Misleading Assignments

   That's it! Here we are, Friday has come at last, and that means I have officially survived my first week as a senior! Crazy to think how far I've come.
   The past two days have been pretty busy. It was all standard stuff during the day Thursday (except for AP Physics, but I'll get to that in a minute), however, I had to work that night-sadly missing marching band practice the night before our first football game.
   Now as I may or may not have stated before, I recently left my job as a grocery store clerk to be a busser at an upper class restaurant a little farther from my house. It's fairly easy work, and both the tips and hours are fabulous, so I'm loving it so far. Anyway, I was working last night, and we close at 9:30 on Thursday nights (or at least we stop accepting walk ins). I'm in the back cleaning the bread station and my manager is up front about to lock the doors when these door ginormous assholes walk in.
   I would like to take this moment to clarify, yes, they were huge asses. And yes, like that South Park episode.
   Anyway, they sat down and of course got appetizers, then entrees, and then OF COURSE they had to have desert. Long story short, it turns out they've done this more than once (most likely so they can have the restaurant to themselves) and I didn't get home until 11:30. Then I still had to do my homework.
   And while we're on the subject of homework, let me say that the AP Physics homework is SUPER misleading. He assigned two problems the first night. Just two. It took an hour. Why, you ask? Because they are then further divided int 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, etc. It was insane. So my brain was pretty much fried by the time I finally went to bed.
   Today was a bit better just in general. Most of my classes are fairly easy, and with the exception of physics, they haven't really assigned much homework tonight.
   I went to the football game with the marching band tonight, and we did fairly well, it being our first public performance. Not great, mind you, but good enough. I think with a little work we could really polish this turd up and make 'er shine!
   And now it is the late so I am the sleep.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Because I Can

   So summer is more or less here for me. I'm halfway through my finals-I've only got AP English and Chemistry left to take next week and then I'm a full-fledged senior.

Break out the allergy nasal-spray, bitches!

   This should be a fun summer for me. Nik and I both have cars and licenses now so we can take the whole group basically wherever we want. I'm thinking of getting everyone up to Ithaca to do some hiking. If you aren't familiar with the area, it's a town in upstate New York with some of the most beautiful waterfalls and hiking trails within reasonable distance of where I live. Of course, we also have the Adirondacks and Catskills, but those are a bit out of our way.
   Just yesterday we got out of our AP United States History exam and ended up spending the rest of the day up at the mall-because we're apparently stereotypical 90's teens now. Regardless, I may or may not have purchased a belt featuring the three Kanto starters and a Pokeball on the buckle. Spoilers: I totally did. And it is totally. Freaking. Awesome.

Aw, yeah.

   If I'm being completely honest though, it doesn't really feel like summer. More of like a spring break. Seems like this year totally flew by, despite being completely awful. I can't help but think things like "better not sleep in too late tomorrow, you don't want to start a bad habit for when you have to go back to school mon-oh wait." I'ts kind of nice at the same time though, because then I get to remember I have the next couple of months to do basically whatever I like, such as drag my friends out to go hiking for no good reason other than I can.
   In other news, tragedy struck the other day when I turned on Netflix only to find that one of Joss Whedon's greatest masterpieces-Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog-had been removed from the site. Words cannot express the fury I feel at this both loss and betrayal. Anyway, the moral of the story is, after a long and fruitless hunt at the stores in my area (always try to buy local first, folks!) I found it on Amazon. Unsurprisingly, those geniuses had it on sale for $5.00. Now that is knowing the market. They knew people would want to go buy it now that Netflix dumped it. Well played, Amazon. Well played.
   I'll see you lot Friday. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elder berries. Now go away before I taunt you a second time!

Tacos,
Gladdstone

That's a Wrap!

   So today was my last day of school, and personally, I am so glad to finally be putting this year behind me. There were a lot of great things that happened this year (one of those being this blog), but all in all it was pretty crappy. Junior year is a really tough year. Will senior year be easier? I doubt it, but it will be a bit more relaxed, at least.
   I think all of the firsts this year was the problem. On top of some fairly difficult classes, I had no lunch most of the year, and then pair that with still getting used to balancing work and school,  add in the stress of having expenses (private lessons, insurance, gas) and buying my first car, it has been a tough year. Next year I will definitely be a little more used to all of this, and hopefully, a little bit better at balancing everything.
   If I could give some advice to people coming towards this age, I'd say be very careful about overloading yourself. I wasn't, and I spent most of the year just bairly keeping my head above water-financially, academically, and mentally. Keep in mind that if you want to get a job, it will interfere with your schoolwork, and if you're not prepared for this it will affect your grades. Also bear in mind that people are going to start hounding you about college and you have to be ready for it. Even if you don't know what you want to do when you graduate, you're going to need some sort of answer. Maybe you don't have a career in mind, but you know you're going to attend college? I'd say take the time to look at a few colleges, community colleges especially as they're just chock full of students trying to figure out where they want to go from here. Basically, it's cheap and it will buy you time.
   Have you ever sat at your keyboard, looking at that little blinking line, and it just taunts you? I'm not sure why, but I've got a thousand thoughtsa whirling through my head right now and I just can't seem to focus enough to write.
   I need a vacation.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Maleficient the Passable

