Glimpses of the mind...

So. I said I would update. Never did. I'm not sure why I keep doing this, updating and waiting for weeks and then going again. Not sure how many people give a damn. Not sure that I give a damn. I guess sometimes it just feels good to get it out.

In these last 10 weeks, I've been excited, nervous, freaked out, stressed, exhausted, and happy. Sometimes at the same time. Sometimes the same day.

It's been a rollercoaster.

A good rollercoaster, I guess...IDK. When I came back from Fall Break I really, really did not want to leave. I fell so easily into the routine I had over the summer that it felt like I hadn't left. Until I went back home and remembered I was partially living out of a bag in my own room.

But in all honesty, being home was amazing. I wish I had realized how wonderful Marquette really is before 3 months before I left. I miss it a lot. But being home was great. I got to get up Sugarloaf and see the fall colors, of which Ann Arbor has little to none. For those of you who don't know: Marquette has yellow, brown, orange, red, purple, and green (from the pine trees). So far in Ann Arbor, I've seen yellow or brown/dead. I love fall colors. And of course I left my camera at home that day, so I don't have any pictures to show. Oh well.

Finally got to see Iron Man and Speed Racer again :D. Fun stuff, great movies haha. Yes, I'm a dork. Leave me alone.

Classes have been going well enough for classes. It's a lot of work, probably a lot more than I did in high school (and I did a lot my junior year). Things are going pretty well though, or at least as well as I can expect. I think I'll be a little happier when I finish Spanish, because that's my major gripe right now: we have to write 700 words each week and hand it in every Friday. And every once in a while we have to watch movies on our own (like, hour and a half-two hour movies). It's a lot. But I guess it's good haha. My other classes have been good, too. I like my GSI for Great Books a lot, and my discussion group is good. Global Change is interesting and I have that with Julia and Anne, so that's pretty nice. And Cryptology is fun. It's a LOT of work. But it's fun.

And band. Oh, marching band.After this coming Saturday (the MSU game) I'll have marched three different games: the first game (Utah), homecoming (Illinois), and this one. I'm not going to lie, pregame is kicking my ass. Really badly. Like, so badly I wonder why I got put in for this week. I'm still really struggling with it...But I got in. I guess they're seeing something I'm not. And my mom, aunt and uncle will get to see this one. So that'll be nice.

Well....Yea. I haven't been partying. I've never really enjoyed huge parties anyway. I don't think I'm missing much. I'd much rather get together with a few people for dinner, maybe watch a movie or play some games. Chillax. That's my idea of a good night. Oh, and Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction. Damn good series. Too bad it ends Monday. Oh well. I still have Heroes, House, Stargate Atlantis (until January, anyway) and Fringe (if Hulu starts working again! WTF!?!). Very good TV. Fringe is awesome.

Did I mention I miss home? A lot? I miss my parents, my cat, having my own room. I miss having my own car, the freedom, just the act of driving in general. I find it relaxing. I miss having Amy less than 10 minutes away. I miss the lake, the fall colors, having gorgeous views of Marquette and the lake. I miss Forrestville Falls, Founder's Landing.....Halo parties. I miss Halo parties haha.

I'm kind of getting used to it.....But I don't think I'll complain this year when it's time to go home for a break.

Well...I think that's enough of my rambling for you guys. If you stuck it out this far I'm amazed and I thank you.

Whoever you are, take care, thanks for reading, and leave a comment if you like. I like hearing from people.

Countdowns; 3 days until GameDay for MSU! 5 days until Reconstruction is finished! 2 weeks until Gears of War 2! 4.5ish weeks until Thanksgiving! 7 until Christmas!

I leave you with a quote from me and Alex:

Alex
11:08
Liv Tylers about to get F'd up the A and not in the good way

Craig Belpedio
11:09
is there a good way?
honestly, i've never understood the attraction of anal
that's one hole that should stay out-only

Alex
11:09
I agree compleatly

G'Night!

Wow, so this thing is dustier than a crypt after a couple years. Time to shake it out.

Shake it out with what, though? Honestly, not much has gone on worth writing about. There were occasional events, to be sure. Orientation was in early June. Was relatively interesting. Kind of. Got classes, auditioned for the marching band. I think it went pretty well. I'll find out July 31st or August 1st. Still a while to wait. Classes/schedule posted later.

Amy and I are doing wonderfully. One year strong, actually....Good dinner and movies abounded.

City band has been good. Playing with Aimee and Kathryn again has been nice, I love those two. We rehearsed Ghost Train last week. I'm super-stoked :D.

Got my laptop for school. 17" MacBook Pro. Recently set up a triple boot with (you guessed it) OS X, Ubuntu, and XP Pro. I love the thing to death, I really do.

Speaking of school, possibly 4 weeks left in Marquette. That is rather scary. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. Excited to go, for class, to meet people, and to have fun and be on my own. Nervous to be on my own, away from the majority of people I know, away from Amy, and all that. What can I do but keep an open mind and not worry too much?

My aunt, uncle and cousin are down from Canada for a week or so. Found out my cousin likes Stargate SG-1 (which is funny, 'cause she's kind of a punk girl, year or two younger than my sister).

