The Patheticness of Me, and New Year's Resolutions

Man, you know what sucks? During the second semester of my senior year of high school, I was in both Jazz and Concert Band. Those classes were back-to-back, five days a week, from right after lunch until the end of the school day. That's a total of about fifteen hours a week, playing my trumpet.

This afternoon, after taking a shower, I decided to practice a bit on my trumpet. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere near three hours, since I hadn't done any serious playing for almost ten years now, but I thought I'd at least crack half an hour, y'know?

I couldn't even make it fifteen minutes before my lips gave out.

Of course, it probably doesn't help that I was trying to play songs from my Disney Star Trek and theme books, which have a lot of notes on the top half of the staff. If I'd gone through and practiced some of the stuff in the books I used in middle school concert band, I'd probably have made it to half an hour, if not forty-five minutes or so.

But that stuff is boring, and I wanted to at least get half of the Star Trek: Voyager theme song played before my lip gave out. Only problem is, I'd played too many other Star Trek theme songs before I went for Voyager, so I only got a few bars in.

I think I want to start practicing every day again. Until I get a job, I'll probably go for early to mid-afternoon, for half an hour (using the boring books only), and then when I get a job, I'll re-evaluate my schedule and see what time is good for practicing then.

I've got an interview on Monday morning at an electronics manufacturing company for a stockroom associate position. The application, and the two little tests they had me take at the time, went pretty well, so I'm hoping the interview goes well too.

But enough of the depressing stuff--it's a new year! I've never really made--and kept--New Year's Resolutions before, but I think I might want to start. Here are three:

1. Practice trumpet for at least thirty minutes every day.
2. Practice guitar and/or piano at least twice a week, for at least thirty minutes each time.
   
3. Call at least two of my really good old friends (the ones I don't see all that often) at least once a month, just to catch up. Text messages, Facebook messages, and e-mails don't count--must be telephone calls.

I went to the Haven New Year's Eve party on Thursday night. It was fun. I talked to a few people I hadn't seen in a while, since the only time I'm really at the Haven nowadays is when I'm playing in Bryan's Serenity RPG, and we're sitting in the tiny gaming room where we can't see anyone else at the time.

I also creamed Steve at Warhammer--his ogres versus my Bretonnians. He literally had only three models (not units, just models) left on the table by the time we called the game at the top of turn five. He'd managed to take out my general and one entire unit though, so I only won by a little over 400 points--still a decided victory though.

I decided not to stay there for the night, since at home I had flannel sheets, but I was walking around the Haven for a while with my favorite blanket wrapped around my shoulders. It's the blanket that I got from the airport in Phoenix, on my way home from visiting Heather and Stephen back in October 2008.

Not Much Going On

The past couple weeks have been pretty routine, with a couple exceptions.Gabe has the entire Discworld series by Terry Pratchett on audio, and let me copy them onto my iPod--or rather, let me copy the first three so far. I've been listening to them as I work, so I haven't caught all of the events in the books, but I've caught enough to be able to get the general gist of the plots. I'm in the middle of The Light Fantastic right now.

In order to catch everything, I went to the library on Saturday and borrowed The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic in novel format. I just finished the first quarter of the first book last night. They didn't have Equal Rites at my local branch, and I didn't feel like going to Thurmont to get it either.

Also on Saturday, I picked up Jason's birthday present at the Haven. The original plan was for him to come with me, so that we could play Warhammer with his new Dragonmage of Caledor (that was the present). I'd bought the model a couple weeks ago, then did the gluing, the filling of the cracks with greenstuff, and the priming myself, but I needed someone else to paint it for me, since I'd never done any model painting before and didn't want it to be awful. Elliot painted it for me, and finished before Saturday. He did a good job, and Jason likes the dragon.

I got him the dragon, because he likes to play High Elves using the Haven's store army, and they don't have a dragon there for store use. So he'd have to proxy in a different model. Now, he doesn't have to.

I went house-hunting a week ago yesterday with Kayla, Anna and Tim. We didn't find any houses that we really liked--the ones we saw that weren't awful were only acceptable. For some reason, we'd only been looking in the Discovery development, so Anna told our realtor that it's okay to be looking in other places.

Yesterday, Anna, Kayla and I got all caught up on Dollhouse. There were seven episodes on the TiVo, and for some reason, it didn't record the March 20th episode, so we watched that one online, for a total of eight episodes in a single day. It was long, but the show is great.

Interesting Quote and More

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - Albert
Einstein

I'm not going to discuss this quote here; I just thought it was a cool quote and decided to yoink it from Heather's LJ.

