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Okay. I finished Maternal-Child nursing Monday and got a C on my final. I have no idea why that happened. I got 85, 89, 90, 91, and 93 on my five exams. Then I got an 80 on the final. Pissed me off, but it could be worse, so I'll just accept it I guess: a B for the course. Oh well. I'm getting so used to lowering & accepting my standards. I used to be an A student (during all my prereqs), but, thanks to nursing school & RL, I'm a B student now...!
( Read more... )
Just found out 2 more people failed out this semester (they were not in the class I just finished, they were in the other class; then we all switched this week). That's exactly why I wanted the LPN course and exam as a backup: in case anything else screwed up my 2nd year and prevented me from completing the RN. In the case of (I'll call him Jose), he has spent the last two years on prereqs and the first year of nursing school, struggling and triumphing and surviving... until now. And what does he have to show for it? Nothing. ( Read more... )
Also, I went to the first opera of our season last night with my sister: Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride. It was pretty good, considering it was a Gluck opera (typically staged in the "stand-and-sing" recitative style: beautiful music, boring staging). But this production wasn't boring at ALL. It was modern and really well done. It should have been filmed!
There are some cool photos here, here, and here. Susan Graham was amazing. So were baritone Lucas Meachem as Oreste, tenor Paul Groves as Pylade, and baritone Mark Delavan as King Thoas. Meachem, Groves, and especially Graham got standing ovations.
This opera was also very slashy. ( Read more... ) When I read the opera program, I realized it really is a slashier production, I didn't just see slash where there was none: this is a co-production with the San Francisco and Covent Garden opera houses! Yay, slashy opera!
There's a slashy picture of Meachem/Oreste and Groves/Pylade
here (scroll down a bit), from the article at Playbill, which also has a lot of other cool photos from the opera. One photo captures the modern stage design & direction's "graffiti" chalked by the other priestesses on black walls of Iphigenie's and her parents' (Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) and brother's (Oreste's) names on the walls and floor of the stage. Everything was BLACK -- black walls, costumes, etc. -- until the last act. Stark lighting from the side created very expressionistic and moody shadows of the main characters.
I found an online libretto at Karadar's classical music site. Sadly, I do not read French. But with Altavista's Babelfish, I can determine that that in act II Pylade tells Oreste (among other things) "What overpowering language for a friend who loves you! ....I am not so miserable, Since I'll finally die close to you. Linked as of most tender childhood, we had only one same desire. Ah! my heart applauds in advance the blow which will join us together!"
OMG -- angst, too?! squeeeee!
(Original French from the libretto at Karadar's Classical Music World online libretto for Iphigenie en Tauride after the cut.
( Read more... )
Saw the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica last night at 11pm, after I got home from the opera. However lame it may be that I live upstairs from my mom & step-dad, I am truly grateful for their satellite TV, because I haven't had cable/satellite for 2 years. I only started watching BSG for CKR. I try to rent or see almost everything he does, unless it's a really tiny part or impossible to find. (Good luck trying to see Unnatural & Accidental... or even Trailer Park Boys with Hugh Dillon, dammit!) But once I rented seasons 1 & 2 of BSG, I was hooked! This season, starting with the premiere, has TOTALLY sucked me in. Now all I watch on TV is Veronica Mars & BSG!
OMFG Leoben & Kara/Starbuck! Those kisses were killer! Her not wanting them. Him so, so wanting them! And talk about ECU (extreme close up). (Almost) all you ever wanted to know about how an ardent CKR would kiss a coerced partner in a manner to try to convince her (or him...). I won't give spoilers about what happened next, but damn, it was hot watching Leoben's mouth try to convince Starbuck.
I have to get my boyfriend into this show; he loves mind-fucky movies, and BSG is nothing if not mind-fucky. I love BSG. It's a fascinating show that gets more intriguing and topical with every episode.
