Charisma!

Congrats to the San Francisco Giants on winning their first World Series title since moving West last night. Just goes to show what grittiness, charisma, hope, and the best pitching in the league can accomplish.

On Motivation and Free Time

I tried to do NaNoWriMo last year. It didn't work out so well. And this year, I thought I'd try, just for the sheer heck of it. Who cares if I finished or not? It would be fun, an experience. You probably learn something on the way to 50,000 words. It was all settled in my brain until about two days ago.

Then I started thinking about all that time I would be spending on it. In order to have any realistic shot of finishing it or even getting close, I would have to spend practically any free time I have on it. And then, continuing on this dangerous trend of thinking, I thought "What else would I do with my free time?" And oodles of possibilities popped into my head - I could dedicate so much more time to trombone practice, homework, reading things I've never read, learning things. There are a lot of possibilities. So I concluded that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time and that it would detract from what I really want to do in my life.

But then - you can start to see the back-and-forth developing in my brain - I woke up this morning, took a shower, watched some TV and listened to some music and did silly little pointless things. Next thing I know, I've burned a good two hours. Of my free time - which could have been used on anything. And then realization hit me: what kind of free time would I really have if I didn't do NaNoWriMo? I would have that kind of free time, the trivial kind in which you just kind of chill. Which isn't to say that chilling isn't bad. But my previous reasons for not doing it - I could do so much more if I didn't - were questioned. I wouldn't naturally use WriMoing time for these things - I would do silly things like chat and watch sports and blog.

The truth is, I could do a lot more if I didn't do NaNoWriMo. But I wouldn't. There's no pressing deadline for practice - at least not currently. There's never a deadline for reading, not talking about school. The motivation for those kind of things, the long-term kind of things, is a lot less tangible - which is why, a lot of times, it's hard to just do it and realize that its for the best. The motivation can't come from outside; one needs to generate it him/herself.

So that's my revelation of the day. If I'm not going to do NaNoWriMo, I need to motivate myself to at least make some semblance of use of my time. Which I think I'm going to do. And blogging is pretty counterproductive to that, but at least it gives me a medium to get my thoughts out.

Listening to jazz currently. Bill Watrous and the Manhattan Wildlife Refuge.

Oh also. I watched Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time in my life last night. It wasn't in the whole cult-gathering cue-following movie-theatre atmosphere, so I can't really say it was an experience, but it certainly was entertaining. And strange.

Word of the Day: Motivation

Song of the Day: Spain - Bill Watrous and the Manhattan Wildlife Refuge

HEY BLOG IMMA POST YOU (On a Mac)

I ditched this blog for a while. But I feel like I should pick it back up. Just because I clearly don't have enough going on in my life.

And I'm at a loss for what to write about, but not for lack of material. I just have a lot of good halfbaked ideas swirling around in my head.

My old PC finally kicked the bucket. And then it came back from the dead. And refuses to re-die. It randomly crashed one day when I was checking my Facebook, so I turned it off. And then (the creepy part is coming, I promise) I waited for a few minutes. Ate a slice of pizza. Sent a text. And then I turned it back on. The computer complied in turning on, but the screen was just a black thing of blackness. So, doing the most intuitive thing that came to me at the time, I turned it back off.

And it turned itself back on.

And then I turned it back off.

And it turned itself back on.

The zombie computer was relentless; it took a complete shutdown of my power strip to finally bury it. At that point, my family basically gave up on it. We had put up with the suckishness of it, being slow to the point of being unable to play YouTube videos, or music on iTunes, or checking your email in less than ten minutes. Necromancy was the last straw, though.

So we got a Mac, about the size of my TV screen. So far it's fantastic; a lot faster and more intuitive than PC. The only complaint I have is that it didn't come with a legit word processor, although I can easily download iWork or Microsoft Office or something. GarageBand is also a bit of a bitch to work. Other than that the only bumps are getting used to the new commands and the smaller keyboard (damn you, tallperson hands). And the trackpad, but that's been fantastic so far.

I haven't been following the baseball postseason very closely, being heckishly busy with marching band and school (which started, btdubs), but I was really happy to see the Yankees and the Phillies lose to the smaller-market, championship-draught Rangers and Giants, respectively. The series is at 2-1 in favor of the Giants right now. I vote Giants in 7. The home field advantage in this series is a huge deal.

I'm debating doing NaNoWriMo. On one hand, it would be fun and probably rewarding even if I didn't finish. On the other, I could use my time for a lot more effective things, like practicing or homework or sleeping. I'm probably not going to end up doing it.

Phantom Regiment's 2008 DCI show is probably on of the most amazing things I've ever seen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg6tqrpMnm8, if you're into that kind of thing. Or if you're into epicness in general.

