Random thought on the snow fall

You know, seeing this snow fall earlier this afternoon makes me really long for somebody I can curl up with by a fire, maybe under the mistletoe. Somebody to keep me warm, in that way. Just wishful thinking on my part, but I guess being single for Christmas break has its pluses; as my friend Alex points out, less things to get for Christmas, among other things. Oh well, maybe next year. (This goes out to all the ladies out there. Just an FYI. I'm single.)

Snow!

IT SNOWED TODAY!

First semester grades are in...

...and I have a 1.7 gpa =((((((((((. I'm pissed, as I should have done way better; like, not failing Stat for one, given my background in that subject. My first year seminar and my History 131 classes came as a surprise too, as I wasn't expecting C's in both those classes. Thankfully, the parents knew that I had tried and studied a ton, so they actually were really sympathetic. But you know what? It's up to me to kick some freaking ass next semester, as well as the next three years at UMW!

Alumni Panel thing today

As the title indicates, I went in to Lake Braddock today to serve on an alumni panel for the seniors in the government classes. Now, initially I was skeptical of it, as I kinda wanted to sleep in and whatnot. However, it was pretty fun, and totally worth having to get up at 6:30 (oh how I remember those high school days). It was nice knowing that I, as well as my alumni peers, may have helped these current seniors look at college a little bit differently. Also, I felt very special because you have the college experience, which helps others learn that stuff. Being able to relate my experiences with the seniors and to get a chance to publicly share that, I felt powerful. Great experience, and I'd really want to do that another time!

Book Review #2

Okay so I just finished reading a great book today, entitled One More Day Everywhere: Crossing 50 Borders on the Road to Global Understanding, by Glen Heggsted. It's about his journey obviously through 50 borders throughout the world, on a motorcycle. The reasoning behind that was, he was captured by Colombian terrorists when attempting to motorcycle through South America, so he took this trip to essentially stick it to the man.

It was riveting, his book, as you really were there for him on his journey; the way he narrated it, it was if you were biking with him. It was cool how he described every country that he was with, as it really showed the rest of the world in a different perspective, more than we normally associate with. Also, the fact that he was doing this by himself and really not much outside support, it added a sense of danger to his trip. I mean, I was rooting for his two year-long journey to go off without a hitch, so I was especially riveted to his journey. It probably also helps that I'm a sucker for these kind of stories, but it definitely would appeal to any other interests. I highly recommend this, but you need to budget some time to read this, as it's very riveting. 5/5 stars is the verdict.

Semester in review

Now that I'm home for a month for Winter Break, it marks the ending of my first semester of college. I figured that in commemoration, I'd do a celebratory look back at the semester it was. Without further ado, I present, in no specific order (though I'll try to), some of the memorable/significant/random/fun events of my short college career so far. Enjoy!

- Moving in on Orientation Week, and being scared/excited to start college.
- Meeting Eric and Chris, my roommates. The initial couple of days were a bit awkward getting to know each other, but we've since hit it off.
- For that matter, meeting my fellow freshmen. It was a bit awkward, as we all were like "Hi, I'm..." but tons of friends were made. Finding out that a lot more people from Fairfax County and/or NoVa than you'd expected to be here was a pleasant surprise too.
- Getting totally bitched out on the first night of orientation for our mandatory dorm meeting. Totally bitched out. And then finding out later that it really was just for show; the R.A.'s really didn't mean half of what they said, and were basically required to bitch us all out.
- Living on the party floor of the party dorm, aka 4th floor of Russell Hall. And conveniently, we're kinda isolated on campus. And we're also right behind the campus police station. Irony, much?
- The freaking heat. You all know how it was the hottest Summer we've had in recent memory? Yeah well we had to live in our dorm (a few others had it) without A/C until at least September. And I was on the top bunk.
- Starting college classes for the first time, and being rather intimidated until after the second week or so.
- College food
- Eric and I checking Chris' closet for one whole week to establish that his towel actually was wet from showering. (We established, for the record, that it was dry the whole time, at least that we could see.)
- The drunk kids. Lots of them.
- Mahmood getting high/drunk...the first night...of orientation. That kid has issues, seriously.
- Because of him and the other drunk kids, we all were taking bets on who would be the first person to get kicked out. More on that later.
- Our side of the floor being the better side
- The destructive side of Dalton Echard. More so when he's drunk.
- "Trinkle"
- "Dimples"
- The small, yet dedicated and passionate music department
- Being the only student trombonist in Concert Band. Come to think of it, I was the only trombonist in that band until Dr. Bartram enlisted the services of a player from the community to play with me.
- Jazz Band being super chill and a blast.
- Symphony (what I call it), or Philharmonic (what they officially call it), being a new thing and pretty rewarding.
- Sleeping for 70 minutes in one symphony rehearsal, cause they were playing a song that I really didn't play. And they were constantly rehearsing a couple of sections that I didn't play on.
- Sleeping on two chairs in the back of the room in said rehearsal
- The sleep, or lack of, at times
- Speaking of sleep, the fact that nobody had to wake you up and the revelation that you technically didn't have to go to class and could sleep in was a definite wakeup (haha there's a pun there) call that Dorothy, this wasn't Kansas anymore.
- Chris staying up 'til god knows when at night/the morning, on his laptop, doing god knows what on it
- Both Eric and I swear that Chris watches us leave in the mornings for class
- Chris' hygiene. Or lack of. And his aversion to Febreeze and anything else that would make the room smell less pungent.
- Keegan and his frosted tips
- Me being known as the dude who always plays NHL 11 downstairs in the common room
- Carolyn and her "meth lab"
- Being told that if you're a rookie drinker, don't, don't, don't drink anything from Ben's room. Note that while he has a roommate (there's a story about that, actually), it was colloquially known as Ben's room.
- The parties, of which I've heard stories of.
- Coming back on the Friday before Halloween and having my glasses fogged up due to the massive amount of body heat in Russell, thanks to our Heaven or Hell party that night.
- The completely random late-night chats with friends that came out of absolutely nowhere. They're honestly one of the best parts of college, those late night chats/doing random stuff.
- Speaking of that, we've had some very intense Sporcle games, ranging from 11at night to after 3 in the morning. Trying to think of things very late at night is very fun, and very frustrating at times. But totally worth it.
- Doing laundry on the weekends, and it being very quiet, due to everybody being too wasted/tired/hungover from the previous night.
- Having my first drink. I don't drink, let me just say, but I've had half a cup of whiskey twice with Keegan. The first time, I couldn't really drink too much. The second time, he mixed it with his Mexican Coke (stuff's dee-lish) and man, that stuff is good. And I was sort of buzzed that night.
- Keegan's Mexican Coke is the best Coke I've had, barring the whole sketchiness of what that must sound like.
- Watching Caps games with Keegan, as he gets progressively more drunk.
- Eating Swedish Fish while slightly buzzed while watching the Caps game on Thursday night in Keegan/Isaac's room, with Keegan, Isaac, Sandra, and Bob. Such a great night. =)
- The random conversations I've had in Keegan/Isaac's room with them
- Austin and his suicidal drinking tendencies (7 beers
- Strip foosball. I need more practice, let's just say.
- Yes, we do have a foosball table that we rescued from the destructive other side of the hall.
- The furniture wars we've had.
- Stealing back a couch from the other side of the hall, with Eric and Bob. We felt like ninjas afterwards.
- Heading out to lunch one Saturday morning to find two chairs and several mattresses chucked outside the dorm. And of course, it was the other side of the hall who did it.
- Apparently my name, courtesy of John C., is Cone-tin Smeedy. And I'm honestly kinda proud of it.
- Bob Ericson. I love that kid.
- Hearing Cooper get extremely pissed off when playing Gears of War 2 online
- The first thing I heard in Jazz Band was Piccolo (he's a trombonist player, which is hilarious and ironic) tell James that "he waited the whole year", being a week or so, to tell him to "suck his dick". I love Jazz Band.
- Joe and his beard. And his hairy chest. No homo.
- Making a ton of amazing friends.
- Being a college kid.
- Seeing a ton of kids on campus that you don't personally know but you recognize, and being attached to them just cause you've really seen them a ton.
- Playing some freakishly intense street hockey in the rain for an hour and a half and getting totally soaked, but it's all good- you felt like a boss afterwards.
- Winning our Eagle One Cup (as named by me) in our championships for our street hockey club
- Making that at Matt's house, and actually eating real barbeque!
- My average breakfast on the weekend was cereal, mostly Fruit Loops, and Mountain Dew.
- Sleeping in on the weekends, procrastinating, and doing work you should have done like a week ago.
- Professors that are not only chill, but they really know their stuff.
- "Studying" with "a friend"
- Getting far to distracted on Facebook to do work; you will then regret being on Facebook when you're doing a paper at 11:30 at night.
- "Beijing" setting off the fire alarm cause he was a retard and forgot to put water in his Mac 'n Cheese.
- The next time the fire alarm went off and wasn't a drill, somebody on the third floor burnt popcorn
- Somebody on the guy (go figure) side of first floor burnt popcorn; we're now waiting for second floor to complete all four levels of complete microwave stupidity/incompetence.
- Passing our only fire drill to date
- We then proceeded to fail our next 5 fire drills after passing the first one. The first time we failed, it was around 4, and the head fire marshall was there to see us fail that one.
- The fifth time we failed, it was before the Thanksgiving break, meaning hardly anybody was there to fail it for the five people still there. And they fined all of us for that, apparently.
- Some moron slept through one of our drills at the wee hours of the morning, and thus led all of us to fail it.
- Our head R.A. has vodka in her room, which partially would explain the very lax enforcement of underage drinking in our dorm.
- David Justis did a reverse strip tease for the Mr. Russell contest. It's funnier when you take into the account that he almost always is shirtless, and wears those short runner's shorts. He didn't win the competition in case you were wondering.
- Stephen getting kicked out essentially, for lighting paper towels on fire in the bathroom. He actually got hauled off by the cops, too. Shame, I'm really gonna miss that kid.
- Finally, the fact that I realized that some people I know might/will transfer schools/dorms/dorm rooms, and that I won't be able to see them and hang out with them while doing/talking about quirky/stupid/weird things. I'm really gonna miss all of you.

Musical Note (haha there's a pun)

Yes, I just pulled off a pun there. But still, I've been in a very military march mood, thanks to studying for finals; they really got me focused, so they helped. Now, I've still been listening to a ton of them on YouTube. The ones I've really been listening to have been mostly German/Prussian/Austrian marches, with a few other English and French ones mixed in. My personal favorite so far has been Oh, du mein Osterreich, with The Men of Harlech closely behind that. Unter der Doppeladler is a great one, too. If you're interested, this is what I recommend listening to, in no particular order:
- Oh, du mein Osterreich
- The Men of Harlech
- 99er Regimentsmarsch 
- Präsentiermarsch des Wachregiment
-  Marche de la Legion/Le Boudin 
- Königgrätzer Marsch 
- Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse 
- Preussens Gloria


Try not to get too inspired after listening to these

Oh man, this isn't good-Campus alert

A student reported seeing an individual in possession of a handgun on campus walk near Simpson Library late Sunday evening. The individual was described as a white male with a black goatee and stocky build, about 5’5” tall, and wearing a dark hoodie shirt with red lining and blue jeans. He was carrying a backpack. Students and staff are being advised to shelter in place, be alert, and practice good situational awareness. The individual is being sought by campus police for further investigation. If you see an individual matching the description, please contact campus police and do not try to engage, stop or question him.

Life insight, courtesy of Twitter

Saw this and retweeted this on Twitter:
Top 5 Dispute Levels: 5-Divorce Court; 4-Political Campaigns; 3-Land Wars; 2-Religious Wars; 1-Sports fans on message boards

You may argue with this, but I've been around enough to verify this; politicians and their followers are strongly dedicated to their cause, but sports fans are just nuts.

Common Room Chair Wars

'Round 3 today, Eric, Bob, and I stole back a chair from the other side of our floor's common room. We were hanging out in the room across from us, watching them play Zombies in COD: Black Ops, when Eric just walks in and was like, "Hey, you guys wanna help me steal a chair from the other side?" This was in revenge for the stealing of one of ours that occurred around midnight. Revenge is sweet, and we all felt like ninjas afterwards. Win.

Fire, Fire, Burning...Black?

This morning, I got up to go to the bathroom. Guess what I found in there? Charred remains of paper. All over the floor. And even in the showers. Needless to say, it was pretty disgusting, and the cleaning people were not happy at all. In fact, it was a felony and the police arrived to investigate. Around 1, I tried to go to the bathroom, but was told that I couldn't, and that I had to go to other bathroom. Meaning, this stuff was getting serious. Though later, I learned that the person in question, who I'm friends with, got hauled off by campus police. Must be a fun Friday for him, then.

Damn, I must have been TIRED

As I previously mentioned in my other post, I really didn't get much sleep last night/this morning. And apparently, due to said lack of sleep, I had two very odd and trippy dreams. What I'm about to write is totally true, so please, don't take offense to this.

Dream 1 (or 2; no idea in what order it happened): I was sleeping, facing the wall. And then out of the corner of my eye, I see somebody sprint up the ladder to my bunk. I was a bit skeptical there, as I was afraid a certain person who will remain nameless would do some stuff of a PG-13 to R rated nature to me. Lo and behold, it was Molly, in my room, on my bunk, right next to me, at 4 in the morning, giving me a kiss on the cheek. And then disappearing almost right away, like it was magical. In this dream, I was tempted to walk all the way over to Alvey, yet I realized that it freaking was 4 in the morning, let alone me not having anybody to open the door for me. And I think I might have regained consciousness, at least temporarily, after that realization.

Dream 2 (or 1; it remains to be figured which dream came first): Apparently Chris was doing something very sketchy, or at least planning to in the wee hours of this fine dream morning, when I caught him. And then I promptly summoned Liz to do justice. This defies the laws on conventionality, as it was roughly around 4 in the morning, so nobody would be conscious enough to even remotely attempt to do any of this stuff.

The highs and lows of today...and mostly lows

Today has been a whirlwind in the last 24 hours, and it started off not too well. First of all, I really didn't get much sleep, and I'm not kidding; I don't remember falling asleep until probably 4 or later, and it was a bitch to try and fall asleep. And Chris didn't exactly help the cause, as he was moaning and groaning in what apparently was a nightmare. Then, at noon, I met with Molly at the Underground, where she told me that she just wants to "be friends". Ouch. Well, to be really kinda honest, I was probably going to tell her something around those lines, just that she superseded me at that. At this point, things were looking rather bleak and depressing. To round off the hat trick, I had a unspectacular presentation in my maps and politics class. This all happened by 4, which really didn't make this the best couple of hours I've ever had. Fortunately, I was about to be redeemed.

Our street hockey club championship game was tonight, at 7. To make a very long story (over two and a half hours, to be precise), my team, the blue jersied team, won, by a score of 10-8 (comeback from being down 4-2), 7-10, and then 3-0 in the final game. I've been redeemed for my generally shitty day today, and while I'm tired, it still feels doggone nice to go out on top!

On the road back to school

The way back to Mary Washington was a very long way there, and I don't mean because of traffic, which is a story in its own right. We left around 4 or so, and to make a long story short, we didn't arrive on campus for the better part of an hour and a half to two hours. Traffic was horrendous, like, the worst I've ever seen I-95 South. I mean, it was red light after red light; it was like a freaking parking lot out there. And to top things off, we got to Fredericksburg with 0.2 of a gallon of gas left-we were that close to running out of gas on the highway. I had mentioned to mom that we had a quarter of a tank left, and we thought that all would be well with our trip down south. Yeah, didn't quite work out that way. Our "low gas" signal was messing with us towards the end, as it would flicker on very briefly, then turn off. We were hoping that it was working, because we'd at least have some knowledge of how much gas was left in the tank. Though in the end, all worked out, so we were happy about it.

Black Friday? I don't think so

Ha! I didn't buy anything today, so suck that shopping malls/outlets! I just stuck it to the man there!

Hockey in the Rain

So other than the obvious stupidity of playing in the rain, tonight was a blast! My econ teacher wasn't feeling good tonight, so we got out early, and thus I decided to play some puck.

The teams were evenly balanced as we started to play, and then, the rain came down. At first, it was drizzling. Then, as we progressed through, it got a ton more heavier. Honestly, I don't think anybody minded, but the court turned into a swamp by the end of the night. I got a goal in this game, as I took a pass from Corey on the fly and then sniped Steven top shelf (where momma hides the cookies). It happened so fast that he really couldn't stop me, either! And being the hockey player that I am, a gongshow celebration ensued. My team lost the first game in a heartbreaker, 10-9; we played up to 10 in the first game. Man, it was a marathon, and we had come back from being down 5-2 to tie it at 9-9, when we got scored on. Two guys left, so we were playing a solid 3 on 3 with 2 subs, and man, it was intense! It was notable for me scoring a goal...off of my ass! Like, I was screening Steven when Kyle took a shot and I jumped up to both avoid said shot and to screen Steven. Well, needless to say it barely went in off of my butt, but a goal's a goal. I'm now the league leader in goals scored off of my butt, haha. That kicked off the scoring right there. Both teams battled to a 2-2 game, and then since Calvin had to leave, the next goal would win. Each teams had some close chances, in addition to harrowing moments. I personally blocked/saved/knocked away 3 shots that might have gone in, so huzzah for me (I'm so humble, aren't I?). And to put the nail in the coffin, we scored when I was sitting out. Twas a great night, and I can't wait for Friday!

New Favorite Quote of the Day

...Comes from the game Darkest of Days. Here it is:
(warning: language not suited for young kids)

"Morris, you see what those opposition fucks did? This is why we can't have nice things...I'm tired of diddly fucking around"

The Roomie Who Lives With Computers/"My Pent up Rage" Rant

This is a protest post (nice alliteration there come to think of it) slash rant post that I've been meaning to address lately. I may come off as obnoxious and overly mean, but I'm not too happy about it. What I'm getting pissed off about is how my second roommate, Chris, is a lazy S.O.B. and is on his computer all goddamn day. Like, he goes to bed, laptop in hand. He falls asleep in the wee hours of the morning, laptop in hand, and then complains about being tired...and then sleeps in and misses his classes. He shirks his work and then starts to start/work on/finish said work pretty late at night, when I'm trying to sleep; this just straight up pisses me off, because, given the unhealthy amount of time he spends on his laptop and his desktop computer (why somebody needs this IN addition to a laptop is beyond me), you'd figure that he'd manage to get something, anything done. Nope. He slacks off, cause he spends his life on Facebook, YouTube, and his flight simulator. Come on Chris, you can't live your life on a computer-people DO exist in the real world, you do know, right?

Now, I'm super bummed, and I know that a few others share this same gripe too, is that you never fucking clean your part of the room up. We're all clean and pristine, but apparently your computers take precedent over basic sanitation. Which, now that I dwell on it, is probably why we have to Febreeze your stuff every now and then. And trust us, it ain't fun to have to do that. So please Chris, please, pretty please, clean your part up. I'll clean your stuff up WHEN it gets significantly unbearable, but I swear, I should not have to do something that a good, even decent, roommate should do. I didn't sign up to essentially be your second mom, and both Eric and I should not have to do that. And now that we get to the bit about sanitation, please, please, PLEASE shower every now and then. I don't want to sound more like an asshole, but both of your fellow roommates can smell something; in fact, at least one or two other people can smell your stench. You brought shower stuff for a reason-PLEASE use it.

Look man, I know that I've said this quite a few times before, but geez, please do not complain when you are "tired". I know you're in the habit of staying up late and getting up late from high school, but you're living with two other people now. It's fine that you want to sleep, yes, but when you're tired BECAUSE you stay up into the wee hours of the morning doing god knows what on your laptop, I find it pretty hard to sympathize. Even more so, when you have papers due the next day, don't stay up late chilling and then find the sudden urge to do work. You've had all day to do work, and you're also on your computer(s). Wazzup with that?

And finally, you'd like college, and probably your grades, too, if you just put down the computers and went outside our room, and socialized. Trust me, it's fun. You'll actually get to know the people that we all hang out with, instead of the couple of hours they're inebriated. That's all that I, and others, are asking for. Computers are not a substitute for people to talk with. We'd like to talk to you, but obviously we can't when you're always on your blasted computers. Take the time to talk with us, please?

