Look, An After-Christmas Blog! (But No 20% Off...)

I haven't blogged lately, have I? OK, now that I've made things awkwardly random with a rhetorical question, let's see what's happened lately...

Yesterday was, as you know, Christmas. It's a holiday I really love and I always try to remember the true reason we're celebrating--which is of course the birth of Christ. I had a nice Christmas yesterday--for certain circumstances that you may know of and I will not discuss here, it was different and kind of depressing in a way, but it was a great day, and I had fun and spent time with family. It involved playing a bunch of games--I played "Sorry!" for the first time in a while, and I loved it (I also loved pronouncing "sorry" like a Canadian and bugging my mom with it: "Soh-ree"); a random preschooler game called "The Ladybug Game" that I think my little sister got for something (maybe Christmas) was also played by us (weird grammar...) and it turned out to be surprisingly delightful. (I finally got enough aphids!) And, as usual, I beat my family at Boggle... :)

So what else have I been up to? School ended for the semester, and I am excited to be on break. I will be having less of a classload next semester, since when the semester starts I will be dropping Calculus. (I got a D/F for it this last semester...my report card still hasn't come yet...and I don't want to deal with it anymore, I don't need the credit and it hurts my GPA.) This will actually be good because then I won't have an A Hour...my first time since I started high school! Yay for more sleep! Besides that, I will need to get my PE credit taken care of pretty quickly. I will be doing a lot of bowling...and learning about health and nutrition. Delightful! :)

I am also done...for now, anyway...applying to colleges. I sent in my applications to BYU and NAU, and right now I'm just waiting. I still do need to get my FAFSA in, though, once the new year starts, and I'm going to apply for random outside scholarships so I won't have to worry too much about paying for school. I still have my mission to save for...So anyways, I'm glad most of my applying-ness is over. It was very stressful, to say the least.

There's been other things that have happened in the past month...Vespers (awesome!), a bunch of caroling gigs for Chamber (very fun!), and my birthday (I very much enjoyed it...and thank goodness it wasn't like last year, where everything in the world seemed to be scheduled on that day...). Let's not even talk about the fact that the first two (NOT the last one, I'm not terminally ill or something) were my last ones...senior year, aargh!!! :) Well, I should stop blogging your ears/eyes off now. Have a great time after Christmas and through New Year's! Cheese out! :)

Quick, Like A Bunny! (Or A Jackrabbit...)

OK, this will be quite a shorter post than usual since I don't want to jeopardize my going to bed much earlier than I usually do (go homework being done! though I need to work on my Government packet sometime...), but I just wanted to write and blog, because, you know, it's kind of fun. Since my last post, a few things have happened...there was an election or something (who would have thought?), the Veterans' Day Concert was last night (the 12th), and life, with all its random occurrences and events, has gone on. To elaborate a bit on my thoughts on the election, obviously as an Obama supporter I am happy with the results, at least on the presidential race front. I am immensely glad that 102, 8, and that random proposition whose number I cannot recall or did not exist in Florida (regarding marriage) passed, and I hope that the people now protesting against it will stop being so hateful toward the Church--the viciousness with which they're attacking us, a viciousness I believe is very unfounded and based on false information, makes me want to cry and kind of scares me. Anyways, I'm glad that those propositions passed and that marriage stays marriage, and I hope that the other side will learn to be civil. In terms of other races, I was very upset that Russell Pearce (who is, in my very frank opinion, an anti-immigration-crazed windbag) and Joe Arpaio (pretty much the same thing as Pearce) won yet AGAIN, but I guess that Arizona voters will have to deal with the consequences they enacted. On a happier note, a lot of the other local races/propositions/etc. in my view went well for the most part, such as the School Board, State Representative race, and other various and sundry things. 

Anyhow, enough of politics for the moment. November has turned out to be a very busy yet rewarding month so far. As I mentioned earlier, last night, the Choir, Band, Orchestra, and members of Drama performed the annual Veterans' Day Concert. I think it really came together well--especially the Band and Orchestra, which I think did an AMAZING job. They sounded terrific, and I think they could have given any professional philharmonic orchestra a run for their money last night. I ended up liking this experience much better than I did last year for some reason, maybe because it might have been a bit shorter and I felt more prepared. Great job to all who participated!

In random bits of information that are suddenly coming to me at this moment, I played Rock Band on Wii for the first time on Saturday, at my cousin's house after helping my other cousin and her husband move. I ended up singing (I know, such a stretch, right?) most of the time, and I did pretty well at adapting to the Rock Band style of singing--which is basically making sure you hit all the notes. Being the weird, chameleon-like (by chameleon-like, I mean I adapt to whatever music I'm supposed to be singing very well, though in certain situations I often sound quite horrible) singer I am, I sang most of the songs in their original octave--my falsetto (or lack of it) really got a workout, I guess. Oddly enough, I found that some of the songs were kind of some form of good practice for Regionals sightreading. (Yes, I am a music nerd, and proud of it!) I also tried drums once, which didn't end too terribly. A few days ago I played again, and had the guitar once or twice--it was set on Easy and Bass (which meant I had to play much less notes than on Guitar mode), so I actually did well, though I'm sure if I went any harder I would fail miserably. Rock Band is a fun game...whoever thought of putting singing with a video game is the coolest! :)

Oh, and one more thing, a big announcement if you haven't heard of it already (if you go to Mesa High or are related to me, you would sort of know this by now)--I made All-State Jazz Choir. After my audition and the results came in, I found out I was 1st Chair in the Clinic Choir (the 2nd, lower, but still quite awesome and amazing jazz choir), just like I was last year. Michelle Cardon and Matt Speakman (go Matt, he made 1st Chair Tenor in his first year trying out!) made the higher choir. Well, a few days ago--make that Monday, I think--Mrs. Jones told me after class that I got bumped up to 5th Chair in the HIGHER choir!!! Yay for a party with Michelle and Matt!!! I am EXTREMELY excited and I will make sure to learn my music well (unlike last year, where I got called back for a second part check...ouch to myself) and have lots of fun! I will keep everyone posted on dates for the concert and stuff. Yay for jazz!

Well anyways, so much for this being a short post. I think I'm constitutionally (by constitutionally, I mean not constitutionally, since from what I have learned in Government there's nothing about that in the Constitution...wow, random tangent) prevented from writing less than elevendy billion words. Or however many I usually write. Anyways, I hope everyone is doing great and cheese out! :)

Some Politics To Fill The Void of Blog-ness...

Hola, amigos. (Like the shameless Spanish there? I didn't think so.) Anyways, I am going to take a break from rambling on about my life for this post, mainly because with recent events I think I need to wait on that a little bit, and I have been meaning to do the following for a while: give you all (well, anyone who reads this blog or sees this on Facebook) my recommendations for the upcoming election. These are just suggestions (albeit ones I strongly believe in), kind of like The Arizona Republic or any other major paper does. Since I can't vote for two years, I want to get my voice out there at any rate. If you would like to know more about why I feel the way I do on certain candidates, propositions, etc., just leave a comment and I will be happy to talk about it. (By the way, you'll notice there's a lot more Republicans on here than there usually are for a Democrat...I'm weird that way.) These are all for my district/area, by the way. Here we go!

President: Barack Obama (Democrat)

District 6 Representative: Jeff Flake (Republican)

State Senator, District 18: Judah Nativio (Democrat)

State Representatives, District 18: Cecil Ash (Republican) and Tammie Pursley (Democrat)

Corporation Commission: Barry Wong, Bob Stump, and Marian McClure (Republicans)

County Board of Supervisors: Don Stapley (Republican)

County Assessor: Keith Russell (Republican)

County Attorney: Tim Nelson (Democrat)

County Recorder: Helen Purcell (Republican)

County School Superintendent: Don Covey (Republican)

Sheriff: Dan Saban (Democrat)

Special Healthcare District: Rob Carey

School Board: Steven Peterson, Ben Whiting, and Kate Ali'varius

City Prop 400, Questions 1 and 2: Yes

Prop 100: No

Prop 101: No

Prop 102: Yes!

Prop 105: No

Prop 200: No

Prop 201: Yes

Prop 202: Yes (though I don't like it that much...)

Prop 300: Yes

I hope this helped...or something. Look closely at all the candidates/issues and make your choices wisely for this election. And make sure to go VOTE! on Nov. 4. Cheese out! :)

My Crazy Weekend/Week, Part II

And now we continue with Part Two of "Brandon's Crazy Weekend":

Like how that sounded like a boring documentary? Anyways, where we last left our heroes...JK, it's just me...as I was saying, Saturday was slightly busy but not as crazy as Thursday/Friday-ness. I had to mow the lawn Saturday morning and our family went to clean the church. Besides that, I didn't have much else to do Saturday until...HOMECOMING!!!!

