Catch Up Time

Yeah, it's been awhile...

I guess we'll start with Chicago. It was pretty good. A little too Jesusy for me, but it was a good time. I finished HP7 while I was there. I have multiple issues with the book, but mostly I enjoyed it. Anyway, back on topic: The stuff we did for people was pretty cool, and it gave me a nice sense of fulfillment. I didn't really like the evening activities at the church though (except Brenda Matthews, the big hilarious black woman), because they were usually just typical annoying "reaching out to the youth" sermons, and I've heard all those before and they're not convincing. Other than that though, it was a good time.

Next we have the beach. The beach. I wanna go back... Really bad. I love the beach so much. It's always the highlight of my summer. When I get really rich and famous, I'm gonna buy me an island and live on the beach for the rest of my life. Sound good? mmkay. That's after we move to Ireland and tour Europe though (of course). You really fit in with my family too, so it wasn't awkward or anything, which was good. I want a peach shake...

I think I'll bitch about Harry Potter now, so watch out for those SPOILERS:
First of all, wtf@Harry shooting random gold glowy stuff at Voldy. I mean, it's all well and good, up until Dumblydoor explains it as Voldemort's magic that got infused with Harry's wand. Stupid. Let's see... Harry=horcrux. Retarded. I mean, sure, it's dramatic, it adds a "twist" to the last book in the series, but come on. Okay, so, horcruxes are made with ADVANCED dark magic. Voldemort kills people, his soul tears apart, he infuses that piece of soul with an object of some sort with ADVANCED dark magic. "Advanced" means "hard to do," or in other words, "not possible by accident." But if Harry is a horcrux, it had to be an accident that Voldemort made a horcrux. He killed Lily and James, and therefor couldn't kill Harry, but somehow managed to accidentally create a horcrux? I think not. I'm sure there are gaping holes in my argument there, but I'm not gonna go looking for them. What else... I feel like Rowling got to a point at which she was just killing off characters for dramatic effect. Mainly Lupin and Tonks, and a little with Fred. Hedwig was like the kickoff in the book that said "shit is gonna happen" to alert us that people will die. Moody I thought was a good decision. Dobby was disappointing, but that worked cuz he was saving Harry from a knife. Fred just died randomly. The wall exploded. I dunno, I guess I can live with that one, but it seems like she went over the top a little with Lupin and Tonks. She didn't even tell us how they died. She told us later that Rookwood killed Lupin and Bellatrix killed Tonks, but it just seemed a little unnecessary to me. I suppose it's supposed to show the "horrors of war" or something. Close friends, brothers, and new parents die. But still. Oh well. I'll get over it.

I can't think of anything else to blog about, so there you go. You'll probably have to wait another few months for the next one, cuz I never get around to blogging.

Here You Go

I told you I wouldn't post very much. But it's been awhile and I'm bored, so here you go.

Let's see, what is there to blog about... I guess I'll start with camp. Camp was amazing. To a ridiculous extent, camp was amazing. But only because of the people there (mainly the people in my dorm and hallway). The camp itself (meaning the organization and the activities and whatnot) was nothing special, even quite poor at times, but the people there were incredible. Of course there were those that were douchebags and those that were whiny little rich kids, but most were really cool. Andrew's metal guitar skills, Matt's ungodly intelligence and Plankton impersonation, Greg's never-ending hilarity, and James' quiet nature and passion for the cello, to name just a few. Yes, I'll miss these guys a lot. Maybe we can all reunite next year and have another fantastic two weeks. I certainly hope so. Anyway, on to what we actually did at camp. Months before camp started, everyone made an audition tape of about 10 minutes and mailed it in so that a group of judges could place everyone in an appropriate orchestra. Apparently my tape was the best they received out of the violists, so I was top chair in the top orchestra. Out conductor, Mr. Hong, was phenomenal. He is by far the best conductor I've ever worked with. Not only did he have a deep understanding of the music, he connected with each individual member of the orchestra on a much more personal level (and I think that greatly increased our playing potential). We played the Mendelssohn Octet (not that any of you know what that is), which is amazing. Aside from orchestra, some of us signed up for chamber music groups. At the first chamber music day, the horrid organization skills of the staff became apparent. We were waiting for nearly 45 minutes of out 2 hours to find out which groups we were in. Then, after supposedly getting everything settled, on the second day my group was informed that we would be gaining another cello (and therefor that all our work from the previous day was absolutely pointless). However, we played the Schubert quintet, which is a gorgeous piece, so I'm not complaining. Although I suspect none of you really care about the details of my camp days, I'm already typing, and you asked for a post, so too bad. Each day we were supposed to wake up and eat breakfast at 8 (which I rarely did). Then at 8:45 there was always a "mandatory" camp meeting (three of which I attended). After the meeting was orchestra rehearsal for 3 hours, followed by lunch. From 1 to 2 we went to our chosen "electives" (sight reading for me). After that we had an hour to practice by ourselves before leaving for chamber music at 3:15. Chamber music went until 5:15, at which time we left to eat dinner. Each day ended with a concert or event of some sort at 7. There were a few exceptions to this general day, but most of them looked like that. So the week went on, and blah blah blah lots of stuff happened blah blah blah, and then there were the concerts. I had a solo concert in the middle somewhere, which went pretty well. The chamber concert was the tough one. We had rehearsed and rehearsed, and we were good. God we were good. It sounded amazing on our last day of rehearsing, and we were psyched for the concert. However, nerves are also a factor in concerts, and they took their toll on our quintet. Matt was the most talented musician in our group, but unfortunately he was also the most nervous. Our first cellist Meredith missed a turn she had been a little shaky on, and that threw the rhythm off. It just kinda spiraled down from there. The piece wasn't a total disaster, but it was far less than we were capable of and was very disappointing. The orchestra concert was far better though. We did incredibly well, and I could tell we made Mr. Hong proud. So that's pretty much the gist of what happened at camp. On to something else.

Let's see... Well, I'll just cram whatever comes to mind into this last paragraph. We're going to Chicago in about a week and a half. I'm excited, though slightly less so than I would be if more of my friends were going. Sebby's in Europe, Nathan's in... somewhere (probably Nicaragua), and Hannah is away with LEAP. I don't know if Michael is coming, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't. So that leaves me with the sophomores and the seniors (though the seniors probably won't be there either), which will still be loads of fun, but I'd still like for all my friends to be there. At least I'll have two weeks straight with you. THE BEACH! Goin' to tha beach. EXCITED! Oh my God excited! I can't believe they agreed, they said you could come with me, but they did, and I am VERY happy about that. Mmm... peach shakes and hand and foot and salt water and spades and walks on the beach and sand and aahhhh... I can't wait for the beach.

Well, that's it for another profound, deeply moving installment of Ben's blog. Hope you enjoyed. I'm off to get my teeth violated by a man in a white coat.

183rd

is what I placed in a 2,700 person poker tournament. Unfortunately only the top 27 get paid (and first only gets $15), but it's free to enter, so I usually play it. And that's how I spent the past 2 and a half hours.

More importantly, I got a cell phone a few days ago (though the people who read this probably already know that). I'm not gonna post the number here, but I'll give it to you if you ask for it. It's a silver razor. I would have gotten black, but they only had silver and pink on sale (does anyone even like the pink ones? even girls? they look like shit). I did order a skin for it though. It has a yin yang design on it. I might not even use it though. We'll see.

I jammed with Zach again yesterday, which was awesome. I feel like we get a lot better just in the span of time we play together. It's awesome. Then later we picked up Aleina and Tory, and after that Andy came over and we lit fireworks and laid around. It was a helluva time.

Then I went to the HHS graduation ceremony this morning. It was shorter than usual, which is good. I saw Tory and Amanda afterwards, but I didn't really get to talk to them cuz my parents were like "we're gonna take some pictures and leave." I also saw some other people I knew who graduated. Yikes. I'm a senior. Scary.

What else... oh! I'm going to camp on Wednesday. I'll be there for two and a half weeks. Its a music camp up near Philadelphia. I'm thinkin it will probably be pretty cool (lets hope so, I'll be there for a while). Maybe I can eat me a genuine philly cheese steak while I'm there. Mmmm...

That's it. Thank you for your time. Come again.

SAT

Today is Saturday. Today I woke up at 6:30. That should not happen.

But it did, because I had to go take the SAT. I was at HHS from 7:50-1:00. That also should not happen (especially on a Saturday [in the morning]). Anyway, I think I did pretty well on the test, so that's good. My essay wasn't very good, but I hold my essays to a pretty high standard just because I always get good grades on essays, so it was probably fine. The rest of the test was okay. For the most part, I slaughtered the math sections, also destroyed the grammar sections, but only did kind of well on the vocab. I was never any good at vocab. I am eager to get my scores though (even though I'm not sure what's good anymore now that they've changed a bunch of stuff).

I was about to mow the lawn a little while ago, cuz mom asked me too. It looked like it was gonna rain, so I asked if she thought I should mow later, but she said "no, maybe you can mow before it starts raining." So I started mowing. After about a minute and a half, it started pouring, which was fine by me, but now I don't get my ten bucks until Monday. I like the rain. Especially on days like this. It's definitely a good day for rain. But now my hair is wet, and I'm dripping on the keyboard. And I need to pack up the Wii because Lizzy wants me to bring it to her house for the party, which is gonna be cool, but also long (because my family is going at 4, even though the party starts at 7, because my grandpa is gonna be there and we want to visit).

So anyway... I am finished with school for the rest of the summer... ahhh

Post the first

So... I finally succumbed to the temptation that is blogging. I held out for quite a while, though. I'm proud of myself. First of all, don't expect frequent posts from me, because I just had the random urge to make a blog tonight, but I feel like I probably won't have that urge very often. I'll shoot for around one post a week though (and hey, it's better than Chu).

Anyway, to start of my first blog post ever, I'll go ahead and say I've had a pretty awesome day. This whole week has been amazing because I've been able to sleep in 'til around 10 every morning. This is the last week of school. Oh em gee. Excited? I think yes.

I got my hair cut today, though I don't think anyone noticed. Nobody ever notices when I get my hair cut though, because I never cut much of it off. I also got my glasses today, which I'm wearing now. They're very convenient for late night time-wasting when my contacts get really dry and irritating. (And they're Converse brand, which I find highly amusing).

And then, of course, there was Ultimate (NOT ultimate frisbee, because "frisbee" is a brand. Therefor, it is simply "ultimate" [and you play it with a disk, not a frisbee]). Ultimate, quite frankly, is the most amazing sport ever invented. We played with MYF at Purcell Park. Unfortunately, my team suffered a casualty early on when Nathan wailed Aleina in the eye with the disk (not frisbee). I felt bad because we don't play ultimate very often, and the one chance we get, she only gets to play for like 5 minutes. But we're trying to reinstate the Sunday afternoon games, so hopefully we'll have a summer full of ultimate (I still think we should start a church league). I just realized that Sebby never commented on the ring I'm wearing ("hey Ben, where'd you get that ring, the toilet store?"). Of course, that one would be easy to turn around on him ("my girlfriend gave it to me. Do you have one of those? No?").

So there you have it, my first blog post of all time. The only first blog post I'll ever make (ever). And it's 1:30. And I should be asleep.