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. Â 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.
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.
Good morning, everyone. I hope everyone’s day yesterday/today (if you’re more of a “it’s not a new day until I wake up in the morning” kinda person) was a good one. I know mine was.
First off, as mentioned in my last post, I took a nap yesterday afternoon that I very much intended to take; however, the length was most definitely unintended, as it ended up lasting five hours. Needless to say, I was up pretty late last night (go figure), but this time because I simply wasn’t tired. I didn’t end up going to bed until around 3:30am, and it still took me a while to fall asleep from there. Once I managed to nod off, though, I slept better than I would have imagined, only waking up twice, finally waking up at around 6:30-6:45am wide awake. I got up, got dressed, finished up the milk in the fridge, prepared some instant green tea in a water bottle, made my bed, and made my way to my music theory exam, which took place at 7:30.
I felt really good about this test, before, during and after; I never stressed about it because I was pretty confident that I knew the material. I walked into the final exam room with a 94 in the class, and I made it a personal goal for myself to strive to do well enough on the final exam to bump my final class grade up to a 95, which didn’t leave much margin for error. Other than a couple of sections taking a while to complete, I walked out feeling great, knowing that I had done well. Sure enough, when I checked online to see if my grade had been posted just a while ago, I found that it was already graded: a 97, raising my class grade from a 94.35 to a 95.02. I made my goal; it’s a good feeling.
I had a bit of a break after my theory final, a break I spent in my room. Andrew got back from his first final exam a bit after me, and he felt pretty confident about his grade too (economics). Rockin. I hung out on my computer until around 10:15, when I made my way back over to the music building for the last marching band rehearsal on the band lot of the semester. It was set to last from 10:30-1 – something I definitely wasn’t looking forward to – but we ended up getting out about half an hour early. The first hour of the rehearsal was spent nickel-and-diming the first movement of the Dave Matthews Band, which we’re performing at the bowl game on January 1st. It dragged on for forever. Then we moved on to the third movement (we skipped the second since we don’t move and since we only have 6 minutes to perform), which took a lot less time than the first movement had, which was a blessing. After that, we got in position for Cotton Fields, the second movement of the Traditions shows (the very first show we learned this season), marching through that and the subsequent March Grandioso. Then we finished up with running through the pre-game sequence (why, you ask? We were all wondering too…we’re not performing it at the bowl game).
After band, I was free again until about 2:30, when I needed to head to the music building for the third time today to practice before my piano final at 3:10. During this time, I sat around on my computer, watched Family Guy with Andrew, and ordered Domino’s Pizza for lunch (I HAVE A PIZZA ADDICTION). The I made my way up to the music building, practiced my etudes that I was supposed to play, went over my I, IV, and V chords, and practiced sightreading with chord changes and transposition. When it came my time to take my final one-on-one in front of the teacher, I did pretty well, minus a couple of chord fumbles and melody mistakes. The professor seemed to take it easy on the grading though, judging less on pitch accuracy and more on technique, rhythm, and musicianship, so I got really good grades. We were given separate grades on each section of the final, and here’s what I got: Repertoire – 98, Harmonization – 99, Sight Reading – 93, Transposition – 100. Not bad. Averages to a 98 for all four. That brings my finals grades to the following so far: Aural Skills – 98. Theory – 97. Piano – 98/99/93/100 (98). Raising the bar. Rockin.
After piano, I was done for the day. I went back to the room and got back on my computer (bet you didn’t see that coming) and put Family Guy back on, watching it until I heard Andrew snoring once he dozed off; we both had to wake up early this morning. I messed around with an image morphing software for a long while, a software called “Sqirlz Morph” (it’s FREE! just search it on Google). Now, I, Chad Hopkins, present to you the fruits of my labor, a personal project titled:
CELEBRITIES I AM NOT
(open each picture individually in a new window by clicking “Open Image in New Tab” via right-click; give each one time to load, especially the third)
Doctor Emmett L. Brown – Back to the Future
Forrest Gump – Forrest Gump (/unnecessary)
Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark
I hope you all found those amusing. I enjoyed making them.
Anyway, around the time I finished making these, Kate called me about something (it’s not my place to tell the story, so if you’re really interested, ask her and she can decide). I guess you could say we went out on an “adventure”. We weren’t finished until around 11:40, at which point Andrew and one of Kate’s friends, Rachael, had joined us. A little before midnight, Rachael and Kate went to wait in Kate’s room whilst Andrew and I grabbed us all a light meal from McDonald’s (irony intended), including my second night in a row of having their Caramel Mocha with milk (whole, of course; unless you’re drinking milk by itself, in which case 2% is the way to go). We went back to Kate’s room, watched another episode of Family Guy (we’re not obsessed or anything…), and then headed back to our room.
And that was my day in a nutshell…a rather large nutshell, I suppose. I have my calculus final tomorrow afternoon at 1:30; I’m a bit nervous since it’s quite a bit more difficult than the finals I’ve already taken, but I think I’ve got a firm enough grasp on the material and how to work it all that I’m fairly confident I’ll get at least a B…*knock on wood*. Just keep me in your prayers, and Andrew as well: he’s got his Animal Science final in the morning, and we take our calculus final together. Pray we do well, please. It’d be much appreciated, from both of us.
OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT SOMETHING. Ha, not like it’s really important, just something that I meant to include in this post. Another Twitter-related paragraph. I came across a Twitter feed run by a group of people who produce a Harry Potter-themed podcast called @HogwartsRadio. I don’t listen to it (@MuggleCast is where it’s at!), but they do one thing that I really enjoy: daily Harry Potter trivia. I LOVE trivia, especially when it’s something I’m knowledgeable about like Harry Potter. I have a strategy for whenever trivia time comes around every night: once they make the announcement that trivia starts soon, I have my phone open to the Messages application, “@hogwartsradio ” already typed in the text box. Since I get their tweets forwarded to my phone via text message, as soon as they send out the tweet with the question, the phone is already in the position to send a quick reply if I know the answer off the top of my head (which I usually do). If I don’t, I switch to my Wikipedia app or to Google, find it quickly, and send it off. I’ve been the fastest responder somewhere between 5-10 times; I couldn’t tell you exactly how many. It’s so much fun. I really enjoy it.
