Rock it

I am finishing my doctorate in piano. Which should, one would hope, make me a pretty good one. Now, I would love to be a music director on Broadway, which include directing and possibly arranging, along with playing the piano. All of which I can manage since most musicals are written as classical music, on good old paper. I also love pop and rock music, which I don't even dare to wish ever play for, as it involves skills it seems most human beings get that classically trained musicians don't: playing by ear and making one's own part.
I've always figured that a good way into it for me would be to take piano jazz lessons, as I would have to make up my own parts. but at least I would get charts to give me somewhat of a base. My boyfriend is a jazz composer so he tried to get me to read some charts from the real book, which got me pretty discouraged pretty fast. I can plunk my way through a song, but I am good enough a musician to know what it is supposed to sound like, and that Mozart style in not the answer.
A doctorate keeps one fairly busy so I keep on procrastinating and not take piano jazz lessons (which actually was one of the reasons I moved to Boston in the first place, not so much for my doctorate in BU, but for possible private lessons with teaches from Berklee).
I got this job in the theatre where I am now, playing musical theatre, which should have been like the rest of what I do, until the first rehearsal happened.
Turned out that the whole show was based on songs by Buddy Holly, and that the music director can't read music and couldn't write charts, and did everything by ear. He played us the first tune, fully anticipating all of us musicians to pick it up, which made all of us professionals pretty mad, but it's not something you can ever mention in a professional situation, so everybody tried to make it work. We spent much more time on every song than we would have had he been prepared, and it took a few days to realize that I was doing fine, and now, five weeks in with one week left of this seven-performance-a-week show (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsieRQ9NZN4) , I can proudly say that I rock!
I can read charts much better that I could, and even better, I now know that Real Book charts are actually much harder that a lot of charts I will ever encounter. I now know that I can absolutely pick up a lot of pop and rock songs by ear, thanks to my classical background in music forms and theory, and know my way around the piano enough to know what options are available to me.
Pat of me was afraid that even if I played the right notes in the right style, classical music would have molded me so much that I couldn't possibly be taken seriously playing pop and rock, and that audiences would realize that I was an impostor. Turns out that I can dance with my shoulders when I play, connect with the audience, sit on a high tool, and play standing up during solos. Who knew?
I am glad I finally do!

(Photo from http://www.vinmag.com/online/media/gbu0/prodlg/AP665-buddy-holly--rock-n-roll-concert-poster-1950s.jpg)

My Mayonnaise

I've grown up eating my grand-mother and my mother's mayonnaise, always loving it and taking it for granted. Now that I am far away from them, and that I sworn off high fructose corn syrup a few months ago and that most store bought mayonnaise contain it, I decided that it was time for me to follow the family tradition of homemade mayonnaise. I proudly announced my decision to my wonderful boyfriend who I expected to scream in anticipation, when the truth came to the surface: he had actually never had homemade mayonnaise before (which I wouldn't have guessed as his mother is one of the best cooks I know). The pressure reached a new high. Not only did I have to successfully turn an egg yolk and oil into something of thick consistence, I also had to make it good as to cancel any bit of repulsion on home made mayonnaise in my boyfriend's mind.

I waited for my monthly woman activity to be done, as I had heard that it would curse the oil into staying liquid, and not combine to the egg yolk. I took the egg out of the fridge hours beforehand so it would get to room temperature, reviewed and compared multiple mayonnaise recipes on my two favorite recipe websites, marmiton.org and allrecipes.com. After a strong inner debate, I thought that it would probably make it easier for a first time to go with a whisker instead of my bare hands and a spoon. I realized at the last minute that hadn't taken the mustard out of the fridge and that it was not at room temperature, but decided to brave my fears and get started with it anyways.

I put the egg yolk and the mustard in a bowl, turned the whisker on at the lowest speed, which seemed to be as fast comparatively to what a spoon would have done as a race car would to a regular car. I added some oil and waited with my whisker for the magic to happened. The oil stayed oily while questions raced to my mind: was I supposed to add more oil before it would turn into mayonnaise? Wait until it was mayonnaise to add more? Start over? Drop the whisker and go by hand? I opted for a compromise: I took one of the two whiskers of the whisker machine in hope for better luck, and added more oil.

That's at that point that my boyfriend came in the kitchen loudly dying of hunger and strongly suggesting that store bought mayonnaise was already made and ready to be eaten, so why wait? I looked at my mayonnaise, all oily and liquid, ready to be turned into a vinaigrette, and threw the all thing out.

Mayonnaise is in my genes, I know it, I can feel it. It is calling my name and I will make it. Next time, I will go with no mustard, and by hand. Until then, I will take any suggestion or other mayonnaise horror story if anybody has any!

(Photo from http://www.quenchpad.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/mayonnaise.jpg)

P90X (for Pain 90 times more than you thought existed)

I was in Colorado working in a theatre for May and June and started hiking, which made me realize that I had not worked out in about a year and that I liked it. I had done kickboxing for a while couple years ago and had looked into it again when I moved to Boston, but could not afford it (what cost $150 for a semester of unlimited classes in Western Michigan University costs $200 for one class once a week at Boston University), so I stopped working out. Sure there is the free rec center but I don't really know what to do on my own, how many reps, how much weight, etc. Classes are so much more fun for me, particularly when I get to kick things.

One of the actors in Colorado gave me a workout dvd and I realized that that could possibly be my way back to working out that I could afford. Fast forward back to Boston where my wonderful boyfriend took a few pictures of me that I disliked so much that I ended up being mad at me. Now, I really try to be a good girlfriend and he definitely didn't deserve me taking my frustration with myself on him. That's when I realized that for my own well being (and his), I should really workout.

I looked up workout dvds online and stubbled upon reviews of P90X, all raving about the program. The difference with the other videos is that it is a three-month program, made with 12 dvds. There are three different programs you can follow, with a different order for the dvds. The concept of the trainer, Tony Horton, is to confuse the muscles. The way he goes about it is to have a completely different type of workout every day, an hour a day, six days a week. In the classic program, the first week is made of weight lifting, yoga, kenpo (similar to kickboxing), etc. It works on all aspects of body health: strength, flexibility, resistance, etc.

I had to try it so I ordered it.

While waiting for it to arrive, I found some videos of Billy Banks on Youtube, which are divided in a few videos but make an entire workout (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_playlists&search_query=billy+banks&uni=1). There are maybe four different ones on there, so I did different ones every day, and Billy Banks is one of my new heros. I also got a netflix subscription in the meantime and checked out the workout videos on instant viewing, but was not impressed by any of them, particularly not by the ones by Jillian Michaels who made fun of the people working out with her, and didn't push anybody to go on when they got tired. Those videos seemed to be more about her and how grat she looks than about getting everybody to work out. Billy Banks works you hard, is quite inspirational, and also offers easier and harder alternatives if needed.

P90X finally arrived and I started it last week. I love it, and I can't wait to see my body in three months at the end of the program. I don't find the exercices to be so difficult that I can't find them, but the pain that follows proves that it is working parts of my body that I didn't know existed. Because different parts of the body are worked on each day, each muscle has the time to recover enough to be able to work out once their time comes again.

Tony Horton is a funny guy that, besides his perfectly sculpted body, isn't like other trainers at all. He has quite a goofy side to him, and seems quite happy and open minded. He has different people working behind him for each workout dvd, most of them who were part of the tes group for the program, non professional athletes. For the leg workout, he actually chose to have one of the guys behind him who did the program and is missing a leg, which he uses as proof that anybody can do the exercices.

P90X comes with a lot of nutrition stuff as well, which I am not following, as I do not believe in nutritionism after reading In Defense Of Food by Michael Pollan (more on this wonderful book in another post). The dvds seem to be plenty for me to get ripped and kiss my boyfriend with a smile when he takes pictures of me.

(Photo from http://www.tradevv.com/TradevvImage/productimages/Accept-Paypal-P90X-US-version-high-quality-Extreme-Fitness-Training-System-Brand-New-13DVDs-A317a9.jpg)

Hair practice

My mother has short hair, which she had my entire life. Which means that beside the time whne I was a kid that she put toilet paper in my hair at night to curl my hair for the next day (which I hated, believe it or not), she did not teach me a thing about hair (or make up, or skin care, but those are different topics).

In France, none of my girlfriends did their hair either. We were all following the hippy trend in high school, not having any kind of school celebration, such as graduation, leave alone prom. Then I moved to the US, and started realizing when moving from Michigan to Massachusetts that beautiful hair did not come naturally but was the product of a woman's knowledge. What a concept!

I always wished that hair salons offered classes on how to make one's own hair, until I worked everyday with a young woman my age who had great different hair every day. As I asked her if she could teach me, she mentioned the self hair tutorials of youtube, and there started one of my new obsessions. I watched as many as I could, most of the ones I learned coming from pursebuzz.com. As I discovered the joys of hair curlers, straighteners, anti frizz gel and such, I also came to realize that it all took time, which I didn't have.

Come a few months later and here I am, doing a rock'n roll show about Buddy Holly which plays 7 times a week, where I have an hour call before each show, and nothing else to do then than doing my hair, really. So I set myself a new goal, to do a different hairdo for each day of the show. We are a month in and I have learned much I am sure, altough I will be fully certain of it once I get back to school and have only a regular amount of time to do my hair every morning.

I have realized that hair is as much an accessory as jewelry, and that I can turn any bad hair day into a good hair day. Hair as mainly allowed me to feel more like a woman, not afraid to be beautiful.

I think that it is an uneasy balance to go between learning to be feminine and find oneself beautiful, and looking for acceptance through other people's agreeing on one's looks.

Any woman can spend time on beautiful hair and carry a meanigful conversation.

Bats in Austin, TX

Let's dive in this blog, people!

I just got back from a weekend in Austin, TX, which was my first time there.
What I mean by weekend is actually my two days off, not so much Saturday and Sunday, but actually Monday and Tuesday, as it goes for theatre people.
My wonderful boyfriend and I went to Austin for the first time, and had a really good time. Of course, I knew of Austin as the music capital of the world, which sounds good to any musician I'm sure, but I was really surprised when my boyfriend and I went on a sunset boat cruise that turned unto a bat cruise. It turns out that Austin is the most populated urban environment of the world. Not just Texas, not just the US, but actually the world. We had a really cool young tour guide, that happened to be a biology major at Texas University in Austin, that had answers to all of our questions. It turns out that Austin did not have bats until one of their bridges had to be reinforced, which ended up creating gaps under it of perfect build for bats habitats.

Bats started to move in the city, which the Austin population wanted to get rid of so much that they had petitions against it because they thought that bats would bring along disease. However, that particular kind of bats that lived in the city are small Mexican bats, that are only dangerous if dead and on the ground, and healthy if alive and flying (in other words, it's best not to pick them up to take care of them if found on the street). They are about 1.5 million of them in Austin and people in the city nowadays love them.

They come out of the 1st st. bridge at sunset, flying away from the sun. The population of bats is made of mothers and their newly grown children, while the fathers stay in Mexico. The bats are best seen between May and October I believe, before going back to Mexico. They fly out to get some food, which has to be one third of their body weight. They eat bugs, which was one of the arguments used to make the population of Austin accept them in their city. The best hunters are back to the bridge faster and get the best spot to stay at under the east side of the bridge, while the worst ones are stuck under the middle of the bridge, having to leave it first at sunset, showing the way to the rest of the bats.

They all fly out at the same in a flock before finding their own way, which is the safest way to be for them. When the baby bats are still young, the mothers have to get up to their full body weight to be able to nurse their little one, while their baby stay under the bridge until they learn how to fly. Once the mother comes back, she finds her own baby out of the thousands of babies left under the bridge. If the mother dies, no other bat will take care of the baby bat, and it will die along with its mother.

This was definitely something unexpected and one of the best parts of our visit in Austin.
Check it out when you go!

(Photo from www.moonbattery.com/.../11/ann_richards_ge.html)

A first note for a first blog about firsts and new things

I have been considering writing a blog for a while, but could not think of the common thread between everything that I like. I am a professional musician, so writing about music would have made sense; I love to cook as a hobby, but it's clearly been over done; hair is fun to do, but I don't feel strongly about writing about it every day; tourism was also an option, that I will keep for when I am richer and can afford traveling more than I do now; human behavior interests me a lot too, although I doubt that I know enough to write much about it.

So I came to the conclusion that blogging was not for me.

But here I am blogging.

The epiphany came. New things are my common thread. What I love about music, cooking, hair, tourism and human behavior is the newness of it all. After all, I just got back from my first time in Austin, TX, am currently performing a show of rock'n'roll music which I had never played before, show that allows me to wear my hair in a different 50s fashion style at every day of each show, am making my first pearl onion relish as I am writing, and finally, am creating a blog, which is definitely a first.

My goal with this blog is to share all the new things that get me excited about life: new finds, new foods, new music, first hair, first visits, new thoughts.

A new things is always a first.

Welcome.