Concert Went Well

The percussion concert went well this afternoon. For the most part, everything went off very well without any hitch.

Looks like I'm gonna play piano accompanyment for Nathan Johnson's trumpet scholarship audition this Friday. That will be a first for me.

I just sent off my student employment application to the San Francisco Conservatory. Hopefully I'll get the job opening currently in the Admissions office. Looks like things are startin' to get busy again.

Later...

Been a Few Days...

Nothin' much new over the weekend here. Today is Marcia's Dad's B-day. He's now 60, but doesn't look any older than about 45 to me! We had a BBQ in his honor yesterday. Got to have some nice Filipino pancit among other meats and such. Played some pool with Marcia's older brother. Went and saw Shrek 2 (very nice). All in all, a nice day.

Saturday I did a teaching observation in the morning for the percussion ensemble I'll be teaching over the summer and next year. After that, Nathan and I installed a fan in the room I'll be moving into next week; we'll be installing three more within the next week for the remaining rooms. In the evening I went to my buddy Aaron and Phil's joint junior recital. It was a good recital combining some classical double bass and saxophone with a set of jazz tunes.

Friday, had work as usual, then percussion ensemble rehearsal for the concert tomorrow, and went to see my wonderful housemate Jason (guitar player) play a recital with Meghan (flute player). It was all duets for flute and classical guitar; good stuff.

That's pretty much it. Coming up, like I mentioned, is the percussion ensemble recital tomorrow. I'm also playing a gig with the New Millennium String Orchestra at the beginning of next month. And for one of my younger students, I'm playing some piano accompanyment for a chior concert at her school.

Next month I've also got tickets to a couple of SF Symphony concerts (Mahler's 9th and Holst's Planets). I also have plans to go to Disneyland in the third week of June; in fact I'll probably get annual passes for my sweetie and I again. It gives me a nice excuse to visit my mom down there more often.

That's all for now...

I Finally Did It!

As some of you recall from my post last week about bathroom breaks (Back from Lunch), I had a hard time pinching off a loaf if another man was in the public restroom at that time, but today I have conquered that fear. In the middle of doin' my thing, someone walked in, and well, I had to finish. So in a way, I planted a steaming bouqet of brown roses while another male was in the stall next to me. YAY!!!

Oh, and in case you actually thought I came up with that last euphemism, think again. I'm not that witty; I actually did a search and found this webpage through Google. Pretty funny stuff.

Dungeons and Dragons

8bit DandD

This is HIIIIIIIIIII-larious. Check it out!

The Blue Devils Forums

Stan has a blog!

LOL, Kevin over at the BD forums posted this last night. To all BD forumites who stumble across this now, leave a comment on this post! To anyone else who stumbles across this blog, click on the link above and go check out the BD forums. Cool people! ;)

Warped Mind

Not many people know it at first glance, but I can have a pretty sick sense of humor on occasion. Like many have said about me, I cross the line quite a bit. Case in point, I just got a new "Random Question" from the blogger profile. If you go to my profile and read it, you will see a small glimpse of the gutters my mind sometimes dwells in.

Aren't those random question just horrible? I went through probably 20 before I found one that I could put any kind of response to. I like the idea, just not the questions (at least, not most of them).

Today for lunch we had a pot-luck for Darrick's birthday (I guy that works here). It was his 50th, but in all honesty, this guy could pass for 30. I was shocked to learn that he was that old. I have a feeling he'll live to be past 100.

In other news, this past weekend Jerry Seawright, the founder of the drum and bugle corps the Blue Devils, passed away. It is a sad event for the activity as a whole (drum corps). I never met him, but have heard so much about him. I only wish I would have had a chance to meet him.

That's all for now. Ta ta.

The Weekend is Over

So last Saturday I had the symphony audition, and all I got to say is "poo". I'm glad to finally have done a real professional audition and expect to do MUCH better in future auditions, but that one did not go as well as I wanted it to (in my opinion). I didn't go in with much expectations, but now I know what to expect so hopefully things will improve.