Another complaint about the Mac: it automatically underlines words that don't exist, such as "epicness", "fwah", "pwn", "suckishness", "mah", and "psh", which are some of the most essential parts of my spoken vocabulary. Curse your lack of lexical creativity, Steve Jobs (iPad, iMac, iPod, iPhone? very uniform :P).

iMah. That isn't underlined. Whuuut. You're trying to subliminally brainwash me, Stevie.

(whut is also a non-Jobsian word)

Yet non-Jobsian is.

Rant rant rant.

Song of the Day: 6.35 - International Trombone Ensemble

Word of the Day: non-Jobsian

British Comedy of the Day: The IT Crowd

Symphony of the Day: Tchaikovsky 5. Specifically, movement number deux.

(Steve Jobs doesn't like French either.)

Imminent Beaver Invasion

So I was sitting in my car, humming along to some Eagles song, on my way to lunch with my dad, minding my own buisiness on what had up until then been an obnoxiously uneventful day
and then
BAM.
There was a fracking beaver. Digging in the dirt. In the middle of downtown. This, for those from places like Wisconsin or New England or Russia or wherever the heck beavers are prevalent, is not a typical occurrance. This is as close to a metropolis as you get in my area. It was right outside this hugeass apartment complex and mall. And a country club. Relevence failures, dialogue!

Me: *double takes* There was a beaver back there!
Dad: Lawlno.
Me: Lawlyeah.
Dad: Are you sure?
Me: I suppose it could have been a badger. (For the record, I am completely unaware of what a badger looks like. I just said it because it sounded a little more believable.)
Dad: I don't believe you. But I'm going to take an extra five mintues to circle around the block and prevent both of us from getting lunch even though we've both expressed the sentiment that we're fracking hungry.
Me: Mkayz.
*awkward pause as we round block*
Me: Yeah, no. That's not a beaver. It's a ferret.
Dad: Yeah. No. No, yeah it is. A beaver.
Me: Yeah. No. Yeah.
Dad: No, look at its tail!
*people behind us patiently lay on their horns*

So we left. It looked like a beaver, except for the tail. It had a little stumpy furry one, not the big flat characteristic tail. So in effect it looked like a hamster. One that's bigger than your head. Giant mutant hamster.
I saw beavers last week too, on a date with my girlfriend. We were walking by this creek behind her pool, and there they were, two or three beavers just chillaxing. She, after hearing this story, agrees with me that beavers and hamsters and other smallish mammals of the sort are massing their forces. Starting my weapons and rations stockpile now.
I had to look up how to spell fracking "imminent". Clearly, my brain is ready for me to start school again.

Word of the Day: Badger
Song of the Day: Annie Dan - Speechwriters LLC
Dead Composer of the Day: Gustav Mahler
Honorable Mention: Camille Saint-Saens

It Sucks When...

-your feet are sore
-your pecs are sore.
-your mom ruins your evening and throws a hissy fit about a reading project that isn't due for another two weeks plus.
-people you care about aren't happy.
-your trombone sounds like a garden hose.
-your baseball team is getting pwn'd.
-you have days when you just aren't yourself,
-and other people notice.

My Life Isn't Interesting

My phone is on the cusp of death. I suppose it's entitled to be in such a state, it's been through a fair bit over the past couple of days. First, a week ago Thursday, I dropped it in a gutter during a frackinintense thunderstorm, where it was until it was found several hours later by a charitable cross-country runner. I should've kept better tabs on it, but in my defense, the gutter was a fracking white water river at that point, so I wouldn't have been able to find it even if I did notice I lost it. Luckily, the aforementioned C.C.C.R. gave it to a friend of mine, who in turn dropped it off at my house. And amazingly, although it was probly severely mentally (ADVERBS DO NOT WANT) traumatized by its experience, it still worked. The disconnect button didn't work, but I could function around that.
And then I screwed it over. In my Tuesday-morning rush to get ready for band camp, I pulled on the nearest pair of canvas shorts I could find, not realizing that they were an unwashed pair of converted swim trunks I wore at the beach ages ago. Being unwashed, they still had large quantities of sand - really really really fracking FINE sand, I might add - in the pockets. Oblivious to that fact, I proceeded to jam my pockets full of marching band supplies, most relevant of which was, you guessed it, my phone. By the time I realized this, my phone was basically a sour Skittle inside and out. Currently it's on life support - it'll only halfheartedly function when it's plugged in to a charger. Battery issue probs. I'll take it to a verizon store sometime soon, hopefully it was a good omen that my girlfriend got her iPhone replaced for free earlier this week.
In other news, one of my best friends moved to France today, he's actually probably in the middle of his flight right now. He's one of the cooler people I've ever met, but for some reason it hasn't really gotten to me yet, emotionally. It'll probably hit me once the school year starts, when his absence will be pointedly apparent. I miss him already though.
Marching band inside is kind of fun, especially when I'm an endpoint in a really complex and awesome move.

Song of the day: Taller Children - Elizabeth and the Catapault
Words of the day: Doubt

What I've done today: