Not the person I used to be

It's almost the end of the semester. I have 5 more days of my mwf classes and only 3 more t/th classes, and my lab is already completely over. Looking back, this semester has been an interesting one, but not necessarily in a good way.

This weekend has done a lot of things to make me realize how much I want to, and how much I need to return to how I was and not continue in the direction I'm going. It began on Friday at Agape with a talk given by Rice Sociology professor Michael Lindsay. The point that he made before I had to leave that really struck me was this.

That sin, at it's very core, can be reduced to one single act. Idolatry. Making things that aren't God into God.

I've been doing this way too much this year. It began as popularity. I tried to get as many freshmen as I could to like me, while trying to also keep us with friendships that I had made last year. I went around Rice meeting people, trying to make myself known. I let me ego take a hold of me and turn me into someone who thinks everyone wants to get to know who I am because I'm just that interesting of a person. I've learned that I need to put my pride aside and strive for humility as I did during my senior year of high school. There was also a point this year where I tried to tell myself that the best way for me to become friends with others and be more social was to go and party. Usually there wasn't alcohol involved, but on some occasions there was and it only made things worse.

I tried my best to please everyone that I could. I kept trying to make myself fit into every group of people that I associated with. To my friends at Agape and CSA I took on the form of a devout believer, the type of person that I actually want to be. To those on 3rd south at Jones, I was a person who liked doing crazy, stupid things because they were fun, and would say that I thought my friends on 4th south were childish and lame, yet when I went to hang out with people on 4th south where I lived last year, I would enjoy their more civil company and talk about how it was a mistake for me to move and how obnoxious some of the people on my floor were, the same people that I had been hanging out with the night before. To those who liked to go out and drink and party, I would go and drink and party, yet for those who enjoyed different forms of entertainment, that would be all I wanted to do as well.

My idolatry also began placing girls in the place of God. I spent a lot of September and October putting most of my thought into how I could get a relationship with a certain girl to work out. I wanted nothing more than to just spend time with her, and as it progressed, that time took more and more out of the time that I should have been spending with God. My desire to build a relationship with her quickly surpassed my desire to build a relationship with God. Then it all ended about a month ago, leaving me with a feeling of emptiness, as if I had wasted all of that time for nothing. Even after that didn't work out, it took me only a day before I had found another girl that I convinced myself I needed to spend time with and start a relationship with. And then my suspicions were confirmed this weekend and I realized that didn't work out as well. It took until this weekend for me to realize that while humans will disappoint us, God never will.

So now I'm struggling to find a happy medium, where I can still be friends with those I care about, yet not ever contradict myself. I'm trying to get rid of the things that distracted me from giving God the proper place in my life. It will be difficult, but I'd much rather turn around now than continue on the road I've been travelling on. I'd appreciate your prayers.

End of the Trial

Today marked the end of Trial By Jury, my first show of my sophomore year and the 5th show I've been in at Rice so far. One more and I'll have already hit the total number of theater shows for my entire high school career. This show wasn't particularly amazing in the way JCS was last year, nor as hilarious and clever as Hello Hamlet, but I would say that I somehow bonded with the cast members in this show in a way that I haven't in a while. We only practiced for the show for a month, and only ran the show for 5 days, but it seemed like a lot longer than that.

One of the things I love most about theater is the way you are able to meet new people. Theater at Rice is so much more amazing than theater at Brentwood because for almost every show there is a new set of people you're working with. In high school it seemed like the same group of 20-30 people did every single show, with some people taking short breaks for a few months to sit a show out every now and then. At Rice, I've met easily 60-80 different people through the shows that I've been in. Going out to eat after virtually every show I've been in helps the process of meeting people a lot too, though it also unfortunately helps the process of lightening your wallet quite a bit too.

The unofficial cast party tonight was also amazing. Watching drunk people play the Wii is something everyone needs to do before they die.

Random bits of my life that may need to be mentioned as well:
-Sophomore classes >>> Freshmen classes
-I made a really cool MechE scepter in machine shop out of steel and aluminum. It feels awesome to make something of that quality with your own hands. I'll be keeping it for a while. Welding lab starts in 2 weeks.
-Complicated relationships are almost as cool as real relationships once you actually understand what makes them so complicated. Many things were made clear last weekend. On a related note, Hard Rock Cafe is expensive, but amazing.
-I'm really looking forward to having lots of football games that we're playing in coming up. Only two more weeks with no games from now until the end of November. This has been such a slow season with so many away games at the beginning of the year. The Tulane trip is going to be fantastic.
-I have free time now. What am I going to do with it?
-Ian, Collin and I are going to attempt the Endless Song Marathon on Rock Band 2 on Tuesday. It has 84 songs and should take about 7 hours. It's going to be sweet if we are alive at the end of it.
-Just finished the 1st season of Lost which involved staying up in Robyn's room until 3:30 or so last night. It was amazing and really frustrating at the same time. I don't know whether I love her or hate her for introducing me to it. Probably the former.
-Due to Monica spending more time in my room than I do, I've decided that I actually do have 2 roommates now. She's a very interesting person, and it's kind of cool to have another person to talk to late at night in my room aside from just Aaron. She also has a wonderful side effect of making Aaron say interesting and witty things. It's pretty cool.

Answered Prayers and good things

It seems like near the end of last year I did a lot of praying about God blessing Jones with more Christian guys. Before Gary and I showed up, it was said that there were really no Christian men at Jones involved in Cru at all, much less in leadership.

Today I realized just how well God answers prayers. One of the freshmen living across the hall from me, John, organized a night-time prayer and worship get-together in his room tonight with all the Christian guys he could get a hold of from the north colleges, mostly freshmen. It was amazing to see how God has inspired him to make changes here at Rice and how enthusiastic he is about serving the Lord to transform the Rice campus. He is certainly not alone, as his roommate Andrew also had some kind of part to this and is also a Christian. It seems like the short end of of 3rd south has become the Jones Men's Bible Belt of sorts, and its awesome. I'm pretty sure most of the floor within a few doors could hear all of us singing and praising the Lord tonight, especially because of John's really enthusiastic and loud prayers and all of the guitar playing.

There were two other things about today that made it exceptional. The first involved me waking up at 6:30 am to go and serve the community by cleaning up debris from Ike at Hermann Park along with several other MOBsters. It was a great opportunity to serve and make Hermann Park as beautiful as it was before Ike hit, and it was also a great opportunity to meet lots of the new MOBsters and continue to strengthen relationships that already exist.

I also have really, really been enjoying the time I've been able to spend with Robyn lately. There's something about her that just makes you always in a good mood, makes me feel totally comfortable, and she's really fun to just talk to for hours and hours. Tonight we went to Thai Village, walked all the way to Ben and Jerry's before realizing it was still out of power, went back to Baskin Robbins instead, and then spent another couple hours just talking and playing cards in her room at Wiess. It was pretty much amazing. I wish I didn't have so many problem sets due on Monday that I have to work on tomorrow.

Hurricane Ike

Just a few days ago, a category 2 hurricane known only by it's three letter name, Ike, flew threw Houston, thrashing all in its path. I am fine, and I don't know of any Rice students who were injured by the hurricane in any way, but it definitely has had an impact on life at Rice for the past few days.

Friday night, each college was hunkered down in a safe location to take shelter from the storm. Jones was sent to our commons, right next to Martel in the north servery. It was a really fun time, but I'm not sure I'd really want to do it for longer than just one night. We watched movies, played board games, and hooked up a projector on a white bed sheet so we could play Brawl. I also played a bit of Rock Band in the Martel section of the servery, and one person said that he'd never seen someone play drums on expert before. Made me feel pretty awesome. Apparently my obsessive playing with the rest of The Festering Pheasants (a band made of myself, and several Martelians which usually include Ian Jones, Bobby Anderson, and Collin Hansen, but occassionally has substitutes) has paid off since I've progressed from medium to expert in less than a month.

The next morning we woke up to find debris covering a majority of the Rice campus. Although we still weren't allowed to leave the building at this time, I later ventured out to discover several downed trees in the south college area as well as the academic quad. The north colleges didn't lose any trees outright, but Brown lost quite a few bricks from the top of their tower. Later that night I went to Wiess to watch the first two Star Wars movies (New Hope and Empire Strikes Back), and it was pretty awesome.

While we never lost power, we did have to deal with a loss of water pressure, so we weren't able to shower for a couple days, and even after we got the water pressure back, it wasn't until yesterday that we got warm water. Ike did a great job of showing how well we as Rice students are able to deal with adverse conditions and still persevere. That fact that there isn't any homework due this week did make it a bit easier though.

In slightly more exciting news (at least for Mithun), my relationship status is very much complicated right now. To the point where I now realize why there is a "It's Complicated" choice on facebook. If you want more information you are welcome to call or email me, but you might get a bit confused.

Rice 56- SMU 27!

Last night was our first football game of the year, and it was an amazing one. As you can tell from the blog title, Rice smashed SMU, despite being down 13-0 for a decent piece of the first quarter. The 2nd and 3rd quarters were absolutely fantastic.

Though what I think is even more impressive than the score is the amount of support shown by the Rice student body at the game last night. The student section was easily 3 times the size of the biggest turn-out from last season, with us completely filling the section right next to the MOB where students usually sit (and usually only fill about 2/3 of the way full) as well as the entire next section over. Their cheers were unified, they were loud, and they really wanted to see a Rice victory. We even got a cheer of "MOB! MOB! MOB!" as we were heading down to do the halftime show. It seems the Tulsa game from last year has gotten us back on the good side of a vast majority of the student body, or at least the part of it that goes to football games.

Speaking of the MOB, I love my freshmen. There are 5 freshmen clarinets this year, bringing our total number of clarinets up to 12 this year (15 if you count the DM's and Marjorie who SA's during halftime). They are really fun to be around and have a lot of energy and great senses of humor. Kyle is afraid that I'm trying to take over our section by winning over all the freshmen to my side (well, this is true), but I feel he still has a lot more respect among the older clarinets, and since the freshmen make up about half of our section, we've pretty much got it split 50/50. I hope that at the BBQ on Monday I can meet some more freshmen from other sections like the percussionists and SA's who I don't get to see very often.

Hurray for 3 day weekends that could potentially be 4 day weekends if the hurricane hits Houston.

End of O-week and goals progress so far

I'm really looking forward to getting to see all of my other friends at Rice when they move in tomorrow, and have already helped Nathan move his stuff over here even though he can't move in to tomorrow. Naturally, its all in either my room or Reagan's room.

Goals Progress so far:
1. Haven't run at all yet. I'd like to blame my busy daytime schedule during O-week so far for this, especially since the things I set my running schedule up for haven't started yet.
2. Haven't screwed up my grades yet.
3. Very discouraging. Though I haven't gotten an absolute no yet, the difficulty in even hanging out outside of the regularly scheduled daytime activities has been frustrating. I get the impression that she's not interested because of her unwillingness to do anything, but it could also very well be caused by how busy both of our weeks have been. I'll keep at it for a little while longer and if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out.
4. More details to come after Kevin, Nathan, and Joey move in, but it's looking pretty good. The plans for the pseudo-suite are coming along quite well, and having two projectors in one room is just going to be awesome.
5. (modified with new goal) I've been focusing on building a few strong friendships this week with some of my MOB friends by hanging out with the same group almost every night this week. I really want to see where my friendship with my fellow clarinet section leader, Kyle, ends up going. We share a lot of common interests, particularly our catholic faith which has a strong influence in both of our lives, and we've already been pretty open with each other in the past. It'll be sad after he leaves at the end of this year, but I feel he will be one of the people I keep in touch with for a very long time.

