Winter. yuck.

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To be honest, I don't like winter very much.  It's cold and especially it's cold in Asia because it's the land that useful technology forgot.  Sure, they can build robots that win chess games, but central heating? insulation? hot water?  Not so much.  They also don't seem to have plows.

My fellow Japanese teachers often ask me questions like, "is it this cold where you come from?"  "is there this much snow in America?"  And really, the answer is, "It's colder and there's more snow, but...  It's different because we have systems and tools in place to deal with it."  But they don't really seem to get it because they're always impressed, 'wow it's colder?!"  "how do you drive with so much snow on the road?"

It's called a plow and it's people getting up at 4am (or even 3am) to push the snow off the roads so we can go to school and work safely.  Sometimes they even go over the same road multiple times to keep the road clear and safe...

lol.  hate to complain or anything...

On Thursday we had a snow storm.  Which could have been great if they had cancelled school, but I think they were a little embarrassed about cancelling it last time when there was no snow, so we had school.  By the end of the work day 4ish (for me) it had snowed about 8-9 inches, which is higher than the front of my car.  To  finish my day of work we got to shovel the parking lot! oh yay.  And even then my tiny car couldn't get a grip and the teacher's had to push my car to get it moving.  Following was a long, slow drive home.  A drive that usually takes about 11 minutes, now took about 40. JOY.

On the bright side the longer drives since real winter has begun do mean I get to listen to music a lot longer in the morning.  I just have to wake up earlier and put up with stupid people in cars doing stupid things.

The night after the storm everything froze.  Including the lock on my car door.  Luckily I had, showing some amazing forethought I didn't know I had, brought out some hot water with me and was able to use it to unfreeze the lock and locking mechanism.  Go me.

ANYWAY...Enough about the weather.

There's not actually much else to talk about?

except.
wait.
I BOUGHT a PIANO!

I'm super excited about it, and it's not even here yet. 
It's not actually that exciting because it's really just a cheap electric piano (I live in apartment with paper walls, require headphones).  well, cheap-ish.  lol.

If you're vaguely in the know, it's a Korg SP170s.  Korg isn't famous for it's pianos like Steinway or Yamaha or Kawai, but it's very popular with the electronic instrument group.  I read a ton of reviews about it and listened to samples on youtube.  Korg pianos are used by most of the Vkei artists I know and love (as most other bands I've ever seen actually use a keyboard), probably in large part because they are super great to connect up to computers and midi programs.  i.e they're good for composing and songwriting.

The only thing I'm not confident about, is the feel of the keys.  They're weighted, which means they're supposed to react like a real piano and you're supposed to be able to feel the hammer action.  More specifically this specific keyboard is supposed to have very realistic hammer action because the feel is suppose to simulate the gradual change in a real piano from low range to the high range.  I hope it's actually good, ordering things online is so scary.

But who am I kidding? anything will be better than the nothing I've lived with for a year!!

And I'm in love with this music video right now (because even classical musicians deserve PVs!!!):

Click to view

Anderson & Roe are a musical duo who began their duo-ing during their years at Julliard (they're kind of still up and coming, almost there, in the classical realms).  And this song!!  The first time I heard the Erl King was in Junior High when my band teacher played it for us.  I fell in love with the story, but of course, I've always been into the creepy fairy tale type stories... (this is my lure to get you to look it up, did it work?).

--if you want to hear a version with the words I totally recommend checking out Thomas Allen's version, but the words are in German, so it might not help you a lot.  But it is pretty cool to hear the baritone singing along with Berlioz' arrangement for orchestra.--

And lastly,
The NEW GIRL arrived and has begun teaching.  She's nice.  Younger than me.  And likes asian dramas and KPop.   So we get along pretty well.