Today was my lucky day!
I have tried not to use this journal as a way to document my experiences...it's more of a way for me to express my thoughts. I'm going to take another departure from this line and talk about how my day progressed today. For Harry Potter fans, someone may have slipped some Felix Felicis in my cereal this morning.
It all starts with me getting out of bed this morning. I set my alarm for 7:45, hoping to get some work done before my 10:35 chemistry lecture. I ended up getting out of bed (due to my laziness and ability to ignore my alarm clock) at 9:55, and just barely making it to class. Overall, chemistry was uneventful, with me spending about the requisite 15-20 minutes of the lecture asleep. After class, I came home, grabbing a sandwich on the way, and enjoyed my lunch while watching the end of Batman on HBO37.
My plan for the rest of the day involved me studying for physics in the afternoon, maybe taking a little nap, and then heading back to campus at 7:30 to go to an Operation Smile lecture on correcting craniofacial disorders with innovative methods. Little did I know I'd be getting that fateful call at 2:30 today...
Before the call at 2:30, I got a reply on the volunteer position I interviewed for on Monday, asking me to come in Friday morning at 9 to help out their bioinformatics guy with some database issues they're having. So I have a volunteer gig for this term...good stuff. Then Stacy called me...this was the fateful call. She informed me that her parents were not happy about having to drive home to Cornwall after the Billy Joel concert they had tickets for at Madison Square Garden, had given them to her, and she asked me if I wanted to go. How do you say no to a Billy Joel concert? I was obsessed with him throughout high school and part of college, and consider him to be one of the strongest musical influences in my life. While I hadn't really listened to any of his stuff lately (maybe because I overdid it a bit previously), I still am a big fan. Regardless, I had decided that I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a concert ticket since I had seen him a few times already and it was music that I wasn't listening to a lot anymore.
OH MY GOD. The concert was incredible. I really had forgotten how awesome of a show this man puts on. He always has the absolute best musicians on stage with him...everyone plays every instrument. He masterfully plays the crowd like he plays the piano, choosing exactly the right song to play at exactly the right time. He is a born performer, and his on-stage dynamic and energy are mind-blowing. From the first song through the last encore, he reached out and touched the heart and soul of almost every member of that audience. His music is the soundtrack of my life, at least the growing up part of it, and I felt myself tearing up and feeling a crazy rush of emotions - every song he played touched on an association I made between that song and a part of my life. When he finished "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," and went into his sadly required final song "Piano Man," I felt as if I had gone through an emotional upheaval, but loved every instant of it.
Someday I will be on stage, performing a song that I've written in front of a lot of people, and the singer will just stop - and the crowd will sing the song to us. I felt giddy as I sang the background vocals to "River of Dreams." I screamed "Keepin' the Faith" at the top of my lungs. I'd forgotten that I knew every lyric to "We Didn't Start the Fire." And hopefully, someday, if I can string some lucky days together like this one, someone will walk away from my band's show humming my music, after having sung it to me.
It all starts with me getting out of bed this morning. I set my alarm for 7:45, hoping to get some work done before my 10:35 chemistry lecture. I ended up getting out of bed (due to my laziness and ability to ignore my alarm clock) at 9:55, and just barely making it to class. Overall, chemistry was uneventful, with me spending about the requisite 15-20 minutes of the lecture asleep. After class, I came home, grabbing a sandwich on the way, and enjoyed my lunch while watching the end of Batman on HBO37.
My plan for the rest of the day involved me studying for physics in the afternoon, maybe taking a little nap, and then heading back to campus at 7:30 to go to an Operation Smile lecture on correcting craniofacial disorders with innovative methods. Little did I know I'd be getting that fateful call at 2:30 today...
Before the call at 2:30, I got a reply on the volunteer position I interviewed for on Monday, asking me to come in Friday morning at 9 to help out their bioinformatics guy with some database issues they're having. So I have a volunteer gig for this term...good stuff. Then Stacy called me...this was the fateful call. She informed me that her parents were not happy about having to drive home to Cornwall after the Billy Joel concert they had tickets for at Madison Square Garden, had given them to her, and she asked me if I wanted to go. How do you say no to a Billy Joel concert? I was obsessed with him throughout high school and part of college, and consider him to be one of the strongest musical influences in my life. While I hadn't really listened to any of his stuff lately (maybe because I overdid it a bit previously), I still am a big fan. Regardless, I had decided that I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a concert ticket since I had seen him a few times already and it was music that I wasn't listening to a lot anymore.
OH MY GOD. The concert was incredible. I really had forgotten how awesome of a show this man puts on. He always has the absolute best musicians on stage with him...everyone plays every instrument. He masterfully plays the crowd like he plays the piano, choosing exactly the right song to play at exactly the right time. He is a born performer, and his on-stage dynamic and energy are mind-blowing. From the first song through the last encore, he reached out and touched the heart and soul of almost every member of that audience. His music is the soundtrack of my life, at least the growing up part of it, and I felt myself tearing up and feeling a crazy rush of emotions - every song he played touched on an association I made between that song and a part of my life. When he finished "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," and went into his sadly required final song "Piano Man," I felt as if I had gone through an emotional upheaval, but loved every instant of it.
Someday I will be on stage, performing a song that I've written in front of a lot of people, and the singer will just stop - and the crowd will sing the song to us. I felt giddy as I sang the background vocals to "River of Dreams." I screamed "Keepin' the Faith" at the top of my lungs. I'd forgotten that I knew every lyric to "We Didn't Start the Fire." And hopefully, someday, if I can string some lucky days together like this one, someone will walk away from my band's show humming my music, after having sung it to me.