Finals' Brain and Kismet

I’m sitting here turning my brain inside out to come up with something interesting to write, but truth be told there is not much brain left these days. 

The semester ends in two weeks and finals have taken over my life and my brain. University of Alaska – as most American universities – is big on final exams and as a graduate student they have only gotten bigger, longer, and harder. I won’t complain. I am happy to be challenged and I have chosen to be here of my own free will. My talent for procrastination has not been left behind with my undergraduate days though. Yesterday I convinced myself that cleaning my computer with swabs was a much more important project than writing essays. Just as giving my blog a new look for three hours and then decide to keep the old look was the thing to do on Saturday. Today I was out of excuses. I went to the university early to get some work done, but this is the great thing about having a campus. There is always something going on when you need to take a break. Today there was an international flag ceremony where new international flags were included in the university's collection and dancers from Peru and Panama showed their moves as part of the initiation. Afterwards there was free ice cream. So I got through another 12-hour day at the university just fine.  

I thought I should tell you about my band: Kismet. We are four girls playing guitar, keyboard, ukuleles (yes plural), mandolin, and hand drums and then of course everyone sings in quite nice harmonies.

Fairbanks is a truly great place to be a musician, because there is a very supported community to cheer you on and so being an all girls band in a town with a lot of men and the majority of musicians also being men, we stand out. We have been invited to play at several summer festivals and several drunken darlings have declared their love to us. Last night Kismet gave a house concert for a handful of friends. It was a quiet Sunday night, most of the friends gathered had just returned from a rock-climbing trip (not self included). Barbecue was in the making while everyone gathered and we sang our quiet songs to supportive applauses. On Wednesday we’ll do it again at Open Mic. at the Marlin.

I uploaded a couple of new photos from March and I can reveal that I have wonderful and exciting plans for blogging all summer so keep reading.