Tuesday, November 30, 2004
I'm not a medic. I'm Swiss.
I'm tired, and I don't feel like writing all that much tonight. This, however, works out for the better because I don't really have all that much to report. But I'll start from the beginning...
I slept in until a little before 8, getting up in time to go to the gym. I picked up a smoothie on the way back to the dorms. When I arrived at my room, the bathroom was being cleaned; I lost five or ten minutes waiting for a chance to take a shower. But I was dressed and ready to go just in time to make it to calculus on time.
Calculus was short and sweet. I say it was sweet mostly because it was so short. I love Tuesdays...there's not much that's more satisfying than having only one hour of class.
I came home and spent some time studying for my EE lecture final on Friday. Kevin left for class at noon and I seized the opportunity to take a short nap (I do enjoy my daily naps). Upon waking up I filled up on Cheezits in lieu of going to get lunch. And I wonder why I've gained weight since I've been here.
MB rehearsal was only an hour long; all we did was sit inside and play somewhere in the neighborhood of five tunes. I was out of there by 4.
Back at the dorms, I didn't feel much like homework, so I spent a good hour playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog, which I have for my Gamecube. It's always fun to play the oldies every once in a while; I remember coming home every day in elementary school to do battle with the evil Dr. Robotnik. The sounds of Sonic emanating from my room enticed about five or six people to come in and watch, and they soon were screaming with pleasure or horror, depending on whether I was playing well or not. The party ended in my room and was relocated to another when Duck Hunt was discovered elsewhere on the floor.
Later, I decided to call Rosalie to see if she wanted to go to dinner with me. I was fairly nervous about it; I've never called someone about whom I know so little. But she said yes, and at 6 she, her roommate, and I were off to the Light House. (In my defense, I did offer to drive the three of us to some restaurant off campus, but Rosalie has a final tomorrow so she suggested that we do that at some later time this week. But I do realize that Light House isn't really the place you want to go when you want to impress someone.) Dinner was great (the conversation, not the food), although I took very much longer to eat than either of them did, partly because I ate more and partly because I tend to talk more than I tend to eat. But they both insisted that they were enjoying themselves, so we remained there until I finished. It was all very exciting, too, because - not to blow my own horn too much - I was frickin' hilarious. I was crackin' wise all over the place. Woot.
After Light House we walked across the UU to get ice cream at Julian's Coffee Shop. They serve Dreyer's, and it's very good. We stood in the UU eating our dessert and talking until our supply of ice cream was exhausted, and then we walked back to Yosemite. And so it ended.
Somewhere in that whole process we discovered that all three of us go to the mission for mass on Sundays, so I'm pretty sure we're going to try to all go together this week. I'm glad to finally have someone to go with...
Anywho, I came home and did an entire chapter's worth of questions for physics. I've got to catch up, you know. That occupied my time until Courtney called to inquire about my "date." I talked to her about it for twenty minutes or so...we had a few good laughs about the whole thing. I quite like Courtney and Ben...
And then I managed to bring my blog up to the present time, removing the need for me to write anymore. So good night...enjoy the rest of your week...I'll see you all in ten days or so.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: good
music: Poets and Angels again
location: dorm
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
Peter: "I saw you in the coffee shop, breaking the fifth commandment. Congress passes these things for a reason, Lois."
I slept in until a little before 8, getting up in time to go to the gym. I picked up a smoothie on the way back to the dorms. When I arrived at my room, the bathroom was being cleaned; I lost five or ten minutes waiting for a chance to take a shower. But I was dressed and ready to go just in time to make it to calculus on time.
Calculus was short and sweet. I say it was sweet mostly because it was so short. I love Tuesdays...there's not much that's more satisfying than having only one hour of class.
I came home and spent some time studying for my EE lecture final on Friday. Kevin left for class at noon and I seized the opportunity to take a short nap (I do enjoy my daily naps). Upon waking up I filled up on Cheezits in lieu of going to get lunch. And I wonder why I've gained weight since I've been here.
MB rehearsal was only an hour long; all we did was sit inside and play somewhere in the neighborhood of five tunes. I was out of there by 4.
Back at the dorms, I didn't feel much like homework, so I spent a good hour playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog, which I have for my Gamecube. It's always fun to play the oldies every once in a while; I remember coming home every day in elementary school to do battle with the evil Dr. Robotnik. The sounds of Sonic emanating from my room enticed about five or six people to come in and watch, and they soon were screaming with pleasure or horror, depending on whether I was playing well or not. The party ended in my room and was relocated to another when Duck Hunt was discovered elsewhere on the floor.
Later, I decided to call Rosalie to see if she wanted to go to dinner with me. I was fairly nervous about it; I've never called someone about whom I know so little. But she said yes, and at 6 she, her roommate, and I were off to the Light House. (In my defense, I did offer to drive the three of us to some restaurant off campus, but Rosalie has a final tomorrow so she suggested that we do that at some later time this week. But I do realize that Light House isn't really the place you want to go when you want to impress someone.) Dinner was great (the conversation, not the food), although I took very much longer to eat than either of them did, partly because I ate more and partly because I tend to talk more than I tend to eat. But they both insisted that they were enjoying themselves, so we remained there until I finished. It was all very exciting, too, because - not to blow my own horn too much - I was frickin' hilarious. I was crackin' wise all over the place. Woot.
After Light House we walked across the UU to get ice cream at Julian's Coffee Shop. They serve Dreyer's, and it's very good. We stood in the UU eating our dessert and talking until our supply of ice cream was exhausted, and then we walked back to Yosemite. And so it ended.
Somewhere in that whole process we discovered that all three of us go to the mission for mass on Sundays, so I'm pretty sure we're going to try to all go together this week. I'm glad to finally have someone to go with...
Anywho, I came home and did an entire chapter's worth of questions for physics. I've got to catch up, you know. That occupied my time until Courtney called to inquire about my "date." I talked to her about it for twenty minutes or so...we had a few good laughs about the whole thing. I quite like Courtney and Ben...
And then I managed to bring my blog up to the present time, removing the need for me to write anymore. So good night...enjoy the rest of your week...I'll see you all in ten days or so.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: good
music: Poets and Angels again
location: dorm
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
Peter: "I saw you in the coffee shop, breaking the fifth commandment. Congress passes these things for a reason, Lois."
Monday, November 29, 2004
Nor Cal? No Cal.
I woke up this morning unfortunately about thirty seconds too late, because when I got to the bathroom both showers were taken and there was already somebody waiting for one of them. I shaved and brushed my teeth in the meantime, thinking the whole time how ridiculously long Ryan stays in the shower (seriously, like twenty minutes). Anywho, I went to physics and music theory and calculus, and then to my physics professor's office hour so I could ask him about the stuff I missed last Monday. (Remember? I left about twenty minutes early to prepare for the music theory composition performance.) I think I got most of it straightened out, although I'll tell you right now that a professor's personal notes are not anywhere near as helpful as a professor's lecture. But what can you do? I went home after that and took a brief nap, as has become my custom after class on Mondays. I didn't sleep all that long because it was past noon and I knew Kevin was out of class. It's unfortunate for me that I'm such a light sleeper that even the mere thought of someone walking in and waking me up keeps me awake.
I awoke from my nap and decided to watch the band video, which we didn't have time to go all the way through last night. I think I'm going to burn a copy of this thing and send it to RB Digital Media to show them what a yearbook production is supposed to be like. The main part of the video is a little like what RBDM produces: a fancy show with scene transitions and the like, never staying on one camera angle for too long. This video, however, has a significantly longer attention span than RBDM's tend to, and I was very impressed with the main video overall, save for the short duration of it. So that's all well and good. Piccadilly, right? But wait, there's more! If you go into the "special features" section, you'll find raw footage of the pregame show, every halftime show that Panorama Studios was able to make it to, and our Bandfest performance. And it's from one camera (for the most part). There's no fancy crap, just a straight recording of the shows that you would want when you buy a yearbook video. It's such a nice change from the...er...horse pucky-ish DVD's RBDM has been producing. I've heard that the Royal Regiment switched back to Ad Lib though, so perhaps the class of 2005 will be luckier than I was...
After that was a bunch of filler until band...homework and putzing around and stuff...
I went to Light House by myself for dinner...roast beef, potatoes, carrots, a spinach salad, and chocolate cake for dessert, and it was all pretty darned good. I don't think I mentioned that I've gained seven pounds since I moved up here, and I'm quite certain that I haven't been going to the gym enough for that weight gain to be attributed to muscle growth. I'm not worried about "getting fat" - you know, because I weigh ridiculously little as it is - but I am concerned that my diet has gotten away from good stuff and moved towards candy, donuts, pizza, etc. So I've decided I'll have to eat more often at Light House and Sandwich Factory because they're pretty much the only places where I can buy decent foods that are halfway good for me. That reminds me, I'll tell you about my lunch while I'm thinking about it. I decided to try a turkey sandwich instead of roast beef. No? Well I thought it was exciting.
WindO was fun, although I'm going to have to take Jenna's (I think it was Jenna's...) term "midiot" and apply it to the composer of "Ride," one of the pieces we're playing. A "midiot" is one who writes music that is too tiring or too technical or whatever so that the only being capable of playing it is some sort of midi device. Well, "Ride" has about sixteen measures of rest out of about two hundred, and the ending is...well...not fun. F on top of the staff for a long time and then bustin' out the high C...and holding it...still holding it...and then you're done, not just with the piece, but for playing trumpet for about a week. (It occurs to me that I may have already complained about this to you all, but as I've said before: that's the beauty of blogs...you can skip over what you don't want to read.) Other than that, windO was quite enjoyable. Just Jiminy Cricket. (Yes, I'm coining a new phrase. This one is used in pretty much the same way as "piccadilly.") I'll end this paragraph with a quote from J: "It's a grand pause! I'm not going to conduct the grand pause! There's nothing to conduct!"
Okay, now here's something fairly interesting that I'm not quite sure how I feel about. There's this girl who sits in front of me in windO who plays french horn, and I hadn't ever really talked with her before tonight. But we discovered that she lives in Yosemite tower one (recall I'm in tower two) so we walked back to "the boonies" together after rehearsal. We talked about this and that and the other on the way; you know, "what's your major?" and "where are you from?" When we arrived at Yosemite we stood outside of her tower for a good five minutes before we finally managed to terminate the conversation. But that didn't happen until she asked what my phone number was. So there you have it...the first phone number I got from a girl in college. I know, it was handed to me, but I'll take my victories as they come. Ben and Courtney were quite proud of me...anyway, her name is Rosaile ("Rose-uh-lee"). We also talked a little about people drinking so much and we came to the conclusion that we need to hang out with each other on Friday and Saturday nights while everyone else goes and gets hammered. I set myself up pretty well on that one, didn't I?
And after that I came back home and finished the crossword puzzle, which turned into an effort by about six people in the tower two common room. We backed into a corner and got "smape" for "a thick urban air condition," which I'm pretty sure isn't a real word. But everything else around it fits, I swear! I'll get the answers tomorrow...
So tomorrow is looking like a low-key day. One class, a trip to the gym if I'm ambitious, and a marching band rehearsal that will most certainly be cut short due to the fact that marching band is over. But why tell you about it now? I'll be back tomorrow night...
Cheers,
Josh
mood: good
music: none
location: dorm
PS - an actual quote from The Engineering Student Survival Guide: "We [engineers] don't attract many members of the opposite sex."
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
Lois: "Peter, you're drunk again."
Peter: "No, I'm just exhausted because I've been up all night drinking."
I awoke from my nap and decided to watch the band video, which we didn't have time to go all the way through last night. I think I'm going to burn a copy of this thing and send it to RB Digital Media to show them what a yearbook production is supposed to be like. The main part of the video is a little like what RBDM produces: a fancy show with scene transitions and the like, never staying on one camera angle for too long. This video, however, has a significantly longer attention span than RBDM's tend to, and I was very impressed with the main video overall, save for the short duration of it. So that's all well and good. Piccadilly, right? But wait, there's more! If you go into the "special features" section, you'll find raw footage of the pregame show, every halftime show that Panorama Studios was able to make it to, and our Bandfest performance. And it's from one camera (for the most part). There's no fancy crap, just a straight recording of the shows that you would want when you buy a yearbook video. It's such a nice change from the...er...horse pucky-ish DVD's RBDM has been producing. I've heard that the Royal Regiment switched back to Ad Lib though, so perhaps the class of 2005 will be luckier than I was...
After that was a bunch of filler until band...homework and putzing around and stuff...
I went to Light House by myself for dinner...roast beef, potatoes, carrots, a spinach salad, and chocolate cake for dessert, and it was all pretty darned good. I don't think I mentioned that I've gained seven pounds since I moved up here, and I'm quite certain that I haven't been going to the gym enough for that weight gain to be attributed to muscle growth. I'm not worried about "getting fat" - you know, because I weigh ridiculously little as it is - but I am concerned that my diet has gotten away from good stuff and moved towards candy, donuts, pizza, etc. So I've decided I'll have to eat more often at Light House and Sandwich Factory because they're pretty much the only places where I can buy decent foods that are halfway good for me. That reminds me, I'll tell you about my lunch while I'm thinking about it. I decided to try a turkey sandwich instead of roast beef. No? Well I thought it was exciting.
WindO was fun, although I'm going to have to take Jenna's (I think it was Jenna's...) term "midiot" and apply it to the composer of "Ride," one of the pieces we're playing. A "midiot" is one who writes music that is too tiring or too technical or whatever so that the only being capable of playing it is some sort of midi device. Well, "Ride" has about sixteen measures of rest out of about two hundred, and the ending is...well...not fun. F on top of the staff for a long time and then bustin' out the high C...and holding it...still holding it...and then you're done, not just with the piece, but for playing trumpet for about a week. (It occurs to me that I may have already complained about this to you all, but as I've said before: that's the beauty of blogs...you can skip over what you don't want to read.) Other than that, windO was quite enjoyable. Just Jiminy Cricket. (Yes, I'm coining a new phrase. This one is used in pretty much the same way as "piccadilly.") I'll end this paragraph with a quote from J: "It's a grand pause! I'm not going to conduct the grand pause! There's nothing to conduct!"
Okay, now here's something fairly interesting that I'm not quite sure how I feel about. There's this girl who sits in front of me in windO who plays french horn, and I hadn't ever really talked with her before tonight. But we discovered that she lives in Yosemite tower one (recall I'm in tower two) so we walked back to "the boonies" together after rehearsal. We talked about this and that and the other on the way; you know, "what's your major?" and "where are you from?" When we arrived at Yosemite we stood outside of her tower for a good five minutes before we finally managed to terminate the conversation. But that didn't happen until she asked what my phone number was. So there you have it...the first phone number I got from a girl in college. I know, it was handed to me, but I'll take my victories as they come. Ben and Courtney were quite proud of me...anyway, her name is Rosaile ("Rose-uh-lee"). We also talked a little about people drinking so much and we came to the conclusion that we need to hang out with each other on Friday and Saturday nights while everyone else goes and gets hammered. I set myself up pretty well on that one, didn't I?
And after that I came back home and finished the crossword puzzle, which turned into an effort by about six people in the tower two common room. We backed into a corner and got "smape" for "a thick urban air condition," which I'm pretty sure isn't a real word. But everything else around it fits, I swear! I'll get the answers tomorrow...
So tomorrow is looking like a low-key day. One class, a trip to the gym if I'm ambitious, and a marching band rehearsal that will most certainly be cut short due to the fact that marching band is over. But why tell you about it now? I'll be back tomorrow night...
Cheers,
Josh
mood: good
music: none
location: dorm
PS - an actual quote from The Engineering Student Survival Guide: "We [engineers] don't attract many members of the opposite sex."
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
Lois: "Peter, you're drunk again."
Peter: "No, I'm just exhausted because I've been up all night drinking."
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Chinese Food for Beautiful People
So I did a whole buttload of stuff since I last wrote you all, which if memory serves was last Tuesday. I've said before how much I hate it when I have to go into day-by-day summaries of a week or so, but this week it was pretty much unavoidable. I apologize in advance - to both my loyal readers and to my future self who may be reading this - for all the tidbits I'm sure I'll forget to mention.
I woke up relative late on Wednesday morning, only to roll out of bed and lounge around the house for a little while. Alena called after a fair amount of time, and we planned for me to go over to her house for a few hours until she had to leave for her flute lesson, which was inconveniently scheduled in the middle of the day. But what can you do? The effects of the limit on our time together were dulled more or less because I'm coming home again in two weeks anyway, but a little more time would have been nice. We sat around and talked and played a board game or two...you know, the usual stuff. I got up late enough that morning to miss breakfast, and because Alena's house was void of food stuffs (because the Egenses were going to Fresno for a few days for a cross country meet of Krista's) Alena, Krista, and I went to In-N-Out for lunch. I think I'm pretty much over the whole sick-of-In-N-Out-food-and-can't-stand-the-smell-of-the-place thing, because I rather enjoyed the meal and the three of us had just a grand old time. After not too long Alena had to leave for her lesson, so we said our goodbyes and she left. I remained to finish a game of Scattergories with her sisters. I left for Ramona a short while after Alena left for Ozzie's.
I arrived up the mountain to meet Dad and his brother Roland and family. The seven of us drove over to Lindbergh Field to pick up cousin Adam (son of Dad's brother Craig) who had flown in (for free - he's a pilot) for Thanksgiving. We swept through the second terminal, cramming Adam and his luggage into the already-packed Suburban, and departed for dinner. After much debate over which restaurant to eat at, we decided to stop by Vons on the way home and pick up a smorgasbord of sausages, tri-tip, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember but that I'm sure was there. Dinner at home turned out to be much more pleasant than any restaurant could have been, as eating out tends to be much more stressful when you've got three kids to manage. With a full stomach, I went to bed in my own room with a loverly queen bed.
