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.

Why I Like the Disney Channel

Up until a couple nights ago, I had only really recorded things (shows, movies, etc) from the Disney Channel on my new VCR/DVD-Recorder. But then I wanted to record The Mask of Zorro onto DVD, so that I'd have it. I only had The Legend of Zorro, since my parents were the ones with the first movie before I moved.

Mask was on ABC Family a couple nights ago, and I wanted to record it without the commercials, so I watched it while it was recording.

Oh my gosh, it took FOREVER!

See, on the Disney Channel, no matter what you're watching, there's never more than 3 or 4 commercial breaks. And for movies, the first commercial never comes before the first half-hour is up. But ABC Family, while it was showing The Mask of Zorro, had commercials every ten minutes! It made a 2 hour and 10 minute movie into THREE HOURS! That just made me all frustrated, because I couldn't even really go downstairs and do something else between commercial breaks--heck, I couldn't even read in my bedroom at that time, because a commercial break could come up while I was in the middle of a sentence!

GAH. That just made me appreciate the Disney Channel even more than I already do because of its good, clean, fun shows and movies.

Last night, Patrick J. came over to watch Smallville, and I forgot that I wanted to record A Cinderella Story (which was on ABC Family) while it was on, so I didn't get that movie.

I don't know whether to be bummed that I missed getting a copy of the movie for myself, or relieved that I won't have to worry about sitting through the commercials when I re-copy it later to VHS and then back to DVD without commercials, like I'm going to have to do with my recording of The Day After Tomorrow.

Before he left, Patrick and I got to talking about books and things, and he told me how he would try to read 7 or 8 books at a time (from the library) and then get all burned-out on reading. I told him how I tried that a couple Spring Breaks ago with the Dragonriders of Pern series and reading 8 books in 8 days. That experience pretty much ruined me for reading more than two books in a row. And I still can't read for hours on end like I used to be able to--I have to take a break from minutes to days in length between groups of 3 or 4 chapters before I pick a book up again.

Anyway, I told Patrick about the Song of Ice and Fire cycle by George R. R. Martin, and he thought it sounded cool, so I let him borrow my copy of A Game of Thrones. If he likes it, then I'll probably let him borrow the other books in the series as he gets to them. As soon as LibraryThing is back up and running, I'm going to make a note in the tags for GoT that Patrick is currently borrowing it.