Never Gonna Give You Up

Today was decent. I feel like I say that often, but the truth is that a lot of the time my days don’t contain anything to make them super-exceptional or anything like that. Better than having bad days, amirite?

Anyway, the day started off simply enough. I woke up at around 8:30 or so and got dressed for my horn jury at 10:15, filling out my repertoire/jury sheets and wearing a button-up shirt and tie. I got up to the music building around 9:15, grabbed my horn, and started warming up; since I had gotten in a good practice session yesterday evening, I felt pretty good this morning and everything was popping out pretty well. I felt fairly confident. After getting in a good warm-up, I waited for my pianist outside the jury room and, besides a momentary scare when I freaked out because I didn’t have additional copies of my music for the judges, was pretty calm and confident. The actual performance went well; as I mentioned before, I had prepared Richard (pronounced Rih-Kard) Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 in Eb Major, Op. 11, but discovered it was too long during my second practice session with my accompanist. So, I was prepared for the judges to tell me which parts of the piece to play or to cut me off early – they chose the latter. I was able to play through all of the first movement (which is my favorite) and through about 2/3rds of the second, but I wasn’t able to finish the second movement or play any of the third. However, what I WAS able to play went really well, and I was pretty satisfied with my performance. My lesson teacher informed me later that I had done pretty well, so now I’m just waiting on my grade. Good stuff.

Afterward, I went back to the room and got back in my sleeping clothes; I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night (I know, I should go to bed earlier, blah blah blah; haha). I went back to sleep (Andrew was still asleep as well) and slept until somewhere between 1:30 and 1:45. Question: did this count as “going back to sleep” or “taking a nap”? I’m inclined  to say the former since I had only been awake for a couple of hours after waking up, and Andrew agrees, but, still, it poses an interesting argument. Moving on. At 2:30 I had a meeting with Prof. Dent about being in a choir next semester, which also went really well. I had a song prepared (The Vagabond – Ralph Vaughan Williams) to sing, and I was also prepared for some sightreading, but he had me do neither. I told him that I had done a scholarship audition for the vocal department in addition to my band scholarship audition back in February, so he had definitely heard me sing before, and he seemed to vaguely remember it. So, instead of actually singing something for him, he just had me do some range exercises; at the conclusion of these, he said something along the lines of, “I think there’s a bit more tenor in you than you’re letting out” (O_O). My voice teacher has been telling me this all semester, and I believed him, but to hear it from an actual choir director was something completely different. I went along with it, and now I’m officially going to be singing with the Texas Tech Matador Singers (men’s choir) as a tenor II next semester; this is the first time I’ve sung anything higher than bass II in a choir since 8th grade when my voice started to change. In short, this should be an adventure, one that I’m looking forward to.

From the meeting with Prof. Dent I went back to the room, and Andrew and I left to go eat at Mr. Gatti’s pizza. I’ve always been a fan of Mr. Gatti’s (my family and I would go occasionally after church on Sundays, and I even had a birthday party there once), but this was my first time to go in Lubbock. Since we didn’t get there until 3:30 or so, it was like a ghost town in there: we were one of maybe two groups there at first. I had a large plate full of pizza, with some cinnamon dessert to go after, and then we went to the Bahama Buck’s next door simply because it had this giant snow cone outside:

 

LOTS OF ICE

To clarify for those of you who haven’t heard of Bahama Buck’s, or you simply haven’t tried it before: Bahama Buck’s sells shaved ice that was sent by God to Earth, delivered on the backs of angels with the heavenly chorus to back them up. It’s THAT good. Check it out when you get the chance. I’ll even take you if I have to. If you’re having trouble deciding on a flavor, I have yet to find someone who hasn’t liked the “hurricane” flavor; it’s what I order every time. GO NOW.

 

After our spontaneous Bahama Buck’s stop, I made a couple of runs to some spirit shops to see if there was anything there worth buying for my family; I didn’t really get anything today, but we’ll see what I can find at a later time. At this point, we went back to the room, grabbed our checkbooks, and went to the Student Union Building, where the official Tech Quidditch shirts had arrived today (they’re pretty rockin’, I must say). We paid our money, took the shirts, and split paths: Andrew to the room, me to First United Methodist Church, the church putting on the production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that I’m part of, to get measured for a costume for “Toot Sweets” (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about; if not, here’s the video for your enjoyment, and yes, I will be a dancer in it; also, if you want to skip straight to the song and dance part, move to 3:30 in the video):

I’m pretty excited for this musical, even though it means that my Christmas vacation is being cut short by a week. I’m gonna miss that extra time with my family and friends, but I’m thinking about maybe coming home the weekend immediately preceding my birthday, the 14-16th. We’ll see how that plays out. I’m just ready to be a part of a theatre production again; after the 12 shows I did in high school and the sudden drop-off into no theatre, I’m anticipating this production a lot. Here’s hoping it goes well!