Homecoming was a terrific experience for me. My date was Rachel Ellsworth and she was really fun and awesome. We had a lot to talk about (maybe not a lot by non-random people's standards, but we ended up having conversation the whole time) and my group was great. We went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen...yay for pizza that is good! Me and Rachel, Bryce and Rhonda, and Andy and Jessica goofed off for a little bit on the dance floor (and we stayed there for 2 or so slower dances) and ended up leaving the dance slightly early--like 10:30 or so--to go to Nielsen's and then to Andy's house to watch his brother's RANDOM and hilarious homemade movie-thing. (It didn't make any sense. But we were all so tired and slightly hyper, not to mention with random senses of humor, that we laughed the whole time. And most of us laughed quiet at first so it sounded like Rachel was the only one laughing, which made all of us laugh more.) So anyways, Homecoming was a blast! I've decided school dances are quite fun to go to, at least when you're going with fun people.

I have to go watch Jeopardy! now, so I will maybe write more later. Or not. Or I will eat you. One of those things. Anyways, cheese out! :)

My Crazy Weekend/Week, Part I

OK, here's the full (ish) post I promised you. By you, I mean whoever is reading this blog, which to tell the truth is not many. Anyhoo, shall I talk about myself? Wait, that sounds narcissistic...OK, I need to stop typing my thoughts right out, otherwise I sound more and more like the crazy psychotic person that I am.

I hope those who have gotten the chance to hear it like my random playlist. To expound upon it for a second, in addition to what I already said about it in my last post, it is truly a very strange and intriguing smorgasbord-thing. You may notice that I even have a sizable amount of music from other languages/countries on there...as far I can tell, I put several Spanish songs, a few ones in Portugese (I wanted more that I have on iTunes, but the playlist.com thing couldn't find them), and one or two in French. My reason for being a fan of Spanish music (at least certain songs/sub-genres of it) is pretty simple: I've grown up listening to music in Spanish. My mom was born in Ecuador, and that's her music. By this point, of course, I've ended up liking Latin music that she either hates or doesn't really know at all, but I still like a good chunk of her music, and the reason I like so much of Spanish music now is because it's part of who I am. As for the Portugese music, a lot of it is jazz or jazz-related, as most foreign-language jazz songs are Latin jazz ones in Portugese. By jazz-related, there is some music that I have from artists from places like Brazil, where it's not jazz music but rather really good music that has some roots in jazz or something. The French music is just random. The one French song I have on my playlist here is by someone who is now the First Lady of France (her name is Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, but she goes by Carla Bruni on her CDs, I think. She used to be a model, randomly). Cool, huh? (Maybe not that cool to you, but I think it is.) I don't even know how I found the French music I have, I think because of "Ratatouille," oddly enough (I really liked the random song in there). So that's kind of inexplicable, but that's how I am--very inexplicable.

Wow, I spent a long time talking about my music, much longer than I thought, and definitely much longer than a second. I should probably get to the part where my blog entry title actually applies, shouldn't I? Well, I was already expecting this weekend to be somewhat busy to begin with, what with Homecoming and what not. But there were a few extra events that threw more craziness into the mix...first, I fell asleep on my bed until about 11:40 last night without doing homework, due to some family arguments that we had. Then, when I woke up, my mom called and informed me that she was at the hospital, because her chest was hurting. Needless to say, that freaked me out a bit...and though she said she was OK and they were just doing tests, I was even more distracted from my homework and ended up staying up until about 3:30, at which time my mom came home and me and her friend who had taken her to the hospital helped her in, as she was on heavy pain medication. On top of that, I found out a few minutes before I went to bed that my dad didn't even know she went to the hospital, and was also trying to do what I could to work out rides for school the next morning. I decided to skip A Hour (for probably the first purposeful, self-caused time in my 3 years of high school life) to get some sleep (and not have to go to evil Calculus).

This morning was kind of stressful still, but not as scary as the night before...though my dad kind of drove me crazy a bit, as he decided to still go to work because he had an interview today, and neglected to call one of our carpool drivers to ask her if she could pick the other two people in my carpool up. Me and my sister did still get to school, however, getting a ride from someone, though my other sister and brother had to stay home because they wouldn't get ready.

On a happier (and hopefully shorter) note, my day at school was fun-ish. I won't talk about it really at all, but after school came the Homecoming Parade! I had a blast on the Choir float, and to tell the truth, though our float was slightly less elaborate, I think I had a bit more fun this time around. We sang random songs from musicals ("Under The Sea" and "Seize The Day," to name a few), cheered a lot ("Go Choir!...Choir! Choir! Choir!"), danced around, goofed off, and threw candy to smiling children. I loved it, though now I have about a negative seventy billion energy level, because the sun sucks energy. I ended up going home after the parade instead of staying for the carnival this year, mainly because I didn't really have any booth to help with this time around, and me performing my song from the Variety Show kind of fell through. (They didn't have a piano, as far as I could tell, and I kind of need one for my song. Along with about 90% of the other people who told Mrs. Jones they would perform at the Carnival. So I wonder how that turned out.) As of now, I'm going against my better judgment and hatred of football and actually planning to go to the Homecoming game with friends. Hopefully I'll have fun there...I probably will if I concentrate more on hanging out with people that are fun rather than the intensely boring and drawn-out football-game aspect of it. (I cannot stand watching football games, they bore me to tears. Oddly enough, I enjoy playing "Madden," mainly because I make it fun with my randomness and I'm in control of how stinking long the game is.) And of course, tomorrow is the Homecoming Dance, my first (and last high-school) one! I'm going with Rachel Ellsworth and a group with 5 other couples. I'm excited and I'm looking forward to it! Of course, before that, our family's going to clean the church in the morning, and I said I would mow the lawn (bleh), which adds another two items to my insane weekend. Oh, joy, Brandon typed sarcastically.

This was probably my longest post ever. I hope I didn't bore anyone. I think I just needed to pour my thoughts out right now, and unfortunately for any readers with a short attention span, they were really long and rambly thoughts. Anyways, hopefully next time I won't drag on so much. I hope you enjoy my awesome playlist, and cheese out! :)

Music (This Time Not Of The Mind...)

Since it's so scandalously late, I'll save a full post for later (one about, you know, life), but as you can see/hear, I've put a playlist up on my blog. I originally was going to do one earlier, but I didn't really like the playlist.com thing. I changed my mind, obviously, and here it is. It's about 100 songs (only about 1/28 of my huge iTunes library) and is REALLY random but also REALLY good. I have no idea what you're hearing right now/will hear if you go to my blog. It could be jazz, rock, French, a dancing lobster...OK, maybe not that last one, but you get the point. Anyways, enjoy, and feel free to comment on it...whether you're saying how weird it is or if you like it (or deeply hate it). Cheese out! :)

For Some Reason, I Feel Very Blog Right Now...

Hello friends...it's nice to be here with you in...my blog? (I couldn't say Primary, of course, because this is kind of--not Primary at all.) Anyway, hola. (Like the lame Spanglish.) Once I stop thinking of creative ways to greet you all to this blog entry, maybe I'll actually write something.

This has been a fun week. It's kind of not over yet--there is that little awesome thing called Saturday still to come--but I'll just talk about it anyway. Sunday, our ward got the chance to go to the Randolph Center, a home/facility for those with mental disabilities. It was a great experience--I was very scared about how I would be to handle taking care of and interacting with someone one-on-one for an hour, and at first, I felt inadequate and unsure, but I ended up doing well, being touched, and feeling the Spirit. I got to sing Primary songs the whole time, too!!! (And play piano, but only for the instruction meeting thing we had beforehand, and the sacrament meeting our ward had afterwards.) It was a unique and very amazing way to spend a Sunday morning.

OK, I said I was going to talk about this week, but random time switch--the Variety Show went very well. I felt like I sang and played my best, and just...I don't know, let my song out there. Thanks to all of you who have complimented me, you guys are great. And most of all...a huge GREAT JOB!!! to everyone who performed in the Variety Show!!!! You guys ALL were amazing, there was not an even close to remotely OK act the whole show, they were all completely terrific! All your top-notch talents really shined. (Hey, if you any of you took video of your singing/playing/stuff, you should post in online, like on Facebook or YouTube. Or send it to me. Or something...by the way, if you missed the Variety Show, I have my song up on Facebook, and I might put on YouTube someday. I don't know, though...)

Before this gets too long(er--yes, I know this parentheses makes the sentence grammatically incorrect), what else is new/happened? I don't know, I was going to say other things but I forgot them. Or they don't fit in with how I wrote this today. Why am I thinking out loud...or, more accurately, on screen/typing-ness? I don't know. Anyways, I will hopefully post random stuff soon. Or not. Anyways, cheese out! :)