O-week

I've been spending the last several days doing stuff for Rice's O-week, the orientation week for freshmen and transfer students, as a part of the MOB. It's been pretty awesome so far. We've gotten to play for the freshmen twice, first at Matriculation in Stude Hall with concert band pieces which were mostly marches, and also last night at the Rice Rally teaching them the fight song and all of that good stuff. Brian Henderson is incredibly happy that the extended fight song is coming back this year.

I also got to thinking about something after a lot of people mentioned it in conversation and Mithun touched on it in a comment to my last post. I think I may be trying to become acquaintances with too many people, and very close friends with too few people. Nathan and Reagan have been mentioning that I know "everyone at Rice," (a bit of an exaguration), but I think that it takes a lot more than knowing someone's name, face, and college to actually know someone. I don't think I truly "know" anyone, not even myself really. I would say that there are maybe 4 or 5 people at Rice that I am comfortable talking to about almost anything, and who would help me out with anything if I asked them. And then there are another 40 or so that I would feel comfortable calling up and asking if they want to hang out somewhere or go out to eat. Maybe rather than trying to talk to every freshmen I can once, just long enough to learn their names and maybe hometown or major, I should focus on just really getting to know 4 or 5 freshmen at Jones first. Find out their interests, what they did in high school, what they want to do in college, major, their heroes, just really get to build up a good relationship with these few people.

I've already got enough acquainances. Maybe it's time I got to really know some people.

New semester resolutions

I'm now at home at Rice, safe and sound, and need something to do before rehearsal this afternoon, so here's a list of things I'd like to get accomplished this semester.

1. Be more active. I've established a workout schedule for the semester which I hope will encourage me to run more than I did last year. I'm hoping that by setting specific times (Sunday after mass, Tuesday and Thursday after my 9:25 class) I'll be able to actually convince myself to get it done.

2. Better grades. My grades second semester sucked, and I don't want to have 3 C+'s at the same time again. I vow to get at least a 3.2 GPA for this fall semester so I can get back above the 3.0 mark. And no C's. I will tolerate a B- at minimum.

3. Try to get a good relationship started. Now that I'm totally settled into Rice, I really feel like I should start dating again. I did a little bit last year, but now that I'll have a bit more free time with fewer labs and hopefully fewer plays that I'll be in, I might have the time necessary. My trouble with girls in the past is that I'm very quick to find something wrong with a girl, and usually it's something silly like how she spends too much time studying or isn't quite religious enough, or not as intelligent as I am, or too much smarter than me. All kinds of stupid things that I tell myself mean a relationship won't work, so I don't try. However, I met someone about a year ago at Rice who continues to be more and more amazing each time I talk to her, and I actually haven't been able to tell myself there's anything I don't like about her. Someone who shares a ton of my interests, and who I can hold a conversation with for hours. Really funny, great personality, and I think that's where I should start.

4. Make 3rd south the greatest floor in the history of the universe. About 70% of my really good friends at Jones have all congregated on one floor, 3rd south, for this school year. I feel like we need to make it even greater than it was last year. We'll do awesome things as a floor, put up some awesome posters like last year, and have a great time.

5. Meet more people, make more friends. As crazy as last year was with meeting hundreds of people for the first time and making strong friendships with several dozen people, I'd still like to get to know more people. Over a quarter of Rice's student body is new this year between freshmen and transfer students, and I'd like to reach out and make them feel welcome as well as find ways to include them in things I already do with my old friends.

Summer in Review

With less than 2 days left of summer, I figured it would be nice to go back and review the things I've actually done this summer so I feel like I've accomplished something, or at least had fun. Plus it'll give me an easy way to explain my summer to anyone who asks me while I'm online.

May:

May began with my last final which was horrible, and then a week of chilling at Rice before graduation. I worked and played a lot of D&D and other games with my MOB friends who were still there. The morning of graduation began with my bass clarinet, BC3, disappearing from the band hall. I had to use another bass clarinet for the commencement concert and later found out that Chuck had taken BC3 and 2 other instruments that were needed for the concert to the shop for summer repairs. Oops.

I got back to Austin about a day before leaving again for Austin Trek, a leadership retreat/ mission trip that actually took place in New Braunfels. I met a ton of awesome people there who were involved in Campus Crusade at their colleges all over the country, with some people from as far as Washington, Ohio, and Kentucky. We went rafting, wakeboarding, and also evangelized at Zilker Park for a day.

The last 2 weeks of May were mostly spent job-hunting, which was very unsuccessful. I filled out about 15 job applications for a variety of different places, and got no offers at all. This seach continued into June, but I gave up about half way through June after I realized my chances of finding a job with only 2 months left of summer were next to nothing.

June:

June was probably the best month of summer for a few reasons. It began with a camping trip with some high school friends near the Rockport beach where we build massive sand castles, got terrible sun burns, and got owned by some jellies. I also got to see Reagan for a bit. I promised him that if I was ever in Rockport (yeah right!) I would say hi, and strangely enough it was actually one of the places I went to.

Immediately after getting back from the camping trip I got in Corey's car and travelled up to Arlington to meet up with Bobby and Kyle to begin our trip to Omaha to watch the College World Series. Bobby's house was freaking huge, and his parents were awesome and gave us tasty food. College students love free food. College students especially love free tasty food. The college world series was kinda depressing once we actually got there, witnessing Rice get killed by Fresno State and then barely lose to LSU. Even though the games sucked, the experience made it totally worth it.

About a week later I got to see the same group of people, plus many more, at Patrick and Gillian's wedding in Houston. All of the cool MOB people were there, along with a few uncool ones, just kidding, and we had an awesome time. I spent the night at Nathan's apartment, and we had a LAN party and ate pizza. Classic.

July:

July began with my only summer job, working in a factory with Franklin and Kameron for 2 days putting stickers on many, many boxes. Afterwards, we spent another two days just hanging out at Andy's house with lots of people for the 4th. I'm glad that I was at least able to spend a lot of time hanging out with a handful of high school friends at Monday Night Soccer and these other spontaneous gatherings.

July ended with a week of band camp, where I spent 7 hours a day teaching band newbs how to be good musicians, or in some cases, how to make any noise at all on their instruments. The saxophones made me want to shove a flute down my throat. They were so obnoxious.

August:

August so far has been mostly family vacation and getting ready for Rice. We went to Port Aransas for about 4 days and just hung out at the beach, enjoying the sun and eating out for almost every meal at the local restaurants. Then we went to Corpus to check out the Texas State Aquarium, then San Antonio for a day at Fiesta Texas. I also got to see Helen and Anna while I was in SA, which was pretty awesome. Then we finished it up with a day at Schlitterbahn.

Tomorrow I'll probably look into the future and throw up some goals for the upcoming semester.

The Ultimate OG

So my high school youth group has a tradition that dates back to my freshman year called OG Night, where a lot of us go to Olive Garden and then go bowling next door afterwards. We had a huge one today, where I got to see a ton of very good friends that I hadn't seen in up to two years. It was awesome. I got to catch up with Sarah, Michelle, Matt M, Matt I, Steph, Jeane, Jeff, Geoff, Mark, Ciera, Adam, Ilsa, and Patrick, as well as meet a few people for the first time. Yeah, our table was huge and we took up a whole room at Olive Garden.

There wasn't a whole lot of interest in bowling, but we did manage to go to Amy's for some ice cream and pictures with our favorite Arboretum Cows. Throughout the whole time, Sarah, Michelle, and Patrick were talking about some kind of huge surprise that has been 1 1/2 years in the making that is coming up, but after we all left, most of us still had no idea what this surprise is. I'll probably have some weird dream about "The Surprise" tonight.

It's amazing how many people you know when you think about it. I had all of these amazing friends from youth group, I'd say close to 50 if you count SVdP and St. John Neumann, plus tons of friends from school, soccer, boy scouts, and it's kinda sad how many of them I've kept in contact with. I've gotten to hang out with maybe 30 to 40 friends that I knew from before Rice this summer, and I wish I could have at least gotten to see most of them.

Tomorrow and Thursday I will probably be posting some kind of meaningful summer in review post and something about my goals for the fall semester. Sort of like mid-year's resolutions. Should be fun.

And I leave for Rice on Friday. So excited.

From family fun to capitalist america

I went to Schlitterbahn today as the last stop of my family vacation, a vacation that reminded me of the difference between holiday blues and holiday stress. Holiday blues is when you aren't able to spend the holidays with your family, and holiday stress is when you are.

Anyways, I've been going to Schlitterbahn about every other year for the past 10 years, and things have changed a lot. I remember when you could go to Schlitterbahn on a weekday and you wouldn't have to spend more than maybe half an hour to ride a ride, and could see just about everything the park had to offer in a day. When I went today it was packed, especially strange since it was a Thursday. Lines for some of the new and more popular rides were up to about 2 hours long, and there were so many people you could barely get from one place to another without running into someone else, especially if you were in the water and everyone had huge inner tubes. In just a few years, it has been transformed from a nice, local waterpark to the best waterpark in the world, visited by several thousands of people each day. It was also sad that almost every attraction is now sponsored by some national restaurant chain or other kind of business.

But it still wasn't quite as bad as Six Flags was yesterday, where most of the concession stands had changed to brand name foods like Papa John's Pizza, Johnny Rocket's hamburgers, Cold Stone and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, and even Panda Express. TV monitors that were once used to show cartoons that matched the theme of the ride now displayed advertisements.

It's shocking to see what has happened to our theme parks. But at least the french fries are still awesome.

How far off are we?

I've been reading a lot, and having plenty of time to think while on vacation. And one thought came to mind while I was reading The Reason for God, a book I am really enjoying and will probably write a really great review for when I finish it.

I was thinking about some of the things that Jesus said during his time about what we need to do to inherit eternal life. He mentioned that we need to give up all our possessions and follow him. That we need to be willing to give up our own families and devote our entire life and everything we do to God. He even says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. Lots of people have claimed that these can't possibly be true and he must have just been exaggerating so that we'd realize our flaws.

But maybe we have been off by a lot. We hear from all of our secular college friends that there is no way that a college student should be living the Christian life, that now is the best time to enjoy parties, alcohol, and promiscuous relationships. It's like this whole time we should be ordering kids' meals at restaurants, but the way they are marketed, the quarter pounder is the healthiest burger any adult should want to get at a fast food place. Is our principle of "Arms Length Christianity," where we make sure we are always behaving in a barely more moral way than our secular culture says we should be, something we need to be fighting against.