I woke up slightly earlier than I perhaps would have liked on Thanksgiving due to the high level of noise emanating from the kitchen Thursday morning. Why do kids get up so early?! It's at least a change from the dorms though: in SLO you can sleep in 'till noon but you can't go to sleep before one because everyone's up all night; in Ramona you can go to bed pretty much as early as you'd like but you're up at 7:30. Hey, I'm all for variety. Anywho, we spent the better part of the morning playing each other in backgammon and chess, two games I quite enjoy, if only in small doses. After a few hours of that I decided to practice trumpet, playing some actual exercises from an actual lesson book for the first time in at least six months. And you know what? It was actually kind of fun. Just another example of the benefits of everything in moderation, I suppose. Anyway, Steve, Tyler, and Jason showed up whilst I was holed up in my room practicing. There wasn't a whole heck of a lot of stuff for us to do for entertainment, so we ended up helping prepare for dinner. Can you imagine the horror? But seriously, I took charge of setting the table. Dad went all out and bought a dining room table for twelve and matching china cabinet, which he stocked with a full set of new china ("friendly village" themed). He also had nice fabric napkins with little berry wreathes to put around them, a couple of sterling candlesticks, and nice fabric placemats. I arranged the lot of it into an exquisite setting, if I do say so myself. (I enjoy that sort of thing - decorating and whatnot...I'm pretty sure I get it from Mom, who has always been into buying and displaying things that match the decor of her house.) Thanksgiving dinner went off without a hitch, complete with turkey, ham, and all the fixin's. My favorite? Stuffing, as always. We had pie for dessert, *cough* *cough* from Coco's *cough*. Apple, boysenberry, two pumpkins, and a banana cream. Yum! After the Riches hit the road, the rest of us fell asleep watching the third Harry Potter movie.
I again awoke slightly earlier than I would prefer on Friday, this time to the result of Dad's feeding Lizzy multi-grain bread and Lizzy's severe allergies to nuts. Never a dull moment in the Parker household, let me tell you. I played a couple last games with the family before I left for an action packed day with all the RB people I've been missing in SLO. First it was off to Lauren's to chat for about an hour, then off to Stacie's to meet her and Jenna for lunch at Marie Callender's (French dip sandwich...delish!). I went home to Mom's for a couple of hours, cleaning my trumpet (which was in desperate need of a bath) for part of the time. That night I went over to RBHS to meet the RB pep band for the RB-Mira Mesa playoff football game. I figured I'd be the only graduate to be dorky enough to come back and play with my high school band, but a whole group of RB alumni showed up to play, and not just from the class of 2004, either. We had very much fun, partially because the Broncos kicked the Marauders' butts and partially because it was almost like old times again. After the game a few of us went over to the RB Denny's to find it completely packed, so Joanna, Jen, Jenna, and I "road tripped it" over to the Poway Denny's instead. I was home by a few minutes past midnight.
On Saturday I got up and started decorating the outside of the house with Mom. Mom put up the bulk of the lights; it was my job to cover the difficult ones, including the second-story roof ones and the ones in the front-yard tree. In the process of climbing across the roof I knocked off and broke a tile...whoops...didn't kill anyone, though. Time was a factor, however, and this year's production suffered slightly, I'm sorry to say. I'll have to do some adjusting to some of the lights when I return in a couple of weeks...But anyway, I met Dad and Uncle Roland's family at the Chili's on Scripps Poway Parkway, and the seven of us (Adam had gone home) drove to La Jolla for a fantastic dinner at P.F. Chang's. (I miss the kung pao chicken in SLO...) We roamed UTC for an hour after that, strolling into stores that caught our fancy. We left around 6:30 so I could get back home to help Mom get a Christmas tree. When I arrived back in good ol' Woodcrest Heights, Mom was too tired to get a tree (which I wasn't overly disappointed about...I was tired myself), so I spent an hour putting up lights in the upstairs windows and setting timers for all seven zones of Christmas cheer. At long last the project was completed; here's a picture of our finished product (please forgive the poor quality of the picture...night shots are difficult!):
Lauren came over right about when I had finished with the lights, and we watched Men in Black II, which happened to be on Fox. We then caught the first half of Men in Black (the first one), which was playing on TBS. Lauren had to get home for her 11:00 curfew, so we said our goodbyes after what was certainly not enough time to spend together and she left. And then I went to bed.
This morning I got up in time to meet Jenna, Justin, Nick, Kevin, Joanna, Stacie, and Irene at the Penasquitos (spelling?) IHOP. Kevin had planned to leave for SLO from there, so he came back to Mom's with me so I could finish packing. We were on the road by 11:40 for the long haul home, with only one stop at the Ventura Chipotle for lunch. Due to a couple of traffic hang-ups, we didn't get home until around 5:30. I hurriedly dressed myself for the band banquet (I had to ask Jeeves how to tie a tie, but my first attempt at it was, shockingly, satisfactory) and rushed out the door to the Madonna Inn. Filet mignon, green beans, baked potato, and a slice of chocolate cake later, the banquet was over and I was on my way home. Highlights: (1) receiving the band yearbook DVD, which was shorter than I would have liked but was of a far superior quality than what I'm used to from RB digital media (2) watching awards given out to assorted individuals/groups (saxophones as best section? psh...whatever!) and (3) getting to take the centerpiece of the table home because my birthday is the next to occur.
And now I'm back here, writing in my blog an entry that went very much more smoothly than I would have predicted. Hooray! But, alas, I must now sign off and go to bed. But you all knew that was coming, didn't you?
Cheers,
Josh
mood: a little homesick...coming back after five days at home is more difficult than coming back after two days at home.
music: Ottmar Liebert's Poets and Angels, a guitarist's interpretation of some of the most cherished Christmas carols. I love this CD because I grew up with Dad always playing it at Christmas time; it puts me in the Christmas spirit.
location: back in home sweet dorm, SLO
PS - Uncle Roland, in comparing P.F. Chang's to the Chinese restaurant he frequents where he lives, referred to P.F. Chang's as "Chinese food for beautiful people," hence the title of this entry.
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[The US Army prepares to launch an attack on the Griffin's house]
General: "We're about to commence 'Operation Bomb-the-Crap-Out-of-Your-House.' The guy who thinks up the names is on vacation."
I woke up relative late on Wednesday morning, only to roll out of bed and lounge around the house for a little while. Alena called after a fair amount of time, and we planned for me to go over to her house for a few hours until she had to leave for her flute lesson, which was inconveniently scheduled in the middle of the day. But what can you do? The effects of the limit on our time together were dulled more or less because I'm coming home again in two weeks anyway, but a little more time would have been nice. We sat around and talked and played a board game or two...you know, the usual stuff. I got up late enough that morning to miss breakfast, and because Alena's house was void of food stuffs (because the Egenses were going to Fresno for a few days for a cross country meet of Krista's) Alena, Krista, and I went to In-N-Out for lunch. I think I'm pretty much over the whole sick-of-In-N-Out-food-and-can't-stand-the-smell-of-the-place thing, because I rather enjoyed the meal and the three of us had just a grand old time. After not too long Alena had to leave for her lesson, so we said our goodbyes and she left. I remained to finish a game of Scattergories with her sisters. I left for Ramona a short while after Alena left for Ozzie's.
I arrived up the mountain to meet Dad and his brother Roland and family. The seven of us drove over to Lindbergh Field to pick up cousin Adam (son of Dad's brother Craig) who had flown in (for free - he's a pilot) for Thanksgiving. We swept through the second terminal, cramming Adam and his luggage into the already-packed Suburban, and departed for dinner. After much debate over which restaurant to eat at, we decided to stop by Vons on the way home and pick up a smorgasbord of sausages, tri-tip, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember but that I'm sure was there. Dinner at home turned out to be much more pleasant than any restaurant could have been, as eating out tends to be much more stressful when you've got three kids to manage. With a full stomach, I went to bed in my own room with a loverly queen bed.
I woke up slightly earlier than I perhaps would have liked on Thanksgiving due to the high level of noise emanating from the kitchen Thursday morning. Why do kids get up so early?! It's at least a change from the dorms though: in SLO you can sleep in 'till noon but you can't go to sleep before one because everyone's up all night; in Ramona you can go to bed pretty much as early as you'd like but you're up at 7:30. Hey, I'm all for variety. Anywho, we spent the better part of the morning playing each other in backgammon and chess, two games I quite enjoy, if only in small doses. After a few hours of that I decided to practice trumpet, playing some actual exercises from an actual lesson book for the first time in at least six months. And you know what? It was actually kind of fun. Just another example of the benefits of everything in moderation, I suppose. Anyway, Steve, Tyler, and Jason showed up whilst I was holed up in my room practicing. There wasn't a whole heck of a lot of stuff for us to do for entertainment, so we ended up helping prepare for dinner. Can you imagine the horror? But seriously, I took charge of setting the table. Dad went all out and bought a dining room table for twelve and matching china cabinet, which he stocked with a full set of new china ("friendly village" themed). He also had nice fabric napkins with little berry wreathes to put around them, a couple of sterling candlesticks, and nice fabric placemats. I arranged the lot of it into an exquisite setting, if I do say so myself. (I enjoy that sort of thing - decorating and whatnot...I'm pretty sure I get it from Mom, who has always been into buying and displaying things that match the decor of her house.) Thanksgiving dinner went off without a hitch, complete with turkey, ham, and all the fixin's. My favorite? Stuffing, as always. We had pie for dessert, *cough* *cough* from Coco's *cough*. Apple, boysenberry, two pumpkins, and a banana cream. Yum! After the Riches hit the road, the rest of us fell asleep watching the third Harry Potter movie.
I again awoke slightly earlier than I would prefer on Friday, this time to the result of Dad's feeding Lizzy multi-grain bread and Lizzy's severe allergies to nuts. Never a dull moment in the Parker household, let me tell you. I played a couple last games with the family before I left for an action packed day with all the RB people I've been missing in SLO. First it was off to Lauren's to chat for about an hour, then off to Stacie's to meet her and Jenna for lunch at Marie Callender's (French dip sandwich...delish!). I went home to Mom's for a couple of hours, cleaning my trumpet (which was in desperate need of a bath) for part of the time. That night I went over to RBHS to meet the RB pep band for the RB-Mira Mesa playoff football game. I figured I'd be the only graduate to be dorky enough to come back and play with my high school band, but a whole group of RB alumni showed up to play, and not just from the class of 2004, either. We had very much fun, partially because the Broncos kicked the Marauders' butts and partially because it was almost like old times again. After the game a few of us went over to the RB Denny's to find it completely packed, so Joanna, Jen, Jenna, and I "road tripped it" over to the Poway Denny's instead. I was home by a few minutes past midnight.
On Saturday I got up and started decorating the outside of the house with Mom. Mom put up the bulk of the lights; it was my job to cover the difficult ones, including the second-story roof ones and the ones in the front-yard tree. In the process of climbing across the roof I knocked off and broke a tile...whoops...didn't kill anyone, though. Time was a factor, however, and this year's production suffered slightly, I'm sorry to say. I'll have to do some adjusting to some of the lights when I return in a couple of weeks...But anyway, I met Dad and Uncle Roland's family at the Chili's on Scripps Poway Parkway, and the seven of us (Adam had gone home) drove to La Jolla for a fantastic dinner at P.F. Chang's. (I miss the kung pao chicken in SLO...) We roamed UTC for an hour after that, strolling into stores that caught our fancy. We left around 6:30 so I could get back home to help Mom get a Christmas tree. When I arrived back in good ol' Woodcrest Heights, Mom was too tired to get a tree (which I wasn't overly disappointed about...I was tired myself), so I spent an hour putting up lights in the upstairs windows and setting timers for all seven zones of Christmas cheer. At long last the project was completed; here's a picture of our finished product (please forgive the poor quality of the picture...night shots are difficult!):
Lauren came over right about when I had finished with the lights, and we watched Men in Black II, which happened to be on Fox. We then caught the first half of Men in Black (the first one), which was playing on TBS. Lauren had to get home for her 11:00 curfew, so we said our goodbyes after what was certainly not enough time to spend together and she left. And then I went to bed.
This morning I got up in time to meet Jenna, Justin, Nick, Kevin, Joanna, Stacie, and Irene at the Penasquitos (spelling?) IHOP. Kevin had planned to leave for SLO from there, so he came back to Mom's with me so I could finish packing. We were on the road by 11:40 for the long haul home, with only one stop at the Ventura Chipotle for lunch. Due to a couple of traffic hang-ups, we didn't get home until around 5:30. I hurriedly dressed myself for the band banquet (I had to ask Jeeves how to tie a tie, but my first attempt at it was, shockingly, satisfactory) and rushed out the door to the Madonna Inn. Filet mignon, green beans, baked potato, and a slice of chocolate cake later, the banquet was over and I was on my way home. Highlights: (1) receiving the band yearbook DVD, which was shorter than I would have liked but was of a far superior quality than what I'm used to from RB digital media (2) watching awards given out to assorted individuals/groups (saxophones as best section? psh...whatever!) and (3) getting to take the centerpiece of the table home because my birthday is the next to occur.
And now I'm back here, writing in my blog an entry that went very much more smoothly than I would have predicted. Hooray! But, alas, I must now sign off and go to bed. But you all knew that was coming, didn't you?
Cheers,
Josh
mood: a little homesick...coming back after five days at home is more difficult than coming back after two days at home.
music: Ottmar Liebert's Poets and Angels, a guitarist's interpretation of some of the most cherished Christmas carols. I love this CD because I grew up with Dad always playing it at Christmas time; it puts me in the Christmas spirit.
location: back in home sweet dorm, SLO
PS - Uncle Roland, in comparing P.F. Chang's to the Chinese restaurant he frequents where he lives, referred to P.F. Chang's as "Chinese food for beautiful people," hence the title of this entry.
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[The US Army prepares to launch an attack on the Griffin's house]
General: "We're about to commence 'Operation Bomb-the-Crap-Out-of-Your-House.' The guy who thinks up the names is on vacation."
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Built Like a Brick Chicken House
All right...I'm about to start on another more-than-one-day summary entry. I really don't like writing these because I always end up leaving stuff out. But that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.
So I got up on Monday at the usual time, got ready, and walked to physics, dropping my flower pot and other music theory composition paraphernalia off in the music building on my way. I stayed in physics as long as I could, but I walked out with about 25 minutes left in the period so that I could meet my music theory group in time for a rehearsal before our performance. (Isn't that great about college? You can come late and show up early, and the professors don't really care. The only consequence is that you bomb the test and fail the class if you do it too often. But it's up to you...isn't it fun being treated like an adult?) Anyway, our rehearsal went as well as it did the night before; we went off to class without much worry. Long story short, we played through our piece in front of the class without any major hitches. We rushed in the third section (thanks to the box player) and the ending wasn't together at all (again, thanks to the box player), but considering where we came from a couple weeks before I couldn't ask for anything more. I was quite impressed with one of the groups' pieces...they had this one guy play four beer bottles filled with different amounts of water (at least, I assumed it was water). They had a fairly innovative melody; the bottle player even trilled at one point. As for the other groups, they played at about the same level that we did, except for one that completely fell apart. All in all it was an interesting experience; I should find out next Monday how I did.
After that I went to calculus, then back to the dorms where I prepared to come home. (I did laundry...three washers full!) I also took about an hour to do the crossword puzzle that the Mustang Daily borrows from the New York Post every day, and I finished it! I've never been able to do a crossword puzzle before (granted, the NY Post crosswords start easy on Monday and get harder until Friday) so I was quite excited. I did get a lot of help from anyone who happened to be nearby (namely, Kevin) but that's what made it so much fun. I had to take the paper with me to dinner to finish it...I got stuck with one clue left to figure out that no one at the table knew. Luckily, Joanna called and knew that a six letter word for "glimpses" is "espies," which I admit I never would have figured out. But hooray for adding new words to my vocabulary. I can even use it in a sentence: Espies was the last word in my crossword puzzle.
After dinner I went on over to windO rehearsal, which ran later than it usually does because J was in a particularly chatty mood. This is my one chief gripe about windO: we do so much talking and not enough playing. He can't just tell us not to breathe in the middle of the melody; he has to launch into a description of his Rotary Club meetings where they sing songs and nobody has any voice training except for this one woman and when they sing most people breathe everywhere but the one woman sings through the melody and she has a beautiful voice but she sounds wrong because everyone else breathes everywhere...and on and on and on...for ten minutes. Quite the infuriation. But we're playing "Candide" so it's all completely worth it.
From windO I went straight to my car and drove home. It took me about 4.75 hours, including one stop in LA to get gas. It is indeed a long haul, but at least this time I'm home for five full days instead of two. When I got home I gave Mom a hug and went straight to bed. My big, full-size, triple-blanketed bed.
I got up this morning at around ten. Mom and I watched The Apprentice, which she had taped for me last Thursday because I was at a volleyball game. I showered after that to prepare for Mom's and my voyage to Target and Costco. I sorely miss my Target and my Costco up in SLO, although if I really wanted to I could drive about a half an hour to get to them. Anywho, Mom and I were partially running errands for her and partially looking for birthday and Christmas present ideas for me (my birthday is a week from Sunday and I've been getting badgered about what I'd like, but I got nothin'). At Costco I found a couple of mini Christmas trees that look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book that I can put on my desk back in SLO. For some reason I'm very excited to be coming into the Christmas season this year. I love to see all the malls and downtown areas and other public places decorated with holly and candy canes and wreaths and whatnot. It all may very well be a bastardization of what Christmas is supposed to be about, but I, quite simply, don't give a flying rat's butt. I'm capable of enjoying all the "capitalism" and not forgetting why we celebrate Christmas. I'm also of the opinion that people should be able to have a non-religious Christmas if that's what they choose to do. All that aside, I'm still very excited to be crossing into the holiday season. Mom has all of the indoor decorations up, and I'm helping her put all the outdoor lights up this weekend. If you've ever been to my house in December, then you know that we go all out. I love it!!
Sorry...got off on a tangent there...after shopping with Mom I went over to Alena's house, where we spent an hour talking and playing Scattergories. She and I went "up the mountain" to Dad's house in Ramona for a steak dinner. (Dad had a few glasses of wine, and told us a story about how he used to be able to swim at a rate that impressed the buff guys. He used the phrase "built like a brick chicken house" to describe them. You can take the Wisconsinian out of Wisconsin...) We couldn't stay too long, though, because Joanna needed a ride home from the airport at 9:30. I dropped Alena back off at home so I could get to Lindbergh Field by the predetermined time so Joanna wouldn't have to stand out in the cold for too long. I arrived at the commuter terminal right on time...but we were in beautiful downtown San Diego on the first night of our vacation, so I couldn't just take her home. We decided to take the elevator to the top of the Hyatt to check out the view. We drove over to the Seaport Village parking lot (which was an adventure in itself, involving one-way streets and uncertainty about which way I was supposed to be driving) and walked over to the Hyatt. They built a second tower recently, and we decided to try that tower first. We got in the elevator an pressed the button for the top floor, and watched the numbers climb: L, 2, 3, 4...4...4. We stayed in the elevator for a full three minutes before realizing we weren't moving anymore. Evidently you need a hotel key to get the elevator to take you above the fourth floor, and if you don't have one the elevator takes you to the fourth and sits there without opening the doors. Sigh. We walked over to the other tower and met the same fate with those elevators; it turned out the skylounge was closed. It was all very disappointing...but we left for home anyway. We were still in the mood for some adventure, so we settled for a stop off at the Krispy Kreme on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard. (If you've never had a Krispy Kreme right off of the conveyor belt, I highly recommend it.) After that I dropped Joanna off at her house and made my way back home.
And that's about all there was. For some reason it is all still very fresh in my mind; this entry was very easy to write. Hooray. I'm sure I'll have many more fun experiences this week to jot down here. For now, I've no more to share.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: nothing specific, but pretty good
music: I've been watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, partly because it's a good movie and partly because it's one of the only things I have on VHS (I've not a DVD player in my room)
location: Mom's House, San Diego, CA
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[Peter pretends to be drug addict so he can stay at a clinic]
Clinic Administrator: "I don't think you're a drug addict. I think you're an idiot."
Peter: "Well I don't pay you to think. In fact, I don't pay you at all.......countered!"
So I got up on Monday at the usual time, got ready, and walked to physics, dropping my flower pot and other music theory composition paraphernalia off in the music building on my way. I stayed in physics as long as I could, but I walked out with about 25 minutes left in the period so that I could meet my music theory group in time for a rehearsal before our performance. (Isn't that great about college? You can come late and show up early, and the professors don't really care. The only consequence is that you bomb the test and fail the class if you do it too often. But it's up to you...isn't it fun being treated like an adult?) Anyway, our rehearsal went as well as it did the night before; we went off to class without much worry. Long story short, we played through our piece in front of the class without any major hitches. We rushed in the third section (thanks to the box player) and the ending wasn't together at all (again, thanks to the box player), but considering where we came from a couple weeks before I couldn't ask for anything more. I was quite impressed with one of the groups' pieces...they had this one guy play four beer bottles filled with different amounts of water (at least, I assumed it was water). They had a fairly innovative melody; the bottle player even trilled at one point. As for the other groups, they played at about the same level that we did, except for one that completely fell apart. All in all it was an interesting experience; I should find out next Monday how I did.
After that I went to calculus, then back to the dorms where I prepared to come home. (I did laundry...three washers full!) I also took about an hour to do the crossword puzzle that the Mustang Daily borrows from the New York Post every day, and I finished it! I've never been able to do a crossword puzzle before (granted, the NY Post crosswords start easy on Monday and get harder until Friday) so I was quite excited. I did get a lot of help from anyone who happened to be nearby (namely, Kevin) but that's what made it so much fun. I had to take the paper with me to dinner to finish it...I got stuck with one clue left to figure out that no one at the table knew. Luckily, Joanna called and knew that a six letter word for "glimpses" is "espies," which I admit I never would have figured out. But hooray for adding new words to my vocabulary. I can even use it in a sentence: Espies was the last word in my crossword puzzle.
After dinner I went on over to windO rehearsal, which ran later than it usually does because J was in a particularly chatty mood. This is my one chief gripe about windO: we do so much talking and not enough playing. He can't just tell us not to breathe in the middle of the melody; he has to launch into a description of his Rotary Club meetings where they sing songs and nobody has any voice training except for this one woman and when they sing most people breathe everywhere but the one woman sings through the melody and she has a beautiful voice but she sounds wrong because everyone else breathes everywhere...and on and on and on...for ten minutes. Quite the infuriation. But we're playing "Candide" so it's all completely worth it.
From windO I went straight to my car and drove home. It took me about 4.75 hours, including one stop in LA to get gas. It is indeed a long haul, but at least this time I'm home for five full days instead of two. When I got home I gave Mom a hug and went straight to bed. My big, full-size, triple-blanketed bed.
I got up this morning at around ten. Mom and I watched The Apprentice, which she had taped for me last Thursday because I was at a volleyball game. I showered after that to prepare for Mom's and my voyage to Target and Costco. I sorely miss my Target and my Costco up in SLO, although if I really wanted to I could drive about a half an hour to get to them. Anywho, Mom and I were partially running errands for her and partially looking for birthday and Christmas present ideas for me (my birthday is a week from Sunday and I've been getting badgered about what I'd like, but I got nothin'). At Costco I found a couple of mini Christmas trees that look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book that I can put on my desk back in SLO. For some reason I'm very excited to be coming into the Christmas season this year. I love to see all the malls and downtown areas and other public places decorated with holly and candy canes and wreaths and whatnot. It all may very well be a bastardization of what Christmas is supposed to be about, but I, quite simply, don't give a flying rat's butt. I'm capable of enjoying all the "capitalism" and not forgetting why we celebrate Christmas. I'm also of the opinion that people should be able to have a non-religious Christmas if that's what they choose to do. All that aside, I'm still very excited to be crossing into the holiday season. Mom has all of the indoor decorations up, and I'm helping her put all the outdoor lights up this weekend. If you've ever been to my house in December, then you know that we go all out. I love it!!
Sorry...got off on a tangent there...after shopping with Mom I went over to Alena's house, where we spent an hour talking and playing Scattergories. She and I went "up the mountain" to Dad's house in Ramona for a steak dinner. (Dad had a few glasses of wine, and told us a story about how he used to be able to swim at a rate that impressed the buff guys. He used the phrase "built like a brick chicken house" to describe them. You can take the Wisconsinian out of Wisconsin...) We couldn't stay too long, though, because Joanna needed a ride home from the airport at 9:30. I dropped Alena back off at home so I could get to Lindbergh Field by the predetermined time so Joanna wouldn't have to stand out in the cold for too long. I arrived at the commuter terminal right on time...but we were in beautiful downtown San Diego on the first night of our vacation, so I couldn't just take her home. We decided to take the elevator to the top of the Hyatt to check out the view. We drove over to the Seaport Village parking lot (which was an adventure in itself, involving one-way streets and uncertainty about which way I was supposed to be driving) and walked over to the Hyatt. They built a second tower recently, and we decided to try that tower first. We got in the elevator an pressed the button for the top floor, and watched the numbers climb: L, 2, 3, 4...4...4. We stayed in the elevator for a full three minutes before realizing we weren't moving anymore. Evidently you need a hotel key to get the elevator to take you above the fourth floor, and if you don't have one the elevator takes you to the fourth and sits there without opening the doors. Sigh. We walked over to the other tower and met the same fate with those elevators; it turned out the skylounge was closed. It was all very disappointing...but we left for home anyway. We were still in the mood for some adventure, so we settled for a stop off at the Krispy Kreme on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard. (If you've never had a Krispy Kreme right off of the conveyor belt, I highly recommend it.) After that I dropped Joanna off at her house and made my way back home.
And that's about all there was. For some reason it is all still very fresh in my mind; this entry was very easy to write. Hooray. I'm sure I'll have many more fun experiences this week to jot down here. For now, I've no more to share.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: nothing specific, but pretty good
music: I've been watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, partly because it's a good movie and partly because it's one of the only things I have on VHS (I've not a DVD player in my room)
location: Mom's House, San Diego, CA
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[Peter pretends to be drug addict so he can stay at a clinic]
Clinic Administrator: "I don't think you're a drug addict. I think you're an idiot."
Peter: "Well I don't pay you to think. In fact, I don't pay you at all.......countered!"
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Release and Down
Yes, I stole the title from one of Jenna's entries. But it applies, and I like it an awful lot. Besides, it isn't plagiarism if I cite it. (Santy 1).
Finally! I have access to a computer at a time when I'm not incredibly busy! I actually miss writing in this thing when I'm not able to, surprisingly enough. I guess it's one of those things where you develop a habit after 21 days of repetition. Regardless, I'm finally able to update you all on what's been going on around here. Mind you, this will probably be relatively shallow coverage of what's happened in the past five days, since there's so much to get through. I'm not sure I remember all of it...
Thursday was busy, as predicted. It seems so long ago now, but I'm pretty sure I ditched the gym in favor of sleep because I stayed up late on Wednesday catching up/getting ahead on my homework. Then I went to Calculus, where we spent the hour reviewing for the Friday midterm. After lunch I went to EE lab, where we did a series of experiments on MatLab, which is this program that tracks and samples mathematical functions and other assorted goodies. We had to use computer commands to do it all...you know, setting parameters and stuff, and I had a lot of fun. It bodes well for my computer science minor, yes? Tres exciting. From there I went to MB rehearsal, then dinner, then the volleyball game. At the end of every pep band game we usually play "Hey Baby," which involves most of us going up to random people in the audience and singing the line "Hey baby, I wanna know if you'll be my girl/guy." I happened to notice that Monica from my tower was at the game that night, so I went over and serenaded her. I'm pretty sure she was half flattered and half thought I was a big dork, which was about what I was going for. Anywho, after the game I went to see if my music theory group was there for a rehearsal, but they weren't anywhere to be found. That was fine with me, because it was almost 10 and I still needed to study for my calculus midterm. So that's what I did until I went to bed.
On Friday I rolled out of bed by 7 and it was off to physics, then music theory (where I took a quiz; we're learning about different kinds of chords), then calculus for the midterm. I didn't quite know right away how to do the last problem, but I'm pretty sure I got at least most of it by the end of the hour. I'll probably know by tomorrow. Anyway, I went to my physics lab after lunch, and then to my EE lecture, where I sat for an hour listening to a few seniors' attempts to describe their EE projects to us. (They didn't really understand that we don't know jack about EE yet.)
I rushed home from class to pack for the trip to Sac State in time to get down to the music building by 5:30. Long story short, I got on a bus and sat for six hours. We did have charter buses that were pretty comfy, but unfortunately the VCR pooped out on us after about the first five minutes, so we couldn't watch any movies for the entire trip. Ugh. But I had my trusty mp3 player to keep me entertained. We also played a few rounds of "sentence-picture," one of Courtney's many games. You write a sentence on a piece of paper - any sentence, like "the elephant climbed the telephone pole" - and pass it to the next person. The next person then draws what the sentence says (in this example, an elephant climbing a telephone pole), folds the paper over so only the picture (not the sentence) can be seen, then passes it to the next person. The next person then writes a sentence based on the picture they see. Then you do it over and over until eventually the picture/sentence you have is nothing like what you started with. At the end you get to unfold the paper and see the whole progression of it, and it's usually pretty hilarious.
We arrived at the Sacramento Double Tree at about 1 in the morning. I went straight to bed because I planned to get up at about 9 to meet Stacie for breakfast. However, my roommates (whom I was randomly paired with because I failed to request specific roommates) went out to party. They came back at about 4, and they were completely smashed. Actually, one was fairly sober, but the other was totally out of it. He had no idea where he was, and he could barely stand and kept running into walls. I don't understand why anyone would want to put their body through that. I honestly find it just sad, but then I guess it's not really any of my business what other people do to themselves.
I got up in the morning and talked to Stacie, only to find that she had missed her train to Sacramento. She had to take a bus and ended up being delayed about an hour. It didn't really affect me all that much but I felt bad because Stacie was going through all of this trouble and would only get to see me for a couple of hours before I had to leave for the game. Oh well. In the time before she arrived I walked over to a Burger King a few blocks away for breakfast (by myself because no one else was awake yet). When I returned to my room I could barely breathe because it was so full of foul-smelling hot air that had been expelled by a pair of drunken roommates. Ew. So I left as quick as I could to go meet Stacie who had arrived at the Arden Fair Mall, just across the street from my hotel. We spent a couple of hours browsing the shops (Our favorite? The Discovery Channel Store.) and admiring all the Christmas decorations. There were three herald trumpet players roaming the mall playing carols. How cool is that?! The two hours went by pretty quickly, and Stacie had to return to Davis. We said our goodbyes and parted ways.
I went back to the hotel and got on the Sac State-bound band bus. We had a rehearsal (a full ten-minute one) and then it was off to perform. We marched around the stadium parking lot until we found the Cal Poly barbeque, and we played a bunch of stuff for them. Then game time, where we beat the Hornets 58-13. It was quite a sad little spectacle: Hornet Stadium is twice the size of ours here in SLO, but the Sac Staters only managed to fill about 15% of it. There were more Mustangs in the stands than Hornets...it was neat, though, because we got to play our halftime show facing the visitor's stands because more people were sitting there. After the game we had a mini band-off with the Sac State band, but they gave up after about three songs. Fine with me...it was cold out there!
Upon arrival back at the Double Tree, a bunch of us went across the street to Arden Fair, home to a California Pizza Kitchen. I had the BLT pizza, which was pretty good despite my lack of hunger. I spent a good deal of that dinner on the phone with various members of the Royal Regiment, who were at the Arcadia Tournament of Bands awards ceremony at that time. I was able to hear all of the big awards as they were called; I was really happy to almost feel as though I was there with them. (I would actually have been there with them if this weekend hadn't been our one away game that the band went to.) How did RB do? Exceptionally well. I was so excited for them. RB took the usual parade and high music awards, but they also took field show band. Field show band! Generally, RB loses by a little bit in field show but makes it up in parade to take overall sweepstakes. But last night they won both parade and field show individually, which they haven't done since my sophomore year (which was the year when we swept every caption at every tournament). I'm so thankful all of my c/o 2005 buddies could go out with a bang in their last ever tournament. For complete tournament results, I'm sure you can tune into Jenna's blog.
After dinner Ben and a few people went to see National Treasure; Steve and I went with Courtney to meet her friend Molly who lives in/near Sacramento and who came up to our hotel to visit for a few hours. We hit the Cheesecake Factory for a little overpriced dessert and spent the rest of the evening chatting and playing another of Courtney's games called Crepes. (I shall have to teach you all this Crepes game...it's quite the barrel of monkeys.) Molly left by 1, but the rest of us stayed up a little while longer and watched Home Alone, which happened to be on TV.
I had to get up by 8 this morning to be on the bus by 8:30 for a 9:00 departure. We arrived back at Cal Poly by 2:30; I had to immediately go meet my music group to have our last rehearsal before we perform our piece tomorrow morning. Miraculously, we can play through the whole thing...ish. It's not as good as I'd like it to be, but I can't deny that we've made tremendous progress since our first rehearsal. Hopefully it'll go well tomorrow.
I had dinner with Kevin and Sarah, one of his architecture friends, at Light House. I stopped by the music building on the way home to practice piano for a little while (I can almost play through Mozart's "Sonata III," which I've been working on for some time. I still need to get some private lessons going, though...)
And now I'm here at home, writing another epic entry, which seems to be the trend for Sunday nights. I must be off to bed now, for I have a long drive to make tomorrow night. (Cal Poly was not picked by the NCAA to go to the playoffs, despite our winning the Great West conference. So I'm coming home after windO tomorrow and staying until Sunday. I'm so excited!) I'll see you all in a day or two...
Cheers,
Josh
mood: relaxed
music: I was watching Friends on my desktop, but it was distracting me so I turned it off.
location: dorm
PS -
Hail to the Broncos valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail, Hail to RB High
The mighty Broncos fight!
Hail to the Broncos valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail, Hail to RB High
The silver, blue, and white!
Congratulations Royal Regiment!!
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[Peter swears repeatedly.]
Lois: "Peter!"
Peter: "Lois, sometimes it's okay to swear."
[cut to the inside of a courtroom]
Judge: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
Peter: "I do...you bastard."
Finally! I have access to a computer at a time when I'm not incredibly busy! I actually miss writing in this thing when I'm not able to, surprisingly enough. I guess it's one of those things where you develop a habit after 21 days of repetition. Regardless, I'm finally able to update you all on what's been going on around here. Mind you, this will probably be relatively shallow coverage of what's happened in the past five days, since there's so much to get through. I'm not sure I remember all of it...
Thursday was busy, as predicted. It seems so long ago now, but I'm pretty sure I ditched the gym in favor of sleep because I stayed up late on Wednesday catching up/getting ahead on my homework. Then I went to Calculus, where we spent the hour reviewing for the Friday midterm. After lunch I went to EE lab, where we did a series of experiments on MatLab, which is this program that tracks and samples mathematical functions and other assorted goodies. We had to use computer commands to do it all...you know, setting parameters and stuff, and I had a lot of fun. It bodes well for my computer science minor, yes? Tres exciting. From there I went to MB rehearsal, then dinner, then the volleyball game. At the end of every pep band game we usually play "Hey Baby," which involves most of us going up to random people in the audience and singing the line "Hey baby, I wanna know if you'll be my girl/guy." I happened to notice that Monica from my tower was at the game that night, so I went over and serenaded her. I'm pretty sure she was half flattered and half thought I was a big dork, which was about what I was going for. Anywho, after the game I went to see if my music theory group was there for a rehearsal, but they weren't anywhere to be found. That was fine with me, because it was almost 10 and I still needed to study for my calculus midterm. So that's what I did until I went to bed.
On Friday I rolled out of bed by 7 and it was off to physics, then music theory (where I took a quiz; we're learning about different kinds of chords), then calculus for the midterm. I didn't quite know right away how to do the last problem, but I'm pretty sure I got at least most of it by the end of the hour. I'll probably know by tomorrow. Anyway, I went to my physics lab after lunch, and then to my EE lecture, where I sat for an hour listening to a few seniors' attempts to describe their EE projects to us. (They didn't really understand that we don't know jack about EE yet.)
I rushed home from class to pack for the trip to Sac State in time to get down to the music building by 5:30. Long story short, I got on a bus and sat for six hours. We did have charter buses that were pretty comfy, but unfortunately the VCR pooped out on us after about the first five minutes, so we couldn't watch any movies for the entire trip. Ugh. But I had my trusty mp3 player to keep me entertained. We also played a few rounds of "sentence-picture," one of Courtney's many games. You write a sentence on a piece of paper - any sentence, like "the elephant climbed the telephone pole" - and pass it to the next person. The next person then draws what the sentence says (in this example, an elephant climbing a telephone pole), folds the paper over so only the picture (not the sentence) can be seen, then passes it to the next person. The next person then writes a sentence based on the picture they see. Then you do it over and over until eventually the picture/sentence you have is nothing like what you started with. At the end you get to unfold the paper and see the whole progression of it, and it's usually pretty hilarious.
We arrived at the Sacramento Double Tree at about 1 in the morning. I went straight to bed because I planned to get up at about 9 to meet Stacie for breakfast. However, my roommates (whom I was randomly paired with because I failed to request specific roommates) went out to party. They came back at about 4, and they were completely smashed. Actually, one was fairly sober, but the other was totally out of it. He had no idea where he was, and he could barely stand and kept running into walls. I don't understand why anyone would want to put their body through that. I honestly find it just sad, but then I guess it's not really any of my business what other people do to themselves.
I got up in the morning and talked to Stacie, only to find that she had missed her train to Sacramento. She had to take a bus and ended up being delayed about an hour. It didn't really affect me all that much but I felt bad because Stacie was going through all of this trouble and would only get to see me for a couple of hours before I had to leave for the game. Oh well. In the time before she arrived I walked over to a Burger King a few blocks away for breakfast (by myself because no one else was awake yet). When I returned to my room I could barely breathe because it was so full of foul-smelling hot air that had been expelled by a pair of drunken roommates. Ew. So I left as quick as I could to go meet Stacie who had arrived at the Arden Fair Mall, just across the street from my hotel. We spent a couple of hours browsing the shops (Our favorite? The Discovery Channel Store.) and admiring all the Christmas decorations. There were three herald trumpet players roaming the mall playing carols. How cool is that?! The two hours went by pretty quickly, and Stacie had to return to Davis. We said our goodbyes and parted ways.
I went back to the hotel and got on the Sac State-bound band bus. We had a rehearsal (a full ten-minute one) and then it was off to perform. We marched around the stadium parking lot until we found the Cal Poly barbeque, and we played a bunch of stuff for them. Then game time, where we beat the Hornets 58-13. It was quite a sad little spectacle: Hornet Stadium is twice the size of ours here in SLO, but the Sac Staters only managed to fill about 15% of it. There were more Mustangs in the stands than Hornets...it was neat, though, because we got to play our halftime show facing the visitor's stands because more people were sitting there. After the game we had a mini band-off with the Sac State band, but they gave up after about three songs. Fine with me...it was cold out there!
Upon arrival back at the Double Tree, a bunch of us went across the street to Arden Fair, home to a California Pizza Kitchen. I had the BLT pizza, which was pretty good despite my lack of hunger. I spent a good deal of that dinner on the phone with various members of the Royal Regiment, who were at the Arcadia Tournament of Bands awards ceremony at that time. I was able to hear all of the big awards as they were called; I was really happy to almost feel as though I was there with them. (I would actually have been there with them if this weekend hadn't been our one away game that the band went to.) How did RB do? Exceptionally well. I was so excited for them. RB took the usual parade and high music awards, but they also took field show band. Field show band! Generally, RB loses by a little bit in field show but makes it up in parade to take overall sweepstakes. But last night they won both parade and field show individually, which they haven't done since my sophomore year (which was the year when we swept every caption at every tournament). I'm so thankful all of my c/o 2005 buddies could go out with a bang in their last ever tournament. For complete tournament results, I'm sure you can tune into Jenna's blog.
After dinner Ben and a few people went to see National Treasure; Steve and I went with Courtney to meet her friend Molly who lives in/near Sacramento and who came up to our hotel to visit for a few hours. We hit the Cheesecake Factory for a little overpriced dessert and spent the rest of the evening chatting and playing another of Courtney's games called Crepes. (I shall have to teach you all this Crepes game...it's quite the barrel of monkeys.) Molly left by 1, but the rest of us stayed up a little while longer and watched Home Alone, which happened to be on TV.
I had to get up by 8 this morning to be on the bus by 8:30 for a 9:00 departure. We arrived back at Cal Poly by 2:30; I had to immediately go meet my music group to have our last rehearsal before we perform our piece tomorrow morning. Miraculously, we can play through the whole thing...ish. It's not as good as I'd like it to be, but I can't deny that we've made tremendous progress since our first rehearsal. Hopefully it'll go well tomorrow.
I had dinner with Kevin and Sarah, one of his architecture friends, at Light House. I stopped by the music building on the way home to practice piano for a little while (I can almost play through Mozart's "Sonata III," which I've been working on for some time. I still need to get some private lessons going, though...)
And now I'm here at home, writing another epic entry, which seems to be the trend for Sunday nights. I must be off to bed now, for I have a long drive to make tomorrow night. (Cal Poly was not picked by the NCAA to go to the playoffs, despite our winning the Great West conference. So I'm coming home after windO tomorrow and staying until Sunday. I'm so excited!) I'll see you all in a day or two...
Cheers,
Josh
mood: relaxed
music: I was watching Friends on my desktop, but it was distracting me so I turned it off.
location: dorm
PS -
Hail to the Broncos valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail, Hail to RB High
The mighty Broncos fight!
Hail to the Broncos valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail, Hail to RB High
The silver, blue, and white!
Congratulations Royal Regiment!!
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[Peter swears repeatedly.]
Lois: "Peter!"
Peter: "Lois, sometimes it's okay to swear."
[cut to the inside of a courtroom]
Judge: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
Peter: "I do...you bastard."
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
I'm too busy to come up with a clever title.
Hello again. Sorry I didn't post yesterday...and sorry I'm not going to be able to post much today, or probably for the next four or five days. Here's the dill-e-o: yesterday evening Stacie called to inquire about my schedule for the Cal Poly - Sac State game this weekend, which the Mustang Band will be traveling to (Stacie's coming to see me. Oh boy!). We ended up talking for a good while, and by the time we were finished it was just too late for me to write anything. And today it hit me that even though I've not had many classes yet this week, I had still managed to put off a couple of lab write-ups and a music analysis that are due soon. I spent all of the free time today (between windO and that California Government final, which went fine) finishing those. Tomorrow I have class, then marching band rehearsal, then dinner, then a pep band volleyball game, then a music theory composition rehearsal, with some added studying for a Friday math midterm thrown in. And after class on Friday I leave for the Sac State game, with an expected return date of Sunday.
So there you go, an entire paragraph dedicated to why I don't have time to write anything tonight. Ironic, yes? Okay...well I have to go to bed. The clock just ticked past midnight; I'm totally going to have to forgo the gym in favor of sleep tomorrow morning...
I look forward to the next time I actually have a few minutes to write something with substance.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: My abs are sore from the gym on Tuesday. It feels good!
music: none...too much trouble for so short an entry
location: dorm
Since I take so much pleasure in citing hilarity from my favorite TV show, I'm starting the following new feature of Living the SLO Life:
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[proof that mathematics is necessary in everyday life]
Guy #1: "It's 3:00. Where the [heck] is Louie?"
Guy #2: "Well, you tell me. Louie left his house at 2:15 and had to travel a distance 6.2 miles traveling at a rate of five miles a hour. When will Louie get here?"
Guy #1: "Depends on if he stops to see his ho."
Guy #2: "That's what we call a variable."
So there you go, an entire paragraph dedicated to why I don't have time to write anything tonight. Ironic, yes? Okay...well I have to go to bed. The clock just ticked past midnight; I'm totally going to have to forgo the gym in favor of sleep tomorrow morning...
I look forward to the next time I actually have a few minutes to write something with substance.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: My abs are sore from the gym on Tuesday. It feels good!
music: none...too much trouble for so short an entry
location: dorm
Since I take so much pleasure in citing hilarity from my favorite TV show, I'm starting the following new feature of Living the SLO Life:
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
Guy #1: "It's 3:00. Where the [heck] is Louie?"
Guy #2: "Well, you tell me. Louie left his house at 2:15 and had to travel a distance 6.2 miles traveling at a rate of five miles a hour. When will Louie get here?"
Guy #1: "Depends on if he stops to see his ho."
Guy #2: "That's what we call a variable."
Monday, November 15, 2004
EE 112-03
The title from yesterday's entry is from Joanna's awesome CD. On it is a cover of "Mr. Sandman," and one of the lines from it is "lots of wavy hair like Pat the Wolf Man." The first time I heard this - and Joanna and Stacie can attest to this - I thought the line was "and lots of wavy hair like Pat Buchanan." And there you have it.
I was pretty tired through class this morning, partially because I stayed up past midnight writing and partly because Kevin came home from working with his architecture friends at 3:30 this morning and stayed up until 4:45 printing things from his desk, with the light on. Sigh. But maybe I'm getting used to not sleeping as much as I used to, because I haven't really been that tired today. So hooray.
Classes are going pretty well, I guess. I've fully recovered from my boredom in physics that hit a couple of weeks ago. We've finished with light and moved to fluids...you know, pressure and buoyancy and whatnot. In music theory, we're moving on up from intervals to...ready for this?...chords! That's right, combinations of intervals. I'm going to have to start studying harder. And in calculus we've finally come to material I haven't seen before. A lot of it has to do with mechanical physics (from junior year), and it's neat to see it from more of a mathematical standpoint. Yay classes!
Speaking of classes, I told you all last week that I had registered for next quarter. I can't remember whether or not I told you they came up with this new system that only allows you to register for 14 units until everyone has had a chance to enroll in some classes. So there's one class I couldn't add to my schedule even though it was open when I registered, and now it's just about full. Stupid registration system. So maybe I'll get it through crashing it, and maybe I'll take 18 units next quarter (which is actually doable, since 8 of them would be math anyway). There are still two spots left in the class...maybe they'll still be there on Friday...
At any rate, I spent the rest of the day doing homework and practicing piano. Oh, and I had my debut as second-chair trumpet tonight in windO. My music is playable, except for the ending of "Ride." What composer writes an F on the top of the staff for a trumpet to hold out for sixteen measures before he has to hit and hold a high C for another two, with a ritard? Honestly...but hopefully it'll force me to improve musically. We'll see...
Other than that there's not much to report. I did get a letter from Stacie today...thanks Stacie! You're the best! Okay...that's all for now. Good night!
Cheers,
Josh
mood: neutral
music: no music, but Friends is playing on my desktop
location: dorm
PS - this quote from Family Guy made me laugh today:
"Lois, go get the medical dictionary and look up 'fork' and 'lung.'"
"But why would--"
"Time's a factor, Lois."
I was pretty tired through class this morning, partially because I stayed up past midnight writing and partly because Kevin came home from working with his architecture friends at 3:30 this morning and stayed up until 4:45 printing things from his desk, with the light on. Sigh. But maybe I'm getting used to not sleeping as much as I used to, because I haven't really been that tired today. So hooray.
Classes are going pretty well, I guess. I've fully recovered from my boredom in physics that hit a couple of weeks ago. We've finished with light and moved to fluids...you know, pressure and buoyancy and whatnot. In music theory, we're moving on up from intervals to...ready for this?...chords! That's right, combinations of intervals. I'm going to have to start studying harder. And in calculus we've finally come to material I haven't seen before. A lot of it has to do with mechanical physics (from junior year), and it's neat to see it from more of a mathematical standpoint. Yay classes!
Speaking of classes, I told you all last week that I had registered for next quarter. I can't remember whether or not I told you they came up with this new system that only allows you to register for 14 units until everyone has had a chance to enroll in some classes. So there's one class I couldn't add to my schedule even though it was open when I registered, and now it's just about full. Stupid registration system. So maybe I'll get it through crashing it, and maybe I'll take 18 units next quarter (which is actually doable, since 8 of them would be math anyway). There are still two spots left in the class...maybe they'll still be there on Friday...
At any rate, I spent the rest of the day doing homework and practicing piano. Oh, and I had my debut as second-chair trumpet tonight in windO. My music is playable, except for the ending of "Ride." What composer writes an F on the top of the staff for a trumpet to hold out for sixteen measures before he has to hit and hold a high C for another two, with a ritard? Honestly...but hopefully it'll force me to improve musically. We'll see...
Other than that there's not much to report. I did get a letter from Stacie today...thanks Stacie! You're the best! Okay...that's all for now. Good night!
Cheers,
Josh
mood: neutral
music: no music, but Friends is playing on my desktop
location: dorm
PS - this quote from Family Guy made me laugh today:
"Lois, go get the medical dictionary and look up 'fork' and 'lung.'"
"But why would--"
"Time's a factor, Lois."
Sunday, November 14, 2004
And Lots of Wavy Hair Like Pat Buchanan
Bonus points to anyone who understands why this entry is titled what it is...
I'll start by saying that I feel a lot better about things. Not completely better, but certainly better than Saturday afternoon. I'll elaborate more on this in a bit. For now, let's just launch into my usual chronological description of events.
The football game was lots of fun. Our show went along without a hitch, considering we learned about 60% of it on Tuesday and didn't have a rehearsal Thursday. After halftime we were sitting up in the stands where we always do, and this little girl came up and started talking to the clarinets who sit right in front of me. She was in fifth grade and played clarinet herself; I don't remember her name. But the clarinets let her sit with them for the rest of the game, and she had fun listen to us play and even participating in some of our dance moves. It was really cool. Although, most of our cheers are...uh...PG-13 or higher. So the clarinets and a couple of trumpets (including myself) distracted her during those. If the parents of that little girl ever happen to read this blog, I apologize for the band's corrupting your daughter.
As far as the football game itself went, our Mustangs shut out the Northern Colorado University Bears, 31-0. I happened to do a little research before the game on the Great West football conference and how different teams could win the division title. The two big contenders for this year's trip to the playoffs are Davis and Cal Poly. If one of them won on Saturday and the other lost, the winner would be the sole possessor of the title. If both won, they would share the title. If both lost then they would share the title with two other Great West teams. So, given that Cal Poly won our game (in their first shutout since 2002), guess whether or not Davis won their game. Seriously, go ahead and guess. Well, they lost to North Dakota State, 25-7. So Cal Poly wins the Great West conference, and will go to the playoffs (I think. But then, what the heck do I know about football?) So, affect of me? I'm not sure. Because Davis beat us, the playoff game won't be in SLO. If it's nearby we'll probably take a portion of the band, but if it's far away we probably won't go. So for now, it's still up in the air. I'll let you know when I know more.
After the game I went with Ben and Courtney to a party thrown by one of the older bandos. And yes, it was a full-on lots-of-alcohol and drunk people party. Ben and Courtney don't drink, however, so I felt comfortable in their company. It was pretty fun, and shockingly it wasn't something I was completely opposed to doing. At one point I went with another trumpet freshman, Amy, to go and get eggs so they could make egg nog. This is interesting in that Amy has to be the most hard-to-talk-to person you'd ever meet. I have no idea at all how to relate to her. But if you stick two people in the car for long enough I guess they have to talk about something, and so we did, mainly about KKY (band fraternity) and the reasons why she decided to join and why I decided not to. (There is this whole big process you have to go through to become a member. It takes all of winter quarter, and at the end of it all some people still don't get in. The fraternity itself doesn't seem like something I'd really like to do even if I didn't have to work that hard to get in. And, not knowing too much about what they do, I'm not anxious to commit to it. I have enough on my plate already. But most of the people who were invited to join are attempting to do so, so I wonder if I'm missing something. I don't know...such controversy...) But anyway, I guess I'm kind of able to talk to Amy now, so maybe it won't be so awkward when she sits next to me in MB. Hooray for new friends.
One of my friends got pretty drunk at the party, and Ben, Courtney, and I stayed later than we otherwise would have to make sure she got back home all right. So I didn't end up going to bed until around 2. If you'll recall, I had to stay in another band friend's room last night. At 2 in the morning I was tired from the long day and all I wanted to do was sleep in my nice comfy bed. However, my friend's roommate's bed was going to have to do, right? Not exactly...it turns out my friend's roommate didn't want anyone to sleep in his bed (or on top of it, as I had planned to do), so I ended up on the floor. I never really thought about it before last night, but are floors are hard. Really hard. So long story short, I had a pretty miserable night's sleep. Oh well.
I got up this morning and came back to the room to shower before I went to church. I returned from the mission to go and have brunch at Vista Grande Restaurant with Ben, Courtney, and a couple of other band people. I ate way too much and felt pretty nauseous for a good couple of hours, but that's okay because all I wanted to do was take a nap. I slept for about a half an hour before Kevin and Dana came back from wherever they were. As Dana would be leaving in an hour or two, I decided that it was high time to go to the grocery store to get out of their hair for the last hours they'd be spending with each other. So I groggily went over to Albertson's, bringing a full carload of tower 2 people with me.
Upon return I packed away my groceries and then set off to finish my California government book, which took me less than an hour. By then it was time to go to meet my music theory group to finish learning our piece, this time with the entire group present. Yeah, one of the people didn't show, the same who hasn't been showing for a large number of our rehearsals. Sigh. So we're meeting again on Tuesday, and he promises to be there. Aside from that, the rehearsal went well. I have confidence that we'll be able to play through it by Friday, the earliest that we might have to perform. Woot.
While I was in the music building I figured I'd practice piano. 45 minutes later I left the music building to drop off my stuff in my room, then to go have dinner. I went to VG's, because tonight convenience won out over quality; I wasn't walking all the way down to the UU for something different. I tried their cheeseburger, and it wasn't horrible. Again, woot.
After dinner we had a tower 2 meeting, because Katie-the-RA had a survey she needed us to fill out. I talked to Katie for a little while after that (she's still trying to recruit me to be an RA). At about 9 I called Alena and talked to her for a pretty good while, since it had been awhile since I had more than a couple of minutes' worth of conversation with her. I killed some time after that, and now I'm writing in my blog.
So, now that I've caught up to the present, I have one little announcement I'd like to make before I sign off. I keep this blog to keep in touch with all the people I love back at home, but I also keep it as my own personal journal that I can look back on in the future to see all the little things in my life that I'd otherwise have forgotten. That said, you can imagine that sometimes there are things that happen in my life that I wouldn't necessarily want to post on the world wide web for anyone to read, but that I myself would want to keep a record of. So, this is my legal disclaimer that the entries that appear online here are not necessarily printed in their entirety. I reserve the right to make portions of what I have to say private, and I'm sure you'll understand. I keep a copy of all of this in a Word document in case this website goes down or something, and that's where I'll write down the things I don't want just anyone reading. So that's that.
All right, I need to go to bed now, as it's past midnight and I'm going to be tired tomorrow (at least I have time for naps on Monday). OH! I almost forgot! J posted the audition results for windO/windE, and I moved up two chairs to second chair windO, which is just about exactly where I'd like to be. Hooray! I'll have to play first part, though, and I'm not sure I can play sufficiently high enough. But I hope that by the end of the year playing first part will have forced me to learn to play high, and that that will no longer be a weakness in me. We'll see.
Okay, now I'm going to go to bed. I hope you all have a good week - the last in marching season! I'll talk to you soon.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: pretty darned good, considering
music: Joanna's awesome CD again
location: dorm
PS - I forgot to tell you from a week or two ago that AM (as in radio) stands for "amplitude modulation." I'll save the technical details of this for some other time.
I'll start by saying that I feel a lot better about things. Not completely better, but certainly better than Saturday afternoon. I'll elaborate more on this in a bit. For now, let's just launch into my usual chronological description of events.
