I'm ready for my break now...

Well the last week sure was busy and I'm glad that I now only have 2 more days of stuff before my spring break starts. I actually got lucky and the first time slot of the first official day of finals will be when I have my last final. The rest of my classes had/are holding finals before then. As of when I'm writing this post, I only have Stats tomorrow and Macro on Wednesday then I'm done with this insane quarter and perhaps I can play videogames more regularly again. So this last week was really busy as I may have said already and I think that for this post, I'll organize it into events rather than days since that makes me feel like I'll be able to keep it somewhat shorter. After that, I'll get back to homework so that I can go play SC, SC2, ME2, anything that I want.

Pre-Reno (PREno):
See what I did there? Ok anyway, I had to leave on Wednesday for Reno, so the first couple of days of the week were absolutely filled with homework doing and trying to find time to sqeeze in Starcraft with Keir and Steven as it was Keir's (very unfortunately timed for me) spring break and he wanted to shove some Teriyaki down every noob on battle.net's throat. On monday, I was doing homework since Keir was unavailable when I was. After I had done a bunch of it, I had to leave for the dress rehearsal for our band concert. It went pretty well and I always like them because we get out slightly earlier than regular rehearsals. At the rehearsal though, a strange thing happened. Chelsea showed up. If you don't remember, she is the girl that used to stand next to me in Jazz Band that I thought was hot and Davis did not. I must say Davis, the first thing I thought when she walked in that room was "Where the hell has she been?" The second thing I thought (that you would actually be interested in) was "Hmm, perhaps Davis' rating was more correct than I thought." All of the guys that had a crush on her obviously did not share that sentiment however as they rushed over to her during the break. I went over as well, but only to ask where she had gone. All we heard in Jazz Band was that she had family problems, then she was gone for a week, then came back, then disappeared for a month. We were really concerned in the section that her parents had died or something. It turns out, she just decided she doesn't really like playing jazz and that was her only class on campus every day so she switched to all online classes plus her outside ensembles like concert band. I must say, I was a little disappointed at how lazy she was being (complaining about the 2 hours that jazz band took out of her day). I mean, she does work part time as well, but still. Ah well, in the end it worked out because she was replaced by this new guy who's really good at trumpet and besides, now we only have 5 trumpets and that's still more than we need. A 6th was just pushing it. Sorry to go on that for so long, but I thought it was good to get closure on the whole story and it was nice to know there was not some horrible catastrophe.

On Tuesday, I had to do a bit of homework while I waited for Keir to get on. In Stats, we were given an assignment to give advice to future online statistics students. For my information, I was able to follow the guidelines for what kind of information to give as well as hiding a message in it. If you take the capitalized letters (I was able to avoid using 'I') and write them out in order, you get a message saying "DROP THIS CLASS." I showed Orion and we agreed that if my message gets through to even just one person, I have succeeded. Eventually, Keir signed on and he and Steven and I played some Funeral Pyre 3v3s in which I had a severe getting rushed problem. I have no problem being the tank though, especially when I'm playing as terran and I can just escape without having to bother Steven asking for help or begging Keir to ask for assistance that will never come because he doesn't have units. I don't remember how we did, but it was nice to play for a couple of hours especially since the only gaming I had recently done was a couple hours on the weekend. That night, I had the concert band concert. Shorewood played before us and I saw Meredith, which was cool, but not as cool as SEEING NATHAN!!1111 The conversation was great:
Me: Nathan? NATHAN!!! HELLO!!!!
Nathan: *Turns around and awkwardly chuckles and waves on his way up the stairs*
He probably knows that's all he need to do for me now. I must say that Harshman ran a much tighter ship and while this new guy is popular, Shorewood's Wind Ensemble was terrible. It was worse than the Symphonic Band when I was there. Even my mom knew they weren't as good, which is definitely saying something. I may not agree with all of Harshman's methods (and Davis may not agree with any (enjoying these shoutouts Davis?)), but at least his bands did sound pretty good especially compared to this.

