Author: galador

In case you missed my last entry (shame on you), for the past eight days, I’ve been on family vacation to Corpus Christi and San Antonio. It was pretty fun, but not quite as fun as our usual family vacations. Also, I saw a lot of stuff I thought I need to share, so later, this entry could get pretty random. Just a warning to the faint of heart or whatever.

So, last Tuesday, June 13, we packed everything up and left about four in the afternoon. We drove forever and ate supper right before we got to Tehas. Finally, at about eleven o’clock at night, we stopped in Nacogdoches, Texas, where we got a hotel.

The next day, we drove even friggin’ more! We continued to drive until we finally got to Corpus, where we checked into the hotel and drove around some to see all the neat stuff to see in Corpus (and just to let you know, besides the beach, the USS Lexington [more on that later], the Texas State Aquarium, and the Convention Center, there’s really not much interesting there [at least in my opinion]). We ate supper at the Olive Garden (which is always good, no matter where you are )Then we went to this random beach and enjoyed the ocean breeze for a little while.

The next day, we had to get up early, cause my dad had to bowl in the USBC Open Nationals. This is the yearly tournament for male bowlers who have paid their sanction fees for USBC. All people are invited to bowl in this tournament, and there are all kinds of prizes and all that good stuff. Though the conditions are always really tough, and this year was no different. However, one of my dad’s team mates rolled a 299 game (in case you don’t know a perfect game is 300)…it was really nice. My dad bought himself a new bowling ball, and my mom bought a ball and some bowling shoes.

Afterwards, we went to the USS Lexington. “The Lex’ is a de-commissioned United States Essex-Class Carrier that has been converted into a floating museum. It was really cool (of course, I like military-technology stuff). There were all kinds of displays of guns, helicopters, airplanes, and all kinds of other
military stuff. There was also an IMAXmovie theater, which showed a movie about Fighter Pilots. It really enjoyed going to “The Lex.” We ate a Whataburger, which is really good.

The next day, we went to the beach, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I still really didn’t have all that much fun. After that, we went and drove “The Loop,” which is this highway loop that goes around Corpus
Christi, through Aransas (stupid Texans, can’t even spell “Arkansas” right ) Pass and Port Aransas, over Mustang Island, and then
back to Corpus Christi. During this excursion, we got to ride on a ferry, which was kind of cool. After we got back to the hotel room, my parents did the laundry, so my brother and I sat in the hotel room. I had my good friend, Internet, to keep me company, so I wasn’t too depressed about it. This was our last day in Corpus, which I was happy about. Corpus was not all that fun for me.

So, when we woke up the next day, we left for San Antonio (yes, more driving). And after you get out of Corpus, heading towards San Antonio, the land is flat…for as long as the eye can see. Not the kind of landscape you want to look at for many hours. Also, it
is prime growing season, yet none of the fields we passed on the way to SA were being used to grow crops…kind of weird.When we got there, we stayed in the Hotel for a little bit, and about supper time, we went to the River Market/Alamo/River Walk area. Before I go into what we did there, I wish to pose a question. Why is it that to get from the area where most of the hotels in a given city are to the “Touristy” (and yes, according to Microsoft Word’s Spell-Check, “Touristy” is, in fact, a real word) area, you are required most of the time to go through the slum part of town? It seems inevitable that wherever you are, this is the case. (Yes, this was the case in San Antonio.) So, in the Downtown San Antonio area, we ate at this awesome Mexican Restaurant called Mi Tierra. It has to be the best Mexican food I have ever had. But if you go there, be prepared to wait a while to eat… You have to get a number (like in government offices where you pull the little slip from the machine, and they call your number to be served) at the podium, and then you watch these LED displays for your number to get a table. So you have to wait to be waited on. We got lucky, and had our number called soon after we got our ticket (they randomly choose the numbers), so that was cool. If you do go there, I recommend the “Super Mexican Dinner” or something like that. It was really good. After that, we went and saw the Alamo. It seems smaller than I imagined it to be (and less orange than it looks in the pictures). We then walked the Paseo de Rio (the River Walk, for those of you not versed in your Spanish). It was really cool. The flora was really pretty. I so wish I had a digital camera so I could have taken a million pictures there. There were also a ton of people there. It was definitely cool.