The football game was lots of fun. Our show went along without a hitch, considering we learned about 60% of it on Tuesday and didn't have a rehearsal Thursday. After halftime we were sitting up in the stands where we always do, and this little girl came up and started talking to the clarinets who sit right in front of me. She was in fifth grade and played clarinet herself; I don't remember her name. But the clarinets let her sit with them for the rest of the game, and she had fun listen to us play and even participating in some of our dance moves. It was really cool. Although, most of our cheers are...uh...PG-13 or higher. So the clarinets and a couple of trumpets (including myself) distracted her during those. If the parents of that little girl ever happen to read this blog, I apologize for the band's corrupting your daughter.
As far as the football game itself went, our Mustangs shut out the Northern Colorado University Bears, 31-0. I happened to do a little research before the game on the Great West football conference and how different teams could win the division title. The two big contenders for this year's trip to the playoffs are Davis and Cal Poly. If one of them won on Saturday and the other lost, the winner would be the sole possessor of the title. If both won, they would share the title. If both lost then they would share the title with two other Great West teams. So, given that Cal Poly won our game (in their first shutout since 2002), guess whether or not Davis won their game. Seriously, go ahead and guess. Well, they lost to North Dakota State, 25-7. So Cal Poly wins the Great West conference, and will go to the playoffs (I think. But then, what the heck do I know about football?) So, affect of me? I'm not sure. Because Davis beat us, the playoff game won't be in SLO. If it's nearby we'll probably take a portion of the band, but if it's far away we probably won't go. So for now, it's still up in the air. I'll let you know when I know more.
After the game I went with Ben and Courtney to a party thrown by one of the older bandos. And yes, it was a full-on lots-of-alcohol and drunk people party. Ben and Courtney don't drink, however, so I felt comfortable in their company. It was pretty fun, and shockingly it wasn't something I was completely opposed to doing. At one point I went with another trumpet freshman, Amy, to go and get eggs so they could make egg nog. This is interesting in that Amy has to be the most hard-to-talk-to person you'd ever meet. I have no idea at all how to relate to her. But if you stick two people in the car for long enough I guess they have to talk about something, and so we did, mainly about KKY (band fraternity) and the reasons why she decided to join and why I decided not to. (There is this whole big process you have to go through to become a member. It takes all of winter quarter, and at the end of it all some people still don't get in. The fraternity itself doesn't seem like something I'd really like to do even if I didn't have to work that hard to get in. And, not knowing too much about what they do, I'm not anxious to commit to it. I have enough on my plate already. But most of the people who were invited to join are attempting to do so, so I wonder if I'm missing something. I don't know...such controversy...) But anyway, I guess I'm kind of able to talk to Amy now, so maybe it won't be so awkward when she sits next to me in MB. Hooray for new friends.
One of my friends got pretty drunk at the party, and Ben, Courtney, and I stayed later than we otherwise would have to make sure she got back home all right. So I didn't end up going to bed until around 2. If you'll recall, I had to stay in another band friend's room last night. At 2 in the morning I was tired from the long day and all I wanted to do was sleep in my nice comfy bed. However, my friend's roommate's bed was going to have to do, right? Not exactly...it turns out my friend's roommate didn't want anyone to sleep in his bed (or on top of it, as I had planned to do), so I ended up on the floor. I never really thought about it before last night, but are floors are hard. Really hard. So long story short, I had a pretty miserable night's sleep. Oh well.
I got up this morning and came back to the room to shower before I went to church. I returned from the mission to go and have brunch at Vista Grande Restaurant with Ben, Courtney, and a couple of other band people. I ate way too much and felt pretty nauseous for a good couple of hours, but that's okay because all I wanted to do was take a nap. I slept for about a half an hour before Kevin and Dana came back from wherever they were. As Dana would be leaving in an hour or two, I decided that it was high time to go to the grocery store to get out of their hair for the last hours they'd be spending with each other. So I groggily went over to Albertson's, bringing a full carload of tower 2 people with me.
Upon return I packed away my groceries and then set off to finish my California government book, which took me less than an hour. By then it was time to go to meet my music theory group to finish learning our piece, this time with the entire group present. Yeah, one of the people didn't show, the same who hasn't been showing for a large number of our rehearsals. Sigh. So we're meeting again on Tuesday, and he promises to be there. Aside from that, the rehearsal went well. I have confidence that we'll be able to play through it by Friday, the earliest that we might have to perform. Woot.
While I was in the music building I figured I'd practice piano. 45 minutes later I left the music building to drop off my stuff in my room, then to go have dinner. I went to VG's, because tonight convenience won out over quality; I wasn't walking all the way down to the UU for something different. I tried their cheeseburger, and it wasn't horrible. Again, woot.
After dinner we had a tower 2 meeting, because Katie-the-RA had a survey she needed us to fill out. I talked to Katie for a little while after that (she's still trying to recruit me to be an RA). At about 9 I called Alena and talked to her for a pretty good while, since it had been awhile since I had more than a couple of minutes' worth of conversation with her. I killed some time after that, and now I'm writing in my blog.
So, now that I've caught up to the present, I have one little announcement I'd like to make before I sign off. I keep this blog to keep in touch with all the people I love back at home, but I also keep it as my own personal journal that I can look back on in the future to see all the little things in my life that I'd otherwise have forgotten. That said, you can imagine that sometimes there are things that happen in my life that I wouldn't necessarily want to post on the world wide web for anyone to read, but that I myself would want to keep a record of. So, this is my legal disclaimer that the entries that appear online here are not necessarily printed in their entirety. I reserve the right to make portions of what I have to say private, and I'm sure you'll understand. I keep a copy of all of this in a Word document in case this website goes down or something, and that's where I'll write down the things I don't want just anyone reading. So that's that.
All right, I need to go to bed now, as it's past midnight and I'm going to be tired tomorrow (at least I have time for naps on Monday). OH! I almost forgot! J posted the audition results for windO/windE, and I moved up two chairs to second chair windO, which is just about exactly where I'd like to be. Hooray! I'll have to play first part, though, and I'm not sure I can play sufficiently high enough. But I hope that by the end of the year playing first part will have forced me to learn to play high, and that that will no longer be a weakness in me. We'll see.
Okay, now I'm going to go to bed. I hope you all have a good week - the last in marching season! I'll talk to you soon.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: pretty darned good, considering
music: Joanna's awesome CD again
location: dorm
PS - I forgot to tell you from a week or two ago that AM (as in radio) stands for "amplitude modulation." I'll save the technical details of this for some other time.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Banished, and Banished Again
My plan of going to bed early on Thursday night so that Friday wouldn't be miserable failed. Kevin came home just about the time I was getting into bed, about 11:15. He set up his stuff at his desk and started doing homework. I asked him how long he thought he'd be up and he guessed about 12:30. So I asked him if he wouldn't mind moving out into the common room. He said he didn't mind, because I was making sacrifices for him this weekend. I felt pretty guilty after that so I went back out there to tell him I could try to sleep through it if he wanted to use his desk; he declined and said he'd be fine in the common room. Oh well. The whole issue turned out to be moot anyway because a whole heck of a lot of people (who I assume ditched class Friday to have a four-day weekend) were up until 2 playing some kind of game that involved chucking a tennis ball around and screaming.
So yeah, Friday was pretty miserable.
I did get a chance to nap after my physics lab, as it ended about an hour early. But that didn't happen until around 2 in the afternoon, so everything before that is kind of a blur.
Oh, and I have some news on the academic front. Remember that second physics midterm I took on Wednesday? 70/70. I actually got few extra-credit points too, but Dr. Poling wouldn't let anyone score more than a 100%. But hey, I'm not complaining. I would like to point out that three other people in the class received the same score, so contrary to popular belief I'm not the only one in that class who puts forth a lot of effort and does well.
After class and all I met the bando crew for dinner at Light House (because most other things were closed because of the Veterans' Day holiday). And from there we went to the basketball game, which for the most part I enjoyed.
I say "for the most part" because this weekend isn't turning out to be the best for me. I'm not sure if I mentioned or not that Dana - Kevin's girlfriend - is here visiting for the weekend from Berkeley. As a result, I'm spending both Friday and Saturday night elsewhere because Kevin prefers to have alone time with Dana so they can stay up late and do whatever without worrying about keeping me awake. As my band friends put it, I've been "sexiled." So that's fine. Kevin did give me plenty of advance notice, although I'm not sure whether I would ask him to sleep elsewhere if the situation were reversed. But anyway, last night I stayed in a certain band friend's room, whose roommate happens to be gone this weekend. So where am I staying tonight? Well, my certain band friend - having his roommate gone and all - also wants some alone time tonight with his girlfriend. Me? I'm being doubly sexiled; I'll be staying in another band friend's room. And there you have it. I don't blame any of them because I understand where they're coming from. But you can imagine that all of this moving around and trying to find someone who doesn't mind having me sleep over makes me feel like crap. I feel like a tagalong, perpetually in the way, a burden to be passed on to the next host. And it sucks.
I also came to the realization last night that I don't have any close friends here. There are people that I have fun doing things with from time to time, but I still don't feel attached to any of them. I don't feel like I would miss them if they were to move away. People call me up to do things now and then, so I guess I'm included in that respect. But so often it happens that I'm doing something I don't really want at all to be doing because that's what the group wants to do. Take last night: we wandered around campus taking random pictures of things, just for the sake of taking random pictures of things. As I'm typing this it sounds like that should have been something I would have enjoyed, but for some reason I didn't. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the people I know here are much more into sex, alcohol, and drugs than I am, or at least they are much more vulgar/perverse than I would tend to be. I don't really know how to relate to them, and as a result I don't feel connected with these people. Nobody here knows me inside and out, nor do I know them. And it's tough to get to know them on a personal level (yes, I do realize that getting to know people takes effort on my part) because when we do have the opportunity to do that, most of them already have boyfriends/girlfriends to go and spend the quality time with. And I just tag along with whoever's left.
So, as you can see, all of these issue tie into the same underlying problem: I'm frickin' lonely, and I'm tired of it. And I know that I'm the one who needs to go out and either get to know these people better or find some new people to get to know, but I guess I'm just not very good at that.
I need to stop writing now, partly because I'm in a horrible mood and partly because I have to go get ready for the football game. (If Davis winds today and Poly loses, Poly is out of the championship race. Pray for that.) I'll talk to you all later, when I can find the time.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: not so great
music: Phil from next door singing in a falsetto voice along with whatever he's playing
location: dorm
So yeah, Friday was pretty miserable.
I did get a chance to nap after my physics lab, as it ended about an hour early. But that didn't happen until around 2 in the afternoon, so everything before that is kind of a blur.
Oh, and I have some news on the academic front. Remember that second physics midterm I took on Wednesday? 70/70. I actually got few extra-credit points too, but Dr. Poling wouldn't let anyone score more than a 100%. But hey, I'm not complaining. I would like to point out that three other people in the class received the same score, so contrary to popular belief I'm not the only one in that class who puts forth a lot of effort and does well.
After class and all I met the bando crew for dinner at Light House (because most other things were closed because of the Veterans' Day holiday). And from there we went to the basketball game, which for the most part I enjoyed.
I say "for the most part" because this weekend isn't turning out to be the best for me. I'm not sure if I mentioned or not that Dana - Kevin's girlfriend - is here visiting for the weekend from Berkeley. As a result, I'm spending both Friday and Saturday night elsewhere because Kevin prefers to have alone time with Dana so they can stay up late and do whatever without worrying about keeping me awake. As my band friends put it, I've been "sexiled." So that's fine. Kevin did give me plenty of advance notice, although I'm not sure whether I would ask him to sleep elsewhere if the situation were reversed. But anyway, last night I stayed in a certain band friend's room, whose roommate happens to be gone this weekend. So where am I staying tonight? Well, my certain band friend - having his roommate gone and all - also wants some alone time tonight with his girlfriend. Me? I'm being doubly sexiled; I'll be staying in another band friend's room. And there you have it. I don't blame any of them because I understand where they're coming from. But you can imagine that all of this moving around and trying to find someone who doesn't mind having me sleep over makes me feel like crap. I feel like a tagalong, perpetually in the way, a burden to be passed on to the next host. And it sucks.
I also came to the realization last night that I don't have any close friends here. There are people that I have fun doing things with from time to time, but I still don't feel attached to any of them. I don't feel like I would miss them if they were to move away. People call me up to do things now and then, so I guess I'm included in that respect. But so often it happens that I'm doing something I don't really want at all to be doing because that's what the group wants to do. Take last night: we wandered around campus taking random pictures of things, just for the sake of taking random pictures of things. As I'm typing this it sounds like that should have been something I would have enjoyed, but for some reason I didn't. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the people I know here are much more into sex, alcohol, and drugs than I am, or at least they are much more vulgar/perverse than I would tend to be. I don't really know how to relate to them, and as a result I don't feel connected with these people. Nobody here knows me inside and out, nor do I know them. And it's tough to get to know them on a personal level (yes, I do realize that getting to know people takes effort on my part) because when we do have the opportunity to do that, most of them already have boyfriends/girlfriends to go and spend the quality time with. And I just tag along with whoever's left.
So, as you can see, all of these issue tie into the same underlying problem: I'm frickin' lonely, and I'm tired of it. And I know that I'm the one who needs to go out and either get to know these people better or find some new people to get to know, but I guess I'm just not very good at that.
I need to stop writing now, partly because I'm in a horrible mood and partly because I have to go get ready for the football game. (If Davis winds today and Poly loses, Poly is out of the championship race. Pray for that.) I'll talk to you all later, when I can find the time.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: not so great
music: Phil from next door singing in a falsetto voice along with whatever he's playing
location: dorm
Thursday, November 11, 2004
"Gubernatorial" is just about the most ridiculous word in the English language.
Happy Veterans' Day. I hope you all enjoyed some time off; I certainly did. Today was kind of a catch-up day for me. Details:
I woke up at around ten this morning and ran down to the gym, knowing full well that it might be closed. (It was for this reason that I found it easier than most days to force myself to go down there.) I jogged down there as I normally do (you know, to get the blood moving and whatnot), and when I got there I discovered that it wouldn't open until noon. Golly gee darn. The fact that I'd have to wait for two hours to go pump iron was sufficient enough reason for me to ditch the gym completely today, so that's what I did. And you know what? I don't really feel all that bad about it. I mean, I did jog all the way down there, and I walked all the way back up. That's good enough for me. I will say, though, that after having gone on Tuesday I do feel better physically, so I'm going to have to start being a little bit less lazy in the future. Eventually.
I came back and showered and was about to go and get breakfast when Courtney called and asked if I wanted to do something for breakfast. She had a sectional, so we all ended up going for lunch at 1:30. I had a bowl of cereal to carry me over. In the meantime I read a couple more chapters of my California government book. A couple highlights:
"The revised 2002-2003 Governor's General Fund budget was based upon revenues of $79,158 billion for a total budget of $98,888 billion."
"The elected officials that make up the plural executive branch of California government are the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the secretary of state, controller, treasurer, the insurance commissioner, the superintendent of public instruction, the treasurer, the controller, and the board of equalization."
Yes, I quoted these verbatim. Hooray for California government and textbooks about it. It's not too bad, though. I understand what they're trying to say, but, as I was telling Joanna not too long ago, this book seems like something a high school class would write as a class project. All the information is mostly there but it's full of type-os and improper grammar. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now. At least I have a lot of it behind me; I read about two-thirds of it in the last two days.
So for lunch I met the gang at Light House, where we decided to go to Back Stage Pizza. Later for dinner, we came back to Light House. In between there was homework and a two-hour game of Taboo with the people in my dorm tower. (We played to 100. My personal favorite clues were singing "Jungle Boogie" to get "Jungle," and guessing "Thomas Edison" from the hint "He had the first idea...")
I spent a couple of hours this evening watching Joey, Will & Grace, and The Apprentice. It's awfully hard to sit for two hours just watching TV, but I'll do anything to watch my Apprentice. It's soooo good!
All right, I have lots of class tomorrow and not much time for a nap, so I'd better get to bed or tomorrow will be miserable. I do have a pep band basketball game tomorrow night; I'm so excited! I love pep band! But yeah, I'm going to bed.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: ready to go back to school...I feel so unproductive, even though I spent a lot of the day doing homework
music: again, whatever it is that Kevin's playing
location: dorm
I woke up at around ten this morning and ran down to the gym, knowing full well that it might be closed. (It was for this reason that I found it easier than most days to force myself to go down there.) I jogged down there as I normally do (you know, to get the blood moving and whatnot), and when I got there I discovered that it wouldn't open until noon. Golly gee darn. The fact that I'd have to wait for two hours to go pump iron was sufficient enough reason for me to ditch the gym completely today, so that's what I did. And you know what? I don't really feel all that bad about it. I mean, I did jog all the way down there, and I walked all the way back up. That's good enough for me. I will say, though, that after having gone on Tuesday I do feel better physically, so I'm going to have to start being a little bit less lazy in the future. Eventually.
I came back and showered and was about to go and get breakfast when Courtney called and asked if I wanted to do something for breakfast. She had a sectional, so we all ended up going for lunch at 1:30. I had a bowl of cereal to carry me over. In the meantime I read a couple more chapters of my California government book. A couple highlights:
"The revised 2002-2003 Governor's General Fund budget was based upon revenues of $79,158 billion for a total budget of $98,888 billion."
"The elected officials that make up the plural executive branch of California government are the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the secretary of state, controller, treasurer, the insurance commissioner, the superintendent of public instruction, the treasurer, the controller, and the board of equalization."
Yes, I quoted these verbatim. Hooray for California government and textbooks about it. It's not too bad, though. I understand what they're trying to say, but, as I was telling Joanna not too long ago, this book seems like something a high school class would write as a class project. All the information is mostly there but it's full of type-os and improper grammar. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now. At least I have a lot of it behind me; I read about two-thirds of it in the last two days.
So for lunch I met the gang at Light House, where we decided to go to Back Stage Pizza. Later for dinner, we came back to Light House. In between there was homework and a two-hour game of Taboo with the people in my dorm tower. (We played to 100. My personal favorite clues were singing "Jungle Boogie" to get "Jungle," and guessing "Thomas Edison" from the hint "He had the first idea...")
I spent a couple of hours this evening watching Joey, Will & Grace, and The Apprentice. It's awfully hard to sit for two hours just watching TV, but I'll do anything to watch my Apprentice. It's soooo good!
All right, I have lots of class tomorrow and not much time for a nap, so I'd better get to bed or tomorrow will be miserable. I do have a pep band basketball game tomorrow night; I'm so excited! I love pep band! But yeah, I'm going to bed.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: ready to go back to school...I feel so unproductive, even though I spent a lot of the day doing homework
music: again, whatever it is that Kevin's playing
location: dorm
Crescendo and Decrescendo
Sorry about the lack of postage yesterday. I wanted to get around to it but there was just too much stuff I was trying to cram into those 24 hours. So let's start from the beginning...
