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
