Jonathan's College Blog

Well I'm embarassed,It's been a long long long time since I've even thought about this little online journal of mine. I guess life has kind of gotten the better of me. Hold on my room smells a bit I just need to light some candles. So much has happened since March that I don't know where to begin. It seems like i've lived a whole life in just a few months. I guess I'll start from where I left off.

Jesus Christ Superstar was amazing. Maybe not the best production but one of the funnest experiences of my life. I'll never forget it. Third term rolled around and I found myself busy with ruth, class, life, work, my future and everything in between. I wound up finishing the school year in kind of a weird place. I didn't have summer housing, I had a job thankfully, I was taking a summer class, and I was dreading a long summer basically waiting to say goodbye to ruth. Once school ended I found myself in between housing with half my stuff with ruth, half my stuff at my friend alex's apartment, and my essentials in my car. This wasn't the best way to live but given my busy schedule the 10 weeks prior and a couple instances of bad luck housing fell through. So i experienced what I think everyone experiences at least once, living out of your car. While I did have various couches and floors and when I was lucky a bed to sleep in, I never wanted to overstay my welcome and thus kept what I needed day by day in my car. The worst was coming back from a day of painting being hot and sweaty and having to cool off in the campus buildings that were open during the summer and had AC and drinking fountains. Since my friends also worked I had to wait for them to get back to use their shower and change. While this only lasted about 2 weeks it seemed like an eternity.

That brings me to my next part of the summer...Painting. This is something I'm glad i've done but will never return to. I worked for a painting company called Lotz Painting which was run by a husband and wife and employed three other third generation painters including the owners brother who was married to the sister of another employee...these guys literally live and work with each other. Apart from the 16 hour days or actually doing very little painting for the first few weeks of the summer, I probably learned more about fishing than anything else. These guys loved to fish. We would have to be at work usually at 6 or so if not earlier and these guys would have already gone out to a lake and gone fishing for an hour or so before coming in to paint, afterwork they would all go back and fish again. Weekends for them usually involved odd jobs of painting and fishing trips. I painted everything inside, outside, decks, ceilings, walls, stairs, banisters, garages, floors, windows, doors, garage doors, framing, soffets, and everything in between. My boss was either really fun or a huge jerk. No matter how early I arrived I was always late, for whatever reason everyone always showed up an hour before me. One day I was soooo fed up with being the new guy who was always late I arrived at the job site an hour and half early, only it was the wrong job site so I actally showed up to the real job site on the other side of town late. This wasn't that uncommon of an occurance as I'm not the best with directions and I had to drive to each job site.

Well that was what I did during the days of the week. Nights and weekends I tried to spend with Ruth.Ruth worked for NCC's camps and conferences which gave her money to stay for the summer and free housing and food which was also a plus for me when I needed it. We did sooooooo much this summer it is unbelievable. At the bottom of the post there will be varioius pictures from everything we did this summer. We went to madison a lot to visit my parents and the rest of my family when they were in town. I had told Ruth when we met that she would meet my whole family before she left and by the end of the visit she had met my imediate family and almost all of my extended family. We made our way up to minnesota one week to visit my new niece Shea Parker. She's sooooo cute and we got to play with the boys as well as Jenn needed a little break from all the excitement they can offer. Ruth loved the drive up and on the way back we stayed with my friend jeff in eau-claire. The next morning we made our way to one of the best attractions wisconsin has to offer in Wisconsin Dells. We had breakfast at Mr. Pancakes since Paul Bunyans breakfast haus was extremely packed. Ruth experienced the fatty but deliciousness of pancakes, omelettes, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, biscuts, and coffee all smothered in fruit, whipped cream, syrup, and boysen berry sauce. It was a breakfast of champions which we needed as we made our way to Noah's Ark: America's Largest Waterpark. This was such a great way to cap off the end of our summer. We went on every ride at least three or four times and had such an amazing time. Afterwards we stopped back in madison and went back to chicago. Ruth and I made our way into the city a bunch of times during the summer for the taste of chicago, various parties, museums, walks, and of course chicago's beautiful beaches. With some of my friends living in chicago it was a great way to spend the afternoon and grab a bite with them relax and then take the train home. Ruth and I went camping with my friends bailey and blake as well up in wisconsin. This was fantastic as we ate, ate, and ate. I'm fairly sure that our bonfire surpassed the healthy limit for a campsite of our size but no one was harmed and we weren't fined thankfully. I think the best times I had though was just when ruth and I would order some thai food and rent a movie and crash on my couch. Which brings me to another aspect of my summer.

I got a house!After finding out summer housing was still available through the school, I lived there for the first few weeks of the year. After that my friends found a house near school and we decided to rent it out for the year. It's perfect. We each have our own rooms, it's in the very forrested area of town. It's two blocks away from my favorite burrito joint and it's about a 5 minute bike ride to school. I live with three other dudes: Grant, Brian, and Max all of which are jazz performance majors at school. You could say we listen and play a lot of music at my house. Also during the summer I switched my major to Music instead of music education. There are a lot of factors that went into this but the main one was I didn't want to teach k-12. It's not for me. It's not fulfilling. I'd rather do something else...so right now I'm looking at ethnomusicology and music journalism. Anyway the summer wound down, ruth went back to ireland, and school started back up. I miss her everyday and can't wait for the next time we see each other.

I'm taking a bunch of classes this term too. Choir, French, Biology, Gender and Womens studies, Photography (I'm probably dropping this class) jazz voice, classical voice, jazz piano, classical piano, jazz combo, vocal jazz, and probably a couple more which i'm forgetting. What should be fun is next term I'm the music director for the senior musical which is COMPANY! I get to conduct the pit and lead music rehearsals which I'm super excited for. Anyway, I've got some reading to do now so below are some pictures of camping, trips, madison, and what not. My whole summer in a few photos. Enjoy!

-TRON