On the plus side, I met a lot of great percussionists, a couple of which I'll be going to school with next year. There were also a few old friends there as well. Cathleen (french horn) was auditioning after flying out all the way from the Peabody Conservatory, and it turns out she's coming back to live in the bay area after she receives her Masters degree THIS WEEK! Pretty sweet. I also found out that her and Mr. Sanchez (clarinet) are dating! What a cute couple.

A quick overview and review of my audition:
Kreisler's "Tambourin Chinois" played on xylo; a few too many wrong notes in places that I never had troubles with before (must be the nerves)
Copland's "Appalachian Springs" xylo excerpt; not too shabby, probably the best part of the audition
Mozart's "The Magic Flute" bell excerpt; ugh, WAY too many wrong notes and too loud, I guess I wasn't consistent on this to begin with
Cirone's "Etude #32" for snare; went alright, flubbed a little on the presto top of second page
Sousa's "Star's and Stripes Forever" snare excerpt (last 16 bars or so); didn't see much wrong with this, probably could have played a little more open rolls

And that was it. I didn't get to show off any tambourine or cymbal skills. No "Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Dukas bell excerpt. Well, this is why I'm going back to get my Masters. I'm sure Jack has a lot to teach me, and I have a lot of room to improve.

After the audition, Marcia and I went and saw "Supersize Me", a new documentary where this guy goes on a 30-day all McDonald's diet. It was funny and very eye-opening. After that we went out to get sushi at Fuji-san Sushi in Milpitas. They're Special Spicy Roll is quite simply the best sushi I have ever tasted. Overall, I highly recommend it.

...Alright, just took a quick lunch at work here. Gettin' back to the weekend activities. Saturday night, Marcia, Dan (one of my housemates) and I watched Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" that night (Saturday) and then Marcia and I went to bed. The next day I did some errands, chilled a little bit, and then we went out to eat again that night at Fuddrucker's. All in all, it wasn't an incredibly eventful weekend. Anyway, its time to get back to work now. Bye bye.

I'm All Hot and Sweaty

Just ran from the music building back to work. I'm pretty hungry right now. The audition is coming up tomorrow, so I scheduled a meeting with Artie (my perc. teacher from college) to give some of it a listen. Didn't play perfectly, but he had a lot of good comments to make. I'll work on them tonight after percussion ensemble.

I hadn't given much substance to the blog yesterday so I'll write a little more right now. Wednesday night I had dinner with Rob. He had a bunch of cool stories from his work as usual. I also found out Danny (my stepbro) got laid off a couple months ago, which isn't good because he just had a baby last month (I am an uncle of sorts now). Seeing as how Rob works for the city and Danny got laid off from the city, Rob is using his powerful influence to go through legal matters to resolve this.

Let's see, what else. Just been working and practicing besides for that. I'm feeling alright about the audition tomorrow. Again, not expecting much, but I want to not make a complete fool of myself.

Marcia came in last night and is at my house today. She always brightens up my day.

OK, that's all I got to say. Adios.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Well now that I've figured out how to post images being hosted on the web (I think), lets give this one a shot. This is a scan of the back of my old BD jacket (or at least as much that would fit in the scanner)...

OK, it worked, but it's WAY too big, so heres a link instead:
The Blue Devil

If anyone knows a way that I can post the image but have the size reduced by a certain percentage by a simple command, please leave me a message. I would appreciate it. I can't alter the image that's already being hosted because it's being hosted on another guy's website.

What Swear Word Are You?

you're shit.


What swear word are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I don't think I'd normally post material unsuitable for youngsters on my blog, but it doesn't look like anyone's reading this anyway. I was looking around at other blogs and found this completely wacky quiz. As long as you don't mind "bad words", it's really funny and out there. Try it out.

Fun Political Cartoons

Cartoon Archives - Slowpoke

Check this out! This is my first time using "BlogThis!", and I think I'm gonna do it more often. What a neat tool! The link above is to some cartoons that I thought were well crafted. I actually found them through Blogger.

Just Checkin' In

Well this may just seem like the most boring blog of all! :D

That's ok, like Marcia was saying earlier to me, it's more of an outlet than anything else. I write just to write and get my feelings or thoughts out there, and you read if you like it, or don't read if you don't like it (yes, there are more options than that). There's only one other person who knows about this blog (Marcia, my gf) at this moment, but I've linked to it in my signature of other forums. Maybe someday someone will be inquisitive enough to click on that link and be transported to my world of wonders (LOLOLOLOL). Isn't it great when we can laugh at ourselves? It almost seems miraculous that we have that ability.

Alright, enough of me going off on several tangents, this entry is pretty much for the sake of doing something on here at this moment. Like it says above, just checkin' in. I'm at work, it's early (well, not that early) and there's not much else to say. Later I'll talk about my dinner with Rob (stepdad), and my practicing last night. Until then, au revoir (refer to link on previous entry and translate from French to English if you'd like to know what that means ;).

Back to Work

Well it's Wednesday now and I'm back at work. I actually called in "sick" this morning, but decided that I "felt better" this afternoon so here I am. I'm SO sick of this job; I'd much rather be practicing right now. Speaking of which, last night, my first night practicing for the audition this Saturday, went alright. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I feel like it will probably be fairly productive over the next few days.

After work today, I'm going to have dinner with my stepdad who's in the bay area for the week taking some courses for his police stuff (he's a policeman...duh :p). My mom and him live down in the LA area so it's not so often I get to see either of them, so I'm looking forward to it. My dad and stepmom live over in Reno (which is a h*ll of a lot closer, 3 hours vs. 7 hours to be precise), which is kind of funny because I visit my mom and get to see her even more often than my dad. Maybe it's just that motherly connection...

As long as I'm on the subject, why don't I tell you more about my parents and why they are where they are today. Without going into to much detail, when they were together, my dad was an alcoholic/semi-drug addict and abusive (at least from stories told to me by my older brother and mother). He was abusive more on a mental level than anything; cold, distant, and playing mind games (again, all second-hand information). My mother was and is very hurt about that marriage and still carries it with her to some degree today. She is a very emotional and open person (some would say too open ;), but all in all, means well. My dad today is a great guy, too, and I don't remember enough of my childhood to see him as anything but a great guy and father. I'm lucky because my older brother beared through that part of his life and tried his best to protect his younger siblings (me and my younger brother).

The inevitability of that situation was divorce, and it occurred as I was in high school. Both my parents eventually remarried and moved there separate ways; Mom to Southern California, and Dad to Reno, Nevada. But I decided to finish out my high school days (about 2 1/2 more years) staying where I had started, in Central California. I lived with a friend of the family who was kind enough to open her house to almost any strangers, and who lived a very religious life. I personally stopped going to church after my parents moved away and have been doing my own spiritual searching ever since (or no searching at all). So I lived with very limited supervision and did some stupid things and some not-so-stupid things, and eventually graduated high school for the most part unscathed and as one of the salutatorians (that's another story). I came to the bay area for college at CSU, Hayward, finished my BA, and that pretty much brings me up to this point in my life.

That's a very rough outline without a whole lot of details, but you get the gist. So getting back to today, after I go to dinner with my stepdad, I'll be coming back to practice somemore. For now, I guess I should actually get some work done. Or maybe I'll go post on some drum corps forums first :D. Tschuess (go to http://babel.altavista.com/ and translate that from German to English if you want to figure out what that means, and if that doesn't work, leave a message and ask :p).

Back from Lunch

How lame is this! It's only been 2 hours and I'm already hooked. Well, just like most small things in my life, this will probably be a passing phase.

Here I am, ignoring my work again. I like to let it pile up and then attack it with a vengeance finishing it quickly and leaving me with a sense of relief. Kind of like when you're on a long road trip and won't be stopping for a bathroom break in a while, but you have to go REALLY bad, and eventually, when you do stop to let it all out, it's a much bigger payoff than if you had gone to the bathroom right away. I guess (and I honestly don't know from experience) that may be a somewhat similar experience for drug addicts. I dunno...

Speaking of bathroom breaks, I'll be right back...

...OK, I'm back. Why is it that I have such a hard time doing a #2 (I'm talkin' excrement of the human feces variety) while other guys are in the same bathroom. I have no problem with urinating next to another guy, but it's so difficult to take a cr*p when there's someone one stall over. It's quiet and awkward and the last thing I want to hear is another man's splash-back. It even gets to the point where I sit there until he has finished and left before I do my business.

ANYWAY, earlier I had mentioned that I was being "laid off" from my job at the end of next month. Let me elaborate a little. The fact is, I used to be a student assistant in this same office for four years up until I graduated last year (June), and they liked me so much, they agreed to hire me on another year until I go off to grad school. Well because of all the hoopla with the California budget, they had to lay-off 63 people with PERMANENT positions. So obviously, they really couldn't afford to keep the extra temporary positions, which is fine, because I was only going to be working for two months after June. So now I get the time off :D, except for my private students and a percussion ensemble I'll be teaching for a couple of weeks.

Looking around this blog thing is pretty cool. Maybe someday I'll learn how to write my own template. It'd be nice to get rid of that ad at the top of the page, but I'd probably have to kick down some moola. Still, it's easy to check out other people with similar interests and location and careers and whatever. So after another long post, I bid you farewell.

My First Blog

HEY! This is my first time doing this so bear with me. I initially was just searching Google to find a definition of "blog" and stumbled across "blogger.com" where reading about blogs convinced me to sign up for one of my own. As most things on the internet are, it was fast, easy, and FREE! (no this is not an advertisement).

Let me tell you a little about myself. I'm a musician. I've got an undergrad degree (BA) in specifically percussion performance and composition. I'm going to grad school next year to study with SF Symphony principal percussionist Jack van Geem. I dabble in jazz vibraphone (I've got a trio that gigs every once in a while), but mostly do classical percussion gigs.

At this moment I'm sitting at my dayjob as an Accounts Payable Technician at CSU, Hayward. It sounds fancy, but it really isn't. Just get to pay the University bills (it's pretty boring). I was considering not coming in this morning; I'm just so sick of this job. It's a good thing they're laying me off in a couple of months seeing as how I'll be leaving them pretty soon after that for my grad work.

This weekend I have an audition for the Santa Cruz County Symphony. I'm not really expecting much seeing as how I'm starting to practice for it tonight (got the excerpts at the end of last week). The audition itself will be a good learning experience for me, but I doubt I'll actually be at my full potential (when am I ever).

What else should you know about me? I have a beautiful, loving girlfriend who lives in Santa Cruz. I see her on weekends. I live in a house with three other guys that are great friends, but all have their quirks (except for Nathan, he's my best friend ;). Me...I'm pretty lazy with momentary spurts of intense working (practicing, writing, etc.); I guess you could also call it being a procrastinater. As I write, there are many invoices on my desk which could be worked on, but I'll save them for later. I sometimes eat healthy, sometimes not; I sometimes exercise, sometimes not. The only things I have a good track record of actually sticking with for long periods of time are the big things: relationships (both friendly and intimate), my music (been playin' since I was four).

I used to have a problem with expressing my feelings or being introverted when I was younger, but today I'm not afraid to speak my mind to the people who are close to me. I keep very few secrets about myself, if any, from most of my friends.

Now I'm just rambling :-p, so let me rap up (if you've read this far, BRAVO...or is it BRAVI). In my youth, I've been fortunate enough to see a lot of the world through touring as a musician with different groups. I am still amazed at the immensity of just our small world in this vast universe. So much life and culture and music and genius packed into one microscopic speck of dust in the cosmic beach (heh heh, came up with that one myself). It is no wonder that mankind in general is in awe of such a miracle and believe in some higher order of things. I do believe that there is a God or supernatural being that has created this universe, and I will continue to seek out connecting with it through my music. Gotta go to lunch!