I've been pretty busy this first week of break doing Nutcracker pit orchestra stuff. We had a gnarly 8 hour rehersal for it on Wednesday (where 'gnarly' has a bad connotation). After that day, my brain felt like mush and I felt a cold coming on. The next three nights were dedicated to some really cool performances of the Nutcracker Ballet. I couldn't really see how many people were in the audience from where I was sitting in the pit, but the applause I heard certainly made them sound like a formidable group, and I heard all four performances were nearly sold out. "Nearly" is pretty good, considering the theater holds about 2,000 people. So armed with a hefty bag of coughdrops, I got through my first and only year performing in the pit orchestra for this production, and I must say it was pretty fun . It was fun trying to keep my attention on the music when there were deafening explosions and colorful flashes of light being emitted from the onstage fireworks during the battle scenes, haha.

I witnessed an instance of pure ownage one of the nights while coming home from Nutcracker. Exiting the 15 onto Mira Mesa Blvd at about 10 PM, I was in the lane to make a right turn, and there was one car in front of me also making a right turn. The light was red for us, meaning that we could treat it like a stop sign. When there was a small break in the oncoming cars, too small of a break, the car in front of me decided to make the turn. Right then I looked at the first oncoming car and thought to myself, man, if I were that guy, I'd be pretty pissed right now. In the next instant when that first car passed, I saw that it was black and white with a gold star painted on its door and a set of sirens on its roof. In the next instant, those sirens were on and flashing. Sitting there alone in my car, I actually said aloud, "owned."