2009 Review: A!

The year 2009 gets a grade A from me! I thought about A minus, but too many exciting things happened this year to warrant the slash. I suppose it doesn't get an A+, but that would probably have to be one hell of a stress-free year to get bonus points.

Here are some highlights! In no particular order. While I like, no, love lists, I have a hard time prioritizing them.

I managed to secure a boyfriend for a whole year! That was a huge deal. My previous relationship was only four months. Thanks, Boyfriend, for stickin' around! You are delightful. Here we are at the ends of a giant creative sandwich known as Vocal Assembly.
I joined three music groups! I sang experimental and graphic vocal music with Vocal Assembly, wrote a piece for glockenspiel ensemble for Outer Circle, and just recently was asked to join Alia Musica, a group of local composers. And no, I don't have time for all of them at once. Sadly.

I received a grant to write music in 2010, and over the past year wrote five new music works, and debuted a sculpture in a prominent Pittsburgh gallery! Also, the music that I wrote for a play premiered and ran for eight nights, and nobody ran out of the theatre throwing up (at least over the music).

I released a CD! Nathan Hall + David Bernabo. If you haven't already bought one, see me. Or see this website for the album's record label.

I saw Bayernhof Museum of musical instruments, featuring antique music boxes, player pianos, and eccentric mechanical contraptions. And batcave.

My band Wungsten performed more than ever, including battling for top Pittsburgh band. We lost, but it was only because our parallel secundal harmonies go unappreciated by the masses. Here is our trifecta about to perform our hit 'Buckminster Fuller', inside of a geodesic dome of his own design (it's in Montreal).
Travels this year included aforementioned Montreal and Colorado, two places I'd never been but were both beautiful in their own ways. Montreal taught me some differences between Montreal French and Paris French, one of which included watching 'Pimp My Ride' in French. Otherwise known as Pimp Mon Char!
Colorado included this lovely item.
It's just a rock, but it's looking over a recently snow-dusted mountaintop in Boulder, CO.

I also performed several concerts with the Mendelssohn choir of Pittsburgh, the most memorable being John Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls, but the most amusing being Carmina Burana, as I'm trying to sing over braces put on my teeth one day prior. Perhaps the ol' braces was actually the most thought-proviking year-long activity; it certainly was on my mind every day, having to take ten minutes every time I flossed, and going to the orthodontist every month, trying to bond (dental pun!) with other adults who have braces. You remember this time, back in February? This picture is a little monstrous but it's hard to get pictures of teeth that don't look absolutely disgusting (teeth are so much grosser than they seem). This was the 'right when they got put on' face.
This is now. They're still naturally a little bumpy, and they have yellowish connector bands to solidify the tooth placement, but they're so much straighter and aligned. I actually like that they don't look like a whole new set of teeth, more like a better version of what I had before, more symmetrical (and without having to pay $5K for the fancy invisaligns). I hope that when the braces come off that I remember how to move my lips with my 'normal' teeth. I'm sure I'll be thinking that it feels weird all over again without so much metal in my mouth. Small differences in position that make a big difference to me! It's kind of amazing how making tiny changes and improvements can add up, one month at a time, to a big change in the end, especially when looked back in retrospect. Perhaps that's a good wise statement to start my 2010.

Almost one year later, I am scheduled to get these braces off on the 16th. Wish me luck for another grade A year full of music and merriment, and straight teeth for years down the road. More to come in 2010!