White Feet

While strolling to the music building to sell my soul to a piano for a few hours, I came across the conclusion that my feet are white. This can only mean one thing. It is time to get back to gulf shores and get my farmers tan back.

Robbed

So Sunday night someone broke into my dorm and stole about $600 of electronics. The police and RA's can't do anything about it, they are not even allowed to look at the cameras (the one room that actually has cameras). So that's how my exam week started off.

Packing

So today I started packing my things in preparation for moving out next week. During the course of my packing endeavors I found many things that I have no recollection of ever having. I find that packing is quite a fun task as you see just how much junk you really have, good news is that I have a lot of new recycling materials now.

Classes are Over

With classes finally being over I have so much free time that I almost don't know what to do with all of it. Today I slept in and then went to Wal-Mart to stock up on food for the next week because I am out of tiger card money. Then I had an orchestra rehearsal for the AU Pops concert which is a benefit for the music and theatre programs here at Auburn. It was quite annoying being at the rehearsal for it tonight as it was about an hour and a half for the first round and then they decided to run all of it again. Thats all for today.
~Stephen out.

Finals and Moving

So finals week is almost upon us! This is kind of scary yet I am ready for it to be over for the year so I can go home and get a job. Moving out of my dorm is going to be interesting though since I might not have enough room to fit everything in my car, especially with my friend going with me this time. I hope everyone is doing fine with their studying for these finals and that your papers are going well. Thats all I have got for now.

Group Projects and Final Exams

So the group project is coming along, but it is kind of scary to think that it is due by wednesday, and these blogs at the same time. I finally looked up my exam schedule yesterday and it turns out I have exams almost every day at 8am. This is not fun at all but I guess that is how the cookie crumbles as the saying goes. Time to get ready for the free write so that is all for now.

Nugget in a Biscuit

So I found this guy on youtube named Tobuscus and he posts a lot of "Let's Play" videos which is sort of like a tutorial most of the time, but he goes off on random bouts of singing about trees leaving their mothers and being cheated on by sugarcane. Some really weird stuff if you don't play minecraft. The main thing that made me want to write about it was this song called "Nugger in a Biscuit" he made, it is so catchy and short that I can't get it out of my head.

Shogun

So I am at shogun, eating sole filet and chicken. This is by far my favorite type of food but I prefer to go to Mikatos which is in gulf shores. The only downfall of this food is that it is expensive so I don't get the chance t eat it very often. Well that's all I've got.

Aliens in my Air Conditoner

So here is another random post I thought I would write for you. Lately my air conditioner has been making strange noises, and not the regular kind of strange noises you would expect from an air conditioner but more cow-like noises. This is extremely strange when I am sitting at the table with a group of friends and a "Moo" spontaneously comes from our locked air conditioner maintenance room door. We believe this is a prank by the RA on our floor, but we are not sure. Well thats all I have got for today.

Minecraft

So, running out of blog ideas so I will talk about mine craft for a bit. Minecraft, for those who don't know, is a game that works with blocks to build structures and other things. I opened my own online multiplayer server and have been playing it with my roommates. We have begun building the city of Rome and now have a completed coliseum, Roman-Catholic Cathedral, Government Building, and Nobles house. This all took about two weeks and in my opinion is becoming quite good. We may make the server public soon or at least post videos to youtube.

Sunday Funday

If you can't tell from my cheesy title I am expecting tomorrow to be pretty good. I have a trombone choir concert at the 1st Baptist Church tomorrow and then I am off to Montgomery to pick up my best friend and then we are having a fajita party at his apartment. So hopefully things will all go as planned and It will be a good day. Church, friends, fajitas. What could be better?

Random Ramblings

So for this blog post I am going to see how many words I can type in a minute while improving my free writing skills. So here I go:

So I am sitting in history class waiting on it to start and he just turned on some music. I don't recognize the band but the song sounds a little familiar, possibly 90's. It sounds a little country but in the bluesy rambling man sort of way. I only learned about rambling man from Rock Band which is a game that I used to play on the playstation.

Well I didn't get very much down did I? Ill attribute that more to I couldn't think of what to type instead of my typing skills because I am a very fast typer and 75 words/minute is not an accurate measurement. Well that was my blog idea for the day. See you next time.

History, Theory, Juries and More

So I have been extremely busy lately, I thought I had caught up on everything over the weekend but as soon as I walked in to my first classes on Monday I learned just how wrong I was. It wasn't that I didn't know what I had to do but more that they had just added a lot more then the whole class had previously known about. So my schedule for next week looks a little more intense then I am used to even though I have been taking eighteen hours this semester anyway.

