Best Boss Ever

I felt better today, but the stuffiness was still here. Bleh.

My COMS class this morning was…interesting, to say the least, consisting of everything from watching a clip from The Office (“bears…beats…Battlestar Galactica”) to my teacher acting out a man getting his soul sucked out by a dementor. How cool of him, huh? In aural skills, I found out that I got the best grade in my class on a homework assignment that everyone else did awful on, so the teacher used my grade to set the curve. We also took a sightsinging quiz this morning that I nailed, so it was a good morning in aural skills.

Between aural skills and strings, I had half an hour to find someone to accompany me to strings class for me to teach how to play the violin. I ended up getting one of the guys I used to play beater with on the quidditch team to come to class with me…I bought him lunch in return. It went well; we ended up getting a lot done faster than I had expected, so I taught him more than we were required to teach him. Sweet.

I spent my free GB period to eat lunch and finish up my recordings that were due today for horn studio. Both were successes, though my recordings could have been a bit better. I’m not worried about them though. My last class of the day (excluding studio) was music tech, which was boring as usual, and that’s all I have to say about that.

I edited all of my recordings together before studio, and studio was spent snacking on candy and performing our quartet for the rest of the horn studio (not in that order). After studio, I came back to the room and just relaxed, starting with eating leftover pizza for dinner. Though I wanted to take a nap REALLY badly, I resisted and stayed awake (not counting my 20 minutes of weakness). Andrew was back in the room early tonight, and we eventually turned on The Office on Netflix, starting with the first episode. Now, we’ve watched about five episodes and, having laughed a lot, are now ready for bed.

The Christmas playlist is rolling and I’m tired. Goodnight!

Chad

Jello

Okay, hopefully I’ll be back to daily posts now, I hope.

Yesterday’s drive home wasn’t too bad; it was long, but I had my Christmas music to keep me company. 6 HOURS OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC (not counting the time I spent listening through the Muppets soundtrack after leaving Abilene)! However, I started not feeling too good once I got in Lubbock; I got a bad sinus headache and got a bit stuffy. No fun. It was okay, though, because I brought my old tiny Christmas tree back to Lubbock, and Andrew and I set it up. Our room is all Christmas-y now! Woohoo! I then went to the music building and did some practicing/recording for an assignment we have due in studio tomorrow before returning back to the room for some sleep.

Today was longer than most Mondays because my sinus headache was still there. I didn’t sleep well last night, and so I just didn’t feel well in general today. Being back in class wasn’t terrible, though. I was thankful that I didn’t have any homework due today. When classes were done and I was free for the evening, I came back to the room and napped for a couple of hours before heading back to the music building to help a friend with computer problems and to get some more practicing done. Now, I’m back in the room with Andrew, watching Whose Line is it Anyway? before bed. I’m feeling a bit better now, but my sinuses are still a bit stopped up. Hopefully everything clears up in the next couple of days.

Welp, that’s all for now. I’m trying to get in bed early at least until my sinuses clear up, though I’ve been going to bed earlier in general. Yay Chad!

Goodnight, everyone.

Chad

Whoopsie Daisy

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last updated. I’ll give you some short summaries right quick.

Sunday
-I slept in this morning to catch up on a bit of sleep after Friday to Saturday’s all-nighter, and it proved to be a good thing, too: I ended up pulling another all-nighter from Sunday to Monday due to an issue I had with the sources in my paper. Oh well; I survived.

Monday
-This day was awfully long, thanks to the all-nighter. I turned in my paper (praise the Lord!) and went to classes, with plans to avoid napping so that I could go to bed early and catch up on sleep before the drive home on Tuesday. However, things didn’t go as planned: I was invited to go bowling with a couple of guys in the horn section, and I decided to take them up on that offer. It was only $8.00 for unlimited bowling until midnight, which is a great deal. I lost track of how many games we played, but we were there for about two hours total. For the first few games, I bowled the way I usually do (by throwing the ball as hard down the center of the lane as I can), but I started to get sore, so I asked one of the guys I was playing with to teach me how to bowl with a curve. After learning, it took some getting used to but I got the hang of it after a while. Still lots of room for improvement, but I’m okay with that. I returned to the room and still had homework to do, so I was up until about 2am, bringing my total hours spent awake to just over 37 hours. Whoops! I slept like a rock that night.

