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.

HWW

"Homework Week" is what that means in case you were wondering. When you're reading this post, assume if I'm not mentioning doing something, I was doing homework right up until I was going to bed every night except Thursday night onwards. I did do a lot of homework on Thursday, but also some stuff I wanted to do. Anyway, I'll just make the post because I'm going to finish up my homework today so that I have more time tomorrow to play Starcraft with Keir (my once chance until summer).

Monday:
Band was mostly just running through our songs. Before we started, Ken took me and the flute girl aside and told us the preliminary plan for transportation regarding this Reno trip. He suggested carpooling to and from the airport. Now being all gentlemanly and that, I was going to offer we carpool in my car, but before I could offer that, the other girl was just like "I'm getting my own ride." It was unexpected, but to be honest, I'm probably glad we're not carpooling.

Tuesday:
I had the recording session for improv. It went pretty well except for my solos. They were mostly technically correct, but I was trying to mess around too much and I don't think they went well. This week, we get CDs of all the songs and get to listen to them in class, so I'll see how I did. If I like anything, I might even post some tunes to the blog. After the session, I went to meet dad at Key Arena for the Seattle University basketball game. I guess it was for the bank (since they make a lot of loans for Seattle U) and we had pretty good (and free!) seats. Most of the bank people left by the end of the first half though. When I say most left, I mean dad and I were the only ones left by the second half of the second half. There were 3 guys aside from us from the bank after halftime. They won, which was cool and other than that, it was just a good game.

Wednesday:
I had to register for my classes. I'm only taking 16 credits, so it will be nice. Still more than the average student though. I got kind of screwed on sciences and have to take Human Biology, but I figure that's a small price to pay for not starting school until 10:30am. I will still have improv making me stay longer twice a week, but the other 3 days, I'll only be around campus for 2 hours (unless I hang out with the trumpet section some days). It will be sweet. After school, I was going to meet grandpa for lunch, but instead my time was spent doing about 9 hours of homework. Fun.

Thursday:
Our French class unanimously agreed to convince the professor to push the test back so that we would have more time to study our compositions. We were successful, so that was pretty cool. I went home after jazz and did some homework, but had to come back for the second improv session. I forgot my music and my sheet of the changes, so I had to write up the chart really quick and had to just wing it on the changes. I don't think I did very well, but I can't wait to hear how it turned out. After that session was over, I found myself looking at a lot of homework that wasn't due immediately. I started a bunch of assignments, but was unable to finish any, so I played a couple hours of Mass Effect 2 to cap off the night.

Friday:
I didn't really get any homework done though I did try. I wound up playing a lot of Mass Effect 2 and Guild Wars because I had been doing a lot of homework all week and I figured it was time for some fun time. That night, we had to set up for the booster auction at Shorewood. All the rooms had to be organized and the way people were running around confused, you'd think my mom was the only one that knew what to do. While she was organizing 2 of the silent auction rooms, I took a swing at organizing the third which was something I had never done, but was surprisingly easy. I was amazed at how all it took to get people to figure out simple things was someone to take charge and delegate everything. I did that and used super-ocd-organization power to get everything running in that room just as quickly as mom did in her rooms.

Saturday:
Steven and I went to UWB's last winter league game. We did okay and the great weather was really a plus. I was happy to get back to Mass Effect 2 afterwards though. Later, I played a few hours of Guild Wars with Davis and we realized we had not talked in quite a long time. I also found out what my parents bought at the auction. Usually, they buy a lot of useless crap, but this time (er, I mean AND this time) they bought some really stupid looking art that are 'worth the frames they came in' (I'd like to take this opportunity to copyright that last phrase). One good purchase though was Windows 7 for 20 bucks! That was pretty cool. I can't wait to put it on this summer.

Sunday:
I met grandpa for lunch at Costco, then took him grocery shopping. While there, I came across a girl that could have been this one girl I've been trying to find unsuccessfully for years. She disappeared though and I never got a chance to ask her who she was. If you want to know more, just ask me. I don't feel like posting the whole story. After that, I hurried home and did massive amounts of homework before going to the Jazz Band performance at Tula's. We did okay. Definitely could have done better. After that, I did a lot more homework until I went to bed.

Today:
In Jazz Band, we sight read some tunes, including a really crappy samba adaptation of "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood" (Mr. Roger's song). Aside from that, I've been doing homework. Now Keir can't play anymore SC until tomorrow, so I'm doing more homework now so I will be able to play with him before I go to Reno on Wednesday.

I owe y'all pictures still, I know. I'll post them next week sometime since I'll actually have free time (it's finals week). Until then, peace out.

Now regular life can resume

Well the Olympics ended already. I didn't really get into them this year until late in the game (I go into it in the Saturday part of the post). I'm going to keep this post hopefully somewhat short as due to the band trip I'm taking next week, I am forced to add a lot of homework in to this week, which is also unfortunate because I already had a lot of things to do. We have our recording sessions for improv on Tuesday and Thursday for 3 hours each. Also, I have a basketball game on Tuesday, a haircut on Thursday, and band today. When I'm not doing those things, I'll be sitting here at my computer wishing I could find time to play some SC2 beta when i will instead be forced to do ridiculous amounts of homework. Fortunately, also due to the band trip next week, this is my last 5 day week of the quarter. I am excited. Next quarter, I'll be slacking off (slacking off for me, I'll still be taking more than 15 credits though) and it will not be as hectic as this quarter. Also, I'm looking forward to being done with this stupid-ass math class. The teacher is starting to get worse and worse. Actually, I have an assignment open right now for that class I'm working on. I'm making this post during the periods when I get mad at his lack of organization/general lack of anything good. Needless to say, I have to take those breaks a lot, so I'm getting this post done rather quickly haha.

Monday:
Actually, I covered that last post. Let's move on.

Tuesday:
I had a lot of homework to do and spent most of the day doing it. I managed to find time later in the day to do a very small amount of Guild Wars.

Wednesday:
I had lunch with Grandpa at Costco, then we did some grocery shopping and he had to go back to his place to sign up for trips they take at his place (they go on tours all over the place) for events in March. He signed up and I did some cleaning and organizing of his place. After that, we went over to my aunt's house to finally and completely clean out the pod. Mission accomplished. Now we can get rid of it after almost a year. Actually, it should be getting taken away today.

Thursday:
I had an easy day in improv because we were just practicing the songs we signed up for for recordings with our respective groups. I enjoyed getting to stay up the hour later as it gave me some time to relax and have my first real afternoon off that whole week.

Friday:
I tried to do some homework after school, but I wound up not getting all that much done. Around 5:30, the jazz band was playing for the school's benefit concert for Haiti. This concert was very poorly put together though. It was supposed to run from 12:30pm-9:30pm. All but 3 of the conductors for various bands were out of town (Doug included in the out of town group). We had no piano and the bass had no amp for the first song and after that, we just had some general suckery going on. Luckily, I don't think the 5 (7 if you include the sound crew) people in the audience really cared or noticed. After we played for half an hour, the students in charge told us we were supposed to play for an hour. Half the band had already left though, so those few of us that are also in improv stuck around and just played a couple songs we knew off the tops of our heads. It was kind of cool to get some practice in if nothing else. After that, our teacher for improv showed up and said the three of us remaining could do some improv songs with him, but in the meantime, he would fill some time with a 25 minute bass solo. During it, I decided that they wanted to play some more advanced songs (they were in the advanced improv class), so I decided to get out of there early since I had long since fulfilled my obligation to the people putting on the concert.

When I got home, I got some help installing the SC2 beta from Steven. I can now play against nobody any time I want. It's actually helpful and awesome to get to see all the units and have them attack each other and see how powerful they are. It's also good for testing builds and stuff like that. I took some screenshots and I'm not sure how good of an idea posting them is, but in the interest of "pix or it didn't happen," I'll try to get some of them up. Oh and for those of you that noticed, yes, I can actually take screenshots in Starcraft now. It's awesome. (they would always be corrupted when I took them in Starcraft 1 for some reason).