I mean, it may not sound like it, but you're a good guy. Yeah, you may have some flaws, but you're still a good guy to talk to. You're one of the few guys, if at all, that I can talk college football, music, movies, and tv shows with. It's just a shame that you can't talk to more people about that; I'm sure they'd love to talk to you if you just got a chance to. Yes, I know I know, you're "sick" or you're "not sociable", but you never know until you try. And I think that's what's the most frustrating thing about you-you're content to say "I don't like doing this" or "I'm not in the mood for this" or "It's not my thing" or "Eh, I'm not good at this/that". Well you know what? Fuck that, if you don't try, there is no fail. That's why we all have fun on our floor, because we try things and more often than not, the feeble attempts often result in greater, more fun things. Shame you've gotta miss out just because you're "not up to it" and then miss out on a great time/night/few hours/etc. 

*Obligatory Joke about my Throat*

I blame this on my two roommates. See, they're sick, and I'm pretty sure that I got something from them. And basically, my throat is burning, which really sucks. REALLY sucks. It's not a fun feeling, let's just say. I've been chugging a ton of fluids lately to try and remedy that situation, but so far it hasn't been working.

UPDATE: I'm about to go off to Concert Band, which should be a phenomenal experience. Joy. (I don't hate that class, just that playing relatively high with a sore throat is not appealing at all.)

Weekend recap

To celebrate my actual posting of something after God knows how long, this is what I did over the weekend

Friday:
-Played street hockey, as a goalie, at 5. Made some pretty sick saves, IMO, and I think I won the first game. Then we played to 5 the next game, which we lost 5-4...after a fluke goal went in off my glove when I clearly had the save there. Oh well. But at least Corey brought his goalie pads for me to use, and we had Trevor in goal, so it was a blast nonetheless! Goalie is criminally fun, and it probably enhances the fun when you make a ton of saves and get a good workout in.

-I played strip foosball at night, which I can tell you is quite enhanced when the people you're playing with/against are either drunk, getting drunk, or just smashed. Anyways, I went 1-3. Meaning, I got quite the workout stripping, but we thankfully don't do the "take yer boxers off" thing. Don't judge us.

Friday night/early Saturday morning:
-We were talking and hanging out in our common room when Andrew Moore freaking forgets to put water in his mac 'n cheese mix in the microwave. Which resulted in ridiculously thick smoke from the burned mac 'n cheese. And a mass evacuation of Russell Hall. For half an hour. In the cold, wee hours of the morning. Not fun.

Saturday:
-I attempted to do my Macroeconomics HW ahead of time for the 15% bonus, but I had a distinct lack of motivation. Sunday: time to clean up and compensate for my laziness.

-Went to Central Park around 1:30 with Molly, Liz, Keegan, Eric, Sandra, Isaac, and Mike Wang (who henceforth will be referred to as Wang; small children everywhere will giggle). We intended to go eat and then go do some necessary shopping at Walmart, but alas, we got sidetracked. After going to Five Guys (which I've seriously missed like no other), we were like "yeah we're not in a hurry-let's go shopping". We then went to Kohls, where I, as well as the rest of our motley crew, took advantage of ridiculous sales and consequently, I picked up an argyle sweater and a lumberjack-esque looking shirt that Molly absolutely loves. Huzzah for 40-50% off most of Kohls' items! And from there, we stopped by the Best Buy two stores down, where Wang and Liz got some CD's and DVD's. From there, we hopped over to Starbucks due to Keegan's incessant cravings for Starbucks. "Hey guys, there's a Starbucks 0.1 miles from here, wink wink". We hung out a bit in there and chatted about certain people and life, then Isaac was like "I want to go to Best Buy", which we did. We shopped for what we needed, and I purchased my much needed clothes hangers. Now, the wait for the FRED to pick us up was a whole different story.

-So about the FRED being obnoxiously slow and highly irregular. Once we were done shopping in Walmart, we went outside of it and went to the FRED stop, just waiting to be picked up. As we had taken longer than planned to get our stuff/trip done, it was about 5:30-ish, getting a bit more colder. The stop just so happened to be outside, with no shelter from wind or anything. Did I mention that it was getting increasingly colder, with not one of us really prepared for the cold. Anyways, to make a long story short, the FRED took the better part of 40 minutes to get there; and we spotted a FRED bus 20 minutes after getting to the stop, yet it didn't go our way and pick us up, much to our chagrin. Fuck the FRED.

Sunday
-Got an extra hour of sleep due to Daylight Savings Time, which honestly was greatly appreciated.

-Started doing my Macroeconomics HW, just to claim the 10% bonus of turning it in a day early. Took me until 11:30 at night to submit it, due to other events (Facebook also didn't help my cause, either). Oh well, at least I turned it in a day early.

-Hung out with Eric, Sandra, and Wang, and Joe too. Went to dinner with them, and we ran into John on the way down, so he accompanied us to the Nest. After we ate, we heckled Keegan at the Underground, where Eric, Joe, and I all got a slice of this amazing chocolate cake. Then we went back, and nothing else happened after that.

-Ran into Justis when I got back to the room. He wants to sell his remaining Amp Energy Drink to me in order to be able to purchase alcohol for the weekend (hey, he was brutally honest about that; can't hate that). I'll be getting back to him on that.

Vote Keegan Cooke for Russell Hall's "Hero of the Week"

Do it. Here's the link:
http://russell-hall.webs.com/WEBPROTECT-index.htm

Don't ask why, just vote. This is a democratic country, so be democratic and vote. Otherwise the terrorists win.

Hockey-playing Deprivation

It's hockey season, meaning I'm following it and thus, I really want to play some freaking ice hockey! Thankfully, there's a rumor that the former hockey rink here in Fredericksburg is potentially reopening, so maybe, just maybe, in the near future I'll have that. In the meantime, I'll just have to wait until breaks to go home and actually hit the beautiful ice. Phooey.

Procrastination: I'll do that tomorrow

I'm currently writing my second map critique for my First Year Seminar, aka my Maps and Politics class, which actually is pretty fun and informative. But the bad news is, it's due this week and I've really yet to work on it. Which brings me to mention how procrastinating is such a horrible thing. And then after that, I still have my final paper in Maps and Politics, which mercifully for me isn't due until December. Then I need to haul ass for my German long term homework. And then there's the case of studying for my Intro to Statistics test on Thursday. Yeah, I probably should not have waited this long to do all these. Oh well. Gotta get working...maybe later. No pressure, right?

San Jose Sharks vs. Adler Mannheim

Right now, I'm watching San Jose playing Adler Mannheim from the DEL in an exhibition game, in preparation for their season opening trip to Europe (Sweden, Finland, or Czech Republic, one of them, can't remember which). Anyways, as I'm writing this, Adler Mannheim is up 1-0 on the Sharks, and Adler Mannheim just switched goalies; as it's an exhibition, they have both of their goalies playing 30 minutes each, which is fair. It's pretty cool too, getting to see what is definitely an out of market game, and even more so given that it's a DEL team playing an NHL team too.

Washington Capitals Winter Classic Jerseys

Well, at the Caps Convention today, the Washington Caps unveiled their new jerseys, for the upcoming Winter Classic. Needless to say, old is new, as they basically went with their jerseys from the 1970's, when they first broke into the league, and just adapted it for the Reebok Edge style of jerseys. I love them, and I'm gonna need to pick one of them, one day, when I have more cash (Christmas maybe, or at worst, my birthday).

It was great knowing you, Allen and Craig Show

So for Friday, there was the series finale of the cult YouTube channel performers, Evil Iguana Productions' series, the Allen and Craig Show. I remember watching them two and a half years ago, and absolutely loving their material. I mean, this stuff was filmed by semi-amateur actors and film makers, though one would argue they are highly qualified to do some films. While part of me kinda died knowing that their run is over, I still have thoroughly enjoyed the last two and a half years of their show, as well as their other material.

So I guess why partially I feel emotionally attached to them is that I know that their original cast/crew of Evil Iguana Productions has moved on, and that they never will have as much of an appeal as they did when I first watched them. I mean, I "broke in" with them, if you can say that, with Allen, Craig, Kyle, Joe, Lars, and Dan; now, that original bunch of Illinois teens, now college graduates, has been broken up, maybe never to really come back. It just makes me think of what could have been and how things might have turned out had some people not have left/been added/have decided to pursue other careers/etc. It ties in with my biggest emotional and deep thought of the past and the future coinciding. For that reason, I guess that's why I will sorely miss their material.

Tonight celebrating Molly's Birthday

Yesterday was Molly's 19th birthday (dang, I feel young now), and it was a great time! First of all, she came into my room, saying that Deniz, her roommate, was sleeping, and that she wanted to enjoy it. When she came in, it was 3 minutes until she was born (1:10 PM, October 1, 1991, to be precise), so she was counting down; after 1:10, she let me officially say happy birthday. We talked a bit, 30 minutes or so, and then we walked to Combs, where I had my German class.

Now, late last night (technically, it's Saturday morning. Oh well.), around 9:30, I went to Jessica and Katie's room in Eagle Landing (it's SUPER posh, and thus amazing!) for her surprise party. On a side note, and I'm going to come clean, she pretty much came from behind me while I was walking on Campus Drive to get to said party, and she found out what was happening. So yes, she did feign surprise at the "surprise" party for her; and I must say, her acting was pretty top noch. Anyways, many sugary foods (this amazing, and amazingly sugary, cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream, with the Mountain Dew I had brought) were to be had, with some great times. At the end, Molly, Jessica, and Katie wanted to take some pictures, so I was enlisted as the photographer. Let's just say that they're very indecisive about the quality of what I personally thought were very solid pictures. This really was summed up by taking about 6 or so "final pictures", for various reasons. Great night though, and I'm really blessed to have such an amazing and lovely girlfriend such as Molly-god I love her!

Why yes, I do believe it's raining

You know, I'm all for this rain, and I want it to keep on raining for a while, but dang, these puddles here are ridiculous. Like, we have one outside our entrance, and it's like a minefield-you try to step around it and not get splashed by the water. That being said, I a) find this rain to be soothing and very therapeutic and b) I'm digging it how I get to wear jeans and/or long sleeve shirts this early, relatively speaking.

Damn I want to play some puck

Continuing with the hockey theme going on here, I really, REALLY want to play some hockey right now. Skater, goalie, it doesn't matter-I just want to play. Badly.

Today

Come to think of it, today felt a ton longer than it really was. Maybe it's because I got out of class at 9:15, and thus my day started earlier and ended far earlier than most people. Maybe because I killed quite a few hours just playing on my 360. Maybe it's both. Maybe because of the rain, I dunno. Either way, it felt like it was the never ending day; not that I really was complaining.

Work-What's That?

