The Great Storm Is Over

Posted on April 29, 2007 by David

I bet everyone was wondering if I’d ever post anything worthwhile here again. Here we are:

Today is Sunday, April 29th. The past month (at least) has been very eventful. To sum it up:

1. Drums – I got a I rating on my solo, Tribute by Jeff Queen, at both regionals and state. I extremely relieved that that is over…

2. School – Three and a half weeks till summer! But, until then there are a couple of annoying things at school going on right now. My history class is totally bogus junk. We’re taking a field-trip to the Truman Library in Independence, MO, and I’d really rather not go – one because I’d miss AP physics, and two I just don’t appreciate that class, that teacher, or what we’re “learning.”

3. Summer – I’m pretty sure I’ll be taking up as many drum students as possible for the summer. With performing my above-mentioned solo at the combined elementary band concert, I probably already have more than a few kids and parents ready to take up lessons. I don’t think I’m going to hunt out a job, since I’ll be gone 4 weeks during summer. I also don’t really want to pick up a job, because I can’t see myself, nor bear the thought of, working somewhere that has no relation to what I want to do with my life – drums. So that leaves lessons or working at a drum shop or music store. I’ve already checked into the music store stuff, and no one in the area is looking for summer help…sigh. So anyway, anyone want drum lessons? Seriously. Let me know.

4. College? – I signed up for a fastweb.com account a few days ago, to begin “shopping” for schools, scholarships and internships. I’ve probably already said this before, but the schools currently on my radar for sure are Washburn, North Texas and UMKC. There are many others that are minor possibilities. I may discuss this in more depth in a later post, if anyone cares to hear.

5. Prom was last night! Dang it was great! Amy and I went from her house, to my house, to the lake, to my church, to each of her grandparents, and to her workplace, all before going to eat dinner at the Ramada Inn, which was fun. At the Ramada we took some pictures, and had an AWESOME dinner. I learned that I love ceasar salads! The actual prom was smaller than I expected but still really cool. It was fun seeing so many people there with dates and friends, and it felt like we were all there as a group of slight-to-good friends. There was no “bad-aura” between people in the air, nor a large presence of “clique-ness” that you usually see at dances. Post prom was great too. Then breakfast at Amy’s, with James and Betsy was delicious and hilarious as well.

Man it’s been a good, but soooo busy, few weeks. Thanks for reading! Comment me!

Posted in My Day, Personal, School | 5 Comments

Lateralus by Tool ON PIANO

Posted on April 18, 2007 by David

This is totally awesome! One of my favorite tool songs, arranged and played on the piano. This guy has done a lot of work with other Tool songs too, check them out!

Lateralus – Tool (piano cover)
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EDIT HOLY CRAP – He does The Mars Volta and A Perfect Circle stuff also! Wow!

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

My New Phone – LG CU500

Posted on April 12, 2007 by David

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Yeah, I got this on Monday. I’m so glad to get a phone that can play some music, as well as be able to create my own ringtones and all that good stuff. It also takes video, which my last phone couldn’t do. If you need to get a cell phone in the next couple of days, check this out at Cingular and get the package deal with it…its a steal!

Posted in Personal, Pictures | 3 Comments

PictBlack

Posted on April 6, 2007 by David

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This is a neat photo. My room was absolutely pitch black (pictblack) when I took this photo…the reason its so bright is because I used a shutter speed of like 25 seconds. Pretty cool huh? Thanks for checking me out!

Posted in Personal | 4 Comments

Respecting Something You Oppose

Posted on March 31, 2007 by David

Do you think it is reasonable/required to respect something you totally disagree with?

I know this is quite a broad question…but I was just thinking about the broad scheme of things today. For example (this is just an example that popped into my head, it does not have any relation or significance in my life):

If an atheist disagrees with a protestant, do you think there should be respect of beliefs between both parties? How about if it is two people who have more similar beliefs, such as a Muslim and a Christian (same God, etc)? Should the relatively similar parties respect each others’ differences?

I guess its a simple question. Any answers?

PS. How do you cope with the absence of respect between one or both of the parties?

