In Other News

I've been working on an album lately. I've got about ten songs so far, and a few of them are decent. The others... well, some of them are decent. I've also been working on my book. I haven't and won't be posting on my Monday Musings blog anymore, or at least, I won't be posting that story. I hope to get it published at some point. That would be fun.

The Christmas Concert is tonight. I've arranged Wizards in Winter for it, a rock christmas song. The band is somewhat unprepared, but we'll pull it off. We'll be fine. Make it if you can (event details on the sidebar).

I have relatives and friends in town this weekend, including Grandpa Don, my Mom's best friend Beth, and her daughter Alyssa. It's actually Alyssa's birthday today. (Happy birthday Alyssa) They are staying at the house, which unfortunately means that I get to sleep downstairs on the couch. It wouldn't have been so bad if Mom hadn't given me a single blanket that doesn't even cover my feet...

I haven't started studying yet, but I plan to spend most of my weekend preparing for the finals. Except for Sunday. I may or may not have a racquetball tournament with some friends at the Y that day. A lot of guys I hung out with from swim team still want to get a chance to beat me at racquetball. I won't let them get that chance, though.

Micheal's coming on back Christmas Eve. Can't wait to see him.

That's all for today... I hope you've had a good day, and from all of us here at Alcatraz014, have a good night.

Drama Indeed

I feel like I don't have anything to write about most of the time, but there are some reasons behind that. One, I really am quite busy. I joined the play again, and so now I'm at school until six practicing every weekday. And the sophomore schoolwork isn't getting any easier. So it leaves me with very little time.

But I think a second, more interesting reason that I haven't been writing lately is because I've become quite numbed to the day-to-day drama that I used to be able to write about. But now it just doesn't seem interesting. That's not to say that there haven't been interesting things happening. How could I have not told all of you that my parents just got back from a cruise in Alaska, and that they were gone for a week? How could I have not told you about asking a junior out to homecoming and getting turned down (in my defense, she already had a date)? How could I have not told you about writing a song for a biology presentation? How could I not have told you about my older brother Michael, who recently started his own blog so he could write about his studying abroad? How could I not have told you about my uncle Brian's so called "intervention" for existential angst? How people keep putting games on the Bishop Kelly shared drive on my files? Or how I'm still working on Mondays, and just finished typing chapter 7? Or how I've already arranged/wrote two songs for the Bishop Kelly Band (one was Bittersweet Symphony, and the other was a "One Tin Soldier" Cover I wrote myself)? Or how I'm devising plans for another run for school president, involving the revival of the USJ and a musical performance for the speech? How I found (or rather how it found me) a way to save up basically all of my monthly allowance? How I honestly suspect that I've been subject to identity theft this month? How I heard about and found the entrance to Gnome-land (Bishop Kelly students, if you don't get this one, try asking around, you may be surprised)? And how I'm still trying to get together a functional band amidst all the chaos of my day-to-day life?

Shame on me.

You could say I'm taking for granted the randomness of life. I ought to think more about how lucky I am to be so strange and do so many things. By the way I've been posting, you'd think my life was dull.

Dull! Ha!

I laugh at the thought of me having a dull life. I have always tried to make my life exciting. And with a few exceptions in the long stretch of summer, I have always succeeded.

So look forward to some more regular posting from now on. Of course, if you do get bored, you can always switch 2 plan b...

100th Post!

Well everyone, here it is. My 100th post.

I don't know what to say here. I'm glad I've made it this far. I don't want to act like I've just gotten an award or something, I just want to say thanks to all of the people that kept me blogging.

Thanks!

Well, 100 posts, that's quite a milestone to pass. I've been aiming for it ever since I started. Every single one of my posts has the label alcatraz014 so that you can easily see just how many posts I've done. And now I'm finally in the triple-digits. I wonder, in seven or so years, will I be celebrating my 1000th post? Who knows?

At any rate, I'm really glad for all of my readers, so thanks Brian. Thanks Calvin. Thanks Silver. Thanks Bronte. Thanks Zack. Thanks Micheal. Thanks Seth Remling. Thanks all of you at BK who occasionally read me in your Computer Apps while you're trying to get to my game links. Thanks to all of you.

And to celebrate this, I am finally registering myself a domain. I will now be Therandomnessoflife.com!

Well I guess I'll just keep blogging now that I've made it this far. Keep reading!

Meet the Family

Note - Gary, my dad, is not in this picture. He was the one taking it.

This is my immediate family, as well as my aunt, uncle, and cousin. Not my only ones, but they live here in Boise, so I get to see them alot more than most of my extended family. (Most of them are in California.) And I will now describe them in no particular order.

Jessica - My sister of 22. She always liked me and is very nice. She is good company and enjoys girly things like clothes and makeup. She also enjoys partying with Micheal on a regular basis. She goes to college at BSU and owns a little house about a mile away from ours. She visits often, but I can tell that she's starting to get a life of her own now that she's an adult.

