ooooh, shiny; | layout 6.06 | west side what-now?

Saturday, October 15, 2005

This morning, written theory was in the FA computer lab. I deviated from the lesson [interval and chord writing], because they're not difficult for me, especially with a piano keyboard... I worked on interval and chord recognition instead! Minor 6ths and 7ths, intervals going down, and chord inversions I can't really hear...
Dr. Robinson asked if I would be willing to tutor a girl in the class. My brain is screaming, "No, work overload already!" but I said yes. Well, it would've been mean to say no... So I'm supposed to help her Sunday afternoon.
Aural theory lesson went well, nothing to write about that...

I started practicing, wasn't really feeling it, then people came in and talked for an hour, and when they were done, I wasn't in a practicing mood at ALL. Giving up, I got my two Phi Mu Alpha burgers, watching the guys play corn hole. [what a dumb game. But I've finally seen how it works, now!] Dr. Robinson was there watching some corn hole, too. Steve, in his crazy advertising, actually got an order from a guy driving a car! That was amazing. :D
I went back to the dorm, finally composed my e-mail update to John (he says he's sorta bored on the Marine Band tour), did some stuff, and took a nap. That was the strangest nap ever. It was only 45 minutes total, but I kept waking up feeling like it'd be two or three hours. Eventually, I even was dreaming that I'd overslept and missed marching band, or worse, Midnight Madness.
Marching band today was a 1.5 hour review of show one--they pointed out that tomorrow is our last performance of that! Hoo-rah. That means we should start learning the 2nd show drill, maybe. :P Practice put me in a really bad mood, for various reasons. Most importantly was that I think I pulled something in my knees earlier today, so they were aching for all of tonight. Because of that, I couldn't roll step, but I also couldn't run quickly, so I got yelled at for being too slow.

Shannon graciously gave me a Cracker Jack rice cake, which I got funny looks for eating. The free basketball shirts we got are cool, though mine's a large.
So, how we get to Rupp: two school buses, load the sousaphones/percussion stuff in through the back emergency exit. Sweet. I ended up sitting on top of a seat with a sousaphone in it because today's band was bigger than regular basketball band.
They were yelling at people on the way over, all sorts of fun. :D
Rupp's insane. I looks like twice the size of the Patriot Center at GMU... And it's all electric, shiny, and spotless. Sickeningly commercial, but full of state-of-the-art technologies and beautifully designed.
We stole pom poms and posters from the ticketed audience chairs... hey, not all of them needed them... After we settled in, we went to the ticket/food areas and played pep tunes. Oh, we had fun with that! It's like full blue band, and the audience is even more receptive!
So the whole event was basically a pep rally. Yes, in high school, you skipped pep rallies, and in college, you pay good money to go to them. They had video sequences, dance team, multiple mascots, news people everywhere, cheerleaders, audience contests, the "kiss cam" [where they show two audience members on the jumbotron and they're supposed to kiss], and other stuff. That doesn't even have to do with basketball! For that they had both teams (men's/women's) with their staffs, and little cute contests between team members. I think one of the girls was 6'7". That's insane.
We didn't play for the entire actual event, save for "Z" near the end. Oh well. Apparently we play a LOT more at actual games... I got to watch a news guy do one of those live, on-the-spot appearance clips ["And now to Bob, who's amid the throngs of fans at Rupp Arena tonight. Bob, what can you tell us about Tubby Smith dancing?" "Well Linda..."]. I found that whole thing fascinating, especially because the guy's personality/voice changed completely when he was on camera... He looked really nervous about the whole thing.

Afterwards, buses loaded and we crawled through traffic back to Fine Arts. Dumptruck, Craig, Slug, Mallory, Brendon, and I were going to go to the Ho, but it was mobbed. We stopped at the Pazzo's patio to wish Molly a Happy 21st. Jeffkeller was already very drunk, and was being silly accordingly.
Ended up eating quickly at Jimmy John's, then us minus Mallory went to Brendon's to play Halo. Well, Slug was on the computer the whole time "reading forums." [actually probably: talking to girls on AIM or looking at porn :P ] I got six kills in one round--amazing! I also intentionally jumped off a cliff 9 times in a row. :D Mostly, I didn't care, so I made random noises/comments. Such as "rumbly gun," when I heard gunfire without seeing it and felt the rumble pack.
Phil came in to get Slug, and he was extremely wasted. Funny, how Phil's very much the same, only he slurs his words and is louder about everything. Dumptruck chugged a beer like a champ [he doesn't even like beer... I don't get why he chugged it!], and we decided to leave.

The moral of the story is: 4am makes me not want to write these summaries with any sort of caring.

posted at 3:29 AM

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Oh man work to do. I might be a very bad person and not do all of the reading. It's a lot! And I technically only have to read the first chapter for the assignment.

Please please oh please no Symphony Band tomorrow.

Bug bites? Why do I have them?

posted at 12:43 AM

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

MY WIRELESS IN THE DORM SUDDENLY WORKS NOW.
I AM SO INSANELY HAPPY.

posted at 3:32 PM

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

7.5 hours today, and I didn't even make my three hours...! Face hurts. :X;

So this morning I got up 15 minutes earlier and finished my Honors homework. [I had to give up last night because I was starting to write about awake-dreams I was having...] I'm surprised at how awake I felt, just by getting up that much earlier! Well, I felt awake until band or so...
I also didn't eat breakfast until right before Honors [9:20 instead of 7:50], so I wasn't starving during Symphony Band!
Honors today seemed good. It started off with a laugh at my expense--I was the first one there, so I set up the circle of tables, and it's the worst circle we've ever had. "It's very... angular," said Dr. Pfeiffer. Never again will I be spearheading that project!
We talked about Ishmael. I disagree when people were saying that it wasn't meant to be persuasive... I mean, why talk fire and brimstone otherwise? On the other hand, it's very poorly written, so it's not at all persuasive. :P
Symphony band today was a dress rehearsal in the concert hall. We were goofing off even worse than usual. On the usual sarcastic topic of, "THIS IS SERIOUS. SYMPHONY BAND IS IMPORTANT. CONCENTRATE!!" Slug tagged on, "There are starving people in China!" right before we started Esprit de Corps. MichaelSee and I managed to get through the first note before cracking up. His stupidity is going to break me!
Stuff sounded better again, but we also have never made it through Dances of the New World without falling apart--no good news there.

Before we could go eat, Slug had to add another four rules to the rule list. I would say that the Slug/Blake jazz war is getting out of hand, but it's funny. Slug misspelled "doesn't" thrice before giving up (and I was helping him for the last two :P ). "doent" "doenst" and "doest"
I did some exercises and took a nap... Let me tell you, it was hard to wake up. I wasn't actually awake until I was halfway back to Fine Arts.
This is where I was just dumb with my zeal to play tuba... I practiced C for half an hour, had two hours of orchestra on F, had 1.5 hours of the symphony band concert, 1 hour of quartet, and another half hour of practice. Ow ow ow ow.
Between orchestra and the Symphony Band concert, we had a tailgating party at Short Bus' apartment. (see, the tuba studio is amazing) Junior lives there too, but he didn't get there until the last 20 minutes or so. Enough time for Junior, Proffitt, and Slug to have a couple drinks. XD;;

