Where’d the day go?

Woke up this morning feeling like P. Did- No. I didn’t. I woke up this morning pretty tired considering how late I had stayed up without really realizing it. I didn’t have to wake up when I did since the calculus review this morning at 9 was only optional. By the time Andrew and I woke up, I had only gotten about three and a half hours of sleep (in addition to the two-and-a-half hour nap I had gotten earlier). We went to the Student Union Building (SUB), got Blue Books to give to our calculus teacher for the exam, grabbed some Starbucks at Barnes and Noble (Venti Cappuccino Vanilla Latte; yummy), and made our way to the math building. I was actually pretty okay with post of the stuff we learned this semester, so I didn’t have many questions and just followed along with what she did on the board as she went. It helped a bit, I suppose.

 

When the review session was over at 10, Andrew and I threw away our empty coffee cups and made our way back to the room. I had originally planned on sleeping another couple of hours at this point before I had my jury rehearsal with my accompanist at 2, but the coffee destroyed that plan. Instead, we just sat in the room for a while, watched a few episodes of Family Guy, and then, around 12:30 or so, we decided to walk to the Subway on University Dr. and use our gift cards (thanks, Granna!) to buy dinner. I got my usual; a foot-long Subway melt (ham, turkey, white American cheese, and bacon) on Italian Herbs and Cheese bread, with lots of black olives and Parmesan cheese (the candy of cheeses) on it as well. Good stuff. With a large pink lemonade and a bag of kettle-cooked jalapeño potato chips, it made a great meal.

 

We finished relatively quickly and made it back on campus around 1:20, where we split paths at the music building (where I was to have my accompanist rehearsal); he went back to the room. I went inside and warmed up a bit while I waited on the accompanist to show up, and, once she did, we played through all of the Strauss horn concerto I was planning on playing for my jury. I timed it from start to finish, and, unfortunately, 16 minutes and 57 seconds is far too long for a jury, so we’ll have to skip around a bit. Oh well. Hopefully, whatever I play from it will sound alright. Who knows, maybe it’ll sound better since I won’t be playing the whole thing start to finish! Gotta consider the possibilities.

 

After accompanist rehearsal,  I re-joined Andrew back in the room, where he was working on Chemistry homework and I just sat on my computer for a while (which is still functioning marvelously, I might add). Around 4:15, I decided that it was due time for a nap, so I shut down my computer, ate a Lofthouse cookie, put on my favorite radio station from home (TuneIn Radio app for iPhone, if you’re interested), and went to sleep…and didn’t officially wake up until 9:15. WHAT THE HECK. When I woke up, Andrew was gone and I only had my Christmas music to keep me company (I think it was around this point that Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” started playing). I texted Andrew the following: “HOW COULD YOU HAVE LET ME SLEEP SO LONG” (word-for-w0rd, caps lock and everything). I laid in bed for a while, messing around with Twitter and Facebook on my phone, and then, around 11:15-11:30 or so, I decided to walk to the parking garage, get in my car, and drive to McDonald’s down the street for a late dinner (since I had slept through the time when normal people eat dinner). I got my usual there as well: two McDoubles, plain and dry with a large fry, and I decided to get a Hot Caramel Mocha, with whole milk, to drink. Lemme tell you, that is some good coffee. I really enjoyed it (am I turning into a coffee addict?!).

 

Speaking of drink obsessions, I am proud to announce that I have officially been completely soda-free for nearly four months now, since mid-August. I didn’t think I could do it, but I’ve pulled it off so far. I think I’m gonna try to shoot for at least a year and see where I stand at that point. You see, there are a couple of reasons why I gave up soda. The first reason had to do with the fact that I was becoming over-dependent on it. When I woke up in the morning and was tired, I’d grab a soda. Headache? Grab a soda. Feeling sick? Grab a soda. Eating? Grab a soda. Woke up in the middle of the night? Walk to the kitchen and get a swig of soda from one of the 2-liter bottles. At Poppa and Granna’s house? Grab five sodas. You get the picture. I was too reliant on the effects of the sugar and the caffeine, or maybe even the carbonation. Who knows? My other reason was inspired by Logan Mitchell, a good friend who I mainly keep in contact with through Twitter, who gave up soda more than two years ago, losing him a lot of weight and making him look super great. Now, I’m not saying that I’m fat or that I’m super chubby or anything, but I could definitely stand to lose some weight, and, since eating habits are more difficult to change since I’m a generally picky eater and I really enjoy my food, soda seemed to be a good first step on the path to being skinnier. So far, I haven’t noticed much difference, but I don’t think I’ve gained much either, which is a plus. Maybe the change is more long-term than just four months. I’ll find out, won’t I?

