Monday, April 1, 2013
Backpacking
Sorry guys I haven't blogged, but I went camping in Utah so I was kind of busy. I also want to specify and add that I didn't just go camping, I went backpacking. For ignorant people, the different between the two is that camping is just when you set up a tent somewhere, it could be in your backyard or in Canada, and you sleep there and make dinner and play cards and do whatever else you want to do as you spend time in the great outdoors (or maybe not so great if you hate bugs or whatever).
Now, backpacking is when you walk, with a backpack obviously, to a place and then camp there. This involves many miles of trudging, carry anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds on your back.
Now I don't want to say I'm the backpacking expert or anything, because....oh boy.....I am NOT the person you want to ask for tips and things. It's not necessarily that I walk slowly as we hike....I blame it on the stumpy legs.
Thanks stumpy legs.
You make me feel nonathletic.
Wait, I am nonathletic, (gym grades cannot lie).
But lets get back to the backpacking. I think I'd call myself a trooper before anything else. My brother and dad can walk sooooo much faster than I can, but I think that's also kind of an effort thing also.
So to be more specific, we backpacked in Escalante National Park, which according to my father is some sort of backpackers paradise, because you don't get all those day hikers with their little kids and carefree attitude. No, none of that. You only come across the real hardcore backpackers, and some hippies of course. The trail we hiked on wasn't paved or completely set and we had to cross a lot of streams. Another good thing about the part of Escalante we hiked in was that we were in a canyon the whole time created by a river, so there was definitely no way to get lost.
Well anyway, I might talk more about the trip later.
See ya.
Now, backpacking is when you walk, with a backpack obviously, to a place and then camp there. This involves many miles of trudging, carry anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds on your back.
Now I don't want to say I'm the backpacking expert or anything, because....oh boy.....I am NOT the person you want to ask for tips and things. It's not necessarily that I walk slowly as we hike....I blame it on the stumpy legs.
Thanks stumpy legs.
You make me feel nonathletic.
Wait, I am nonathletic, (gym grades cannot lie).
But lets get back to the backpacking. I think I'd call myself a trooper before anything else. My brother and dad can walk sooooo much faster than I can, but I think that's also kind of an effort thing also.
So to be more specific, we backpacked in Escalante National Park, which according to my father is some sort of backpackers paradise, because you don't get all those day hikers with their little kids and carefree attitude. No, none of that. You only come across the real hardcore backpackers, and some hippies of course. The trail we hiked on wasn't paved or completely set and we had to cross a lot of streams. Another good thing about the part of Escalante we hiked in was that we were in a canyon the whole time created by a river, so there was definitely no way to get lost.
Well anyway, I might talk more about the trip later.
See ya.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Some gym stuff
So I haven't blogged recently.
Actually I probably shouldn't have said that, because that's how I start all my posts nowadays. Some of my computer keys have started making a really disturbing crunching noise whenever I press them, mainly my caps lock key. This is probably because graham cracker crumbs are stuck under the key or something disgusting like that.
I eat a lot of graham crackers.
If you haven't tried graham crackers and milk you should do it now. You dip the graham crackers in the milk and once they're soggy enough it actually tastes good. I also recommend dipping challah bread in grape juice. That's what I always did in hebrew school. You get like a shot glass sized amount of grape juice in a paper cup and an individual roll of challah. I lived for that.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about in this post is gym class, which is going to start a long chain of rant posts. I suck at it.
There is no way for someone to suck at "trying their very best at every activity", but maybe that's why I'm failing. Why the hell would I try hard at ballroom dancing, which a unit we had for six weeks. Why would I try hard at badminton? (actually I got pretty into that, but I bombed the test because I didn't cheat like the rest of my class. I mean seriously, who expects their students to know the dimensions of a badminton court (which, by the way, is 20' by 44) and who gives tests in gym!)
Maybe it's my carefree attitude, which I take great pride in. Gym teachers expect a certain amount of fear in their students, and I'm pretty sure they love the sound of kids unhappiness when they yell "run six laps around the field!" or some random bullshit like that. Gym teachers have to realize that their class isn't a real class, no offense gym teachers. But gym is about physical fitness, and I guess learning sports, but not really learning anything. So basically kids are graded on their "drive and effort", what drive is there in gym class? The drive to want to beat every kid in my badminton class? Noooooo.
I have no drive to want to do well at sports, so I just don't...do well. Eh whatevs.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
WWA (Woodwinds Anonymous)
This morning I went to this competition called Solo and Ensemble competition (which is a really uninspiring name). I actually wasn't stressed at all though, it was a pretty low key environment.
So basically how something like this works is you are given a room to warm up in, and then you warm up (it's a pretty basic process), and then you go into a room (still basic) when it's your assigned time, and a judge judges you on how well (or how badly) you played. They're all nice judges, and they aren't of the same ilk as the classic pissed off band teacher who wants to assert their importance while trying to convince their students that their class actually matters.
So it was all pretty chill.
Unfortunately the first group from the school playing was a brass quartet, not that brass quartets are gross or anything. But that did mean that all the participants from my school congregated in the brass warm up room.
Do you know how terrifying it is to be surrounded by kids all holding giant metal weapons? Terrifying. We were the little woodwind people, with our lame ass wooden instruments, and we were being totally judged. Whenever I played a note in that room I felt the judgement. The brass people also took my friends stand, and there was no un-awkward way to get the stand back. So we were standless. Also our warm up room was one of those classrooms where the desk is connected to the chair. Come on! What, are they trying to trap the students at their desk so they can never ask to use the bathroom? Or maybe they hate when kids stand up and blow their nose, so they try to make it as awkward as possible for them to stand up.
Onto a different thought, you know that awkward feeling when you're at a recital or a concert or something and you are the only one of your kind there?
For example I'm part of a woodwind trio, and we perform at the flutists recitals, and we are the only diversity at the concert.
Well, there's a solution to this all too common problem.
Just join WWA. There you can be with your own kind, where everyone understands everyone and life is good. Just sitting around...with other woodwinds....doing woodwind stuff...
Okay, I have no idea where I'm going with this.
I'm out.
So basically how something like this works is you are given a room to warm up in, and then you warm up (it's a pretty basic process), and then you go into a room (still basic) when it's your assigned time, and a judge judges you on how well (or how badly) you played. They're all nice judges, and they aren't of the same ilk as the classic pissed off band teacher who wants to assert their importance while trying to convince their students that their class actually matters.
So it was all pretty chill.
Unfortunately the first group from the school playing was a brass quartet, not that brass quartets are gross or anything. But that did mean that all the participants from my school congregated in the brass warm up room.
Do you know how terrifying it is to be surrounded by kids all holding giant metal weapons? Terrifying. We were the little woodwind people, with our lame ass wooden instruments, and we were being totally judged. Whenever I played a note in that room I felt the judgement. The brass people also took my friends stand, and there was no un-awkward way to get the stand back. So we were standless. Also our warm up room was one of those classrooms where the desk is connected to the chair. Come on! What, are they trying to trap the students at their desk so they can never ask to use the bathroom? Or maybe they hate when kids stand up and blow their nose, so they try to make it as awkward as possible for them to stand up.
Onto a different thought, you know that awkward feeling when you're at a recital or a concert or something and you are the only one of your kind there?
For example I'm part of a woodwind trio, and we perform at the flutists recitals, and we are the only diversity at the concert.
Well, there's a solution to this all too common problem.
Just join WWA. There you can be with your own kind, where everyone understands everyone and life is good. Just sitting around...with other woodwinds....doing woodwind stuff...
Okay, I have no idea where I'm going with this.
I'm out.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Super chill
Today at school there was no school. Not technically, which I was incredibly happy about. Of course I did no homework last night, so I have to do it all tonight, and I am just not really feeling it right now. I'm not in the homework mood, I guess you could say.
Today at school it was Arts Fest, which boiled down to the basic idea is a day where our school gets to prove how alternative it is. Our school is based in science and math, or I'm pretty sure it is, because that's the vibe I've been getting from it my whole life. So today was a day where the school became 'artsy'. It was pretty goddam artsy.
It's all student run, and you sign up for the five activities you want...which are mostly food based. Unfortunately I didn't get any food activities, which was pretty disappointing, because I had really been looking forward to sushi making (now I'm happy I didn't take that because the sushi fell apart in the soy sauce and looked nasty).
I'm just gonna say it like this: I think I'm a pretty chill kid. Like not chill as in cool, but I'm chill because I don't give a shit about a lot of things. Usually I don't do much self judgement, but I've come to this realization today.
I took a Henna workshop, and none of my friends had ever done henna before, and being such a chill person I let them put the paste/paint stuff on my arm. I didn't know then that the stuff lasts three weeks or something awful like that. One kid couldn't get the paint out of the tube so she squeezed really hard and a giant blob got on my arm. Instead of taking the paint off, she smeared it on my arm, which was pretty upsetting at first. So then other people put their initials and their name on my arm, to complete the picture. At first it actually looked like I had wiped my ass with my arm and there were shit stains all over it, because it was naaassstty.
At another workshop, face painting, I made another bad decision. Everyone was doing tribal stripes and stuff on other peoples faces, so I did it to my friend. It looked kinda cool actually, so when she asked to do it to my face I was expecting at least a slight degree of coolness. Of course she just dotted and smeared random stuff on my face.
And then more stuff got added, including turquoise eyebrows, after I asked someone to fix what the other kid did.
Not a good decision.
I looked like the color wheel had eaten too many skittles and then threw up on my face. It was kind of disturbing actually.
Today at school it was Arts Fest, which boiled down to the basic idea is a day where our school gets to prove how alternative it is. Our school is based in science and math, or I'm pretty sure it is, because that's the vibe I've been getting from it my whole life. So today was a day where the school became 'artsy'. It was pretty goddam artsy.
It's all student run, and you sign up for the five activities you want...which are mostly food based. Unfortunately I didn't get any food activities, which was pretty disappointing, because I had really been looking forward to sushi making (now I'm happy I didn't take that because the sushi fell apart in the soy sauce and looked nasty).
I'm just gonna say it like this: I think I'm a pretty chill kid. Like not chill as in cool, but I'm chill because I don't give a shit about a lot of things. Usually I don't do much self judgement, but I've come to this realization today.
I took a Henna workshop, and none of my friends had ever done henna before, and being such a chill person I let them put the paste/paint stuff on my arm. I didn't know then that the stuff lasts three weeks or something awful like that. One kid couldn't get the paint out of the tube so she squeezed really hard and a giant blob got on my arm. Instead of taking the paint off, she smeared it on my arm, which was pretty upsetting at first. So then other people put their initials and their name on my arm, to complete the picture. At first it actually looked like I had wiped my ass with my arm and there were shit stains all over it, because it was naaassstty.
At another workshop, face painting, I made another bad decision. Everyone was doing tribal stripes and stuff on other peoples faces, so I did it to my friend. It looked kinda cool actually, so when she asked to do it to my face I was expecting at least a slight degree of coolness. Of course she just dotted and smeared random stuff on my face.
And then more stuff got added, including turquoise eyebrows, after I asked someone to fix what the other kid did.
Not a good decision.
I looked like the color wheel had eaten too many skittles and then threw up on my face. It was kind of disturbing actually.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Assassin's Creed
I'd like to discuss my favorite game ever.
To clarify, it's the only video game I play, unless you count World of Warcraft as a video game. Technically I never played Wow to its full potential because I never had the full version, and when I hit level 20 it cut me off and I was just running around killing boars in the forest which got really lame after like 3 hours. Yeah...I was pretty into that game over summer break '10. It's a break kind of game.
So anyway, the only game I play consistently is Assassins Creed. This is the game I play because unlike other games like Call of Duty, when I play it and I play badly I won't bring my brothers average down.
Why did I like Assassins Creed at first? Well, the main character for Assassins Creed 2 through Revelations was incredibly attractive. Like 80 years passed through out the three games and Etzio never aged. It was crazy. Also finishing missions was incredibly addicting, expect whenever there was something too hard for me to do I'd have my brother finish the mission for me. He got incredibly pissed off and one day he announced he would never help me again. Which was pretty mean of him.
I'm a little disappointed in AC 3 because it's in america, and because its all about the revolutionary war and stuff like that it's kind of lame. The only cool thing is that you can climb every tree. EVERY TREE. But it's funny because when you were the white templar character he couldn't climb the tree, but then when you started playing as the native american guy, who has this really long complicated name but calls himself Connor, can climb trees. I find this aspect of the game incredibly offensive to my race, and discriminates against the average caucasian.
I was just joking.
Now that my parents find whatever I say ever offending I have to say when I'm joking, because nothing can me insinuated now.
That is all.
To clarify, it's the only video game I play, unless you count World of Warcraft as a video game. Technically I never played Wow to its full potential because I never had the full version, and when I hit level 20 it cut me off and I was just running around killing boars in the forest which got really lame after like 3 hours. Yeah...I was pretty into that game over summer break '10. It's a break kind of game.
So anyway, the only game I play consistently is Assassins Creed. This is the game I play because unlike other games like Call of Duty, when I play it and I play badly I won't bring my brothers average down.
Why did I like Assassins Creed at first? Well, the main character for Assassins Creed 2 through Revelations was incredibly attractive. Like 80 years passed through out the three games and Etzio never aged. It was crazy. Also finishing missions was incredibly addicting, expect whenever there was something too hard for me to do I'd have my brother finish the mission for me. He got incredibly pissed off and one day he announced he would never help me again. Which was pretty mean of him.
I'm a little disappointed in AC 3 because it's in america, and because its all about the revolutionary war and stuff like that it's kind of lame. The only cool thing is that you can climb every tree. EVERY TREE. But it's funny because when you were the white templar character he couldn't climb the tree, but then when you started playing as the native american guy, who has this really long complicated name but calls himself Connor, can climb trees. I find this aspect of the game incredibly offensive to my race, and discriminates against the average caucasian.
I was just joking.
Now that my parents find whatever I say ever offending I have to say when I'm joking, because nothing can me insinuated now.
That is all.
After the Pause
There's been a huge gap in my writing, almost two weeks I'm pretty sure. I have nothing to write about. I mean, I could write about the Winter Formal dance that was last weekend or about all the unfair things teachers did this week, or anything I want. But I just haven't.
My parents found out about my blog when I casually mentioned it, which is a stupid mistake on my part. But stuff happens, so it's all good.
My dad thought I sounded like a jerk, and my mom thinks that everyone in the internet is only there to rip you off in someway. Her thought progression went something like: comment on blog post, follow blogger, chat with you, find your address, go to your house, steal all the things.
I think she also talked about how this blog will ruin my future and about all the pedophiles cruising the interweb during her ten minute lecture.
So anyway, I considered ending this blog, seeing that I don't really do much on it, and all the people who read this I know, so I could tell them about the things I write here, but in person. But then I realized that I'm having fun writing this, so that's all that counts. Right? I write this blog to create a more mature writing style....not. Not at all.
So I think I'll start blogging more again. Yep.
My parents found out about my blog when I casually mentioned it, which is a stupid mistake on my part. But stuff happens, so it's all good.
My dad thought I sounded like a jerk, and my mom thinks that everyone in the internet is only there to rip you off in someway. Her thought progression went something like: comment on blog post, follow blogger, chat with you, find your address, go to your house, steal all the things.
I think she also talked about how this blog will ruin my future and about all the pedophiles cruising the interweb during her ten minute lecture.
So anyway, I considered ending this blog, seeing that I don't really do much on it, and all the people who read this I know, so I could tell them about the things I write here, but in person. But then I realized that I'm having fun writing this, so that's all that counts. Right? I write this blog to create a more mature writing style....not. Not at all.
So I think I'll start blogging more again. Yep.
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