Saturday:
We got up early to go to the Olympics in Vancouver. It's a long story, but the short of it is I saw a report on the Holland Heineken House (which was the de-facto Dutch hq during the olympics) and I told my parents about it and that we should go see it. Somehow, that became a serious suggestion as mom wanted to go see the Olympics, but tickets were way too expensive to go to any events. People dad talked to said it was worth it to go and look around and be in the environment. I would agree, it was a pretty cool experience. We saw the cauldron, gold medal curling, the Dutch hq, and much more. I'll post some pictures (though I know most of you would really rather see the SC2 screens if you had to choose). I wanted to get to the Russian house, but the wait was over 3 hours to get in, so we decided against doing that.

Sunday:
I spent the day doing a lot of homework and most of that was writing an essay in French which took way longer than it should have.

Today:
I have been doing homework today and I will be during every free moment I get this week until possibly Friday afternoon depending on how fast I get through all of it. My very ambitious goal is to actually get some time to myself by Thursday night, but unfortunately that might not happen. Here's hoping though. I'll desperately try to squeeze in time to post pictures this week, but no promises. Until next week, peace out.

My Econ Professor being cool:
Bob: Now you can go out and party and all that on weekends and in the short run you can maintain that with coffee, energy drinks, methanphetamines...

Bob: Wow they sure like to keep this room hot, huh? How's about I rip off my shirt now and show off my supply and demand tattoos?

Bob: The one nice thing about being congested is I get to enjoy one nice day of being a very sexy baritone. Ladies, try to restrain yourselves as I give this lecture.


Me: Ok do we want to vanquish in Elona or EotN?
Steven: idc
Me: Oh no, not this again.
Pick a vowel.
Steven: y
Me: God damnit, Steven.

Me: PAX is getting really crowded though at the rate it's growing.
Steven: Yeah, they should have it in 2 locations in the same weekend, like two different buildings.
Have that card game shit somewhere else.

Me: I gotta catch up with you here
Steven: Don't worry, it's not a race.
If it were a race, I would have won by now.

Seems like it's been a lot longer than it has.

Even though I've only had a few days longer of a break between posts, it feels like I've been away much longer. Perhaps that is because I have two Sai sightings in recent memory and since Sai sightings are usually so rare, it just feels like those couldn't have possibly happened so closely together. Anyway, a bunch of stuff has happened so I'll try to get right to the post while mom and Kathryn finish watching their crappy tv shows so I can start watching 24.

Saturday:
I got to bed at about 1:00am even though I had to get up at 4:00am. Until he went to bed at 11, dad regularly had something that brought him downstairs when he would remind me how early we were leaving. I decided that no matter how much sleep I got, I would be angry in the morning because I was being woken up at 4am. For that reason, I decided to stay up until 1am playing Mass Effect 2. It was well worth it. The plane ride to Portland was nice as was the one from there to the airport in California. We made our way over to the park and hung out there until about 10pm when we went back to the hotel (which is early for us when we're at Disneyland) for sleep.

Sunday-Tuesday:
We had the same routine, going into the park and riding rides. We found out they're making a sequel to Star Tours which I hope will be nice. It's going to be 3D and involving pod racing. I hope they don't totally scrap the original, I would be really sad. Also, while we were there, there was a cheerleading convention going on in town so there were many hot high school age girls ("I keep gettin' older, but they stay the same age") and I got some looks from some of them and sent some right back. Not to sound cocky, no conversations actually came about. I did see a girl though wearing a Captain America shield logo on her shirt. I almost ran after her to ask her to marry me, but I decided it would have been awkward. Probably should have done it, she was fairly attractive. Also, realizing I had forgotten to tell Doug I was going to be gone, I decided to email in sick which turned out to be true as I got really sick from stupid kids that hadn't yet learned how to cover their own coughs. On a bus ride to the park once, there was a Scottish family riding the bus with us and an American guy making small talk with them. He was a total noob though as he started talking about how his parents were going up to Scotland and he told his dad only one word "Jameson." I facepalmed at that because anybody knows Jameson is IRISH whiskey. The three of them said "That's Irish!" He didn't seem to notice because after that, he mentioned Guinness, which somehow IS EVEN MORE IRISH THAN JAMESON. I facepalmed even harder at that comment. Overall, it was a pretty fun time there and I can't wait to go back especially now that I know about the new Star Tours and the fact that they're bringing back Captain EO (wikipedia it if you're interested).

Wednesday:
We were in the parks until 2pm and then we had to go catch our flight home. We made it back around 8. I got in some homework and went to bed even though I had a really strong feeling that I shouldn't go to macro the next day.

Thursday:
Turns out once again, I shouldn't have ignored my strong feeling. It has a perfect track record. Macro was cancelled, so I just spent the morning doing nothing important until French. Jazz went well, but it was kind of hard to play while my nose was clogged up. It was easier while I was playing French Horn though. While I was playing it, our improv professor stopped by and saw me playing and said he really wanted me to come play in the improv class using it, so I'm going to tomorrow. I had the same problem in improv.

Friday:
We had been plagued by absences in the trumpet section all week apparently and that day was no exception. On Tuesday, there were 2; on Wednesday, there were 3; on Thursday, there were 4; and on Friday, we were back down to 3 (bare in mind we have 6 trumpets now and there has been only one day the whole quarter when all 6 of us have been in the same room). It was a sight reading day, which was pretty cool because it was really casual. I busted out some high C's which was surprising because I didn't know my range was that secure up there, but it was nice to find out. After that, I met Grandpa at Costco for lunch and then we ran some errands and I came home. I spent some time playing Guild Wars with Steven, but then we got bored (vanquishing an area with 400+ enemies will do that) so I decided to play some Mass Effect 2. My xbox had other plans unfortunately. I got the red ring of death for the second time and just my luck, the warranty was up a few months ago (I guess it doesn't get renewed when you get a new one (don't get me started on that even)). I determined with no warranty to void, I could try whatever I wanted because I wasn't about to spend $150 to wait for 8 weeks when there was a chance I could fix it for free. I used the towel trick which I learned about the first time I got the ring. It worked and the xbox is going fine for now. At the very least, I wanted to limp it through the end of Mass Effect 2 (which has worked) so now I'll see how much longer it works for, but then I'll just figure out a way to get rid of it.

Saturday:
I got to play some Mass Effect 2 before going to frisbee. We got stomped by some high school teams which was pretty embarassing, but it was nice to be playing. I didn't get much playtime in though because I was still sick and was getting tired really fast.

Sunday:
I spent more time playing Mass Effect 2. We went to the Globetrotters as well which was cool. After that, more homework and more Mass Effect 2.

Today:
I had to make up my Econ test from the previous week which I did after school. After that, I had no homework due tomorrow, so I beat Mass Effect 2. I really liked the game and I'm starting my second playthrough now. Band was uneventful. Our guest soloist showed up and all the older ladies were really giving him the eye which was kind of strange. Now it's late and I'm going to go to bed. I took a break to watch 24, so it's actually almost 11:00 now. I'll post a quote post this Wednesday I think. Sorry, this post seems like it was kind of boring, but I'll try to make more interesting ones from now haha. Peace out.

Special Friday Edition

Well hello everyone. I wonder how many of you are actually reading this before Monday. If you're reading this on Monday, fear not, I shall be back on my regular posting schedule next week. The reason I'm posting today is because tomorrow we're heading out to Disneyland for a few days because once again we found a way to go there for dirt cheap (excitingly cheap!) and we'll be there until Wednesday night. So as not to screw up my schedule too much, I'm going to just have a long week and post the following Monday after I get back just to make it easier. Ok well now I'm going to get on with the post because it's going to be short and I have some stuff to do today.