Tuesday
-I only had a few classes this day, and none of them were stressful. I ended up skipping my last class from 2-3:20 because I had things to get done before leaving, like cleaning up our room, finishing and turning in a job application, and filling up my car with gas before hitting the road. The drive itself wasn’t bad at all; Megan rode with me to Abilene, and then she switched over and rode with Andrew back to Mesquite, since she lives closer to him than to me. It was so great to be home and see everyone, including my cat! Woo! I slept spread-eagled on my bed that night.

Wednesday
-I slept late on Wednesday, which was much-needed. After waking, I joined Andrew and his mother on a trip to the Cheesecake Factory, which I had actually never been to before. I ordered a four-cheese pasta and a slice of red velvet cheesecake, both of which were excellent. For the rest of the day, I hung around the house with family, helping clean up before family came over later in the evening. We met with Granna, Poppa, Uncle Craig, Aunt Brenda, Summer, and Carson at On the Border for dinner, returning to our house for a while afterward. When they had left, Mom, Dad, Blake, and I set up our Christmas tree. Normally we’d wait until after Thanksgiving, but I didn’t get to help set up the tree last year, and this was the only chance I’d get. So we did! And it looks great. I’m glad I got to help out with it this year.

Thursday
-Thanksgiving! We went to Poppa and Granna’s house first-thing, with all of the adults getting right to preparing the big meal. When we finally ate, it was glorious: ham, turkey, dressing, potatoes, rolls, yams, etc. All excellent. I took my nap an hour or two after finishing eating, and it was definitely a good one. Andrew’s family came over after a while because they were in the area, and they invited us to go see The Muppets with them. IT WAS SO GOOD! Andrew and I sat together and were laughing the whole time; my family thought that we were funnier to watch than the movie itself. Oh well. Andrew and I love the Muppets! And this movie was fantastic. We returned to Granna and Poppa’s house for a while to eat dessert before heading back to our own home.

Today
-I woke up relatively early, saying goodbye to Granna and Aunt Brenda, who I probably wouldn’t see face-to-face again before driving back to Lubbock on Sunday. They, along with my mom, were going Christmas shopping. Dad, Blake, and I eventually went and ate lunch at Chick-Fil-A before getting my car washed and making a brief trip to Best Buy to just look around. I had to leave Mesquite for the hotel that GB is staying at in Dallas just before 3. It didn’t make sense why we had to be there so early, though: the only thing on our itinerary for tonight was our band banquet, which was at 6:30. The banquet wasn’t awful, though I could have done without it. The dinner was good: grilled chicken with fettucine alfredo. Yum. After the banquet, I changed out of my suit, going with Conner, Josh, and Angela to Target to buy a movie or two to watch back in the hotel room. We also stopped by McDonald’s for McFlurries before heading back to the hotel. The cheap HDMI cable I had bought to use with the hotel TV wasn’t working, so we ended up just watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which didn’t leave me complaing…I love my Indy.

Now, it’s just about time for bed. We get to sleep in a bit in the morning, not loading the buses to leave for rehearsal until 11am. Last game of the season! I can’t wait. Goodnight, everyone. Sleep well!

Chad

P.S. – The Christmas music has begun!

Doneski

After 17 hours of (inconsistent) work, I finished my 10-page research this morning at about 9:40; all I have left to do is do any necessary editing and polishing. I then proceeded to climb in bed and stay there until after 5pm.

When I got up, I got dressed and drove to Andrew’s friend Ana’s house, where Andrew had set up camp in the kitchen, preparing food for an event he called “South in the Mouth”. He (with help from another friend) made a meal consisting of fried chicken, ribs, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread: Southern home-cooked staples. It was all very good; I’m so glad that we’ll have our own stove in our apartment next year! Good times will be had by all.

There’s really not much else that happened today. I returned to campus after eating and practiced on my horn for a while (we’ve got some recordings due after Thanksgiving break) before coming back to the room, where I just chilled out for a while. Landry was originally gonna come over, but he was busy doing something else. Oh well. Tomorrow’s a busy day: church in the morning, followed by basketball game at 2 and Court Jesters rehearsal at 5. Then I’ve got to do theory homework and touch up my paper before Monday. Busy busy busy!

