The Wave
Things can be felt building up again, slowly but surely. The next semester of school is on the way starting the last week of August, sometimes I consider debating whether or not to take a music performance class, but then I remember (particularly for this semester) the less units the better (most likely). I may have some music performance to tide me over anyhow. Just recently I got together with my long-time musical-mentor Joe Lev and a group he is going to be performing with. The catch is that I am a shoe-in as an available bass sub should Joe not be available. I'll have to see just how available I can be though. Again with school coming up and now that I'm back on my feet, ninjutsu will be back into the mix soon.
The thing that gets me about this semester is an engineering class I was anticipating taking. It's a course called MAT-Lab, where we use computers to assist us in matrix-functions relating to engineering problems (that's the bit I know at least). It's been offered every Fall semester, up until now for some reason. This is a real thorn in my side as I was planning to take it this Fall semester before going back to CSUS in the Spring. I'm going to talk with the CSUS counselor about this when I go over to turn in my application for reinstatement. I feel good about the application though, because the head of the Engineering Department has already said he'll approve me to get back in. :D
The damage Brian has caused to the dojo and its members though is fairly extensive at this time. Joel is no longer training out of the West Coast Martial Arts Supply store on Power Inn & Fruitridge. The details are unknown to me other than the owner was being rude about something or other, so now training is being done out in parks. As it stands there are just a handful of people participating in the training. I'm going to jump back into it soon, but given that I'm going to be getting a little into the music scene and school as well, I need to see what kind of flexibility he can offer right now. Such that, if I need to miss a class on Sunday or Wednesday, can I possibly do a private training session on some other day. It also seems that Luis is becoming disinterested in ninjutsu; or at least, he's become as lazy about it as I have.
Above all that though is the coming road-trip to prepare for in August. I gave it a week's worth of time for travel in case anything random should happen along the way, but I'm assuming it'll be just a little shorter than that. Still need to plot it out though to get an idea of how much money will be spent per-day on amenities and gas, and how many days we'll likely be on the road. It should be an interesting trip though; we're traveling for the majority of the trip on Interstate-80 which passes through cities such as Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Lincoln, and Davenport. I don't think there will be a terrible lot of sight-seeing though, as that is an investment of time and money which we must invest in getting ourselves across the states. Definitely stopping for the occasional picture though. The other thing in question is how many hours we'll be able to knock out per day, because I want to go for 8 to 10 and Janelle would like to go for 6. I can't blame her though, because driving straight for hours, and hours, and hours does get quite tiring. We'll see though once we plan it all out though.
However before that there's the issue of remodeling and repainting 4 rooms in the house withing the period of a few weeks. We need to get the ball rolling in my opinion, and it doesn't help that one member of the work force is going to bitch, whine, and half-ass it all the way through the process. I just want to get the bedrooms done a.s.a.p. for Janelle's arrival. My Dad said we'd be getting it done before I left for Michigan, and this pace is irritating me. That and he wants to do both bedrooms at the same time or something? That makes no sense, because then both David and myself won't have a bedroom to stay it. It'd make more sense to go through-and-through with one room (mine), and move David into it. Then complete the other room so that your efforts are construed all over the house with multiple objectives.
I've also been reading a series of books/graphic-novels by Neil Gaiman that I've been borrowing from Vanilla Thunder, called The Sandman. It's about The Lord of Dreams; in the beginning of the book of Preludes & Nocturnes he is imprisoned by mortals, and his realm turns into shambles without him. From there he is regaining his stolen relics, hunting down escaped dreams/nightmares, and restoring order to things that were damaged from his absence. There's more plot to it, and it's a very enjoyable read. I like books that read very much like the process of unadulterated thought.
Let's look on the lighter-side of things for a moment though.
Last weekend I played some "D&D" type stuff with Ben, Sam, Joe, Drew, Anthony, and Mike (I think that was his name). It was a spin-off thing called Paragon, which is a super-hero sort of setting. It was a fairly amusing game; the only things that detracted from it for me was when I'd get relentlessly chided for making a character modeled after Inspector Gadget, because it was too unoriginal...erstwhile I was catching up to the adventures of (Anthony) Son of Supra-man, last of the planet Argon (and the Argonites), and (Drew) Rusty-Spork, son of millionaire entrepreneur Tony Spork. The other bit would have to be driving checks, which are only required for stunts/maneuvers/dangerous-driving such as weaving through traffic at high speeds, executing driving moves (like a J-turn), and ramming other vehicles. I bring that up because an unnecessary check resulted in me getting to sit idle for an hour while everybody else continued playing. However while I was playing it was very fun. Much was permissible, and people generally worked well together when it came to playing out characters and combating foes. Anthony's character also just cracks me up.
The games of StarCraft have also been fairly fun. So far the players include: Myself, Oscar, Luis, Clare, Justin, Joe K., and Ben. Should Sam find his disc, and Joe S. get a computer, we can play an 8 player game. Most people seem to be reluctant to play other people however, but I feel it's the best way to learn and enjoy the game. Computers are always too easy, or too hard. And when I say too hard, I mean that they're perfectly controlling every unit individually in coherence and as such have the maximum amount of resources and offensive force as could be possible for a given point in the game, it's crazy. That's why I like playing people; people make mistakes, people can surprise and deceive one another, people vary from game to game so you never know how it's going to go. That, and it's fun being able to mock each other in game. :p
Whew, so I guess that's the most of it.
I might be showing up at the training session tonight at the park, we'll see.
Some remodeling to be done today and tomorrow, perhaps.
Friday Gavin Reiser is having a party for a foreign-exchange friend that is in town.
