now for something completely different...
today was pretty uneventful as usual. gosh things just seem to get more boring don't they? i had to mow the lawn for the first time since we got home and boy was it thick. i'm glad i didn't have too much trouble. all that grass pollen floating around really gets to you though.

earlier in the day, we worked on cleaning more out of our computer room and i vacuumed the stair well. those were some of the biggest dust bunnies i have ever found in this house. that's like several years of dust bunnies. and guess what. yep that's right. i breathed in so much dust that my bronchial tubes are hurting right now. believe it or not. and right after that, i had to mow the lawn. so my chest is hurting and it's bothering me.

more action with the cape today and boy was nadia riled up. i guess it's from all the speakers during that democratic national convention. well whatever it was she sure was wild today. she grabbed the cloth when i wasn't looking and bit it and then started to tear a big hole in it but i managed to intervene and get it away from her. wow what a wild animal to play with!

tomorrow is that rehearsal with the band. and it starts a little earlier around 5 pm for people who want some extra time to work on the march. i will surely attend because rehearsals are always fun because you get to goof around with your friends. and what more can you want? lol. last rehearsal mr. forney announced that we will be in group a open competition and that means going to giant stadium in new jersey for a huge competition. oh gosh lol. so it's off to new jersey...again...in the same year lol. we went to new jersey for our last adjudication in case you didn't know. and this trip to giant stadium will be an over-nighter so that will be pretty cool.

and progress is being made with the thorn drawings. i just got finished a little earlier looking up all sorts of ways to draw and shade eyes properly because that's what i need to work on the most. the eyes are just to flat and unrealistic looking and that really bothers me. i want these drawings to be the most realistic ones yet so it will take some serious work. but i am looking forward to it because i have nothing else to do besides worry about field band and play with the cat. it really helps me find something else to think about.

ziggy

nadia de la mancha (part 4)
ouch well you still gotta watch out for those claws. i learned that the hard way again today. nadia had just come out from behind the cape and i sort of tried to lift the string up and away from her but she followed it and she jumped up in the air after the string and she came down and her claws were out and they connected with my right elbow. i could feel them sink into my skin riiiiiiip. lol okay maybe not that bad. but i did manage to stop the bleeding after a few minutes.

we worked on cleaning out the computer room yesterday and we'll work on it some more tomorrow. rehearsal last night went well. we went outside and marched around and stuff and boy were we tired. and to think we only have like a week to prepare for the parade!

the parade runs the entire length of town and then back again so it's twice as long as our halloween parade. gosh we're gonna die out there. hopefully it won't be like 90 degrees out and humid and...oh gosh i shouldn't have said that. lol. knock on wood. i hope it's not very hot. the hotter it is, the harder it is.

this coming thursday's rehearsal should be interesting. brock decided to have it a bit early at 5pm and he's gonna order pizza. it's for people who want a little bit of extra time to work on the march. so yeah. oh and today i didn't do much. i just started some preliminary sketches on this person named rose thorn. see i've been "commisioned" by a friend of mine named kaitlyn to do a drawing of a character of her's. thorn's a mighty undertaking and it'll be very challenging but i think it will turn out alright. i needed something to do because i am just so bored here lol. oh and kaitlyn, i hope you can come out and visit sometime soon! it probably won't be for a while but i look forward to it!

ziggy

nadia de la mancha (part 3)
yes folks it's back to the bullfighting ring for today. nadia's got the hang of bullfighting now and she loves it but you just have to be careful. i mean her claws are so incredibly sharp they'll slash into your flesh and you won't feel it and all and then you'll notice the blood everywhere. yeah so you get the idea. lol.

well anyways today was very slow and boring and stuff. we would've gone to philly but decided not to at the last moment. we'll visit in a few weeks. tomorrow is another rehearsal with the band and hopefully that will go well. we'll probably be marching around a little outside so that will be alright. everything has been going pretty smoothly with band. band camp is coming up soon!

mr. forney told us that we have to maintain this perfect posture and doing this is very difficult. he said "just imagine a marble between your cheeks...and i'm not talking about these cheeks (*points to his face). just squeeze that marble tight and you won't sway back and forth when your marking time."

mr. forney does have interesting ways of saying things.

ziggy

nadia de la mancha (part 2)
more bullfighting with the cat today. she needs a lot of excersize because she's so darn fat. but i've got her to charge alright now and she kind of has the idea lol. she grabbed the handkerchief and dang near shredded it to bits if i wouldn't have gotten it away from her in time.

she sure gets fierce when you're least expecting it. once she nearly took my foot off when i tried to walk past her. you have to watch out. so when you're playing with her, it's real dangerous! lol.

i also worked today as you might already know. that was the same old stuff. charlie wants to get me in as much as possible before school starts because once school starts, there will be no time for anything, just...well...school and...band. that will have me so incredibly busy that i won't know what to do. i may not even be able to leave messages on here! probably only like once a week. band sure is a hell of a commitment.

