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There are nine empty beer bottles and one vodka bottle in my apartment's living room. This explains why my roommates had so many loud friends here on Sunday...

So... tonight was interesting. A couple weeks ago, one of the choir members asked me if I'd be interested in singing for her jazz studies jury thing. I would be in a group of seven people (mostly CSUN graduates or students from Santa Monica College) singing two songs in front of the director of jazz studies. So I first looked at the songs on Friday, then we had rehearsals Saturday and Sunday, and we sang it today. The two songs were Mo' Joe, arranged by the choir member, which is a bebop song that the choir will be learning, and Virou Areia, which is a fast samba. Mo' Joe I had down pretty well, because I was given a recording of the Finale playback, while for the other song I was sometimes just mouthing the words (which was fine, since there was another bass). I got most of it, at least. Anyway, this was a fun experience for me. I've never sung with a group where you're just given music and asked to learn it, and you perform it a few days later. It's so different from the jazz choir experience I've been used to, where you're given music and you go over it with everybody else, for the most part. The ratio of time where you practice alone to where you practice with others is reversed. It's kind of refreshing to move that quickly. And people thought the performance went really well, too. We'll apparently be singing it all again, along with one other song (called Covenant/Recessional; kind of the same style as Episode: Prelude or Sing a Song of Song) at her recital later in the year.

After that performance, I went to our normal choir rehearsal, which had started around the same time as the performance. We went over our songs that we're singing at the jazz festival on Saturday, as well as Like Someone In Love, which we'll starting working on more next week. A couple of the SMC people sang along with us for that last song... always nice to have another bass. Though there was some bad news: we're on the waiting list for Reno, and it doesn't look hopeful that we'll be able to perform, in which case we won't be going. Guess I'll just have to hope that the DP choir's concert isn't in the middle of my finals or something.

Do you like text like this blog better justified or non-justified?

For someone who doesn't have perfect pitch, it's surprising how often I'll have a song going through my head (in this case, This Masquerade) and it turns out to be in the right key.

So, today is Friday... a day where I tend to do no homework and just relax, as it is the first day of my weekend. Though sometimes I go to the music building to practice, as I did today. I'm supposed to be able to sing three songs for which I'll be singing bass by tomorrow at 11:30am. I got these songs 11 days ago, I believe, and they're not easy songs. Hopefully I won't have too much trouble at the rehearsal, because I think we're performing them on Tuesday.

I played KotOR II over the the past couple weeks. It was good until the ending... but I guess that's to be expected when the publisher tries to rush game development. I'll probably play through it again if/when the restoration project is completed. Anyway, now Louis is offering to pay for EVE Online for me, so I'll probably play that. Of course, EVE's not a game where can just sit down and focus on it for long periods of time without doing anything else at the same time. You kind of have to multitask if you don't want to get too bored. (At least, that was the experience I got from the trial.) But still, it should be fun.

Oh, Epicenter went on a mini-tour last weekend. We performed in Bakersfield and Oxnard. I got to see my family in Bakersfield, which was nice. Though I think I liked the Oxnard performance better... I don't know if it sounded any better, but it felt better. And next weekend, we're going to the Royal High School Vocal Jazz Festival in Simi Valley (wow, a short drive to get to a jazz festival, amazing). The main attraction there will be Vocalogy, so that should be a good show.

Okay, I'm tired of writing now.

Well, I don't really have anything to do right now (at least nothing that I either want to do or can't be done much later), so I guess I'll find some way to distract myself. Maybe by writing a blog entry.

So, the first week of my second semester at CSUN is now over. I haven't even written about the first one. My last actual entry was about Europe, back in July. And before that trip, there's a huge gap that includes, oh, I don't know, maybe graduation from high school and all of the other post–CC semester–and–AP test (look, en dashes!) stuff. Oh well. I might go back and write about it later. I probably won't.

They're playing annoying music upstairs again. It's rather loud right now. It usually lasts less than 15 minutes, but they seem to be playing it more tonight... probably because it's the weekend and maybe they think, “Who's going to be studying on a Friday night, anyway?” Well, me, for one, and the thumping bass is annoying in any case. Sadly, low frequencies transmit the best through floors and through my headphones. I can just drown out the other frequencies with my own music if I can hear them.

I'm listening to one of the songs we're singing this semester. It's called Beautiful Love, arranged by Matt Falker (our director, for those of you who don't know). I like the ending. Well, I like the entire song (and the solo section; I might try to get it), but I like the ending the most—probably because it's like a ballad, and I haven't sung a ballad this year so far. We should get to Like Someone In Love (arranged by Gene Puerling, Singers Unlimited) some time this semester, though.

I keep fast-forwarding my music while writing this. I've gotten used to my laptop's keyboard shortcuts for Home, End, etc. and they happen to be about the same as my desktop's Winamp shortcuts.

Yay for random rambling. I suppose that statement is somewhat redundant. Anyway, I realized some time ago that the reason I didn't update my blog much (aside from the fact that I don't generally like writing) is that I felt like I had to write about stuff that's happened since my last update, which takes too much effort, unless I'm in a really good mood and a writing mood at the same time, which, as you can see by my diffuse entries (woo, double meaning), isn't very often. But then I realized that I didn't. Yes, it's nice to have a personal history to read, but I suppose I'll live without it.

Our air conditioner is broken. Apparently there's a problem on the roof (hopefully they'll fix it soon). So our air conditioner is really good at blowing air around right now, and that's about it. Luckily it's cooled down to 57° outside; it was 81° earlier, and that was a bit too warm for me.

I suppose I should write something about my classes. Let's see... this semester's accents are Spanish, German, and Chinese. But at least they can all form coherent sentences, unlike a certain professor last semester. So far my favorite class (aside from choir) is Comp 222 (even though we haven't really done anything in any of our classes yet), probably because the professor has a sense of humor. Or maybe because, of the one lecture that I've had in each class, his seemed to be the easiest to follow. The worst class award looks like it's going to Hist 271. While not too big of a surprise (it is a history class, after all), it's winning the award this early in the game because we'll be required to write a series of letters from the perspective of an African-American who lived some time between 1865 and now. Creative (albeit historically based) writing. Bleh. Oh, and the one extra credit opportunity is a 6–10 page essay. In other news, I don't know who my physics lab teacher is yet, because the original one couldn't do it and the new one was busy this week, so they sent a sub to our first session.

Hm, apparently my new roommate (no, I haven't changed rooms yet) goes to sleep early (that is, 11:17; I generally go to sleep around 4 because of my schedule). And he closed the window. Pity, now it'll be all hot again tomorrow. Oh well, more ice packs for me. Wow, and after three minutes he's already snoring. Hopefully I can open the window a bit while he's asleep.

And now I can't think about anything else to write about. I guess that means I get to see how often people check this blog now, seeing how once every couple months would have been enough.

Well, I finally fixed my comment system. Feel free to try it out.

And yes, I know, now you need more posts to comment on.

Well, it's been about two months since my last update, and quite a bit has happened since then, so I better write about it all. Or at least part of it. I think I'll start with the jazz choir's Europe tour.

Wed July 6 - We (that is, my dad, mom, and I, the former going to Europe with me as chaperone/sound man) left our house early in the morning, went to our church to load the bus, choir, and chaperones (there was also a smaller bus for some of the choir's fans, i.e. relatives), and left for LAX. After a sleepy but mostly sleepless (for me at least) bus ride, we went into the airport, and then waited in the check-in line for an overly large amount of time. After we finally got our boarding passes (exit row seats, yay), we got on our plane to our first stop, Houston. There, we had a brief layover, then got on the plane for the ride to Amsterdam.

Thurs July 7 - We arrive in Amsterdam. Flights that span two days and nine timezone changes can be quite disorienting, but sleeping on the plane rides did help a bit. After getting all our luggage (that means bags for 43 plus the choir's equipment) and waiting for our bus, we went to Delft, where we were staying. Once we got there, we didn't have much to do, so we just wandered around the town a bit, then went back to the hotel to sleep.

Fri July 8 - The day started out with a tour of Delft. (Well, it really started out with breakfast at the hotel, but so did every day on this trip.) At the end of the tour we went into one of the three Delft ceramics factories. Later we changed into our performance clothes and headed off to the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague for our first performance of the tour. The performance was, uhm, interesting. It started off well enough, but for some reason Sing a Song of Song started off in 3/4 instead of 4/4, and stayed that way until Mr. J cut us off half way through the song. Anyway, that night we went to the Dave Holland concert, which was great. We got back to Delft around 2am or something, but when your're on a tour in Europe with the jazz choir, you're always tired, so it didn't seem that late.

