Birthday Surprise!

Yesterday I had a wonderful birthday...which included getting poked by a lot needles!  After a ballet lesson in the morning, followed by lunch with my Mom and two friends from church, I went to get a tetanus shot in my right arm (which is very sore today!).  As soon as I got home that afternoon, my friend Stephanie called me and told me I needed to come over for "a thing".  

So I drove over to her house. Steph and her husband Rick took me to the mall...and we walked around for a bit looking for the place where "the thing" was (I had no idea what it was going to be).  Soon she turned into a little jewelry store called "Claire's", walked up to the counter, and said to the woman there, "This young lady is having a birthday today and she would probably like to get her ears pierced."  

"Stephanie!!" I gasped in surprise, and slapped her in the behind. 

 "What???" she said, "I thought you wanted to!"  

I had told Stephanie in some other conversation we had earlier this month that I had had my ears pierced as a child, but I ended up getting an infection/allergic reaction after I didn't take out a certain pair of earrings for a couple of months (I was nine!).  My ears actually grew around the backs of the earrings, and after discovering that I couldn't get my earrings out one day, my mom had to dig them out with a pin.  After the traumatic experience, I have not worn earrings ever since, and the holes in my ears closed up. So I told Steph that I had been thinking about getting them re-pierced for a long time, but never had the gumption to go and do it. 

So she helped me.  After walking around the store for a while saying things like, "Should I do it? I'm afraid! What if I cry?" (to which Stephanie replied, "I will hold your hand!"), I finally decided to go ahead with it. 

It actually didn't hurt nearly as badly as I remember it hurting the first time when I was nine (actually it hurt much less than the tetanus shot I had gotten earlier that morning!).  Maybe that was because I had my ears pierced before, so the cartilage was not as difficult to go through as it was the first time.  Or maybe because when you are only nine you are more sensitive to pain, who knows?  Anyway it wasn't bad at all. 

Tonight I made my Mom take a few pictures of me to show off the gold stud in my ear lobe (which I have to wear for the next six to eight weeks before I can change it!)

So here is my new ear.  Pretty?  

My birthday full of needles!  

  To finish off my birthday celebrations, today my sister Rachel took me shopping for a new pair of jeans, and tonight my family went out to dinner.

 So that was my wonderful birthday!

New Video!

I've been working on a new project for the last couple of weeks. For quite some time I have really been wanting to learn how to create "professional" sounding recordings.  I want to be able to record my own songs that I write and have them be really high quality.   I decided that maybe the best way to practice that would be to try to re-create some popular songs that I like from the radio.  So my first is this:   "Gravity" by Sarah Bareilles.  

I know the recording isn't totally professional yet, but I think it's a pretty good start.  Hopefully I can only get better from here, right?

Two weeks

I can't believe that in only two weeks I will move to San Francisco!!!

My dad is going to drive down with me on the 10th of August. We will rent a car, and then he will fly back on August 12th to Montana.   We are driving because I want to bring my electric piano with me, as well as my window air conditioning unit and a couple of little appliances (my toaster, rice cooker, etc.). 

I wish I had more time to practice before I go, but I guess it will have to be enough.  This summer has gone by very quickly, but I have taken some time off from practicing so hard and it has been one of the more relaxing summers I have had in a looong time.   I think I needed the break.

I have some new songs I have been trying to get recorded but my software keeps having problems when I try to mix down the final mix.  I'm hoping when I go to San Francisco someone will be able to help me with it. I got a new video camera about a week ago, too, that plays miniDV's.   I got it because I want to upload some of my old performancees from miniDV to Youtube.  I haven't figured out how to get it all connected yet, but hopefully soon.

Tonight I'm going to go and sing karaoke with my friend Steph, (the one who just got married).  That will be fun - my first time ever to go out for karaoke night.

Bye bye!  

New Website

My old website host, which I have had for the past six or seven years (Microsoft Office Live), recently stopped offering free website hosting.  So my website was shut down (because I didn't want to pay for their "pro membership".      So I have been in the process of finding a new free website hosting service, and I decided to go with Google sites.   Now I finally have it basically set up, and after much ado have figured out how to direct my own domain name (www.jacquelynweitz.com) to my new website as well.

