorant and says that production takes priority over our gig.

It’s so easy to sit here on the couch, with my laptop on my lap, half watching/listening to tv in the background, mobile phone next to me, the kitchen (and the junk food it entails) just a couple of metres around the corner. That’s how I’ve spent the past twelve hours apart from sleeping (right here on the couch) and watching the Roland Garros Women’s Finals. I’ve been trying to upgrade my mum’s site from WP 2.5 to 2.5.1 but it’s been such a pain that I just re-installed WP altogether (she had no content on it anyway).

Thankfully the All Blacks defeated Ireland, 21-11 last night in Wellington. It was a must-win game, so now we all finally have a rugby match to talk about, since the entire embarrassing World Cup fiasco last year. I didn’t actually watch it LIVE though, I saw half of the replay a couple of hours after the game, since I was at a friend’s house watching movies. We watched The Brothers Grimm, in which I thought Heath Ledger’s role was very Jack Sparrow-like… kind of insane, out of it, loopy… And yikes, I’m so incoherent right now, I had so much to say before I started blogging, none of which I actually ended up saying.

This book from Pearce was one of the highlights from my birthday party last weekend. It’s also probably the only gift I’m going to blog about – not because the others were of any less sentimental value, but simply because… well heck, I’m not sure.

To be perfectly honest I haven’t gotten past the second page, school’s been an absolute nightmare and I now four early mornings out of five on which I have to be at school at 6.45am and 7.20am. I am not a morning person. Regardless, I plan to finish this book hopefully sometime soon, and embark on writing my own list; but not in a “soundtrack to my life” context, more so of a “soundtrack to my present point in life”, if that somehow makes sense? Already I’m annoyed that I left my ipod in the car, meaning I can’t doze off with the sleep timer on.

I must say that I’m thoroughly surprised by Nellie Furtado’s “I’m like a Bird” being featured on Hornby’s list of 31. I suppose I can see the attraction, but I would never have thought the guy who wrote High Fidelity (which, I admittedly haven’t read but have only seen the movie) would put it on such a selective list. I remember receiving the CD single as a 10th birthday present and being disappointed because I only liked the song the first time I’d heard it on the radio, and there I was seven years ago, now stuck with a CD of it which I was often asked whether or not I liked.

Irrelevantly, believe it or not I actually haven’t bothered to take anything more than a pxt of my new car. I haven’t found the entire ordeal that exciting because I’m still feeling extremely sad and guilty about my old car. But the good news is, now I have a driving permit to drive to school for four days of the week due to all my co-cirricular involvements (our school has a bunch of strict policies, driving to school without a permit can result in suspension or worse).

Life is currently a graph full of extreme high and low points, so I think I’m going to veer away from blogging about it. But I will say that I finally got a car today. It’s great to get wheels back. Living in Auckland without a car is like… being legless.

Completely irrelevantly, I always wonder how people write their emails. Especially ones to people you don’t know/don’t know very well – the best I can usually come up with for a start is “Hi there” or “Hey/Hi [maybe insert name]” – I always think that those sound pretty lame, but it’s what I’ve always received and I honestly cannot think of anything better.

Then, once I’m done with the content of the email, I’d often end on a:
“Thanks,
Amanda”

… but then if the “thanks” wouldn’t be relevant I’d have to come up with something else… or just my name. (Just to clarify, I’m not referring to emails to friends.) Soo yeah, I’d really like to invade other people in/outboxes and see what happens there.