 

I prefer “theatre” to “theater”; it looks better to me. Super classy.

 

Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Andrew and I just sat in the room watching Family Guy the rest of the night, and I ate the rest of the bread sticks from Olive Garden for dinner. Not much else going on, besides the fact that I have my SHMRG final in the morning at 7:30. That being the case, I’m done for now and off to bed. Goodnight, everyone, and I hope everyone has a great day today.

 

Chad

 

P.S. – Also, this:

Clicky

Hicka-bicka-boo?

Hooo-sha.

Happy December 7th, everyone. I hope everyone remembers that 69 years ago today, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, giving the United States sufficient motive to enter World War II. Take a moment to consider how blessed we are by God; we have a military filled with individuals willing to sacrifice their lives so that we may live in freedom and in comfort. If you believe in such things, please take a moment to pray for those in conflict at this very minute and for their families. They need prayers.

Moving on, today was a pretty fun day. Woke up for music theory, where we just went over review stuff. It’s funny; I had thought that I was running late to class and that I just barely made it before class started, but I ended up being the third person to show up; everyone ELSE was late. /amusing

After theory I had horn lessons, which went well. I just need to work my scales up to speed and into all three octaves, as well as learning/perfecting my minor scales now that I know how they work. I also need to work a bit more on my jury piece. For my jury (end of the semester final for music majors) on Monday, I will be playing all three movements to Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 in Eb Major: a fantastic solo. I played the first movement at Texas State Solo and Ensemble Competition my sophomore year (my first year at TSSEC; I walked away with a silver medal), and I played the third movement at TSSEC last year and earned a 1, giving me a gold medal, so I was already familiar with this piece, though I had never played the second movement before. I’m hoping to do pretty well for my jury, so I just need to get in a little more practice time this week and I’m sure I’ll be fine.

From lessons I went straight to my SHMRG class (don’t ask), which was a joke. Just simple review stuff. I let my eyes close for a little while (to Granna (and Mom), who I know reads these: don’t worry, I heard every word! :)) I also found out that I made an 85 on my last test, which means that I should still have my A in that class. Hopefully. Boo-yah.

Probably the best part of my day was history class. Never thought I’d say that. You see, last week, right after Thanksgiving break, I had a paper due on Wednesday over a history monograph of my choosing. Sunday came along and I had not even thought about what I wanted to read, so I went to the bookstore, picked out a book about JFK’s assassination and the conspiracy theories surrounding it, but I never read it. Instead, I flipped a few pages, found a few ideas, and pretty much pulled the paper out of thin air. Finishing late Tuesday night, I told myself that it was the worst paper I had ever written; I expected a terrible grade. I turn it in, and, finally, today I get it back, a nice, big 90 marked on the last page. Best grade I’ve gotten in that class on a paper this year, and this is the third paper; I even read the first book (I made an honest attempt at the second one, but it wasn’t as interesting, and we had had a class discussion previously over the material). I was beyond mind-blown. Here I was, thinking I had written an absolute piece of garbage, yet here it was in front of me with an A. Go figure. I guess I’m a good enough writer to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about. That’s a plus. Go writing skills!

After history was Goin’ Band rehearsal, but all we did today was meet in Hemmle Recital Hall in regards to officer elections, Outstanding Bandsman Award nominations, and bowl trip information. Speaking of bowl trips (ugh), Texas Tech is going to the Ticket City Bowl, which, conveniently enough, is at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, which is pretty much where I live. So that’s a plus, I suppose. Honestly, I’d rather not have to go at all since my break was being cut 8 days short for the musical I’m in anyway. However, since it’s on January 1st and I have to be back in Lubbock on the 2nd, I guess that it’s good that the bowl game isn’t interrupting my break so much as it is cutting it a day or two short. Whatever. I still don’t wanna go. Tomorrow during class we’re going to meet in Allen Theater and record most of the music we performed this season. Fun stuff.

Following the band meeting, I was a free man, able to go anywhere and do anything I wanted (within legality), since it was my last class of the day. I ended up just hanging around in the room all day, playing Snake on Facebook (frustrating as heck, especially when my 500+ point game got reset midway through since I accidentally pushed one of the keys adjacent to the arrow keys), snacking on delicious, sent-from-God Lofthouse Cookies, and playing with a few new laser pointers (red, green, AND violet; the violet one writes on glow-in-the-dark material: it’s amusing). Andrew and I hit up Cici’s for dinner (thank you Granna for the gift card!) and then did our calculus homework upon our return to the room. I think we finished it before midnight for the first time. Rockin. I understood the assignment pretty well, and Andrew did too after the first few problems.

(((((((((((((((((Apparently, I like parentheses just as much as I like semicolons))))))))))))))))) ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Andrew also had a couple of quick papers to type up tonight for class tomorrow, but, since his computer has been…well…under the weather?, he needed to use mine to type it up. While he used my computer, I decided to take a look at his computer to see if I could do anything to save it before it exploded. I managed to get the Internet working on it again, downloaded an antivirus software, scanned, and deleted the 18 files it found (all Trojans). Hopefully that did the job; I told him to run the scan first thing again tomorrow. WE WILL DEFEAT YOU, YOU TROJANS!

And that was my day. I talked to my cousin Summer for a while via text message, so that was fun (her 15th birthday is on Wednesday [tomorrow]). I’ll call her either at midnight (if she’s still awake; it’ll be a school night) or sometime during the day on Wednesday. Either way, I’ll probably at least text her at midnight if I don’t get to call her. I’m so looking forward to seeing all of my family next week; Wednesday night and I’ll be home for a good while! I’m definitely ready for that and for Christmas. I love this time of year, in case you couldn’t tell.

With that, I leave you with a goodbye and an amusing video of a ninja cat:

Chad

P.S. – It wouldn’t be a Chad blog post without a postscript, would it? Well, I’ll give you another video, this time of my favorite Christmas song:
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Frank Sinatra

FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA

Today was a good day. Not that anything super special happened or anything like that. It was just good.

Woke up on time for my 8am theory class. Today, we brought our instruments to class and played through our compositions. You see, this project involved partners: one who’s primary music clef is treble and another who’s in bass. In this instance, we said that the horn played in the bass clef and I was paired with a clarinetist. For my composition that I wrote for my partner, I quoted the theme from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind by John Williams. Pretty simple, but I enjoyed it.  My partner didn’t show up, however, so no one heard my composition (not that it was anything particularly special), but no big deal. I did well when I played her composition; ironically enough, it was titled “The Consequence”…

Moving on. I showered after theory. Yay hygiene!

SHMRG was boring today. But it was better than filling out five of those darn sheets like we usually do, so that’s a plus. We’re still waiting to get our grades back from the test we took on Monday. We should know by Monday how we did. The final in that class seems like it’ll probably be pretty simple (knock on wood!). I’m not too worried about it.

History history, Watergate Watergate, blah blah blah.

Oh, I was walking to History when I saw that the Will Rogers statue at Memorial Circle is totally wearing a Santa hat! It kinda made my day. Oh, Christmas.

Marching band was simple today too. All we did was play in concert arcs (I make it sound like it was nothing; in reality, we played some really high stuff a lot of times. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay first horn!). But it was enjoyable. Better than marching the same thing over and over again for an hour. Also, congrats to Shane and Catherine on their newly acquired Goin’ Band Drum Major status! I kinda wish Chelsea had gotten it over Catherine (GO FRENCH HORNS!), but we win some we lose some, and I’m sure Catherine will be great. She seemed like a funny person, so that’s a plus.

After band, WEEKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEND!!!!!!!!! (gratuitous use of the multiple vowel/multiple punctuation excitement technique) I went back to the room, explored the Interwebs a bit, and then, around three in the afternoon, I put on some Christmas music, turned on the fan, turned off the lights, and proceeded to take a two-and-a-half hour long nap. God bless America. (This would explain why I’m sitting here typing this at 3:30 in the morning!) It probably would have been longer if Andrew hadn’t shown up, but it’s a good thing he did or I very well might’ve slept through the Carol of Lights at 7.

Carol of Lights was pretty cool, by the way. For those who don’t know, it’s a Texas Tech tradition that began back in 1959. Several of the buildings on campus are decorated with Christmas lights, and there’s a big ceremony-type thing beforehand that involves a long progression of people carrying torch-like lights, one of the choirs leading everyone in Christmas songs (<3), and stuff like that. Here’s a video picture (I can’t figure out how to share my video off of Facebook) of the lights around Memorial Circle (where the event is held):

SHINY

Forgive me, I am not a professional photographer, not to mention this was taken on an iPhone camera. Ha. But yeah, the whole thing was very enjoyable. Apparently, I need to brush up on my lyrics of obscure verses from popular Christmas songs because half  the time I was mumbling everything but the FA LA LAs or other random words I had somehow picked up (thus the title of this post; aren’t I clever?).