Sat July 9 - We took a day trip back to Amsterdam. It started with a visit to the Rijksmuseum, filled with a bunch of Rembrandt. After that was the traditional boat tour of the city, followed by random wandering down the shopping area, where I, as usual, bought nothing and was somewhat bored. After that we went back to Delft, then on to the jazz festival again. I didn't have tickets to any of the paid concerts this day, so we basically wandered around from place to place the entire time. For anyone who's never been to North Sea before, it can be described best with one word: crowded. Well, that and smoky, in quite a few places. Oh, and loud. In fact, those were the three reasons we wandered the entire time: the places were either full, too smoky, too loud, or a combination thereof. We heard a little good stuff, but were too tired to stay for one of the later acts, which everybody who did go said was very good. Oh well. At least I was awake enough to take a shower and get rid of some of the smoke smell.

Sun July 10 - We left Delft on our bus (all the way from Florence in Italy, as we would be using it for the rest of the trip) and headed toward our next stop, Cologne (Köln) in Germany, where we saw its well-known gothic cathedral... we also heard Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor while there, but rather than being played on an organ, it was with a collection of accordions and a tuba. Anyway, after lunch we continued on to Rüdeshiem, a small town on the Rhine. We had to take a ferry across the Rhine to get to the part of town where we would be staying. When we got there, we had dinner, then the choir had a rehearsal (we had a performance the next day) which went well.

Mon July 11 - We got to sleep in an hour or so (I had been getting up a bit before 7 every day, which is early for someone used to sleeping until the afternoon during summer). After breakfast we took a cruise on the Rhine. Most of the choir stayed on the top of the boat for the cruise, while I, as usual, sought shade, this time in the front of the boat. We went upstream a bit first, then turned around and went downstream until we were a little past Lorelei (a very large rock that stands something like 400ft above and right next to the Rhine; also the narrowest part of the river between Switzerland and the North Sea). There we got off and took the bus back to Rüdeshiem. After that we got ready for our performance, which was to be at a restaurant a couple blocks from our hotel. We got there, waited for the group that was there to finish playing, and set up our equipment. Then our transformer died. No mics, no amps. We sang one a cappella song, and, defeated (and with many in bad moods), carried our equipment back to the hotel. After dinner we had another rehearsal, which I wasn't particularly looking forward to, but it ended up okay. The beginning of Way of the World brought some laughs, with the guitar and bass jamming without amps, and aside from the tiredness, the rest of the rehearsal was fine.

Tue July 12 - No sleeping in today. This was the day that we left Germany, and headed into Switzerland and the Montreux Jazz Festival. The bus ride was rather long and boring, though that was broken up slightly by playing cards (as were most boring bus rides and waiting). The official card game of the trip apparently was Three Card, though I managed to get some to play Hearts, and Gin when there were only two people. Anyway, after we got to Montreux and checked into our hotel (the same one as last time, great view of the lake), we went off to our first performance (most of the choir took the bus, which became full, so a few of us walked the few blocks there, arriving at the same time). The performance went well (they're kind of hard to differentiate a month after they happened). Afterwards we wandered up and down the overcrowded walkway by the lake, with lots of vendors and overly loud music here and there.

Wed July 13 - This was our only full day in Montreux. We first went to the Castle of Chillon (Château de Chillon), known for its imprisonment of Bonivard in the 16th century. I could have slept in a bit more, but the people who went two years ago had said they enjoyed it, so I decided to go. It was pretty fun. The castle was right on the lake... it had two sets of walls, a dungeon and cave-like rooms, tall towers, a chapel, etc. I went around to all the rooms Kevin and Sam... I managed to keep them following the numbers of the guided tour even though Kevin thought we were just going to places randomly. Every once in a while we found a room with good acoustics so Kevin and I sang one of our Chamber Singers songs. Oh, and we found a secret passage of sorts between two rooms; it was very dark inside, with a low ceiling, and we scared two other choir members when we came out the other side. Anyway, our time at the castle ended by climbing up to the top tower of the castle (we were running a bit low on time so we had to hurry), then going back down to the chapel with most of the choir members who came and sang one or two songs (lovely acoustics, though we were short a couple altos). After that we went back to the bus and rode back into Montreux. We didn't have anything else planned that day except a performance that night, so I took a nap. After that I got ready for the performance, and went down to the stage—different from the first one we performed on, but same as the last Europe trip's stage... directly in the sun, though I don't think it was as warm as two years ago. The performace was great, better than the one the day before... too bad it wasn't recorded (the mic was off... at least we got the first Montreux performance though). After that we were free again, so after dinner I played cards with people in the lobby (mainly Andrew).

Thu July 14 - We got up at the same time as two days ago, if not earlier. We spent half the day on the bus, heading to La Spezia in Italy, first through beautiful valleys between mountain ranges and then through about two dozen tunnels, which made it difficult to play cards. After we got to the hotel and checked in, we went off to Cinque Terre, a set of five little coastal villages nearby, reachable only by train (the first of which we missed by about 30 seconds). We ended up only going to two of the villages... it was a little interesting but for the most part kind of boring. After we got back my dad and I wandered around La Spezia a bit (everything was closed by then, of course, though window displays were still lit up), then went back to the hotel, which was the worst one of the entire trip, but luckily it was for only one night.

Fri July 15 - Another travel day. Our first stop was Pisa, but we were running late so we didn't have much time there... basically look at the tower, have lunch, and spend maybe ten minutes in the cathedral. After that we drove on to Perugia, home of the Umbria Jazz Festival. When our bus arrived at the hotel (around 5, I think), someone came running up and said that our performance that evening had been moved to something like 5:30. This would give us no time to get dressed or prepare in any way, but when Mr. J asked if we still wanted to perform, everybody said yes, so we hurried up the hill to the festival and soon were performing. It went pretty well; though the original later time would have been nice, this rather impromptu performance was fine. After the performance we went back to the hotel and had dinner, of all places, and an American grill called Crazy Bull.

Sat July 16 - This day we went to Assisi, a town not too far from Perugia. First we went up an escalator to one part of the town, and after that we went down to the Basilica of St. Francis. Don't really remember much about Assisi... must not have been memorable. Anyway, after we got back to Perugia we went up to the festival early, as we were to perform again (on the same stage, this time in our uniforms) that night. Though I wish we hadn't gone early, because all we did at first was wait for an extremely loud band to play first... my dad and I sought refuge on the other side of a building, where the rest of the choir joined us later to warm up. Then we went up on stage. This stage, by the way, is outdoors, though covered, right in front of some building. It looks out down a busy walkway and has another walkway running in front of it. During the first performance the people basically flocked to the shade, making it at least look like there weren't many people. But the second performance was after sunset, and there were lots of people all around. The performance went very well, full of energy and excitement. After the performance we changed out of our uniforms, and some went back to the hotel, but we stayed up and had dinner there. After dinner (which takes a while—this is, after all, Italy), there wasn't much time to do anything, so we went back down to where a bus (not ours) would pick us up and bring us back to the hotel. But the bus was full when we got there, so we crammed half of our group onto it, and four of us walked back to the hotel instead. We somehow managed to get back to the hotel not long after the bus (it's all downhill), getting almost lost only once.

Sun July 17 - We went to Orvieto today. We drove along what I think was the Tiber for a while to get there. We went up a funicular to get up the cliffs, then a bus to go the rest of the way, dropping us off in front of the cathedral, which closed for mass when we got there. We went on a tour of the caves nearby (man-made, not natural), which contained many pigeonholes, literally—small holes for pigeons which could be eaten during a siege. Aside from that the caves weren't very interesting, though the second one we went into was nice and cool, being totally underground. And there was a well from Etruscan times (probably 700s BC). After the tour we walked down a couple of the streets, had lunch at a place with Internet (which quite a few people took advantage of), then the choir gathered at the cathedral, in which Mr. J convinced the person in charge to let us sing. So we sang Episode: Prelude (a song with no words... they didn't want secular stuff and this was the closest we had). Cathedrals have nice acoustics. Anyway, after that we went back down the funicular and went back to Perugia. We ended up having dinner at some pizza place, where I was amused by the fact that you could get your pizza with either alta or bassa crust.

Mon July 18 - Another traveling day! Luckily the bus ride to Florence (Firenze) was not as long as the other ones we'd had during the trip. We got to Florence before the hotel was ready for us, so we took an impromptu bus tour of the city, stopping by a park on a hillside that had a fountain in the form of a dragon, around which we took a group picture (well, lots of pictures really; pretty much every adult there had a camera). After we checked into our hotel (which was rather nice), we had the rest of the day free, so wandered around Florence a bit. Pretty soon most of the people in our group no longer felt like wandering, so we went back to the hotel room. I played billiards with Sam for a little while (of course, this billiards table had pockets barely bigger than the balls themselves). I probably played cards, too. Don't really remember that much.