Goodnight everyone.

Chad

Brought to you by the number 10.

Working on my research paper, so you won’t be getting a “real” post tonight. However, as I’ve been working on my paper, I’ve been tweeting various “research paper ‘tips'” via my Twitter page (mostly being facetious, of course). I’ve decided that I’ll compile the list of “tips” as I tweet them. Enjoy.

RESEARCH PAPER TIPS by @Chadadada

#1: BS things to make them longer, even if only slightly. (ex. “the English and the French” vs. “England and France”)
#2: Be super repetitive, but disguise the repetition. Be creative with how you word your sentences and no one will notice.
#3: Add useless information in small amnts. Adds length, gives tiny bits of background, &, most importantly, adds length.
#4: if your teacher offers to let you count one page of iconography toward your final page count, take advantage of that. 9 pages of writing > 10 pages of writing.
#5: Know how to input special characters in MSWord BEFORE getting to work or else you’ll be distracted by Internet search.
#6: There’s no such thing as “just checking” FB or Twitter. Leave them alone if you don’t want to waste valuable work time.

As mentioned, these were mostly conceived for joking purposes only. I hope you found them funny.

Anyway, back to work. I’ll update as I think of more. Goodnight!

Chad

Compiling lists.

Today was a pretty great day!

I woke up earlier than I normally do on Tuesdays and Thursdays for my COMS class; today was the day of my final presentation, which was actually a group presentation with two other guys. It was a pain to put together (the topic had to be something we could all present on, though our majors were music, theatre/psychology, and engineering…talk about difficult!), but it turned out pretty good and I was glad to finally get it out of the way.

Aural Skills was fine and so was strings, and Goin’ Band wasn’t anything special. I found out that my music technology class is supposed to be meeting on Tuesday, but I may or may not skip; since we don’t have GB rehearsal on Tuesday, I’d be able to leave for home pretty soon after noon, but I’d have to wait until at least 4 if I went to my music tech class. I haven’t had any absences in that class and we don’t have any assignments or projects due that day, so skipping wouldn’t be terrible.

My second worry (after my presentation this morning) for today was my first time to sing in front of my peers, as well as in front of several members of the voice faculty here at Tech. Every Thursday, a “Vocal Area Recital” has been held, in which voice majors would prepare solos to sing for the group. As a non-voice major, this performance wasn’t required for me, but my voice teacher wanted me to, and I’m always open to performances. However, as I mentioned before, this was the first time ANY of my peers had heard me sing outside of an early-morning aural skills sight-singing class, so I was actually a bit nervous this time around…not typical of me. It ended up going perfectly fine, though, and everyone really enjoyed it; there were a couple of girls I have class with who were impressed that I could sing as well as I do as a non-vocal major, and I received compliments from the voice faculty as well. In addition, my voice teacher talked to one of the professors (Prof. Dent, who conducts Matador Singers, the men’s choir I was part of last semester) about me possibly taking lessons from him, and he was interested! I had asked the man in charge of voice lessons last year if there was any way for me to take lessons from an actual professor rather than from a graduate student, but those spots are reserved for vocal majors only, so Prof. Dent making an exception for me would be a big deal…fingers crossed!

I returned to the room and simply vegged out…I took a nap for a while before waking and eating breakfast for dinner (Fruit Loops!), and now I’m about to get in bed; tomorrow is going to be a long day. I have a 10-page research paper due on Monday, and I plan on starting it tomorrow after classes let out. I made a conscious decision to not start the paper until tomorrow…it wasn’t necessarily me putting it off because I was too distracted. Here’s my reasoning: I do my best writing when I do it all at once. When it comes to this paper, I already have 15 sources compiled for research, as well as the first page and a half written from an earlier assignment. My plan is to lock myself in the library and pull and all-nighter to finish it; I have no plans this weekend, so I think I’ll get it done relatively easily. I only pulled one all-nighter last year, and it was also to write a research paper. However, that one was 15 pages long, and I finished it within the same time constraints that I plan on writing this one within. Piece of cake. So, needless to say, don’t expect anything more than a short update tomorrow night…I’ll be in research paper-writing mode.

