Ramp up Part II : WotLK (aka "Sidetrack 1.0)

In an effort to keep me from being productive, Blizzard has decided to release the new class talents for the "Wrath of the Litch King" expansion to WoW. I suppose I will have to do a bit more listening to the music than I had planned, and a bit less reading of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

My main interest here is in their changes to the Priest's Shadow abilities. A Shadow priest has been fun, albeit frustrating, to play in pvp for the last year; the shadowpriest can't prevent taking damage in any real way. Blizzard is trying to fix this in today's patch. It remains to be seen whether they have really addressed the issue by balancing the shadow build with other classes' abilities, or if they have tweaked the others too much (Blizzard is introducing three to five new abilities in each class's three talent tree), in effect placing one class at a clear disadvantage in pvp.

LA Phil Ramp up

One week from today I will take an audition for the principal horn position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In the vein of everything else that I've done this year, the first audition I have taken. I'm pretty excited about it. I am very interested to see whether or not I will get nervous on the day that I audition. I get nervous now and then during large ensemble performances, but never during solo projects. This evening, while running through a visualization of the event, I did get nervous. Maybe the fact that I play recitals and solos in my mind several times before the actual event is enough to prevent any debilitating nervous shaking, or perhaps worse, erratic breathing.

Anyway, it's coming up fast. I've been putting in five to seven hours of preparation per day for the last month. In this late hour I still have excerpts that I cannot play as I would like, something that will be corrected before Thursday.

Mantra : "Eat, Practice, Sleep" (in reference to Phelps's daily experience).