Monday:
I had that math midterm. I got there and finally met my arch nemesis of the quarter, my math teacher. Actually, he looks like a somewhat older Gus Sorola of RoosterTeeth (he's the dude in that picture btw if that wasn't obvious already). After that, I went to band and got there a couple minutes late. I had my dinner (some bread) in my pocket and I ate while playing which was probably not the best decision, but I was careful not to blow too many crumbs into my horn.

Tuesday:
I celebrated the fact that I had no immediately due homework by playing a lot of Mass Effect 2.

Wednesday:
I met Grandpa at Costco for lunch and then we went to do some more grocery shopping after that. When I got home, I did some homework, then played Guild Wars with Steven for a bit. While I was playing, dad came down and presented me with... bum bum bummm MY LOST BOSTON CD!!! I was so excited, it is one of my favorite CDs that I own (and has my favorite song of all time on it) and it's been missing for over a year. I guess he found it in the case for the soundtrack to The Lion King which brings up a few questions:
1. Why was my Boston CD in the case for the soundtrack to The Lion King?
2. Where is the soundtrack to The Lion King?
3. Why do we have the soundtrack to The Lion King?
4. Why was dad looking for the soundtrack to The Lion King?
Anyways, I was happy to have that CD back at long last and it made my night.

Thursday:
We had the second day of midterms in improv and I did rather well. I had done well on Tuesday, but this time around was more fun because I was less nervous. Also, to teach a lesson about how you don't need every instrument present to cover every part, the professor called up the five horn players (4 trumpets and a sax) to play a song and we figured out who was soloing, who was doing the bassline and all that and I had a pretty good solo on it (well it was good for me at least). The bassists found it funny when our bassline players were running out of breath. After school, I did some homework and then some Guild Wars.

Today:
I had one class which was nice, but I also had homework to do. After doing it, I left this post open and I don't know how early I started it, but I'm looking right now at the clock and it's 9:10, so it will be interesting to see the timestamp when I post to see when I started it. Anyway, I went to the mall with Sai to get the discolored Pichu so that when I get SoulSilver, I can get deformed Pichu! After that, he and Steven came back to my house and we played Brawl for a while and stopped aroung 8. Now I'm about to finish this post and play Mass Effect 2 before having to pack and go to bed to wake up early tomorrow (6am flight :/). Until later, peace out.

The Saints Came Marching In

That was quite a good game yesterday up until the last few minutes when it was obvious who was going to win. Both teams had a great season, but the Colts already have a recent Superbowl championship under their belts, so the Saints deserved this one. Congrats to them and all New Orleans fans, hopefully as a Seahawks and Texans fan, I will someday get to see one of those teams get a Superbowl win. This week, during the week, I might say I played Guild Wars when what I mean is I did a repeatable quest (in Guild Wars (about a 2.5 minute loop of actions)) over and over to get a lot of things that will be worth good money in the future. I guess I'll just get on with the week and I'll keep it brief because I should study for my math midterm today.

Monday:
Band was rather uneventful. Ken even decided to cut this one really annoying song from our concert, so that's going to be even better.

Tuesday:
I spent most of the day doing math homework, but I had time for some Guild Wars later in the day.

Wednesday:
We found out that only one person brough Suckol the money this week, so despite the reminders, the team was just not motivated and there will be no SWUF this year. It is very unfortunate both because I wanted to be able to get some good playing in this spring and I will now probably wind up going to Victoria. The Victoria part isn't so bad though because I found out Mike from jazz band might go with his own band as well, so that would be cool. Also if I go, I can hit up Lyle's Place to get some CDs for cheap. After school, I played a lot of guild wars.

Thursday:
Chelsea was finally back. She had been gone for about a week and a half, so it was good to have her back, but unfortunately our two lead trumpets were gone, so it was the fantastic four for that day. I did some homework early, then played a lot of guild wars for the rest of the night.

Friday:
It was just the four of us in jazz band again. There were technically only 3 trumpets though because I was on my horn the whole class that day. It was a nice change of pace from playing trumpet all class. Doug also gave me a part for trombone (that's what I play on most songs except the one where I have the alto flute part) and I had to transpose it in my head as we went. I did a lot better than I thought I would especially considering I was transposing and switching it from bass clef up to treble clef, which I guess isn't a terribly big deal now that I think about it. I did some guild wars after school, but got bored of it since I had been doing it all week, so I took a Mass Effect 2 break, then came back to guild wars

Saturday:
I woke up too late to go to frisbee with bothell, so I just played Mass Effect 2, then did some guild wars until we left for the Billy Joel and Elton John concert at Key Arena. It was originally going to be in November of last year, but Elton John got sick and they had to postpone. Billy Joel actually apologized during his set though, which was nice. He had a better set all around than Elton in my opinion because he actually talks to the audience and warms you up with jokes. He also did a nice little treat for the Seattle fans by playing some Hendrix for us. I thought that was pretty cool. Overall, it was an awesome concert and the 3 hours (yes really) flew by. It was really loud though and I went to bed with my ears ringing quite loudly.

Sunday:
I spent the morning playing Mass Effect 2, then I decided to keep playing because I had had enough of guild wars for the week. I went over to grandpa's place for the superbowl because they have a little theater there with a big projector. We also celebrated my aunt's 60th birthday while we were there. It was a cool game and I'm happy for the Saints, but it's too bad the Colts lost because they're my 2nd favorite team. After we came home, everyone went to bed, but I stayed up to play some more Mass Effect 2 because I had already done all my homework.

Today:
We only had the three amigos in jazz band today because Chelsea was gone along with the other two guys, so the songs we played we only had 3rd and 4th parts for. There was one song though where I had a 5th part and one where I had 2nd, so without the lead, we were hanging out naked there in the section. It was funny to realize how loud the lead is playing usually. Now I have a math midterm coming up in a few hours, so I gotta get studying. Have a good week everybody.

Hey I just remembered today that I need to make a prediction for the Super Bowl. I am quite happy because I got both my team predictions right last week and that means I got my initial prediction right that I made back in December (although come on, it was a pretty easy call with these 2 teams). Anyway, here goes my pick.

Saints vs. Colts: Colts by 7:
Last year's superbowl was a good offense vs. defense game, but this time around it's offense vs offense. Now I'll be rooting for the Colts, but the Saints sure deserve the win and I wouldn't be sad if they won, but I think the Colts just have more offensive power than the Saints do and the Colts might have some problems with the Saints offense, but their defense can be up to the task especially if the offense really goes all out and gets a lot of points on the board.

There's no such thing as 2 much Mass Effect

Well last week certainly dragged on and on due to the fact that I had Mass Effect 2 staring me down all week. On Friday though, I finally cracked it open and played it all night long. And we knew it was special because we waited. Anyway, last week was also busy due to poor time management, but this week looks like it shall be much better in that regard. In other news, you may have read on Steven's blog that the frisbee team for Shorewood is not happening this year due to lack of turnout at practices and lack of people actually paying. Well last night, we got an email from the captain (who hadn't even paid himself (that's how undedicated this team is)) saying that they had until Wednesday now to get their shit together so hopefully there will be a team otherwise Steven and I might have other coaching opportunities available. We'll have to see. I would really like an excuse to get out of Victoria though.

Monday:
Right after making the post, I kept going on my homework. I had left way too much for that night and I wound up having to stay up late to do it. In band, nothing much happened, but it looks like our next concert will be fairly easy for the horn section which is nice because last quarter we had some real chop busters.

Tuesday:
I skipped the lab for improv (since we only need to go to one a week) and hopped on over to Best Buy to pick up Mass Effect 2. On my way back, there was nobody there for frisbee so I went home and spent the rest of the afternoon doing just homework.

