...And a pocketful of gold

Re: the hair. I got a little crazy with it. Yes, pictures were taken. No, I won't show them. I decided that in the name of everything good that I should undo it anyway since it couldn't get cut the way it was.

On to other things, I brought home my art project to finish it. It's a ring with Zoso on it. Don't ask me exactly what Zoso means because I really don't think it means anything. It's just a reference to Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.



Right now it's in the wax stage. Hopefully it will get cast in silver within the next few days. Then the really fun part--the sanding and polishing--can begin.

music: The Zutons - Not A Lot To Do

Coup de Cheveux

(before anyone comments on the spelling of the title, I'll point out that it's meant to be a bad pun)

I've been thinking about a haircut for some time. Long hair does have its perks such as... well, your hair is long. And it also has its downs such as getting hair everywhere, the rinse-lather-repeat thing, combing, more hair all over the place, drying it, hair all over the place... you get the idea.

I've been keeping this on the DL for some obvious reasons. I've made some remarks about how bad haircuts are and I'll have a hard time eating those words. So to make the ingestion a bit more palatable, I've decided to add a bit of humor.

Me? Do something stupid for the sake of a cheap laugh? Never! you say.

If all things go according to plan tonight I'll have my hair sectioned off into squares and...

...give myself dreadlocks. That's right. RED DREADS! Pictures will be sure to follow if it happens.

In the meantime between the actual dreads and the haircut (whenever that may be) I need to come up with a decent style. It's something I've started to take for granted. Now I feel for all those girls that think they need to change their hairstyle every week. Changing something as prominant as your hair is stressful.

Anyway, I'm sure to get some comments and laughs at school. I'm not completely un-used to it. I remember what it was like to have blue hair and I imagine dreadlocks aren't much different as far as the reactions.

A couple of people have actually (seriously) encouraged me to get dreads so it will be interesting to see what their reaction will be.

music: The Zutons - Don't Ever Think (Too Much)

You say you love day but you come out at night

Turns out Brebeuf Jesuit beat us pretty bad. If you want to see the slaughter, it will be Feb. 5 at 7:30 PM. I don't know what channel. I won't be watching it anyway. At least it was a good opportunity to have a good free lunch and go to a few bookstores where I picked up a CD I've been wanting and another CD I haven't been wanting but don't regret getting anyway. The latter is The Zutons. I listened to the 30 second clips that were available and decided it was probably one of the freshest sounds I've heard in a while and picked it up. Consider yourself urged to check it out.

School has gotten incredibly boring. Lately it doesn't even seem like there is homework to keep my occupied. Not that I'm complaining.

I'm thinking it will be getting interesting soon, anyway. Drama practice will be starting soon for me. The spring play will be the Diary of Anne Frank. Mr. Wilson's vision of how it will be includes intense light and sound so for the first time, I actually won't be in charge of both. He says there are over 100 sound effects through the play which is a lot more than I've done before. It should certainly make it interesting. I won't be able to do my usual shenanigans such and raising and lowering the chair and spinning around in circles. While that is a bummer, at least I'll be busy.

My guitar instructor, Dave, has been pretty unreliable lately. Tuesday he didn't even show up. Another guy that gives lessons that used to be at Indy's Music House, Tony, was there so he gave me a lesson. He gave me the low-down on this method of picking called Travis picking, named after Merle Travis. It's great stuff to play, really fun and sounds nice once you get the hang of it. It has a very American sound to it.

Today there was a University of Scouting luncheon and my mom received the Silver Beaver award which is the highest honor the Crossroads of America Council can give for serving local Boy Scouts. Mad props to her for that.

music: The Zutons - You Will You Won't

Zzzzz

Well here we go. The second night I try to make this honest effort of listening to my body and how tired it's telling me I am and I'm ignoring it already. Deep down I really don't care about homework but I seem to insist on finishing it anyway. This "short" story is 20 pages and for some reason, I'm going to force myself to read it even though I'm about to fall down face-first asleep.