Per usual fashion, I am very late at updating what I did this afternoon. But then again, my loyal follower Rachel probably is used to that by now (sorry bout all that there, by the way). So anyways, my only class of the day ended at 9:15 in the morning, meaning I had the whole day off. I could have studied, done some homework, or work out, and just generally be productive. What did I do? Nothing, except play NHL 11 until I couldn't handle it anymore. And by that, I mean that I played, and consequently got beaten like three consecutive games in a row, which lead my friend Joe to heckle me during the games. However, I did win for him (minus changing the difficulty level and playing Team Ukraine, but shhhhhhhhhh); I outshot the other team 58-7...yet somehow they managed to score a single goal on me (Simeon Varlamov, you suck, bro). Sadly, it's not something to brag about when you beat Team Ukraine while playing as the Caps.

Anyways, the moral of this little life story, for which I know all one of you care about, is that I didn't really do anything today.

What can Down Go Brown and Whose Line Vids can do to you

So as the title indicates, I was reading the very hilarious Down Goes Brown blog, while watching Whose Line Is It, Anyway? vids. Needless to say, my roommate came over, tapped my chair, and asked me why I was laughing like I was on crack.

Funniest Thing I've seen Today

This gem came today, courtesy of the Facebook group "Proclaimed Hockey presents Proclaimed Hockey Whores". One of the wall posts asked,"What if [Marian] Gaborik was given a shot in the shootout to make the playoffs instead of [Olli] Jokinen?". One of the replies was: "What if Jesus had been, like, 'YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE' and gone fuckin Rambo with his magical super powers on some pharisee ass?" Beauty reply right there. 

NHL 11 fail of the (yester)day

Marty Brodeur going into the corner, passing the puck...right to a Pittsburgh Penguin who consequently had an open net to score-which he did. Even though it's a video game, and an amazing one at that, I still had to shake my head due to the amount of epic fail there.

Realization

So while it technically is a new day, I still have some thoughts about what is now yesterday. First of all, being home over the weekend from college is pretty weird; I mean, I still haven't gotten used to the fact that I'm not in my dorm in Russell Hall. But still, here are my things I have to say.

-Being home is awesome, if not a bit weird. Like I mentioned, it's super nice to be in your own bed, in your own room, in your house, unlike being in a fairly small dorm room (mine isn't as small as what some of my other friends have had, though). Not to mention that I actually have sweet wifi here, unlike the shitty and sporadic UMW wifi.
-Driving for the first time in a month. It was like "whoa" for me. Haven't been behind the wheel for that long-it's like an out of body experience.
-Speaking of driving, I drove to Lake Braddock to see if I could meet my buds there, as they had the annual tag day event. Turns out that when I got there, they were mostly finishing up, but I did get to talk to some people. And man, was it great seeing those guys there! It also was pretty cool being able to see the freshmen this year too, and I have to say, they're kind of small.
-Being able to purchase and play NHL 11, after being deprived of video games for a month

Talking on Facebook with people in the room

So as I'm writing this as I'm talking to roommate number one, Chris, and a friend, Molly in both person and on Facebook. It's interesting, and a bit pointless, really. But hey, it's all good; we're special people, haha.

I'm Canadian, Eh?

Forgot to mention this but last night when I was chilling in the Underground, I said about in a fairly good imitation of the Canadian accent. This led Molly to ask if I was Canadian. I had to explain that no, it was my hockey influence, but at the same time, it's kinda cool that I was asked if I was Canadian.

Masterpiece Drunk College Freshmen Improv Theater

Round two of the entertainment tonight/early morning came at the expense of the drunks, aka Matt and Shannon. Matt came into our room when Molly was in there, and he thought that it was his room he was in. Keegan literally had to come in and haul Matt out, which just goes to show how schloshed he was.

Now, there was Shannon. From the very beginning, we all knew she was drunk; in fact, you could kind of smell the alcohol on her. She was wandering in the room across from ours, and was apparently really hungry. When she came into our room, she wanted goldfish, and her eyes lit up like you wouldn't believe when I told her that yes, we did have other types of goldfish other than the pretzel ones. And in the room, Keegan was signalling us that she was a bit tispy. In fact, I asked her to walk in a straight line when we were in the hallway. And to her credit, she walked in a fairly straight line. But after this, she left our dorm due to the curfew time. Great night, and god bless the shenanigans of the drunks. Final observation of the night? Damn I wish I had a camera for all of this.

And because I just said it and I felt so witty about myself for saying it, I'm gonna requote what I just said about them. "It's like the 1812 Overture, the cannons are about to go off".

After the bands played

Walking back from the performance in the Underground, I was with Chris, one of the two roommates, and Molly, a recent friend. We went back to our dorm just to show Molly where Russell Hall was, as she'd never been around there. It was kinda funny when she was like "whoa" about the lack of air conditioning, as she lives on the other side of campus in Alvey, where there is indeed A/C. We got around to talking about random stuff, and I got to know Molly, and I can safely say that she's pretty awesome. And kinda cute too. (Texting somebody and complimenting them is an off the chart way of building a friendship, just going to throw that out for all to see). All three of us shared our travel stories, as well as other miscellaneous stories we had lying about in our heads. We were interrupted a few times by the drunk shenanigans, but all went well. So basically, it was a great night to be had by all parties involved.

The Underground bands playing tonight

Tonight's first round of entertainment came with the three bands/solo guitarist playing in the Underground. The first guy was an acoustic guitarist, who was fairly good given that he was just by himself. I didn't think he was the absolute best, but he was enjoyable; definitely the guy you want to kick things off. The next 'band' was the Milkstains, consisting of the drummer and the guitarist. Personally, I thought that they were decent; their songs were good, but they didn't really sing for the majority of them and that the songs were a bit too short for my liking. Now, the main attraction was The Vermillions, and they were enjoyable. Their lead singer wore a bow tie, and rolled up his jeans, and he wore chucks, so initially, I thought he was going to be a douche and have some crappy stage shenanigans (honestly;that was my initial reaction). That bow tie ended up leading to a short but intense texting conversation with Molly, who was across the table from me (we couldn't really hear each other during the performances, so we communicated by text). But hey, he turned out to pretty dang good and he seemed like a nice guy. They had some solid tunes and it was an enjoyable night!

Now, the tool of the night was this guy with a fairly large mohawk who was dancing like a moron during two songs. I mean, he was just flailing his arms like you wouldn't believe, and the music wasn't exceptionally rocking, so to speak. Then again, I will give him credit-it was hilarious how intense he was getting.

Grocerie Shopping In College

As we were in our dorm, Russell 421, sharing our food that we had just recently walked back from from the Giant down the road from the edge of campus, I had to say that it was pretty successful buying snacks. We successfully jaywalked across Route 1, loaded up on snacks (Cheez-its, goldfish, materials for our inevitable s'mores party later tonight) and soda, and walked back feeling rather happy about what we got. Then, we got in a little discussion about who was going to pay what, which was interesting. Note to self: get a Giants reward card ASAP. Overall though, it was a great time, just walking to there and back. Plus, it's fairly easy to get there. Double win right there!

Drunken College Kids and Their Shenanigans

This happened last night to me. I was on Youtube watching videos, when suddenly a buddy down the hall comes in and asks us for help. Apparently his friend were in a shot drinking contest, when his friend passed out. The dude passed out on this guy's bed, and he wanted us to just monitor him, and help to ensure that he didn't die or hurt himself. And then right after that, the aforementioned bud down the hall left with some female friends to go do whatever. So yeah, one of my roommates and I spent a good three hours just checking up on this sleeping drunk guy and having to occasionally flip him over so he wouldn't choke on his own vomit (yeah, he puked and actually slept in it). Twas an interesting night.

And apparently tons of people were getting their booze on. Consequently, we're probably one of the few people on our floor who don't have hangovers. Score!

This is for Rachel

I was a free concert yesterday, listening to the band As Tall As Lions; they're actually pretty solid in my book. And guess what? I saw a guy wearing an Alesana shirt. Once I saw that, I immediately thought of you. Hope this makes you happy.

I'm Not Dead, I'm Just Resting

I know, I haven't posted anything on here for a while now, but it's because I've been busy in college. Well, I just finished up with the first week (wow, that's odd to say) and that I've been busy hanging out with friends and just generally getting acclimated to college. But now that I'm getting acclimated and all that, I might be able to post some more. Oh and by the way, I miss you guys. A lot.

Late Night Youtube Fun

To answer the question, no I'm not stoned or high. This is critical to understand to know because I'm watching Frank Caliendo right now. And man, is he funny! It helps that I actually can understand his pop culture references. So yeah, just my thoughts right now.

Book Review Time

I thought that I'd delve into the world of book reviewing; I mean, I figured why not? Okay, so the book I read was The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, by James Patterson. Admittedly, it's more of a teen novel, but at this point of summer, I'd read just about anything. Plus, the concept appealed to me.

The plot of this book is Daniel X being an alien hunter, with the power to create. Literally, he can create things that he thinks of, and they're actually real. He also can transform himself into anything he thinks of, which is a rather useful talent. These powers comes in handy to eliminate the alien scum that are trying to destroy, eliminate, corrupt, etc. the world, and he frankly needs them. Oh and did I mention that the most wanted alien on earth murdered his parents? Yeah. That's what fuels Daniel's quest for relative vengeance.

For this book, he was trying to eliminate the number 6 most wanted alien on earth. It starts out with his recap of his parents being murdered and thus him taking over as the designated alien hunter (it's starting to get cheesy writing "alien hunter", but bear with me here).

Because he hasn't had the need to go to school at all in his life, as he's literally too smart for learning, he finds it a bit awkward to walk in the halls of high school. Note, the only reason why he's going to high school is that he had a hiccup with the truancy officers in the good city of Portland, Oregon. Well, that and he literally is too smart for school-he just knows things, as he's a genius, of sorts. From his new high school in California, he ends up with a crush (that ends up getting a bit messy) and other things. Who knew high school could be that deadly?

The part of the book that I can critique with fairly good accuracy is the segue parts. I felt that some of it was just filler to move from point A to point B. Yes, the people reading it are young kids to pre-teens, so their attention spans aren't long enough to really mind. Maybe it's me, and I'm pretty sure it might be the case, so I might be a tad facetious. But still, I was questioning a few parts of what was going on; I didn't see the relevance between a few parts in the plot, aka the loopholes.

Without spoiling anything, I felt that the ending was a bit rushed, and that it could have been a bit more spectacular. That being said, it still was neat, just that it was a more younger kid heroic ending, rather than the more mature-ish ending that I've become accustomed to. Eh well given the intended audience, that's to be expected.