I got up at a reasonable hour and forced myself to go to the gym. I severely dislike the gym. But I went, and I must have done some good because I'm sore today in the muscles I thought I was working. So hooray.
After Calculus I came back home to do some homework. Jacob from upstairs needed a ride to pick up his car that was in the shop, so I dropped him off downtown. In exchange he lent me his copy of Finale (a music writing computer program) so I could use it to score my piece for music theory. (Please don't get on my case about pirating the program. I'm supposed to have access to it somewhere in the music building but no one can direct me to a computer that actually has something more than the trial version installed. They also have trial versions of another program called Sibelius, but none of the computers on which it's installed are connected to printers, and since I don't have the program myself I can't just email myself the file and print it out. Darned music department.) Anyway, I spent the next couple of hours learning how to use Finale. By the time I had enough features learned to score my piece, it was time to go to marching band. So off I went.
Marching band went well. They changed the sperm into a barbell (you know, because barbells are so manly). We learned the rest of the show, and it too was stripped of its sexual innuendoes. At least, it was stripped of all of its readily apparent sexual innuendoes. Regardless, we all have it learned. Due to the Thursday holiday, we won't have another rehearsal until the day of the game (aren't we hard working?). In all fairness, rain is forecasted for tomorrow and we're starting our rehearsal on Saturday an hour earlier. We have some work ethic, just not that much.
After band I went and had pizza with some bandos, and then it was back to my room to score my piece. (By the way, the piece needs a title. I'm trying to decide between "Overture to the Flower Pot" and "Flower Pots on Exhibition." I'd appreciate any comments regarding this matter. I'd also accept any other suggestions you might have...) I finished just in time to print everyone's parts before I met the group in the music building to continue learning the piece.
At the music building, I found three of five of my group members there. The fourth showed up about twenty minutes later. The fifth didn't show up. One of the three who was there on time had to leave early. I don't know how we can learn this if we can't get all six of us together at one time; I'm getting kind of nervous. But we agreed upon a 5:00 rehearsal time on Sunday. (We may have to change it because the guy who never showed up is out of town this weekend. Great.) So yeah, we have a few hours to perfect this by the time we perform on Friday. I'm confident in three of the people (who can read music), but I'm a little worried about the other two. They'll be playing from memory, and although this is a simple piece it is 156 measures long. But we'll see. As far as the piece goes, I'm actually quite please with how it sounds. It's very easy to play and is very repetitive but it (surprisingly) isn't too boring. Maybe our group can go on tour and stop off in San Diego to play it for all of you.
I came home from that to find that Kevin had a couple of his architecture friends over. They were just sitting on his bed, talking. It was after 9, and I had a physics midterm the next day (which, by the way, is my reason for not posting yesterday). So instead of waiting around for them to leave or trying to study through them, I went down to the main lobby and studied there, which worked pretty well. I produced my 3x5 card of equations and read through all of my notes, referring to the book when something wasn't clear. It took me a good hour and a half, but luckily I understood everything. (I'm a little fuzzy on interference of waves, but I totally get light waves, and I actually enjoy doing the problems associated with them.)
And then I went to bed.
This morning I got up bright and early to make sure I wasn't late to physics. I got there with time to spare and used the minutes before the midterm to squeeze in some last-minute studying. The midterm was all right; there was nothing I hadn't seen before, although, as I said before, I was a little fuzzy on some of it. But the test itself was completely fair. It's hard to say how I did. I had at least a good idea of how to do everything, and I wasn't pressed for time. Plus, there was an extra-credit problem at the end that I knew how to do. I don't know...we'll see soon enough.
From physics I biked over to music theory, as I always do. We're learning about scales now; today we learned the circle of fifths/fourths and where it came from. We have a quiz on Friday, which I'm not worried about because it will be mostly on how many flats/sharps are in each scale and things like that. But anyway, after class I went to Dr. Barata's office hour and showed him my score. He could't pick out any major problems with it, but he also couldn't tell me if it was a good piece or not. The hardest thing with this project is knowing what exactly I'm supposed to compose. There's no sheet giving requirements. All I know is that it needs to be 2-3.5 minutes long, with each person playing for half of the piece. Add in a couple of requirements about having ties across barlines in each part, and that's all the restrictions there are. It makes sense to not restrict us too much (after all, we're composing original pieces), but I have no idea how complicated or simple the piece is supposed to be. It would have been nice if Dr. Barata had played us an example of an 'A' piece. I'm not too worried though, because it's only 15% of my grade, so if I get a 50 out of 100 I'll still have an A (assuming I don't bomb any quizzes or tests...). Whatever...I'm still having fun with this class.
After Dr. Barata's office hour I came home and slept. Wednesdays are good for that because Kevin has lots of class and I don't. So I slept until noon. It was good.
I then read a couple of chapters out of my California government book. I know I told you this a while ago, but just to refresh your memories: I'm taking a one-unit independent-study class (i.e. I don't go to class, I just read a book and take a final) on California government. I need this because AP Government fulfills the national government portion of the GE requirement, but I still need knowledge of how California's governing bodies function. The final - my entire grade in this class - is next Wednesday. I got through about 25% of the book today, so I'm feeling better about it. I also went and talked to the instructor of that class today about what to expect on the test, and it sounds like it's more of a test just to make sure I read the book. I'm still pretty nervous about it, though...the book is short but there's still a lot of information in there...
I had dinner with bandos again at Lighthouse. Hooray for beef roast and mashed potatoes! On the way through the university union, I noticed a display assembled by some students. It was all about how holidays that are supposed to have religious significance are too commercialized. They had the Easter bunny hanging on a cross, a Santa Claus in a manger, and a big Jesus pooping an Easter egg. Their point is well taken, although I might have tried to find another way to get it across. My own personal opinion of the issue is that Americans should be free to commercialize holidays. The specific American freedom in question is not only freedom to religion, but freedom from religion. If people want to make Christmas just about the presents, then all the power to them. I personally don't want to do this, but if other people do it doesn't keep me in the slightest from celebrating the religious meaning behind the holiday. People should be free to do what they want; get off their case. If ignoring the religion is a sin, then they'll end up paying for it someway, somehow. But it's certainly not up to a bunch of college kids armed with cardboard cutouts and plywood to control.
Anyway, this evening I went to hear the Warsaw Philharmonic play at our PAC (as a requirement for windO). They were very good, although the pieces they played weren't the most thrilling. The first piece, entitled "Polymorphia," wasn't music so much as it was all the string players making a variety of sound effects for eight or nine minutes. It was interesting, but...well...I'm not sure how I felt about it. They also played a piano concerto by Rachmaninoff; the pianist was superb. After intermission they played Brahms's first symphony in C minor quite well...I was impressed. I've really grown to like music this quarter more than I ever have before. I hope I can continue at trumpet and especially piano and maybe someday become as good as these people I hear playing.
I came home from that and bummed around the common room for awhile, talking at whoever would listen. And now I'm here, writing to all of you. Neat how that works out, isn't it?
I'd like to close off by relating to you a conversation I overheard while sitting in the common room tonight:
"Excited for Veterans' Day?"
"Is that what tomorrow is?"
"Yeah...you didn't know that?"
"S---, I don't care. All I know is that I don't have class."
I hope all of us can find a moment tomorrow to think about why it is that we don't have to go to school/work. I have a great amount of respect for our military, both past and present, and I'm sure that somewhere out there there is a little more gratefullness for them than what I've seen in our common room.
Thank you to all of the veterans out there. Your sacrifices are truly appreciated.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: opinionated
music: whatever it is that Kevin's playing
location: dorm
I got up at a reasonable hour and forced myself to go to the gym. I severely dislike the gym. But I went, and I must have done some good because I'm sore today in the muscles I thought I was working. So hooray.
After Calculus I came back home to do some homework. Jacob from upstairs needed a ride to pick up his car that was in the shop, so I dropped him off downtown. In exchange he lent me his copy of Finale (a music writing computer program) so I could use it to score my piece for music theory. (Please don't get on my case about pirating the program. I'm supposed to have access to it somewhere in the music building but no one can direct me to a computer that actually has something more than the trial version installed. They also have trial versions of another program called Sibelius, but none of the computers on which it's installed are connected to printers, and since I don't have the program myself I can't just email myself the file and print it out. Darned music department.) Anyway, I spent the next couple of hours learning how to use Finale. By the time I had enough features learned to score my piece, it was time to go to marching band. So off I went.
Marching band went well. They changed the sperm into a barbell (you know, because barbells are so manly). We learned the rest of the show, and it too was stripped of its sexual innuendoes. At least, it was stripped of all of its readily apparent sexual innuendoes. Regardless, we all have it learned. Due to the Thursday holiday, we won't have another rehearsal until the day of the game (aren't we hard working?). In all fairness, rain is forecasted for tomorrow and we're starting our rehearsal on Saturday an hour earlier. We have some work ethic, just not that much.
After band I went and had pizza with some bandos, and then it was back to my room to score my piece. (By the way, the piece needs a title. I'm trying to decide between "Overture to the Flower Pot" and "Flower Pots on Exhibition." I'd appreciate any comments regarding this matter. I'd also accept any other suggestions you might have...) I finished just in time to print everyone's parts before I met the group in the music building to continue learning the piece.
At the music building, I found three of five of my group members there. The fourth showed up about twenty minutes later. The fifth didn't show up. One of the three who was there on time had to leave early. I don't know how we can learn this if we can't get all six of us together at one time; I'm getting kind of nervous. But we agreed upon a 5:00 rehearsal time on Sunday. (We may have to change it because the guy who never showed up is out of town this weekend. Great.) So yeah, we have a few hours to perfect this by the time we perform on Friday. I'm confident in three of the people (who can read music), but I'm a little worried about the other two. They'll be playing from memory, and although this is a simple piece it is 156 measures long. But we'll see. As far as the piece goes, I'm actually quite please with how it sounds. It's very easy to play and is very repetitive but it (surprisingly) isn't too boring. Maybe our group can go on tour and stop off in San Diego to play it for all of you.
I came home from that to find that Kevin had a couple of his architecture friends over. They were just sitting on his bed, talking. It was after 9, and I had a physics midterm the next day (which, by the way, is my reason for not posting yesterday). So instead of waiting around for them to leave or trying to study through them, I went down to the main lobby and studied there, which worked pretty well. I produced my 3x5 card of equations and read through all of my notes, referring to the book when something wasn't clear. It took me a good hour and a half, but luckily I understood everything. (I'm a little fuzzy on interference of waves, but I totally get light waves, and I actually enjoy doing the problems associated with them.)
And then I went to bed.
This morning I got up bright and early to make sure I wasn't late to physics. I got there with time to spare and used the minutes before the midterm to squeeze in some last-minute studying. The midterm was all right; there was nothing I hadn't seen before, although, as I said before, I was a little fuzzy on some of it. But the test itself was completely fair. It's hard to say how I did. I had at least a good idea of how to do everything, and I wasn't pressed for time. Plus, there was an extra-credit problem at the end that I knew how to do. I don't know...we'll see soon enough.
From physics I biked over to music theory, as I always do. We're learning about scales now; today we learned the circle of fifths/fourths and where it came from. We have a quiz on Friday, which I'm not worried about because it will be mostly on how many flats/sharps are in each scale and things like that. But anyway, after class I went to Dr. Barata's office hour and showed him my score. He could't pick out any major problems with it, but he also couldn't tell me if it was a good piece or not. The hardest thing with this project is knowing what exactly I'm supposed to compose. There's no sheet giving requirements. All I know is that it needs to be 2-3.5 minutes long, with each person playing for half of the piece. Add in a couple of requirements about having ties across barlines in each part, and that's all the restrictions there are. It makes sense to not restrict us too much (after all, we're composing original pieces), but I have no idea how complicated or simple the piece is supposed to be. It would have been nice if Dr. Barata had played us an example of an 'A' piece. I'm not too worried though, because it's only 15% of my grade, so if I get a 50 out of 100 I'll still have an A (assuming I don't bomb any quizzes or tests...). Whatever...I'm still having fun with this class.
After Dr. Barata's office hour I came home and slept. Wednesdays are good for that because Kevin has lots of class and I don't. So I slept until noon. It was good.
I then read a couple of chapters out of my California government book. I know I told you this a while ago, but just to refresh your memories: I'm taking a one-unit independent-study class (i.e. I don't go to class, I just read a book and take a final) on California government. I need this because AP Government fulfills the national government portion of the GE requirement, but I still need knowledge of how California's governing bodies function. The final - my entire grade in this class - is next Wednesday. I got through about 25% of the book today, so I'm feeling better about it. I also went and talked to the instructor of that class today about what to expect on the test, and it sounds like it's more of a test just to make sure I read the book. I'm still pretty nervous about it, though...the book is short but there's still a lot of information in there...
I had dinner with bandos again at Lighthouse. Hooray for beef roast and mashed potatoes! On the way through the university union, I noticed a display assembled by some students. It was all about how holidays that are supposed to have religious significance are too commercialized. They had the Easter bunny hanging on a cross, a Santa Claus in a manger, and a big Jesus pooping an Easter egg. Their point is well taken, although I might have tried to find another way to get it across. My own personal opinion of the issue is that Americans should be free to commercialize holidays. The specific American freedom in question is not only freedom to religion, but freedom from religion. If people want to make Christmas just about the presents, then all the power to them. I personally don't want to do this, but if other people do it doesn't keep me in the slightest from celebrating the religious meaning behind the holiday. People should be free to do what they want; get off their case. If ignoring the religion is a sin, then they'll end up paying for it someway, somehow. But it's certainly not up to a bunch of college kids armed with cardboard cutouts and plywood to control.
Anyway, this evening I went to hear the Warsaw Philharmonic play at our PAC (as a requirement for windO). They were very good, although the pieces they played weren't the most thrilling. The first piece, entitled "Polymorphia," wasn't music so much as it was all the string players making a variety of sound effects for eight or nine minutes. It was interesting, but...well...I'm not sure how I felt about it. They also played a piano concerto by Rachmaninoff; the pianist was superb. After intermission they played Brahms's first symphony in C minor quite well...I was impressed. I've really grown to like music this quarter more than I ever have before. I hope I can continue at trumpet and especially piano and maybe someday become as good as these people I hear playing.
I came home from that and bummed around the common room for awhile, talking at whoever would listen. And now I'm here, writing to all of you. Neat how that works out, isn't it?
I'd like to close off by relating to you a conversation I overheard while sitting in the common room tonight:
"Excited for Veterans' Day?"
"Is that what tomorrow is?"
"Yeah...you didn't know that?"
"S---, I don't care. All I know is that I don't have class."
I hope all of us can find a moment tomorrow to think about why it is that we don't have to go to school/work. I have a great amount of respect for our military, both past and present, and I'm sure that somewhere out there there is a little more gratefullness for them than what I've seen in our common room.
Thank you to all of the veterans out there. Your sacrifices are truly appreciated.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: opinionated
music: whatever it is that Kevin's playing
location: dorm
Monday, November 08, 2004
Candide to Overture
I think I'd like to report this day in the reverse order of what actually happened. So good night, and have a good week.
I spent the last 45 minutes playing video games, which I haven't done in the last couple of weeks. I think I've pretty much grown out of video games. They can only entertain me now for an hour at the most. Add in the fact that I don't have all that much free time to play video games, and you can imagine how little I play them. It's kind of sad really...I miss being so easily entertained. But alas, I'm just to sophisticated now.
Band ended about an hour before it usually does. WindO rehearses until 8:15, when windE joins us and we practice our combined pieces. But since Bandfest is now in the past, we don't need to rehearse with windE anymore. So we were free to go at 8:15. I was able to use the extra hour for video games. Before we left, however, we played three new pieces: "Ride," "Marriage of Figaro" (transposed for winds) and...ready for this?..."Overture to Candide." I had thought windE was playing Candide, but it turns out we get to! I was so excited. Everyone was sight reading, though, so it didn't sound all that great...but it was still fun! (It makes me miss RB, though.) "Ride" was also...uh...interesting. It's one of those pieces that changes time signatures just about every measure. I'm pretty sure that the sounds we produced weren't really what the composer had in mind. We'll eventually get it...probably.
Before that I had dinner at VG's. I had a sandwich because VG's has not yet figured out how to make a sandwich taste absolutely horrible. I'm sure they're working on it.
At 4:50 I had my trumpet audition with J for next quarter. I played two relatively easy pieces out of the Arban's book. The first piece, "Carnival of Venice," was just okay. J told me some things to do to improve my sound, and when I did them my sound vastly improved, which I'm pretty sure impressed him. We talked for a few minutes before I played my second piece, "Bolero." This one was more technical; I played it very well. J said I played it with "so much finesse," which I did. So, in short, I kicked that audition's butt. Although I am hoping to stay in windO and not advance to windE because windO plays pieces I really like, and windE is playing "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor." You know, because I didn't get enough of that last semester...
I spent about an hour practicing for that audition. I meant to spend some time in the music lab, putting my music theory composition into a scoring program, but it turns out that the music lab computers don't have the program the lady in the music office told me they did. The lady in the music lab said the scoring program was on the computers in the music office. Sigh. At least I got enough practice in.
I took the greater part of the early afternoon to do homework, and now I'm even more caught up than I was yesterday. Woot! I also went over to the Cal Poly Foundation administration building to make my meal plan payment for winter quarter, and since that's right down the street from Campus Market, I decided to do some shopping. I was in a generous mood, so I bought Kevin some milk so he wouldn't have to go all the way down to the market himself. I bought myself some cheddar chex mix and some Chef Boyardee ravioli cups. Tres exciting.
I took a nap right after I got back from class. Naps are never quite long enough...
And my day before that was average. Calculus, music theory, and physics. It's Monday, so of course I stayed up later than I should have last night and was tired all day. But my nap cured that (for the most part).
I woke up at about a quarter to seven, and that's where this day started.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: relaxed somewhat, mostly due to the extra time I got from windO ending early
music: The Italian Job in the background, not of the room, but of my computer. Yay DVD drives!
location: dorm
PS- I realized that my signoff should have occurred at the beginning of this entry if I truly was to do it backwards, but I couldn't bring myself to end this on "and that's where my day started." So, once again, cheers.
I spent the last 45 minutes playing video games, which I haven't done in the last couple of weeks. I think I've pretty much grown out of video games. They can only entertain me now for an hour at the most. Add in the fact that I don't have all that much free time to play video games, and you can imagine how little I play them. It's kind of sad really...I miss being so easily entertained. But alas, I'm just to sophisticated now.