I never did go to Butler. It got postponed until Wednesday. If this headache I have doesn't go away, I may ask someone to fill in for me anyway.

Last week consisted of Café Cubini and telling myself I need to do homework. I've been really behind on this homework business lately. Homework... maybe it's the senioritis talking, but why bother? Really, I have at least ten more credits than I need to graduate. The only credit I need that I don't have is government. If I had just taken that as a freshman or something, I probably could have graduated halfway though my junior year if not sooner. It's funny that we're not allowed to do that while there are colleges advertising that you can get a four year degree in three years. They should do that for high school.

About Café Cubini, though. It was my first and last year participating in it. All in all, I'd say it was pretty neat. It's certainly a different idea as far as a way to raise money. Not only that, but everything was set up all spiffy looking and the food was excellent.

music: Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)

Most of today was spent preparing for Café Cubini. It's my first year doing such a thing and I must say it has been fun so far. I'm looking forward to Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

In lieu of working on my English project, I was searching for tunes of Psalms and stumbled across this completely awesome website from RPC of Australia. It has MIDIs of a good number of Psalms as heard in The Book of Psalms for Singing.


click

Enjoy.

Of swords and rocket launchers...

I don't know why, but I am horrible at Halo on XBox. Some of it may have to do with the fact that I really don't play very many video games, but still, I've played Halo enough that I should think I would have respectable skill. Yet I still get owned time after time. Against an equally armed opponent, I may fire three seconds on someone, and in less than that amount of time, I get killed. People (Adam) that don't even own the game do better than I do. For this reason I have concluded that the XBox stacks things against me. I always knew those consoles hated me. Why else would I lose so often in every other game I play?

Reason for bringing this up is I just got back from Stephen's house. We were up all night playing Halo 2. There were four XBoxes, four TVs, and ten people. Nine after Isaac left around 11 o'clock. Now, don't get me wrong here, Halo is fun. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have stayed over and played it. But I hate it. There is something about it that just prevents me from excelling and it's frustrating. I feel like I've hit a wall once my frag-to-death ratio reaches 1:4. In the face of all this frustration, I got a bit drowsy and dozed off. I woke up around 5:30 with Satchmo sleeping on me.

I foretell that this next week of school is going to be a breeze. Monday there is no school of course, Wednesday I'll be at the State House, and Thursday we go to Butler to tape Brain Game and then go to get a free meal. Well, free for us, anyway. Then Friday, eh, who ever does anything on Friday?

I have AP Biology, English, and some French to work on. I think I'll do some of that and then lay down. Or something. I'm tired.

music: Cardigans - Erase/Rewind

Again with the rain

I've been going to school early a lot lately. As a result, I've been going to bed slightly earlier and earlier. But when I don't have to go in early, I stay up and sleep in. It's kind of frustrating. Maybe I should just tell myself I need to get up early every morning. It's not like it's a bad thing to do that. It would give me more time to do things like morning prayer, perhaps. It probably wouldn't hurt my health any to go to bed earlier and get up earlier anyway.

The art classes are frustratingly overcrowded and undersupplied. Triton Central seems to have no appreciation for art. Poor Mr. Howard has to buy all the supplies with money out of his pocket and most of them end up getting stolen by the end of the month. Due to a lack of wax carving tools, my ring is coming along extremely slowly and other problems (mostly creative) are keeping me from finishing the watercolor sunset. I'm kind of afraid to do anything to it since the sun and the colors are so pretty. I feel like adding to it would ruin it.

The anti-climactic train wreck that is Ethan Frome should be avoided. The only nice thing I'll say about it is it's interesting how the characters interact, but I'm afraid that's not enough to save it from being a mediocre book.

So far, teaching French III the subjunctive has gone swimmingly. For a bunch of juniors at TC, they don't do bad.

It started raining today. On a whim, I took the back roads home. Big Sugar Creek is more like Big Sugar River.



The trees mark where the bank is

music: Incubus - Teardrop

The system is (was) down...

The internet was down for a while for some reason so there was a general lack of blogging from me.

School has picked up at its usual pace. I have two reams of worksheets for biology to finish for the end of the semester. Plus there is a project in English with very vague instructions that has left me all kinds of confused. I don't know what to think of that.

David cut his hair! His once glorious ponytail has been lopped off at the shoulders. I almost didn't recognize him. Following that note (hah, note, that's a pun) forming chords began to make a little bit of sense. I won't go into any details here but I think I've nailed the basics. I'm still a bit unsure about things like suspensions and sevens (in the same chord) because finding the root is just nuts. Anyway, that's about all I'll say about that.

Mr. Elder gave me a Topical Memory System. I'm really glad he did since I have been wanting to memorize verses but I haven't had any idea where to start. So now I do have an idea where to start, sixty verses arranged by topic, and he'll be checking our progress on memorization each week.

I finally got my car back from the body shop. My only complaint is there are a couple of holes where a Mercury badge should go. I filled those holes in on my old header panel, but they didn't get filled in on the new one. I could put a Mercury badge there but I just don't think it would look right next to a Ford badge. So it's a small complaint, nothing huge. Cookie, as always, did an excellent job repairing and painting.

That pretty much sums up the week.

music: Radiohead - No Surprises

Meanwhile...

So it's still raining outside. I feel like I'm in London or something. It's been raining nonstop since Sunday or so. The creeks look like lakes and the dry spots look like creeks. There must have been four inches of running water on Post Road. Quail Creek (a neighborhood around here infamous for flooding) probably looks like... a neighborhood with a lot of water.

I have to read Ethan Frome now.

All the ducks are swimming in the water...

If you were to look outside, you would see rain. Observe from the east deck:



There is so much rain, the new biology room that they worked on all last semester is leaking. About seven tiles have fallen off the ceiling and about seven more are soaked. It's sort of sad. We get a nice new fancy room with these nice facilities and a big expensive fume hood thing and it all gets rained on. Biology should be interesting with trash cans all over the place collecting dripping water.

In art, Jake looked out the window at the flat roof and all the water on it and proclaims, "Lake Triton!" You'd think that they would put some sort of drainage on flat roofs instead of let low spots form and collect water. Just goes to show you, I guess.

In other news not related to water, I need jewelers wax. Not only is that stuff expensive, it is also apparently hard to find. There are a few places on the internet that I could order it from. Who knows how long it would take to get here. I'm thinking I will definitely need some high quality wax anyway for what I have in mind. I want to make a ring with a textured band (I can't really describe the texture I have in mind) and then I'll put the Led Zeppelin "ZoSo" on it. I'm really not even sure if I'm capalbe of pulling it off, but if I can, it would look great.

Whatever I end up doing, with two art periods this semester, I should be able to find the time to do it. There is only one real disadvantage to two art periods, and that is that a lot of the kids in art aren't Triton's finest. That's not completely bad, I suppose. I think it's good to see and talk to all kinds of people but on the other hand it can be easy to be associated with them in the wrong ways.

music: Lemon Jelly - Nice Weather for Ducks
(ain't it true?)

Lights, Camera, Transaction

I about turned Indianapolis upside-down today. First, in Wanamaker, I visit Acoustic Works. The place has a giant rack on the floor, a few scattered guitars, and bareness everywhere else. Not much merchandise yet, it would appear. But I got to meet the owner and no. 1 employee, both of which seem to be very nice people. They're business owners of the variety that will tell you their name, ask you theirs, get to know you a bit, and tell you what sort of plans they have for the place. While I'm not happy that Indy's Music House went under, I am happy that I'm being redirected to such a nice place.

They said something that made me wonder... That they plan on having a set-up where they can put bands together. If they have a student that just plays guitar, they could suggest a singer to go with him. Now, I'm not really much for the stage, but an idea came across my meek little mind... it will probably come to nothing, anyway.

Then I tore the town apart looking for the Incubus Alive at Red Rocks DVD. I saw it over at Ross Stackhouse's a month or so ago and decided it had great solos and live performances of songs, particularly Drive. In the end, it was no where to be found so I ordered it off of Amazon. But I did not come out of the ordeal empty-handed. I also picked up Mezzanine by Massive Attack and A Crow Left of the Murder... by Incubus.

And I got thoroughly confused with all the music theory.

Now I must be going to bed since I have school in the morning. We'll see how that goes. It will be odd without welding class. I'm going to miss it.

*sniff*

music: Incubus - Talk Shows on Mute

Concerning human endurance...

Thirteen hours of anything, except sleep, is a daunting thought. Try thirteen hours of Lord of the Rings. I may make that sound like a bad thing, but I assure you that it isn't (given proper break-time). Plus when you add a few talkative girls, Zach, and a glass of water and you get some interesting results.

I couldn't possibly have been doing anything better today. And now the plan for tomorrow sounds excellent: rest. Perhaps I'll check out Acoustic Works, the place that is replacing Indy's Music House. While I'm out, I may as well get a few CDs as well. I've been meaning to get Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gate of Dawn and Incubus's Alive at Red Rocks. Who knows, I may see something else that strikes my fancy.

I should also take a look at the "homework" David gave me to go through the notes in a song and decide what chord is best suited. Roots, thirds, minor triads, major triads, fifths, and how to make sense out of them all... it seems a bit daunting now. Who ever would have thought that music has structure to it? Insane! Given my lack of understanding, I figure I'll have to make wild guesses here and be corrected and instructed for the lessons. Hopefully this will all be made clear and easy some day.

Maybe.

music: Massive Attack - Future Proof
(talk about the antithesis of music, eh?)

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil?

I figure I may as well bring things up to date.

On New Years Eve I went to the Cerbuses and played Scattegories and Apples to Apples. After the ball dropped and New Years Day officially began, things settled down and we planned on watching Napoleon Dynamite but our plans were foiled and Arsenic and Old Lace was settled for instead. Around 3:30 it was mutually decided by the survivors of the night that turning in sounds like a good idea. So that's what happened.

It's worth mentioning that the Cerbuses have access to the most absolutely awesome shower in the world. The world. A shower head in the wall, concrete floor, and curtains hanging around it. I seriously don't know why Mrs. Cerbus pretended to be all flustered about such a great shower. Really, it is so simple and low maintenance and it's great.

Anyway, it was then off the John Cavanaugh's to watch episodes IV, V, and VI of Star Wars. I must admit, it's the first time I've actually watched all three at an age where I could actually follow what was happening.

Then I create this blog. And I slept. Soundly.

The morning service had quite a fitting message from Jeremiah 6 for the new year. I find it kind of funny how simple the right way to act in a crisis is, yet how hard it usually is to actually do. It's easy to be rash and impatient and to do the easy thing and take the route that seems best--not only for small decisions, but for big ones as well. Even decisions that are so big and even natural that you don't recognize them as decisions until you reflect on them much later. Really, if humility were a color, that would be pretty close to the color of my face when I reflect on my own life.

And today for our late Christmas, I learn what people truly feel of the ADD approach to guitar playing. It seems that most generally frown upon the idea of playing a few lines here, a few lines there, and then improvising various bluesy-sounding things. But hey, it wasn't my idea to let them hear the Epiphone so if they don't appreciate it, it's no sweat off my nose. So yeah, I don't know why, but people seem to think that you should sit there and play an entire song. Talk about boring, eh? Maybe I'll do that when I learn to sing. Until then, it's the eclectic approach. Mostly.

Anyway, I must be getting rest as I have to wake up early to endure 12 or so hours of extended Lord of the Rings.

gratuitous picture currently from the east deck:



music: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Looks like a New Year

New year, fresh blog. My old blog, while it had a few strong points, I feel is full of weak ones as well. I'm referring namely to the points found in 2003 and early 2004. It's not that I would like to forget that the part of my life ever happened, it's just that I feel that I've done enough growing (both spiritual and mental) that it's time for a fresh start.

And what better time for a fresh start than the first day of a brand new year?

Cheers to that.

suitable song: Death Cab for Cutie - The New Year