Holy Moley!

All the craziness is over! I can't believe it! What an insane month.
First off there were tons of recitals by my fellow composers. Josh had a great recital, and so did Matt Smart, and then Zane's was epic, and then mine! Ensemble 48 played a lot of great music along the way, helping out whenever we can, and it all came off great. Then the whole Boston crowd came for my recital weekend, which was tons of fun. Going out to nice restaurants, walking around in the nice weather, and me trying not to freak out about anything. Then Sunday came, and I was really happy with all the rehearsals, and the concert went off perfectly! Even Dean and Ross came down from Chicago to show their support, so I had to invite them on stage for my encore.
I've put some of my music on my myspace page, check it out if you can.
Once that was over and done with, we had a little shindig at my apartment as I shared my newest homemade brew, an Irish Stout that was simply delectable. After that a group of Ensemble 48 members went to Columbus, Ohio to do another live soundtrack gig. Here's a cool article written about us. After that I had a couple papers left and a presentation on Roy Harris' Third Symphony, which went surprisingly well actually.
Then last weekend was graduation, so Mom and Ellie and even Betsy came by. We all had a great time, even though graduation was predictably quite tedious, but hey, at least I got to wear a pink hood thing.
After that, Ensemble 48 put on it's second annual Defenestration BBQ, this time with the E48 Skills Challenge, which is like the Olympics for stupid things we do sometimes. After throwing some great stuff out of Scott's window and eating too many hamburgers, we had arm wrestling, leg wrestling, the hot sauce eating contest, the white bread eating contest, the gymnastics, etc. It was a blast.
Here are the four hot sauce competitors, and you can see the wild combination of sauces which were mixed together, along with some crazy peppers Brian had lying around his house. Josh gave up eventually because he couldn't feel his fingers anymore, but the rest of us persisted through the numbness and tingling and gagging and eventually hit a stalemate. It was beautiful.
That basically leaves us to where I am right now. No classes, just working on my thesis, looking for jobs anywhere and everywhere, and hanging out with all the cool kids who are staying around this summer. We're off to see an Indianapolis Indians game tomorrow night which will be awesome, but other than that, I gotta get my head in the game!