 

Anyway, by the  time I got back to the room with the burgers and coffee (I had eaten the fries during the drive back, like you’re supposed to with fast food French fries), Andrew was back from doing whatever he had been doing with Chi Ro (I believe they were studying together). After eating and watching a few YouTube videos, Andrew went to bed and was asleep less than five minutes from the time he stopped talking, and I began typing this out. You know, I’ve been keeping up with this blog more than I had expected; my previous attempts at blogs were basically complete failures. Oh well. I really enjoy typing this out; it’s fun to talk about my day and put other thoughts out there for others to read. That’s why I like WordPress a lot more than I liked Tumblr (which, incidentally, I didn’t like very much): it allows feedback on my what I type via comments and the like. It’s great. I hope you all enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy typing them; at least, I assume there’s several of you who read this since I’ve gotten 144 profile views since I made this just over a week ago. In fact, if you read this, how about you let me know (if you want) via a comment on here, on Facebook, through a mention on Twitter, any way you’d like. I’m just curious. I know that my Granna  and my Memaw both read it, but they’re the only ones I know of for sure.

 

After mentioning Twitter, I’d like to stress to you all how much I enjoy it. I first made it back in April of 2009 when I first got my iPhone, just because having an iPhone with a Twitter app made it easy to tweet frequently. I started off slowly, but after getting back in contact with Logan Mitchell via Twitter and interacting with him and others, I got to where I tweeted more and more, and now I’m at nearly 6300 tweets. What’s so great about Twitter is that it’s a lot more personal than Facebook is; on FB, I have 440 friends. On Twitter, I follow 97 people and 122 people follow me, but most of those people, both sides, are not really people; I follow CNN Breaking News, a deals site, a couple of various news sites (BTTF.com [Back to the Future news] and Mugglenet [the best Harry Potter fansite]), as well as a couple of Harry Potter-related Twitter accounts that have daily trivia that I enjoy participating in and stuff like that. It’s really cool. With Twitter, I don’t have to be careful with what I say (not that I say anything that I SHOULD be careful about, I’m just making a point) so as not to offend people, and if someone annoying is clogging up my Twitter feed I can unfollow them and there’s no harm done or questioning of friendships; honestly, most people you interact with on Twitter are people you don’t know, and you make friends that way. Based on what you tweet about, people with similar interests can find you and follow your feed. A lot of you may think that Twitter is stupid and may not understand it, but if you give it a try you just might like it; it just takes some getting used to. It’s not about telling people about everything you’re doing all day long; it’s much more than that. You can keep track of news, share an article you’ve been reading, keep up with celebrities via their Twitters, and other stuff like that. It’s a great online experience. I urge you all to at least try it. My Twitter feed is linked below. Be warned: if you follow me, I’d recommend not getting my tweets forwarded to your phone; I tweet a LOT:
@Chadadada

 

I had a mini-conversation with my good friend Regan on her status on Facebook on Internet abbreviations, namely the ones relating to laughter. I had jokingly said that something she had posted had “made me rofl”. Now, I’m a well-educated person, and I am what I like to think of as a gifted writer; that’s not to toot my own horn at all (get it? I’m a horn player!), but instead just stating fact; I’ve always made good grades on papers, whether the content was good or not, simply because I’m good at wording things in a way that makes it sound like I know what I’m talking about. Anyway, the point: I use proper grammar and proper English language when I write, say, or type anything. I feel like it makes you seem stupider when you rely too much on abbreviations on the Internet. Now, I realize that on places like Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to say what you want, you do what you can to make it all fit, calling for bad grammar and spelling liberties. But Facebook? Come on, people, is it too hard to spell things out, and spell them correctly? “lol”, though a term I use often (e.g. “That video made me lol”, “I lol’d pretty hard after reading this”), is a stupid term and one that is used far too often, which is why I stick to some variation of “haha” when I think something is funny. That way, I’m not lying (who ever actually “laughs out loud” every time they post that?), and I don’t look stupid. Also, who ever is literally “rolling on the floor laughing” when they type “rofl”? I don’t understand. Learn2English, people.

 

Anyway, this blog post ended up being a lot longer than expected, though I don’t mind at all. Like I said, I really enjoy this. That’s all for tonight, though; I need to try and get to sleep (despite the excessive nap I had earlier) before my theory final at 7:30 in the morning, with band soon after. Goodnight, everyone.

 

Chad

 

P.S. – I’d like you to still cast your vote in the poll on my last post regarding whether you think “Linus and Lucy” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is a Christmas song or not: read my argument in my last post, but decide for yourself and cast your vote. Here’s the video and the poll. Make sure you listen before you decide, and ignore the fact that the background is from A Charlie Brown Christmas – my point is that just because it was composed for the Christmas special does not make it a Christmas song, nor does the fact that people associate it with that Christmas special. It was used in all of the subsequent specials as a sort of Peanuts “theme song”, so it’s not solely Christmas. Anyway. Here you go.

Mini-Wheats and French Toast

I’m gonna type this pretty quickly since I really want to go to church in the morning. I haven’t been in a few weeks due to lack of sleep (I blame football!). Honestly, I have no excuse. I actually love going to church. It’s not that it’s something I find to be a chore or anything like that. I very well could have gone last week, but decided a few extra hours of sleep would be more beneficial. In reality, an hour and a half of God would have been better than anything for me, which is why I am going tomorrow for sure. I can’t get in the habit of not going to church, not matter what excuses I might try to present.