So you can visit it here!  www.jacquelynweitz.com 

I decided to try adding Google Adsense to my website and blog for the first time. Who knows?  Maybe I will earn $0.25 now and then if someone clicks on an ad.

I still need to figure out how to optimize my site so that people will find it in Google search results.  But for now I am taking a break because I have been working on it all morning and my brain is fried!

Enjoy!

New reflections

http://jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2012/07/seeking-truth.html

Yoga Yay!

So, here is my first blog post which also contains... a VLOG post!      I have just recently started to be able to do a forarm scorpion pose without assistance from the wall... which makes me happy.

Here is a video of me holding the pose for a full minute:

This morning at four A.M. my family and I returned from Cooperstown, North Dakota, where we gave a fundraising concert for the Cooperstown Museum, as well as a memorial for my step-Grandfather who passed away two years ago.  My sister Rachel, Daniel Montoya (her boyfriend), and I sang popular, country, and folk music, and Rachel and I played some classical piano pieces on an 1863 rectangular Steinway grand piano.   It was an intense weekend...it is a ten hour drive from Billings to Cooperstown.  And then a ten-hour drive back again.   But it was a good experience.   I improvised accompaniments for myself on some songs I hadn't performed before, like "Some Enchanted Evening," and "Red River Valley". 

I'm thinking maybe to make some money when I move to San Francisco in August I might look for a job playing/singing at a restaurant.   I think my improv skills are starting to be solid enough that I could be passable.    It would force me to keep working on it regularly, as well, and expanding my song repertoire.  

Do you know that in only one month I will move to San Francisco?   And then I will live there for two (or at least two) full years.    I feel so strange!  But so happy.   San Francisco has been very good to me so far.

Now to figure out what to do with the remaining month before I leave... I have a friend in Texas that wants to make some recordings of me, if I go down there.  But I'm not sure if I want to take a couple of weeks right now when I am about to move, or if I should just stay here and practice and get ready for the placement exams and auditions I will have to take in August for the classes and ensembles at the conservatory.    I also need to do some things like clean out my messy room, haha.  Plus if I leave I will not be able to keep teaching my students who are taking lessons over the summer so I will lose money.   But, on the other hand, I will have some good new recordings.   My friend Matt was a recording engineer for the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas, so he knows what he is doing.

Lots to think about.

For now, I think I'm going to go practice some yoga. 

Little life of Mine

Our lives are so small, aren't they?  When I think of this big earth, and all the billions of people in it... and unknown numbers who have already lived and died their brief little lives.  And I only know so very few of them.

And the world is so old.  And I am so young, but I will not be here long. 

Our lives are so little. 

Reflections from my recent first visits to the temple:

http://jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2012/06/so-i-went-to-temple-two-days-ago.html

http://jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2012/06/another-day-at-temple.html

A New Day

Click here to go to my reflections post about today:    http://www.jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2012/06/celestial-room-inside-billings-montana.html


The Billings Temple.

Summer plans

Time goes by so fast and it seems so long since I have posted, once again.   But summer is here, and soon I will be moving back to San Francisco.

I have so many plans, it seems, and so little time to execute them.   But I trust that I will have time to do the things that are most important.

I have been thinking a lot about the things I want to do, and recordings I want to make... and I have been considering starting a couple of new Youtube channels - one for children's music, and perhaps one for religious music.   I love both genres but it seems strange to mix everything together in one channel. 

Next month my sister, Rachel, her boyfriend, Daniel, and I will be giving a show in Cooperstown, North Dakota.   We will play the piano, guitar, and sing songs, both popular and classical, as a fundraiser for the museum there.   My great grandfather has some mechanical traveling shows on display at the museum, and my step-grandfather is buried in Cooperstown, so they asked us to perform.    I am working on resurrecting my second Hungarian Rhapsody of Liszt for the performance.

A couple of new quotes on my reflections blog:

http://www.jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2012/06/beautiful-quote.html

http://www.jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html

Alright, time to go practice.