Home Sweet Home

I am officially done with my first semester of college, and I am finally home for longer than only four days. Praise God.

I was up VERY late last night since I slept so much yesterday; I originally wasn’t gonna say, but here it is: 5:30. I just wasn’t tired, and, when I DID lay down to sleep, it still didn’t happen immediately. I woke up first at 9:30 and saw Andrew out the door for his chemistry final, then proceeded to sleep another hour and a half before waking up (fully awake and refreshed, I might add; not tired at all). At that point, I finished packing up all of my stuff for the trip home, since I had already packed my band stuff and all of my video game stuff last night before I went to bed. I used my big suitcases this time instead of my duffel bag since I’m staying for much longer this time. After packing, Andrew showed up and started working on a couple of papers he had due today and I continued with making sure my side of the room was clean and that the dishes were done.

Then, at 1:20, I left for Holden Hall where my history final exam was being given at 1:30 and beasted that. It wasn’t too difficult at all; just a LOT of writing. All of our assignments in that class this semester were writing assignments, whether they were book analyses or essay exams. Today’s exam ended up taking four pages (front only) of handwriting. FOUR PAGES IN AN HOUR. But, other than that, it wasn’t bad at all.

After history, I went back up to the room and then left to go get my car at the parking garage, stopping by the music building first to get my concert horn so I can practice audition music for next semester just a bit over the break. Then I stopped by our residence hall and started carrying our stuff down and loading it up. Once we had all of our stuff loaded, we first went to Varsity bookstore nearby so that Andrew could return a textbook he had rented this semester and so that I could take care of some other business. Afterward, we made our way out, stopping only for gas and snacks/drinks (I’ve had sour gummy worms, a Vanilla Starbucks Doubleshot, and a bottle of green tea every trip so far; gotta keep it a tradition!). We finally hit the road at around 5:30.

The ride went very smoothly. The highway was a lot less crowded than I initially expected it to be, probably because people left yesterday or earlier today than we had. Who knows? We made good time to Abilene, where we always stop for dinner, and we got Subway for dinner…again. Ha, I LOVE Subway. Got the usual, of course. It didn’t take us too long to finish eating, so we got back on the road pretty soon (I don’t remember what time specifically). On the ride home, Andrew slept during most of the first stretch to Abilene, with me chilling to my Christmas music, but after we ate we listened to the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows audiobook by Jim Dale (I highly recommend it), since Andrew hasn’t read the whole thing before. We listened to four chapters.

We didn’t stop anymore until we got to Andrew’s house back home, and, after unloading his stuff, I headed to my house. My mom was already in bed, but she woke up long enough for me to talk to her a bit and hug/kiss her goodnight. I brought all my stuff inside, put the Tech ornament I had bought on the tree, and we all got ready for bed…of course, I had to type my daily blog first! May I mention that our house looks great? I love our Christmas lights every year, and just WAIT until you see our living room…here’s a couple of outside pictures, but I’ll wait until tomorrow’s post to show you the living room:

I started typing this post whilst watching some Family Guy (typical), but I turned the channel to Phineas and Ferb once that ended; have you ever watched Phineas and Ferb?! If you haven’t, you are most definitely missing out. I’m not even kidding. Turn to Disney Channel whenever it’s on and check it out. It’s SO creative and super funny. I don’t wanna give too much away for those who haven’t seen it, but trust me, please…watch it, for your own good.

Tomorrow, I plan on going to visit my old high school; well, at least the choir class since the head band director isn’t there this week. I also may go to see the play that the theatre department is doing, A Christmas Story. I didn’t get to see Arsenic and Old Lace when they put it on, so I really want to go tomorrow. There’s some friends who I haven’t seen in a long while who I’m looking forward to seeing again.

Has anyone seen the Disney Christmas Carol movie with Jim Carrey? I haven’t seen it yet, but it was directed by my favorite movie director, Robert Zemeckis, who also directed Back to the Future (my favorite movie), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cast Away, Polar Express, etc. He’s also remaking the old Beatles movie Yellow Submarine in CGI: I hope that turns out well.

Going back to Back to the Future, Telltale Games announced the official launch date of the new Back to the Future video game today: December 22. I’m SO excited. It looks like they’ve done a really good job with it; at least, I HOPE it’s good, since previous attempts at Back to the Future games failed miserably…

I’m pretty much out of things to say. I tried to keep going, but I’m done. Ha, goodnight, everyone. Safe travels if you haven’t made it home yet, and everyone have a great Christmas!

Chad

P.S. – My cat is awesome and I missed him a lot.  I got him when I was only nine nears old and when he was nine weeks old: Now, he’s nine years old and I’m nearly nineteen. My, how time flies! I love this cat so much. Meet Noel (named in light of the holiday for which I received him: Christmas, of course!)! I first got him on December 26, 2001.

KITTY

Sleeping. 🙂

I’ll have the Caramel Hazelnut Macchiato, please.

Good day, everyone. I hope everyone is in a good mood and I hope that my fellow college students are doing well with their finals.

 

Speaking of finals, I only have three more to go (well, technically two plus a horn jury): my jury is tomorrow morning (don’t worry, I’m about to go to bed; I’ll be fine), my SHMRG final is Tuesday morning bright and early, and my History final will be Wednesday afternoon, unfortunately; I wish it was earlier so that I could be home earlier, but oh well. Nothing I can do about that except for skip, and I’m definitely not going to do that.

