It's a Brand New Day

   Monday evening again, and here I am again. It's good to be back, like slipping back into a familiar coat.
   Friday was an interesting day. It appears I am now the Pam of the marching band ((go watch The Office if you don't understand, you uncultured swine). Not sure what I do, but whatever. Should be a good year nonetheless.
   Saturday was, as I'm sure you all know, Free Comic Book Day. For me, the day has become less about free stuff, and more about meeting new people. Nik, Nate, and I all went to the mall and enjoyed talking to some likeminded nerds. We even saw a couple cosplayers. Power Rangers. I stopped in the middle of the mall and saluted them exclaiming  "God bless America." because what else could you possibly do at a moment like that?
   Slightly less exciting than that was that I had to take the SAT first. Let me say, that was the most absurdly stressful thing I've ever done in my life. And I had to pay money for it.
   Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly easy (never even picked up a review book), but the time constraints were absolutely killer. The math portions were less difficult, and more time consuming. Sort of so that one brief mistake could cost you the time to do an entire question.
   Enough about that, though. Let's talk music! I haven't quite found the time to finish that violin cover of I Miss You yet, but let me tell you, words cannot describe how excited I am to finish and perform it. It's going to be so fantastic. The intricacies of the parts and the way they fit together are just so great.
   Speaking of which, Rivenburg (orchestra teacher) had a guest violinist in today. And not just any violinist, a rock violinist. Yeah. Think about that. Basically what he would do is he'd set his equipment to record from his acoustic/electric violin and then loop while he played the melody. It was all dne live, too which made it all the more impressive. He would lay down the bea, then base, some decoratives, and go to town. It was truly incredible. If you want to check him out (and I highly recommend you do), his name is Andrea di Cesare. He's an Italian violinist, and he didn't speak much English from what I could tell. It wasn't too bad though, I know enough Italian to get the gist of what he was trying to say. I must say, though, it really got me excited to try broadening my horizons with my instrument a bit.
   Speaking of broadening my horizons, tomorrow I'll be picking up a low brass instrument for the first time. For the marching band, or course, just like basically everything else I do. I love my fluties, but it looks like the low brass are going to need warm bodies, and Shannon and Megan have it all in good hands. I'm sure they'll get along fine (read: better) without me.
   That oughta do it for tonight. I'll see you all on Wednesday.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Pride (part 2)

   Band secretary.
   ...better than nothing, I suppose.
   Better than nothing, I suppose. See you all Monday.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Pride (part 1)

   Thank God it's Friday. This has been a long, and stressful week.
   I'm in chemistry, right now, not paying attention. I have to work right after school tonight, so I'm trying to take care of this post during the day so I'm not up all night. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but I have SATs tomorrow, so I should probably try to get some sleep. I'm shooting for 10 tonight, if not 9:30. The test is at 8 so I'll probably have to be up around 7, depending on if Nik passes his driving test today. He takes it at two.
   Speaking of this afternoon, Mr. Bill announced today that the results from leadership interviews will be posted 9th period today. I have been completely unable to focus since then, because I am just absurdly nervous. Last year's flute section leader Shannon said she was in her interview for a half hour (they were generally about 10 minutes). She was going for drum major too, so that makes me a bit nervous. Mine did last about 20 minutes, though, so that could be a good thing, who knows?
   I also put a bit more work into my cover of I Miss You by Blink-182 for three violins. It's pretty frustrating to write out, because all I want to do is play it. But I kind of have to write the piece first. The good news is it's really coming together well.
   I've also been asked to do an orchestral arrangement of Cry Me a River by Michael Buble for someone's senior song (in our orchestra, for our last concert of the year the seniors each pick out a song, and we didn't have the music for that one). Talk about a good song, but my God is it tough to get the right rhythm out of the vocals. This one I have to write out all they way, too. As opposed to the short hand I'm writing I Miss You in, because I'm the only one who has to be able to read that. Hopefully, I can get this done and convince my music theory teacher Mr. Mueller to help me record it. He has a fantastic electric violin and is an absolute wizard with Garage Band (which makes sense, because that's basically his job).
   In Blizzard's domain, I spent some more time on my troll shaman. He's almost done with LFR ToT, and then all that's left is Siege of Orgrimmar and some item grinding, then I'll be all about set to start at least as an alternate healer for my guilds raid teams. After that, maybe I'll try out elemental shaman, because apparently they're pretty powerful right now.
   Before I forget, when you boost your character to 90 using the WoD boost, you get all Embersilk bags. Yeah. I didn't know that, and now I have more bag space than I know what to do with. It's insane.
   In Hearthstone, I've leveled my shaman (lots of shaman this week) and the deck I built is actually working fairly well. It has a low win rate, but I can tell where the problems are so I think once I so all I need to do is switch a couple cards out. The issue is really I have a lot of board control, but I never have anything to finish my opponent with once I've got tempo and board control.
   Agh, this is absurd. I can't focus. Time for another intermission. I'll put out a second post later after 9th period.

Wish me luck,
Gladdstone