Tue July 19 - For this day we had originally planned to go to Lucca, where we were to perform. But the festival there was canceled, so we didn't. Instead I spent the day sleeping, as I wasn't feeling too well (sore throat, etc.).

Wed July 20 - On the road again... we traveled to Venice (Venezia). Another long bus ride. When we got to our hotel (on the mainland) they weren't ready for us, so we had a short practice outside and then waited around doing nothing. After we got into the hotel, we gathered to go to Venice proper. We took a bus over the bridge, then a boat over to Piazza San Marco, around which we wandered for a while, then gathered back at the piazza, where the moon was rising over the canal, so we sang Full Moon. After that to get back to the bus we took taxis up the Grand Canal... one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Thu July 21 - Back to Venice. We went to the same area, more or less, except we had all day to wander, meaning I was bored. Not to mention tired. But afterwards the entire choir gathered for dinner at one restaurant (I had a pomodoro pizza). After dinner we sang one of our songs, and at the very end of the song it began to rain. We had been planning to go up in the campanile (bell tower) in the piazza, but when we found out that you had to take an elevator and couldn't climb it, many changed their minds; a few however, myself included, decided to go up anyway. It was quite a nice view. We could see Venice, lit up by the occasional lightning bolt (one might have hit the tower while we were in it; it was pretty loud... we were in a nice metal cage, though this fact didn't seem to abate Shelby's fear very much). After that we still needed to get back to the bus and didn't really want to take boats in a thunderstorm, so we walked back instead. It took us a while to get to the bus station... let's just say that Venice doesn't have many straight, continuous streets (nor does any European city we went to, for that matter). But it wasn't cold or anything, so it wasn't bad. After we got to the station we waited for a bus, then went back to the hotel.

Fri July 22 - We went to Milan (Milano), making a brief stop in Verona to drop off Kevin and Leslie. There was a shopping/sightseeing opportunity in Milan (the hotel was about half an hour out), so a some of us decided to see what there was to see. Everybody wandered in different directions, so first we went to the cathedral, where we not only walked in it but also climbed up some stairs onto its roof, giving us a nice view of the city (few buildings are as tall as cathedrals), including the top of the dome of the plaza where we had dinner. After that we gathered back in front of the cathedral, and the bus took us to our hotel, where most of the people were just leaving to go to dinner. So I borrowed someone's cards and we played them until everybody got back, after which someone else joined us in our games. Then we went to sleep; we would be getting up early tomorrow.

Sat July 23 - This was the day of our flight home. We got up at some insanely early hour to get some breakfast and then travel to the airport on the other side of Milan (our travel agent put us in a hotel by the wrong airport). After getting all our luggage checked in we got on the plane and flew to Newark. I slept for a good portion of the flight, waking just as we were coming over Canada. When descending into Newark I could see glimpses of New York City, but only when we were turning; the plane's wing was in the way for the most part. When we landed, we noticed that we were running quite a bit late—by the time we got to the baggage claim area there were something like fifteen minutes until our next flight started boarding. By the time we got all of our luggage (oversized items take longer and are in a different area), the plane was already boarding. So we rushed to get our luggage checked in again (too bad they can't do it for us... they must not like international flights), went through a security gate that one of the airport employees opened just for us, and hurried off to the plane. Shortly after the last of our group got on the plane, we left the gate and were on the runway. Again, I slept for a good part of the flight, and woke up somewhere over New Mexico. After landing and getting our stuff, we waited for the bus, then rode back to Good Shepherd, where all of the choir families were gathered to pick us up. We put the equipment that needed to go back to DP in a trailer and left it there so we didn't have to deal with it that night, then went home.

Well, now it's been over three months since my last post. This one took a long time to write. But it's finally done. Now I can write about other stuff, like college.

But not right now.

Okay, this will probably be a long post, as it covers both Reno and all of May... which, as you will see, is a rather busy month. So... I'll start with Reno.

We left early Thursday (April 21) morning. First the bus came to DP so we could load combo and sound equipment, then it moved over to the end of Padova to load the rest of the choir, away from the craziness of construction and people at school. The bus ride was uneventful... I slept or watched scenery for most of it, talked a bit, and watched Ocean's 12. We got to Reno in evening, and had dinner at Olive Garden (I had spaghetti). After that we went to the church, where we unloaded, set up equipment for rehearsal, and rehearsed. It went pretty well, despite some people being sick, Jory not being there, and Evan Sutton not having his guitar (which Jim Mooy brought up from SB next day). After rehearsal we went to bed. I slept relatively well... much better than Monterey.

The next day we woke up (too early), went to the showers, then went to UNR. We had breakfast at the student union, then went up to the Lawlor Events Center to watch choirs. I saw Folsom II, some middle school choirs, and then a clinic (for which few of the choir members wanted any of the seats we reserved in 2nd row for some reason). After lunch, I went back to see CSUN/CSUS/Olympic Community College (from Bremerton, WA). Wow. They were all exciting... it was a whole lot of fun crammed into one and a half hours. Too bad CSUN didn't have time to finish their set. The songs they sang were good though. I feel good about joining them next year. Olympic CC sang a beautiful arrangement of Old Friends/Bookends. We need to get that arrangement for Europe. I should contact their director...

After dinner, we came back for Kenny Garrett concert. Kenny was good, and the drummer was impressive, but for some reason I didn't enjoy it as much as everybody else did. I enjoyed the choirs mentioned earlier much more... but everybody else was amazed by the concert, whereas I was not. It was kind of sad, actually. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it were quieter... maybe not. Who knows. After the concert, we went back to the church for rehearsal. The choir practiced without the combo in the sanctuary. We even had one of those moments at end where Mr. J says something emotive and nobody makes a noise. I love those... too bad I can't remember what he said. After that we went to sleep.

Saturday... again, we woke up too early. But it's competition day. We had breakfast, showered, and went to the university to watch Folsom. They were pretty good. After that we went to the bus to get our shirts, then went to the warmup area. The perfomance went very well. Afterward got equipment for combo performance, and watched that. Then we watched some big bands (including CSUN). Bands still aren't as exciting as vocal is for me.

After we found out we didn't win (the ones who did had already left, heh) we went to Sizzler, then came back to watch winner showcase thing. After that, went to the Hilton, but all the restaurants were closed, so we went back to the church and had a gathering there. People shared memories and funny stories. After that we were supposed to go to sleep, but as usual I didn't. I went into the sanctuary, where it was quiet and dark... peaceful. I admired the architecture, and realized it was that last time I'd ever be there. Then two other people came in and started talking on other side of sanctuary. Talking softly, but talking nonetheless. I stayed for a while, but they didn't go away (apparently they stayed there more than an hour longer than I did), so I went to bed. The next day we came home... long bus ride. People gave the traditional bus ride speeches... I managed to get a few laughs out of mine. Otherwise it was an uneventful ride. So ends my recollection of our Reno trip.

Now onto the other stuff.

Tues April 26 - We had a performance for the school board. We didn't used mics, but it went well anyway... it was a small enough room. Warmup was fun; I was the human pitch pipe for Full Moon. Afterward I unloaded equipment at choir room, and watched Stefan and Dana dance a bit in the parking lot. I hadn't really done any homework since last Wednesday, so I thought I should probably do that...

Wed May 4 - Physics review so boring... I finished around 19 of the 46 problems in the first packet so far. It's hard to concentrate on it. Oh, and I still need to fill out those school disctrict forms, write my research paper for English, make my compsci proj, and schedule bass sectionals. Life will be much better after a couple weeks from now...

Mon May 9 - Physics AP test. It seemed pretty easy... I think I did well. Didn't finish much more of the physics review packets, oh well. Now we do nothing in that class. Wee.

Tues May 10 - Finished my research paper today. It's shorter than it's supposed to be as usual, but a decent paper for me. Hopefully it's good enough to get a passing grade in that class.

Wed May 11 - Advisement appointment at CSUN. 1.5 hour drive both ways, but I got to pick my classes for next semester. I'll be taking Phil 230 (Symbolic Logic I), Coms 151/L (Fundamentals of Public Speaking), Comp 182/L (Data Structure and Program Design), Comp 122/L (Computer Architecture and Assembly Language), Geol 101/102 (Geology of Planet Earth), and Mus 371 (Jazz Vocal Ensemble). 17 units total. After coming back from Northridge, I went to SBCC to present my Java project.

Thurs May 12 & 19 - Farmer's Market performance. Combo and octet. My dad brought our wagon with batteries and our portable sound system on it. Fun performances... good thing we had shade to stand in, though.