Pop Quiz

So I had no clue about that pop quiz we had today. I tried my best to just take an educated guess and I was pretty close but not quite so I  don't know how I will be graded. So Easter was cool, my first time home since Christmas break. The group project is going well, we have a nice facebook page set up to help us communicate with each other.

Easter and Ramblings

So I finally got to come home, first time since Christmas, and had a good time with some friends and family. For the group project we were supposed to post to a discussion thread, we all gave questions but we didn't designate someone to post them so they were late =/ haha, communication fail on our part. That's all for now.

Final Group Project Paper

So for this group project we have to write a paper with the help of two classmates whom we were paired with. I usually prefer to work alone but I think this will offer an interesting experience especially since I am going into business next year. I never thought I would write a wiki page but now that I have to it seems pretty cool. Writing a credible paper for online that people may actually use for their research studies just like we used to do. Pretty neat if you ask me. Stephen out.

A Monday That Never Ends

So recently I returned from a tour of China with the Auburn University Symphonic Band, and I thought I would describe the journey home to make an interesting blog post for you while I practice my writing.

China is thirteen hours ahead of Auburn and when we travel back from China we cross the "date line", this essentially rewinds whoever crosses it a whole day. I left for America at 10:00am Monday morning and after the thirteen hour plane ride I arrived in Detroit at 11:00am. I just traveled thirteen hours to arrive only an hour later? Blasphemy! I just had a Monday twice! And so ends the story of my thirty six hour Monday.

So, since I'm back from China here is a list of things you should no longer take for granted:
#1: Clean Air
#2: Soft Beds
#3: Chap Stick
#4: Food that you can tell what it is
#5: Salt

#6: Cold Drinks
#7: Warm Weather
#8: Toilet Paper
#9: Toilets
#10: English
#11: Shrimp without heads
#12: Plates larger then your phone
#13: Drinking Glasses Larger than a size D battery
#14: Size D batteries
#15: No Car Horns 24/7
#16: Street Lanes
#17: People who drive cars that don't want to kill you
#18: Crosswalks (that are paid attention to)
#19: Drinkable tap water
#20: Working heat/air
#21: Internet
#22: T.V. that makes sense
#23: Democracy
#25: Stickers (it's true)
#26: Working Shower
#27: Warm Water

There are many more but I don't have time to write more. Think about this list before you go to China!

China

So I am going to China this friday and I thought I would just talk a little about it and I can post it because it does have some sort of relevance to writing as we have to keep a journal while we are there. As you can tell from my blog history I kind of got lazy with writing the super long ones, not so much lazy but I have been extremely busy with the basketball Pep Band, Concert Band, Symphonic Band, Orchestra, Trombone Choir, the list goes on. But some of that ends after spring break so maybe I can go back to posting my super long awesome posts. China should be fun, but I am preparing myself to be exhausted for a few weeks during it. My flight leaves early, so I have to be out of Auburn by 1am since China is 12 hours ahead of central time. Thats all for now.

Interview Topic

So for this new project I think I'll be doing an interview about attendance from a musical point of view. Attendance is very important for all musicians due to (especially if you are one on a part) the group needing you to cover the part you were assigned because the others must listen and match to you, and if you are not there then they are unable to do that making the overall playing level of the group lesser because this one person decided not to show up, even if they have good reason. I plan to use a professor in this field and a friend who is not in this field as my professional and bystander.

Woman's Basketball Tounament

So I'm on the band bus heading to the woman's basketball tournament, I've been on this bus for about four hours and my laptop died a few minutes ago do I thought I would post a blog. I thought I did really well on the midterm but I'm not too sure about the manifesto. Judging how they grade these is kind of impossible and seems it would really be up to personal preference and if they feel it was a well thought out paper or not, so one can only hope that they view my paper in a positive light. Well, back to being bored and sitting on a bus, might take a nap, I don't know, but what I do know is that I'm starving and we won't stop for another couple of hours.

Manifesto and Movies

So I believe I am going to write about how friends influence your decisions. This is all I can think of to write about, it isn't a bad topic, but might cause me a bit of headache. I will have to think on it a little more to come up with a solid point to try and make. This will be a short post today as I don't have much time, but my lengths should return to normal after this.

For those of your who are interested my valentines date went well. We saw "The Woman in Black" and went to a new Italian restaurant. "The Woman in Black" was a scarier then I expected, well... it wasn't necessarily scary, but more of creepy and had a lot of suspense. Suspense is the only thing that can make me jump or react, imagine trying to keep your cool next to your girlfriend when something totally unexpected and random just pops out of nowhere. It's not very easy, but I managed. I don't usually go to scary movies but this particular one peaked my interest somehow.