and speaking of band. there's a parade coming up like 2 weeks from now and that's for "old home week". it's the 35th trennial of the founding of this old town and everyone will be out to celebrate. it happens like every 3 years so it's quite a big deal around here. and the parade is 2 freakin hours long. and there's a whole lot of other things like this pageant and heritage stuff. so yeah you get the picture.

ziggy

nadia de la mancha
nadia is my cat's name that i am training to bullfight. i gotta find a better handkerchief though to use as the muleta but oh well. and yes i am skipping the placing of the banderillos and the death part because i don't want to kill my cat geez lol. but i do have to be careful because nadia's claws are very very sharp. i found that out the hard way.

i have nothing else really to do around here however i do have to go to work tomorrow from 9 am to 3 pm. yes it's back to the old grind (literally). i will most likely be working all these saturdays in august around band camp and whatnot so i'll be a busy bee. so DO NOT get in my way! lol. sunday i will be visiting my grandmother out in philly so that's always a pleasant car ride out there and back. and that's my weekend in a nutshell.

ziggy

off to pamplona
well not really in fact. i was just bored here this afternoon and i decided to get my cat to "bullfight" with me. it was working too! see i made the muleta out of a wooden stick i found (which is normally used for closing the curtains) and a red handkerchief which was the cape part. and i used this string as a lure to get her to charge the cape and it was quite interesting at first until we ran out of space in the living room and my cat kept chasing the string around and nearly climbed up my leg.

now i don't want to mortally injure my cat so i think i'll leave out the part with the banderillos and the pics and the part where i go in for the death kill. hey if you're wondering where i learned all this stuff, i learned it in the book i read by ernest hemingway called the dangerous summer. yeah it was all pretty cool and it took me only like 2 weeks to read (i took it slowly, only 1 chapter a day because i am lazy lol).

lately, i got to thinking about cleaning up my room. see i saw this ad in a magazine for this totally cool futon bed/couch thing and i really want it for my room but my room is like a warzone. i mean i haven't cleaned it out in like 7 years (yes, sadly that's a true statement). so i am going to totally re-do my room and paint it and everything and i'm gonna have a desk and a laptop in it and all and i'm gonna put that futon bed/couch thing right by where my other bed is (only i'm gonna chuck my other bed out the freakin window lol).

so this is going to be my new year's resolution for next year. only i just realized that that was my resolution for this year and the year before that! so second semester, i will start (if not sooner) because first semester has the hardest subjects and with field band and all and work, it will be hard to find time. but i am definitely going to pursue this to the end and i'll post pictures too!

ziggy

life is a beach
i figured i'd tell you this one:

we had a blast that entire time we were down there for the 2 weeks. everyday we'd head down to the beach around 10:30-11:00 am and then stay down there till like about 3:30pm. so we were usually down for like 4-5 hours and such.

well during that period of time, a person sure can see a lot of weird stuff down there on the beach. occasionally we'd see a few dolphins and whatnot and other times i would see rays jumping out of the water doing backflops which was really neat. and then there were the funny things that we'd see too. like watching other people's umbrella's blowing over and collapsing and this other thing. these two women were out in the ocean a fair distance with an inner tube. and also there was a strong wind from the south that day and the current was moving south to north.

i'll tell ya, if you let go of that inner tube for a split second, it will be up the beach faster than you can say "aw crap there goes my inner tube". and that's exactly what happened to these two ladies and one of them let go while the other one was swimming along side and the wind and the current took it upstream so fast, you wouldn't believe it. and i watched and that big inner tube just drifted to the north and out to sea until it was just a tiny speck on the horizon. and then it just was gone. some story huh?

ziggy

the dangerous summer (part 2)

well i'm back and i managed to make it home in one piece. here's a picture for your thoughts. it's of the ferry boat on the way home from ocracoke island. we always make the trip down there while we're on the outer banks. our visit was very nice because they have this awesome coffee shop/bookstore. and we also visited this neat craft store back on howard street that's was cool. i bought a new coffee mug there. the ferry was nice on the way home. it's always nice taking the evening ferry home because you can watch the sun setting.

we had a great time and i'll post a few things up here once and a while about what happened because it would take to long to tell in one entry. i finished my book (the dangerous summer, by ernest hemingway) while i was down at the beach. it was pretty good. and i also bought the catcher in the rye which is my favorite book that i would've liked to have owned and well now i do. i bought it from that coffee shop/bookstore down in ocracoke. ocracoke is the bomb.

the trip wasn't as tiring as i thought it would be but it took around 11 hours until we reached salvo. then on the way back we decided to rest at a motel. driving another 11-12 hours after a 2 week vacation wouldn't be easy anyway. it always seems longer coming back. so that's it for now and band camp starts in a few weeks!