I actually wound up changing in the tuba room, because I was running late. [the guys were already in uniforms] No one else was there, but it was still weird!
Proffitt and Slug were having a good old time... There were lots of football references and other such things. "The lights are dimming--it's almost time for kickoff!" "We need to run out of the tunnel..." "And starting on first trumpet is... I don't even know."
Considering rehearsals, the concert went splendidly. In the grand scheme, it wasn't great music, but it was good for how bad we are. Nothing fell apart, not too many botched entrances. I even remembered all of the octave changes for the string bass cues!
After the concert, the football reference was: "4th and long ... TOUCHDOWN Symphony Band!" So Symphony Band is 1-0 in the season opener. :D
Thomas was generous, and took my recital card to get checked off--7 of 16. :D I sat in the tuba room admiring the rules list until quartet rehearsal. The list was 16 long when I got here, and now it's 48!
Quartet... hopefully that'll go well on Thursday. We haven't run most of it continuously.. But my face was dead, so it wouldn't have done much good anyways.
I've been back here, just trying to tie up loose ends of stuff. I don't know how I'm ever going to get AHEAD for stuff, i.e. ahead enough to do my DSP midterm project and those blog entries, as well as just stuff for fun, you know? For a weekend with no game, it's really busy. [Midnight Madness on Friday, that high school exhibition on Saturday]

A random snippet, for your reading pleasure:
Brendon: why's it got to be scientific
Brendon: s'not like we're gonna win a nobel prize
Beth: because science is the American Way!
Brendon: the fuck it is!!
[okay, so maybe science is just the TJ Way. But, "If you're against science, the terrorists win!"]

MONDAY
So Columbus Day. TJ, W&M, and NOVA have no school, but UK, JMU, and UVA do. What the what? Federal holiday my foot. :P
Another MWF, another double set of music theory. But at least for this semester, I like having them back-to-back and three days a week. TR theory seems like it'd be painful (especially aural)...
Someone in the Kentucky Kernel really cares about this diversity board thing. All 3 of the papers I've seen in the past week have it in the headline article.. (lunch at the Student Center, with Craig, Slug, Shannon, Erica, Chris, Thomas, Dan-guy, and Emily stopped by)
One of the more amusing things to come out of this Columbus Day is the story of Slug Columbus-- all he says is, "Spain! Football! Football, Spain!" and he discovered the New World because: they were playing football on the ship, and someone fumbled the ball overboard, so Slug swam after it to try for an interception.

Tuba band was. ...I was going to practice my parts Mon/Tues, but I didn't. Oh bother...
Wrote my DSP paper, which was undoubtedly my worst yet, then scurried to dorm class (DSP). I think all we did was talk about Woodstock and watch parts the Woodstock movie. ...I'm sure the guys enjoyed it. *cough*
Practicing, then marching band. Marching band's a lot more bearable when the weather's nice. We didn't even touch the 2nd show--it was all review of the first show. [yay, we're going to cram all the drill in at the last possible second...] They added horn moves though, and didn't really reahearse them, so I'm sure they're forgotten by now. Blake was just blasting away Superman half a step above or below the actual pitches. And best of all, none of the directors seemed to notice. :D;
A bunch of us went to Blazer for some dinner... Erica was arguing on the phone with Eric, and Dumptruck/Chris weren't really helping the situation with their random intended-to-be-overheard comments.

I got dressed, then headed over to Fine Arts for SAI pledge ceremony. All had compliments for my scarf except John D., who accused me of looking like a throat. [a vocal-y major person] :P
The ceremony was pretty short, and Cailyn was making funny faces the whole time. Pam is Rachel's big, and Cailyn is mine. Hooray! :D Cailyn was such a liar when she said someone else had asked to be my big first. LIES! And Cailyn smells funny. :P But she did two things: 1) pinned my pledge pin upside down ["It's a modern pan flute--a whole new craze!"], 2) gave me a gift! Gift was a card that says I smell and a picture frame to be filled later.
Us four + Katie had a meeting to arrange study sessions [for the national exam]. Then we went back, everyone sang, and it was Picture Time! Katie and the pledges, Pam and Rachel, and then Cailyn and I [photos by Katie]. The last picture is of us attacking each other after I gave Cailyn bunny ears. XD Man, hanging out with Cailyn is going to be a blast!
I was late for quartet rehearsal, but I had pledge, so nyeh. :P
After that, a bunch of us went to the Ho, as usual. We tried to get Scoot to come, but she refused. :( But, against all odds, we had fun anyways. For example, they called me "the Slug of Virginia" after I made some particularly Slug-esque comments. "Virginia math science Virginia derivatives Virginia PI!"

Alright, enough of this fun diversion. Back to work. :(

posted at 10:53 PM

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Yesterday, I went to the Cinema De Lux [see: bourgeoisie shopping center] with Kristin and Lisa to see "Wallace and Gromit." I felt bad, because Olivia's parents probably would've let her go, but they weren't home to drive her. :(
It was a pretty decent movie--even had a little Pixar pre-movie before it, about the penguins from "Madagascar." Short movie, in a theatre full of kids. So we were surrounded by stupid comments whispered far too loudly. "HE DOESN'T KNOW HE'S A RABBIT." Surprised at the high number of bad innuendos put in there! :D;;
Then we went across the street to Potbelly's for sandwiches. I tried the key lime soda and was not overly impressed. I like water better. :P

Then I went to Old Navy for a bit of last-minute shopping before heading to Andy's house. Sippy and Erin were there, Tom and Christine showing up soon after. We walked to drag Andy away from Blockbuster, but he met us halfway. Amanda was there when we got back, and then we hung out in Andy's basement for the next three or four hours, eating Hershey's kisses w/ caramel, gummi bears, chips, and potstickers. Mmm, potstickers.
Andy didn't have his camera! Jeez, Andy, you're supposed to carry that thing everywhere! Luckily, I had my mom's good camera, and ended up taking a bunch of pictures (Christine and Andy helped take pictures too).
It was a lot like old times, but instead of Sippy telling hilarious stories we all knew, he told stories only Erin knew. Silly UVA!
As usual, Christine drove me to her house, and dad picked me up. But THIS TIME, they had freshly made banana nut bread! Mmmm, so tasty. I got a slice and a half, and Christine's mom gave dad a slice too.
I stayed up far too late trying to pack everything, do what I needed to do, and so on.

Woke up the next day, sorta tried to wake up, playing a bit of the little MW-30 tuba that stays at home. [gah, I need to sell that thing or have Baltimore Brass fix the valves] My first psuedomeal of the day was two garlic butter rolls from Damon's. Second psuedomeal was baked BBQ beans from Fudd's. Third psuedomeal was a pumpkin bagel from Einstein's. Fourth was a Nutrigrain bar when I got back to the dorm. My only real meal was at the Ho--which tells you how healthy today was.

I went to the first half of the bassoon recital [MG SHE PLAYED YOUR RECORDING SESSION PIECE!], but I had to run to go to quartet rehearsal. It's okay, because the second half was chamber music...
Johnny could only stay for ~45 minutes, but the rest of us played for another half hour or so. [...I should really stop screwing up those parts that I keep screwing up...]
Walking back, I saw Brendon's car sitting in the New North loading dock--and ended up going with him and Craig to pick up Erica at the bus station. That fun little side adventure turned into a trip to the Ho with the guys + Slug and Phil.

Sorry for the cursory summary, but I'm tired.

Amanda: damn. there goes my vision.
Beth: or you just have to change your vision to, "make beth be more stupidly social"
Amanda: bingo!
Amanda: philosophy through intoxication!
Amanda: intoxication through philosophy!
Beth: similar to "physics through intoxication" for brendon. hey, maybe we're onto something :P
Amanda: a new horizon for college education
Amanda: genius!
Beth: i think if intoxication through philosophy worked, there'd be a lot more geniuses on campus...

posted at 11:57 PM

Most of the pictures from tonight's 1147 gathering [Andy, Christine, Tom, Sippy, Erin, Amanda, and I]. Yeah, Flickr is stupid, with it's upload limit.
The rest are here.

posted at 2:49 AM