In praise of Friday

Hooray for Friday, the end of the week!
Hooray for Friday, the end of the struggle!
Hooray for Friday, the start of the weekend!
Hooray for Friday, the start of Saturday!

Yeah, and now I am out of lines. So I will stop. Is it just me, or did last week seem a lot longer than this week did? I mean, the only major events this week were orchestra, Japanese class, the Meet and Greet for NaNo, and my lesson today. Not like last week, where we had something large that we had to do to every day of the week. Like doctor's appointments. Or something similar. Over these past two weeks, starting from last Monday, we have had 9 days in a row of stuff. Not exactly the most restful or fun week I've ever had.

Halloween

Today, I am to blag about Halloween. I have decided to blag about the history of Halloween, after stating what my costume is.

I am going as Aizen Sousuke from Bleach, post-soul society arc. I am going as him because I like the character, he wears glasses, and has the same hair color as me.

Halloween is essentially a large ploy on the part of the candy and costume selling companies to sell way more candy and costumes then they normally would, with the candy just being at movies and the costumes being for like, cosplay things on something. It would not sell at all. So, they have their sell lots of candy thing.

What I am currently reading

Currently, I am reading two things: the icon for my blag as I am posting a new post, and all of the little tabs above it. I was previously reading my schedule, so that I know what Mom wants me to blag about today, and before that I was reading the inside of my eyes. That book has some pretty cool colors on the cover.

The book I am currently reading is The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. It is a very interesting book, and I find it to be quite entertaining. I think it establishes a good post-apocalyptic world vibe, and I find it be quite the good read.

Two Things That I Worry About

So, today, Mom has told me to blag about two things that I worry about. So, here they are:

1: The future of our country. We are in an economic recession. We have this large paranoia about terrorists. We are getting to the point of being willing to sacrifice our liberty for a false "safety". We do not care about the environment, at least not as much as we should, and the big businesses only care about making more money. Our public school system is horrid, the country is stupid. We are all obsessed with pointless religion. It is fearful for what direction we are going.

2: Doing a music performance and sounding bad, and then having people clap anyway. I don't want to sound bad and get rewarded for it. It makes me feel bad. I would much rather do a bad performance and get told that, than to know that the audience just doesn't care what I do.

The Chamber Music Recital

In the chamber music recital yesterday, I performed the Shostakovich Quartet No. 1, 1st movement with my quartet. We sounded really good, especially when the cellist figured out that he was a measure ahead and got back on halfway through the first page. The solo never happened. Don't ask about it.

Seriously, don't. It was really bad.

NaNoWriMo

I am really looking forward to NaNoWriMo this year. I mean, sure, I probably said the same thing last year and the year before, but I feel like I am more excited this year than last. I know I say that every year. I just am really looking forward to NaNo. I've been spending time fleshing out my female lead, because I know that she is a rather flat character right now. I want a strong female lead, not a doormat. Doormats are no fun. They tend to die in my world. With nobody complaining. Because no-one likes them. Because the never do anything of worth. Besides stand there and go "Oh, (insert hero name here)!" and then get kidnapped.

In my world, the hero would just say "Screw you" and not bother saving her. Because nobody liked her anyway.

Cancer

Cancer is when you have a cell or group of cells are displaying uncontrolled growth. Recent developments have caused cancer to be drastically reduced in terms of the overall threat that it poses. It was previously pretty much a death sentence to have cancer. Nowadays, cancer is pretty much the same as any other ongoing medical condition. Take a pill every night, and you will have it well contained. This is an interesting, as well as good, thing.

Pottery class

Yesterday, I had pottery class. I had fun, as usual. We were working on the wheel, and I built a couple of tall, thin vases. My teacher wanted me to start working on centering my pots myself and starting them, and I did work on it a bit, but I wound up losing half of my clay. It also tends to make your hand hurt when centering. She put it back together after my epic failure, and so I'll try again in a couple of weeks.