Final Rating/Opinion: 5-6/10. It's a decent read, cheesy at times, but not too bad. Do I suggest buying it? Well, I'd say to check it out, read it a few times, and then make your decision. The book itself is really short, so it would have to be mindblowing or highly rated for the individual to purchase it; though I don't mean to say that it wasn't that bad. Check it out first, then proceed from there. I will say that I'm more than likely going to check out the next two books in the series though.

Why yes I'm bored

I wasn't able to post this yesterday, but throughout the day, I was watching this one guy do one entire playthrough of the video game, BloodRayne 2. I watched every single one of them, which amounts to 31 videos-roughly 5 hours worth of content. And to answer the question, why yes, I was bored.

Boom goes the Chicago Blackhawks

Scrolling down the hockey news on Yahoo.com today prior to checking my email, I was stunned to hear that the Blackhawks walked away from the one yea, $2. 75 million  contract awarded to their Stanley Cup-winning goalie, Antti Niemi, in arbitration. What that means is he's an unrestricted free agent, and thus will not be a part of the Blackhawks any more. It's shocking more for the fact that he helped them win the Cup, and they're basically destroying their team from last season. Plus, they just signed Marty Turco to serve as their presumed number one goalie, as in all likelihood Cristobal Huet is going to be sent down to the minors; Turco is 35 and aging, but he's a veteran who can help play a large amount of games, and he's signed for way cheaper than Niemi (one year, $1.5 million). While I'm stunned, the Hawks really didn't have enough money to keep Niemi given that their current salary troubles meant that they'd have to cut a lot of ties. Though on the plus side, they resigned their defencemen, which is just as important, and they have Corey Crawford in the wings from the minors. And they have enough prospects to call up from the AHL's Rockford, so they could plug in any holes elsewhere. I'm still shocked about Niemi, but good luck to him in his future endeavors.

Montreal in four days, let the countdown begin

I'm still pretty stoked for going to Montreal on Friday! I'm not that happy about having to get up at roughly 5 to leave for the airport, but given how much I've traveled it's not too bad; leaving for the airport in Berlin at 4 AM local time was pretty rough, same with leaving for the ferry in Dublin at about the same time. Oh yeah, I need to bone up on my non-existent French (thank god for those basic guides to speaking French). Anyways, spending five days in Montreal/Quebec City is going to awesome, and our itinerary so far should result in an amazing trip. Can't wait for it!

NEW PHONE!

I got my new phone today! It's the LG Cosmos, and it's pretty sick! Given that I was using a Tracfone phone for just over the last four years, this was a marked improvement. I mean, I get a keyboard to text on, unlimited texting, a built in camera, and just overall a better quality phone! Oh and the phones themselves were free; beat that, I dare you. I know this may seem basic to some, but given how primitive this now outdated phone was, I'm super duper stoked for this new phone.

World Cup Qualifying

It's definitely been a slow summer. Really slow, I might add. That would be the reason why I'm watching highlights of the various qualifying games for the World Cup...after said World Cup has been over for the last two plus weeks. Yes, I'm pretty bored.

However, it's been pretty cool getting to see some of the lesser know teams play, as well as being able to see their home stadiums; yes, for the most part they get pounded, but the chance to see the Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, San Marino (FIFA's unofficial designated freebie match), Luxembourg, Andorra, Iceland, Wales, Bulgaria, and Ukraine play is pretty awesome. Even though at the end of the day, the results favored, for the most part, the favorite teams, it's still a treat to watch some international soccer. Heck, I'm becoming more and more of a soccer fan by just watching international soccer; to a lesser extent, I'm recapturing the fever of the World Cup!

Summer late night Wikipedia fun

Because there's nothing to do at 11:11 (I did just make a wish, thanks for asking) on a late July night, I've been surfing Wikipedia for my entertainment. And for some really bizarre reason, I'm looking at the Virginia single A athletic conferences, from the extreme western parts of the state. Which has then moved on to me somehow looking at Pound (from the town with the same name) High School's band's pictures of marching band camp. Suffice to say, I'm pretty damn bored right now. Then again, I did that same thing last night. Woohoo!

The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced Kiri-Bass)

Just finished reading a book by J. Maarten Troost about the grand little Pacific nation of Kiribati. Long story short, the whole living in a pacific island with basically not much fanfare, or running water or a lot of things we take for granted, just appealed to me. Plus, his exploits made it seem like it's an epic struggle of man vs. nature. Kinda made me want to visit there.

Whoever did this is just a bastard

So this ties in with the last post. When we were coming back to the locker after our session of pickup hockey, we found out that some wanker (or two) came into it sometime during the session and cleaned out our wallets of cash. Just cash, and none of the credit cards or highly valuable cell phones and whatnot. Out of the whole locker room, maybe 9 or 10 of us got robbed, totally fucking robbed. Apparently it had happened before, at the same rink, so some guys put their wallets in their pants, which they hid in their bags. Either way, some scumbag is gonna have karma bite them in the ass. Or the police, which ever comes first.

The bitterly ironic part about this whole thing is that earlier, as we were taking our bags out of the car, my dad said something along the lines of "why don't you put your wallet in the compartment? I can lock it up for you". And me being me, I said something like "nah, I'm fine; nobody steals things from the locker room". Yeah. Irony REALLY sucks here. Overall, I lost about $30 American and another $30 worth of Euros, not to mention the Polish Zloty and the Czech Koruna I had on me. Plus, my mom nagged me for even carrying that much money on me, when I got home. Yeah thanks mom, I'm feeling soooooooooooooo much better after that reminder of how much of a dumbass I am.

However, all is not lost. I learned a valuable lesson about my money and how to take care of it and what to keep in my wallet. And when I think about it, I at least didn't have the $90 that I earned at the MLRH tournament in Laurel last week on me today. And to conclude this rant, I will say that whoever stole all that money from us, karma is going to be a bitch one day. Take care, and stay classy, mystery thief.

Don't play hockey with glasses

Due to the previously mentioned eye infection, I couldn't wear contacts to pickup hockey today. Which meant that I had to wear glasses to play, which I will point out is a pain in the butt-you have no idea how much of a hassle it was to play with fogged up glasses and having to make sure they were secure on my face, and not moving around.

So I apparently have an eye infection

When I was in my optometrist's office for my vision check up, I was hit with some startling news. I had an infection in my eye that was masked by my contacts; apparently half of my left eye was a red cornea. So yeah, as a result, I have to go contactless for a week, and I need to put this fancy eye drop medicine into both eyes four times a day for at least a week; I have my follow up appointment in a week to see if my eyes are not infected anymore.And to add some more insult to the proverbial injury, the vision in my right eye got worse AND the medicine, which basically is a ridiculously small bottle of eye drop, costed around $65. Ouch.

Old school music

And by that, I mean I'm listening to the band concerts from the early years of high school. You know, I feel more of a personal connection while listening to them, as I feel that it was during a time where everybody worked pretty doggone hard to move up, and to me, that was part of the fun; seeing and hearing the rewards of your hard work. Plus, it seemed that beginning sophomore year, there was much more camaraderie, meaning that it was an absolute blast playing with all the guys in Concert 1, and even back in Concert 2.

And right now, I'm listening to Wynton Marsalis play Carnival of Venice. And by play, I mean that he doesn't so much as play as he owns it. It's insane how easy he makes it seem to play it; that's no easy feat by any means, as the score for it is basically black on white.

Cats, and lots of them too

Maybe less than five minutes ago, as I was taking the recycling out, I was walking down the deck, when I almost ran over something. A cat. It was a wakeup call, at night no less, as I honestly wasn't expecting that. Then again, it's been more or less a minefield on our lawn lately, with all the miscellaneous cats lying around the lawn. It's getting pretty ridiculous.

Wow

As I was lying in bed this morning, I was thinking that today is the fifth day of being back since the concert that capped off my last UNCG Summer Music Camp. It's weird and kinda sad, knowing that while it felt like yesterday that I got back, it's been five days already. And it feels even more weird knowing that one of the senior bands, probably Aycock, would be in musicianship class right now.

Penny for my thoughts

You know, I've always wondered how I appear in the eyes of others. I know I have an opinion of how funny I am and what I think I look like, but I've always wondered of what people see in me. Anybody care to answer this? Cause I honestly want to find out.

UNCG Summer Music Camp schedule

I had a thought just now and thought, hey, why not post my UNCG camp schedule here. I had my schedule lying around on my desk, so here it is.

                                                       Aycock Senior Band, 2010
8:30-9 Woodwind sectional
9-10:45 Full band
11:15-12:15 Musicianship class with Ms. Strum (she was from Newfoundland)
12:15-1:15 Lunch
1:25-2:45 Full Band
2:50-3:20 Brass sectional
3-5 Free Time, Lessons, Recreation
4:30-6 Dinner
5:45-6:15 Percussion sectionals
6:15-7:15 Full band
7:15-9:15 (roughly)
Mon: Staff recital
Tuesday: Movie in Aycock Auditorium (UP)
Wed: Movie in Aycock (The Goonies)
Thurs: Party (the dance) in Cone Ballroom
9:30 Campers inside dorms
10:15 On floor for attendance
11:00 Lights out

iPhones are apparently abundant now

I'm on Facebook and I see a ton of people activating the FB app for the iPhones. Geez, I know you guys like your phones, but damn, I feel that a ton of people are spoiled; if you paid for it, nevermind, that's totally cool, but sheesh, what's wrong with your old phones? I may be pontificating a bit, as I know there are some circumstances that I don't know about (i.e. people receiving them as presents or paying for them or getting new phones to replace old outdated/broken phones), but at the same time, I can't help but feel that some people are spoiled. Just my two cents here.

Does this make sense?

On the International Ice Hockey Federation's website, there was this one story that I was reading. It was about how a Czech team wants to play in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League...but play their home games in Poprad, Slovakia. Apparently the KHL is planning to play with this planned team, HC Lev (Lion in English), yet it's a Czech team that isn't registered as a sport club in any country that's planning to play in a Russian league; to be fair, Dynamo Riga in Latvia and Barys Astana in Kazakhstan are non-Russian, but this would be the first team that wasn't from the former Soviet Union playing. Anyways, it should be interesting to watch this situation play out, like the planned team from Ukraine that didn't quite work out (there was a b.s. thing about paying for the rink and the parties involved, but they're going to play next season instead of this upcoming season).

