Well, I hope someone out there's having a much better Rosh Hashana, because I sure ain't. I caught the current bug going around the school, and managed to miss services for Erev RH and afternoon services because I was thirteen different kinds of tired, sniffly death, and if I end up spreading the bug/cold/whatever around the temple, I'll REALLY have a happy new year. Erk. Usually, I don't take much stock in omens, like breaking glass (your bad luck is as long as the wrath of whoever's window you broke) and walking under ladders (LOOKOUT! Falling tools!), but I'm nervous that being sick now, could possibly be a preview of this year's coming attractions, and the movie looks BAD.

On another note, guess who has a music theory test tomorrow morning? I thought this class would be fun and helpful, but then intervals came along, and now it's running my fingers up and down a piano, hoping I'm the right number of whole and half steps away. Can't study for this class easily, because a) my ear sucks and blows when it comes to determining pitch and b) I have no fixed pitch instrument. I don't do fixed pitch instruments; I play clarinet. I can go from a major to a minor second, depending on how sticky the room is; I can't use my clarinet to figure out intervals!

Excuse me while I crawl into this hole here and try not to lose it.

[	mood	|	relaxed	]
[	music	|	Shoeless Joe Dance- I HATE PLAYING THIS!	]

Well, summer's been interesting this far, but by interesting, I mean, dull and spent mostly in the house. Now that I haven't had to get up early for driver's ed, I've started going to bed later at night/earlier in the morning- see the time stamp on this post- much to my family's dismay. The only thing's I've actually been "doing" are practicing for a musical and playing in community concert band. The concert band's ok, but if D March of the Belgian Paratroopers hasn't sufficiently traumatized me during DMA last year, then it definitely has now. As for playing in the musical pit...
I. Hate. Damn Yankees!

The music sounds like it came straight from the fifties, and thanks to the score publishers being grade-A idiots, woodwind parts got put into books screwy. Who thinks that the clarinet is an adequate substitute for English horn?!

On another drama-related note, my mom thinks I'm smoking weed; I'm not. Not smoking tobacco either. Let's add a big, fat "NOT SMOKING ANYTHING" sign to that, because even with normal lungs, I still can't make a nice, solid sound on t-bone. Adding smoker's lungs to that mix would be worse.

My little sis, nearing Bat mitzva age, got her portion assigned; it's smack in the middle of Deuteronomy, if I remember correctly. I'm just freaked out that the temple is sending out the notices so soon; she's only ten. Freakyness aside, she's most likely going to be the first woman to become bar mitzva in my family since...forever. My male relatives have all have gone up to the bimah, but either by choice or lack of opportunity, no woman has. I hope she does.

[	Tags	|	jiggawha!	]
[	mood	|	disappointed	]

Today, in my town, a man was murdered.

In response to both the murder and a standoff, all schools were locked down, twenty minutes before the end of the day to prevent anyone from being hurt in the crossfire of the standoff. None of the students were told the official reason. I thought that a gas line had burst, the cause of another lockdown, two years earlier. For two hours, students were told to stay in their classrooms, many not knowing why. All that was said, was that there had been " an incident near one of the main roads.

This incident was not handled in a calming manner. If students, especiallyhigh school students, could have been told why they were being detained, then there would have been less panicking, fewer people scared. No one was allowed to call or text, to "keep communications lines open". No one could tell an adult outside, what was going on, officially. Many did anyways.

When the schools released their students, I didn't know what was going on. The roads were packed with cars and buses going to and from schools. Helicopters circled the sky. It was light-years away from the previous lockdown.

Today a man was murdered, in a place with few of such crimes. I didn't know.