The next day, we went to SeaWorld. The shows were awesome. The rides, not so much. Now don’t get me wrong, they were still fun…it’s just that I thought that the shows were so much more interesting. We came back on the day after that, so we
had two straight days of SeaWorld. Now, some of the randomness starts to surface…

• “La Grange” is best left to ZZ Top.
• “I Like to Move It, Move It” = Crazy Little Kid (and Mrs. Smith)
• The “Carwash” Song = Craziness (andNikki Greene)

And that brings us to today (technically yesterday, now)…we drove ALL FRIGGIN’ DAY! I’m so glad to be home, though. Today I heard a The Fray song on the radio. It’s kind of cool to already know a song before it’s played on the radio.
Also, we took my car on the trip, and the transmission started to leak. However, we think it’s just that the seals dried out, allowing the transmission fluid to leak, because once it cooled down, and we got back to the more humid climes of Arkansas, it quit. So, that’s good. But I still think we’re going to get the
seals replaced, just in case.

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And don’t think that just because I’m
back at home means that there’s no more stuff to write about…now comes the part of this post where more randomness surfaces and I make some other comments. So, here we go:

• Pastels are definitely not good colors for beach houses (and probably any house, for that matter).
• There were bathyscaphes for sale in Corpus.
• The next version of Microsoft Office is a huge improvement over the current one…but it takes some getting used to the new User Interface.
• Saw a Delivery Truck from Keebler’s that said “A little Elfin Magic goes a long way.” and I thought it said “A little ‘Effin magic goes a long way” :)
• I saw a real-life Shriner’s temple.
• Symbolics.com was the first ever domain name to be registered.
• In San Antonio, I saw a pregnancy clinic next to a Little Ceasar’s Pizza… so I guess if you’re hungry after banging your girlfriend, you can grab some pizza while she’s checking to see if you got her pregnant.
• My mom says she saw a transvestite gas station attendant.

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Now…while I was on vacation, due to the large amount of car-riding, I was able to catch up on my music-listening, and here are the results:

• Nada Surf changed a lot between their first and second albums. Both are good, but the style definitely changed a whole lot between the two.
• Brand New are pretty good. I really like the song “Sic Gloria Transit &
  Glory Fades.”
• Motion City Soundtrack also changed a lot between their albums. I like their new album much better, but again, they’re both still good.
• I really like Plain White T’s.
• Circa Survive is also really good, and the singer has a really unique voice.
• I heard the actual recording of “Daddy’s Hands” on the radio. It brought back bad memories. I instantly turned up my iPod to cover it up. The “Star Wars Main Theme” was much more enjoyable.
• They played “Move Along” by the All-American Rejects in Corpus Christi like once every two hours. Now, I’ll admit, I think it’s a good song, even an excellent one, but one kind of gets tired of hearing a song every time you get in the car! Literally. I heard it every time we were in the car in Corpus.

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So, that’s enough randomness and updating and music stuff to keep one occupied for quite some time…so I’m signing off for now. (8,191 characters, suckas!)

Today I will be leaving with my family for Texas, as we are going on our family vacation. We’re going to go to Corpus Christi and San Antonio. So, for the next ten days, I will probably have no communication to the outside world. So if you guys want to leave me a message, I guess you can comment it here or send me an e-mail (B_2k06@hotmail.com).

The song in my currently listening is like the greatest arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner ever written. If you’ve never heard it, then go listen to it now. It’s really good.

…totally sucked. Big ones. I would easily put it in my top 5 worst films ever. The plot was paper-thin, the acting wasn’t much better, and I think I laughed more than anything else. I think watching the other people moving around the theater was more interesting than the movie itself.

And for like the first twenty minutes, the screen was messed up and it was “squashed.” To demonstrate, I shall use some lovely ASCII ART!!!111cos(0) (Erm… sorry, got a little carried away…)

Normally, the screen is like this:

Regular, widescreen, 16×9 picture.

Now, for the first twenty minutes or so, the screen appeared like so:

Now, you’ve gotta admit, that’s some high-quality ASCII art…. Hang on, lemme take in the beatuifulness that is the ASCII art…… (For some reason, it looked all weird when I posted the art, so I took screenshots in the editor, and posted them here.. but all that ASCII is hand-umm….typed, i guess, believe me.)

Allright, I’m good. So yeah…. the scren was really annoying, and it took you even more out of the experienc than you already were. So what’s the moral of the story for today kids? Don’t go wast you money on seeing An American Haunting. As someone said, “go spend your money on better entertainment, like getting a blowjob from a hooker with herpes.” ° Or something like that…

Yeah, it sucked that bad…. No pun intended, of course.

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° Supposedly atrributed to Clent Stracner, though that’s yet to be confirmed

So… updates…. yeah…

Haven’t had one of those in a while, have I?

Well, I guess first of all, I should say (as many others have) that Project Graduation was freaking awesome! The hypnotist was insanely cool. Too bad I didn’t have a camera to take pictures of the hypnotic people while they were doing their hypnotized actions… that would be some major blackmail material.

Well… my MP3 Player died (well… not really died [yet], but it’s on it’s way to the grave), so I went out and bought a shiny, new one with some of the money I got for graduation… So I am now the proud new owner of a black 30GB video iPod. The only problem is that I had a lot of songs in a format that the iPod doesn’t play, so I had to convert them to MP3, which was a pain… but oh well….

Another thing is I’ve discovered a great game called Mornington Crescent… it’s really strange, but once you get it, it’s highly addicting… You can read about it on wiki here. And see a real game of it in action here. Also, if you plan to play it sometime, this can be a very helpful thing to have. Be prepared, though… if you don’t know what’s happening, then it’s pretty confusing.

Well, that’s about it… maybe I’ll have something interesting to say come my next update time…. but prolly not.

Tonight’s graduation…. and I’m both reallly happy (because I’m gradutating), but I’m also really kind of sad… this may possibly be the last time I’ll ever see some of my friends in my life. I mean, sure there’s Gradutation and Project Gradutation tongiht, and later this summer there’s National Beta Club convention (yes… I’m going), and I may go over to some of my friend’s houses over the summer but after that… I may never see most of these people again… It’s really kind of depressing.

I just learned last night that I’m a Highest Honor Graduate… would have beeen nice if they’d have told me before today (I learned it from Jason last night, and they officially told me today)… but that’s still really cool. I am like the ultimate slacker… I hear I got a 4.0 on the nose… (as did Jason) I did just enough work to get Highest Honors… no more… no less.

In case you missed my last post, the Morrilton High School band trip was Friday and today… and it was a blast! At first I, like many of my fellow bandmates, thought it wouldn’t be as fun since we only got to go to Branson (for the longest time, we were told we were going to get to got to Disney World, but we didn’t have enough money to go there, unfortunately). However, it turned out to be a lot more fun that I anticipated.

On Friday, we got together at the band room at about 9:30 in the morning, and started loading the busses (which were charter busses… nice!). We had to have our bags checked, but most of the bag checks were practically non-exsistant. Brad, when got his bag checked, he opened his bag up, told the lady, “There’s some snacks, my boxers, and some shirts.” He didn’t move a thing and when he closed the bag, the contents of the suitcase were exactly the same as when he had opened it. He could have snuck anything in and they would have never known….