Or perhaps these incredibly strict ways of living that Jesus talks about are a way to point out that we can't possibly inherit eternal life no matter what we do. That the ONLY way to live with God after death is to realize how far we are from the target and ask for His forgiveness.

Band Camp, looking back

Band camp is almost over. I have only 3 more hours with the beginners in the morning, and then a concert in the afternoon in place of the usually scheduled "advanced" band camp. Looking back, it's been a really fun experience, and I learned quite a few things about band and people.

From the first day, it's pretty easy to identify who plays what instrument. On day one, none of the kids had gotten their instruments yet, but my new friend Andrew, a music major at ACU, and I were able to identify which instruments about 80% of them were going to be playing. 5th and 6th grade band people are also somewhat similar to their counterparts in the MOB.

Flutes are cute and fun, but pretty loud, especially when compared to the clarinets. They really like talking with each other and others, very social. You can't help but love being around them though.

Clarinets are pretty quiet and reserved, but great learners. They listen to what you say, which makes any teacher happy, and play well with others. Most of them also like challenging themselves and were eager to learn new notes that they didn't need to know for months.

Saxophones are loud! The "make you wish you could stick a mute down their throats" loud. They do whatever it takes to make sure everyone's attention is on them. If you say the words "play more softly" they don't make it to their brains, so don't bother. They are also notorious for being late. For two days in a row all 3 of the beginning saxs were at least 20 minutes late, while the 8 clarinets were all there on time.

Trumpets are just disrespectful and silly. I didn't work with them personally, but according to Andrew, they intentionally do what you don't want them to do, and do all kinds of things that annoy people. I heard that one of the trumpet players kept crossing his legs like a girl, knee on other knee. Andrew claimed that he wanted to smack the kid on the back of his head and remind him "You're a man!!" Maybe the trumpets in the MOB should be reminded of that as well.

Trombones got great reviews, but also had no idea how to listen to directions, which I suppose is common among beginner players. They did a great job of annoying Andrew, which I guess is good since he needs to get used to it if he's going to be a band director soon. Low brass think they are the coolest section in the band, and that if they weren't there, everything else would fall apart.

A joke that one of my flutes told me today: If you're flying over a desert in a canoe and the wheels fall off, how many flowers does it take to paint a house?
A: None, cause snakes don't have armpits.

She also tried to teach me how to play flute, but apparently I lack the epic skills that it takes to play it. Flutes must have some kind of wisdom that just transcends my understanding, because I am pretty sure that you can't actually make music with that long rod of metal and buttons. I know where to place my fingers though. I guess that's a start.

Mega Day Mega Blog

I went through today basically thinking of lots of amazing things and how they need to be blogged for the benefit of my friends, no, America. Actually, for the benefit of the entire planet. So I titled this the Mega Blog, cause it's just that awesome. I apologize in advance for the flow of random thoughts that will have little if anything to do with each other. That's just how I roll. (That, and with a d20 in hand. lolz)

I began the day going to one of my personal favorite places on earth, Austin Community College (Wow, sarcasm! That's original!), where my little (little in age, not height) brother had to register to take a class for next semester. I looked through the course catalog and noticed how incredibly easy and low level all of the courses were there. I was one semester away from being finished with the highest level math class they even offer, and had finished the equivalent of every economics class they had in the two classes I had taken (yes, they just had two econ classes). It felt good to let my famous Rice ego roam free again, a feeling I hadn't felt since, well, I started going to Rice. Rice students do a really good job of making you feel stupid, constantly. Especially if you are friends with pre-meds. I have a love-hate relationship with pre-meds. I love all the pre-meds that I know very much, but hate how they ruined my chemistry grade through the entire last year.

So, then I went to band camp. The kind of band camp where you are working with level 1 Band Newbs all day long who haven't even held an instrument in their hands before. I had forgotten how squeaky clarinets sounded, but now I can remember the noise...quite well. This made me remember that just 8 years ago, I was in their shoes. Then I thought of how much has happened in the last 8 years. Everything relating to band, Brentwood, most of my major soccer memories, boy scouts, my faith, youth group, 98% of my friends... All of it in the last 8 years. Heck, everything from Rice was all in the last year alone, and that's huge! And, God willing, I'll have about 10 more sets of 8 years that may be filled with just as many memories, important events, things that have changed my life around, friends to be made...wow! How different will I be a year from now, or 8 years from now?

Speaking of knowing people for a long time, I ran into Nickel, a friend that I've sorta known off and on since elementary school, at Starbucks today while I was helping Andy with his college algebra homework. When I think about how long I've known her, Richard, and some of the other people from elementary that I still keep in tough with, and then I think about what I've gone through since I met them, and that they've had just as many life experiences as me. Each person in this world has a crazy cool story to tell. Life is such a sacred and beautiful thing.

Which leads me into another interesting topic that arose briefly in my life today, abortion. As a Catholic I believe that all life is sacred, and that abortion is completely wrong since it leads to the destruction of a life. But while I was talking with a friend on the way home from Taco Bell after soccer today, he mentioned that he wouldn't be alive if abortion was illegal/ didn't exist. He's Chinese, and his mom got an abortion sometime before he was conceived. Under Chinese law, if his parents had had that child, they wouldn't have been allowed to have another, and my friend wouldn't even be alive. It was kinda a weird thought. So does this mean that the Chinese government goes directly against the Catholic church (aside from the problems with Communism restricting religion in general) and what is a Chinese Catholic to do while living under that kind of government?

My mind does ramble a lot.

Swinging Around

Well, I just got back from swing dancing in downtown Austin with some friends of mine, and it was pretty awesome. I think I have the obligation to share what I learned with my fabulous readers, whoever you are.
1. Swing Dancing is 10% skill and training and 90% improv and making it up as you go. What makes a good swing dancer is a person who has confidence in his or her made up moves, and a large arsenal of moves that he knows work well, most of which he could have made up. You can do almost anything in swing as long as you are able to keep your feet moving in the right rhythm, and even that is optional if you're good enough.
2. The creepier someone looks, the better they tend to be at dancing. On one end I saw a weird looking guy with his grey hair in a pony tail and suspenders going over his shoulder who could really tear it up on the dance floor. At the other end, the nice looking asian guys that seemed to appear in the masses near the beginning didn't look like they could even keep a rhythm. This rule wasn't always the case, but it held true at least 70% of the time I'd say.
3. Veronica Torres has a long lost twin. I danced with a girl named Carly who said she goes to UT who looked almost exactly like one of my friends from Rice but with darker and straighter hair. It was also funny that they both played flute in high school and can both dance really well.
4. It's great to be a girl who hasn't swing danced before, being a guy with hardly any experience sucks! A girl can be good, or at least seem good, if dancing with a guy who is really good at leading complicated moves. If a guy only knows 3 moves, he's basically stuck with those unless he's dancing with a good friend who has been swing dancing for 2 years and knows he don't have a clue and is willing to lead for him. This was the case when I was dancing with my friend Lianna, who between her and her friend Kendall taught me more than the beginner's lesson did, but when I was with other people towards the beginning I was hopeless.
5. Saying you go to Rice is a great conversation starter. Not many people know someone who goes to Rice, but everyone in Austin has heard of it. I talked to many people who were interested in how things were over there, and when I got started on the MOB, most people thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Weekly Obsession: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

I recently stumbled upon an amazingly well done, soon to be 3-part series, called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Another brilliant work by my hero and yours, Joss Whedon, this musical video blog follows the life of a rising superhero named Dr. Horrible as he battles his arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion), while also chasing the girl of his dreams. Each act it about 13 minutes long, and only the first two are out so far with the third to be released on Saturday. Go see it now, you won't regret it.
http://www.drhorrible.com/

On the road again!

Well, I finally decided that I need to get my license since it was on my summer goals list and it's now the middle of July. So I went out today to work on my mad driving skills and remembered how much standard cars annoy me. I think driving would be 10 times easier if there was no clutch or stick-shift, but since both of my parents drive standard cars I don't have much of a choice. At least I'll have mad skills of a driver when I'm finished. And I think I covered all of the hard things today, mainly parking, 1st and 2nd gear, and how to change gears and start and stop the car without stalling the engine. I improved drastically over the hour I was practicing, going from a 50% rate of stalling the car on every attempt to about 10%. It'll need to get better before I get on the road, but at least it's something. And I can't think of anything else I really need to learn that doesn't just come from practicing and gaining confidence.

Counter Productive

I got back from eating at Chuy's with my family and grandparents today and we discovered that someone had destroyed my dad's Obama 2008 yard sign while we were gone. I figured it was probably done by someone who doesn't support Obama, but all that means is that now my dad will get a new sign and give the Obama campaign more money. He or she probably should have thought that through.

Things that frustrate me and my Cleric

I spent most of today playing D&D in what is the highest level and most challenging adventure that I've ever faced. It made me realize just how many things DMs can throw at you that make you want to kill them and their firstborn. The top 5 things that made my character upset are
5. Really high spell resistance to the point where you couldn't hit the monsters with a spell if you tried.
4. Undead that drain wisdom. When clerics lose wisdom, they can't cast spells. If anyone loses enough, they can't think and just fall unconscious. Advanced Elite Allips suck.
3. Being hit by area of effect spells when the rest of your party has evasion. We took a delayed blast fireball, chain lightning, and a maximized fireball all in the first round of combat thanks to a time stop. I lost 80% of my hit points. On my turn I ask the rest of the party how much healing they need from a mass cure spell, and they all respond by telling me that they all evaded or absorbed the spell. I just healed myself that round.
2. When your own party attacks you. A stupid magic fountain had an effect that drove the weaker willed members of my party into a confused rage where they all wanted to attack the nearest creature regardless of who it was. I was the healer standing right in the middle of the group. Guess who they went for first.
1. Fey with levels in Seeker of the Song who have 17 natural armor, a 36 charisma, and are capable to singing two songs at once, one of which prevents all enemy spells from being cast. I got to sit around and feel pathetic for an entire combat while being mauled by it's animated ruin friends, which were probably gazebos. Whenever you see a gazebo in an adventure, you know that trouble is afoot! However, my brother's dwarf just plain died during this combat, and as he just said, feeling useless is much better than feeling dead.

Go see Hellboy II

As one of the 200 people who really loved the first Hellboy movie, my family and I had to go see it the day it came out and I was really, really impressed. It had everything I loved about the first movie and added tons of amazing things that were just really cool. The storyline was really cool, with action scenes quickly turning into what you first thought would be slower scenes with more character development and such, but then finish off with unanticipated action. I also really began to fall in love with the character of Hellboy through the movie. He was just really interesting, funny, and a great character. The different creatures from the movie were also amazingly well done and diverse. There was a scene that made the cantina scene from Star Wars look like a bunch of sock puppets. I also got to see a lot more of Abe, who is one of my favorite characters in the series, as well as introducing a new hero who was really funny.
4 out of 5 stars.

Caution: Extreme Nerdiness Ahead

So my highlight for today was definitely the fact that I finally made it to the outlands in World of Warcraft. The outlands are basically the final areas where the super high level people go to get really powerful gear and fight the monsters capable of destroying continents. Pretty exciting stuff.