Wednesday:
We had a test in macro and I forgot my calculator so I made a lot of percentage calculations by hand (using what I knew off the top of my head to get close to what I thought the answer was). Fortunately, Tim showed up late and let me use his calculator to check my calculations. After classes, I had some free time which I used to play some Guild Wars with Steven. I spent most of the day doing homework though.

Thursday:
After the busy week I had had, I decided to skip Macro since we just had a test the previous day. I then had to skip French as well, but it was just going to be an unimportant day anyway. I showed up for Jazz Band, then went to the improv class and it was pretty fun because only a few people stuck around. After that, there was no frisbee since it was a finals day for Shorewood, so I went home and did some quick homework then hopped online and did more Guild Wars with Steven.

Friday:
Doug had something going on, so I only had one class that day. I went to French and then hurried home and played Mass Effect 2 for several hours. It's even better than the first one. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil anything for Eric so if you want to know, you can ask me in person. At around 6, I met up with my grandpa and my aunt at her house and we went to go to my cousin's birthday party at her new house in Federal Way. It's a nice house and they(my cousin, her brother, and her boyfriend) have all been working on it themselves and they've done a very good job so far. After we got back home, I played more Mass Effect 2 until it was late.

Saturday:
I played Mass Effect 2 until Eric texted me reminding me that there was a double header I was supposed to go to. They had no subs when I got there an hour and a half late. Shortly after I got there, Jasmine dislocated her finger and had to go home so the remaining 6 of us played the next team in a 5 on 5. It was the team we played over the summer where we were a man down and I messed up my ankle when I stepped in a sprinkler hole. Steven and I had wondered if we would have beaten them if we had had a full side and maybe some subs. After playing them again, I know we definitely would have. After that, I headed straight home and spent the rest of the afternoon playing Mass Effect 2 of course. Eventually, I got kicked off the TV, so I played some Guild Wars/semi watching proleague with Steven via his livestream page. His "first recording" is pretty good because it was of us (with voices) playing a dungeon that was really ridiculously hard and it was late at night so lots of yelling and funny moments like "He's not stupid now, he's not stupid now!" and the final boss being ressurected.

Sunday:
I played Mass Effect 2 until lunch, then I ate lunch and spent the time up until the pro bowl doing homework. I have never really watched the pro bowl for the whole duration and I realized why last night. It's a huge joke. I was productive during it though, doing a lot of French homework, fully cleaning my keyboard for the first time in 8 years, and fixing my watch. We had dinner with grandpa after that and then we came home and I finished some homework and went to bed.

Today:
We had homework assigned last Thursday in Macro, but since so few people showed up today, we got extra credit which will at the very least cancel out my missed assignment so yay, I dodged a bullet there. We had a somewhat easy French test and a sectional in Jazz Band after that. Now I'm here and I will do some homework and if time allows, hopefully some Guild Wars before band. Steven found a way to make good money now that Wintersday is back for a week and since we have mostly figured out what titles to max, I now have a better idea of what kind of funding I will require and it is more than I have, so I'm looking forward to making some good bank off of this.

Until later, peace out.

Ok this was actually going to be a Things I Hate because my teacher was a noob, but I looked at my quotes and there are a lot so I figured it was better to unload them.

Steve: There goes Doug out there.
Me: I thought he left to go get dinner.
Steve: No, he just left to go masturbate
Me: Man, he’s living my dream out there.
Steve: Haha, you’re pretty quick. You’ll make a good lawyer someday.
Me: Why? Because I’m quick with masturbation jokes?
If it please the court, I’m going to pound one out really quick.
Steve: Judge, sidebar?

Doug: Why the hell are you all the way up here? There was a chair back there in the corner for a reason.
Ian: Oh, I heard you say “The rhythm section can come up” so I figured you meant move forward.
Doug: Oh, well I didn’t you can go back now.
Ian: I see how it is, go back in your corner, guitar player

Steve Kim: Jazz improv is really different from classical composition. With jazz, you’re making it up on the spot for yourself. With classical composers, you have a guy that plays “composer’s piano” which is basically really crappy piano. They then take their composition and give it to some guy that’s really good at his instrument and say “hey, here’s my bitchin’ etude” or whatever and then the guy just takes it and practices it over and over.

Doug: We gotta have everyone loud in this part like we’re in a big orchestra playing for Star Wars or something when Luke off’s one’a those cats.

me: nice
i found it the other day and i liked it
i was glad i could reuse it
O: see?
everyone loves reusing your posts, even you!
me: yeah!
i can't help it, i just write so well!
O: lol
me: especially my earliest posts
my overuse of the word "tight"
i dont remember how long its been since ive used that
in that context at least
O: did you really use the word tight a lot?
i dont remember that
me: yeah i guess so
i used it in my early posts then abruptly stopped
i dont remember saying it that much though after 8th grade but my posts cannot lie
O: link me one
me: http://dutchpride.blogspot.com/2005/05/star-wars.html
i think that was the last instance of using it
idk, i dont go back there very often
it was the boring years when i had nothing important to say
which i guess is similar to now
but now is interesting because
um
O: lol
me: it's recent
O: loll
me: you read it?
O: who was fink?
me: in it's paragraphy glory?
no idea
random person
O: those randos sure love you
me: excluding gregg, i've had 2 random ppl comments on my blog
and yeah
im just a stalker magnet
O: just think
if you get a six pack
and then post pics of it on ur blog
youll get so many stalkers
me: indeed
my female readers will finally leave comments
"fap fap fap"
that's what they'll say
ill let you take that however you want
O: haha..wait what?
i dont think thats really the sound it makes
if they're masturbating
me: it'll be "moosh moosh moosh"
O: hahaha
you gotta quote yourself on that one
me: i wonder if girls actually say that

me: wow
quote from my math book
"...is called the interquartile range. It's commonly abbreviated IQR (and pronounced "eye-cue-are." not "ikker")"
NO SHIT
this is why i took stats online
otherwise i would blurt out all the time and the teacher would hate me
but i would have a lot of funny stories i bet
O: hahahah
not "ikker"
that's great
me: does my math book think im retarded?
congrats on taking stats! good for you! you're trying to learn!
O: "u r smrt!"
me: haha

Hard to believe that was only a four day week

Well I sure had a busy week last week. Having concert related things three nights in one week really takes a toll on one's time. Anyway, this week will see fewer posts from me. Since I don't usually call the pro bowl, I won't bother this year. I will not make a football post tomorrow, but instead, I will make it next Tuesday. On Wednesday, there will be a Things I Hate if I can come up with something in the class that gives me enough rage to make a longer post on. If not, I'll unload a bunch of quotes that I've been meaning to for a while. In fact, chances are good I will do that, so some quotes will most likely come up on Wednesday unless my math teacher pisses me off somehow (which is possible). Ok well that all being said, I shall now try to recall events from the past week.

Monday:
If you recall, last Monday I was making my post and being concerned about having a ton of homework to do. Well due to efficiency and things (such as being really smart and awesome and talented and sexy), I was able to finish all my homework before 24 started! Or so I thought. Let me now take you back to the previous Friday:

There was an important Jazz Band rehearsal, so I had to leave French a few minutes early to get to Jazz Band earlier to warm up and hash some stuff out with the section right before class. I asked the teacher if I could leave 10 minutes early and she said that was okay. I considered asking her if we were going to have any homework, but I assumed we wouldn't because we already had 20 pages of workbook problems to do for Tuesday. I wound up not asking her and she said anything.

Now fast forward (yes Orion, FAST forward) to Monday. 24 had ended and as I went to shut down my computer for the night, I saw a message from my friend in the class that sits to my left (Tony). He was asking me about the homework she had assigned and indicated it was something other than the workbook stuff (which I had done already thinking it was the only French homework). After much searching and some help from Paul, I discovered she wanted us to write a brief report (2-3 paragraphs) on the history and current events of Haiti. It of course had to be in French. Now you might not think that was so bad; but in the class so far we have only just begun learning future tense and that is our only tense besides present tense. Needless to say, future tense sure as hell wasn't helping me to write that. It took a long time and I got to bed very late sadly. An unfitting end to a day where I was so productive.

Tuesday:
I had considered skipping my Macro class, but I finally figured out the downside to having two back to back classes in the same classroom (Macro and French are in the same room and French immediately follows Macro). Even if I skipped, the first professor would notice my having skipped when I walked into the room. I showed up on time and sat through the lectures and tried hard not to fall asleep. In improv, not too many people stuck around for the lab and it was pretty fun. Only Kathryn showed up to frisbee even though it was in the 50's and sunny, so I reluctantly said screw it and we left. It was probably for the best though as I had a lot of homework and spent the rest of the night doing it. That night, Grandpa called me from his place. I guess the place had hired some trumpet guy to entertain the people there. Anyway, he was calling me to ask if I wanted to come bring my trumpet and play some tunes with this guy. It was an odd request and I of course said no because I knew that wasn't how it worked and besides, I was in an online test.

Wednesday:
I had a busy day of homework related things. I managed to sneak in some time to play Guild Wars with Steven before our sound check for the prism concert that night. The check was rather boring and uneventful. We got to see samples of all the groups performing. The Jazz Band was definitely the most lively and the rest had some okay songs. There was one fourhand piano duet (not sure that's what it's called, but it's where two people sit on the same bench and play the same piano) where both of the chicks were pretty attractive.

Thursday:
I skipped the lab because of the performance that night and I took the hour before frisbee to do some homework. Sukol had gotten on everyone's cases in the team meeting the previous day, so the turnout was good. Unfortunately, the skill level was not as good. We won't do that well this season, but it will at least hopefully be fun to coach still. After that, I showered, quickly did some homework, then headed off to the prism concert. The rest of the songs everyone played were pretty lame and for our last song (which was a quicker tempo), Doug told us "Come on let's kick this thing up a notch to make it more interesting." We actually played all our songs quite well, it was nice. Since I got to stay up later, I got to play some Guild Wars with Steven.

Friday:
I got to sleep in since it was Friday and after the business of the week, I was quite happy to do that. After school, I did some homework until the prism concert. Most people played different songs this time and they were all more interesting. At one point, the Funkngroove was playing "Shake Your Groove Thing" and Steve and I were over in our section singing and dancing along. I'm sure it would have looked odd if the audience had been watching us since everyone else around us was doing what we were supposed to do, stand quietly and stand still. The two cute piano players found us entertaining, so that was cool. It turns out one of them is married and one is single and from Ukraine (very nice!). Sadly (depending on how you look at it (personally, I don't feel it's particularly good or bad), that is the closest thing I have to an amorous affair anymore since I found out the Dutch girl that sits next to me has a boyfriend). After the concert, Steven signed on, then we got our legendary guardian titles. It was pretty good. Later on, he left to go "celebrate his birthday" so I signed off and did some Assassin's Creed 2.

Saturday:
We took grandpa to lunch at Taco Del Mar because we wanted to talk to the guy that owns that store over by Costco to ask how he was doing since Taco Del Mar had filed for bankruptcy. He seemed optimistic, so that was good, I would hate to lose that place. Afterwards, I did some homework briefly, but spent most of the day gaming and waiting for either a call to go over to my aunt's house to move some stuff around or to go up to hang out with the guys from the trumpet section to practice our jazz improv stuff. Neither call came, so I was gaming most of the day. That night, Keir and I watched proleague while I vanquished. He watched the Ace vs Woonjin match since he had a player on his fantasy team in it. I watched estro vs CJ and we both filled each other in on what was happening. It was a rather entertaining way to spend the evening.

Sunday:
It was football day as well as homework day. I spent most of the day doing both of those things. I got both my picks right and I even gone one game dead on (Saints by 3 points) and I was close on another (Colts by 14 (they won by 13)). I was sad I couldn't beat my record from last year, but doing that well was sure nice. I also had to go over to my aunt's house to move some stuff around. After that, I spent the rest of the night doing homework.

Today:
I had not much going on. In French, we watched a video in which one of the guys said "Je les rape." Corrine (Dutch girl that sits next to me) and I were laughing a lot harder and much longer than we should have been, but it was really funny. Immaturity is awesome sometimes. I took grandpa to lunch and now I have some homework to do before band so I'd best be getting on with that and quickly. Until Wednesday, peace out.

Things I Hate: 11

Hello and welcome to another Things I Hate. That's right, it has returned from the dead! My math class online is run by a teacher that has the most terrible organization I have ever seen and after sharing with Orion some of the horror stories thus far in the quarter, he suggested I bring back Things I Hate, so I am. This week on Things I Hate: a total lack of organization.

Some background on this image, we had to take a quick survey and then we had to make a graph of classmates' answers to one of the questions asked. So he put the file up on blackboard and when I loaded it, I was this.

Now at the time, I had not read the assignment so the only logical thing I could think of was that he wanted us to organize this. I have no idea why he needed to make the question its own column and not the header for that column. Also, in the column before each question, there is a completely useless column that says something along the lines of "Question_ IDS." I don't know what that means, but it sure as hell didn't come in handy.

I mean seriously, if you're a STATISTICS teacher where the whole class is about charts and graphs, YOU WOULD THINK YOU WOULD AT LEAST KNOW HOW TO MAKE THOSE THINGS. It took me the whole week to do the assignment because every time I opened up this document, I would swear excessively at it before giving up and doing something else. It's not that hard to make a chart, do a column for each question and at the top, have the question and for the student answers, have the answer to the question. It's really simple and I'm questioning my teacher's ability to teach.

That's only one of the stupid parts of the assignment however. After reading the assignment, I noticed that he wanted us to make a graph of one set of data from this survey. This was no ordinary graph though, it had to be hand drawn. Now you may be thinking "David, that's not so bad, I hand draw graphs all the time." Well normally I would agree with you, BUT THIS IS AN ONLINE CLASS. WTF, WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DRAW SOMETHING AND SCAN IT? I signed up for this class so that I could do things ONLINE or ON A COMPUTER. Microsoft Paint would have been just fine. He also wanted the graphs to be "beautiful, neat, and organized." I came extremely close to just submitting a word document that said "You first."

Ok well that's it for this week. I have to ease myself back into being able to hate things or at least to try to complain about stupid things in an entertaining manner. Until later, peace out.

Well it's official, I cannot beat my record from last year. It was another half right week for me and hopefully I can finish strong by getting the remaining 3 games right. Here are my two picks this week.

Jets vs Colts: Colts by 14:
Well Rex Ryan has been saying his team should be favored in every game this postseason and I don't have anything against him, but I dislike being proven wrong. I don't know what was up with the Chargers. That was the first game I had seen them play all season and I don't know how they got an 11 game win streak with that kind of playing. Anyway, the Colts are the best team in football right now and even though the Jets beat them once during the regular season, this time, the Colts will have their good players on the field and they will take control early and they will hold that lead for the whole game and the Chargers (a team I like) shall be avenged.

Vikings vs Saints: Saints by 3:
This is the game I'm not sure about. The teams are evenly matched and it's possible it could go either way. I pick the Saints though because as we saw last week with the Vikings, their offense consists mainly of Brett Favre and Sidney Rice. The Saints have more options for scoring and I think that their ability to adapt and to use different players will give them an edge over the Vikings who only have a few stars. The Vikings could easily win though if they are able to shut down Drew Brees like they shut down Tony Romo last week.

Well that's it for this week. Fingers are crossed hoping I get these right. We'll see how I do this Sunday.

Hopefully the weeks will become less busy soon.

Howdy everyone. First of all, I have to say I GOT INTO THE HONOR BAND!!111 That means I will be going to Reno and unless Rachel is going on some family vacation that week, I will more than likely get to stop by and hang out. I'll mention it later in the post. I will make a post tomorrow about the footballz and then on Wednesday, come back and visit for a special post OOoooOooOo. With that all out of the way, I have little time left today (before 24 starts at least) and much homework to do, so I'll jump into the week.

Monday:
In band, we got a Beatles medley that sounds extremely cheesy, but what can you do? There's a cool horn solo that two of us played because it was poorly written and we need two horns playing to play over the backgrounds.

Tuesday:
I have decided to do labs for the improv class both Tuesday and Thursday because they only really wind up lasting until about 2:10 and that leaves me enough time to get to the truck and drive over to the fields to wait. The labs are cool because we just play the head of a song then solo for a really long time. It's good practice for my chops as well as for soloing to be in there more often and as long as the other trumpet players (the other 3 guys (not including the new guy) who are my friends in the class) stick around, I'm happy to stay there as well. I went straight to the fields, but it was raining and only one girl showed up so I gave her a ride back to near her house since she apparently lives close to me. After that, I went home and tried to do some homework, but didn't get as much done as I had hoped due to some things taking more time due to terrible organization by my professor.

Wednesday:
I had missed a call by grandpa for going to lunch on Sunday, so I took him to lunch on Wednesday to make up for it. After that, we ran a bunch of errands including getting him his new handicap parking permits. We got back to his place at 4:30 and I checked out the damage to the place. I guess on the 5th floor, a fire suppresant system pipe leaked and spilled water all down the walls and they've been reconstructing that wall since then. It's unfortunate that they had to deal with that problem since they're such nice people, but bad things happen to good people I guess. At 5, they had casino night there where you got fake money to bet with. I guess the girls wanted grandpa to bring me, so he did and we played for a while. Grandpa did pretty well at blackjack, okay at roulette and then I did really awesome at craps. It must have been beginners luck, but I almost tripled my amount of chips, but I had to leave so I gave them to grandpa and I heard he spread the wealth around to some other people that were running out of chips, which was nice of him.

Thursday:
During Jazz Band, we had some downtime at one point and Ken came into the room and said "David, I have a word for you." I said "Hopefully it's a good word." It was, he was there to tell me I got into the honor band. I'm going to be going to Reno along with the flute girl that texts in class a lot (who's actually a really good player as it turns out). Chelsea and Erik are on the wait list, so they could theoretically go, but they most likely will not. I haven't told Chelsea yet and I don't really want to now becuase she also wanted to go. Ah well, maybe no threesome for David, but at least I'll probably get to hang out with Rachel a couple times. After school, there was frisbee practice (which was a nice change of pace from people not showing up). Sukol got on people's cases again and despite the rain, 6 people actually showed up. We had a quick scrimmage then called practice early. After we got back, Steven and I did some vanquishing for a bit, then I got some homework going in preparation for the coming weekend event of double EotN points.

Friday:
After class, I stuck around with the guys (the 3 from the trumpet section that I'm in improv with) and we jammed for a while until our chops were dead since Doug was working us pretty hard for our upcoming concert. After that, I left to go get Orion and we went to the UW to meet Nikki and Drew for some teriyaki. It was cool to see them again and catch up. After that, Nikki had to take her brother to the art museum, so Orion and I went to check out Drew's house which was pretty cool. Eventually, Lucy called us and since we had little time before we had to get Orion back home for his dinner, we decided to go meet up with her. Once we got into her dorm, I called her to ask where she was and it turned out she was on the other side of the doorframe from us. I must say, I enjoyed this visit to Lucy's place much more than the one last year:

then we called Lucy for some reason and found out she was in her room with
Erika, Allison, and Kayla. We decided to go see them since Orion wanted to. I
didn't really need to see Erika and I didn't particularly want to ditch Nikki,
but she had a friend there, so we went. I didn't realize how much I never talked
to them until we got there. All four of them were in bed together and they all
climbed down so say hi.......to Orion. Being quickly forced out of the circle, I
stood in the background with Lucy's roomate, who seemed pretty cool because she
was unboxing a box so that it would take up less space in the recycle bin, which
is something only cool people do. Kayla actually did say hello to me, but
awkwardly as she passed me on her way out the door. I was glad we were only
there for about 3 minutes because it was really awkward for me. After that, we
walked Lucy up to the campus so she could meet up with her religion buddies for
some bible thumping.

After talking with her and Sarah for a while, our visit ended with pants on the ground (I'll let you take that any way you want). Orion and I headed back up to the truck and then to his house where he downloaded some classic rock from me and I left him with the huge stack of cd's to rip for the next day.

Saturday:
We met grandpa for lunch and then dropped him off and came back here to watch some football. I was proven right on the first game. After that, I went to play some frisbee with UWB again and it was pretty fun. Afterwards, I got my cds back from Orion and said goodbye then came back home to watch the second game. Steven and I got some more vanquishing done and I was proven right again as the colts won.

Sunday:
I played some Assassin's Creed 2 while waiting for football to start. First, I was proven wrong when the Cowboys lost to the Vikings. After that, the Chargers lost which I didn't like because I like the Chargers. After that, I played some Assassin's Creed 2 and then watched 24.

Today:
Well today, not much is happening. I have a lot of homework to do and I'd better get started on that because it's now almost 3:00 and 24 comes on in 5 hours which should give me just enough time to finish all the crap I have to do if I hurry. Don't forget to check back on Wednesday. Until then, peace out.

Stimulating Economics Discussions:
Bob: So what if there were a correlation found between the length of girls' skirts and the overall state of the economy? Like say the shorter a girl's skirt, the better the economy is doing? Well if we find that out, what are we going to do to girls' skirts? We'll shorten them in the hopes that it will stimulate the economy.
Tim: Oh, it'll stimulate something!

French Essays:
Valerie: Ok class, tonight I want you to write an essay in French my life in 10 years.
Tony (70 year old guy that sits behind me): 10 years? Damn, I'll be dead by then!


Keir: Why should you go to bed? I'm 3 hours ahead of you and I'm filling in France pixel by fucking pixel.

Davis: u there?
me: Yes, I am here.
Davis: wow lol gud 2 now aht
me: I have no idea what you just said.
Davis: Oh, excuse me.
I rather lost myself for a moment there.
me: Quite understandable.
Davis: Shall we play some Counter-Strike?
me: We shall.
SENTENCE FRAGMENT CONSIDER REVISING
Davis: CONSIDER FUCKING YOURSELF IN THE ASS, MICROSOFT WORD

me: i dont support games in which colt mccoy doesn't play
i wish my parents had named me that
lastredcoat: if your parents had named you that youd probably be a super QB
but instead you are an ok pre law student
me: indeed
maybe someday ill be a blocker for little montana
lastredcoat: lol
me: that would be cool if that happened
then i would finally maybe somewhat come close to finally earning your respect
lastredcoat: you have my respect
youre just crap at starcraft

*I post a Facebook status "David Altena finds it funny that arizona's kicker can kick a field goal from the far 45 yard line but when it matters, he cant even kick a chip shot."*
*this takes place within a minute of my posting that*
me: have you seen both the games today?
lastredcoat: yes
me: same
the green bay game
IT WAS SO AWESOME
lastredcoat: i found it funny that arizona's kicker can kick a field goal from the far 45 yard line but when it matters
me: ah you too?
lastredcoat: he cant even kick a gosh darn chip shot
me: i see we think alike in verbatim even
its no wonder we're such a great team on iccup
lastredcoat: ahahahaha
me: on the plus side tho
i now know how i can feed you strategic advice while we play
now i know that if i want you to do something on iccup, i just make it a status update
lastredcoat: huh?
me: "David Altena wants keir to make more god damn zealots."
you read my statuses quickly
almost as quickly as you would hear it if i just told it to you via skype
lastredcoat: lol

Well I didn't do so well last week. I only got 2 right out of the four games. If I want to break my record, I have to get no more wrong pick. Unfortunately, it's not looking like that will happen based on what I saw last week making for hard calls this week. I hope I get all of them right, but you never know.

