Retrospective

I've been getting worse and worse about posting. I don't know why.

Halloween ended up sucking. I wrote an essay for a college application while my mom criticized me. I got accepted so I guess it was worth it.

Several birthdays passed in November. Rachel's, then mine, then Ben's. My own birthday was pretty uneventful. I don't feel much different at all.

I played a house party with my band. It didn't go too well. It was very disorganized and we hadn't rehearsed, which never helps. Some of the other performers were amazing though and it was overall a pretty good time.

Thanksgiving happened. I spent it with my dad and his side of the family. It was pretty good. I don't see that side too often so it was kind of nice for a change. After we had dinner my dad and I stopped by Gabo's house, where my mom and sister had Thanksgiving. Gabo gave me a birthday present (the new and excelent Neko Case album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood) and then we watched The Triplets of Belleville, which I had always meant to see but never got around to. It was good.

The last day of November I had the privilege of seeing Victor Wooten live in concert at the TLA with my dad. I took numerous photos and videos but the videos turned out terribly. The concert was amazing. Victor Wooten is a god among men. I could go on and on about it but I'm not in the mood. Easily one of the best concerts I've ever been to, easily. Certainly from a musical standpoint.

I went to a fancy, virgin-cocktail party thrown by a friend of Rachel's with her. I had a lot more fun than I expected and I think managed to not be so introverted. It was a little strange because Rachel's friend seems to be going out with my doppelganger. I'm afraid that somehow we might end up embroiled in a fight to the death to figure out which one is real. (It's me.)

There's too many people I'm afraid I'm going to get into that kind of fight with, come to think of it. They're all people I like, too. Maybe I'm the evil doppelganger. H'm.

I went a reunion for my middle school. It was also fun. People looked pretty weird. It sounds stupid but they did look older. I was able to recognize everyone there, and I think most everyone was able to pick me out. I'm sure my hair helped to throw them off, but still. Also, without Gus there, I think I became the tallest guy.

Winter break started. I went to Ben's Festivus party. It was a very good time. He had the aluminum pole and gave us all presents: donations in our names to the Human Fund. We watched the titular episode of Seinfeld and then played Guitar Hero I and II for the rest of the night. I took photos. After the party I went to Chris' house and played Gears of War (an excellent game) and spent the night.

Christmas was pretty nice. It was quiet and, besides a minor fight with my sister, peaceful. I got a lot of books and a few CDs and some clothes. And some storage bins.

Quiggy finally managed to get a copy of the music video he created home. I compressed it for him so it could be uploaded. The quality is terrible but here it is.

In recent times I've also had a fair amount of computer trouble. First my iBook died of natural causes. By a quite nice coincidence the previous night I had done a decent job of backing it up. After that my Dell went, because it's shittily made. It's doing something it did once before of shorting out the power cord when it's plugged in. I think last time it required its system board be replaced. The next problem was really my fault I suppose.

I wanted to back up the important files on my iMac, reformat the disk, and reinstall Mac OS X to make it run nicely again. All of the hacks and various debris on it were making it unpleasant to use. I used Backup.app to back up all of my music and photos and various documents to an external hard drive. After 14 hours, Backup.app told me it had backed up successfully. Thus I reformatted my internal hard drive, wrote zeroes over the whole thing, and then reinstalled everything. When I went to restore from my backup I discovered that it gave me an error. Every time. I have been able to restore my music form my iPod but my photos are, for the time, lost. On the plus side, the iMac runs at least two to three times faster and that's pretty dreamy.

Things have been going well overall. I'm much busier than previous times in my life. My time seems to be primarily divided between school, school work, practicing music, and hanging out with friends. I see Rachel an unsettling amount, but it's the good kind of unsettling.

At some point I intend on whipping up a list of good music of 2006. I have no particular plans for New Year's yet, though I might be ringing in the new year with Rachel. That would be a nice deviation from previous years, where mostly I spent the countdown alone and resentful. That's really more of a personal problem than anything else, but it's nice to have a change.

I'm not sure when I might post again. I hope not too long from now. I started using this thing called Twitter which is kind of neat. It's kind of a mini-blog type thing, basically a way to update your online status via text messaging, IM, or through the website. I put in a little javascript on the top right of this blog to display my current Twitter status so that the front page will change even when I'm not posting.