The End of the World, the Pastoral Symphony, and Aaron's Party

This is a belated post, because the last two events mentioned in the title happened last weekend - but you've got to hand it to me; I chose quite a date on which to be fashionably late. We are all still here on Earth - I texted Aaron to make sure that he had not ascended (he had not) - and I dined with my mom this morning (at Chili's), and I think that she is quite saint-like, and she had not ascended either. I feel bad for the people who have to take down all of those billboards.
Starting last weekend: it was an exciting weekend because of Aaron's gain of 16 years and the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven, which is my favorite of the 9 and which was the first Beethoven symphony that I had ever seen in concert. So, on Saturday evening, after my mom and I had visited that grandfather of mine in Durham (we attended to all of the usual traditions by going to the Golden Corral, etc), I was dropped off at Aaron's place at 7:00, dressed as Professor McGonagall (I was going to dress up as Ludwig van Beethoven, but that would have required a lot of hairspray and I didn't feel like doing that to my hair, especially because we were warned beforehand that we would be near to an open fire). I met a ton of lovely West folk, with whom I am now friends on Facebook. For the first part of the party, we mainly hung out down in the basement, listening to a lovely playlist which had some Regina Spektor and some Owl City and some other things - I socialized with Ms. Alexis, as it had been a while since we had last hung out (she had arrived early to put up all of the beautiful red streamers and other decor). Once other people started to arrive, we decided that we ought to go outside to play a game of Quidditch, in spite of the fact that it rained and the grass was all wet. Well, it was, but I was able to remove my shoes and make do. I was a Chaser on the Gryffinpuff team along with Aaron, and the Snitch was Ryan. Our Seeker was Sahar and the other team's Seeker was Egla (I think). After Aaron explained the rules to everyone, we lined up near our goal posts, preparing to charge the balls in the center of the field. Jamie hollered "Gryffinpuff!" obnoxiously and Haley shouted back, "Slytherclaw!" Ryan got a 15 second head-start, and then we were off. I must say, it was one of the most brutal sports that I have ever played. Gryffinpuff, unfortunately, lost all three of the games, but the other team did have a slight advantage in their numbers. After Quidditch, Aaron opened his gifts and proposed to people. Then, we ate some cake and danced to the music. Finally, we watched "Tangled," which I had never seen before - just as the movie was ending, that mother of mine arrived and I had to leave, but it was an amazing movie and an amazing evening.
The next day, I went to church and sang this anthem which was written by a woman who became a member of our church that day (she got up and gave a speech and everything; she had been a member when she was a little girl, but then she traveled all over the place to Berlin and other places far away). Afterwards, we ate at the new Breakfast of Course restaurant which is downtown, and after that, my dad said that we had a surprise at 3:00 (I knew that this surprise was the concert, because I had told him earlier in the week that the concert on Sunday was at 3:00). Right around three, we piled into the car and drove over to the Stevens Center, where we had a seat in the center of the balcony, close to the railing - it was a perfect view of the entire orchestra, moving together. This was particularly interesting with the Pastoral, because the music moves in waves (particularly in the first two movements) and you could literally watch the melody progress from the low strings to the high woodwinds. Maestro Moody took the third movement at the perfect tempo (I've found that lots of people like to take the "Merry Meeting of Country Folk" way too slow, like it's the merry meeting of old country folk), and of the entire symphony, the 4th movement, "Rainstorm," was absolutely phenomenal. You can pick up so much more of it live than in a recording, because on a CD, it is usually too quiet to hear the more intricate interwoven harmonies. You could hear it perfectly from the beginning, however, and at the first climax, the whole music hall exploded - the strings were zooming up and down, the timpani man was jamming, and the orchestra moved sharply together with each of the simulated lightning bolts. I nearly cried, it was so awesome. Then the Hindemith was also swell, and our overture (which was chosen by the audience!) was the overture to the "Barber of Seville" by Rossini.
In any case, it was an amazing weekend - and the following week was pretty swell too. Forgive me for any grammatical incorrectness, because I had to write this post in the space of about 10 minutes so that I could actually do some homework. That's all I have to say about that.