Well, thats all I have for today, as I said it was going to be a short one, but now looking at it it is still longer then what I see everyone else posting, so ha! I win.

Bringing you walls of text since 02/06/12
~~Stephen

Manifesto and ramblings by Stephen

So we have this manifesto writing project coming up and I haven't decided what I want to do for it yet. I have some ideas but nothing is definite yet. If anyone wants to give some input that would be cool. So to start out I will list some topics that have come to mind:
Trust in a relationship
Effects of friends on behavior
Harmful secrets
Gossip/Drama

So there are a few topics I have thought about. I would explain my ideas for them further but you are smart people, at least most of you are (just kidding), so I will spare you my full explanation of each one.

Something funny to tell you guys about this is before this project I thought for some reason that a manifesto was a sort of business log, I don't know where I got this notion but I have thought that for a few years, so I felt pretty stupid when I was questioning myself, "How am I supposed to write about an inventory report?!?". So that was my dumb moment of the week.

I have never fancied myself as a good writer, but for some reason I find it much easier to write in this free-flowing blog form. I have no thesis, no point, just writing about whatever I want and it happens to be on subject. I thought maybe I was doing these blogs wrong because I was writing about my valentine's day plans but then I realized that I have talked about my writing in every post I have done so far, which is meeting the requirement the teacher has set forth. If you will notice I haven't released any personal information, but kept all my comments general, no names, no places, etc. I do this because this is a public blog and I have had issues in the past with mentioning names of people who were incredibly paranoid, even if it was an alias, such as a avatar name.

Speaking of Avatar (segway ahoy!), I was thinking about the James Cameron Avatar (the giant blue indian things) on the day of my history test, and it turns out that on the test there was an answer that was "Yehwah" which was the god in Avatar that the natives worshipped. Random thing I thought I would share with you.

I do tend to ramble on about things that don't really matter or have any substance, but thats just my personality. Sometimes I will be talking to someone, lets say about music, and then I will stop mid-sentence and say something like, "Oh! Thats why those cookies burned last night! We used a dark pan instead of a light pan, ahhhhhhh dumb me!" and then go back into talking about authentic cadences or whatever.

Once again I believe I have wasted enough of your time, If you wish to hear further ramblings you can always message me on Facebook, make sure its a message or I won't see it because I very rarely log onto Facebook, in fact (here we go again) I would suggest just friend requesting me and getting my phone number off my info page because I probably will never see anything otherwise. Texting is what I do, although being a music major keeps me pretty busy. Facebook is not very appealing to me, it is cool and all, it helps keep track of some old friends, but I could easily live without it as long as I had my phone.

By the way, here is a video of a guy I know getting hit by a football at one of the games, enjoy!

Ok, this time I'm serious, I have rambled on enough for the day, stay tuned for more of my ramblings tomorrow, but probably not on Saturday as I will be out with my girlfriend giving her the best valentine's day I can do.

Bringing you walls of text since 02/06/12.
~~Stephen

Valentines Day and More

So, today has been quite a long day. After all of my classes and my community orchestra rehearsal I am now sitting in my room, which is quite messy, trying to think of a belief to write about for my english assignment. Why is it so hard to pick one belief to write about? It's not that I don't believe in anything, it is just hard to find something that I can write about. But enough about that and now into something a little more interesting.

So, valentines day is coming up, and since I won't be able to be with my girlfriend on the actual valentines day I have decided to have an early one this weekend since I will be able to travel this weekend. I bought her two dozen red roses, a spa kit, some chocolates, and a teddy bear. Some may think this is a little much, and I would be inclined to agree, but we have been dating for three years, and (to me) she deserves it. She also hasn't been having a very good couple of weeks while she is getting ready to move.

So how about those Giants? Not like I care, I didn't even follow college football until I came to Auburn. I didn't even know who was playing in the Super Bowl until the day before when a friend on WoW told me.

So I leased an apartment for next year. I'm kind of excited because I have really wanted an actual kitchen and a wall internet connection, but there might be some drawbacks. In the dorm I have roommates, but in the apartment It will be just me, so I'm not sure how that will work out, but I'll probably make new friends with the incoming freshman during band camp (hopefully). I've started to get to know the others in the music school, but not enough to hang out with them, it's more of an "I know you." friendship.

I'm going on a trip to China on a tour with the symphonic band, I'm looking forward to this trip, but I am still a little disappointed by how the person in charge of the band program hasn't taken much notice in me. I'm not being conceded here, I am truly better then a few members in the symphonic band, but it seems he has chosen his favorites and counted everyone else out no matter the skill level. This doesn't bother me incredibly much, because it provides me with motivation to completely astonish him next time I have an audition with my preparedness and tone. I'm not saying he is unfair, I am saying it seems as if he chose his top group based upon who was there in years past, even if they are not the best choice, which I personally don't agree with.

Moving on, I am not particularly looking forward to after the China trip, because I then have to go to the Woman's Basketball tournament. It's not that I'm sexist versus Woman's Basketball, but more that I don't enjoy basketball in general. Being in the pep band is fun, but can be quite the hassle sometimes. You see, we can't miss a game as there are only a few people on your specific part, so if you don't show up then your part is weaker which in turn makes the band out of balance. So in order to miss a game you have to find a substitute. Finding a substitute can be a hard task at times because sometimes no one can sub due to jazz band concerts, community orchestra rehearsals, symphonic band concerts, etc. I don't plan on doing pep band again next year, but by opting out of pep band I will lose my music scholarship.

Speaking of scholarships, I recently won the Sarah Anderson Memorial Scholarship, which if you don't know is a scholarship that is in memory of Sarah Anderson who was a member of the AUMB in the piccolo section. She died in a single car accident three years ago, but the band has not forgotten. As the winner of this scholarship I had to write a letter to her parents, and forever be a leader in the effort to raise money to support the Sarah Anderson scholarship. This is not so much a bad thing, but it is hard to write a letter to the parents of a girl whom I have never met. I used what people had told me about her and my own personal research into the subject to come up with enough material to write to her parents as an informed person. I believe I did a good job, but we will see when I get a reply. Thats enough for today.

Bringing you walls of text since 02/06/12.
~~Stephen S.

Introduction to Me, and maybe a bit more...

Hi, I'm Stephen and welcome to my Super Awesome Blog Time. To begin I will tell everyone a little about myself, being the super interesting person I am you should all remain entertained. Well...maybe not.

I am 19 years old and a 2nd semester Freshman at Auburn University. I am currently majoring in musical performance with my primary applied instrument being the trombone. Bored yet? I plan on adding a double major next year with  business and music. The reason for this being that a liberal arts degree is not going to make much money at all, but it's doing what I love to do so it is worth the extra work to me. Now enough about my boring school life, lets move on to my boring home/extra-curricular activities. I am a member of the Auburn University Marching Band (which I will refer to as the AUMB from here on out) which is composed of about four-hundred students and graduate-assistants alike. This is probably my favorite thing aside from my growing addiction to the video game some of you might know as World of Warcraft (or as we gamers call it, because we are lazy, WoW).

When I first picked up this game I figured it was pretty cool, I had never played an online game before with real people, and I wasn't exactly Mr. Popular in high school. So I used this as an outlet for my social and recreational needs. Some people don't see why people spend so much time on games like WoW but the truth is, for people (or me at least) it is more about going to a place where your not judged on your looks, or how good your social skills are, but only on your personality and skills. At the height of my addiction (and it *is* an addiction) I would play WoW for about eight to ten hours a day. Is this unhealthy? Sure it is. Is it wrong? Thats up to your personal views. I have reduced my addiction much over the seven years I have played this game, even quit completely a few times, but as many find out, you will almost always come back. Some would say they have no life, but just because we play doesn't mean we have no life, in fact I have a rather full life which I split between school, practice, friends, and my girlfriend of three years. But enough about WoW, as I'm sure I've lost a few of you already, or at least those of you who are trudging through this post to try and make a comment for your grade.

Speaking of this "grade", I figure if I have to keep a blog, I might as well make it interesting and do it correctly instead of just posting my fifty words, so if you don't feel like reading walls of text, I wouldn't suggest using my blog as your comment finder. I realize this is an assignment and that I don't know any of you, but I have decided to post anyway as if it doesn't matter, maybe you will learn to know me better then.

So, moving on, there are many advantages to being in the AUMB. It is a way for me to practice my profession with hundreds of others who share my passion for music, and it also is an indescribable feeling when you deliver that crowd stopping show. I remember this year at LSU (boo) when the band got ready to do our half-time show, we were boo'd and shouted at, had keys shaken at us, and every other rude thing you could think of, but when we finished our show many if not most of the LSU fans sat back and thought to themselves, "Ok, I gotta admit, that was pretty good." Which is what I always look forward to, WoWing the fans with our unexpected professional performance. (Catch the WoW insert? How about the hypocritical "boo" when I mentioned LSU? No? Pay attention better.) Another advantage of being in the AUMB is it helps you know people in Auburn before classes start, which gives me a head start in a way. And of course, the free entry (and transportation) to all football games is always a plus.

I have rambled on enough today, so I will let your eyes rest until the morrow.

Bringing you walls of text since 02/06/12
~~Stephen S.