So Long, Farewell

Today was our last day in Alabama. =/

I’m really going to miss it here. I feel that I’ve gotten a lot closer to my aunt, uncle, and cousins since the vacation my brother and I took with them over the summer to Florida on a Disney cruise, especially to my uncle; I’ve already explained that. But I think I also got a lot closer to my cousin Summer. We got along really well; I made sure to spend time with her and do some things that she wanted to do, such as play Just Dance 2 for the first time (which I really enjoyed and did pretty well on). All yesterday evening we were messing around with each other, teasing and such, and just having a great time together. I think it was good that I made it a point to spend time with her because I haven’t always been the greatest about doing that with her in the past, since my younger cousin Carson likes me so much. We used to play with each other almost nonstop just because he was so attached to me, and I think that Summer felt a little left out at times. So yeah. I did a good thing, I think. I also got a bit closer to my aunt this time around because we share a common gift: we both got iPads for Christmas. I helped her figure some things out, dress it out in accessories, and we even played on them a bit together; we’ll be playing Words with Friends often, I can tell…I’m gonna miss them so much. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we next see them, since they don’t live so far away anymore. Maybe this summer? We’ll see.

Anyway, today I slept until 11:15ish. I went downstairs, had a couple of bowls of Fruit Loops, fixed a cup of coffee, and then joined in playing “Bananagrams” with my grandma, my aunt, my dad, my uncle, and Carson; it’s a sort of Scrabble-like game, but here’s how it works: you have a big pile of letter tiles lying face-down in the center. Everyone grabs 11 tiles to start with. Someone says “split” and everyone flips their tiles right-side-up and proceeds to form their own crossword. Once you form all 11 of your starter tiles into a crossword with valid words, you say “peel” and everyone, including you, draws a tile from the center. If you have a tile that you just can’t play, you return it face-down to the center, say “dump”, and draw three tiles. The goal is to use all of the tiles on the board; once the pile in the center runs out, the first person to use all of their tiles shouts “Bananas!” and wins the game. It gets really fun; I might have to go buy it for myself for party occasions. It’s a blast, and we spent more of the day playing that than anything else.

After a while, at around 5:15 or so, my mom, dad, aunt, and I left for Kohl’s again to exchange a couple of shirts that my aunt had bought for my stocking (a Bob Marley shirt and a Beatles Apple logo shirt (that I honestly already have anyway) because they were a size too small, but the store ended up not having larger sizes of the same shirt, so I got two new ones: a new Beatles shirt that simply has the logo on it and a Star Wars shirt that has a grid with different characters in different colorful squares. It worked out well, and they’re both really cool shirts; great additions to my pop culture shirt collection. From Kohl’s we went to Pizza Hut to pick up the pizzas my uncle had ordered by phone. Taking them home, we all ate it together at the kitchen table. I don’t ever eat from Pizza Hut, but this pizza was pretty good. I liked it a lot.

On the subject of pizza, I’ve been toying with the idea of quitting pizza in 2011. Crazy, I know, but I really do have a pizza problem; during my junior and senior years of high school, I’d get pizza for lunch nearly every day in the cafeteria, and now, in college, Andrew and I will order it three times every two weeks, with the gaps often filled with me buying Sbarro in the Student Union Building. It’s pathetic. Yes, I enjoy it, but yes, it’s also a problem. Despite the fact that I quit soda for the purpose of drinking healthier drinks and losing weight, I don’t think I’ve lost any weight at all; in fact, I think I’ve gained just a few. No “Freshman 15” just yet. Maybe I should do anything so radical as to quit cold turkey like I did with soda. It might be a good idea to simply limit my pizza intake to once every two weeks or a month or something. We’ll see; it’s something I’ll have to discuss with Andrew.

I may also try eating fruit every day, though that could get expensive. We’ll see about that, too.

Following our pizza dinner, my grandma insisted she take a few pictures of my cousins, brother, and I to put in a picture frame she got. After that, which only took a few minutes, Summer brought down the Wii from the game room and had it hooked up in the living room. After a few moments of lazy digesting, I joined her in playing Just Dance 2 for a while. Both cousins played, Blake joined in this time, and my mom even played it a bit! Fun stuff. I was still winning most of the time tonight. 😉

After playing that for a while (I have no idea for how long), I joined my mom, my grandma, Blake, Summer, and Carson in more Bananagrams. A few games in, I got an email notification via my iPhone, and guess what? TELLTALE GAMES RESET MY ACCOUNT PASSWORD. Do you know what that means? I PLAYED BACK TO THE FUTURE: THE GAME FOR THE FIRST TIME. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

OHMYGOSH I KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW

And what a great game it is. It’s not like a lot of video games you might see out in the world; for one, this is only part one of five; the next four will be released one at a time, once a month for the next four months. It’s not an action-type game, but instead a game where you search around for clues, talk to people (with several different choices of what to say or ask each person), and analyze situations. It’s really creative how they did it. Christopher Lloyd reprises his role as Doc Brown (<3), but, other than by allowing his likeness to be used in the game, Michael J. Fox was completely uninvolved, which may seem as a surprise once you hear Marty in the game: it sounds just like him. The voice actor's name is AJ Locascio or something like that (I don't wanna look it up), and he does a great job as Marty. I don't know how far through the first part I am, but I'll consider typing out a full review of it once I finish.

On the subject of Back to the Future, I received the 25th Anniversary Trilogy on Blu-Ray for Christmas (the gift I told my parents that if I got it they wouldn't need to get me anything else, and I was serious). I haven't done anything with it other than put the free digital copies of all three films on my computer, which I need to fix when I get the chance at home. I am literally going to sit down and watch through all of the special features I can get my hands on; I'm SO EXCITED.

Anyway, this post ended up being a lot longer than I expected, though I actually typed it out pretty quickly. Now, it's time for bed; we are planning on waking up at 7 in the morning, with plans to leave as soon as possible so we can get home earlier in the day, which will be nice.

See you all back in Mesquite!

Chad

P.S. – You'd be surprised how addicting it can be to play with these little magnetic balls:

Cube.

Snowflake.

Erm...Thing.

Love one another or die.

Good day, everyone. I hope everyone is enjoying themselves. To my fellow Tech students, I hope you’re enjoying your dead day before finals officially begin, and I wish you all the best of luck.

My day started unfortunately, with me waking up for my last 8am theory class of the semester at 8:25. No, it’s not because I was up too late – it was because I had forgotten to set an alarm to wake me up on time. At least I made it to class, even if there were only fifteen minutes left by the time I got there. No grades were taken today and it was basically just going over a review that we had done, so I didn’t really miss anything; I’m not worried about having missed the review because I have a 94 in that class at the moment; I’m hoping that I can possibly bring that up to a 95 with a good final grade. We’ll see.

After theory I had an hour-long break and then I had my SHMRG class. I feel a bit guilty for saying this, but today’s last class was my favorite one of the semester, and we didn’t even cover anything that was part of the curriculum for the class. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, today (well, now it’s yesterday), December 8th, was the 30th anniversary of the death of singer/songwriter John Lennon, of the Beatles fame. Being that, today in class we had a discussion with a guest professor stemming from how John Lennon and the rest of the Beatles affected popular music and whether we felt that popular musicians had a right to their own opinions and whether or not we felt that we should judge their music based on their personal opinions. It was a great discussion (when people weren’t saying the same thing over and over and over again about how much Ke$ha sucks, though I agree), and I had the opportunity to talk to the class about the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and why the medium of the vinyl record versus the medium of iTunes individual song downloads was important. I really enjoyed it all. Fun times. Rest in peace, John Lennon. We love you.

