Song of the Week

Every now and then I find a song that just sticks in my head and screams for me to play it on my iPod nearly nonstop. That unsatiable desire sometimes lasts for about a week. My love affair this week is with Owl City's "Fireflies". It has been playing itself over and over in my head and on my iPod. I just find it incredibly catchy and (dare I say) cute - it talks about fireflies giving hugs! And dancing!

Anthony, you can lower your eyebrow now.

It's just a nice little something different from my standard Lifehouse and Coldplay playlists. The rest of the album - most of which you can listen to on their website - isn't bad, especially if you're into electronic and/or dance music. And the lyrics are all pretty good! But the single "Fireflies" is probably enough for me to buy right now, although I kinda like "Hello Seattle". As a whole, Owl City has a quasi-video game quality to it (being synthesized) that pulls me back to my childhood when I played Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Nowadays the video game music is practically orchestrated, but thanks to Owl City I can re-experience the good old days.

*sigh* How can I resist music that does that?

On a different note, I'm coming down with something ghastly that's causing a sore throat. Aaaack! And I have to sing my solo in the Bach Mass in B minor on Monday and Tuesday! I'm trying to deal with it on my own: drinking tons of water (and having to go to the bathroom way too often), gargling salt water, and getting plenty of sleep. Well...at least trying to get plenty of sleep.

I'm also chugging along with NaNoWriMo. I was up to par on my word count last night, and now I need to get to typing to keep up with my 1,667 words today. It looks like victory could be a possibility!

Quick Update

My phone is ALIIIIIVE!!

(This is the Transformer that turns into a cell phone in the movie.)

That being said, if anyone wants to call me they now can. I doubt I'll have any unusual amount of phone activity, but just so you know that the potential is there. :-)

I also wanted to post the link to my NaNoWriMo homepage (<~~ click the picture!). This is the page that will have my wordcount (hoping for 50,000!) as well as a small excerpt from what I typed up yesterday.

And, for your knowledge and viewing pleasure, here is the daily wordcount I have to stay up with in order to win NaNoWriMo by November 30th. The number list refers to the date (on November 1st I had to have 1,667 words, etc.)

1. Day 1: 1,667 words
2. Day 2: 3,334 words
3. Day 3: 5,001 words
4. Day 4: 6,668 words
5. Day 5: 8, 335 words
6. Day 6: 10,002 words
7. Day 7: 11,669 words
8. Day 8: 13,336 words
9. Day 9: 15,003 words
10. Day 10: 16,670 words
11. Day 11: 18,337 words
12. Day 12: 20,004 words
13. Day 13: 21,671 words
14. Day 14: 23,338 words
15. Day 15: 25,005 words
16. Day 16: 26,672 words
17. Day 17: 28,339 words
18. Day 18: 30,006 words
19. Day 19: 31,673 words
20. Day 20: 33,340 words
21. Day 21: 35,007 words
22. Day 22: 36,674 words
23. Day 23: 38,341 words
24. Day 24: 40,008 words
25. Day 25: 41,675 words
26. Day 26: 43,342 words
27. Day 27: 45,009 words
28. Day 28: 46,675 words
29. Day 29: 48,343 words
30. Day 30: 50,000 words

So bug me a lot if the wordcount on my NaNoWriMo homepage doesn't reflect this! Thanks a bunch in advance for keeping me on top of this. :-)

Now I'm off to a rehearsal for the Bach Mass in B minor. Woohoo!

Happy Halloween!

An update: my phone has gone into a coma. Living for two days without being able to communicate via speech to any of my family or friends away from Tallahassee has been surprisingly difficult. I mean, I know that we used to live like that until the last few decades - but I never did! So any kind of loneliness I might have felt beforehand is now exponentially stronger. It's just a little tough. :-(

But never fear! The Sprint people (as though they are a separate race of humans...) told me that I will be getting a new phone on Monday after 2pm. Why such a different answer than a few weeks ago when I complained of screen issues? Apparently they have a different opinion on phones with condensation under the screen. Hooray!

And it's Halloween!! Woohoo! I've learned to become a bit wary about 'parties' around these parts, what with underage drinking and skankiness always making a showing. So my big celebration ended up happening last night instead of this evening, when the FLYSAGA (FLorida Young Single Adults GeorgiA) group threw a Halloween dance at the Institute building in Gainesville, FL. The "Zombie Prom" as it was affectionately named was awesome, with dancing and food and fake blood and dead faces galore! But I must admit...I was a bit of a bum and didn't go in a costume (I've had a hard week, okay!). Thankfully, a friend of mine named Claire viciously applied eye shadow to my entire face - along with a few artful dabs of pomegranate Burt's Beeswax lip balm - and made me a zombie-fied college student! Hooray again!

I'll try to get some pictures from...um, well, I guess from anybody that was there, and then put them on here. It was a ton of fun! Even the 2 1/2 hour drive was a lot of fun (especially leaving Gainesville after 1am - and getting back into my own bed at 5am).

So here is my tribute to the Halloween spirit. After all, we must remember the reason for the season.


("Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?" from The Onion)

I overslept! September's LONG over!

A lot has happened here in sleepy Tallahassee over the last month. Let me explain. No, there is too much - let me sum up. (Yes, that is a quote from The Princess Bride for those of you that caught it.)

I auditioned for the opera Serse (Xerxes in English), and have been cast as Arsamene. Woohoo! There goes my Christmas break, learning a role! ;-)

I have taught voice lessons now for a couple of months. Who knew that I would take to private teaching?

My truck has now been replaced with a green Honda Civic. Crazy! But SO MUCH BETTER in gas mileage. You have no idea.

Also, I have decided to plan my descent into the 9th Level of Hell by signing up to do National Novel Writing Month next month. There are a few people in my ward that are going to do it, and they explained the whole thing to me. The basics: I'm going to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. As in 30 days. That equals out to about 1,667 words a day!


When they (my "friends"...) first told me about this, I thought they were simply crazy and/or masochistic. A whole novel in 30 days? What are they thinking?! I mean, I considered doing it at the time...but along the lines of crazily considering what it must be like to get struck by lightning (sizzle/KABOOM!), get in a fight with a shark (poke it in the eye!!), or leap off the Empire State Building (it would be pretty windy). Those aren't exactly serious considerations here.

But then I thought, "Ben, you used to write all the time when you were younger! Why not search for that creative side of you again?" And I have to admit...I had a pretty creative and active imagination. Even now my id likes to play around with me, giving me intense dreams with Blu-ray detail and elegant plotlines. But to actually dredge that part of my brain out of the muck of mediocrity? It'd be difficult to do.

So I decided to do it on a whim. That's how these crazy decisions work, isn't it?

Wake me up when September ends

Alrighty, it's been a little bit since my last post, and a lot has happened since then. For example, I'm in Tallahassee right now! Crazy! It's SO humid here, and combined with the heat...well, it's pretty much death. It's been raining almost every day here too. Yeah. There have been a lot of good things that have been happening (especially in school), but there have been a lot of crappy things happening as well. Like my backpack breaking last week. And not having a bed until (hallelujah!) two nights ago. Or not having any income from my assistantship until two weeks from now. And realizing the voice faculty want me to take 15 extra credit hours of language that I will have to pay for! And not having my financial aid money until I can deposit my check (which hasn't arrived yet) into a bank that doesn't exist yet in Tallahassee!!

*cough cough*
Sorry.

But anyway, I wanted to write today (especially today) because of a wee little occurence last night. It seems that my closet decided to herald in the new month by...imploding!! Yes, ladies and gentleman, my closet did pretty much the exact opposite of exploding by dropping it's largest closet rod/shelf on to the floor. At approximately 1 AM. As the story goes (...and I know, because I was there), I woke up early this morning with a loud and resounding CRASH that left me staring stupidly around my dark room. Without a lamp to see what had happened, I just assumed that one of the many boxes still stacked up in the middle of my room had fallen over or collapsed. I woke up this morning and saw...nothing out of the ordinary - as though my boxes had intelligently righted themselves (cue music from "The Twilight Zone"). I then assumed that the sound I'd heard the night before had to have come from the apartment upstairs. So I took a shower and got ready for the day.

I opened up my closet to pick out my clothes and found...



I stared at it for about a minute or two. Just stared. Marveling at the unexpected but inherent beauty in the angle at which all the clothes were laying, the perfect dichotomoy of order and chaos that were literally existing right next to each other, as well as the unbelievable-ness of what had occured. How?? Why?!?

On closer inspection I discovered that the screws and nails that held the shelf "securely" to the wall had been pulled out, ripping through the drywall and causing the loud CRASH at 1 in the morning. All of this from a bunch of shirts, some slacks, a canvas shoe holder, and some practically empty luggage on top of the shelf. For what I'm paying to live here, you would think that the closets would be adequately constructed! And I'd better not hear the management tell me that I shouldn't have things on top of the shelf. Otherwise, what is the POINT of a shelf?!

I pondered all of these things as I stared.

When I was done, instead of curling up on the floor and sobbing for Mommy, I decided instead to laugh and take a picture. After all, how often do we have the chance of having our closets implode?