Holy crap, I'm rambling so much. I'm using the new post editor for blogger and either the window for writing in is skinnier or I'm writing a lot of stuff. I'll try to keep it condensed and from here, it shouldn't be too hard.

Reno:
On Wednesday, I had Econ and French, though I could have skipped. I was travelling with a girl from the flute section named Eunice. She's here on a student visa from Hong Kong. We met at the airport and then went to the gate where we met Doug who showed up about 4 minutes early (like a boss (I hope I used that right)). When we got to Reno, Eunice volunteered to be the navigator, so we didn't go straight to the hotel because she got us a bit lost. Fortunately, I was able to give Doug good directions from the backseat as well, so we got there after a nice little tour of the neighborhood. Now in Reno, there's a huge slummy area and our hotel was in the middle of it. We got to the rooms and then had to go straight to auditions. I could have gone right in, but I didn't really know how it worked. I was shooting for 3rd horn because they write horn parts like 1, 3, 2, 4 where other instruments go 1, 2, 3, 4. I was also fine with the fourth part too, but in my history I have the least experience on third, so that was the one I really wanted. I didn't want first parts because we had several hours of rehearsal each day and I would have died. I botched my audition accordingly to get the part I wanted.

After that, I had 2 hours for dinner, so I set out on foot to explore the area for a good grocery store to get food for breakfasts in the future because they didn't give us much time for breakfast and I only got $75 from the school and I was determined to pocket some of that money for myself (mission accomplished there :] ). I walked about 4 or 5 miles in total going all the way to downtown and several blocks over and generally all over the place. It was 30 degrees out and dark, but nobody raped me, probably because I was wearing shorts and they thought I was crazy. Eventually, I gave up and just got a couple things at a 7-11. On my way back, I found the market I had been looking for originally. My phone had fed me bad directions and if I had looked up instead of looking at the phone, I would have seen the market was right across the street from the hotel.

We had our first rehearsal with our conductor, Thomas Duffy. He was a really cool guy and he can conduct in split meter which is very entertaining to watch. Much to my pleasure, I got the third horn part AND as we were doubling music, only one person got to be responsible for the folder and it was not me. I was pretty stoked about that. I was right where I wanted to be. Also, there were quite a lot of hot girls there, the views were pretty nice. The horn section was mostly guys though. Only one out of the seven of us was a girl. After rehearsal ended, I went to that shop across the street to get actual food I wanted, but was disappointed with the lack of food that was there. I was super sick and did manage to find a lot of gatorade though, which was very nice. The lady there was very friendly and she said I had a baby face (a description that has dogged me since 5th grade). That night, I was finally able to meet my roomate. It turned out I only had one, which was nice as I was expecting to have 2 (which was crazy since Eunice had no roomates and neither did Doug or Ken when they stayed there). My roomate was actually a combination of Steven and I so the two of us got along quite well since we weren't playing Starcraft of Guild Wars together.

The next day, we had six hours of rehearsal. After the first 3.5, we got a break. Eunice and I went to Walgreens to get toothpaste for her and groceries for me, then we went to a Vietnamese restaurant. After that, we had two hours of concerts, then 2.5 hours of rehearsal, then we got shuttled back to the hotel where we were able to drop off our things before getting shuttled back to the school for 2 other concerts. I skipped those concerts though armed with 32 fluid ounces of juice and a determination to get over my sickness before the Dash on Sunday.