Aside from that, I spent a good amount of time talking to the new Jones freshmen and thinking of how much I miss my Rice friends like Jessica, Ian, Helen, Rachel, Nathan, Chris, Reagan, Gabbie, Justin, Veronica, Sara, Julia, Joey, Brian, Aaron, and even Kevin sometimes. Oops, now I miss them all even more. *frustration*

This Date in Alex History: Jones College (2007)

This is the first of probably many "This Date in Alex History" blogs where I remember something that happened about a year, two years, or even ten years ago around this date, and talk about it. I'll try to restrict it to really embarrassing moments, really epic moments, or times that changed the direction that my life was going.

With all of the class of '12 people getting their college assignments, I'm reminded of just how stressful it can be. They're really freaking out, sending death threats to their mailmen, and offering their limbs just to find out which college they'll be placed in. So far, most of the Will Ricers, Wiessmen, Hanszenites, Bakerites, and Sidizens have found out, leaving Lovetteers and those from the north colleges sitting in a waiting room.

Last year Jones was the first college to send out their letters to freshmen. Jones freshmen were getting excited about it on facebook, and I still hadn't heard anything. It got to 2 or 3 days after the first Jones letters were received, and since I was from Austin, I assumed that if I was in Jones, I would have gotten my letter by now. This of course led me to believe I was in one of the other colleges, so I took the opportunity to get a head start on making fun of Jones college, which was especially easy since I was told by my Owl Weekend host and his friends at Brown how evil Jones was.

The next day my mom gave me a letter that she said had arrived in the mail a few days ago and she forgot to give to me. Sure enough, the letter was sent from Mary Gibbs Jones College. I felt like an idiot, then got onto facebook and shared my announcement with everyone else, and went to appologize to all of my future college-mates that I had been making fun of for the last couple days. Negative ten points for Alex.

In other news, congrats to Sang Yoon, my most awesome prospie, for getting into Will Rice College. Sure you could have been luckier and gotten into Jones or Martel, but Will Rice is a solid 3rd place on my favorite colleges, so you got pretty lucky.

Saved the phone

I saved my phone, sorta. The old phone died officially, so I decided that I would take the parts from my dead phone and an old phone that my mom used to use and just build a new one. Then I decided that the only part I wanted to use from my dead phone was the sim card, so I just took the sim card and put it in the old phone and was good again in this world. I can talk to friends again, not that anyone ever calls me these days.
I wonder if anyone actually reads this blog. Not sure if I want the answer to be yes or no.

Fun times

In slightly happier news, I just got back from spending about 3 straight days with a bunch of awesome friends from high school. The first day and a half as I mentioned earlier was spent working with Skid and Kameron at the warehouse for Fitovers sunglasses. After getting my $130, we partied at Andy's house for a couple of days. We played some awesome games, watched a lot of movies, and had some equally cool people join us occasionally. It will definitely be on the summer highlight post if I ever make one. Talk to me if you want more details about the fun times that were had, because they are too numerous to list on this blog, but definitely worth hearing about.

In memory of a faithful friend

She helped me keep in contact with my friends, tell other people about fun outings, and helped me coordinate study groups during the school year. But now a good friend of mine is in critical condition. While she is showing signs of recovery, the damage is severe and she may never quite be the same. Due to carelessness earlier today, I left my dear cell phone in my right pocket when I went swimming for about 10 minutes earlier today, and she got really wet. I feel like an idiot. Throughout their history, cell phones and pool water never really got along, and after seeing the damage that the pool water did to my dearest cell phone, I understand why.
Keep her in your prayers.

Working feels good

Day 1 of my 2-day employment went really well. You would originally think that unpacking boxes, then unpacking the boxes inside those boxes, sticking labels on all of the individual boxes of sunglasses, repacking them in their boxes, labeling each of the medium sized boxes that holds 10 boxes of sunglasses, packing those back up, and then labeling the box of 100, would be really boring and tedious.

No, it was not. Seriously.

Being able to talk with two friends while working and standing up for 8 hours made it go by really quickly and I almost would have been able to work for free since I enjoyed it so much.

After making $80 for the day, I went to a devotional at Kameron's church, then used 4 of my free Chick-fil-a coupons from the Magnolia opening back in April to feed myself and some friends, and then we went to Coldstone for some amazing overpriced ice cream. Everything seems cheaper when your wallet is heavier than it has been for the last few months. Andy, James, Skid, Kameron, Sabonis and I stayed outside the Coldstone for a while chatting about random things. We felt pretty guilty about bringing in such a huge group half an hour before they closed. As Kameron said, "If I still worked here, I would hate us right now."

Employed...sorta

I've proven that finding jobs has nothing to do with what you know, but who you know. I'll have a temporary job for a couple days this week thanks to two of my friends who work there. Franklin and Ben both work at some kind of sunglasses store, and apparently they needed extra help and they thought of me. The extra money will definitely help me out, and it should be fun to spend tons of time with friends instead of sitting at home.

Happy Birthday Patrick

I'd like to say happy birthday to Patrick, because the highlight of the day goes to Patrick's Birthday Party. While playing D&D for 7 hours was great, the party which included going up to random strangers asking for stuff for a scavenger hunt just like last year (though the other team cheated apparently), playing rock band, and watching blades of glory was even better. None of those were quite as cool as just getting to see old friends and meeting new ones.
Best part is, I'll get to see them all tomorrow morning at the car wash at Culvers. Yay excitement!