Mon May 16 - Bobby McFerrin came into the jazz choir classroom today after school. We sang a few songs for him, he sang one for us... it was fun. Leslie and Mikie got to trade fours with him on Dizzy's Itch... lucky. Later, I took my English final. I was given 2 hours to read a document, analyze and evaluate it. Fun. Well, I finished two minutes before the deadline. It was short, but what can you expect when given only two hours?

Tues May 17 - Calculus final. Apparently I did well enough to keep an A in the class, yay. And now I don't have to go to second period anymore... I just have to check in at the end. More sleep for me.

Wed May 18 - Java final. Easy.

Thurs May 19 - I made a quick design of our trebuchet for the physics olympics thing to show to Mr. Shaeer. We (Fletcher and I) will work more on it later.

Sun May 22 - Day of the benefit concert. I woke up at 8:30 (half an hour earlier than my usual time) to get equipment from DP over to San Marcos. They have a nice theater. I helped set up the theater, started setting up our sound, then went home for a few hours. When I came back, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was doing their soundcheck (they have way too many speakers), then our combo did theirs , then the choir. Everything ran smoothly. After a while it was time to start concert. We sang well. I liked my solo on Full Moon, it was exciting... maybe the audience gave me more to work off of. After us and intermission (where the choir took all of our stuff off stage), BBVD performed. They were loud, but good. Some choir members started dancing in the aisle, causing other people in the audience to get up and dance in the front (Stefan was rather proud of this). After concert, I helped BBVD load equipment back into their trucks, then took our stuff back to DP. I got home at 12:15 or so. It was a long day, but it went well... and we only lost one cable and took one extra mic with us back to DP.

The next week - Jazz choir started working on our new music more. Sing a Song of Song we pretty much have down already, Episode: Prelude is getting close. Next up is Way of the World, which we'll probably work on in sectional today (Sun May 29). As for my other classes... well, basically all I have is physics, where we played poker on Friday (I won), and econ, where we just finished watching a movie (and will probably start another soon). And we're going to work on the trebuchet more tomorrow.

As I said... long blog post. Now I just have to get my comment-posting system working (or my blog-posting system for that matter... I'm adding this entry manually via phpMyAdmin).

Okay, so according to my statistics I've had 15 visitors to my blog this week... and I'm pretty sure that at least 10 of them are human. Must be some sort of new record. Maybe I should write more.

Let's see... the jazz choir went to Monterey last Friday. I drove up with Amy, Courtney, and her mom. We watched The Incredibles for a good portion of the drive up. After we arrived in Monterey and had dinner, we went to the concert at the convention center where the festival was. All of the adjudicators performed, as did Branford Marsalis. Needless to say, they were all good. On Saturday we had our performance. Because all of the choirs were one right after another, I was only able to see one other choir (the one we beat)... well, that and LA School for the Arts didn't show up. So, we got third place... most people in choir were expecting first or second. But Sioux City came in second. This got the occupants of my car rather frustrated. For some reason it didn't bother me. Anyway, after that we left for home. After Courtney and Amy got past some of their frustration we listened to/sang some barbershop music, and after they fell asleep, we listened to Vocalpoint and chatted until we got home.

So... now jazz choir's getting ready for Reno. We got the list of groups that are going to be there. Surprisingly, neither Hamilton nor LA School for the Arts are listed. However the rest of our usual competition, like Folsom, will be there, as will the various college choirs , including Bellevue (who won college vocal last year), CSUN and USC (Matt Falker), and CSUS (Kerry Marsh). Oh, speaking of Kerry Marsh, I'm kind of annoyed because we won't be able to see his clinic on vocal jazz arranging, as we will be warming up for our performance during it. Hopefully someone will tape it. Oh, and also annoying, Folsom sings at the same time as the DP band plays, Bellevue sings at the same time that our combo plays, and we'll have to probably literally run from the end of our combo's performance if we want to see the beginning of Garfield's band (overall instrumental winner last year).

In other news, I've been making the DPEA website for Mr. Shaeer. It's pretty good, except for a bug in IE5 Mac that makes the navigation bar cover up the entire screen. Hopefully I'll be able to fix that soon. So... making websites for Mr. Shaeer involves very long phone calls. One of them was something like two hours long, and there were a couple more in excess of an hour. But at least the site's getting done. And the work pays well, too. I just have to become a full employee of the district first so I can get the grant money he's paying me with. Paperwork, fun.

Uh... what else to talk about... I had a compsci midterm yesterday (easy), a physics test today (easy), and a calc test tomorrow (hopefully easy but who knows). Choir car wash is on Saturday. Reno next Thursday. AP Physics test on May 9. English paper due who-knows-when. Calc final sometime May 16-18, I think. After that pretty much all my classes are done except for jazz choir, which has our concert on May 22 with BBVD. Well, technically econ isn't done either, but that never really started, save for homework about once a month. But calculus, computer science, English, and most of physics (still doing labs, etc.) will be done.

I never know how to end these entries...

One and a half months since my last entry... must be time to update again. Time to go back in time to... let's see... February 26. That's the day the jazz choir went down to the Mt. SAC vocal jazz workshop. It had people like Jennifer Barnes and Michelle Weir to critique us. They liked us a lot... said we were at the level of a college choir instead of a high school. Yay. Anyway, those are some of the people that will judge at the competitions coming up (which I'll talk about later).

On March 2 we had a gig at the Bacara for TIAA-CREF. I sang the solo in Somewhere (from West Side Story), their theme song. Oh, and there's a rumor that Bill Gates was there... interesting... Bill Gates hearing me solo. Also on that day was my midterm for compsci. I got a 99% on it... it would've been a 100%, but the teacher apparently doesn't like it when people get 100s so he went back over my test looking for errors and found one. Oh, by the way, the midterm was crammed between jazz choir's mic check and performance. So it was head over to the Bacara, sound check, rush to CC, take midterm, rush home to get changed, then back to the Bacara just in time for the end of our warmup before we perform. Fun.

Three days after that the jazz choir (see a theme in this post?) put on our annual benefit concert I brought all the sound equipment that we needed over from DP to GV. It was raining that day, of course. After bringing it there Andrew Alker and I started to set it up... my dad came to help too. And we got some choir people to go set up mics. Then Andrew decided that I should do lights for the shows. So he showed me how to use the board... lots of sliders, wee. Anyway, I got to wear the wireless headset thingie for the show, and for the most part did my job without any problems. And I got to sit in an air-conditioned room while everybody else had to be in the rather warm house. Doing lights is kind of fun... too bad I kind of had to perform in the show, so at the end I went backstage and Andrew took over lights, as my dad was handling the sound. The choir's performance was pretty good. Too bad our audience was on the small side... oh well.

Let's see... what else is on my list of stuff that I should write about... the gig at the UCSB faculty club on March 12? Nah. Weird dream I had? Sure. I had a dream where we were singing a song in choir... but when I woke up I realized that I had never hear the song we were singing before. So apparently I compose in my sleep. Too bad I don't remember any of it after I wake up.

We had an interesting rehearsal on March 17. Jory and I were the only basses there for most of the time. We were singing the end of Minuano, the part where the basses go up at the high end of their range... and we were very loud. It was rather entertaining... when we sang the high D and F we couldn't hear anybody else singing at all. So we had to be a bit quieter, which isn't exactly easy on those notes when we're supposed to hold them for as long as we were.

I think it was March 22 that Jennifer Barnes came into jazz choir. The choir seemed to like her a lot... she got us to put more intensity into Dizzy's Itch, showed us what a good solo consists of, etc. We sang very well when she was there... hopefully we can keep singing very well like that day.

Okay, that's enough choir stuff. For now. It sounds like all I do and all I think about is choir. Which probably isn't too far from the truth for a good portion of my time... but maybe I should talk about my other classes. Like... calc. Calc is... calc. Okay, not much to talk about there. Physics? We're doing circuits right now. Econ? We don't do anything for the most part. English? Meh. I had a paper due last Thursday. I turned it in today, Monday. It was not a fun paper... analyzing a chapter from The Island of Dr. Moreau and saying how and why it is crucial to the novel. Sounds easy enough, right? Except English homework drains my will to do anything... unfortunately this includes actually doing the English homework. My mind likes to go blank instead. So... yah. Anyway.

So, this is spring break. It doesn't feel much like a break, except for the lack of classes and more sleep... I still have to do English homework (and other classes' homework for that matter) and I still will have jazz choir practice this week. We're going to Monterey on Friday, so we're getting ready for that. Our set is Dizzy's Itch, Spain, Full Moon, and Minuano. Should be interesting to listen to the other choirs perform there... all our favorite rivals.

I still need to rewrite my blog's code. It's still the original mess using the original layout engine. Hopefully I'll be able to convert it to a non-mess and use the new layout engine. And redesign the URI system so it makes more sense. And use XMLHTTPRequests to serve up comments. Well, that's enough writing for today. You may now comment.