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.