 

Today was decent. Woke up around 9:30-9:45 or so, got dressed, and made my way over to Conner’s house. He hopped in my car and we made the twenty minute trip to Wolfforth, where the church we go to together is located. The normal pastor was back today after a three-week hiatus (I’m not sure where he had been), which was great. Don’t get me wrong, the man who spoke last week was decent, but you could tell that he was doing something he wasn’t entirely comfortable with/used to. Today’s message was titled “Missing Christmas While Waiting in Line”, which is pretty self-explanatory – we need to make sure that Christmas isn’t about what presents we get (though I’m not saying that those gifts are the root of evil or anything like that), but rather about the people we get those presents from. Most importantly, however, it’s about God and how He sent His only son Jesus down on earth to be born to a virgin and later to save us all from our sin and from the fate we all deserve. Be thankful for your situation in life, whether you’re poverty-stricken or well-off, because God loves us all and He always provides for us.

 

After church, I dropped Conner back off at his house and headed back to the room. I called Andrew on my way back to see what he was up to and to let him know that I would be there soon, but he didn’t answer. I shrugged it off, thinking he might have gone to his church’s 11am service. After I had parked in the parking garage and had started to make my way back to the room, he called me back: believe it or not, Andrew had just woken up. Blew my mind. You see, Andrew is NOT a late sleeper at all; this is the only time I’ve seen him sleep past 11, and I’ve rarely even seen him sleep past 10 at the latest. It was definitely a landmark in the sleep habits of Andrew.

 

Once I got back in the room, we just hung out for a while, had a glass of milk, ate a cookie (Lofthouse, of course!), watched Family Guy, the usual. Oh Family Guy, why do you amuse me so?

 

Speaking of amusing, here’s something that’s NOT. It’s a Flash game called “QWOP”, and it’s the hardest Flash game I’ve ever played. Basically, you control a runner at the Olympics, and your goal is to finish a 100-yard sprint. Simple enough, amirite? Wrong. To make the run, you have to control of each the runner’s leg muscles separately; the Q and W buttons control his thighs, while O and P control his calves. If you don’t time it correctly, you fall over and crack your head (you don’t see it, but the sound effect for some reasoned sickened me a bit). The best I could do was 32.2 meters. Here’s the link below; see if you can get any farther than I did:
Clicky

 

Anyway, after a while of failing at that game, I decided that I had put off my laundry for long enough, so I put everything in my hamper, packed my laptop in my backpack, and trekked down to the basement/laundry room. Andrew would have joined me, but he had student mass at his church at 5pm, so I went alone. The laundry room was pretty busy tonight; I was only able to snag two washing machines at a time. Laundry was pretty boring (not that I expected any different), and as soon as I finished and had gotten up to the room to put everything away, Andrew called me asking me to pick him up. You see, our friend Megan was accepted into the Disney College Program and will be working at Disney World in Florida as a paid intern next semester, so we won’t see her for months. We decided (well, it was Andrew’s idea) to get a few of us to go out to eat and then go see Tangled at the movie theater as a sort of “send-off” shindig; however, plans changed, and we ended up just going out to eat at the Olive Garden. I had raspberry lemonade to drink (very tasty, as our waitress could tell you; she refilled my glass countless times throughout the evening) and ate lots of bread sticks before our meal came out; everyone knows that the bread sticks are the best part about the Olive Garden. For my meal, I ordered what I normally get there: the fettuccine alfredo. Good stuff. When we had first looked through the menu to order, we saw the dessert menu, listing several delicious items sent down to the restaurant by God Himself, including the Caramel Hazelnut Macchiato.

SO GOOD

Now, since I’ve gotten into coffee lately, I was all too eager to try this macchiato, so I resolved to order it after my meal, as did Jenny (one of the girls we were with). When it finally came (without whipped cream, of course; whipped cream is disgusting), it was delicious. I didn’t have to add any creamer because of the caramel and hazelnut syrups already mixed in. Very good stuff; Andrew decided to order one too, and, as we drank it down, we made sure to keep it classy by keeping our pinkies out. Would you expect anything less of us? Haha.

 

After dinner and dessert, we went back on campus, where we all re-grouped in Tessa and Jenny’s room (they have the big TV set), where we proceeded to play with the Wii, games like Mario Kart (Tessa wins), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (I win), and Just Dance 2 (I did not participate in such shenanigans). We played that until about 1:30am, when I said, “Listen, I’ve got a jury in the morning and I’ve gotta go. Goodnight.” Gave Tessa and Megan hugs, Jenny a high five (she was lying on her back on the ground, exhausted from dancing), and then Andrew and I headed out the door and went back to the room. And here I am.

 

I think I had mentioned the other day that my voice teacher had talked with one of the voice professors at Tech, Prof. Dent, and that he would get in contact with me to talk about a choir audition. Well, after waiting somewhat impatiently, I received an email today from Prof. Dent, who proceeded to set up a time for me to meet with him and get things in order. We will be meeting tomorrow afternoon at 2:30, at which point I’ll sing for him a bit of a song I have prepared, and I’ll also sight-read a bit. In other words, nothing I haven’t been doing for two-thirds of my life (singing in a choir, at least; I’ve only been sight reading since seventh grade and performing solos since fifth grade). I’ll keep you all posted as to how it goes.

 

Random: I want to learn how to rip a phone book in half. It’s not a particularly difficult feat, and it doesn’t require a lot of strength if you know how to do it properly. So I will learn, and then I will record myself beast mode-ing it up, and then I will post it on here for you all to see. Sound like a plan? Awesome.

 

For some reason this post seems shorter than normal, but, according to the word count below this box, I just passed 1200 words, which is around the same general amount as usual. I could probably keep going at it, but I have my horn jury in the morning and I want to be able to wake up on time, not be in a hurry, and do well. I’m not too worried about the jury itself; I’ve practiced what I’m going to play and I know how to do it well, so it’s just a matter of doing it.

 

Anyway, that’s all for this post. Goodnight/good day, everyone. I hope it’s a good one.

 

Chad

 

P.S. – Two more days.

Image Humor at Its Best