This afternoon, I hooked up with my buddy Mike Decamp to help his brother film a short video for a presentation that his brother has to give to his marketing class at ASU. After that, Mike and I decided to go see Thank You For Smoking. Because of time restraints (I was meeting Linh for dinner) we went to an AMC theater chain that I haven’t voluntarily gone to since I was in junior high (because it’s where all the junior high kids meet up). Usually, I’m a Harkins guy all the way. We got our tickets. $9!!! WTF? Oh, that’s the adult price. I forgot to get the student price (keep in mind this was a matinee). So I go inside to get a price adjustment. Harkins is usually about $6.50 for a ticket. Thinking AMC would be the same, I look at what I now paid. $8. I saved one dollar for being a student. What a rip off. I didn’t know our issues with oil were driving up the price of movie tickets, too. The $4.25 I paid for a blue rasberry Icee wasn’t exactly the best thing I’ve spent my money on, either. At least the movie was worth it.

Afterwords, I met Linh for dinner at Z-tejas with Dan and Gomez. Dan and I will be recording a lot during the next few weeks so we’ve been busy talking/planning these upcoming events. And of course, we are now entering the final weeks of the semester which means I’ll be (along with everyone else) wicked busy studying/cramming for finals. But after that, it’s all about the projects…

Easter was a good day: the family came over, Linh came over, and we painted eggs!Here’s my attempt at a StrongBad egg… didn’t quite turn out as good as I thought it would. Oh well. That night, Linh went home early to work on a paper and I went out with Dan, Gomez, and Bob Moody. They didn’t have any family to visit that day so we all went out for sushi (I ate at home…. I don’t like sushi….. but the sake was good!). It was good to catch up with Bob again. Actually, if you happened to be listening to KBAQ from 1 - 3 PM on Easter Sunday, you would have heard the Messiah Dan and I recorded back in December with Bob conducting the Phoenix Symphony Chamber Orchestra and Choir. He is now the conductor of the Winston-Salem Symphony. Rock on!For lunch, Linh and I went to Pete’s Fish and Chips. Normally, Arizona does fish and chips just about as good as New York does Mexican food, but this place is an Arizona classic!Linh and I had about 45 minutes after classes this morning and took a drive to the Phoenix Zoo. We didn’t go in but we hung out on the bridge before the enterance and laughed at the turtles on the logs. I swear it was like watching some 1980s video game like frogger or something. The turtles kept on rocking the log side to side and then falling into the water and then swimming back on the log and repeating the entire process over again. What great free entertainment (perfect for any date, I’m sure).Then, this ugly son of a Texas softshelled turtle showed up. This thing is wayyyyyyyyy f’ugly.Either way, Linh was happy that we got to watch the turtles for a few minutes before heading home to work on essays that are due tomorrow.But of course, I didn’t start my essay right away because my drumline samples came in and I just had to play with them!

So there’s not really anything new to tell. Just thought I’d warn you now to spare you from reading the remainder of these couple of paragraphs.

Since Saturday, my focus has been on… math. Ugh. I had two tests this week and I really needed to do well on them (not that I did). The floor around my desk and on my desk is literally covered with college-ruled notebook paper with scribblings of Laplace transformations, Lagrange multipliers, and triple integrals (I like the triple integrals most out of all of them).

But the week wasn’t all bad. The morning of my first math test, I saw this beautiful rainbow (one of the best I’ve ever seen here in AZ). I probably shouldn’t have been taking pictures while driving on the freeway…Since I’ve been so submerged in this marching show, I’ve also found myself buying into African culture and art. Well, not really. This four-foot mask was made in Vietnam and bought at Burlington Coat Factory. I guess that’s the closest I’ll get to Africa any time soon. If we can find more of these lolly drums, we’re thinking about selling them to the marching band parents to make noise up in the stands. They are too fun to pass up!
So that’s been my week. Hell. Well, not really, but it is pretty bad when you’re actually doing math in your dreams. I woke up screaming. Damn you convolution integrals!!!

But Sunday, it all changes. I’ll be flying into Orlando with John Mackey for a concert of our works Monday night at University High School (a very nice campus I’ve been told–GoogleEarth confirmed this). It’s gonna be a great time and a fantastic experience. Only catch is, I’ve got to talk about myself and my work. I’ve never really… had to do that, formally. Oh well, I’ll probably end up saying something stupid :-). Especially when I have to follow Mackey. I remember when he talked to ASU about Redline Tango. He said something like, “I dunno what I was thinkin’, I must’ve been drinkin’.” I will remember that forever.