(Yes, my ex-bf & I are back together. And he has renewed his proposal. And... I'm thinking about it. There are two things that are very, very true, aside from the fact that I love him despite the emotional exhaustion of the last few years: my job loss, my dad's death, my mom's & stepdad's cancer, & nursing school: (1) he has been truer through the toughest time of my life than any other man I've ever known ever was to me during much easier times, and (2) I know it's because he loves me. ( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Just found out 2 more people failed out this semester (they were not in the class I just finished, they were in the other class; then we all switched this week). That's exactly why I wanted the LPN course and exam as a backup: in case anything else screwed up my 2nd year and prevented me from completing the RN. In the case of (I'll call him Jose), he has spent the last two years on prereqs and the first year of nursing school, struggling and triumphing and surviving... until now. And what does he have to show for it? Nothing. ( Read more... )
Also, I went to the first opera of our season last night with my sister: Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride. It was pretty good, considering it was a Gluck opera (typically staged in the "stand-and-sing" recitative style: beautiful music, boring staging). But this production wasn't boring at ALL. It was modern and really well done. It should have been filmed!
There are some cool photos here, here, and here. Susan Graham was amazing. So were baritone Lucas Meachem as Oreste, tenor Paul Groves as Pylade, and baritone Mark Delavan as King Thoas. Meachem, Groves, and especially Graham got standing ovations.
This opera was also very slashy. ( Read more... ) When I read the opera program, I realized it really is a slashier production, I didn't just see slash where there was none: this is a co-production with the San Francisco and Covent Garden opera houses! Yay, slashy opera!
There's a slashy picture of Meachem/Oreste and Groves/Pylade
here (scroll down a bit), from the article at Playbill, which also has a lot of other cool photos from the opera. One photo captures the modern stage design & direction's "graffiti" chalked by the other priestesses on black walls of Iphigenie's and her parents' (Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) and brother's (Oreste's) names on the walls and floor of the stage. Everything was BLACK -- black walls, costumes, etc. -- until the last act. Stark lighting from the side created very expressionistic and moody shadows of the main characters.
I found an online libretto at Karadar's classical music site. Sadly, I do not read French. But with Altavista's Babelfish, I can determine that that in act II Pylade tells Oreste (among other things) "What overpowering language for a friend who loves you! ....I am not so miserable, Since I'll finally die close to you. Linked as of most tender childhood, we had only one same desire. Ah! my heart applauds in advance the blow which will join us together!"
OMG -- angst, too?! squeeeee!
(Original French from the libretto at Karadar's Classical Music World online libretto for Iphigenie en Tauride after the cut.
( Read more... )
Saw the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica last night at 11pm, after I got home from the opera. However lame it may be that I live upstairs from my mom & step-dad, I am truly grateful for their satellite TV, because I haven't had cable/satellite for 2 years. I only started watching BSG for CKR. I try to rent or see almost everything he does, unless it's a really tiny part or impossible to find. (Good luck trying to see Unnatural & Accidental... or even Trailer Park Boys with Hugh Dillon, dammit!) But once I rented seasons 1 & 2 of BSG, I was hooked! This season, starting with the premiere, has TOTALLY sucked me in. Now all I watch on TV is Veronica Mars & BSG!
OMFG Leoben & Kara/Starbuck! Those kisses were killer! Her not wanting them. Him so, so wanting them! And talk about ECU (extreme close up). (Almost) all you ever wanted to know about how an ardent CKR would kiss a coerced partner in a manner to try to convince her (or him...). I won't give spoilers about what happened next, but damn, it was hot watching Leoben's mouth try to convince Starbuck.
I have to get my boyfriend into this show; he loves mind-fucky movies, and BSG is nothing if not mind-fucky. I love BSG. It's a fascinating show that gets more intriguing and topical with every episode.
(Yes, my ex-bf & I are back together. And he has renewed his proposal. And... I'm thinking about it. There are two things that are very, very true, aside from the fact that I love him despite the emotional exhaustion of the last few years: my job loss, my dad's death, my mom's & stepdad's cancer, & nursing school: (1) he has been truer through the toughest time of my life than any other man I've ever known ever was to me during much easier times, and (2) I know it's because he loves me. ( Read more... )