ziggy

the dangerous summer (that book by ernest hemingway silly)
well i've just finished packing most of my stuff. all that remains is some of my clothing that's still drying and my toiletry items that i'll pack tomorrow. that van we have sure does have a lot of room. sure the windstar had all that plushy goodness but not as much room as the 1992 plymouth voyager. it is pretty classy. or was. i should say it was pretty classy back in 1992! lol. and it actually smells okay and not like dogs or anything. see we're borrowing from a close friend of ours (for FREE...yippeee!) and while we're away, he's taking the windstar and checking it out and trying to fix it (NOT for free.....awwww but hey i think it's a fair trade).

well my dear friend teresa is going off to africa for the next 6 months and i am really gonna miss her! gosh she was always so cheerful and always seemed to brighten my day no matter how incredibly crappy and stupid it was. take care teresa! and travel safely! she leaves on the 13th i think and is flying 7 hours to amsterdam, then a 2 hour wait and then another 8 hours down to cameroon. gosh what jet lag. i'm not sure if i could even handle all of that lol. i haven't even flown in a plane in 15 years so i forget what it is like. someday though, i will fly again.

well today wasn't too eventful. i went to the library around 1:45 to pick up a book to read while i'm on vacation and i chose "the dangerous summer" by ernest hemingway who is one of my favorite authors. it looked pretty good so i'd figure i'd take that out when i get bored. so yeah. and then after that, around like 3:30, i decided to finish the rest of the mowing and then went to the pool. and while i was at the pool, we got into a quite a ferocious game of handball and now the heel of my hand and my wrist is sort of swelled up and turning purple. lol gosh. see handball is just like baseball except you use your hand to hit this rubber ball. i guess i hit that ball one to many times on the wrist. ouch. and then i swam some laps and returned home around 6:00 to finish the rest of the mowing and packing.

and now i have to go to bed at 10:30 tonight and i just got done cleaning the turtle tank one last time. and that sure was a blast well not really. and i just talked on the phone with laura for the last time so that was a pleasant conversation we had. i'll miss everyone while i'm away! and yes i'll be kind to the manatees and all the wildlife, marcia, don't worry! lol. and maybe my parents.

ziggy

1st rehearsal
well tonight was the first rehearsal for the marching bands at school. it went from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm and it went pretty well. i am now an official member of field band! oh boy you know what that means :D. of course...you guessed it... band camp! that begins on like august 9 and runs to the end of that week. that's 8:00 am to 4:00 pm of pure band goodness in a jar. it's gonna be tough but somehow i'm gonna manage to pull this off while still maintaining a 4.0 on the report card. whew! hard work, here we come.

i've been dogsitting the past few days for that lovely chocolate lab named jager who's just a great big bundle of energy. he's only like 4 years old anyways but he sure can pull me down the street! and it better be worth the $60 to pick up his poop with a plastic bag and stuff. ewwwww.

i've updated the main page! finally, geez. and i think i'll keep updating it every month so that everyone stays up to date. wait a second...everyone? who actually visits my site and cares? oh yeah that's right, just me. oh well. at least i can try to promote it now as much as possible. i'm gonna try to increase traffic levels. i had 35 people visit my webpage yesterday which is pretty good for me (the most being 345 people in one day!). hopefully more and more come. but i need to think of something interesting to actually make people want to visit. hmmmm.

in a few days, i leave for the beach. what a great time i'll hopefully have. i want to catch a large fish and take it to laura's house. and i hope the weather is alright down there for some good body boarding. maybe i'll get my nerve up to try surviving sometime. at least now i can swim well enough to do that. there's a ship wreck off of our beach so maybe i'll swim out to that but who knows what sort of marine wild life could be dwelling there. spooky stuff i bet. i need to burn a good cd for the trip being that we'll be on the road for 10 straight hours. oh boy what fun that will be...not. hopefully, we won't all drive each other crazy by the time we get there.

we leave on saturday probably around 7:30 am or earlier and we expect to arrive around maybe 5:00 pm or 6:00 pm that night. gosh it'll be a long haul. i pray that our van (with its failing transmission) can take that abuse. god only knows. this vacation will take up two of those band rehearsals but that shouldn't be a problem because the most important is the band camp which happens way after we come home. in fact, it's after old homeweek. and there's a big parade and pageants and all sorts of good old home cooking to celebrate the founding of this lovely little white bread, trailer trash, redkneck valley town we call greencastle. jesus christ, there's more culture on our tennis shoes here (haha). well anyways, i'll be in that parade so yeah.

boy this sure is a long message but i suppose i'll give you the scoop on what the entire field band thing is. you see, this year we'll be wearing army fatigues which mr. forney only does every 6 years. and the piece of music we'll be playing is called "miss saigon" (which i believe is a broadway musical) so everything, uniforms and all, go with the music. we played it earlier tonight at rehearsal for the first time and boy did it suck. royally. but there's always room to improve i mean who says that we should play it absolutely perfectly the first time? of course that's impossible. but it's quite an interesting piece and i bet it'll be even more interesting playing it while moving around in formation.

i think it's about time to cut it short since i'm getting carried away with this message. so keep checking up here in the next few days, i'll try to keep it up to date.

ziggy