Holy crap. It’s raining. Hard. Like torrents of rain. I went to the movies and when the movie was over, it was pouring down like crazy heavy. Like flash-flood rain heavy. Like two inches on some parts of the road heavy. Like driving 45 miles an hours on the Interstate and you can still barely see 20 feet in front of you heavy.
And the lightning was crazy, too. It was the light-up-the-whole-sky-like-it’s-daytime kind of lightning. And huge thunderclaps to accompany it. It was pretty crazy
Yeah, I know I said I would make an update soon, but it didn’t exactly turn out that way, huh? And no, I haven’t been sleeping straight So I apologize for those of you who have been refreshing my page every two minutes to get the latest and greatest story straight from the horse’s (I mean… my) mouth. And now that I’ve put it off, I have even more to add, including the ever-fun AP scores and college registration. But first, the trip to Greensboro and National Beta, right after these words from our fine sponsors.
{insert commercials here}
So, the first day, I got up super-early (for me at least), at 5:00 (yes, AM). Got a shower, all that good stuff you normally do for hygenic purposes, got all my stuff together, and packed up to leave for the High School parking lot. Got there slightly early (about 5 minutes), so I talked to the other people who had gotten there already. Soon Debbie! (<-yes, that exclamation point is mandatory) got there with the bus, and we loaded everything up and all that good stuff you would regularly do to prepare for a long ride. And yes, the bus ride was very long. If I had thought the drive to San Antonio/Corpus Christi was bad, it was nothing compared to this. And it wasn’t a charter bus… no, it was just a regular school bus (it did have air conditioning and the best bus-driver ever, so that helped it a little). So we drove. And drove. And then, for good measure, we drove some more. When we finally got to Nashville, we first went to the Parthenon and toured it. Our tour guide was pretty weird, and had a very heavy Russian-esque accent. The Parthenon was pretty neat. Then we drove over to the Opryland “complex” (I supposed that’s what you’d call it), where we were to spend the night (take that, suckas!) After we got checked in, got all our stuff to the rooms, we went over to the mall. The group I was with just walked around for a while, and we ate the “The Aquarium” restaurant. It was friggin’ good (and friggin’ expensive, too!)! I can honestly say that their Blackened Catfsh is the best fish meal I have ever had in my life. And it actually did have an aquarium in the restaurant. After the mall closed, we went back to the hotel and just scattered about, and enjoyed the scenery. It’s massive inside the Opryland. And there’s tons of foliage to look at. It’s very cool.
The next day, we did more of our favorite activity in the world, we drove nearly all day in the bus. So yeah, we drove ’til about 8 o’clock at night, when we got to Greensboro. We didn’t really do anything else interesting that day.
The next morning, we had Quiz Bowl competion, where we won our first match against Byng, Oklahoma, but got knocked out of the second round. Ate at the mall in Greensboro (it’s one of the biggest malls I’ve seen, but that doesn’ mean anything). Afterwards, we were required to go to the campaign meetings. I thought that most of the speeches and skits really weren’t that good. I though some of the ones at Arkansas’ Beta Convention were better, but what do I know? After that, there was the Special Talent portion, and the talent was really good, except from this one girl from Texas, but I’m not going into that catastrophe. Afterwards, some people (including Mr. Vest!) went to Hooters to eat. I didn’t go, though. I went with some people, and we met other peeps in the lobby area. And there was the best thing ever. These people from Tenessee (I think… I’m not completely sure about that, though) were going around offering money for someone to go to their state Beta President (he wasn’t running at Nationals, though) and pretend to be gay. Finally, Jake Li (some of you may remember him as the “China-Man” that was running for secretary) agreed to do it, with some hillarious results.
The fourth day included a trip to Wet and Wild: Emerald Point waterpark. I really didn’t enjoy it. Though Wesley, Nicci, and I made a friggin’ awesome sandcastle. (In fact, we deemed it “Castle Friggin’ Awesome”) Sandcastles > Joo During the General Session that day, the Group Talent competitors preformed, and man… some of these schools put some major cash into their sets. They were all really good.
The next day, we went to the last General Session, and they had this guest speaker/motivator who was really good, in my opinion. Then there was the prerequisite awards and “You’re Leaving, I’m Going to Miss You” speeches, though they weren’t actually all that bad. After the session, we packed up and left for more great times on the road… in a bus… not fun… We got to Nashville again, and stayed in the “Millenium Maxwell House Hotel” (and yes, the coffe in the room was Maxwell House brand). Then we went downtown and looked at “The Strip.” It wasn’t very interesting, but I did buy a T-Shirt at Hard Rock that’s friggin awesome.
The next day we loaded up again, and made a stop at “Loretta Lynn’s Crappy Kitchen. However, we did find something very cool in the gift shop. They sold Katanas there (in case you didn’t know katana = samurai sword). Of course, a ton of poeple bought one (including myself). So now it’s know as Loretta Lynn’s Samurai Sword Shop or something like that. We continued to drive even more, until we finally got home.
Though I did love the trip, I was glad to finally be home and sleep in my own bed.
Next on the agenda, AP test scores:
Chemistry = 1 (what I planned on getting, in case you don’t know… don’t take AP chem)
English = 2
Calculus = 3
Finally, today I registered for college classes today. I’m only taking four classes, but that’s still 15 hours of classes. I got Calculus I (5! hours), Comp I (3 hours), Computer Science (4 hours), and World History I (3hours). Not too bad, I submit.
So I hope you people are happy, now that you have your Bryan’s stuff fix. That’s all I have for now… tune in next time, (probably not the) same Xanga time, (more likely) same Xanga channel!
And excuse me if I left errors in my typing, I didn’t go back and read over it.
So, yeah… I’m back from Greensboro, where I went to the National Beta convention. I’ll make a detailed entry about it later… but for now, I just want to rest, which I didn’t get much of on the trip. So be on the lookout for a great new entry later about all the escapades at Greensboro and the other places we went to on the way there and back again.
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…
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.
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:
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.
° 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!