Cardinals at Saints: Saints by 3:
The Cardinals had a really good game last week and they've been good off and on this whole season, but the Saints this season have seemed to have generally squeaked by when they were really challenged. I think that if the Cardinals try hard, they can win, but I gotta go with the higher seed on this one just to be safe.

Ravens at Colts: Colts by 6:
While I would like to see the Ravens play as well as they did last week (extremely), I know that there is no way they are going to beat the Colts.

Cowboys at Vikings: Cowboys by 6:
The Vikings made it to the playoffs basically just from riding a few players' coattails. The Cowboys on the other hand have been hot recently and they're going to take down the Vikings. They could even be Super Bowl bound.

Jets at Chargers: Chargers by 10:
Rex Ryan said his team should be favored in every game. Unfortunately, they're now going to be playing probably the hottest team in the NFL right now. The Chargers are going to stomp the Jets and send them back to New York crying.

Well there you have it. Feel free to wager with me here and I hope I get them all right so I can beat my record.

I'm not sure what I was thinking this quarter.

Howdy all. If you're confused about my title, don't be any longer. It shall all be explained this post. I'm taking 21 credits right now as well as doing the Shorewood Ultimate gig 2-3 times a week. Usually I take 19 credits, which is 4 more than average, but this time I decided to 2-up that and since I didn't factor in how much time I would lose playing frisbee, I have gotten in pretty deep, but I think it will all work out once I get settled into the schedule. So for this post, I'll be going over my classes, then how each day of the week works, then notable events this week. Tomorrow, I'll make a football post. Wednesday, I'll make a quotes post. For now though, time to get into this post.

Macroeconomics (9:30-10:20 Monday-Thursday):
I'm taking this class with my professor from micro after he convinced me to do a face to face class with him. The first week was boring because it was all micro review so I knew it already. It's already getting more interesting this week though. The professor was cool online, but even cooler offline because there are more opportunities for awkward jokes. We have to subscribe to The Economist magazine for the class and he told us how to pick up chicks using the magazine to attract women that are attracted to intelligence. Tim Cheeney is in that class too as well as this guy that always seems to be in business related classes with me (even the online ones) and he's really cool so the 3 of us sit in close proximity and do some of the work together.

French 2 (10:30-11:20 Daily):
This class is about the same as the last class at least in terms of workload and such. There was a second French 1 class last quarter and the two have been combined. Whether on purpose or not, the two classes have segregated themselves and our class sits on the right half of the room and the other class sits on the left half. The seating arrangement is different now too. I sit to the right of that guy I mentioned last time still, but now the Dutch girl sits to my right. Since there are much fewer people from our class than the other one, some of us have become much tighter and I have gotten to meet the other half of the room from last quarter (the people in my class that sat on the other side of the room).

Jazz Band (11:30-12:20 Daily):
My walk from French is longer now so I get to Jazz Band having less time to warm up which is unfortunate, but I work around it. This class is the same as it's been, really fun. We got a new trumpet player (that's 6 of us now for those of you counting). He's a really good lead player which is exactly what we needed because me and Chelsea are both working towards being able to handle lead parts, but I'm quite a ways off and she's still not able to play lead for every song we get. This new guy is really cool though and with our lack of tenors, it might open up possibilities for some more jazz french horn.

Jazz Improvisation (12:30-1:20 Tuesday & Thursday and 1:30-2:20 Tuesday OR Thursday):
When I signed up for this class, I thought it would be two hours a week of mostly theory. That worked for me because I could practice on my own. Apparently, it is actually run like previous quarters where we actually play. Twice a week, we meet at 12:30 and do theory work for about an hour on songs. Then, on either Tuesday or Thursday (we get to choose which one we personally show up to), we show up to a "lab" where we get to play in a band setting. Everyone is at different skill levels, but really tolerant of the mistakes made during solos (especially by me :/) which is really nice. This is a huge nail in the coffin of my free time and it eliminates lunch on the day I show up to a lab, but I really want to get better at soloing, so it will be a class I will be glad I took. I don't think I'll do it in spring quarter though unless I decide not to take a 9:30 class.

Symphonic Band (7:00-9:30pm Mondays):
This time of year is always better because I know I'm not missing out on Monday Night Football (which was especially heartbreaking this year because of the amount of great games (Texans playing and Favre's return to Lambeau to name a couple). This quarter, we lost our strongest horn player due to job things (he is the head of the Edmonds School District music department and is trying extremely hard to save the music program so he had to take the quarter off). It may be due to his absence or it may be a coincidence, but the first horn parts are much less chop busting this quarter. They're still cool parts, so either way, I'm not complaining.

Statistics (Online):
A lot of people have asked me "how can you take a math class online?" To them I just say "Come on, it's just stats." The only problem is that this teacher has the crappiest blackboard site organization I have ever seen. His folder names are what the folder should be containing (for example, one of the folders had no contents but instead just detailed the assignment in the folder name). Furthermore, the sidebar is weird yellow (that he calls orange, but as a proud Dutchman I know it is NOT orange) and blue which he says is in honor of the NY Mets, his favorite team. I mean damn, I like the Mets too, but have some common sense man! Don't go blinding the students here! It took me forever to figure out how he organized his site (even with the help of the "How do I begin?" tab). I recently discovered he actually DOES assign problems from the book and that there are a lot so that's why I'm skipping frisbee today is to get those done and hopefully to get as far ahead as I can in that class to make it less of a drain on my free time in the coming weeks.


Ok well those are my classes, now I will go into the daily routine.


Mondays:
School - 9:30-12:20
Frisbee - 2:30-4:30
School - 6:30-9:30
I start at 9:30 and I get out at 12:20. From there, I get to have lunch, then I head back out and go to Shorewood at 2:30 to meet up with the frisbee team for a running practice. I'm not doing that today, but it will be part of my schedule. At some time between 4 and 5, I go home, do some homework, then head out at 6:30 for band.

Tuesdays:
School - 9:30-1:20(or 2:20)
Frisbee - 2:45-5:00
Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busy days. I spend a lot of time in school, then either go straight from there to frisbee (if I go to a lab) or have time to go home, grab lunch and head almost right back out (if I don't go to the lab).

Wednesdays:
School - 9:30-12:20
My mid-week oasis. It has some semblance of a normal day (normal for the past few quarters at least). I get some actual time to work on homework or play some videogames. I also need a day to go to lunch with grandpa at costco occasionally and given what I am up to now, this may be my only non-weekend day to do that.

Thursdays:
School - 9:30-1:20(or 2:20)
Frisbee - 2:45-5:00
Like Tuesdays, very busy regardless of whether I go to the lab or not.

Fridays:
School - 10:30-12:20
My little treat to myself. I get to sleep in an extra hour and after the week I go through (which will look like nothing when I get a 9-5 job), it's nice to get that extra hour off of school. After school on Fridays this quarter, I might stay late and do some trumpet duets with a couple of the guys from the section. They've been trying to get me to stay late off and on, but usually I had a conflict or they forgot to invite me. This last Friday, I had a haircut so I didn't stick around, but I will this week.


And there's my week. Now I shall regale you with some notable events of this past week.

I got a haircut finally. It had gotten really long in the front which was odd because usually it mulletifies itself by growing really long in the back.

Steven, Eric, Orion, and I all went to a pickup game at Magnuson park on Wednesday. We were really out of shape, but it was fun to play even if we got really tired and sore.

I think I saw Rosa at a bus stop and I might have offered her a ride, but I thought she was back at school and either way, I was headed the opposite direction.