Oh, I forgot to mention something that happened immediately before Carol of Lights. Now, the logical thing to do would be for me to scroll up, click in the space right before my Carol of Lights paragraph, hit enter, and type this paragraph, but that’s just too obvious. Who do you think I’d be if I followed common sense? Anyway, Andrew had to go to Carol of Lights because his fraternity, Chi Ro, was  helping with the lighting of ambient candles and the like, and I was, as of yet, not out of bed from my nap. I showed up around 6:40-6:45 or sometime around there, and so I asked him via iPhone where he was. He told me he was “near the street on the mathematics side in front of the Texas state flag”, so I start looking on what would be my right if I was facing the three flags (from L to R, Texas Tech flag, American flag, Texas flag); if someone told you “in front of the flag on the right”, wouldn’t you look on the right side? That’s what I thought, but Andrew’s perspective is slightly different from us non-gifted people. I finally found him almost dead center, right in front of the American flag, and we proceeded to argue about what “in front of the Texas flag” meant. His big “brother” (who’s really a girl) sided with me, as did Megan (who helped me find him in the first place). We’ll give Andrew perspective lessons later. 😉 (To Andrew if you read this; I jest.) Oh, shenanigans.

After Carol of Lights, I hit up Subway for dinner all by my lonesome (Andrew had a party with Chi Ro) and then came back to the room, where I proceeded to play Halo 3 on XBox Live with Matt Weddle, who I hadn’t talked to in months, in excess of four hours. Good times. It was nice to just sit back and enjoy some good ol’ vidya games with a good friend. By the time we were done playing that at about 1:15, I played various games on Facebook (but don’t worry, Farmville was NOT included), including Snake and Snowboarding until about 2:45 when Andrew got back, at which point he went straight to bed and began snoring, and I decided to start typing this. Yay, blogging!

Speaking of blogging, I had mentioned in my first post on here that I first got my start with Xanga. Well, I looked up a few of my old Xangas today (yes, a few; I went through Xangas like flu patients go through tissues), and was quite embarrassed. I might post the links at a later point in time, but for now just think about what they might contain and how you can use them against me. Feel the anticipation rise.

Earlier today I had an argument with someone I don’t know on Twitter (yes, I know Interweb arguing is pointless, but bear with me) over the initiative to raise awareness of child abuse by changing Facebook profile pictures to cartoons. She claimed that it was pointless and was doing nothing to help the cause at all, and she even indicated that it might be poking fun at those who have experienced child abuse in their lifetime. I, of course, replied with a hearty “LOLWUT?” and began to argue against her point. I said that while some may be changing their profile picture to cartoons just to join the hype and bring back some memories, some actually made the change to support the cause. In fact, many of my Facebook friends explained why they changed their picture in a post explain the theory behind it all, and a couple even posted helpful links to information pages explaining more and giving background on the subject. I claimed that the very act of changing pictures to something so unusual raised questions, which presents the opportunity to explain the cause and get people passionate about it. She eventually came to accept my point of view (though she held her own opinion), and we virtually shook hands and smiled. It was an enlightening and enriching experience for all involved. (By the way, my profile picture is now of Ed from Ed, Edd, n Eddy. That show ROCKS. /nostalgia)

Update on what I mentioned last night about the man who was hit in the street by a vehicle that then fled the scene; his name is Eddie King, and he is 40 years old. He’s still alive, but, by the way it sounds, it’s just barely. No headway on who hit him just yet, but hopefully the culprit will be caught. Please just continue to keep all involved in your thoughts and prayers.

Also, today is my now 9-year-old cousin Carson’s birthday. Yay Carson! I love that kid. I called him at midnight to wish him a happy birthday. He told my uncle that it wasn’t his birthday yet (in the mind of a 9-year-old, the next day doesn’t start until you wake up after sleeping). He had to explain that it was midnight and that the date had changed, making it indeed his birthday. Oh, you.

And now we’ve reached the end, and I’m way over my 1000 word post quota by now (1602 total {including postscripts}!). I get Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in the mail via Netflix tomorrow! 🙂 /excited Goodnight everyone, and God bless.

Chad

P.S. – Maybe I should start typing these during the day so that people will actually be awake to read them! We’ll see.

P.P.S. – There’s still several people moving around on my floor outside my room. They must be crazy; I have an excuse. GO TO BED.

P.P.P.S. – I think I added four paragraphs after I thought I was “done”. Go me.

P.P.P.P.S. – I figured out how to share Facebook videos: