Textbooks...

Yesterday, I went online to see if the book list was up yet for second semester (starting in January). It was...but when I scrolled down I nearly fainted. I am taking two non-music history courses, and I discovered that for the two of them I need a total of (hang onto your hats here) NINE TEXTBOOKS. OUCH OUCH OUCH. I haven't been paid for my marking job yet (due to some confusion about my employment, I am only submitting the time sheets this week) but I can see my entire salary for this semester from that going towards that. I hit the book store this morning, and was able to purchase seven of them there, but two of them were still on order-both had been ordered in October, and the clerk said "We have no idea when they'll be in...". With that I decided that I would just look online, and fortunately, Amazon had them (and for a lower price too, probably). I don't like to do that too often though. For one thing, I like to support my local stores, and the university bookstore is pretty awesome (it's kind of a hide-out for me...if I'm stressed after a rehearsal and have some time, I'll go there for 20 minutes or half an hour and just browse and then because I feel guilty and strange about going in and not buying anything I'll buy some 100% post-consumer recycled 3x5" notecards...I think I have about 10 packages of them...). But mostly, I don't want to take the chance that I ordered the wrong edition. It's too hard to tell online sometimes.

I'll admit...I did take advantage of the 20% off general reading and non-fiction book sale (including on bargain books) and buy five fun reading books-four bargain books, and then one that totally wasn't, but I consider it valuable. The non-bargain book is a history of my university. And I can say that I'm the only student at my university right now that can state that the university started in my church! Yes, this is correct. Back in 1877, the first classes of the university were held in a building that was at the time called **** college. In 1988, that building was renovated and moved, brick by brick, over about 250 or 300 feet, where it became part of the new church building. Now it's where we hold sunday school classes. A plaque stands on the wall that I've read almost every sunday since I was five years old, and it means a lot to me. So, this book has two of the most important facilities in my life's history!

Right now, I'm reading two books, one called 'Notes left behind' by Brooke and Keith Desserich, about the valient fight of a six year old girl against DIPG, or Diffuse Brain-stem Glioma, a brain tumour in the brain stem that is over 90% fatal. For more information, check out the foundation that they started, at http://www.thecurestartsnow.org/, or their own personal site, http://www.notesleftbehind.com/. The other book I'm reading is called 'Night Letters' by Robert Dessaix. It, too, is about death-from the back "For twenty nights in a hotel room in Venice, a traveler, recently diagnosed with an incurable illness, writes a letter home to a friend. He describes the kaleidoscopic journey he has just made across northern Italy from Switzerland, while reflecting on questions of mortality, seduction, and the search for paradise. Against a rich background of earlier journeys in literature, notably Mann's 'Death in Venice', Robert Dessaix creates a compelling and ultimately uplifting account of a life enriched by a heightened sense of mortality'.

Don't ask me why books about death are appealing right now. You would think that I would want to read anything but, however, somehow, this is what I am drawn to. During my mom's very last days, I was reading 'Alex: The life of a child' by Frand DeFord, about his daughter's battle against cystic fibrosis and 'The Unwanted' by Kien Nguyen about being an ameriasian child in Vietnam after the departure of US troops in 1975. I would highly recommend both, incidently.

Monday my dad gave me a brief scare, for about four hours. See, during October, he developed this growth on his wrist (my guess is the stress had a lot to do with it). Anyways, we all thought it was a wart, so he made an appointment with his doctor. She said that she didn't do those procedures, and referred him to another family medical clinic. He met with them on monday, where they said it wasn't a wart and so the procedure would have to be different. HOWEVER my dad told me only that part while I was rushing from the faculty to the bus to go to my orchestra practice and didn't tell me WHAT it was. Naturally, then, my first thought is "OH MY GOSH WHAT IF THIS IS SKIN CANCER???????!!!!!!!!!" So, for four hours, I was pretty panicked going PLEASE I CAN'T GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN SO SOON NOT AGAIN!!!!! Until I got back from orchestra and he explained that pretty much the first thing they had told him was "it's not cancer". Let's just say I was VERY relieved.