On Friday, we only had an hour and 45 minutes of rehearsal before having two hours of concerts. I skipped though as I had plans to meet Rachel for lunch. Before I left though, I saw a girl walk by and I thought "Wow, except for the hair, that looks EXACTLY like Sam!" Then I remembered having a conversation with people from NAU and I realized it was actually her, so I went over to surprise her and say hi. I didn't expect to see anyone I knew besides Rachel there. Sam said they were playing in the second wave of concerts that afternoon (which I was originally going to skip) and that it might be a train wreck and that I should come, so I planned to. After that, I went to have lunch with Rachel and her good friend Dana. It was nice to catch up and we sat around talking for a very quick hour and a half before I had to get back to rehearsal. After the rehearsal, I saw Sam play and she got to take some solos so that was kind of cool to see. NAU wasn't terrible, but Sam agreed with me that it could have been better. After the concert ended, I congratulated her, then went to sit with Rachel and Dana and their gay friend to watch the UNR band play since I guess they had a couple friends in it. After the concert, I had to go back to the hotel and Rachel had to leave to beat the snow on the mountains or she would have been trapped in Reno over break and I think her family had plans to go somewhere over break, so she really had to get back. I said goodbye and left for the hotel. The banquet and jam session and cocktail hour were that night for about 6 hours and would have been a great chance to socialize, but I valued winning the dash on Sunday much higher than possibly having sex, so I stayed in and drank juice, watched the end of Talladega Nights, got 10 hours of sleep (a welcome change from the less than 8 we were averaging), and got better. I also went out for a slurpee to soothe my sore throat. It was so cold outside that in the 15 minutes it took me to walk back, it hardly melted at all. It was a very good slurpee.

On Saturday, we didn't have to get going until later because other bands were using our rehearsal room and conductor Duffy said we were pretty good already and the hour and 45 minute rehearsal would only prove that more. We had a couple hours of concerts to listen to and I had to go since Ken was there. We sat next to each other for some reason, but it was cool because it gave us both someone to analyze the music with. After that, he took Eunice and I to lunch which made her happy because she had expected Doug to do the same whereas I did not expect him to and did not care when he did not. We came back for the dress rehearsal after that, then had a half hour break before the performance. It went okay. After that, we rushed to the airport and caught our flight with little problems. I got picked up by my dad and my uncle, then went back to the house and met up with the whole family before my uncle and aunt and my cousin and her fiance and their son had to leave.

The next morning was the morning of the St. Patrick's Day Dash. My personal 20th one (been doing it since before I was 1). Last year, I was lied to by the evil bad-at-estimating-distances man and this time I knew the course and was not going to lose to Kathryn by one second again. I was a bit worried though as I hadn't been running recently and I was still really sick, but I was running the race with the motto "If I don't need to lay down at the end, I didn't run hard enough." The race was going well, I was running just behind Kathryn like I did last year. When we came up on the final turn, the evil guy was not there (I didn't see him this time around at all, which was good for him as I would have punched him in the head as I went by for costing me last year's race). I started sprinting when I thought it was the last turn, but we still had a quarter mile and I wasn't going to stop running hard. I almost threw up, but I was determined to win, so I held my head to the side of the course and was ready to do it, but was able to stop myself from having to. In the end, I beat Kathryn, who was also in pain from running so hard. The times came in today and I beat her by 10 seconds. After the finish line, I had to lay down for a bit before we got to go around looking at the freebies offered at the end of the race. I found out Kathryn's race motto was "If I need to lay down after the race, I need to work out more" which I think I might use in the offseason haha. It felt really good to finally win and now we might start doing cool costumes for the races in the future even though I'll still try to win because I have to cath her in number of wins.

Today I had my French final in which one of the questions asked about a hypothetical shopping trip. I made up a story about how I had to go to Libby Liu (sp?) to get a new bedazzler to prepare for my upcoming BBQ. I wonder what the professor will think of that or if she expects no less of me by now. This week is going to be nice. I have a final tomorrow, a final on Wednesday, then spring break for me. I'll be gone from Friday to Monday at noon. I'm going to see where Edward Cullen lives. Actually, I'm going there because I have family there. My grandpa's sister lives up there (the one we helped move over in Eastern Washington). After that sometime, we gotta get a Star Wars marathon going or at least try to. We can always put it off to summer. We should also do a LAN party, so make sure we pressure Ben to do that. Until later, peace out. I'll get pictures up for sure this week.