Though this doesn’t follow my day chronologically, to stay on subject of the Beatles, I’d like to share this link that my good friend Connor shared on Twitter today:
Clicky
Read through the whole thing if it interests you. If you haven’t heard of the “Paul is dead” hoax, search “Paul is dead” on Wikipedia. It’s not a long article. Back to the link I just posted: I think that this person, whoever he is, presents interesting ideas and what could be some pretty solid “evidence”, but I still find the whole thing pretty hard to believe. The idea that Paul McCartney died in the late 1960s and was promptly replaced with a lookalike who stepped in where the “real” McCartney “dropped off” to continue his musical career seems absolutely ludicrous to me. Now, I can’t explain the supposed changes in Paul’s alleged appearance changes presented in that article, but I’m sure there’s some sort of logical reasoning behind it besides Paul being dead and having been replaced by a lookalike/soundalike. That’s just silly. But who knows?

Picking up after SHMRG, I had a history exam. Unfortunately, this wasn’t my final, which I find a bit ridiculous. On the last day of class we have an exam right before the final? I dunno. It didn’t make much sense to me, but what do I know? I’m just the student. I’ll let the teacher do his job and follow his instructions. The exam wasn’t too bad; like usual, it was an essay exam, covering everything from Brown v. Board of Education to the Kennedy Administration to the Watergate Scandal to Reaganomics. I got in some good study time in the hour between theory and SHMRG, so I felt decently prepared; I’m hoping for at least a B, like usual.

Goin’ Band was next, and all we did was go over what we’re doing at the bowl game on New Year’s Day (bleh). We’re doing the part of the first show we learned this year as a sort of pre-game show, and for halftime we’re doing part of the last show we learned, the Dave Matthews Band show. Fun stuff. We even managed to finish early today, which was definitely a plus. The end of band today marked the end of classes for me for the semester: it’s a good feeling. Only finals to go!

Finals schedule: Theory Friday morning, Piano Friday afternoon, Calculus Saturday afternoon, horn jury Monday morning, SHMRG Tuesday morning, and History Wednesday afternoon. Then, I’m HOME FREE.

From band I went back to my room and hung out on my computer. I had gotten a call from Dell during band saying that my new computer parts were in and asking when I would be available for a technician to come and get the job done. The technician lady ended up coming at 3 on the dot. I think I had mentioned this before, but my computer screen had been faulty. It would blackout occasionally when the computer was being used and charged at the same time, leaving only my TV to display what I was doing. It had done this almost since I first got the computer, but it had never lingered for more than an hour or two and only happened once every few weeks or so, at least until last Saturday. Then, it blacked out and would black out every time it was plugged in, except for yesterday, when it worked great all day. It was even working fine for the first hour or so of usage after band today, but then it blacked out, and I thought, “Yes! Now I have something to show them!” So, I showed the technician from Dell when she came, and she recognized the issue straightaway and proceeded to dismantle my computer, remove the screen, and replace it with a shiny, brand new one, as well as replace my AC adapter since it might have been faulty as well. All for free since it was still covered by warranty. Rockin’. It’s been working fine ever since.

After she left, I went downstairs and bought a foot-long sub sandwich with ham, turkey, cheese, bacon, white American cheese, Swiss cheese, Parmesan cheese, and black olives (the Swiss makes it fancy/gourmet). Good stuff. I also bought two packages of Sour Punch Straws (<3) and a bag of Twizzlers, with a large Mountain Blast (Blue) Powerade to wash it all down with. Heading up to my room and eating at my desk, I decided to take a nap afterward, a little before six, not waking up until Andrew got back to the room around 8:30 after doing who-knows-what all day. From there, I laid in bed messing around on my phone and later talking to my parents until just after 11.

At this point, I was at a loss of what to do other than sit at my computer for several hours, when I looked up at my bookshelf and saw Tuesdays with Morrie. In case you don’t know, this book, written by Mitch Albom, is the book I’ve read more than any other in my life (6 or 7 times, once a year since 8th grade with a possible extra time in there as well). I love this book and have taken so many things away from it; it’s the only book I’ve ever highlighted stuff in of my own accord. So, around 11:30 or so, I started reading it again, finishing it a little after 3, I believe (what? I took a two-and-a-half hour nap, remember?). It was just as good as always, and all through reading it I posted on Twitter nearly everything I had highlighted (which is a lot, so I sorta apologize to my followers on Twitter, even though I think there’s lots to learn from all of those tweets). I’d like to share my favorite passage from the book, probably the most important thing I’ve learned from Morrie Schwartz. In the chapter titled “The Sixth Sunday: We Talk About Emotions”, Morrie talks about what he calls “detachment”, shown below:

“…If you hold back on the emotions – if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them – you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

“But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’ ” (p. 104)

Isn’t that an awesome thing to think about? I think it is, anyway. The idea that by fully recognizing emotion, or pain, or, heck, even the freezing cold (why not?), you can embrace it, know what it feels like, and then let it go. Push it aside. You’re not ignoring it at all, which tends to make it harder for us. I use this system all the time; it’s a really good tool to be able to utilize, I think. Morrie also quotes his favorite poet, W. H. Auden, frequently throughout the book: “Love each other or die”. What an incredible statement. Morrie has taught me so much just through this book; I almost feel like I know the guy. I hope I have a Morrie sometime in my college career. We’ll see.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a mini-argument with a couple of friends over whether or not the song “Linus and Lucy” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, which premiered in the A Charlie Brown Christmas TV special, is actually a Christmas song or not. I argued that, since it was used in the subsequent Peanut specials and not only for the Christmas one, it was more of a “theme song” instead of a Christmas song. I’ve always been upset when Christmas stations play it on their radio playlist because I simply don’t think it’s a Christmas song. One of my friends argued that, since it was written for the Christmas special and because people associate it with Christmas. I didn’t argue my point further (even though I strongly disagreed with this point; sorry Ben! ;)), I lated mentioned to Andrew that associating a song with a holiday does not make it a holiday-specific song. The content does. Let’s say that my family had a tradition of dancing the Macarena on Christmas Eve before we went to bed time. I would associate that song with Christmas, wouldn’t I? Does that make the Macarena a Christmas song? Heck no! I think the same thing applies to “Linus and Lucy”. The only reason I bring this up now is because Andrew heard it on the radio today and sided with me – “Linus and Lucy”, while an excellent song by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, is most definitely NOT a Christmas song. “Christmas Time is Here” and “Skating” from the same special and by the same group are DEFINITELY Christmas songs, though. Take a listen and feel free to decide for yourself (though you know where I stand; in fact, I wanna set up a poll and see what you all think):

Welp, that’s all I have for this long post; my longest yet (2100 words; I had a lot to talk about tonight)! I have an optional Calculus review period tomorrow morning that Andrew and I plan on going to, as well as jury accompanist practice at 2; other than that, I have nothing to do tomorrow. I hope everyone has a great day!

Chad

P.S. – One more short passage from Tuesdays with Morrie for you to enjoy and learn from:

“Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too – even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.” (p. 61)

P.P.S. – I didn’t use proper citation, MLA or Chicago Manual of Style, for either of those quotes!

P.P.P.S. – Quick story before I’m officially done; while I was typing this, Andrew sat up, asked (very clearly, I might add) “You wanna dance, pretty boy?”, flipped over, and resumed snoring. /amusing

Bloggity bloggity blog.

Hello blog readers of the world. I hope you had a great day.

Mine was decent. I woke up a little before ten, got dressed, and headed off to FBC Wolfforth. It was a good service, but the normal pastor wasn’t there today. The fill-in was decent, though. After the service, I started to leave, but as I got to the door some woman stopped me asked “Have you filled out a visitor form with us?” Keep in mind that this was at least my fifth or sixth time to visit this church and I hadn’t been stopped yet. So, she pulled me back inside, took me to the front desk, and had me fill out a visitor information card. Then I got a little goodie bag that had a mug, a note pad, a bag of popcorn (“Thanks for POPPING in!”), and what I think might be a Jesus music mix CD. Cool stuff.
After leaving the church, I hopped in my car, started up the Christmas music, and made my way to Home Depot with the intention of buying a new broom for Quidditch. Unfortunately, I had to go to the second Home Depot in Lubbock because the first one didn’t have what I was looking for, but no luck there either. Now that it was ten minutes until one (which is when Quidditch starts on Sundays), I was slightly frustrated and in a hurry. I got back to the school, walked to my room, changed clothes (sleeveless shirt and athletic shorts in 40 degree weather for the win), and headed to Quidditch. I was only 20 minutes late, and I showed up right as they were about to start the first game (“Chad’s here! You’re on the black team. We’re about to start.”).

After a long, full (with two seekers and the Snitch) match, we played a shorter match without the Snitch. Conner (the president and native beast) and Alex (the other beast) sat out, and the other team also got a new keeper who had never played before. Needless to say, we had 90 points when they only had 20. But then BOTH Alex AND Conner joined in…on their team. They caught up. Fast. Soon, it was tie game: 90 to 90 (we were only playing to 100!). I turned to the rest of my team and said, “Listen. We have one chance. If they get the ball from us again, they’re gonna score and win. We need to take the ball and sprint down as fast as we possibly can and score. I’ll cover whoever has the quaffle.” So we split, and, on the count of 3, set off in a sprint, me covering the chaser holding the quaffle (I play beater; well, I might add). One pass and a toss through the hoop later, we had won. It was awesome. What a great game.

The only problem with playing Quidditch in 40 degree weather is that it’s difficult to breathe. After playing out for two and a half hours, I was completely unable to take big breaths or to laugh without breaking out into a coughing fit for about an hour and a half afterward. We had a short meeting regarding the tournament Tech Quidditch is hosting in April (April 9th, to be exact, so you should come out and watch!), and then we went our different ways.

I went back to my room and tried to fix my computer. You see, there’s nothing really, truly wrong with it like a virus or a Trojan, but I’ve been having trouble with my laptop’s screen. Every once in a while the screen will black out completely when it’s plugged in to charge, making the only way I can do anything on it through my TV (they’re hooked up via HDMI cable; that’s what I’m using now). After spending an hour or two working on it alone and another hour or two spent with customer service, I had it arranged for a Dell technician to come out and replace my screen…for FREE (covered by warranty). It shouldn’t take long at all. Hopefully this’ll stop this problem from happening because it’s happened sporadically for quite a while now. It’s frustrating.

Other than all that mess, I went to Wal-Mart to get more milk (and ended up getting a 21 pack of Lofthouse cookies as well), to Dairy Queen to get a vanilla milkshake, and to Little Caesar’s to get two Hot-N-Ready pizzas (I had a coupon!) and Crazy Bread. Good stuff. Andrew got back a while later, after I had finished eating (I saved some for him too, so no worries) and had started on my music theory homework; nothing too difficult. It didn’t take me long.

And here I am. Nothing much else to see. Maybe I can manage to squeeze out another two hundred words or so though to reach 1000.

Oh! Go to translate.google.com. Paste this into the text box:

pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch

Translate from “German”  to “German”. Then, on the right, click the “Listen” button. Make sure your volume is turned up and prepare to be amused.

Speaking of being amused, watch this!

Clicky (Do Right Click>Open in New Window so you don’t leave here)
Isn’t that incredible? I was definitely impressed. This guy is a winner. Even though he played a Lady Gaga. You know, it’s not that I don’t like her music; her music is FANTASTIC. She’s one heck of a songwriter, to rival Lennon/McCartney and Freddie Mercury (Freddie’s song for Queen, “Radio Ga Ga”, is where Lady Gaga gets her name from), but I don’t care for most of her lyrics or for her very much. I always say, “man, I wish that Lady Gaga used her songwriting powers for good instead of evil.” Amirite or amirite?

Anyway, that’s pretty much it for tonight. By the time I finish this paragraph, I’ll be past 1000 words and it’ll be time for bed. Plus, it’s the last Monday of the semester tomorrow (not counting the next Monday since it’s only finals)! I’m excited to go home. So, goodnight everyone. I hope you all sleep well. I’ll be back for more bloggity-blogging tomorrow.

Chad