   Whoops, guess I missed Wednesday again. Sorry everybody! My bad! Let's all just move along, nothing to see here.
   Moving on, it has been a pretty slow week in terms on interesting-ness, but it was still fairly busy. Like I said, I had Tuesday off and I went to see Maleficient with some friends. On the docket tonight will be a brief review (spoiler free, I promise). But first, let's get everybody caught up.
   Tuesday was a nice day off, and then Wednesday was fairly relaxed other than a practice Chemistry regents. Honestly, it wasn't too difficult. I really expected to do poorly and I did quite well. I didn't go to my lesson that night because of schedule conflicts, and I finished the office later that night (either then or

Pictured: the UEHS Orchestra 2014-15 year

Thursday night, I honestly can't remember). Either way, wow. Just a fantastic end to a fantastic show. If you read Monday's post, you'll see I was getting pissed off, but I love the direction they ended up taking it in the end. It really was perfect. Thursday night I had the end of the year concert for orchestra. That's always fun, but sad. Each senior picks a song for the group to play, and unfortunately, we had 16 seniors this year. So yeah, long concert. But anyway, it was sad to think of all the people I'll probably never have the opportunity to perform alongside again. Rivenburg cried, of course, and that just made it sadder. It's crazy to think I'll be sitting in the concert master seat next year. Horrifying thought. On the bright side, I got a chance to catch up with an old cellist friend of mine, Michelle, who told me to start an 11th Doctor roleplay blog on Tumblr. So that's a thing now. Anyone who is interested in reading or participating can find it at www.mybowtiebringsallthegirls.tumblr.com. Not much there, at the moment, but it should be getting off the ground in the next couple of days. Today was fairly dull, went to school, went to work, came home, blogged, and went to bed (not yet, but soon. Soon.). With that, I think we'll move on to my Maleficient review.

Truly the face of evil

   So, Maleficient. Have I ever said how horrifying Angelina Jolie is? Her face is a train wreck. Somewhere along the line she just ended up with so much plastic in her face that she no longer appeared alive. As of right now, she looks about 4 months dead, and I honestly just don't see how people find her attractive. But regardless of her nightmarish looks, she honestly did fairly well as Maleficient. Not the best performance I've seen recently, but it certainly could have been worse. The musical score was good, but again, nothing wholly remarkable. The only thing that really leapt out at me was the CGI, which I thought was extremely good, with some exceptions such as a couple parts of the flying scenes where it just looked awful. Honestly, the CGI either looked fabulous, or dreadful, with no in between. The story I found fairly lacking. It felt very dragged out in the beginning, when it discussed Maleficient's childhood (not a spoiler), and then rushed through the rest of the movie to get to the Sleeping Beauty crap. The actress who played Aurora was Ellie Fanning. She's a very cute girl, and she performed very well. I can't say it was the best performance I've ever seen, but it was certainly some of the best in the movie, and I really hope we get to see more of her as she grows up and matures. All in all, I'd give the movie 6.5/10. I wouldn't say not to go see it, but if you have to choose between this and, say Guardians of the Galaxy, pick Guardians. If you do happen to like the idea of this extra character development, this movie may be for you. There isn't a lot, but enough.
   Before I go, I should mention the Geek Council will be available on iTunes soon, I promise. We've hit some logistical problems, but the recordings are still happening. The episodes are being developed, we just need to get it up and running. Promise.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

This is the Title of This Post

   Back again, I see?
   It is Wednesday night, and you know what that means-it's time for a new post. So let's jump right in, shall we?
   Today I had the absolute pleasure of taking the AP US History exam, and let me just say-fuck. Seriously, that was absolutely awful. I don't even know where to begin. 80 questions, 55 minutes followed by a DBQ and two regular essays in 2 hours. Not to mention I didn't know 90% of what was on that test. I'll be completely amazed if I passed, frankly. But, we won't know until July because who the hell knows.

