A Week in the Life of A Nick

Friday night was opening night for La Mancha. My grandmother, mother, sister, sister's boyfriend/my friend from college, two bosses, and a couple from my church who sing in the choir with me and are the leaders of my "parish" were all there for opening night. The first six all sat in a "cell" of six seats two wide, the bosses sitting directly in front of my family was unplanned but God seems to program in all sorts of weird "coincidences" for life. (Like how my first youth pastor ended up at a church where, though I think at different times, a friend in a later youth group's fiancé and now husband was the minister of education who told me a story about a rafting trip involving a girl jumping from a swinging rope and breaking her leg or somesuch, the girl who I would later meet because she and I were both music majors at the same college and interns at the same church, working in the same 5th and 6th grade children's choir. These sort of occurrences are commonplace in my life, some sort of amusement God put in to keep things interesting I am guessing.)

Anyway, I digress. Opening night All went well and I had fun, as I usually do with such things. There was a reception with champagne and sweets after with the cast and crew and some of the opera “big-whigs” which was mostly boring aside from the champagne and sweets and cast. I didn't stay long.

Saturday night was a good show as well. On a sad note, however, the staging director/Sancho's father had been dieing the whole time and Dean knew that he might not make it back in time to see him one last time. He got back any time we had a day off, flew up to St. Louis and back. His father was very excited that he was playing Sancho a third time and directing this one, he said, and was telling everyone at the hospital about it. Dean got the message at intermission Saturday night that his father had passed at 8pm. Later I found out that this was 8pm in St. Louis which is 9pm here and Dean said that this was about the point in the show where he sings “I Like Him” referring to Don Quixote, who later dies in the arms of Sancho. Very sad, I can't imagine what it must be like to work on a show while dealing with this, and to have a role that somewhat mirrors what you must be feeling in some way. And he had to go right on to another show he was contracted for in NC starting this past Monday.

My parents are cleaning their new house, painting the rooms and pulling up carpet. Planning where things will go and what to do with the stuff that the lady left. Some might not think it would be nice to have their parents living next door but my family is a close one. And it is better than having them live with me. I can pop over for a few minutes and not feel like I have to stay the evening. Very nice.

Work has been work. The shop is full at the moment, of papers for various large jobs. We are running out of space. The space problem is so bad that our mailing equipment resides in a “climate controlled” storage unit about 2 miles down the road. We got the blueprints drawn up this week for an addition on back that will almost double our workspace. Nice. However, I would love to not be working there come mid January.

Why would I love this? Because if I don't get started with graduate school soon I will go insane. It has been now three years since I graduated and said, “I will start grad school in the spring or next fall (of '04). That never happened. After that deadline passed I said, “I will start in the spring or next fall ('05). That deadline passed as well and since I have obviously not started grad school yet I am saying the same thing.

However, last fall I was on the road to getting my application in but was also feeling very depressed about work at the coffeeshop and was half-heartedly looking for a new job. Then my car died. The car search took over and thoughts of grad school had to be pushed aside. I got a new job. I decided I would work that job until at least the fall before doing grad school stuff just so I wouldn't work there for three months then leave them.

But now I am looking at it all again. I have the letters of recommendation, I've sent in the GRE scores, and I have my transcript. I'll have to fill out some new forms (the ones I have on file are for last year, stuff like audition applications with dates on them and such) and actually send it in.

Of course, last night I was looking at the financial side of this thing and realizing just how much it is going to cost me. Tuition is around $10,500 a year and that doesn't include books, a place to live, food, or transportation (it does, however, include college provided health insurance that is probably crap compared to what I have but what I have will go away when I no longer work at the printshop). I then discovered that the subsidized Stafford loans max out at $8000 a year for graduate students (this is the loan where the government pays your interest while you are in college) so I would have to get an unsubsidized loan as well.

IF I could get an assistantship that would knock off the $2000 I wouldn't be able to get loans for and it would give me a small stipend. Not enough to live on by far so I'd still have to find some form of work. With the assistantship taking up 20 hours a week I would probably be left looking for church work again.

Well, I plan to take a day off very soon and go up and talk to people at the school about all this. Hopefully I'll be able to swing it, somehow.

Tonight I finally was able to make it to the men's Bible study I joined almost a month ago. They had only made it to lesson two which we only got a quarter of the way through tonight so I'm not behind, haha! We are studying James. It's good to have a small Bible study group to be in again as it has been a few years since I had anything like that (before, all the Singles' Bible study groups met on Tuesday or Wednesday night, nights when I have choirs. Now we have a Thursday night one and with opera over I have the time!).

Well I'm out for now!
- posted by Nick @ 10/12/2006 11:01:00 PM | 0 comments

 

Nicholas Gosey -- [noun]: An immortal 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Ha! Freaking awesome!!!

Nicholas -- [noun]: A real life muppet 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Platypi007 -- [adjective]: Pretentiously academian 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

(So I took a "meme" from a friend's LJ, the world will now end.)
- posted by Nick @ 10/12/2006 10:47:00 PM | 0 comments