Orchestra

Yesterday I had orchestra, and it went as normal, besides the fact that I had auditions. I think auditions went well, and Dad said I sounded really good. I thought that was nice, because the chair I was on was a bench and I am not used to sitting on benches. I kind of had to go to one side in order to make sure that my strap was well placed to hold my cello properly, and I was at an angle that I am not used to.

During orchestra, Mrs. Lim had the cellos each playing their individual parts on the Brandenburg 3, and I was on the 2nd part. The other guy on the part was Daniel, our 2nd chair. Daniel and I were playing our part on our own (Mrs. Lim wanted to hear each cello part individually), and I heard a tapping noise. The kind that comes from touching your cello. The kind that none of our parts have. The kind that distracts you. I knew very well that it was our last chair, Josef (He tends to make noises on his cello when we aren't doing anything, so it was easy to figure out.), and so after we were done, I turned around, angry, looked him in the eye and said:
"It is very rude to make noises on your cello when somebody else is playing!"
Except loud enough that the entire orchestra could hear. He looked at me wide-eyed and shocked, as if he could not imagine that anyone would dare to say that to him. I swear Mrs. Lim was almost laughing. He stopped making noises on his cello after that.

The Mentalist

The Mentalist is a show on CBS that is probably one of my favorites. We mostly just watch it when the full season DVDs come out, because it's too popular to just put online and we don't get T.V. Anyway, the show is about the titular mentalist Patrick Jane, a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation, (Yes, the entire show, with the exception of a short trip to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, takes place in California, although most of the places are made up.) which needs to "Work on brand recognition a bit." Jane tends towards being out of line, uncontrolled, and insult rich people who don't like being insulted, but also "closes cases like a fiend", causing him to be unable to be fired. After getting a new boss, she outright told him that the only way he will get kicked off the job is if he kills someone - anything else and he will be fine. It's an interesting show, and one that I highly recommend watching. Seasons 1 and 2 are both available on DVD, and season 3 is currently on air.

Pumpkin Festival

This week marked the official start of Pumpkin Festival, the worst time of the year. The traffic is terrible. You cannot go anywhere you want to go because there is so much traffic heading into town. The smart locals just hide in their homes until it all blows over. The really smart locals leave town for the weekend.

Today.

Today I need to make a blag entry. But I have no idea what to blag about. I still have no idea what our schedule is, so I get to blag about something. But I don't know what. So I will blag about Japanese class.

I did not sing very well. It sounded pretty bad. What I should have sung, considering that I like the song, it is sung in Japanese, and by a guy (so it is not embarrassing to sing) is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoDawd3SYfU

What I sung was a children's song. That sounded really bad and out of sync with everyone else.

Post retreat- Mom's side

While I was having fun at the retreat this weekend, Mom wasn't. She got stuck babysitting. A large number of five-year-olds. She had no fun at all babysitting. Then she got Babysitter's disease yesterday. She now feels well enough to go to art class, but she was still a bit unhappy.

The Cazadero Retreat 2010 - Part 3 (The Game of Musical Jeopardy)

If you have not yet read parts 1 and 2, do so here and here. Now, onto my favorite part of the retreat, as well as the conclusion to my epic orchestra retreat saga:

Musical Jeopardy

I was placed on team 4. There were seven teams, going up from 1. We came in third.

The seven categories were as follows:
Music theory
Name that tune
Compsers
Instruments
Musical Vocabulary
GGP History and Trivia
GGP Misc.

Membership of my team was as follows:

Me.
Keary (Viola girl that was in senior last year, and camerata this year).
Two girls from camerata.
Bass girl from junior.
Annoying Indian girl (Known for getting really into it and yelling loudly whenever we got a question wrong or right, and same thing with the other team. Every. Single. Time. It got on my nerves really fast).

The first question answered wrong was by team 2. It was a 1000 point question. They never made it very far.

I, as the only guy in the group, (and probably the tallest as well) got declared the "Person-who-stands-up-and-declares-our-question-and-the-answer-to-our-question-loudly-with-testosterone". A role that I had a large amount of fun with. We came up with the answers (usually either me or Keary, although the two camerata girls helped too.) and I stood up and yelled them. Similar thing with what question to pick. Here is how it worked:
Me: "Vocab 1000!"
Mr. Gallegos: "What does con fuoco mean?"
Me: (pauses)
Camerata girl 1: "With fire"
Me: "WITH FIRE!"
Mr. Gallegos: "Correct! Con fuoco means with fire!"