This morning, I was woken up by someone playing the piano--at 7:15 in the morning!--that's a very rude time to be playing the piano, especially since most of the rest of the household is still trying to sleep at that time (my dad just in the very next room from the piano, and Mom just down the hall on the same floor). There is also a keyboard in the house which is able to have headphones connected to it, so there is no excuse to be playing the actual piano so early. Not to mention, that was only 15 minutes until my alarm was going to go off, and being awakened by the piano did not translate into a good last 15 minutes of sleep--I'm a light sleeper nowadays.

The past week has been pretty normal. I joined the Magic: The Gathering league at the Haven, and I've been playing against everyone I could all week. So far, if I remember correctly, I won one "official" game, and three "unofficial" games.

The "official" games are against two other players chosen at random from the list. Winner gets two points, and a card is ante'd from each deck before the game starts. Whoever wins chooses to either keep both ante'd cards, or let the other person keep the card they ante'd.

The "unofficial" games also have ante'd cards, but winner only gets ½ of a point. I've either got 3 or 3½ points; I can't remember who all I won against for the half-point games, but I'm sure I won at least two, if not three.

I also purchased a Bretonnian Warhammer army from one of the guys at the Haven, and have played the game with them twice. The first time was a couple weeks ago, against Jason, who was playing high elves. We stopped that game at the end of the second turn, because we both really wanted to go home.

The second time was just last night, against a Havenite's dwarf army; it was an NPC game I was playing for the Warhammer Fantasy campaign going on at the Haven. I would've done better, if he hadn't gotten lucky with his guess-range canon in the very first turn and not only destroyed my trebuchet (causing the crew to flee off the board), but also causing my pegasus knights to flee off the board as well. Basically, the dwarves slaughtered the Bretonnians. It was fun though. And after that, I beat him in a Magic league game, though that was a close one.

Today is payday--yay!

Tomorrow, I'm going to take the forge safety class at the Haven, so that I can possibly upgrade my membership so that it's GM/crafting, instead of just GM and be allowed to use the forge whenever I want (if it's not already in use). That way, I can make metal stuff and sell it to get some extra money. Gene actually gave me the idea; when I asked what I would make to sell, he said something like, "All kinds of things," and then as an example mentioned door handles.

Wouldn't you know, I had an idea right then for a unique door handle design? I actually designed it with the door at the Haven in mind as a good place to put it. I'm not going to say what the design was here, but I may post a picture when/if I ever get one made.

I'm thinking that, if I do decide to do this side-business thing (Gene said he'd sell the stuff I make at the Haven, like he does for other crafting members), I'll not only make my own designs, but also take commissions for other designs. I'll have to ask Gene to help me decide on fair prices though, since I've never sold anything like that before.

Lots of Thinking

Tuesday I did end up going to the Haven, and I watched Gene and Steve play Warhammer for the fantasy campaign that's going on. They didn't finish until about half an hour after closing time, but it was so fascinating that I didn't feel like going home until they were done. I've watched bits of two different other Warhammer games since then, and I think I might want to learn the game. But I won't buy an army for myself unless I really get into it--and then, only a few years or so down the road. Until then, I'll just use the armies they have at the store for club use.

Last Saturday, I went to Allegheny Optical and got my eyes checked. I found out that it'd been four years since my last eye exam. It's funny--I never realize how long it's been between exams until I put on/in my new prescription in the optometrist's office. I put in those new contacts, and everything was much, much sharper. It made me realize that having trouble reading road signs from the short distance I'd been having trouble at was not normal. I've resolved to go to the optometrist at least once a year from now on, or at least listen and schedule further appointments as recommended, instead of waiting for the money to be there and then scheduling the appointment. I also got a new set of frames. They're like the frames I had two prescriptions ago (which I still have), but they're copper-y colored, instead of gold.

Kayla's currently in Alabama, visiting her family, so when she gets back this weekend there will be two episodes of Pushing Daisies and Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction to watch--much fun! I have yet to get caught up on Psych, Numb3rs, Bones or Smallville though. I'm thinking I'll just catch them on Sidereel later. I've also not yet finished watching my MacGyver DVDs--I've been in the middle of season 4 for at least a month and a half. Plus, I want to re-watch at least seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy and seasons 4 and 5 of Angel--I don't remember much about Angel, and I've only seen those seasons of Buffy once, with a few episodes here and there from when Anna and Kayla were going through the serieses.

I've been thinking too, that I might give up on re-reading the core DragonLance novels--I've been in the middle of Dragons of Winter Night for months now, and I've only read that much because I needed something to read while I got my allergy shots every Monday.

BUT! A girl at the Haven this past Tuesday (not the one with the Warhammer) brought a bunch of books she was getting rid of, and I took 7 or 8 that looked promising (I haven't added them to LibraryThing yet, but I will this weekend), including Sister Light, Sister Dark, which, if I remember correctly, Heather recommended to me a few months ago and sounded extremely intriguing. So, if I do decide to quit on DragonLance, then I'll be reading those books.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to catch up and read fast enough to actually make the 50-book goal this year.