Micheal - My brother of 20. He is strong, philosophical, if somewhat arrogant. He is funny and great conversation. I don't get to see too much of him anymore because he goes to college in St. John's in Minnesota, but I miss him every second that he's gone. One of my favorite characters in my life.

Me - Oh come on. It's on the sidebar.

Andy - My brother of 13. This is one of the most competitive, athletic people I know. He's on year-round swim team, some sort of plus soccer team, as well as having played most of the other sports out there. He's somewhat annoying and malicious, but I have faith that he's going to mature and be a good person someday.

Mitzi - My mother of ??? She is really a great Mom. She's always been really caring, and how I was brought up really made me a good person. And a lot of it comes from her. She's never really does things if she doesn't think that it's right. She's got a great sense of right and wrong, and a great will to follow the first one. Besides that, she's a nurse working under a neurosurgeon at St. Luke's Hospital.

Gary - (not shown) My father of ??? He as well is a great Dad. He was the religious factor in the family, and was an outspoken Catholic to try to teach us about his faith. He is a doctor - anesthesiologist - and works at St. Luke's as well. I think Dad told me he met Mom over a patient. He really is brilliant, much smarter than I am. He recently was diagnosed with cancer, but he's taken some chemo and if things continue as they are, it could be normal again. I love him so much, and hope that it will be normal again.

Later: Amy, Kurt, and Ali.

Sunday Skiing

My first time skiing this season. Hopefully it will be the first of many.

Yes, I ski. I do not snowboard. I don't have anything against snowboarding, except that it's just about useless in cat tracks. You all know it's true.

I woke up early this morning for the second time in the last three days. I'm not sure I've filled my Christmas Break Sleep-In Quota. But I may have to live with that. After grumpily climbing out of bed I began to pack my skiing gear in the back of the car. After some fussing with Mom and some confusion about my boots, we headed up to Bogus Basin. Troy (my friend), Andy (my brother), Brandon (my brother's friend), and I all packed into the car and after nearly an hour of windy roads and Gregorian chants playing from the speakers, we made it.

That picture above may give you a false impression of just what the mountain was like; it was foggy as hell. The visibility was just awful and I could hardly see where I was going. But we skiied anyway, and for the record, we did pretty well. Troy and I split off from Andy and Brandon to shred the mountain as best we could. Our first run after warming up on the bunny hill was into a usually friendly terrain park off the main lift. The problem was, nothing was really done yet, so none of the jumps were there, but near the end of the run it dumped into a hellish bowl filled with moguls and dry patches. After that we played it easy for a while and built up our confidence. So we blazed a trail down the main lift, and guess what? We somehow ended up right back up at that same mogul-stricken bowl off the terrain park. I've got no idea how either.

Frustrated at the difficulty of finding jumps and/or visibility, we sat down for a nice lunch in the lodge. They make really good food. Anyway, following lunch, we went to the backside this time. This time we went off a few black diamonds and got lost a couple of times, and ended up having to ask for directions from a man named John. He kindly showed us how to get back to the frontside, and after bombing down the mountain one last time, we hung up our skiis and snowboards for the day and waited to be picked up.

Or so I thought.

It just so happened that my older brother (Micheal) and his good friend Al was there as well. They called me and Mike told me that he wanted me to take one last run with him. "Can you keep up?" he asked. "Can you?" I replied, laughing. So up on the main lift we went and guess what? I ended up in the same damn bowl as I did the other two times. But this time I ripped it up. I almost kept up with Mike and Al, and that's saying something. You should have seen them, just going down at top speeds. I'm afraid I just don't register on their Crazy-Ass-ometer. Oh well. It was still a good run, and I finished with style.

To a good day of skiing!

Finals: Day 4 (Last Day of School)

I've got an announcement everyone!

Holy crap it's Christmas Break!

The school day today was only a couple hours long and we only had one class; whatever we usually had at seventh period. For me, that was theology. And God it was easy. Our teacher basically handed the answers to it out weeks ago. Anybody who studied it would be fine, which is why I'm sure I aced it.

I asked my English 1/Speech teacher about how I did on my English final and it turns out I got 95%. I was stunned; this was one of the finals I really wasn't sure about as much. That's the only grade I've got so far aside from the health final. It looks like I did pretty well. I'll have to wait to see how I did on the others.

After the Theology final and the bell, I ran out in the hall, hugging people and shouting "School's out!" and "It's Christmas Break!" and such. Everybody was happy to finally be out of school for a while. And with good cause. Christmas is five days away. Five days. That's a normal school week. It's just so close.

With the holidays approaching, my older brother Micheal came last night and is staying with us for break. I haven't said much about him, but he's twenty, he goes to St. John's in Minnesota, and he's majoring in Philosophy. He's totally buff and spent one of his summers working as a construction worker. He's great company and conversation, and thanks to him I'll be getting my healthy doses of sarcasm this winter.

At any rate, there's no worries. It's nearing Christmas time and I've got family nearby. Happy Last Day of Finals!