Band ended about an hour before it usually does. WindO rehearses until 8:15, when windE joins us and we practice our combined pieces. But since Bandfest is now in the past, we don't need to rehearse with windE anymore. So we were free to go at 8:15. I was able to use the extra hour for video games. Before we left, however, we played three new pieces: "Ride," "Marriage of Figaro" (transposed for winds) and...ready for this?..."Overture to Candide." I had thought windE was playing Candide, but it turns out we get to! I was so excited. Everyone was sight reading, though, so it didn't sound all that great...but it was still fun! (It makes me miss RB, though.) "Ride" was also...uh...interesting. It's one of those pieces that changes time signatures just about every measure. I'm pretty sure that the sounds we produced weren't really what the composer had in mind. We'll eventually get it...probably.
Before that I had dinner at VG's. I had a sandwich because VG's has not yet figured out how to make a sandwich taste absolutely horrible. I'm sure they're working on it.
At 4:50 I had my trumpet audition with J for next quarter. I played two relatively easy pieces out of the Arban's book. The first piece, "Carnival of Venice," was just okay. J told me some things to do to improve my sound, and when I did them my sound vastly improved, which I'm pretty sure impressed him. We talked for a few minutes before I played my second piece, "Bolero." This one was more technical; I played it very well. J said I played it with "so much finesse," which I did. So, in short, I kicked that audition's butt. Although I am hoping to stay in windO and not advance to windE because windO plays pieces I really like, and windE is playing "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor." You know, because I didn't get enough of that last semester...
I spent about an hour practicing for that audition. I meant to spend some time in the music lab, putting my music theory composition into a scoring program, but it turns out that the music lab computers don't have the program the lady in the music office told me they did. The lady in the music lab said the scoring program was on the computers in the music office. Sigh. At least I got enough practice in.
I took the greater part of the early afternoon to do homework, and now I'm even more caught up than I was yesterday. Woot! I also went over to the Cal Poly Foundation administration building to make my meal plan payment for winter quarter, and since that's right down the street from Campus Market, I decided to do some shopping. I was in a generous mood, so I bought Kevin some milk so he wouldn't have to go all the way down to the market himself. I bought myself some cheddar chex mix and some Chef Boyardee ravioli cups. Tres exciting.
I took a nap right after I got back from class. Naps are never quite long enough...
And my day before that was average. Calculus, music theory, and physics. It's Monday, so of course I stayed up later than I should have last night and was tired all day. But my nap cured that (for the most part).
I woke up at about a quarter to seven, and that's where this day started.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: relaxed somewhat, mostly due to the extra time I got from windO ending early
music: The Italian Job in the background, not of the room, but of my computer. Yay DVD drives!
location: dorm
PS- I realized that my signoff should have occurred at the beginning of this entry if I truly was to do it backwards, but I couldn't bring myself to end this on "and that's where my day started." So, once again, cheers.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Reunion
Well, the parents are gone. We had a good visit, but as with all good things it eventually came to an end. Dad's already at home in good ol' Ramona and Mom's still here in SLO at the Peach Tree Inn, getting a good night's sleep in preparation for a 7am departure. It's not as hard to seem them go considering that I saw them two weeks ago at Homecoming and that I'll see them two weeks from now at Thanksgiving. It does still make me a little homesick, but then when am I ever not a little homesick?
Anywho, I'll pick up where I left off on my post last Friday night. I was able to sleep in pretty well Saturday morning (having the room to myself and all), although Kevin's alarm did go off promptly at 7. It took me a pretty good while to figure out what the heck was happening, but somehow I managed to groggily make my way across the room to silence that insufferable beeping. But I went back to sleep for a good three hours more, so it all worked out. I got up, had breakfast, and showered, all in time for Kelsey from my music theory group to come over at noon to bang out a composition. When she got here we decided it was easier for just one of us to write it, and since I had already written something and since I had a moderate amount of interest in finishing it, we decided that person would be me. (I'm not trying to sound like they're all trying to stick me with all the work. I actually do have an interest in this project, and I'm glad I get to write our piece.) That was about the extent of our meeting. Kelsey left me to compose.
About an hour later Dad called to say he had arrived in SLO. He came and picked me up so we could go to lunch. We had planned to go to Firestone Grill, a popular SLO sports bar/cafe, but the line was about thirty feet out the door. We opted instead to go across the street to Woodstock Pizza. My slice of pepperoni was good but Dad was less than pleased with his Greek salad. So it goes. From there we went to look for sunglasses for me, because I lost the ones we bought when I first got to Poly. I couldn't find any I liked at Big 5, so we decided to go elsewhere to look.
However, it was at that point that Mom called to say she was coming into SLO. So we ditched the sunglasses search and met Mom back at my dorm. And from there I took Mom and Dad on the grand tour of Cal Poly (which, by the way, I'd gladly give to any of you should you decide you'd like to come visit me. I'm all for talking as many people as I can into coming here.) Mom had never been to SLO before, so it was fun to show her (and Dad, although he had seen a lot of it when he dropped me off here in September) all of the places I talk about in my blog and elsewhere. My EE lab classroom happened to be open, so I was able to take them in there and show them a bunch of the equipment I use. I also took them by my math and physics classes, the library, the university union (including the bowling alley), and Campus Market. Whilst we were at the market I chanced upon some sunglasses that weren't the worst things in the world (although Mom had to talk me into them), so I went ahead and bought them with my meal plan dollars. Woot for efficiency.
After the tour we went and had dinner at Firestone Grill, where the lunch rush had diminished and the dinner crowd hadn't arrived yet. I had a delicious tri-tip steak sandwich. Very SLO. I then left my parents to go and get ready for Bandfest.
Dress. Mustang Band rehearsal. Break. Wind orchestra rehearsal. Break. Opening of show: "Star Spangled Banner," played by wind orchestra, ensemble, and Mustang Band; then "Fanfare for the Common Man," played by windO/windE brass. (From now on I'd like to refer to wind orchestra/ensemble by their abbreviated forms, pronounced "window" and "windy.") Both tunes went well; we managed to not screw up Fanfare, although it wasn't as flawless as a professional group would have played it. Then the windE portion of the concert: "American Salute" (variations on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again"), "America the Beautiful" (the blue Europe band version), and "National Emblem" (the monkey/flagpole march - see Friday's post). All three of these went just dandily. WindE followed us to wrap up the first half of the concert; I couldn't listen because I had to change from my tux to my MB (MB = Mustang Band from here on out) uniform. During intermission MB warmed up. We opened the second half of the concert with "Come on Feel the Noize," following it with "Jump in the Line," "I'm a Man," "Hummin' Along" (drum-soloalicious), "Nights in White Satin," and, of course, the fight song. These all went well also. Although after the fight song when we all had taken our bows we were standing there waiting for the curtain to close, but the stage hand couldn't figure out what cord to pull or something because nothing happened. We all stood there grinning and watching out of the corner of our eyes for some instruction. Someone in the audience finally yelled out, "close the curtain!" It did, and all of us in MB finally were able to let out the laughter we had been restraining. It was pretty darned hilarious. Anywho, after that was the WindO/WindE combined portion of the concert. We played "Lonely Beach," where I got to go stand in the audience (still wearing my MB uniform, mind you) and play a solo-bugle-call kind of thing. Then we played "Armed Forces Salute," which was my favorite part of the concert. We played each of the five branches' songs, and J told all the veterans in the audience to stand when theirs was played. It was really moving to see all of them stand up and clap along with their branch's song. After that we closed the concert with...brace yourself, big shocker coming here..."The Stars and Stripes Forever." We played it very well, although I've heard the piccolo solo played better before. (Interesting aside: John Philip Sousa was born on November 6, 1854. Our concert was November 6, 2004. Happy 150th, J.P. Sousa!) Anyway, that was the concert.
I went back to the dorm afterward to change, and then I stayed with Dad overnight at his hotel in Pismo Beach (the same one we stayed at when we first moved me up here). I had no swimsuit but I really wanted to go sit in the jacuzzi (as I don't have one around here), so I went in my boxers. Feeling more relaxed - and more awake after my Starbucks Frappuccino kicked in - I stayed up pretty late finishing my music theory piece. Then sleep.
I woke up to find Dad had been up for a few hours already, walking along Pismo Beach and enjoying the scenery. We went to church at the mission and then picked up Mom for breakfast. After waiting twenty minutes or so we sat down at a table at the Apple Farm Inn, only to be informed that breakfast wasn't served after noon. So we ditched the Inn in favor of IHOP. Stuffed french toast deliciousness.
Dad had to hit the road after that, so he dropped Mom and I back off at Mom's hotel and left. Mom then returned me to campus so I could have a few hours to catch up on homework. I wish I could have spent the time with my parents, but I have more midterms coming up and I desperately needed to catch up on my work. I got a considerable amount of math and physics done before I had to leave for my music theory group meeting, where we took our first stab at playing my piece. Our attempt wasn't too shabby, although we will need a lot more work. We've got two weeks; I'm pretty sure we'll pull it off.
While I was in the music building I decided to practice trumpet. I have an audition tomorrow, and I really want to make windE because they're playing "Candide." I'm playing a couple of easy pieces out of Arban's...I'm going the "play an easy piece well" route rather than trying to push myself and risk screwing something up. I'll let you know tomorrow how it went.
After I had sufficiently recovered from last night's concert, Mom came and fetched me and we went back to the Apple Farm Inn for dinner. I had chili, with caramel apple pie for desert. Yum! Mom felt like coffee afterwards so we drove over to Starbucks and purchased a cup of caffeinated bliss for her. Then it was back to campus to drop me off and say our last goodbyes.
In the time since I've occupied myself with the rest of my physics homework (on a chapter I'm actually finding quite interesting) and writing this epic blog entry. And that's where we are now.
One last thing before I go: I'm sorry to hear that RB lost field show to Vista at Mira Mesa. But, in a way, I'm glad to hear it. I hope all of you now can stop feeling guilty about "always winning." And, as the margin of loss was so little, I hope it inspires you to work harder in the two weeks you have left this year. There's still time...use it and enjoy it!
Good night all.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: much less stressed now that I've caught up on a lot of my homework
music: a punk cover of "Mr. Sandman," which happens to be on a CD Joanna made for me a while ago entitled "Super Cool, Really Awesome, No Words to Describe Them - Songs"
location: dorm
Anywho, I'll pick up where I left off on my post last Friday night. I was able to sleep in pretty well Saturday morning (having the room to myself and all), although Kevin's alarm did go off promptly at 7. It took me a pretty good while to figure out what the heck was happening, but somehow I managed to groggily make my way across the room to silence that insufferable beeping. But I went back to sleep for a good three hours more, so it all worked out. I got up, had breakfast, and showered, all in time for Kelsey from my music theory group to come over at noon to bang out a composition. When she got here we decided it was easier for just one of us to write it, and since I had already written something and since I had a moderate amount of interest in finishing it, we decided that person would be me. (I'm not trying to sound like they're all trying to stick me with all the work. I actually do have an interest in this project, and I'm glad I get to write our piece.) That was about the extent of our meeting. Kelsey left me to compose.
About an hour later Dad called to say he had arrived in SLO. He came and picked me up so we could go to lunch. We had planned to go to Firestone Grill, a popular SLO sports bar/cafe, but the line was about thirty feet out the door. We opted instead to go across the street to Woodstock Pizza. My slice of pepperoni was good but Dad was less than pleased with his Greek salad. So it goes. From there we went to look for sunglasses for me, because I lost the ones we bought when I first got to Poly. I couldn't find any I liked at Big 5, so we decided to go elsewhere to look.
However, it was at that point that Mom called to say she was coming into SLO. So we ditched the sunglasses search and met Mom back at my dorm. And from there I took Mom and Dad on the grand tour of Cal Poly (which, by the way, I'd gladly give to any of you should you decide you'd like to come visit me. I'm all for talking as many people as I can into coming here.) Mom had never been to SLO before, so it was fun to show her (and Dad, although he had seen a lot of it when he dropped me off here in September) all of the places I talk about in my blog and elsewhere. My EE lab classroom happened to be open, so I was able to take them in there and show them a bunch of the equipment I use. I also took them by my math and physics classes, the library, the university union (including the bowling alley), and Campus Market. Whilst we were at the market I chanced upon some sunglasses that weren't the worst things in the world (although Mom had to talk me into them), so I went ahead and bought them with my meal plan dollars. Woot for efficiency.
After the tour we went and had dinner at Firestone Grill, where the lunch rush had diminished and the dinner crowd hadn't arrived yet. I had a delicious tri-tip steak sandwich. Very SLO. I then left my parents to go and get ready for Bandfest.
Dress. Mustang Band rehearsal. Break. Wind orchestra rehearsal. Break. Opening of show: "Star Spangled Banner," played by wind orchestra, ensemble, and Mustang Band; then "Fanfare for the Common Man," played by windO/windE brass. (From now on I'd like to refer to wind orchestra/ensemble by their abbreviated forms, pronounced "window" and "windy.") Both tunes went well; we managed to not screw up Fanfare, although it wasn't as flawless as a professional group would have played it. Then the windE portion of the concert: "American Salute" (variations on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again"), "America the Beautiful" (the blue Europe band version), and "National Emblem" (the monkey/flagpole march - see Friday's post). All three of these went just dandily. WindE followed us to wrap up the first half of the concert; I couldn't listen because I had to change from my tux to my MB (MB = Mustang Band from here on out) uniform. During intermission MB warmed up. We opened the second half of the concert with "Come on Feel the Noize," following it with "Jump in the Line," "I'm a Man," "Hummin' Along" (drum-soloalicious), "Nights in White Satin," and, of course, the fight song. These all went well also. Although after the fight song when we all had taken our bows we were standing there waiting for the curtain to close, but the stage hand couldn't figure out what cord to pull or something because nothing happened. We all stood there grinning and watching out of the corner of our eyes for some instruction. Someone in the audience finally yelled out, "close the curtain!" It did, and all of us in MB finally were able to let out the laughter we had been restraining. It was pretty darned hilarious. Anywho, after that was the WindO/WindE combined portion of the concert. We played "Lonely Beach," where I got to go stand in the audience (still wearing my MB uniform, mind you) and play a solo-bugle-call kind of thing. Then we played "Armed Forces Salute," which was my favorite part of the concert. We played each of the five branches' songs, and J told all the veterans in the audience to stand when theirs was played. It was really moving to see all of them stand up and clap along with their branch's song. After that we closed the concert with...brace yourself, big shocker coming here..."The Stars and Stripes Forever." We played it very well, although I've heard the piccolo solo played better before. (Interesting aside: John Philip Sousa was born on November 6, 1854. Our concert was November 6, 2004. Happy 150th, J.P. Sousa!) Anyway, that was the concert.
I went back to the dorm afterward to change, and then I stayed with Dad overnight at his hotel in Pismo Beach (the same one we stayed at when we first moved me up here). I had no swimsuit but I really wanted to go sit in the jacuzzi (as I don't have one around here), so I went in my boxers. Feeling more relaxed - and more awake after my Starbucks Frappuccino kicked in - I stayed up pretty late finishing my music theory piece. Then sleep.
I woke up to find Dad had been up for a few hours already, walking along Pismo Beach and enjoying the scenery. We went to church at the mission and then picked up Mom for breakfast. After waiting twenty minutes or so we sat down at a table at the Apple Farm Inn, only to be informed that breakfast wasn't served after noon. So we ditched the Inn in favor of IHOP. Stuffed french toast deliciousness.
Dad had to hit the road after that, so he dropped Mom and I back off at Mom's hotel and left. Mom then returned me to campus so I could have a few hours to catch up on homework. I wish I could have spent the time with my parents, but I have more midterms coming up and I desperately needed to catch up on my work. I got a considerable amount of math and physics done before I had to leave for my music theory group meeting, where we took our first stab at playing my piece. Our attempt wasn't too shabby, although we will need a lot more work. We've got two weeks; I'm pretty sure we'll pull it off.
While I was in the music building I decided to practice trumpet. I have an audition tomorrow, and I really want to make windE because they're playing "Candide." I'm playing a couple of easy pieces out of Arban's...I'm going the "play an easy piece well" route rather than trying to push myself and risk screwing something up. I'll let you know tomorrow how it went.
After I had sufficiently recovered from last night's concert, Mom came and fetched me and we went back to the Apple Farm Inn for dinner. I had chili, with caramel apple pie for desert. Yum! Mom felt like coffee afterwards so we drove over to Starbucks and purchased a cup of caffeinated bliss for her. Then it was back to campus to drop me off and say our last goodbyes.
In the time since I've occupied myself with the rest of my physics homework (on a chapter I'm actually finding quite interesting) and writing this epic blog entry. And that's where we are now.
One last thing before I go: I'm sorry to hear that RB lost field show to Vista at Mira Mesa. But, in a way, I'm glad to hear it. I hope all of you now can stop feeling guilty about "always winning." And, as the margin of loss was so little, I hope it inspires you to work harder in the two weeks you have left this year. There's still time...use it and enjoy it!
Good night all.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: much less stressed now that I've caught up on a lot of my homework
music: a punk cover of "Mr. Sandman," which happens to be on a CD Joanna made for me a while ago entitled "Super Cool, Really Awesome, No Words to Describe Them - Songs"
location: dorm
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Oh, the Monkey Wrapped His Tail Around the Flag Pole
We have our fall concert tomorrow, and one of the marches we're playing is the "National Emblem," by E.E. Bagley. I don't know a way to relate the tune of this march to you other than to say that it's the march Quagmire (from Family Guy) sings in his head when Peter, Joe, and Cleveland are able to read his thoughts with Joe's police van. Anyway, did you know the National Emblem has lyrics? "Oh, the monkey wrapped his tail around the flag pole." That's all there is, and I have no idea where it comes from. I think I'm going to have to come up with the rest of the words myself...
Anyway, as I said, the Cal Poly bands have our fall concert - "Bandfest" - tomorrow night. I had extra rehearsal today from 4:30 to 9:30, with an hour for lunch stuffed somewhere in there. The concert is in celebration of Veterans' Day, so we're playing mostly patriotic stuff. Both Mom and Dad are coming up to see it, so I'm excited to see both of them. And the concert should be pretty good, too. The wind orchestra and the wind ensemble actually do play very well; it was impressive hearing them in our new performing arts center. So I'm excited about tomorrow. I have to change from my tux (with the wind orchestra) to my band uniform (for Mustang Band) halfway through the show. Oh, and I have this semi-solo-type-thing. We're playing a piece called "Lonely Beach" that calls for eight offstage trumpets to play bugle-type calls in the audience, and I'm one of them. Hooray. We're also playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (of course), and - in my professional opinion - we play it much better than the Europe bands played it last summer. The well-known pieces like that are much more fun when you're good at them.