A bit later:

Me: "Misc. 1000!"
Mr. Gallegos: "Which member of the faculty is also a member of the fire department?"
(I didn't even have to pause or ask my teammates for the answer)
Me: "DONNA LIM!"
Mr. Gallegos: "Correct, Donna Lim is a member of the fire department."
Mrs. Murray: "And, I would like to point out, the president of the fire department of her area."

It went on like that. It was very satisfying. It got to the point that Mr. Gallegos just asked:
"Ian, what does your team want to do?"

We basically farmed GGP Misc. and GGP history and trivia. By the time we were done, all of the easy questions were gone and so we got to laugh at all of the people who got those questions, figuring out that they were really easy ones to get right. They were wrong. Every question in those areas asked by people besides us were wrong. It was epic. The only regular question we got wrong was:
Mr. Gallegos: "How many years did the GGP have a wind section?"
Me: "At least 1."
Camerata girl 1: "Eight, I think."
Camerata girl 2: "I thought it was five."
Annoying Indian girl + Junior orchestra bass girl: "We had a wind section?"
Keary: "I don't know."
Mr. Gallegos: "Ian? What is your answer?"
Everyone: "Just take a guess."
Me: "Six!"
Mr. Gallegos: "Incorrect. The GGP had a wind section for 2 years."

The other one that we got wrong was the final jeopardy question, which was:
"Of the three composers Mozart, Schumann, and Schubert, which one died the earliest and yet wrote the most music?"
All three teams: "Mozart!"
Mr. Gallegos: "Incorrect. It was Schubert."

The team that won bet all but one of their points on the final question. Everyone else bet all of their points on it. We lost. Oh well. I impressed a lot of people during it though, so that is a good thing.

The Cazadero Retreat 2010 - Part 2 (The Junior Orchestra Cello Section)

If you have not yet read part 1 of my post on the Caz retreat, read it here. Once you have, come back here. Done? Okay.

While the basses were quite appalling, the junior orchestra, as a whole, was worse. Especially since they only had one cello. Who could hardly play. And you were lucky if he showed up on time. At a concert. Where he had nowhere else to go.

Considering this, it should come as no surprise to you that Mrs. Murray called me up to help the cello section. As soon as I saw the cello section there, I took into consideration the fact that I was sitting in the front, and had nothing else better to do, and I actually had enough brownie point-want that I would do it. Sure enough, she yelled at the rehearsal for the Junior orchestra:
"Ian, get up here!" I just sighed, and walked up there. The other cellist was not there.
"Where is Tristan?"
He was at the far back of the stage, packing his cello.
"Tristan, get down here NOW!"
He paused, look around, and ran over.
"Where is you music, Tristan?"
He paused, looked around, and ran back up, grabbed his music, and ran down.
By this time, it had already been about five minutes. The piece itself was not that hard. But what it was what astonished me.

It was the same exact piece that they had done last year at the retreat. And the membership of the juniors was mostly the same. It was really easy, and I played it without trouble. Then, at the concert, the real one, Mrs. Murray yelled:
"Where is Tristan?"

I've decided that, while that ending is just too perfect, that there is one thing I should add, after talking to one of the members of the senior cellos that was in the junior at the start of last year, I asked him if he was always that bad. The response I got:
"No. Last year he went to bakery right before the concert."
The bakery, I should add, is a five minute walk, one way, from the performance shell.

The Cazadero Retreat 2010 - Part 1 (The Basses)

The Cazadero retreat. The yearly weekend retreat where the GGP goes to Cazadero, which is about a two hour drive north of San Fransisco. Where chamber groups are formed. Where people are appalled at how terrible, horrible, and terrible the bassists are in the orchestras. They cannot play in tune. They can not play in rhythm. They misbehave. They blame all of their mistakes on the other sections. What did the drummer get on his I.Q. test? Drool. The bassists are the drummers of the orchestra.