Anyway, that’s all for this post…it’s time for bed. I’ve been up since 6:30 this morning. Getting to sleep somewhat late in the morning is something I look forward to. Goodnight, everyone. I hope you all have a wonderful day.
Chad
P.S. – According to the poll I posted on the past two posts regarding whether or not “Linus and Lucy” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is a Christmas song or not, more voters said that it was NOT a Christmas song than those who said it was. Of course, the vote was only 4-2, but still. Either way, I’m not going to force my views on anybody; you’re free to think of it as a Christmas song if you want, but if YOU try to tell me otherwise, I WILL argue my point. Haha. Now bring in the dancing lobsters.
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, Â 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.
Today was a great day. I slept until about 9:10 (yay for not having to worry about aural skills final this morning!), which meant that my first class today was Calculus. We turned in our homework, which I had understood fairly well, and we proceeded to talk about the things we absolutely needed to know in order to do well on the final exam. No worries; I think that I will do fairly well on the exam. I feel pretty prepared, for the most part. There’s a review sheet with a few practice problems, so I’ll definitely take a look at that.
After Calculus I had an hour and a half break (isn’t my Tuesday schedule wonderful?), so I went to my room, printed something out that I was going to need later, called up Landry, and the two of us headed out to Chick-Fil-A. Yes, there’s two Chick-Fil-As on campus, but they only sell fixed items; you can’t order what you want, and I wanted a spicy chicken sandwich. We drove out there, originally intending to just go through the drive-thru and head back to the school to make sure we weren’t late, but the drive-thru line was so long that we ended up parking, walking inside, ordering, and then leaving. We made it back on campus in plenty of time for me to eat my sandwich (I had eaten the fries while driving) and still make it to band on time.
Andrew is snoring…what else is new? /expected
In Goin’ Band today, we were inside Allen Theatre to record all of the music we played this semester; needless to say, by the time we were finished my chops were completely blown. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, though; the horns had some good stuff to play this year, and the music was rockin’ overall.
Some guy is outside on the basketball court singing “I Believe I Can Fly” by R. Kelly. I think he lives on my floor. It is 1:15 in the morning. GO TO BED.
From band I went back to my room for an hour and a half, surfing the Interwebs and probably eating a Lofthouse cookie or two.
Who can resist Lofthouse Cookies?
At 3:30 I went to piano class, which was fun considering it was just a quick review-type deal and we were done super early. Then I had a quick 25-minute practice with my accompanist for my horn jury on Monday. It went well, despite the fact that my face had died playing my horn earlier that day (thank you, Goin’ Band). After that, we had our last horn studio of the semester at 5, where we went over some etiquette stuff, did course evaluations for our lessons, and, most importantly, ate some Little Caesar’s pizza.
Not to be confused with the Caesar who is about to be murdered in this picture.
As pathetic as it may seem, that was basically my whole day. The rest of the day was spent in front of my computer on my desk, looking up handheld laser prices (yes, I’m lame), watching Family Guy, and doing theory homework. And here I am.
On the subject of lasers, I’ve gotten obsessed with them in the past few days, and it’s not the first time. Lasers are some of the coolest things ever, especially if you can get a really good one; if you get a good, well-made laser that’s got the proper specifications, you can pop balloons, light matches, melt through electrical tape, and even melt some plastics/rubbers. I WANT ONE; unfortunately, most quality lasers will cost you at least $200, which is a bit on the ridiculous side as far as something as simple as a laser goes. Maybe one day. Actually, I did find these:
Pretty legit looking, eh?
These only cost $49.95-99.95 apiece (not bad at all, really). These particular lasers are 200mW, which means they can do all of that awesome stuff mentioned previously. They also specialize in stinging skin and burning retinas if used improperly. Anyway, I’m actually considering shelling out the money for one of these (probably the green one with the 200mW upgrade option) after Christmas/my birthday; I think it’ll be worth playing around with it. And no worries, I won’t set anything on fire. For educational purposes, here’s two videos of good lasers:
Moving on: I don’t know how many keep track of things like this, but today, December 8, 2010, is the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon (“L” is for “L”ennon too!) by Mark David Chapman. For you uncultured people of the world, John Lennon was one of the four members of the Beatles, arguably the most influential rock group of all time. Lennon, along with Paul McCartney, helped to write the majority of the band’s catalog, and he even managed to maintain a successful solo career after the band’s breakup. He’s missed by many, including myself, though I wasn’t alive at any point when he was. He was a heck of a musician and it’s a shame he died so young. Rest in peace, John Lennon, and God bless.
And, in light of the Christmas season:
That’s just about all I have for tonight. At least, I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. Let’s see: I covered my day, I had my little laser paragraph, I mentioned Lennon…hmmm. OH. I just thought of something.
How many of you knew that today (December 7) was the anniversary of Pearl Harbor before someone else mentioned it? Anyone? It seemed to me that hardly anyone noticed or that anyone cared, for that matter. It’s a shame. I wish that people paid more attention to the past, to events like this. “A date that will live in infamy…” Maybe eventually people will learn to care about our nation more. I sure hope so.
Welp, that’s it’s for me tonight. I’m off to bed before my last day of classes for the semester! Yay! I’m pretty excited. Goodnight, everyone, sleep tight, and something about bedbugs.
A Day in the Life 