Posted in Personal, Religion and Politics | 18 Comments

Twister’s Wild Eye

Posted on March 30, 2007 by David

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An up-close foto of my dog Twister. I just thought it was a funny shot. I aimed the focus for his eye, so his snout, ears and the foreground and background beyond these areas, are all blurred. Opinions?

Posted in Personal, Pictures | 10 Comments

Tribute

Posted on March 29, 2007 by David

YES! I’m excited! This is a video I took today of the solo I’m taking to regional and state competition in mid-April. It’s Tribute by Jeff Queen (he is great!).

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Any critiques (especially from drummers) would be helpful. Otherwise I like comments anyway!

Posted in Percussion, Personal | 2 Comments

Tonight’s Sunset

Posted on March 27, 2007 by David

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It was a beautiful sunset tonight! As I was driving home from my drum lesson at about 7.15pm, I saw the opportunity to drop by home and quickly grab my camera and go up to the Tecumseh RD bridge to catch a few photos. I took about twenty, but this was my favorite, seeing that there weren’t any power lines in the not-too-distant foreground.

As always, I love feedback!

Posted in Personal, Pictures | 3 Comments

Sprintime=Drums+Health

Posted on March 26, 2007 by David

The big world must be awfully concerned about me…I haven’t made an intelligent post in a few weeks. Well, I’ve got the drum-sickness, the spring-bug, and a whole lot of a other goodies on my plate right now.

Most of my home-time has recently been devoted to playing the drums, listening to drums, watching drum videos, etc. With the end of my junior year rolling around in just two months, I’m starting to think about college choices. Ohhh, what a chore. Even though I’m extremely indecisive, I know there is one thing I can do that any college I want to attend will appreciate: practice, practice, practice. So I’ve been working on drum set skills, marching snare skills, and those ever-important music theory MAD-SKILLZ. What now? I’ve also been preparing my marching drum solo for contest, Tribute by Jeff Queen. I hope to have a video up on youtube of this soon, so you all can see it and I can get some critiques from some drum people online.

The spring-bug is just that, the spring-bug. With the nice weather coming around, spirits are heightening and bodies are becoming more active. So I sit here and think “Why aren’t I out on the track team or playing tennis or otherwise exercising my body?” Well, frankly I’m already too dang busy for it all. I don’t really have time to be committed to a school team. However, I’ve been pondering recently my commitment to myself (cheesy, eh?). Anyone that knows me, knows I’m pretty scrawny. In the past I’ve tried various ways of beefing up a little bit and gaining some poundage. My philosophy has been “If I’m going to hit this, I should hit it hard.” I now realize that that philosophy just doesn’t fit my schedule, or match my mind and body’s attitude when it comes to actually getting things done. So, now instead of weights and running and eating like a overweight rhino, I’m just going to try a couple of simple goals:

    1. Do 50 pushups at least 3 days a week.
    2. Take a 5 mile bike ride at least 3 days a week.

Thats it. I’ll do this for a couple weeks or a month or something and see how I feel. Maybe that will help me greatly, maybe it won’t. Maybe I’ll want to double those numbers, or perhaps cut them in half. I’ll just have to see. Sound reasonable?

Spring break was last week, and the marching band trip to New York City was really great. I think I’ll work on getting a photo-summary post of some sort posted up here (since I don’t want to put any pictures on facebook or flickr).

I hope this post was interesting…I think “frequency vs interestingness” needs to be an inverse relationship. The less frequent my posts are the more interesting they should be…right?

Thanks for reading. Why don’t you just knock me down with a ton of comments? -Peace

Posted in Percussion, Personal, School | 4 Comments

Grace Cathedral Organ

Posted on March 26, 2007 by David

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This is the organ at my church…well the keyboard parts. This picture shows about a third of the stops (right), 4 of the keyboards (there is a fifth, the pedals, played with footsies!), and a whole bunch of cool buttons. I just enjoyed this shot. If I could change one thing in the picture it would be to dim the glare on the wood in the very top right corner. Let me know what you think?

Posted in Personal, Pictures | 3 Comments