Let It Snow – Michael Bublé

So, today. Since I went to bed at 4am last night (which was justified considering 2 is generally my “you better get in bed NOW” cutoff and I had taken a two and a half hour nap earlier), I didn’t officially wake up until about 1-1:15 or so (that’s in the afternoon, by the way). My bed was super comfy when I woke up, so I had that inner conflict between getting out of bed to take a much-needed restroom break or staying in bed where it was warm and comfortable. The urge to use the restroom won the battle though, so no worries there.

Dominick the Donkey – Lou Monte

I wonder if I dreamed while I slept last night. I’m sure I did, but I don’t remember a bit of it. I sure I wish I remembered it though. There are very few dreams I’ve had in my life that were vivid enough for me to remember them when I wake up, but even then I only remember bits and pieces. I think that dreams are the coolest things ever, especially lucid ones. For those who don’t know, a lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming, meaning that you are capable of controlling what you experience. You can fly, you can breathe underwater, you can do ANYTHING you want. It’s something that I’ve never gotten the hang of, though. There are methods that are supposed to aid in achieving lucid dreams. For example, if you are gifted at recalling dreams after you’ve awoken, you have a better chance of dreaming lucid., which is why it’s recommended to keep a dream journal if you’re interested in lucid dreaming. Another method is through reality checks; if you look at a watch or a clock in a dream, look away, and then look back. if the time has changed randomly/radically, you’re dreaming. You can also flip a light switch in your dream (light levels don’t generally change in dreams) or look in a mirror (dream reflections are often blurred, distorted, frightening, or incorrect). I suppose I just need more practice in order to get the hang of this, as with anything else. I’ll work on it.

Christmas Time is Here – The Blenders

Anyway, after I woke up and got dressed, Andrew and I sat around in the room snacking on cereal (Frosted Mini-Wheats!) and watching Family Guy via Netflix (we’ve been watching through the entire show all semester). After a while, my computer had a couple of issues (no viruses or real problems, so no worries), so we switched to watching SNL. Around 6, we went out to eat at Cracker Barrel with Tessa and Jenny. I got my usual Cracker Barrel dinner, or breakfast, I suppose I should say: Momma’s French Toast Breakfast, with maple syrup, eggs over medium, and bacon. With a biscuit on the side. Yum yum yum. Good stuff for sure, and pretty cheap as well, considering the amount of food I got.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Barry Manilow/K. T. Oslin

Then I had to drop Andrew off at an initiation dinner thing for his fraternity; everyone congratulate him because he’s now an official active member of Chi Ro! After I dropped him off, Tessa, Jenny, and I swung by my room, grabbed my computer and all of the attachments I needed, headed over to their room (you see, we’ve got a 19-inch TV; they have about 4 times that), and we watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (yay!) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (super yay!). I love Who Framed Roger Rabbit; it’s yet another example of why Robert Zemeckis is my favorite film director, why Christopher Lloyd is my favorite actor, and why I think Alan Silvestri is such a good composer (though still not as good as John Williams). If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s definitely worth it. Netflix it or something.

Do You Hear What I Hear? – Johnny Mathis

Speaking of Netflix, GET IT. It’s one of the most worthwhile things I’ve ever spent money on. For ten bucks a month, you get unlimited DVD rentals (one at a time, but you can get a new one every three days if you do it right) and unlimited Internet streaming through your computer, your XBox, your Blu-Ray player, your iPhone, your iPad, WHATEVER. If it connects to the Internet, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has Netflix capabilities. It’s really great for testing out movies that you don’t necessarily want to shell out the money for, or even for testing out movies BEFORE you buy them, just to make sure they’re worth the money. Netflix really is great; you wouldn’t be sorry if you invested in it.

O Holy Night – Josh Groban

After watching movies, we sat and talked for a while. Right before we started Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Tessa’s old friend from colorguard had joined us (Callie, with a possibly different spelling), so she was involved in the conversation as well. Not that we talked about anything in particular; we just sat on the beds and talked about this or that while I waited on Andrew to finish up with initiation. It was fun times. I enjoy Tessa and Jenny’s company, and Callie was a nice addition as well.

Last Christmas – Taylor Swift (eh)

Then, I got a HeyTell message from Andrew (it’s a cross-platform phone application that acts as a walkie-talkie so that you can send voice messages to each other; check it out!) notifying me of his return to the room, so Callie and I walked back to Wall/Gates (she lives in Wall, I live in Gates, so we walked back to avoid walking along so late in the cold). Then I got ready for bed, put on my favorite Christmas station from home (103.7 LITE FM, The Christmas Station!), re-stationed my computer from my backpack to my desk, and began typing this blog, informing you all of what songs were playing in between each paragraph. Hope you caught on to that.

Here Comes Santa Claus – Elvis Presley

Now, it’s time for bed, and I’ve got church in the morning. Yay Jesus! Anyway, my bed looks pretty comfortable, and Andrew’s already snoring (no surprise there), so I’m off to bed. Goodnight, everyone.

Chad

P.S. – Isn’t God wonderful?

P.P.S. – The Twelve Days of Christmas – Straight No Chaser ❤

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: