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What makes Gabby happy on this specific day:

1. MUSIC!

a. Flute/piccolo- Well, I always love my flute. My solo competition is now officially two weeks away, and I'm feeling awfully well about my piece. If I get a chance, I'll see if I can finally figure out how to record myself, and it might not be the best of sound quality, but you can at least hear what my flute solo sounds like. I might or might not do the piccolo solo. Maybe I'll do the one part I have in band for our "Folk Song Suite" I swear, that piece was written for piccolo. xD But yeah, both my flute and piccolo solos are coming along.

Here are other people playing my solos:

Flute: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cyxg7wxvtAU
Piccolo: Movement III (I can't find the second movement which I'm also doing) - http://youtube.com/watch?v=wkfkZgEhH44 (why can't I have my own back up orchestra gonk )
Vocal: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RabAEnOUtX0 (again, why can't I have my own back up orchestra?)

b. Sweeney Todd. My friend burned me the album, and I've fallen in love with it. We watched it online (actually through Gaia, someone has it on their vj), and I did say "EEWWW" through the whole thing, but I'll make Anthony my hubby!!!!! Muahahah! xD Jk...he's my friend's husband, but the actor's my husband. xD I think I got the better end of the deal.

c. See music on profile: I love that music. I mean, mainly the ones that have the orchestral backup to them.

2. I made my first website layout! I mean, its not completely done, but its actually quite nice. I was just experimenting for our key club website (so I could make my own and everything), and I made a decent one. I might actually just get a freewebs account so I can put it up. I have some finishing touches to it, as well as making more pages. If I'm going to make a website, gosh darn it I'm going to make more than one page (instead of the stupid school limiting me to one xP).

3. Taltos by Stephen Brust (I believe). My friend lent it to me to read, I read it a few years ago, and now she has the whole series, so I'm rereading it so I can read the whole series.

4. 4 day weekend!

5. Under the music category add borrowing teacher's piccolo...I mean really really nice piccolo! =O It's amazing!

And many more things. I'm just in a good mood in general. I've read a few mangas via mangavolume.com. I'm working on finishing this one that's about this girl being the reincarnation of a demon, and this guy trying to kill her and everything, it feels like all they do is run around, they hate eachother, then they find something out, then they love each other, then they find something more out, they love each other even more, then she specifically finds something out, and tries to run away from him. I'm amused by it so that's good ^_^.

There was another one I read, I found it was highly inappropriate for my taste (made me kind of uncomfortable...hehe), but it was also interesting. It was kind of a spin on Little Red Riding Hood. I really liked the main plot of it. So, basically, I guess this angel of the light falls for an angel of the dark...they have a child, and for some reason she's been banished to our realm. So, she's a ten year old girl in our realm who cannot die. The guy who takes her in gives her clothes, and so once all dressed up she looks like Little Red Riding Hood. She doesn't have her memory of her past life, all she knows is that she desires to be eaten by 'the wolf' and that's the only way she can die. The plot starts off with not knowing anything about any of this, just thinking its another gore book, but then a bunch of chapters in it gets more complex, and I wound up almost crying by the end. But like I said, it was kind of inappropriate for my tastes...a lot of it couldn't have been cut out of it.

So, here's a long post on random things, and why I'm in a good mood. ^_^

It was pretty good indeed. The author herself has won a pulitzer before and you can tell - at least from the fact that her character comes off knowing exactly what it is she does and can explain to the reader in detail about it (she's a book conservationist - doesn't restore them, just repairs them and treats them enough that they won't fall apart while on display). The narrative jumps through time - starting with WWII, moving on back as the main character discovers more clues as to where this famous, ancient manuscript has been in its travels. I'm just a little disappointed with the plot of the main character compared to the plot of the characters whose lives the Sarajevo Haggadah touched (however briefly). But over all it was a good read...

I don't know if I could narrow it down, since I tend to branch out a little (one kind of music/book/movie only would be so boring :/), but I do always delight in finding an interesting-looking vampire story. One where the vampire isn't just an Anne Rice copy, beautiful and elegant and horribly full of angst, but they twist it up a bit and put humor or make the vampires monsters instead of people who just happen to drink blood. I think a lot of writers tend to forget that vampires were meant to be monsters when they were developed. The blood is the life, and here's something that is coming to take it away (ha ha hee hee ho ho) from you - most likely to leave you a pale corpse who won't be coming back to life.

I like looking at the adaptations people come out with, but I'm not always happy with it. Romance novels (bleeeh) tend to get the vampire and the female lead in the same situations every story, no matter who the author is. And instead of vampire, it's "Carpathian". Stephanie Meyer's series fell short mainly because it's fallen into this rut of "Oh, Bella's in trouble again but there's another book so we know she lives." You Suck by Christopher Moore has an entire tiny chapter devoted to the main character taking his last dump and asking his vampire girlfriend if he should save it (I really need to continue this). And then there's the issue of a book actually dealing with some of the things that come up when a mortal dates a vampire. For one thing, no matter how much the characters love each other there's going to be some strain in the relationship, since, well...one drinks blood, and the other one has blood.

Phillip Glass is an excellent composer to send you to sleep. xd
I've never really been into minimalistic music, but I think tubular bells was minimalistic. The whole song is about 25 minutes long, but it's still good.
I prefer classical guitar most, then orchesteral(sp?) second best. There are quite a few pieces written for the kind of war typw settings, which are cool.
but I do love the calming music, it's needed alot in the world these days.
The substitute music teachers I got never liked me, 'cause I was beter than them.
And the girls in class never liked me either, 'cause I got all the boys attention. xd

I'm in a band now! YAY!

Yea, I keep forgetting to look for Yarbro/Yarbo's book when I think of books I need to read. It's probably somewhere on Amazon, but I doubt the bookstores would have it, since so few people know about it.

Anne Rice...I'm sorry but she gets downright boring at times. :/ But that's my opinion, and as Dennis Miller says...I could be wrong.