Anyway, it’s time for me to get in bed. It’s just after midnight, and I want to be as well-rested as possible before tomorrow evening’s long ordeal. Goodnight, everyone!

Chad

I know, I know…

I said I’d have a full post tonight. But things too longer than expected. I need a shower and I need to get in bed…group speech in the morning and vocal performance in the afternoon. Goodnight, everyone.

Chad

Victory, my heart.

I wish I had a longer post to offer tonight, but laundry kept me up later than anticipated, and now it’s definitely time for bed. I’ll be sure to update tomorrow! Goodnight, everyone.

Chad

Why are you applying?

This is less a “what happened in my life today” post than a “late night thoughts” post. We’ll see where this goes.

I’ve never had an official job, unless you count this past summer when I worked for the Poteet Pirate Band. That being said, I’ve applied for several jobs without results. I made myself a promise several years ago that I would never work in the food industry, so that has always been out of the question (I declined a job offer in the Disney College Program because it involved me working with Food Services). Perhaps I’m overly stubborn, but I’ve just always felt that my talents were above preparing people food.

Recently, I was told about a job on campus here at Tech at a place called the TECHniques Center; it’s a tutoring position with flexible hours that would accommodate my busy schedule. It is perfect! I downloaded the application and began filling it out a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t pick it up to finish it out until this evening. At the bottom of the application, in the “short answer” section was this question: “…why are you applying?”

I was stumped. Why AM I applying for this specific position? Obviously, I need money. I’m a college student and my funds are pretty limited, so a steady source of income would be nice. But is that really the only reason? What is stopping me from applying at other places in Lubbock? I ended up answering the question by talking about how I’ve always wanted to have a job where I could display my personal knowledge while helping others to further theirs. That’s why I want to be a band director; what’s better than sharing my love of music with others and helping them to build their own?

My answer to the question aside, it occurred to me that we do a lot with our lives without thinking about the “why”. WHY do we hang out with this group of people? WHY do we sign up for these classes? WHY do we listen to this music? The questions go on.

I personally think that asking “why” clears perspective. If we consider our options, if we give ourselves reasons to do or to NOT do something…we give our actions meaning. It shows that we have intentions behind our choices, and it shows that we are capable of making decisions rather than simply acting on a whim all the time. Considering “why” can reveal flaws in a plan or even enlighten you into discovering new paths to travel down.

As you go through today, briefly think about the “why” before you act. See if you learn something about yourself.

That’s all for tonight; just some food for thought. Goodnight!

Chad

You Should Care

After sleeping for so long yesterday (3something – 11, midnight to 8am), waking up for church was a breeze. I left early enough to stop by Sam’s Place West (which opens at 9am) for a quick breakfast-to-go before heading to church, which went well. I’m still really enjoying this church, so I plan on continuing to come every week.

When church was over, I decided to grab Chipotle for lunch since I still have money on my gift card. I called Mom and talked to her for a few minutes, telling her that I’d be stealing our Christmas movies after Thanksgiving to bring back to Tech, and I also negotiated with her to get more Christmas music for the Christmas season. Success! I came back to the campus and just hung around for a while before Court Jesters at 5, where we learned some new songs…I’m having a blast with the CJs. More fun playing my horn than I’ve had in a long time (don’t get me wrong, I still love Goin’ Band and playing my horn in general, but we play legitimately FUN music in CJs). At 7, there was a prospective leadership meeting for those who wanted to run/audition for band officers, visual instructors, drum majors, or section leaders. I had initially planned to just audition for section leader, but I think I’ve decided to go for visual instructor as well (you can do both). Auditions aren’t until December, so wish me luck in preparing!

Landry has been in town since Halloween weekend, so I decided to call him up and see if he wanted to hang out since I had no homework to get finished tonight. We came to my room and watched first the new episode of Family Guy, then the Phineas and Ferb movie (since he hadn’t seen it and he’s also a big P&F fan), and then we got out Back to the Future: The Game on my PS3 and let him play that. He finished Episode 1 and started on Episode 2, and he really seemed to enjoy it. Landry is also a big BTTF fan, though of course not as big as me (I’m not sure if anyone is…).

I had intended on doing laundry tonight, but I still have clean clothes for tomorrow so I figured it could wait a day or two. For now, it’s bedtime. Goodnight, everyone!

Chad