Realization Stinks

So I've been home for two days now, and I'm not quite yet re-readjusting to the fact that I'm not in a dorm room in Greensboro, on the campus of UNC-Greensboro. I mean, yes, I was there for 5 and a half days, and yes I've been going to camp for six summers now, but still. I guess the whole atmosphere of being stuck in my room without anybody to talk to about life/camp/whatnot is rather foreign at this point, given how active I was at camp. For that matter, it's still rather foreign knowing that I came back from my last ever UNCG Summer Music Camp, and won't be able to enjoy that one week out of my summer. I miss my friends there, I miss Alex a ton, I miss messing around in rehearsal, I miss Dr. Markoch and his random rants about random stuff, I miss the people in my band(s), I miss the Caf, I miss the EUC, I miss complaining about how the dance on Thursday night always is overrated, I miss their Swedish Fish in the store (totally legit given the size of them), I miss everything about the camp. Oh well, I get the last laugh-I'm going off to college in a month.

Toy Story 3 thoughts

I got back maybe less than an hour ago from Toy Story 3, and I have to say, it was good, just I felt that it wasn't as good as other people made it out to be. My dad was disappointed, and I agreed with him, saying that it kinda meant more to younger people and/or certain tastes; I could appreciate the theme of nostalgia, but at the same time, it was the make or break them of the whole movie. That being said though, I enjoyed it, and it was very well done with the plot; I was blown away by the guys who did the plot, as that takes serious skills to write. I had to really think about my stuffed animals, especially my beloved stuffed animal cat Eeschwee of 18 years, and what will happen to him and all my other ones once I go off to college. That thought really followed me, and perhaps for that matter the whole audience tonight, and it's sobering and depressing to think about; you love them, but at the same time, you can only love them for so long. Just thinking about that, it's scary to think about how love can mean so much, yet it lasts for a relatively short span of time. How does one relinquish that love and how does one deal with the fact of not loving something for as long as they'd hoped to? It's scary, but I know that sooner or later, we all need to deal with that. Finally, I'll admit that while I wasn't crying, I was starting to get semi-teary, knowing that Andy grew up and gave up his toys, the same toys that were the basis of his childhood, when he left for college; again, he derived hours of joy from those beloved toys, yet he had to move on. I guess the movie itself didn't live up to the immeasurable hype bestowed on it, but the underlying themes moved me.

Stuff from the MLRH Laurel Tournament

So here's some of my notable stuff from both yesterday and today:

Winner: Itan Chavira scoring off the opening faceoff by beating his man to the puck, barreling to the net, and scoring, on his backhand and with one hand, top shelf. It was the sexiest goal by far of the two days, and he made it look freakishly easy.

- The Tricerat team passing like crazy. It was insane how well they passed and knew each other's tendencies, though they have been playing with each other; it's that obvious. Plus, I played against some of them!
- One team getting slammed 16-1
- Getting to play with Itan Chavira himself; man is he amazing
- My right shin guard breaking down the middle, and having to get new ones. Those are the Vapor 60 pads, costing $90, though I'm gonna be super protected.
- Breaking in my brand new skates (which I love)...and consequently having sore feet up right now
- Getting paid $90 for basically just pushing the buttons and writing down the ridiculous scores, after a combined nine hours of work over the two days of the tournament
- Seeing one team who I've hated to play against, as they were douches, get shelled. Karma is a wonderful thing.
- A "fight" breaking out. Aka, one guy turtling and one guy throwing all the punches.
- Just having a blast and enjoying playing with pro guys from the Pama Cyclones in L.A.

I came back from Borders to find this in my room

Well, aren't they cute or what? They're escorting my laundry, teehee. =)

My skates have come in!

My lovely new roller hockey skates have come in today! Free two day overnight shipping for the win! Can't wait to try them on and skate with them at the Laurel tournament on the 17th and the 18th. Though they're a little bit big for me; oh well, I'll have to find a way to fix that, shouldn't be too bad though.

Classes for college

This is a bit late, as I got my classes ahead of time, as I'll be at UNCG next week. Anyways, I got the classes I wanted and I'm pretty happy about them too. This is my schedule, if anybody is interested:

German 201 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 2-2:50
History 131 (American History to 1865) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 8-8:50 AM
Econ 201B (Principle of Macroeconomics) on Mondays from 6-8:30 PM
Math 110 (Finite Math with Applications) on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30-1:45
PSCI 101A (Intro to political science) on Thursdays from 2-3:15
FSEM 100LL (Maps and Politics) year round on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3-4:15




Note that I'm taking the maximum 18 credits for a semester. Hope it doesn't kill me, though we'll see about that.

LeBron James signed with Miami...no more drama

Well, now that he's signed with the Miami Heat, I don't have to turn on Sportscenter to hear all this buzz about where he's going to sign. So glad it's over, so so glad.

Obligatory random post of the day

I want to violently hug my stuffed animal cat as hard as possible, because I love him. Which is odd, but hey, I am an odd child. And right now, he is stuffed in the front of my shirt. He's cuddly. And cute. So yeah, I love him.

Obligatory random post of the day is over now. You can go back to whatever better things you were doing before you read this.

Russell Hall, room 421

As the title indicates, that's my room number for Mary Washington, where I'll be spending at least the first two years on campus. And I'm in a triple room, so I have two other roommates. Oh yeah, evidently the beds double as sofas. It's going to be fun to see the room. Though I did hear somebody who got assigned there said that it's a spacious dorm.

Fortune Cookie Words of Wisdom

As I was eating two of the leftover fortune cookies that were on the dining room table, I found that both of their fortunes really were applicable to me. The first said that "You are one of the people who 'goes places in life'" and the other one said "Your present plans are going to succeed". It's funny, how literally I've been all over the world so far, so yeah, that first one does apply; and I hope that it'll refer to my plans, so I'm gonna be keeping my fingers crossed.

Happy 4th of July!

I celebrated our independence by going to Brennan's for a little party that was amazing. Hot dogs for dinner, playing with fireworks as an intermission, and eating chocolate ice cream with M&M's and chocolate syrup to close it out.  I met Alex, Ian, and Leah, and they were pretty cool, just that they had a little obsession with Pokemon (though we all have at some point, so it's all good). Yup, fun night! Oh and, God bless the troops serving at home and abroad, as we're the land of the free BECAUSE of the the brave; never forget that.

Oh and on a related note, the US National Inline Hockey team won the gold medal at this year's Inline World Championships in Sweden, besting the Czechs 4-3. I find it a bit ironic that we won by scoring 4 goals on the 4th of July; nabbing the gold medal is an amazing way to celebrate our independence day! Also, kudos to Austria for beating Croatia for the Division 1 gold medal, congrats to you guys!

Tip: Don't watch the Travel Channel when eating

I was eating lunch today and watching the Travel Channel's best hot dogs thing. And also occasionally flipping to the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Bottom line, I'd highly recommend not watching anything about food when you're eating. Not fun.

Hopefully this will be a future job of mine...

Right now I'm spending a summer night by reading political reports for countries all around the world. As of this moment, I'm reading a report on how allegedly Russia is intruding on Moldova's wine industry, which is big for Moldova as wine exports evidently accounts for over 3.1 percent of their exports. Good stuff, and it helps open my eyes to things I really didn't know about certain countries in the world. The other other article that I previously read was one about South Africa's security throughout the World Cup, like how they've helped prepare security and the like. Man, it's great reading material (at least for me). Like the title indicates, I hope these strategic briefings will be what a future job of mine might deal with. I can hope, can't I?

Follow up to that last post

So in regards to that last post, I think it's kinda cool that I actually can imagine what my iPod would look like if it was a person, as well as it's personality. I imagine Bonnie to be this kinda southern girl with thick black hair, wearing dresses. Oh and she'd probably have a cute accent. God I'd love to meet her if she existed. But yeah, that's just my two cents on that. Don't judge me, I'm weird like that.

Hi, I'm Conan. Nice to meet you.

She's lovely, absolutely lovely. Amazing voice, long black hair. Her name's Bonnie. As in, my iPod. Yes, I just named my iPod Bonnie. Deal with it. I'll be dealing with her and I'm quite happy with her, thank you very much.

Score one for my broken stick/shaft collection!

I grabbed a broken Nike Bauer Vapor 40 stick today walking out of the locker room. And by "stick" I mean the end bit of the shaft with the blade was hanging off the rest of the shaft. Shame too, as it was a good stick, had the blade not been hanging on. Maybe I can send it in to SRS and get it back, cause it's a nice stick. Oh well, now I have two shafts in my broken stick collection.

Why don't we do this in hockey?

You know, after watching the World Cup and seeing how opposing players trade jerseys at the end of their games and watching the ESPN Jozy Altidore jersey exchange commercial, why don't we do that in hockey? I mean, it'd be cool to do and it'd be a great way to get jerseys as well. Yeah yeah, I know that hockey jerseys generally are more expensive to produce/buy, but it'd be a neat thing to do. I'd do it, just throwing that out there.

Locker room fact finding

As I was in the locker room today at Kettler (Kettler as in Kettler Capitals Iceplex, practice facility of the Caps) pulling off my gear, I ran into a guy goes to Mary Washington. He said that he wanted to go to the administration/student activities office to form a team, and that he was planning on getting a team established. It was pretty cool meeting another guy from UMW who wanted to get a team going-hopefully it'll happen when I'm there!

NHL Free Agency begins. Cue the madness of it all.

Today marks the start of the NHL's madness free agency period. Nothing too big happened in terms of signings, but I'm gonna share my thoughts really quickly about who signed where.

-Volchenkov, Tallinder, and Hedberg to the Devils. I like these signings, as Volchenkov can help block shots (huge understatement there; he's one of the premier shot blockers in the NHL), Tallinder is a solid defenseman, and you can't go wrong with Johan "the Moose" Hedberg (love that nickname), cause he's pretty solid and can be a solid goalie. Great signings so far.
- The Blackhawk's fire sale is continuing, with Andrew Ladd going to the Thrashers, and keeping up the Chicago-Atlanta connection of late, for defenseman Ivan Vishnevskiy. Seriously, it seems like half the team has been traded; Sopel, Byfuglien, Eager, Versteeg, and now Ladd are all gone. Then again, they're stockpiling prospects like crazy. And I mean crazy as in, it's criminal how many prospects they now have in the system. Oh and Burish signed with Dallas. I swear, half their Stanley Cup-winning team is gone.
- An ex-Devil, Paul Martin, has signed with the Penguins. While I hate to see him go to Pittsburgh, at least he gets more recognition.
- Dan Hamhuis to the Canucks? Well, at least Luongo won't get shelled cause of a solid defense, conceptually of course. Same goes for Michalek, cause I actually liked him; it's gonna test that with him also going to Pittsburgh.
- I'm digging Phoenix's move, resigning Morris and signing Ray Whitney
- WTF Glen Sather. You sign Boogaard for 4 years? You sign a player who fights and that's it. You've lost it, completely freaking lost it.