Wanted

I went to see Wanted tonight with Sabonis, Skid, Justin, Eva, Andy, Ben, Chris, and James. It was great. Basically a violent, action movie with excessive cursing and violence while at the same time defying the laws of physics every five minutes or so. Then we went to Whataburger afterwords for a while and the service was not so great, but I didn't really mind since I don't think the cashier charged me enough to begin with since he gave me a shake at the same price as a regular drink.

Slightly more interesting than that would be a conversation I had with a good friend of mine before I left on facebook chat. All I wish is that I could just understand girls, how they think, and why they ask certain questions when they do. I think given the choice between $100,000 and the ability to understand women, I'd take the ability to understand how they think because pondering about it too hard sometimes just frustrates me. If the offer was one million though, I'd probably just take the money and hire a female psychologist to interpret for me, though I'm not sure if that would be enough.

Excessive photo comments

Rice students are too bored over the summer, as shown by a very long conversation I've been having with 3 other Rice students through comments on a photo on facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1001965&id=500534514

Global Warming and Christianity

Ever notice the similarities between Christianity and global warming? Ok, probably not. My mind was wandering between random topics this morning as I was lying in bed and then as I was eating breakfast and I thought this was kinda interesting.

If we don't believe in either of them and it turns out that they aren't true, then we feel good about being right, and the world continues to go the way it is.

If we don't believe and it turns out that Christianity or global warming are actually correct, we're screwed. Both result in living in a place that is incredibly miserable, and a lot warmer than we want it to be. Hell and the apocalypse are both very much in the "Worst Case Scenario" list. Things that we don't want to ever have to see.

However, what if we believe, truly act and live as if these are absolute truths, and end up being completely wrong. Jesus was just some crazy man with ridiculous ideas, and Al Gore just wanted a nobel prize. By living as if these things are true, we'd have to make some sacrifices, but it would result in a better world. For Christians, it would be a place where people respect each other, live to serve those who need help, and a place without needless war and violence. For global warming, the air would be cleaner and the world would be a healthier place for our children to live in.

And finally, what if we believe and are correct. We just saved the world from 140 degree highs and the destruction of costal cities. But it seems like in the case of Christianity, we gain even more. Eternal salvation. Living with God for all eternity, I can think of no greater reward.

I've been a Christian for all of my life, but never really bought in to all of the global warming stuff. Maybe it's worth taking into consideration, even if it's completely false.

Starting out

Summer boredom has struck, and after failing to find a job I've turned to many places to entertain myself. Facebook has continued to be an addiction, and I've recently turned to one of the greater evils on the planet, World of Warcraft, as a means of having something to do. I recently decided to start working on a home based business that I will probably tell anyone who would actually be reading this about in the near-ish future.

But most relevant to this blog is the fact that I've decided to start another blog as a way to keep my thoughts and memories straight, or at least straighter than they normally are. This reminds me of a funny parallel, since it was the summer before my sophomore year when I began my xanga for very similar reasons to why I am beginning this; reasons that no one else reading this would really know about or understand, though I suppose part of it is indeed the boredom factor.

Good things about summer so far:

1. Monday Night Soccer- It keeps me sane, in relatively good shape although I should be running more, and enables me to stay in contact with some of my beloved high school friends.

2. Taco Bell- This seems random, but runs to Taco Bell have gone along with Monday Night Soccer starting this summer. Various soccer friends of mine have gone to Taco Bell every Monday night, stayed there until they kicked us out at any time between 10:15 and 11 (the employees aren't really sure when they close it seems) and sometimes we go hang out elsewhere after that.

3. Rice Baseball- Though depressing, the trip to Omaha with Kyle, my fellow clarinet section leader next year, Corey, Kyle's roommate and my WoW mentor, and Bobby, the crazy one, was the funnest thing I've done this year. Rice lost both games in the two most depressing ways possible. First, we were crushed 17-5 by Fresno State, the biggest underdog in the history of the CWS. Then, LSU beat us 6-5 after scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning after Rice had been leading for the entire game. Fresno State may actually win or have won it all by now. I should check to see how the championship series is going. I think it's probably over by now.

4. Camping Trip- 8 friends of mine from high school went camping near Rockport right before the Omaha trip, and it was awesome. Most of them were from that soccer group, but a few weren't and it was nice to see them. I got a massive sunburn that is still peeling today, 2 weeks later, and we built the greatest sandcastle in the history of sandcastles that I have had a hand in building. I also got to see Reagan, who lives in Rockport, though when I told him I would say hi if I ever ended up in Rockport over the summer, I never anticipated actually going there.

5. The release of D&D 4th edition- Yes, I'm a total geek. I was skeptical as to how v 3.5 could be made any better, but I was pleasantly surprised. I really like how the system works and really look forward to getting to play a halfling rogue in a campaign with Bobby, Kyle, Corey, Patrick, Jeff, and Evil Eye (my D&D group from last year entirely comprised of MOBsters) once I get back to Rice. One thing I noticed is that it took a lot of stuff from World of Warcraft, which I guess is good considering how successful the game has been. There are still enough things that are clearly D&D that it isn't just a paper and pencil rip-off, which is also good.

6. Patrick and Gillian's wedding- The best day of my summer thus far, and also my birthday. Take the excitement of seeing Rice friends for the Omaha trip, take out a bit of the insanity and stress, and make it 5 times better and that's what the wedding was. Aside from dancing to Louie, Louie and Shout in a suit with a bunch of MOBsters also in formal atire, the best part would have to be seeing Jessica again. I've really missed her more than most of my friends, and getting to chat after the wedding and on the way to the reception with her and hear her stories of the camp she worked at made my birthday even better. She's an amazing person who has never been unable to make my mood one step better, whether I'm upset about something or already pretty pleased with life.