Orion and I joined Eric and the UW Bothell team on Saturday for a double header. It was fun to play on a team again even if we got stomped in both games.

My parents were out of town for the weekend and it was a playoff weekend, so I moved my computer into the tv room downstairs (which I would have done for either occasion) and got to do some gaming while watching football and bachin' (bacheloring) it up.

Ok well that's about it for the week. I'll post the football stuff tomorrow, then the quotes on Wednesday. Peace out until later.

Well it's that time of year again, playoff season is upon us. While I know that only about 3 people will be interested in the contents of this post, I shall post it anyway.

Jets at Bengals: Bengals by 6:
I think the loss last week was somewhat intentional. The Bengals made the smart move though as the Texans were really hot in the last half of the season whereas the Jets were not as good. The Bengals will come out guns blazing to show everyone that they threw last week's game.

Eagles at Cowboys: Cowboys by 10:
The Cowboys were really hit and miss for most of the season, but they seem to have gotten their crap together. After last week's game against the Eagles, the Cowboys showed that they are definitely contenders in the playoffs this year and expect them to possibly go to the NFC championship if they upend the Saints (which is entirely possible as we have seen).

Ravens at Patriots: Ravens by 13:
It's odd that the one game this weekend that isn't a repeat of this last week was the easiest to call. The Patriots lost their man that gets them to the endzone (Welker). While they still have Moss, he really mostly just got TDs this year and the Ravens defense is extremely awesome so they will have no problem as they roll over the Patriots.

Packers at Cardinals: Green Bay by 6:
It's odd to see the losing Superbowl team go on to have a better season the following year (and especially odd to see the winning team fail to even make the playoffs). After last week though, we saw that Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers mean business and they will most likely beat down the Cardinals.

Ok well hopefully I can do better than last year when I got 8 out of 11 right. We shall see. Until next Monday, peace out.

We are cool.

The two parts. Sai drew the numbers because he has better handwriting.

Two layers of chocolate cake with cocoa frosting on the sides, buttercream frosting on the top. All that, under a white cake (that was crushed by) fondant and more frosting up top. Complete with fondant and frosting flames as well as dinosaurs (plastic).

Behold! D20 meteor dinosaur extinction cake!

The mega-frosto cookie.

The don't ask, don't tell soldier.

The communist star.

The token Jewish cookie.

How to frost a broken french horn cookie.

Winter Break 09-010 Part 2

Well howdy there. Welcome to the new decade. This week, lots of stuff happened and this coming week many things will happen so I'll be posting more than just my usual once this week. There will be this post today as well as pictures (which you've probably scrolled past if you're reading this), then tomorrow there will be a football post. With that being said, I think this post will be long enough without my intro (hopefully an average length post in the end) so I'll get into it.

Monday:
I spent most of the day finishing up my Mass Effect playthough that I will use for Mass Effect 2 when it comes out. After that, I played some Starcraft with Keir, then with Steven and Davis joining us.

Tuesday:
I went and got Sai at about 10:00, then we hit up the grocery store for supplies and began making our cake for Davis (pics to come). Eventually, we realized we needed some more ingredients, so we went back to the store and wound up in the same cashier's line. "Forget something?" He said with what I'm sure was amusement. We paid for the stuff and then left. Later still, we discovered yet another ingredient missing. We decided to go to the other QFC, which admittedly, is probably closer to my house ever so slightly. It took from 10am to 4pm, but we finally completed the cake and it was awesome. Also, sometime during the noon hour, we went on a hunt for dinosaur figurines and went to a bunch of dollar stores including a 99 cent store where nothing was 99 cents and where Sai got a butterfly knife. After the cake, we played a little bit of Halo, then went to Ben's house for a little bit and saw the asians there.

Wednesday:
I played some Starcraft with Sai until he had to leave to come to my house for DnD. While I waited for people to arrive, I played some ICCup with Keir. We played DnD for a while and I must say being a Druid is way more fun than I've had playing DnD yet. Also, I enjoyed that it was not me nearly dying this time. Some noteable events that happened.
-I jumped off a ledge and transformed into a tree in an attempt to crush our enemy (at Sai's suggestion) that none of us could damage. Sai tried to get out of the way, but failed and I came one point of damage away from killing him.
-Some mouth enemy ate me (while I was in velociraptor form), but while I was inside it about to be digested, I transformed into a tree and the enemy basically exploded everywhere.
So as you can see, my tree shape spell is really overpowered (probably because the creators did not anticipate someone using it as creatively as me), but it also leads to much more unpredictability and fun in the sessions.

Thursday:
I went to Costco with grandpa to get stuff for my aunt's party the following day. After that, I ran some errands with him and then finally got back home at about 5 whereupon I played SC for the rest of the night. Kathryn had some friends that night and I did not, but it was only 2 friends she had over so I was able to remain downstairs. Now I had a zen moment across new years and I will tell you about it.

The zen moment:
So back in Christmas of 1999, I got 2 games from my grandparents: Starcraft and Majesty. I have loved both of those games, but especially Starcraft. It was one of (if not, the first) game I played in the last decade and I have spent countless hours playing it (to this date, it is by far the game I have the most hours logged in (I can't prove it, but I am very positive this is true)). So when Keir messaged me at 11:20 pm, whether I wanted to play Starcraft, how could I say no? I started and ended the last decade with Starcraft. Now I said some things about it a couple posts ago to the effect that I hadn't done anything with my life, but now I'm cool with that. I realized that I really appreciate consistency and probably one of the most consistent things in my life (besides the big things like family, etc, etc) has been Starcraft and I have a deep appreciation for that game. I hope Starcraft 2 has just as big an effect on me as Starcraft did. I also hope that someday I get a girlfriend and all that stuff, but I'm not rushed to do that, I'll let things take their course. I'm trying not to fill a lot of space by not going in too deep here, but suffice it to say Starcraft (and gaming in general) is a big part of my life and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Oh and by the way, I think everyone that plays videogames with us can agree that the quote of the decade definitely has to go to Keir for:
"SKYPE IT UP TO THE MAX BITCH@ AND THEN AGAIN!"

Here's hoping many a bitch (don't worry ladies, I'm just calling SOT members bitches) skypes it up to the max many times this coming decade.

Friday:
I was totally raging that day (by raging, I mean going to a bunch of different parties). I started with the neighborhood party at 10am. It ended at 1pm, so I went over to my aunt's house for her party. I then had to leave at 3 to pick up Steven and Orion and Davis for some Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. It was tricky at first, but then it got pretty fun. After a little of that, we met Alex, Josh, Ben, and Oliver at Red Robin for dinner. After that, the 4 of us headed back for more MUA2 until we stopped at midnight.

Saturday:
We met grandpa for lunch at Taco Del Mar and then took him to some funeral at his church (dropped him off, did not go in). After that, I spent most of the day doing Assassin's Creed 2 and Starcraft.

Sunday:
I went to the Seahawks game with grandpa. We got a ride from the couple that sits next to us (they are from Portland and they came up and spent the night at my aunt's house because they wanted to come up while the weather was good or something). Griffey was raising the 12th man flag, so I went over and stood as close as I could and even though I didn't get to get something autographed by him, it was still awesome to see him. Some lady was talking to her friend and said he was as tall as me. It was weird to see that because I always thought he was taller than me. We lost the game, but it was at least pretty interesting. After that, the Texans were also eliminated from the playoffs due to some Cinncisucky playing. After that though, I got in some Starcraft with Steven and Keir before he left for school.

Today:
I won't go into detail of my classes yet because they are part of the next post, but today has gone well so far. We had a failed SWUF practice, but it was raining, so that was to be expected. Band is coming up now and I've got to figure out my online class here (the professor has absolutely terrible organization). I'll get those pictures up today, but until tomorrow then next week, peace out.