So tomorrow should turn out to be a busy day. I'm meeting one of the girls from my music theory group at noon tomorrow to compose our piece. That should actually be kind of fun, plus it will be nice to finally have that project somewhat out of the way. But, as it's quite late, I must be off to bed.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: relaxed - Kevin at an architecture sleepover so I've got the room to myself for the first time ever
music: none - silent bliss
location: empty dorm
Anyway, as I said, the Cal Poly bands have our fall concert - "Bandfest" - tomorrow night. I had extra rehearsal today from 4:30 to 9:30, with an hour for lunch stuffed somewhere in there. The concert is in celebration of Veterans' Day, so we're playing mostly patriotic stuff. Both Mom and Dad are coming up to see it, so I'm excited to see both of them. And the concert should be pretty good, too. The wind orchestra and the wind ensemble actually do play very well; it was impressive hearing them in our new performing arts center. So I'm excited about tomorrow. I have to change from my tux (with the wind orchestra) to my band uniform (for Mustang Band) halfway through the show. Oh, and I have this semi-solo-type-thing. We're playing a piece called "Lonely Beach" that calls for eight offstage trumpets to play bugle-type calls in the audience, and I'm one of them. Hooray. We're also playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (of course), and - in my professional opinion - we play it much better than the Europe bands played it last summer. The well-known pieces like that are much more fun when you're good at them.
So tomorrow should turn out to be a busy day. I'm meeting one of the girls from my music theory group at noon tomorrow to compose our piece. That should actually be kind of fun, plus it will be nice to finally have that project somewhat out of the way. But, as it's quite late, I must be off to bed.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: relaxed - Kevin at an architecture sleepover so I've got the room to myself for the first time ever
music: none - silent bliss
location: empty dorm
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Closed Frequencies
I registered for classes for winter quarter this morning. I had to get up at 6:50 when I otherwise would have slept to 8:30 (putting aside Kevin's getting up for his 8:00 class), but it was worth it. I got all the classes I wanted, which means I have Fridays off. Actually, I didn't get all the classes I wanted...they've started this new system where you can only register for 14 units the first time through, and then you can register for more when everyone has had a chance to get the initial 14. So right now I have four out of my five classes, with a two-credit EE lecture I'm hoping will still be open when I'm able to sign up for more classes. I'm guessing I'll end up having to crash the course, but since it's a lecture without a lab I should be able to...I don't know...we'll see. But I've got Fridays off, so who really cares? My Tuesdays and Thursdays aren't looking so hot, though. There's always a compromise somewhere.
We built an AM radio today in my EE lab. Does anyone reading this know what AM stands for? Anyone? Anyone? (Bueller...? Bueller...?) Perhaps I'll let you know on a future post, though you'll probably have to remind me. Anyway, I understand - to some extent, at least - how AM radio works, and it's quite exciting. We also messed with the incoming frequencies to produce interference - I was more interested in the intervals between the pitches that different interference frequencies sounded (1kHz produces a note, 2kHz produces a note an octave above that, 3kHz a perfect fifth above that, 4kHz a perfect fourth, 5kHz a major third, 6 kHz a minor third. Brass players recognize the pattern: C, C, G, C, E, G. They're the partials you can play with one valve combination. It really is creepy when you're learning about the same thing, in one way or another, in all of your classes.). One group stumbled upon a way to make a microphone out of their receiver, so they tried to broadcast their "EE 151 pirate radio" so the rest of us could pick it up at our stations. It failed but was a valiant attempt nonetheless.
It was another rainy day today, alternating between misting a little and raining cats and dogs. Marching band was rained out for the third time this year, so we cut an entire song out of our next halftime show because we won't have time to learn it. Oh well, we're still playing "Soul Man" and "I'm a Man," which were the only two cool ones. We're also marching the drum feature we already know. It should be a good show.
Someone came up with the idea of driving over to Atascadero - about twenty minutes away - to go to In-N-Out for dinner. We went at 9:00, got there by 9:20, ate and got home by 10. The food was good but I still can't stand the smell of the place. Oh, and the prices here are different. Next time someone goes to an In-N-Out please notice how much you pay for your meal and let me know. A #1 set you back $4.96 when I worked there, and an #2 was $4.04. I'm curious to see if this was a franchise-wide price change or if it's just this one for some reason.
Anywho, I have a music theory midterm tomorrow. I'm not too worried about it, but I should review a few things before I go to bed. So that's what I'm going to go do now. Good night.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: still refreshed because of the new room layout
music: zip
location: dorm
We built an AM radio today in my EE lab. Does anyone reading this know what AM stands for? Anyone? Anyone? (Bueller...? Bueller...?) Perhaps I'll let you know on a future post, though you'll probably have to remind me. Anyway, I understand - to some extent, at least - how AM radio works, and it's quite exciting. We also messed with the incoming frequencies to produce interference - I was more interested in the intervals between the pitches that different interference frequencies sounded (1kHz produces a note, 2kHz produces a note an octave above that, 3kHz a perfect fifth above that, 4kHz a perfect fourth, 5kHz a major third, 6 kHz a minor third. Brass players recognize the pattern: C, C, G, C, E, G. They're the partials you can play with one valve combination. It really is creepy when you're learning about the same thing, in one way or another, in all of your classes.). One group stumbled upon a way to make a microphone out of their receiver, so they tried to broadcast their "EE 151 pirate radio" so the rest of us could pick it up at our stations. It failed but was a valiant attempt nonetheless.
It was another rainy day today, alternating between misting a little and raining cats and dogs. Marching band was rained out for the third time this year, so we cut an entire song out of our next halftime show because we won't have time to learn it. Oh well, we're still playing "Soul Man" and "I'm a Man," which were the only two cool ones. We're also marching the drum feature we already know. It should be a good show.
Someone came up with the idea of driving over to Atascadero - about twenty minutes away - to go to In-N-Out for dinner. We went at 9:00, got there by 9:20, ate and got home by 10. The food was good but I still can't stand the smell of the place. Oh, and the prices here are different. Next time someone goes to an In-N-Out please notice how much you pay for your meal and let me know. A #1 set you back $4.96 when I worked there, and an #2 was $4.04. I'm curious to see if this was a franchise-wide price change or if it's just this one for some reason.
Anywho, I have a music theory midterm tomorrow. I'm not too worried about it, but I should review a few things before I go to bed. So that's what I'm going to go do now. Good night.
Cheers,
Josh
mood: still refreshed because of the new room layout
music: zip
location: dorm
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Feng Shui
I stayed up later than I should have last night, so this morning I was dead tired through physics and music theory. But somehow Dr. Barata managed to wake me up about halfway through class. We were discussing how minor seconds can used tastefully in music even though its not the sweetest-sounding interval out of context, and to give us an example he played us the theme from Jaws. You know: daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa dum......daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa dum....daaaa dum daaaa dum daaaa dum da dum da dum da dum da dum, etc. To demonstrate how a minor second does have its place in music, Dr. Barata changed the interval to a perfect fifth and rewrote John Williams's theme. (I apologize for those of you not familiar with the language of music; this story is almost completely lost on you.) Pretty soon he was playing a "hoe-down" type song with lyrics along the lines of "I'm a little shark and I'm gonna eat you...look at my big teeth and my big fat fin" and so forth. It's hard to imagine the tune, but it was pretty funny. But Dr. Barata wasn't finished. He jumped up from the piano and did a little jig for all of us, singing all the while. I was almost in tears. It's interesting because most people in the class hate Dr. Barata and complain about all of his stupid jokes. I'll admit that he tells a lot of groaners, but some of them are quite creative and most are at least a little amusing. And even if most of the jokes are pretty bad, it's still more entertaining than no jokes at all. So I'm liking that class right now. It would be different if I didn't have previous knowledge of theory because we don't spend enough time on any one topic to truly begin to understand it, but as it is I'm doing just fine. daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa dum.
When I arrived back at my room just past 10:00 (finished with class for the day!), I wasn't tired anymore so I saved myself the two hours I would have wasted sleeping and instead decided to do something productive. What, you ask? Why, move the furniture in my room, of course! Observe the following diagram that I took five minute out of my life to draw and scan just for you all to see:
The top diagram is how the room used to be. Observe that there's a corner about 2'x2' in the corner of the room closed off my desk and my dresser; we put the trash can and recycle bin there but it was more of a waste of space than anything. Also observe that Kevin has a nice view out the window from his desk and I have a view of a cement wall that's simply loverly from mine. Well, after lots of tetris-style shifting of furniture, our room now looks like the bottom diagram. I didn't draw these very well so you can't really tell the difference, but there's a lot more open floor space in the layout we're using now. I can also now see out the window (slightly) when I sit at my desk. All of the junk that used to clutter my desk got cleaned up in the process of moving so now my desk feels as though its twice as big as it used to be. And I can lean against the wall when I sit on my bed lengthwise. And as far as I can tell, there aren't any cons to having my room arranged like this. (If you're wondering what happened to the trash can/recycle bin that was in the corner before, I moved the trash can under my desk where my feet go (it's not a very large trash can) and the recycle bin is now on the window seat, behind Kevin's dresser.) Anywho, I'm very excited about my new room, if for no other reason than just to have a change.
After that I went downtown to return to Long's to develop the pictures I didn't get developed the last time I was there. I also got gas. Woot.
I spent some time doing homework, and then it was off to the music building to practice trumpet. I have an audition on Monday and I really want to make wind ensemble (as opposed to wind orchestra, a level down) so I can play "Candide." I took a break from that to have dinner at Back Stage Pizza, and then I returned to the music building for wind orchestra rehearsal, which went a lot better than it did on Monday. We were much more in tune, so we didn't have to stop as much. Yay band.
I later ran over to Campus Market to pick up an extention cord (covered by my meal plan!) for my alarm clock which, from its new position on my dresser, no longer reaches an outlet by itself. Oh, and I finally set my watch today after it being an hour ahead due to the ending of daylight savings time. I had been waiting until I could call time so I could set my watch exactly, but calling time apparently costs money and I don't have an access code so I can't use the dorm phone to call and my cell phone won't call it because I'm out of area, so I had to borrow my RA's phone card to finally make the call. But now my watch is correct to the second! I know, I know...I'm anal. But you all knew that about me already.
I must now go to bed for I am getting up by 7 so I can register for winter quarter classes. If all goes according to plan, I'll have Fridays off. All Fridays. Boo ya. So yeah, I'll talk to you all later.
Cheers,
Josh
PS- I got an email from the drum major that was sent to the entire band. We're editing out the sperm set from "Soul Man" because we decided its in bad taste. I guess there are at least a few people out there who share my opinion on that whole thing.
mood: refreshed, because my desk is so large!
music: I'm watching My Fellow Americans (because it was just election day)
location: dorm, but sitting against a different wall now
When I arrived back at my room just past 10:00 (finished with class for the day!), I wasn't tired anymore so I saved myself the two hours I would have wasted sleeping and instead decided to do something productive. What, you ask? Why, move the furniture in my room, of course! Observe the following diagram that I took five minute out of my life to draw and scan just for you all to see:
The top diagram is how the room used to be. Observe that there's a corner about 2'x2' in the corner of the room closed off my desk and my dresser; we put the trash can and recycle bin there but it was more of a waste of space than anything. Also observe that Kevin has a nice view out the window from his desk and I have a view of a cement wall that's simply loverly from mine. Well, after lots of tetris-style shifting of furniture, our room now looks like the bottom diagram. I didn't draw these very well so you can't really tell the difference, but there's a lot more open floor space in the layout we're using now. I can also now see out the window (slightly) when I sit at my desk. All of the junk that used to clutter my desk got cleaned up in the process of moving so now my desk feels as though its twice as big as it used to be. And I can lean against the wall when I sit on my bed lengthwise. And as far as I can tell, there aren't any cons to having my room arranged like this. (If you're wondering what happened to the trash can/recycle bin that was in the corner before, I moved the trash can under my desk where my feet go (it's not a very large trash can) and the recycle bin is now on the window seat, behind Kevin's dresser.) Anywho, I'm very excited about my new room, if for no other reason than just to have a change.
After that I went downtown to return to Long's to develop the pictures I didn't get developed the last time I was there. I also got gas. Woot.
I spent some time doing homework, and then it was off to the music building to practice trumpet. I have an audition on Monday and I really want to make wind ensemble (as opposed to wind orchestra, a level down) so I can play "Candide." I took a break from that to have dinner at Back Stage Pizza, and then I returned to the music building for wind orchestra rehearsal, which went a lot better than it did on Monday. We were much more in tune, so we didn't have to stop as much. Yay band.
I later ran over to Campus Market to pick up an extention cord (covered by my meal plan!) for my alarm clock which, from its new position on my dresser, no longer reaches an outlet by itself. Oh, and I finally set my watch today after it being an hour ahead due to the ending of daylight savings time. I had been waiting until I could call time so I could set my watch exactly, but calling time apparently costs money and I don't have an access code so I can't use the dorm phone to call and my cell phone won't call it because I'm out of area, so I had to borrow my RA's phone card to finally make the call. But now my watch is correct to the second! I know, I know...I'm anal. But you all knew that about me already.
I must now go to bed for I am getting up by 7 so I can register for winter quarter classes. If all goes according to plan, I'll have Fridays off. All Fridays. Boo ya. So yeah, I'll talk to you all later.
Cheers,
Josh
PS- I got an email from the drum major that was sent to the entire band. We're editing out the sperm set from "Soul Man" because we decided its in bad taste. I guess there are at least a few people out there who share my opinion on that whole thing.
mood: refreshed, because my desk is so large!
music: I'm watching My Fellow Americans (because it was just election day)
location: dorm, but sitting against a different wall now
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
A Little off the Top
I slept in today - such bliss! Then I was off to calculus (we're getting into some stuff I haven't seen before). From there I got a haircut at an actual salon place. I'm used to Supercuts where you just walk in and get your ears lowered, but this was one of those places that requires an actual appointment. Whoops. But I got lucky and they happened to have a spot open a few minutes after I arrived. (I would have had to wait longer but I could not for the life of me figure out where I was supposed to turn in to park my car. I could see the "Designer Cuts" sign from the main road, but there wasn't a driveway near it. What's that about? It took me three tries before I finally found the parking lot, which was tucked away around back.) Anywho, my hair is (thankfully) much shorter now, and it only cost me $10. Hooray for $10 Tuesdays.
I then drove downtown to pick up the pictures I had developed to send to Mrs. Evans. (Mrs. Evans was my 7th grade teacher. In her class I built a model of the White Tower in London, so I've been meaning to send her the picture of Renee and me in front of it so she'd know I'd seen the real thing.) I got ten pictures returned to me, but unfortunately none of them was the one in front of the White Tower. I apparently forgot to have that one printed...I'll write to you tomorrow about my trip back to Long's.
I had marching band rehearsal today, and it was interesting to say the least. The next show we're doing consists of "Soul Man," "In a Young Man's Mind," and "I'm a Man." Do you see any themes there? We learned the drill for "Soul Man" today. What formations do we march, you ask? We make the male symbol, we spell out "XY," and we make a sperm. That's right, a sperm. We also make a couple of other formations that aren't anything specific but that I'm pretty sure are supposed to suggest something sexual. I suppose it's kind of funny, but I think it's more in bad taste than anything...
After rehearsal I had dinner at the Avenue with Nate and Margaret, who both march in band. Nate had just broken up with Jen, and he seemed only mildly upset about it. (If you'll recall, Nate and Jen are the ones who started dating the night they met.) I didn't know beforehand, but evidently Nate and Margaret are pretty good friends, so I was kind of left out of most of the conversations. Yay awkwardness.
Later I met with my music theory group and we went to Home Depot to get our instruments. Final decisions: three flower pots, a brush, a cardboard box, wine glasses, and a bottle. They actually sound good together - at least as good as a bunch of random stuff from Home Depot can sound together. I actually tried to compose a piece using them, but I didn't get very far. I don't know if I want to take charge and write something or if I want to let someone else do it. If I choose the latter, it's very possible that nothing will ever get done. We only have a few weeks left to write and practice the piece before we perform it...
I came home afterwards and followed the election for a little while until Kevin brought his architecture friend Sarah up to the room. The three of us talked for a little while, although it was hard to include myself in their architecture conversations at times. Sarah seemed nice, though.
Anywho, I think I'll wrap this up right about now. Not much else happened anyway...
Cheers,
Josh
mood: a little frustrated/annoyed
music: election coverage
location: dorm
I then drove downtown to pick up the pictures I had developed to send to Mrs. Evans. (Mrs. Evans was my 7th grade teacher. In her class I built a model of the White Tower in London, so I've been meaning to send her the picture of Renee and me in front of it so she'd know I'd seen the real thing.) I got ten pictures returned to me, but unfortunately none of them was the one in front of the White Tower. I apparently forgot to have that one printed...I'll write to you tomorrow about my trip back to Long's.
I had marching band rehearsal today, and it was interesting to say the least. The next show we're doing consists of "Soul Man," "In a Young Man's Mind," and "I'm a Man." Do you see any themes there? We learned the drill for "Soul Man" today. What formations do we march, you ask? We make the male symbol, we spell out "XY," and we make a sperm. That's right, a sperm. We also make a couple of other formations that aren't anything specific but that I'm pretty sure are supposed to suggest something sexual. I suppose it's kind of funny, but I think it's more in bad taste than anything...
After rehearsal I had dinner at the Avenue with Nate and Margaret, who both march in band. Nate had just broken up with Jen, and he seemed only mildly upset about it. (If you'll recall, Nate and Jen are the ones who started dating the night they met.) I didn't know beforehand, but evidently Nate and Margaret are pretty good friends, so I was kind of left out of most of the conversations. Yay awkwardness.
Later I met with my music theory group and we went to Home Depot to get our instruments. Final decisions: three flower pots, a brush, a cardboard box, wine glasses, and a bottle. They actually sound good together - at least as good as a bunch of random stuff from Home Depot can sound together. I actually tried to compose a piece using them, but I didn't get very far. I don't know if I want to take charge and write something or if I want to let someone else do it. If I choose the latter, it's very possible that nothing will ever get done. We only have a few weeks left to write and practice the piece before we perform it...
I came home afterwards and followed the election for a little while until Kevin brought his architecture friend Sarah up to the room. The three of us talked for a little while, although it was hard to include myself in their architecture conversations at times. Sarah seemed nice, though.
Anywho, I think I'll wrap this up right about now. Not much else happened anyway...
Cheers,
Josh
mood: a little frustrated/annoyed
music: election coverage
location: dorm
