Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

So yesterday, I called to schedule my state licensure exam. Apparently, I had 4 months to schedule, and because I had on my national exam blinders, I forgot about the deadline. I’m really glad I learned this on the phone before receiving the letter in the mail yesterday. I’ve been waiting for the pass/fail test results from the national exam, and when I saw that letter in my box, I got really anxious. I opened and saw the word “failure”. Eep! Had a mini-panic, then realized that this was what the woman on the phone had explained – that failure to take the state exam in time results in a failure. There aren’t too many repercussions of this “failure”, only that I have to take and pass the exam within four months… Yeah, that was the plan anyway.

My state exam is now scheduled for October 9th. I’ve heard it’s pretty straightforward. The contents are all printable on about 40 sheets of paper – nothing like the reams of information included on the national exam. Soon, I will be licensed. Oh yes, I shall be licensed.

I’ve avoided blogging too much, since on Monday through Friday, I’m trying to remain focused on professional tasks. I’ve also started setting an alarm to make sure I get up at a reasonable time. Without structure, my sleep and rising times have moved later and later. The side benefit of this new plan is that I’ve bought a new alarm clock, which I keep set to WCPE. My friend Tara is a DJ there during the night shift (“Sleepers Awake”). Despite an extensive classical musical education, my listening time has primarily been devoted to non-classical music. It’s nice to revisit this music once again. The side benefit is that my cats have started sleeping near the radio when it’s on. They apparently like classical music.

I’ve seen some wonderful gigs recently. I’ve written about Andrew Bird before (The review was actually picked up on Scenestars, too). I won’t review him again here, but I will say that this was probably the best of the times I have seen him. He is talented, visionary, unique, quirky, incisive, and seeing him was an utter delight for me. I’ve never been a huge Elvis Costello fan, but seeing him with the symphony with friends on a nice night was a treat. We hit up Whole Foods and brought rosemary bread, Boursin cheese, organic grapes, spinach dip, etc. Part of the time was spent on the lawn, and part was spent in the first few rows taking some excellent pictures.

This Saturday was The Old Ceremony at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, and again, I’m limiting the length of this post since I need to be doing so many other things, but it was a wonderful show. The OTT review I wrote after the first time I saw them still applies, although I will add that I’d forgotten how much better they are live. I love their CD Our One Mistake (available on their web site) and listen to it in the car all the time (have since that first show), but I love that live, the cello and violin are turned up quite a bit more in the mix. This was the first time I’d seen them on their home turf, and the crowd was definitely appreciative. I’m very happy with my pictures from the night, and some of Brian’s pretty much blew my mind.

There’s a little bit of video from the gig. This is their fun encore song, with their string players rocking out on tambourine and cowbell, and who knows what the keyboard player was doing back there. I couldn’t really see, since I was dancing my ass off. Because I was dancing (i.e. moving around) so much, I passed my camera to Shannon to videotape the song. She misunderstood and thought I wanted her to videotape me dancing. So yeah, listen to the fun song and watch me dance around like a fool. 😀

The Old Ceremony Performing “Dumbed Down” at Cat’s Cradle, 9/20/2007 from abbyladybug on Vimeo.

Be sure to pay attention at around 2:35 when Django throws in a riff from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Come ON! How much do I love that?! Oh, I love it a lot!

My mom keeps asking if anyone else took pictures of me in my tiara, and yes… I must admit, I’ve been carrying this thing around since I finished my test on Thursday. You know… just in case! This particular tiara moment was captured by Logiblue (aka Oliver, aka Robbo, aka Robb or Rob… take your pick!)

I highly recommend checking out all of his pictures though. He’s one of my favorites on Flickr and has a real knack for making images look cinematic, despite his recent insistence that he is “losing his cinematic mojo”.

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Everyone likes a tiara (Oliver, Josh, and Alice):

Saw The Mountain Goats for the second time last night. And by “The Mountain Goats”, I mean John Darnielle and his guitar. Amusingly, though, he did walk out on stage alone and say, “Hi, we’re The Mountain Goats.” It was a great show. He played a lot of really old songs, many I didn’t know. So of course today, I’m going to have to look into his back catalog much more carefully! There were some real gems. I think he was kicking himself for some prior heavy-dabbling in alternate tunings. Without a guitar tech at the ready, it meant he had to recall and implement these on the spot. And some were ones he hadn’t done in a while, so recalling just how they went wasn’t exactly effortless.

The crowd didn’t mind, though. They love their John. Although, if you ask me, I’d say they were pretty darn demanding, yelling and screaming requests after every song. I guess that’s what you get with such a large repertoire, and a ton of renegade MP3’s of live performances all over the internets. He responded to one guy’s constant LOUD requests for some obscure number by explaining that he barely remembered the song at all. Some guy on some radio station played it for him, it sounded vaguely familiar… He acknowledged that it was, in fact, one of his children, but knew little more about it than that. This response did not dissuade his audience though. The yells continued all the way through to the end.

What a charismatic and genuine performer. His lyrics are honest and specific and always manage to evoke something so salient for me (and clearly the rest of his fans). He uses his voice in the most unique way to express what he’s saying. He’s a storyteller. If you have the chance, don’t you dare miss him.

There’s a relatively popular song of his that I woke up singing to myself this morning. It seems fitting, given that this is the morning after my big exam. I do feel that I “woke up new” today. It’s about a breakup, but you’ll see how it might (and in fact does) fit my current state of mind:

On the morning when I woke up without you for the first time
I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared
And I began to talk to myself almost immediately
Not being used to being the only person there

Wanna hear what I’m talking about? Listen to some tunes stream on Hype Machine. (Hope that works.)

11:58-1:12pm Items 1-75
1:20-2:07pm Items 76-150
1:22-3:28pm Items 151-225 + review of all the items I marked

So it was 3.5 hours minus 23 minutes of a break, during which the clock is still running. So the whole things (225 questions) took 3 hours and 7 minutes.

Every time I left the testing room for a break or came back in, I had to show ID and get fingerprinted (aka “Biogenic ID”)! I had a nice cubicle in the back, so it was a very nice environment – not at all distracting (I had been a little worried about that). There were things I didn’t know. There were a LOT of items where I knew it was one of two. I couldn’t believe after so many practice exams, I still came across items I wasn’t familiar with, but that’s OK. I didn’t leave with feelings of impending doom. I’m going to make the assumption that I passed, because to spend the next “several weeks” worrying doesn’t seem appropriate (because I think I probably passed) or fun.

Next is the state exam, which is supposed to be very easy. Tomorrow is cleanup day (study detritus is strewn everywhere!), then a REAL weekend, then on Monday, I look into the state exam and get tags for my damn car (yes, I know… I’m REALLY overdue now). Tuesday is when I’ll start the currently suspended job hunt again.

Tonight is a celebratory dinner with friends and The Mountain Goats at Cat’s Cradle. Life is good… MUCH better than a few hours ago!

I woke up thinking about that scene at the end of The Wizard of Oz when the Wizard finally “grants” powers to the three companions, particularly the part with the Scarecrow. He’s given a diploma, and he holds it to his temple, then says something that sounds smart, but kind of isn’t. From a pretty early age, I noticed that he got the Pythagorean Theorem wrong, because the squared hypotenuse is equal to the SQUARED sum of the opposite sides, not the “square root of any two sides”. And it pertains to RIGHT triangles, not isosceles triangles! Silly Scarecrow.

Let’s just hope my knowledge demonstration today is correct and not just correct-ish.

A few on the way out photos: