Hi!

Hi, and welcome to my blog-turned-place where I post my writing. This is my outlet to put them up, which was radically different from the blog that this started out as. I hope you'll have a good time reading my blog/place where I post some poetry and some short stories. I try to cover a variety of topics in these works of mine, so I hope any readers will enjoy it. I'm not an English major by any stretch, but I enjoy writing. Critique would be nice for my writing, cause lord knows I could work on it. Enjoy!

Saturday, July 31, 2010

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 I know this may seem basic to some, but given how primitive this now outdated phone was, I'm super duper stoked for this new phone.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

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!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

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.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

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.

Friday, July 23, 2010

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.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

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.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

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.

Monday, July 19, 2010

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).

Sunday, July 18, 2010

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.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Friday, July 9, 2010

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.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

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.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

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.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

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.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

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.

Friday, July 2, 2010

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!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

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.