Chug-A-Lug

So this has been a pretty good past week. Things are all funneling nicely into place before I leave on Thursday for the Jazz Band trip, then when I get back, much free time shall ensue. I'm hoping we get D&D going someday. The only days I won't really be available for D&D are Saturday and Sunday. All throughout the weekdays, I'll be good to go. I've also noticed that my homework load is very light this quarter. Looking ahead, it's not going to get much worse, so weekdays are going to be more and more open as the quarter goes on and as I slowly have less commitments. Ok well anyway, I'm going to get on with the post, which will be a normal formatted post.

Monday:
Band went pretty well. My friend in the trumpet section that is also in Jazz Band quit band because she said she is getting her credit for that doing something else that meets on a better day for her. For what it's worth, I can still talk to Erik and Darren or Dan if I need to, but mostly I just sit around until class is over. Victoria is coming up about a month from now and that's going to be pretty cool. Hopefully Dan and I won't be tagged along to by the others. That is my only worry, that I will feel forced to spend all my time with the Shorewood guys. It probably won't happen though as the three of them are tight and they will not probably not notice/mind if I'm not hanging out with them.

Tuesday:
We had not much going on. I started doing my homework during math class again because I find I can pay just as much attention while doing my homework as I can while doing nothing or playing calculator games, but at least this way, I feel productive. Nothing much else happened that day.

Wednesday:
We had our last jazz band rehearsal of the week. We decided to not meet on Thursday and instead, we are meeting for 2 hours to get in a really good rehearsal tomorrow night. Mr. Sisko had one of his students from another band there that day and he was pretty good at trumpet, but the other two didn't like him. He was not as good as them and he was kind of a cock. Naturally though, I tolerated his presence. We traded off between third and fourth parts and on one part, he gave me third and it had a solo so I asked if he wanted it back and he gave me a cockly reply that "It's just blues, that's the easiest thing you can get." Ok well sure, but I haven't kept up on my theory and for those of you that don't know, over the solo, you have stuff like G7 or something like that above the bar and that is supposed to immediately tell you what notes to play. Well it does exactly that, but I'm not good at translating that fast, so my solo consisted of basically quarter notes as I quickly tried to figure out the notes as we went along. About 8 measures in, Sisko stopped the band and gave me pointers on how to solo well and even talked about "jumping off points" for potential teachers in the band and gave me a few good notes that would work throughout the solo and when I just played those notes, I had a far better solo. Granted, it was just 3 notes with different octaves, but it sounded much better than before. Because he did this, I now like Sisko better than Doug. It was really cool of him to help me out like that without making me feel embarassed since I blew (the bad kind of blowing) on the solo the first try.

Thursday:
We had a trumpet sectional instead of Jazz Band. After that, I had to go to Magnuson park for my service learning orientation with EarthCorps. When I get there and park, who should show up in the car behind me, but that nerdy guy from class. It turns out he's actually pretty cool, but I still have the desire to either pwn him in a trial or get teamed up with him for an unstoppable force of domination. There were 2 hot girls in the place that were seniors or juniors I can't remember. I would say a mack battle occured, but I was the only person there with any mack (even my little amount was enough to win). The guy coordinating the volunteer stuff is really cool. He has a big, bushy beard and it's easy to tell he would be an environmentalist by looking at him. The really cool thing about him though is that he also has a mole and not only that, but it's in the same place mine is. The service learning stuff will take place on Saturdays throughout the quarter. This means that from here until June, I will not have any normal Saturdays. I will either be doing service learning or I will be on a band trip. The rest of my weekends will be made up of homework and work on grandpa's house or my aunt's house.

Friday:
I went and met grandpa and my aunt at Costco for lunch, then my aunt came back here to do her taxes, then I went over to grandpa's house to fix up stuff for the following day. I finally finished our swivel chair. It looks nice for having originally been a pile of garbage.

Saturday:
Dad and I met grandpa at Costco for lunch, then picked up food for dinner after the work party that day. After that, we went to grandpa's house and started fixing stuff up. The rest of the family arrived shortly thereafter. All of them worked inside and I worked outside. I was the only one outside because the inside stuff is all trivial crap I don't care about and I'm the only one trusted by grandpa to work with stuff in the backyard. People were saying we shouldn't throw too much away from the backyard because grandpa can't take that stress, but he and I have like minds and we know what's really up. We know that if we go with their plan and wait until he's moved out to throw everything away, EVERYTHING will get thrown away. Now the thing nobody gets is that there's a ton of good stuff he has laying around. The good stuff is under the garbage, you just have to look. I'm pretty much the only one who's found it. The other one is my second cousin and he has been taking whatever he wants for a while, which is good because he uses it and it's stuff we don't have to get rid of there. So grandpa and I are trying to get stuff that isn't really garbage by any standards out of the shed and the backyard and to a safe place (my house where it will get used) and we figure it only makes sense to throw the garbage away as we go along.

Sunday:
I had the Mariners game on all day and I was doing some homework. After that, dad decided we should go use my Joe's gift card that I got for my eagle ceremony in December of 2007, since Joe's filed for bankruptcy and isn't getting money and my card could soon be worthless. We were going to get me work boots, but the selection was bad. At least prices were low though. We wound up getting a bag of M&Ms, 2 bags of beef jerky, paint to repair paint chips by the keyhole on the truck, and a flask. That's right, I'm the proud owner of a flask. My parents might think I'm an alcoholic, but I figure it's like the police, you don't have to be afraid if you haven't done anything wrong. Anyway yeah I keep water in it for now, but still it's pretty cool.

Today:
It was pretty boring today as well. I didn't get much done yet because I've been making this post.

So yeah this Jazz Band trip will be cool and when it's over, I'll have a lot more time. Since I do service learning on some weekends now, that just makes my weekends more crowded. I'm also going to start going over once or twice a week to really start fixing my grandpa's house and my aunt's house. Ok well not much else is going on now, so peace out.