Band trip

Whew, after four days of going around doing stuff, we all got back last night in one piece. Here's a day-by-day outlook.

Wednesday: Not much. Driving, dinner, then more driving. We got to the hotel at around 9:30.

Thursday: We played two concerts in the morning, with the second one being better than the first. Organization was a bit of a problem, but got better as the trip went on. Then we went down to the Portland zoo. I used over half my film there (yes, I still use that ancient technology called film), and half of that is of penguins. Then we went to Washington Square mall. To my surprise, I bought a lot more than I expected. One thing was a T-shirt with that emblem you find on the Hylian Shield from Zelda - Ocarina of Time (this one, to be exact), and I bought a 2-CD Glenn Miller collection from a store that was having a 30% off clearance sale.

Friday: We played at a concert at a school on the coast. I broke a string. During a solo. Which isn't entirely a bad thing, except the entire guitar goes out of tune. For me, that's twice on the trip, and twice during a solo, and the first for each were on different occasions. Oh, well. One thing I make sure of when I buy strings is that they come with extras. I'll replace it when I get the chance. Then we went down to Seaside (yes, that's the name of the town. You can also find the town of Boring there.). The beach is great, even if we didn't go swimming, and the shops there are really cool. I bought a really nice leather bag for my laptop and it cost me 20 bucks. But the best part is that I found an In the Groove 2 machine there and I got to try it out. Other than the fact that the volume was too low, it was awesome. I want to try another one sometime; I only got one game. I also saw an F-Zero AX machine there. We went to a cheese factory (awesome) after that. That evening we went down to Fred Meyer (for fellow Canadians wondering what that is, it's kind of like Wal-Mart meets Safeway) and I found a shirt that looks like one of those football t-shirts with the "property of" thing in big letters, except it said "Property of Jesus". It's awesome. I wanted the one that looked like the eBay logo, except it said iPray, but I didn't want the same shirt as someone else. Oh, and self-serve checkouts rock.

Saturday: We went to some outlet stores in the morning, which was a bit more interesting than I expected, but I didn't get anything. Then it was a long drive home. I saw Mr. Holland's Opus in its entirety for the first time. It's a great movie. It was interesting to note that on our way out, the US customs people checked our passports and everything, but the Canadian customs people on the way back let us go after the driver reported us. We got back tired, but in one piece.

Since it's my last trip, I can post favorites.

Grade 9 - Nelson - My fave of the four. I dunno why, I think it was the hotel with the really nice pool, even if I forgot my swim trunks that year.

Grade 10 - Prince Rupert, Northern BC - A lot of driving. I didn't get the bus I wanted either. Other than that, though, it was fun. Least favorite of the four.

Grade 11 - Lethbridge - I liked it. Having access to a DDR machine for 3 hours helped. Can't think of too much else. 3rd.

Grade 12 - Oregon - I bought a lot of cool stuff, found an ITG2 machine, and did a bunch of cool stuff. But something about it seemed missing. 2nd.

This trip also gave me a lot to think about, but I don't really feel like talking about it right now. I've talked enough, anyway.

It's official: I've been hit by the Sudoku bug. I don't know why, it just happened. I did one of the hard puzzles and I'm trying to do an "evil" one without any mistakes.

Yay! Band trip in two days! We're going down to the Oregon Coast. It should be fun.

My situation in a nutshell

1600 word French essay due tomorrow, just over half done. Band trip Wednesday.

Will post more some other time.

Sorry about the double post, if there is one above this one. Blogger doesn't like me right now.

More Guitar Hero Stuff

Guitar Hero II announced for this fall!

Too bad I'll be gone before it gets released.

Redefining music geek

Wow; Gibson has made a Les Paul with an ethernet port in it.

I guess it's for those online jam sessions. Or for recording.

Come to think of it, an online jam session would rock. But I don't know if you can make it in perfect real time, unfortunately, because if it weren't, the timing would be off.

Yay for busy-ness!

Let's just say I'm glad that it's a 4-day long weekend now.

Café Jazz was yesterday. The fun thing was, in the 16-19 song repertoire, I played in every single one. Unfortunately, that comes with attending 4 different sets of practices and having to organize one of them. I'm kind of glad that I go back to 1 after the Easter break. Overall, we all did well. My favorite parts were when after the Jr. Jazz group, I put the music away, put down the folder, then proceed to pick up the other folder and get ready for the next group. Similar things happened between the other groups. It was fun.

So now, I'm going to enjoy my break.

Just when you thought Guitar Hero couldn't get awesome enough...

Someone turns the controller into a real instrument.

What a week.

Or, at least, the past few days.

Yesterday (and today) was the 30 hour famine. Basically, you get pledges, then not eat for 30 hours and have a party at the school. We had a Gamecube, my laptop, and a projector we got out of the library. It was great. And after, I had 9 pieces of pizza.

And today, I got my tux for prom. It was actually kind of fun. It's a 3 button suit with a burgundy vest and tie. I actually like the burgundy look. It looks good.

So, yeah. Stick around for updates next week, the way things are going.

My week

Anyway, my week. 3 days later than I said I would. Yay.

Monday was interesting. Turns out there were 4 people that aced math (and we're all in the same calculus class, somehow), including me, one of them also aced chem and is also a good friend of mine. Good for him. Someone aced English 10 as well. What I'm amazed at is that at another high school around here, someone aced English 12. I didn't think that was possible.

Tuesday was normal.

Wednesday was the band concert. It went well. One of my favorite parts was when my band teacher's community band played Fantasy on American Sailing Songs, a song we played in Grade 9. I didn't remember much at first, but as they played, I could hear every part that we had to play 1000 times to get right. Seriously.

Thursday was the first combo practice, but Joel couldn't make it, so we were incomplete, I guess. But it still went well. It turns out my kitty-cat song (Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, my own arrangement) is pretty darned hard to play. Oh, well.

Friday was normal, as far as Fridays go. Except my brother bought Kingdom Hearts 2. I still don't know why it's part Disney, part Final Fantasy, and part something else, but it works. And it has Tron in it. Get it.

Saturday I saw Ice Age with some friends. It was funny, and I'd recommend it. Wait, I am now.

Sunday was the second combo practice, but our clarinet player couldn't make it. Oh well. I had snagged a tenor player out of jazz band to balance out the lows and we sound quite good. Rock on. Or jazz on.

And it's Monday again. Yay.

Yeah, I've been busy. I'll post about my week later.

But I'm watching Kong right now and you've got to wonder how the girl is going around the island in all sorts of crazy situations and not get scratched, bruised, injured, or even dirty throughout the movie. I guess if you're going for unrealistic, you have to go as far as you possibly can.