At one point, my stand partner threw this swedish fish thing at one of the (drummers!) bassists, I'm going to call him Tweedle-dumbest, as opposed to Tweedle-dumber, the other bass. So, it lands under Tweedle-dumbest's bass, which causes the two Tweedle-stupids to spend five minutes reaching for the fish, without setting their basses down!, and me sitting there laughing my ass off and giving my stand partner a high-five. Eventually, Tweedle-dumbest manages to get it somehow (I was to busy laughing to notice), looks at it, pauses, says "400 second rule." (I kid you not), blows it off, and eats it.

Later on, the basses were having trouble with this one part that the rest of the orchestra had too, so Mrs. Lim had them play it. She paused, looked at us, and said: "Cellos, show them how it's done.", with all of us playing with the basses, and then the basses playing it. This repeated five times before Mrs. Lim decided the basses were so bad that she said:
"Violas, help them."
This went on five more times. They still could not play the part.
"Second violins, help them."
At this point, almost the entire orchestra was helping. Four times later, she said to basses after their turn doing it alone:
"That will have to do."
They were behind, not together, and out of rhythm. But it was still not as bad as what they had been playing before. Mrs. Lim also told them to play better, or else it would sound like someone was moving furniture in the back of the stage.

At another point, Tweedle-dumbest was telling Tweedle-dumber not to mess up. While we were playing. Mrs. Lim yelled:
"STOP! WHO'S TALKING?!".
Tweedle-dumbest pointed at Tweedle-dumber.
"Him. He is."

I should mention that we have one good bassist. Her name is Kendra, and she is in the Camerata. The highest ranked orchestra. Because she can actually play.

On not going to Game Night

Not going to Game Night is no fun. You don't get to meet up with any of your friends, and instead get to spend the day sitting around doing an essay the you get more tired of doing the more you do it, because you were stupid and slow and did not get it done beforehand. And then you finish it, and the achievement of finishing just before you have to go to bed and being rewarded with cake - that was satisfying, as well as very tasty. And I even managed to painlessly upload my flash lessons to my Youtube channel so that my teacher could look at them easily.

Now, as to how I felt about not going to Game Night was a progression of thoughts that went as follows:
6:00 Wahh! I'm not going to Game Night... :(
6:02 Maybe if I get this done I'll be able to go to Game Night.
6:30 I'm pretty close, not too long now...
7:00 I think I can make it, even though I still need to eat dinner and stuff, I am going to make it
7:30 Too late. Oh well. Let's get this done.
8:00 Yes! It's done! I can eat dinner and go to sleep now.
8:30 Now, how did I convert these Flash files so that I can upload them?
8:45 Yes! I did it! Now, time for the cake (which is not a lie).
9:30 Time for bed.

facebook

Facebook, as everyone knows, is basically a very big blog. Except people play games on the blog. And half of the flash-based games don't work in Firefox. And the other half are ridiculously competitive, with PKs running around killing each other. But, it is good to stay in touch.

Sectionals

Yesterday, at sectionals, I was really just trying hard to pay attention. Between not having practiced since I sprained my ankle and being a bit out of it because I sprained my ankle, I was very glad I made a decent sound and was not out of tune. I sounded pretty good, and it helped that it seemed as though Mrs. Hasbun completely forgot about what we were going to be tested on. Not that that is really a bad thing. I know I'm bad. I just felt out of it yesterday.

Crutches suck.

So, because of my sprained ankle, (stupidity in loading the car) I need crutches. Let me tell you, crutches, while better than the alternative (namely, hopping with one leg), are a pain. You are supporting your body with your arms, which, for me, since my arms a a little weak, is painful. More importantly, no matter how soft the handles are, they still make the palms of your hands hurt. Also, my left leg (unsurprisingly) get really tired hopping around all of the time. So, while better than the alternative, I joke that because of the crutches I'll wear out my left knee and be unable to walk on it and need a wheelchair. Which would be awesome, although make it a little difficult to walk down steps.