Saturday night Joe Lev and the group he's with will be playing at a venue, I'd love to check it out.
My mom at some time is going to try to get me over to her house to help her clean up her clutter.
And before July is over, I want to hang out with my cousin Keith.
And other developments of course, but all in good time.
The thing that gets me about this semester is an engineering class I was anticipating taking. It's a course called MAT-Lab, where we use computers to assist us in matrix-functions relating to engineering problems (that's the bit I know at least). It's been offered every Fall semester, up until now for some reason. This is a real thorn in my side as I was planning to take it this Fall semester before going back to CSUS in the Spring. I'm going to talk with the CSUS counselor about this when I go over to turn in my application for reinstatement. I feel good about the application though, because the head of the Engineering Department has already said he'll approve me to get back in. :D
The damage Brian has caused to the dojo and its members though is fairly extensive at this time. Joel is no longer training out of the West Coast Martial Arts Supply store on Power Inn & Fruitridge. The details are unknown to me other than the owner was being rude about something or other, so now training is being done out in parks. As it stands there are just a handful of people participating in the training. I'm going to jump back into it soon, but given that I'm going to be getting a little into the music scene and school as well, I need to see what kind of flexibility he can offer right now. Such that, if I need to miss a class on Sunday or Wednesday, can I possibly do a private training session on some other day. It also seems that Luis is becoming disinterested in ninjutsu; or at least, he's become as lazy about it as I have.
Above all that though is the coming road-trip to prepare for in August. I gave it a week's worth of time for travel in case anything random should happen along the way, but I'm assuming it'll be just a little shorter than that. Still need to plot it out though to get an idea of how much money will be spent per-day on amenities and gas, and how many days we'll likely be on the road. It should be an interesting trip though; we're traveling for the majority of the trip on Interstate-80 which passes through cities such as Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Lincoln, and Davenport. I don't think there will be a terrible lot of sight-seeing though, as that is an investment of time and money which we must invest in getting ourselves across the states. Definitely stopping for the occasional picture though. The other thing in question is how many hours we'll be able to knock out per day, because I want to go for 8 to 10 and Janelle would like to go for 6. I can't blame her though, because driving straight for hours, and hours, and hours does get quite tiring. We'll see though once we plan it all out though.
However before that there's the issue of remodeling and repainting 4 rooms in the house withing the period of a few weeks. We need to get the ball rolling in my opinion, and it doesn't help that one member of the work force is going to bitch, whine, and half-ass it all the way through the process. I just want to get the bedrooms done a.s.a.p. for Janelle's arrival. My Dad said we'd be getting it done before I left for Michigan, and this pace is irritating me. That and he wants to do both bedrooms at the same time or something? That makes no sense, because then both David and myself won't have a bedroom to stay it. It'd make more sense to go through-and-through with one room (mine), and move David into it. Then complete the other room so that your efforts are construed all over the house with multiple objectives.
I've also been reading a series of books/graphic-novels by Neil Gaiman that I've been borrowing from Vanilla Thunder, called The Sandman. It's about The Lord of Dreams; in the beginning of the book of Preludes & Nocturnes he is imprisoned by mortals, and his realm turns into shambles without him. From there he is regaining his stolen relics, hunting down escaped dreams/nightmares, and restoring order to things that were damaged from his absence. There's more plot to it, and it's a very enjoyable read. I like books that read very much like the process of unadulterated thought.
Let's look on the lighter-side of things for a moment though.
Last weekend I played some "D&D" type stuff with Ben, Sam, Joe, Drew, Anthony, and Mike (I think that was his name). It was a spin-off thing called Paragon, which is a super-hero sort of setting. It was a fairly amusing game; the only things that detracted from it for me was when I'd get relentlessly chided for making a character modeled after Inspector Gadget, because it was too unoriginal...erstwhile I was catching up to the adventures of (Anthony) Son of Supra-man, last of the planet Argon (and the Argonites), and (Drew) Rusty-Spork, son of millionaire entrepreneur Tony Spork. The other bit would have to be driving checks, which are only required for stunts/maneuvers/dangerous-driving such as weaving through traffic at high speeds, executing driving moves (like a J-turn), and ramming other vehicles. I bring that up because an unnecessary check resulted in me getting to sit idle for an hour while everybody else continued playing. However while I was playing it was very fun. Much was permissible, and people generally worked well together when it came to playing out characters and combating foes. Anthony's character also just cracks me up.
The games of StarCraft have also been fairly fun. So far the players include: Myself, Oscar, Luis, Clare, Justin, Joe K., and Ben. Should Sam find his disc, and Joe S. get a computer, we can play an 8 player game. Most people seem to be reluctant to play other people however, but I feel it's the best way to learn and enjoy the game. Computers are always too easy, or too hard. And when I say too hard, I mean that they're perfectly controlling every unit individually in coherence and as such have the maximum amount of resources and offensive force as could be possible for a given point in the game, it's crazy. That's why I like playing people; people make mistakes, people can surprise and deceive one another, people vary from game to game so you never know how it's going to go. That, and it's fun being able to mock each other in game. :p
Whew, so I guess that's the most of it.
I might be showing up at the training session tonight at the park, we'll see.
Some remodeling to be done today and tomorrow, perhaps.
Friday Gavin Reiser is having a party for a foreign-exchange friend that is in town.
Saturday night Joe Lev and the group he's with will be playing at a venue, I'd love to check it out.
My mom at some time is going to try to get me over to her house to help her clean up her clutter.
And before July is over, I want to hang out with my cousin Keith.
And other developments of course, but all in good time.