Baseball Fun

Admittedly, I've been wiped out for the last hour or two, so I didn't post this sooner. Why am I wiped out? Cause I was playing baseball with some friends and some colleagues from my dad's office, that's why. You know it was fun when you're dead tired, which, when I think about it, is the case for a lot of things. Anyways, we played at Washington-Lee's field in Arlington, and boy it was a blast. The entire infield is a sandlot, so it felt like something out of the movie The Sandlot. For the first half, all 11 of us rotated between hitting and fielding, which surprisingly was a lot more fun that you'd expect; I also got the rust out of fielding and hitting, so that was a blast. After a while, we played a slightly abridged version of the real rules to baseball, and it was young guys versus the "old" guys. It was Jim, Dave, Evan, Tony, and I against the rest, with one pitcher pitching the whole time. Since both sides didn't have enough players to cover all the positions, anything hit to the right of 2nd base was an automatic out. The pitcher also was the 1st baseman, so if you weren't quite there to first base and the pitcher had the ball, you were out. Moving on, we had a pretty intense game, which ended up being tied 4-4 after how many innings. Both sides were hitting the ball pretty well, just that we had a series of misfortune, aka "the fielder caught the ball". I had one time where the bases were loaded...and I fly out to end the inning. It happened another time, just that I was on base; karma sucks big time. However, I redeemed myself by driving in the game tying run, so that was cool. Towards the end, my knees were sore from running the bases (didn't get much of a chance to do that, cause we never got to do much) and from being the catcher. Whew, I'm still sore from that. Anyways, it was a blast. A bit tiring and I'm slightly sore in my calves from bending as the catcher, but it was a blast! Hopefully in the future we can get a real game going, cause it's so much fun playing!

Anatomy of a Rant

Some of you gentle folk might be wondering, what's the secret to a good rant? Well you know what? I have the secret to a good rant. Without further ado, here is the whole key to a good rant.

You can start out in one of two ways: guns blazing, take no prisoners, or the subtle way. It's kinda like "do I want to take his head off or just rip him a new hole?" Either way, you'll achieve your goal. Personally, I prefer the subtle way, as it's far more fun to mess with somebody's head. But that's just me.

Case 1: The guns blazing method.
What we have here is where you're obviously telling people, you're somebody who is not to be messed with; if they look at you funny, you let them have it. To give them that impression, it's kind of like the first day in jail-you have to kick somebody's ass to let the rest of the bunch know that you mean business. The guns blazing method of a rant is like that, you set the tone early on. From the onset, you should say something like "this would be fun/good/exciting/whatever it is you're talking about, had there not been the problem of it totally sucking", something along that lines; I'll let you figure your own way of conveying that. From here, you just pour it on. Basically, you just heap on the abuse after initially establishing what the main gripe is (note, if it's a true guns blazing rant, there should be several "main" gripes). However, you don't want to overdo your ranting at once, cause it's more effective if you give it some optimism...and then brutally bring it down. What I'd say is something like, "It wasn't all bad, as his acting/performance/whatever you're talking about was the saving grace. Unfortunately, it's as effective as wearing a faulty life jacket when you can't swim, your arms are broken, and you're bleeding with sharks all around you-you're dead anyways." That really just sums up the guns blazing method, as it's pretty straightforward to do in a rant.

Case 2: The subtle way

Some people might want to rip the head off a certain person/group/subject in rants, but the subtle rants are often more efficient. For me, it starts off with a seemingly neutral review/critique, then I infuse it with my biting commentary. Really, it comes to just pouring it on in the rant, but it has to happen later on. Start off by maybe saying, for example, "Going into the movie, I was warned that you'd want to kill yourself by the movie's end. Well, that wasn't true. By the end of it, I wanted to not only kill myself, but the director who made it." By doing this, you express outrage but not so blatantly. From that example, you set yourself up perfectly to continue to rant about something. If I had to give a mentality to the subtle rant, you have to express outrage about something and why your designated subject matter is bad, and you have to have the mentality of quietly plotting revenge. Oh and the last thing that makes the subtle rant subtle is the use of language; the successful use of bigger words lends more to the effect.

Finally, have fun with your rants, as they're supposed to be therapeutic (there's some twisted irony for you there). If you want to see one of my examples, check out my rant on Disney on my Facebook.

Driving in rain

The rain hits my windshield like your head hits a pillow at night. The sound of the rain dancing across the windshield is a beautiful thing to hear. The gentle pitter patter of the rain landing on the top of the car feels as warm as being wrapped with a warm blanket and being led to a warm fire. As I drive, I'm more in awe of the rain than where I'm going; just the feeling of peace with the rain makes me want to stop and take it in, if I wasn't driving.

In fact, I just take a time to see how beautiful the surroundings are in the rain. To me, it's almost like heaven, just seeing the splendor of my surroundings; the leaves on the trees are collecting rain, the trees by the road make it seem like I'm driving through a valley, and the roads are silent, save for the windshield wipers going to work.

With my car's heat on and the overall darkness that came with the rain, it feels dramatic. Finally, I pull up and get out, with the rain blanketing me. Now, I feel that the built up drama has finally climaxed with me accomplishing my goal.

You know, to pick up the warm and scrumptious burgers for dinner.

The Little Town by the Sea

The little town by the sea was quiet. It always was.
It was a small town, so there wasn't much to do. Besides,
its main attraction was the rain. Ah the rain, the lovely rain.
The joke was that if it was actually sunny, it was cause to celebrate.

The residents went through their daily lives, shopping, eating.
They lived in their small cottages; they had cozy fires burning inside for them.
What was the purpose of these villagers? Life was simply simple.
Day in and day out, the villagers in this little town by the sea
Ate in those small restaurants owned by friends
And shopped in the small stores around town.
Finally, at night they relaxed by sharing a pint with their friends at the local pub.
All the while with the rain gently walking on the cottage roofs.

Why didn't they want to go to the bigger towns, the cities?
They simply were happy, living in a little town, by the sea.

Why you DON'T go to bed thirsty

I made the mistake last night of going to bed very thirsty, and let me tell you, it absolutely sucked. Not only was it warm in my room, but when you're thirsty, it's unbearable. What didn't help is that I actually had a dream about having a really sweet drink at a bar (I was legal in that dream), which set off additional thoughts about going to bars and drinks in general. Needless to say, I was really dang thirsty for the whole time I was trying to sleep. However, I finally bit the bullet and got up at 6 AM to get a drink of water. Crap, now I'm starting to get thirsty again. Be right back-I'm getting a drink!

Ode to the Past and the the Future

Do you remember what you were like in elementary school?
Where everything seemed to be magical?
When everything was innocent and fun?
Do you remember?

Well I do.

I remember hanging out with my friends at recess, having a blast on the playground.
I remember those kickball games where the "loser" was really the winner. Actually, there was not loser.
I remember sprinting out of the classroom to spend a happy 30 minutes in the playground.
For that matter, I remember walking through the woods in the back of the playground
Planning grand adventures in my head, and plotting them with my friends.

I remember the days when we were trusted to get up by ourselves, and walk to the back of the room
where we were able to get stuff from our backpacks. Ah yes, those amazing roller backpacks!

I remember having to walk in a line to traverse the halls of our mighty school.
As well as counting to see we weren't missing anybody.

I remember feeling ever so mighty when 6th grade year started You know,
how we were the bosses of Orange Hunt Elementary school, being sixth graders and all.

I remember sleeping over at my friend Dan's house. All the cartoons we watched.
All the video games we played. All the hours we spent being obnoxious kids.

Those were the good days.

Those days get rarer and rare as the years go by. But you know what?
They were the good old days. Days that sometimes, I wish I could go back to.

While I'm departing for college, I will always remember elementary school, aka the good old days. Days of innocence.

Remember how we all looked forward to growing up when we were in 6th grade?

I do.

Question

By any chance would anybody know if you went to see LB Theater's production of MacBeth this past year? Cause I'm pretty sure that I saw somebody that looked like you, and I recall that person wearing black and I think pink and black heels. And they looked pretty dang cute too. So yeah, can you answer this question of mine?

If you have your music...

Yeah, so I'm a bum and found my copies of the winter concert music. And I have a few original copies. Yeah...

Another discovery from last night

Guess what I found? My old travel journal from about seven or eight years ago when we first went to Germany! And as a bonus to add to my nostalgia, I actually wrote it in cursive, which was when we actually were being told that yes, we'd need cursive for the future (boy does that seem like a funny joke now). I wrote an updated entry in it, basically saying that I was super happy to see it again, and that it was far too long since I last wrote in it. I mean, it really was like running into a long lost friend, after being convinced you'd never see them again. And come to think of it, I actually do remember writing those entries AND I actually remember those events that I wrote about, with the pens on the two miniature Swiss Army knives that we'd picked up at the top of a mountain in Switzerland! Man, the memories are coming back now! As my favorite travel author, Paul Theroux (check him out, by the way), once said, "every arrival is a departure". Right now, that's the case, as I'm being hearkened back to the good old days, and going back to my youth. It's a warm feeling, reminiscing back on the old days.

Some things that I wrote about:
-Arriving in Frankfurt, and Mr. Miller driving us about 40 minutes-1 hour south to Heidelburg. We met up with our friends who were living on the military base at the time, as my friend's mom was (formerly; she ended retiring a few years ago) a colonel in JAG. Their house was pretty cool to live in, as was being on an overseas base in Germany; the base was quiet yet cozy, plus there were some foreign soldiers living there too.
-Going to Heidelburg Castle with the Millers
-Going on a cruise and ending up at this little town called St. Goar., which was super relaxing. I remember it raining and just feeling so at peace. Oh so I just read what I wrote, as I evidently thought that I could control the rain, and I can explain that. So, I had a sense when it was going to rain, if I can remember correctly. Or it might have been one of my weird "rituals" where if something happened, then by golly it was going to rain.
-Going to this ridiculously huge pool. I mean, it was like an indoor water park and everything. Even now it still is really impressive to think about.
-Playing Tony Hawk's Underground. Yeah um, no comment on that right there. It was something to do at the Miller's house, honestly.
-Spending a few hours in Strasburg, France for lunch. It really was a nice city, and we went to this little Chinese cafe, cause that was the only place we could communicate with (read: my mom speaking Chinese).
-Going to Bern, Switzerland. Again, it was a beautiful city.
-Sleeping in a barn for a night in this super small village at the foothills of the Alps in Switzerland. I wasn't happy with it at the time, as I wanted to sleep in the car, but now that I think about it, it was really freaking cool. Plus I had goat's milk for breakfast.
-Going through this never-ending tunnel on a mountain road. For at least 20 minutes, we were in that tunnel. It was a bit scary too, but once again it's cool to think about.
-Going down the salt mine in Salzburg, Austria. That place was amazing! Plus we slid down the slide there, and it was neat!

Cleaning up my desk and rediscovering my youth

So last night I got my laptop confiscated by my mom on the grounds that evidently I haven't cared enough to clean out my room. Which is why I couldn't blog about what I found while doing a massive cleanup job of my desk and my shelves last night. First of all, I dumped all of my high school stuff out, which felt liberating. It definitely was a relief tossing out my AP Stat stuff (it felt like I was getting my revenge for the suffering I endured during the course of the year). Anyways, it was not too bad to be able to throw away my middle school stuff, except it was a bit neat to see the progress I made since 7th grade. No, throwing away my elementary school stuff was hard. At one end, it was so long ago that  really shouldn't have bothered hanging on to that stuff for so long. On the other hand, it's nice to be able to cling to a piece or two of nostalgia; something to remind me of how innocent and (surprisingly) how school actually wasn't that bad, and actually sort of fun. Now that I think of it, I remember how fun the kickball games were at recess, hanging out with my friends, especially at recess, the renovation at Orange Hunt, sleepovers at my best friend's house, how I loved to draw pictures of Eeschwee, my stuffed animal cat; man, I could go on and on about all of this stuff. Sadly, I've tossed out most of that stuff, but I kept what appears to be my early elementary school history notebook, complete with a semi-ripped cover with my various drawings of Eeschwee; holy crap, I do somewhat remember drawing that way, way back!

I think mom was right when she said that I should hold on to some of my stuff, just so I can remain, in a way, linked to the past. One of my first orders of business is to haul out some of the things that I had to fight with myself to throw out, out of the recycling bins. Now that I think of it, I'm a moron for even throwing some of that stuff out-stupid me. But really, time can't really erase all those memories, and I'm definitely going to hold those memories with me in my heart for as long as I live!

New Phone Update

So apparently my whole family is getting new phones via our impending switch to Verizon, from Cox. And I'm not getting an iPhone or Android phone. Bummer. Well to be fair, Verizon does have a ton of phones to chose from, so all is not lost. I mean, whatever phone we all get can't be as bad as a prepaid Tracfone phone that I've had for the last four years. But yeah, I'm still kind bummed that I will not be receiving an iPhone or the Droid phone.

A Summer Night

What to do on this fine summer night?
I could read some of the new books that I bought yesterday evening
I could listen to music on my iPod
I could play video games until my eyes go blurry

But no, I'm talking to her.
Talking about life, talking about being bored, talking about how we're both awkward.
It's actually ironic-I'm never bored when I'm talking to her.
I feel happy, talking to a fellow bored person.
Literally, the hours pass as we talk. And I enjoy it.

On this summer night, one of many, I find myself
Enjoying having a conversation
With her. About nothing, really.
But that's why it's awesome. It's about nothing.

Well, I'm glad I'm NOT in this country...

And that would be the "Democratic Republic" of the Congo. Note that the parentheses are in there only because it's a "democratic republic" in name; it's one of the most corrupt and poor countries in the world. Anyways, I was reading Chuck Thompson's book, "To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism" (interesting book by the way, but it might be a bit crude for some, as a heads up). He went to the D.R.C., for a month, in the part that I read, and the second part is him going to India, for 31 days. Basically, he survived the heat, extremely corrupt cops (he basically had to bribe the crap out of the cops and other government officials to travel the country), disease, prostitutes (apparently they're rampant in Africa-it's their way of life, having sex), and other things. His handler dude also wasn't the most trusty worthy as well. But Mr. Thompson survived in his month long quest to find the funniest joke in that country, so that was interesting to read about; if you care to know, it basically was how a French engineer willingly volunteered to come back to Africa, and got screwed over. In conclusion, thank god I didn't have to go there, much less live there.

Hi there Rachel

This is just to say hi. Glad you're reading my blog and all, cause lord knows I need the traffic. By the way, you need to keep up writing stuff on your blog, cause when I stalk it, there's nothing new there. Sad day. And if you see this, PUHLEASE comment on my stuff. Mucho gracias. =)

And you're really good looking. Don't argue, you are. With a cute smile and an awesome laugh. Yup. =D

Damn Fly

The freaking fly that's been obnoxiously hovering around my room is going to die. Painfully.

UPDATE: According to my computer's clock, it's 7:59. I have not yet killed the bastard, but he's left my room. Good riddance. 

Travel Documentaries Rock =)

I'm currently watching Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's documentary, Long Way Round, about how they drove their motorcycles across the world, through Europe to Russia, where they flew to Alaska, then drove through Canada where they finally stopped in New York, where they thus flew back to London to complete their journey. I read their book about it, but it's really neat to actually be able to see their videos of it; I can compare what I read to what I see, and it's interesting to see how I imagined it to what actually happened. I strongly recommend checking it out, cause it's neat stuff.

My Hamlet Shrinklit/Rap (with spoilers)

So this was my Hamlet shrinklit that I did way back when in third quarter. And by the way, it'd meant to be read in kinda a rappish short of way, like a song almost. And yes, I know that if you read it without thinking it as somewhat song-ish, it doesn't rhyme. Enjoy!

After being a student in germany
Hamlet came back to Denmark; he did see

His father, in the form of a ghost,
When Claudius, his uncle, occupying the king's post


Seeing the ghost, to Horatio does Hamlet confide:
I will avenge my father, but my time I will abide

Meanwhile young Hamlet dons a disguise
Pretend he's nuts and leaves people to surmise

"What's up the prince? Is he mad"
The prince is a loon! So, so sad!"

And to prove his point, Hamlet goes to run
Into Ophelia's room at night, for some "fun"

Unexpectedly into her room he did blitz
Looking crazy; she was scared out of her wits

Polonius and Claudius went to spy
On the "crazy" Hamlet, to verify

That the young Dane, heir to the throne
Went: no more Ophelia, he's starting to bemoan

However, their suspicions are denied, as they hear and see
Hamlet shout, "Get thee to a nunnery!"

Later, in the chapel, there was the king.
In the shadows lurked Hamlet, waiting to sting

But he cannot, because Claudius would be invited to go to heaven,
While the Prince, our hero, would experience Dante's inferno, in total seven.

Though later, whilst in his mother's room,
There is an intruder, whom Hamlet gleefully sends to his doom.

Is it Claudius? He hopes it is so.
But it was Polonius. Whoops! Oh no!

The friends, Rosencranz and Guildenstern, were sent to accompany and spy
On Hamlet on their trip to England, where he is to die.

Meanwhile Laertes has returned from France and some joy
Only to see Ophelia crazy and his father dead; no more happiness he can enjoy

So he conspires with Claudius, they plot
Hamlet's death; poisoned swords and wine, just one shot

When Gertrude, she is distressed, does intrude.
Says Ophelia has drowned, a victim of abuse so crude.

Her body is taken to the burial ground and to the grave
Where hamlet and her brother Laertes rave

Over who loved her more; indeed, fists were thrown.
All this while they competed for love, over her bones.

At Elsinore, the castle, Laertes and Hamlet prepare to fight a duel
A duel that begins the descent into death; all for honor, that deadly jewel.

Nobody expected Hamlet to last; though he took them by surprise.
His sharpness, brighter than anybody in the court, was part of his clever guise.

For he hit Laertes not once, but twice. Now, Claudius dropped the poisonous pearl
Into the cup; sadly, Gertrude took a good ol' swig, and then did a swirl.

The play then takes an ominous twist; First Hamlet is tabbed then Gertrude is dead-
What was meant for the prince was drunk by the queen instead.

Now Hamlet is angry, and he stabs Laertes. Guess who he is now going to kill?
Claudius. "Finally, my plan has come to perfection. My father's wish, I have fulfilled."


"Nobody else left in nobility than me. Sadly, I'm about to expire."
Fortibras, the liar, takes the throne with no one left. "Oh Hamlet, it's you I admire."

"He was a noble man, but the last of his kin, there is nobody left,
Treat him with honor, his life is bereft.

I, having no opposition, in the face of these events, the wake
The Danish throne, I will take."

Words of Wisdom, courtesy of Mr. McCabe

When I got back my capstone paper for AP Lit last Thursday, Mr. McCabe wrote this on it, and I really thought that it was solid advice. In referring to my paper tying in my life's current progression with the novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, he said, "Yours [life's journey], like K+K's, is a search of courage and for self-keep on this journey (it's hard to read his handwriting, so I guessed at what word he said). It never ends-at least for the smartest and the wisest!" It's true, and I really want to hold that knowledge with me; lord knows I'm going to do so.

Something to think about

As my friend Alex said last to me, what she said sums up my thoughts on graduation. I told her that I was happy to graduate yet I was bummed that I was going to miss marching band. She said that while I wouldn't miss the commitment to it, I'd miss the fun of it; the friends, the trips, etc. It's totally true, I am going to miss seeing the new marchers/freshmen, the initial stages of the drill, and more importantly, being innocent and having that fun. Heck, I'm even gonna miss the times we get screamed at for not hustling or working hard enough. I know that I'm reminiscing a ton, yet I really am gonna miss it. It's like something is empty in my life now, as it's the first time in five years that I won't be going to marching band camp in August; instead, I'll be in school at Mary Washington. And it's not just marching band, it's just Lake Braddock band in general. Seeing the people I know after a long summer, it's not going to be there anymore, as I'll be a freshman in college. Maybe I'm afraid of breaking away from tradition, or anything else. Anyways, I'm going to miss the joy of marching band, and all the amazing times. Actually, I'm going to miss seeing the freshman grow up before my eyes, which honestly is the thing I'll miss the most; it was a blast these last few years being a part of them growing up. Anyways, best of luck to you guys for the future of the Lake Braddock Marching Band!