Avatars!!!!

I stumbled across a livejournal community for House avatars today. A lot of the people posting comments had various other interesting ones, too. I couldn't resist ganking a few (dozen). These are my favourites. The "Welcome to the end of the thought process" one is totally the best, I think. Now that I have proven myself to be a total and utter geek, I'll leave you with the link to the place where I found them and go back to hiding in my hole. ^_^

Picture Goodness!

So Joyce updated her blog (finally ;-p), and she had a picture game kinda like the one Jo had on her blog back in October. I'd collected all the photos for the one Jo did, but I had a bitch of a time posting them. I believe that now, however, I have had enough practice (the second post of Formal pictures took a dozen or so edits) that I can get this up. So, here we go:

1. Where you grew up.



















2. Where you live now.















3. Your name.



















4. Your grandmother's name.

My paternal grandmother:




















And my maternal grandmother:




















5. Your favourite food.

















6. Your favourite drink.



















7. Your favourite song.























Or, if you can't read that, here's one that makes less sense, but I found quite funny:









8. Your favourite smell.
















No, my favourite smell is not "Fat Stupid Man." Go watch Hell's Kitchen.

And, lastly...

9. Your favourite sound.



















Wow, that was easier than I though it would be. I wonder who drew that picutre I used for my name...

Moving Truck???

Peter is talking about Napoleons. The pastry. "To be fair, only in the context of eighth of inches," he says. We have to make more pastry cream. Making that stuff is like doing your first chemistry experiment in elementary school. One second, it's liquid, the next second, it's pastry cream. It's insane, and makes your arm sore to whisk.

The past couple of days have been good. I want an extra week of Reading Week, though. I don't feel like I've gotten quite the opportunity I wanted to relax and do fun things. I've been watching 10th Kingdom again, and Jenilee and I went to Ikea on Monday and I cooed at all the furniture I'll be acquiring later this year when we move. Apparently, my mother thinks I also need a new TV. I have no problem with that. The TV I have is older than I am and doesn't have enough ports. And have any of you gone to Ikea and sat in the Ekeskog chair? Not the Ektorp, the Ekeskog. It's big and poufy and the closest thing I can find to the gushy chair in the lownjlounge without the decades of wear and spores of mystery dust. ^_^ Check it out.

So my sister's getting married on July 29th. She couldn't tell my dad in person while she was here, I guess, so she called him less than half an hour before her flight left to go back to Vancouver. So it was kind of a triple-whammy for my dad. 1: Getting married. 2: Soon. 3: To a woman. Yeah, my dad didn't know she was gay. Well, he claims he kind of knew, but he hadn't been told. Apparently the wedding's going to be on the beach and we're all supposed to wear flip-flops. I'm happy with that. :-)

Okay, so the doorbell just rang and there's a big moving truck in the driveway (at Peter's). I have no idea what's going on, but I should really go find out.

ETA: I was the only one here when this happened, hence my concern. But it seems fine. Debbie's in the garage, so I assume Andy's around here somewhere. Still no idea what's going on, but at least it won't be my fault if stuff goes missing from the garage.

Pictures and Pancakes

Finally, I've got my own Formal pictures on my comp. This is Sara, on her day pass from the hospital. I totally didn't recognize her at first with her hair back/up. She said that now that she's being put back on steroids, she wanted to enjoy wearing her nice clothes while they still fit.






And, here, of course, are Pri and Morgan. Pri looks confused. I'm not sure why. Maybe she'd just seen Katie walk by with her fifth (seventh? twelfth?) Harvey Walbanger. But wouldn't that cause more of a look of empathetic nausea? Hmmm...
And, lastly, this is a picture I took by mistake. It will have to count as the requisite picture of Peter and I. The one on my camera had me looking absoluely crazed. I'm not even sure it was a good idea to metion its existence.

In other news, I'm meeting Jenilee for coffee in about 20 minutes, so I should go get changed and whatnot. Oh! Something some of you might find amusing: I made pancakes this morning! I made plain ones for Dave and blueberry ones for myself. I got these organic blueberries that were superb. The problem? I made mine bigger, and they didn't cook all the way through. ^_^ But Peter and I decided that Goo is Good for the Soul, so it's all right. ^_^

I *heart* Logic

This is a puzzle that Peter gave to me. He read about it on the Skeptics Dictionary, and apparently a prof gave the problem to a class of 100 students and less than ten of them got it right.

You're working with cards. Each card has a number on one side and a letter on the other side. You have four of the cards in front of you. They display A B 4 7. In order to test the statement "If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side," which cards would you _have_ to turn over?

Let's hear your answers! Bonus points if you can explain them!

(For the record, I got it correct right away. Peter made a mistake. So I'm kinda bragging. So sue me. ^_^)

Sa-sa-saturday

It is Saturday. And it is Reading Week. These two things in combination make me especially happy. :-)

So in honour of my sister coming to visit, we went to Unhearof last night. Fuck, that's a lot of food. My mom was saying that bulemia as real appeal sometimes. She's even purchased Epecac (sp?) to that end, although she hasn't taken any, I don't think.

On a less morbid note, Lindsay brought pictures of her 2-year-old chocolate lab, Frodo. He's so cute! I bought him chocolate doggie biscuits from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for Chirstmas, which he apparently loved. My brother rolled his eyes at that one.

I don't really have any specific plans for Reading Week. The only assignment I have is a Music History assignment that allows us to make up 8% of our midterm mark. We had the retest on the order of the Mass yesterday, and I'm more or less certain I got full marks. But, really, I passed the midterm, so this whole endeavour is just gravy to me.

Looking forward to Pri and Morgan's birthday part tomorrow night. Haven't had a night of hard-core hangoutage in a while. Maybe I'll see if I can steal my brother's two sets of bongos...

Yeah, I have little to say right now. For those of you who care, I've updated the Tinuviel Henneth link (I'm so far refusing to call her Tinhen). I still have nothing else of interest to link to. Maybe the U of A website? Wait. No... Maybe we should start a lownj website. There've been people looking at blueprints in there lately. I think we should start a tribute/attempt to save it. Anybody feel like coding it?

Sun Jammin' 1

Hands up!
Baby, hands up!
Gimme your heart
Gimme gimme
Your heart
Gimme gimme

Fuck Ed Psych. Sitting on the couch, spending quality time with my computer and a magazine and my dog is much more important. Now if only my dog wasn't jealous that my backpack gets to sit next to me. He keeps trying to edge himself in between it and me.

I need to go find out my Alberta student number. I know I have it written down in one of my high school agendas. If I don't give Donna the form for internal transfer by tomorrow, I have to pay the $75 fee. I think this is the first time I've ever been happy about Donna's existence. Unlike the last time I dealt with her, when she lost my paperwork okaying my reduced courseload. Grr...

Don't think twice
Or count to ten
Don't take advice
Don't ask me when
Just look my way
Simply kiss me and say...

In celebration of my sister coming into town today, we're going out to the Unheardof tomorrow night. I think it's also kind of an early birthday dinner, since her birthday's in March. Good God, I've had a lot of food lately. When my mom got back from Winnipeg last night, we went out to Il Forno, and even though I didn't eat nearly as much as my parents, or, God forbid, Peter, it was still a lot of food. So I'm fasting today. Except that I ate breakfast. And a quasi-lunch. Well, okay, not fasting, but I'm not going to feel good after a meal at Unheardof no matter what I do today. Oh, well.

I signed up for the summer jazz band course. Dominic Spera's not teaching it this year, Tom Dust is, but it's also been rescheduled to the beginning of May instead of the middle of August, so it's much more convenient to take. I also should start thinking about where to apply for a summer job. Costco apparently starts their cashiers at $11.50 and doesn't have any PLUs to memorize. Hmmm...

Let me by your Romeo
Your wonder boy
And your super champ
(and your super champ)
Let me take you
Tot the Milky Way
On a holiday
(on a holida-ay)

Ahhh... Relaxation

So this is us at the formal. Many thanks to Morgan for the picture. I still haven't bothered to charge my camera battery, but I'll e-mail you my pictures as soon as I do! marty didn't wear the tie I suggested, which was brown and pink, and went instead for the irridescent thing you see. Peter was smart and didn't wear a tie.







This is me in my spiffy MSA t-shirt that I won as a doorprize. It's exactly the same as the one I bought in September, but a different size and free! And it came with a rental certificate from Movie Studio, which I find to be most excellent. :-)








So today was a rare day. I had nothing pressing to do today, so I skipped my 9am 281 class and sat around enjoying myself all day. I do technically have Speech class in 11 minutes, but I'll only be able to go to half of it, and all we're doing is a continuation of an exercise I did my part of last class, so I decided to hang out a little while longer before going to watch Jazz II rehearse. Since Dr. Street is out of town all week for that saxophone conference, Tom Dust is going to be teaching our Band Tech class tomorrow, and we need to be at the rehearsal today to know what he's talking about. Well, I don't, really, since I've been in his band, but I'm gonna be a good little student (heh!) and go anyways.

Something I discovered on Monday: Sean's in town. Or, well, he was. He's also at that saxophone conference right now. He's back in good ol' North America to audition for grad school. Apparently Deebs and Len really want him to come back. But, yeah, I was sitting in the hall waiting for my lesson on Monday, and I hear Krippa talking to somebody. It sounds like Sean, I think to myself. And then I hear this person say "Yeah, I'm back in town for auditions," and when I go look, hey! there he is. So I got him to come to Earls with Peter and I for dinner that evening. He apparently got into town this weekend and was at our Wind Ensemble concert on Sunday. *nervous laugh* Oh, hey, I didn't blog about that, either. Well, we played Omaggio by Michael Ball, and there's this part in the last movement where there's this build with the brass fluttertonguing and it's noisy as all hell and then it abruptly stops. Then, there's kind of a 3/8 pick-up measure and the brass come in with these rips. The problem? Deebs screwed up the pick-up bar somehow and _none_ of the brass came in. The flutes made their entrance, though, so it kept going all right, but anybody actually watching the players would have seen the entire back row look at eachother in confusion. Other than that it went relatively all right, I think.

But, anyway, Sean will be back in town for I think five days next week, which, for all you peeps who still have school schedules like me, is READING WEEK! So there's going to be some sort of gathering. More will be known when Sean returns.

Formal Hemogloben Inebriation

Just got back from rehearsal. Chad didn't show up, but Alex did, so we did a bit of fine-tuning for the blocking. Alex told me he sings with the Richard Eaton Singers on occasion, and that he considered getting a BMus in '84 before he got tenure as a Drama prof. I thought that was kind of neat.

The formal was most excellent. My camera battery died partway through the night, though. I've got some nice pictures, which I will post later once I've charged the battery, and Morgan's gonna send me hers, which will hopefully round out the collection. Jackie got really drunk right off the bat, and Katie was upset by this somehow and went on a vengence binge, thus getting even more drunk than Jackie, to the point that Megan and Kate had to take her home before the end of the second set. Her waving goodbye was hilarious. Asides from that, Sarah got a day pass from the hospital to come. Turns out she doesn't have pneumonia, but her hemogloben (sp?) was down to 52, which Morgan gave a double-thumbs up to.

There weren't any pictures of me in the slideshow, which made me feel kinda sad and old, even though I'm only fourth year, but there was one close-up of Doug giving this kind of skeptical face, which was hilarious. ^_^ There were a lot of pictures of the first-year guys who sit behind me in my 281 class whom I don't particularly like. *old person harrumph*

Asides from that, I'm taking today off. I slept in, which was glorious, and I plan to sleep in again tomorrow before the Wind Ensemble concert. Speaking of which, I did some of my makeup before the dress rehearsal last night, but someone in Con Hall had jacked the heat up, so a large amount of it kinda melted off. Boo. ^_^ And now back to our sporadically scheduled loafing.

Killing Time While Hungry

At school. Very hungry, since I hven't eaten yet today, but I'm meeting Jenilee for lunch in CAB and that means I should wait until after 10:30 so the cafeteria is in lunch modea and not breakfast mode. I had a CAB breakfast on Monday, and while it was quite delicious, it was not at all healthy. So in 20 minutes I'll go have a sub or something.

Formal tonight. I ran into Chelsea (second-year trumpet major) this morning and she was really excited. I'm not that excited, but that may be because I seem to be getting a cold and my trusty Tylenol Cold that I keep in my locker is nowhere to be found. I coughed, sneezed and sniffled my way through 281 this morning. Blick. I have to go home this afternoon, though, so I'll get some medicine then.

Speaking of 281, I walked into class a minute or so before it started to find David Grammit talking with some of the people who were already there about the midterm. Apparently the results were bad enough that he's working on providing us with some sort of "compensatory measure." I thought I did pretty well except for the order of the Mass [insert MSN angel emoticon here], so I'm not sure where I stand. He said there was "a number of people" who got over 50%, and then he said he should stop talking because he was making it sound gloomier than it is, so now I'm worried. Worried and hungry.

I'm looking forward to Reading Week. I know that that's a little far ahead (well, a week) to be planning to actually get some sleep, but I just can't get any penciled in until then. Although I took last night off and went and had curry from Block 1912 with Peter, which was very nice. :-)

So our dress rehearsal for Wind Ensemble is this afternoon. I have to miss my Speech class for it, which I don't terribly mind, except that it meant I had to scramble to do my presentation of Wednesday instead of today, but that's over and done with. What annoyes me is that the dress rehearsal goes until an hour before the Formal starts, and even though I'm not bouncing with excitement like Chelsea, I do want to look nice. I've decided to do my makeup in stages. I've got the eyeliner and mascara on now, because those take the longest, and I'll do the foundation this afternoon before rehearsal, and then I can apply the stuff that makes it obvious that I'm wearing make-up this evening. See, I've got it all covered. ^_^

Ok, so it's only been 10 minutes, but I'm gonna head down to CAB now anyway. My stomach is getting rather loud.

Pencils!

I have just eaten three pastilles of extra creamy chocolate, and I'm now much happier with the world than I was ten minutes ago. :-) Holy crap, things have been insane lately.

It's midterm season, leading up to Reading Week. My 281 midterm was yesterday (it went not bad), my Ed Psych midterm is on Thursday, and my Band Tech midterm is on Tuesday. My other two courses (Speech and Lessons) don't have midterms, but 281 is trying to make up for that by having two midterms. Boo.

So my lesson and rep class were cancelled yesterday because Russ' wife had her baby on Friday. It's a boy, and they named him James. Russ e-mailed out pictures, and in one of them, Peter and I decided he looked like an angry mobster. ^_^

The 383 scene I'm in goes up next Tuesday, probably. I'm now kicking myself for deciding to do this. At least it's a short scene. And if any of y'all want to come to the Wind Ensemble concert this Sunday, I actually won't try to talk you out of it. A fair deal of it is "real music." ^_^

But what I'm actually looking forward to is the Formal on Friday. Pretty dresses, drinking and dancing. Oh, crap. I just realized that I have rehearsal for my 383 at 9 am the next morning. Bugger. But my director wants another rehearsal and she's spending all day doing set painting and I can't do Sunday because of the concert and fuck. Oh, well. I've started going back to my high school mantra, and I think this is a good time for it: Sleep is for the Weak.

So I've decided that David Grammit, my 281 teacher, despite being a really good teacher, is nuts about style. We have to submit a bibliography of the score and two recordings of the piece we'll be using for our term paper (well, actually it was due on Jan 30, but I'll get it in tomorrow... I hope), and we have to use this style that... I have no idea what it's actually called. It's not APA, MLA, or Chicago. I had to go to the library and photocopy pages out of the style book that was on reserve. I... why? What's wrong with a style that people have actually heard of? And plus I heard the story about how he accused Eric of plagiarism because he used the phrase "dark and macrabre" in a paper, and so now I'm scared of him, too. I suck at citations. I wrote an entire paper last year without citing my sources. Not only did I not get in trouble, I didn't even fail. Got a B. I guess I just don't see citations as a backbone of scholarly integrity. Bah.

Anyway, another thing I have to do by tomorrow is write a poem about a pencil. I guess I'll go do that.

I like pencils a whole lot
They write good when days are hot
Mechanical or just plain wood
Either way they're mighty good

(Brownie points to anybody who knows what poem I spoofed here. It should be pretty obvious if you know my taste in movies.)

Still Alive for Now

Hmm, it's been a while since I blogged. I guess life kinda got in the way. That and the fact that my computer has spent the past two days in my backpack.

I'm currently sitting in the family room, and we recently go our sofa cushions restuffed, so they're oddly firm. My dog doesn't even dent them. It's actually quite funny.

So... what's been going on lately? Oh, bye, Doug! He leaves today for up North. At least it's closer than England.

Apart from that... last week I auditioned for the Drama 383 Intro to Directing midterm scenes, and I got a phonecall yesterday telling me I'd been cast in one. The girl who cast me didn't even see my audition and has me playing a male part. The other guy in the scene didn't audition at all. I love these kinds of classes. If I ever get to take this class, I'm going to put up a poster with the words "WARM BODIES WANTED" at the top.

Wind Ensemble today was trying. Playing Michael Ball's Omaggio. The "artistic concept" of being broken down and then built back up is especially disturbing under Dr. Street's direction. So we finished off with Second Suite and I felt a bit better. Then I skipped Ed Psych and ate a baggie of sour soothers from Extra Extra and felt much better.

I think my father is trying to independantly boost the viewers per hour average of the NFL Network. I really hope this dies down after Sunday...

Uh... what else? Peter and I went to Il Portico on Tuesday. It was a lot of very yummy food. And tonight Peter and his mom and brother are going to Jack's Grill. A lot of the higher-end restaurants in town are having this $10 entree deal this week. We're going to The Blue Pear for my brother's 31st birthday on Saturday, but tonight's the last night of getting the five courses for $30, so my dad's stuck paying the $57 dollars per person or whatever it is. Sucker. ^_^

*yawn* I'm waiting to get my second wind for the evening. Maybe I'll take a nap while I wait.