My OTP. Seriously.

   To make matters worse, Netflix is not working for me and I am about to lose my cool here. I put up with so much from them, and they never deliver. I have never been happy with the service they provide, but they're (amazingly) the best. SO I guess I'll have to put up with it for the time being. I'm trying everything
because all I want is to rewatch the goddamn Office. It seems to be my wifi, but I can't figure out what's wrong because my iPad is connecting to everything else, just not Netflix. It's working fine on my computer, so I don't know what's up here. I'm really pissed off about it, though (in case you couldn't tell).
   Anyway, back to important-ish things. It's starting to look like I'm probably going to stick with my fluties for my senior year of marching band. I think I would just miss them too much to leave them.
   I'm just going to interrupt this moment to say Netflix is working on my iPad again. Yay.
   Back to the flute section. I really do love the section. They're so much fun, and I think I'd just be happier sticking with my guns. Not to mention the euphonium is a bit of a pain in the ass. I'll certainly work my way up to being fairly decent at it, because I'd really like to continue in a drum corp after high school. I think I love marching band too much to just let it fade away like that.
   That's just about it in my life. These APs have been taking up most of my time. Thankfully, they're finally over so I can get back to not beating useless information into my head.
   See you all Friday.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Sharpie Face=Passing Grade?

   We've finally reached that blessed halfway point in the week where the weekend begins rapidly approaching. The only downside here, is my English AP Exam is scheduled for Friday. Kill me.

The man who I'm relying on to help me
pass APUSH

   The good news is Krieger says that you only need about a 6 on each exam to pass as well as roughly 46/55 multiple choices (subject to change depending on the number of questions and the curve). I feel pretty confident that I can nail this. As for the American history AP...well, you win some, you lose some, eh? I'm really banking on John Green to get me out of that one. For those who don't know, John Green has an entire video series out that covers the entire course and it is a truly beautiful thing.
   I thing it's only fair to warn you, this is gonna get a little personal for a paragraph or so, so feel free to skip over this bit. In fact, I even encourage it, because it's really more for me than you guys.
   Sometimes I just get sick of being single. And by sometimes, I mean all the time. For a while I just ignored the entire dating/crush thing, and it served me well. But after a while, I just started to get lonely, and it sort of makes me regret that I ever started dating in the first place because I know if I hadn't, I wouldn't have this unique sort of loneliness. I'm always surrounded by good friends, but now when I'm single, there's that little emotional void that nothing really seems to fill. Don't get me wrong, I don't totally regret ever having had a girlfriend because some wonderful things have come from my relationships, and they've caused me to grow as a person. But for several months (almost a year, I think) now, I've been consumed with this awful regret, and I can't seem to figure out how to approach it. i made a really terrible decision one day, just out of no where and I don't understand why I would do it, but I did, and I went with it without thinking and I've never hated myself more. It's just one of those things where you can't seem to find a way to broach the subject, and just spend your time desperately trying to build up to it even knowing that you'll probably never reach that point.
   Anyway. Let's pick the pace back up, shall we? In the world of music, I had a violin lesson tonight with my private teacher, and we discussed my college plans for most of the time I was there. But what's really interesting is I've finally gotten to pick up a brass instrument. Specifically, low brass. Specifically-er, euphonium. This is because, as a flute player, I can't continue in marching band without picking up a different instrument. Another factor, was that Mr. Bill had been pressuring me to do it for a while now. Apparently we'll be low in that section next year, so it's looking like that's where I'll be spending my senior year, which I find kind of exciting. I think it will be fun to relearn all the parts for those couple songs that pop up every year.
   Speaking of exciting, ho-boy did something exciting happen today. at long, long last...it has been announced...by Nintendo...that coming soon...in November 2014...is the long awaited Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire remakes! Words simply cannot express how excited I am about this. Along with the announcement came a short, 30 second video. There's nothing super exciting in the video itself, but this is incredibly exciting. I, personally have been waiting for this since Heartgold/Soulsilver and I could not be more excited that it will (most likely) be running in the new graphics engine-although I wouldn't say no to a return to the old style, either. For those who haven't seen it, here's the video.

   Beyond that, I don't have too much going on in my video game life. I should be wrapping up this crazy music writing stuff in the next week or two, and then I'll be back to screwing around.
   This site is looking pretty sparse, and that's something I plan to work on soon here. If you guys have any ideas of what might be cool, feel free to leave a comment below!

Tacos,
Gladdstone