But anyway… we ate in Harrison and when we got to Branson, we checked into the hotel we were staying in, the Settle Inn (ha, a little play on words, there), which was actually quite nice. I would reccommend it to anyone wanting to stay in Branson. After that, we had some free time, and Brad and I watched TV, but when we learned that the only TV channels that hotel got was pretty much news or sports, we started messing around, and we made a pond in our bathroom sink. We also learned that the hairdryer in our room, when you flicked the switch up and down really quick, would create these crazy sparks. I was pretty neat.

After that, we went to Celebration City. There was some problem with the tickets, so we just stood there for nearly half an hour to an hour waiting for the tickets to get in the gates. After we finally got in, we rode pretty much every ride in the park. On the Wildcat *hand motion* (inside joke), there was this weird guy who had obviously been riding it for quite some time (he struck me as someone who would be a pedophile…). I was forced to sit next to him, and throughout the entire ride, he was completely emotionless. Even on the drops and curves, and everything, he would just sit there… it was kinda creepy. The only thing he did on the entire ride was when we passed the camera for the ride pictures, he suddely did a thumbs-up for the camera… it was pretty freaky.

After Celebration City, we went to this go-kart place and drove the go-karts. There was also laser-tag and bumper-boats, but I didn’t ride them. It was really fun. Then after that, we retuned to the hotel and were forced into our rooms. They took up our cell phones, which sucked. We were told they took them up so that we wouldn’t be calling people late at night and disturbing our room-mates late at night, but for some reason, I don’t quite belive that…. There were some crazy things that Matt did in our room… I’ll just say it involved a blowdryer, and leave the rest up to your imagination (and no… it’s not that perverted) But me and my roomates (Phillip, Matt, and Brad) stayed up forever just talking about random stuff. We went from music to video games to classic TV to roller coasters… pretty much everything you could possibly come up with. It was actually quite an interesting discussion.

Today, we went to Silver Dollar City and rode all the major rides (the roller coasters, the log flume, Fire in the Hole… all the good ones [we didn’t have as much time at Silver Dollar City as we had at Celebration City, which I thought was dumb… first of all, it wouldn’t have been as busy on Friday night as on Saturday, and second of all, there’s a lot more to do at Silver Dollar City than Celebration City]). We bought some crazy stuff (you should see Christy’s hat) and over all had a ton of fun. Another thing… we had to leave at three… why didn’t we stay there longer… there’s a lot to do at Silver Dollar City, you need time to enjoy it all. It seems kinda superfluous to go there and leave at three in the afternoon…. but that wasn’t my decision…

Man… I nearly doubled my last big post’s record of characters typed… this time it’s over four thousand… that is a butt-load… literally. I don’t think I’ve written that much for an English paper…. (Nevermind… my longest English paper, for comparison, is about nine thousand characters…)

BAND TRIP!!!!

I’ll sees all you peeps tomorrow!

Today, I took the last of my AP tests, and man… was it bad. I answered 32 out of 75 questions (and problably not all of them were right). And the essay section was even worse. I knew how to do probably 15% of the entire essay section. But it’s OK, because I went in there going… “All right, we haven’t had a teacher to teach us the material in one of the ‘required’ essays… I really don’t like chemistry all that much, anyways… I really don’t know anything we were supposed to learn while the teacher was away on maternity leave (she gave us worksheets that were obviously meant for review to learn the material)… and most importantly, the test really doesn’t matter in the long run. (Of course, if I had done well on the test, I could have gotten credit hours for chemistry, but…) All that was required was that I took test and I get the 5-point weighted credit for the class.

So… I pretty much read through the test and did the stuff I was fairly sure I knew what I was doing… and then slept. Although I’m pretty sure I did more work than Bryant, though. I though I had finished quicly everytime, but whenever I got finished with the section, I would look around, and every time, he would already be asleep.

After that, I went with Elena, Christy, Brad, and Johnathan, and we ate at Penjamos… it was really good. (I got the chimichaunga, it was excellent.) Then we proceeded to Elena’s church, where we played Sardines, and Elena was declared the master of Sardines… we couldn’t find her for 45(!!!) minutes! After that me and Johnathan went over to Clent’s house and worked on a secret project for Days of the Geek. It should be revaled on the site soon, so be on the lookout for that. (I can attest, it’ll be pretty friggin’ sweet.)

Then, I came and updated my Xanga and wrote: “Today, I took the last of my AP tests…” but you know the rest of that. So, yeah… if you ever take any advice from me, make this be the advice you take: Don’t take Chemistry! If you can, don’t even take regular of Pre-AP chemistry, unless you have to prepare for your major or something. It will drain your life away from you (or something equally sick…). DON’T TAKE IT!!! I swear, you’ll have to sacrifice your firstborn to slate its thirst for blood or something… it’s that bad. </over-acting>

But now I can rest easy knowing that I have one school function I have to attend… mwahaha (Graduation, for ye slow of mind).

Leave me comments people…

A few of the readers recognized my last post as a copy and paste from my old blog. I was both awed and amazed for two reasons:
1) That people actually know about my old blog.
and
2) That people have actually read said old blog. (Even I haven’t read it in at least 3 weeks, and I’m the owner of it. )

Over the years (actually it’s only been about a year since I got my first blog) I’ve had two blogs, other that Xanga. I’ve had one blog that’s been deleted (due to a server crash) and another blog on WordPress.com.

And that got me thinking: What’s the deal with Xanga? I’ve made more posts, more frequently, and in less time that both of my previous two blogs put together. What is it about the Xanga community that makes me want to update? To tell the truth, I’ve yet to figure it out. It baffles me greatly, and I just don’t know what makes Xanga so special. Maybe my readers can give me some insight on the vast mystery that is Xanga…

So, time for a lovely update brought to you by yours truly…

This week has been crazy, literally.

First, on Tuesday, we had the band Spring Concert. It was pretty sad, actually. My last band concert, ever…. It was really sad when we had to go accept our Senior Plaques. Miss Clutts was all sad and she was crying when each of us came up and, I’ll admit it, I cried. It was even worse when they read the thing about Kayla, and gave her plaque to her parents. I think that was a good thing to do, though. Then the seniors played “I Will Remember You” (the version we played was arranged by Mr. Nguyen, which is kinda neat), while Heather Cripps read a poem. It was cool. The band I’m in played October by Eric Whitacre (if you’ve never heard this song, go find it and listen to it NOW!!! In fact, I’ll make it easy on you and tell you that there’s a recording on this page) and An American Overture for Band (don’t know who composed this one, I didn’t like it very much).

The next day (Wednesday, for those of you who haven’t been keeping track), I had to get up early and take the AP Calculus test. It wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be, and I felt fairly good until the last section of the free response section. It was killer. I still think I’ll get a two, maybe a three. Then, when we got back to school, it was time for EAST, and Mr. Clay had bought all of the seniors in EAST a USB Jump drive, a Sharpie to sign “The Table,” and some candy. It was really nice of him. Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to sign on the table. (Kinda need to figure that out since my last day is tomorrow…) Then I took Mrs. Smith’s advice on how to prepare for her AP test… I just did stuff with my friends. (Yes she did tell us just to have fun to prepare us for the test.)

Then today (Thursday, for the uninitiated), I again got up early to take the AP English Literature and Composition test. (AP English 12, for the regular people) It sucked. The multiple choice questions weren’t all that bad, but they weren’t good, either. But the essays SUCKED. I just BS’d them all, and I know they sucked. And the allotted time for three essays was TWO FRIGGIN’ HOURS. Not only that, but during the essay part, I suddenly got this killer headache. (Coincidence, I think not) So today sucked, BIG ONES.

Oh, and in my last post, I talked about the “practice” AP test we took for English. It turns out I had the highest score for the Multiple Choice (don’t know how that worked), and on my essays I got two 7s, and an 8. And the eight was on the essay about the e. e. cummings poem… oh, the irony. Too bad that wasn’t the REAL AP test….

I guess that’s all for now… but man, what a post…. over 2600 characters…that’s quite insane.