I've been seeing a lot of Kristin this summer, which has been wonderful. Hope to see Anna more, too, because those two are wonderful. But Bim left, and that is very sad. I don't think I ever saw her frown, she always had a smile and was always crazy and bubbly. She's great :).

Watched Good Morning, Vietnam with Amy on Friday. Wonderful movie. Sad, but wonderful; Robin Williams is a genius haha.

I guess I'm not really sure what else to write about...I mean, college is the big concern I have right now, and most everything else stems from that. Maybe I'll stop rambling now and let you, you intrepid reader, get on with your life.

Thanks for stopping in; maybe I'll keep it more up-to-date in the coming weeks.

So I've been neglecting this thing horribly. It's like that project they give you at the beginning of the year and give you all year to do, and then its May 25 and you're like "Damn, I should do that." Speaking of which...I need to do my Lear reduction. And start reading my S&E pieces. Shit.

Anyway, break has been absofuckinglutely wonderful. The last week and a half or so beforehand were stressing me out hardcore. January's going to be just as bad (musical, exams, All-State, then S&E). But for now it's good. Christmas was great, got some awesome stuff and gave some aweesome stuff away. So my time has been divided up between just me, family, friends, and Amy. Which has been great. Made pie with Jess and Teresa thursday before going to the Congress. Then yesterday Amy and her family took me to Maple Lanes for cross-country skiing. And then we spent the rest of the night (until 12, anyway) at her house hanging out.

Yes, life is particularly grand at the moment. I even got a triple-boot between XP, OSX, and Ubuntu Linux set up today with little difficulty (yea, I'm a geek, so what). And there's a Halo part at Alex's tomorrow. Good times :). Speaking of, Halo, Guitar Hero 3 and Call of Duty 4 are basically wonderful.

Tonight has been one of those "relax and do jack shit" nights. My mom and I watched Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Which was cheesey but entertaining. So yay for that. Also yay is the Serenity Collector's Edition I got for Christmas, with a new commentary from the cast (among other things). SO looking forward to hearing that! And Heroes on DVD. God I love that show.

"I Am Legend" was good. I love Will Smith. Also need to see National Treasure 2.

Craving Orange Box, too. Portal=Awesome, and I need to play Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

I'm starting to ramble. I think I'll end it here and go watch Stargate SG-1 :D.
Maybe I'll update more in the future....Then again, the way January looks, maybe not.
Bye.

My schedule for 2007-2008:

Semester 1:
Cultural Geography-Hefke
AP Physics-Clement
AP Calc-Seeke
Comprehensive Musicianship-Ludwig
Web design-Carr
Wind Symph-Ludwig
AP Lit and Comp

Semster 2:
US Government-Seppanen
AP Physics-Clement
AP Calc-Seeke
Comprehensive Musicianship-Ludwig
Web design-Carr
Wind Symph-Ludwig
AP Lit and Comp

So, I had the most amazing day today.

I went out to lunch with Susan and Danielle (we had Togo's), and Susan brought wonderful homemade cookies :D. Then we went to see "No Reservations". And that was a really good movie. And generally made me pretty happy. It was funny, and very, very cute.

We hung out for a while afterwards, walked around Lower Harbor so Susan and Danielle could take pictures. Which wound up being very entertaining. And very fun.

So I got home, and then JO AND AIMEE show up on my lawn!!! *Squeal* Eeeeee!!! So, that was really rather wonderful....So wonderful, in fact, that I can't express in words simply how wonderful it was haha. And we went off and played at Blueberry Fest for City Band. Which was rather hot, but not terrible.

We chatted more afterwards, and then I went to dinner with the family at New York Deli. Which was very tasty.

Ran to Family Video after, ran into Ms. Salonen, and Lauren and I grabbed "Driving Lessons" and "Man of the Year". Watched "Driving Lessons"...Very funny. Very weird, but very funny. Extremely British, which makes it even better haha.

And that's about it, actually. Tomorrow I'm going to pick-up/setup/play with Dad's/the family's new laptop. Other than that I don't really know. I do know, however, that I've been horrible with updates. That's just something you'll have to live with for now :D. I'm off to bed, cheerio!

Been a while, since I updated....Life's just going to hell like that, I guess. The end could not come faster.

Just for the record, WICKED was amazing. It was really well done, and I enjoyed it a lot....Even my dad enjoyed it, which is odd for him haha.

Break was good and needed, oh-so-badly. I sat around for a week and didin't worry about school. It was wonderful. We had family down from Canada, so we were with them a lot, and we had a bunch of family dinner things, saw Neil and Pam, Easter candy/dinner/fun. Yea.

The rest of the week only had a couple exceptions to the "uneventful" rule. Monday Danielle and I did chemistry, then Jess, Teresa and I got together, chilled, and made key lime pie :D. It it may have required two runs to the grocery store, but we did it. Actually had enough for two whole pies. And we chatted the night away. Which was of course, a blast.

Thursday I had Haloage at my place. Jess and Laura came, and were very entertained by Shane haha. Shane's always the most entertaining when we play Halo....I quote: "YES! I JUST KILLED YOU!" 5 seconds later, as he gets sniped: "DAMNIT! YOU KILLED ME!" in his really loud Shane-crazy voice. And it was a frag-fest. Good times :)

Saturday I went to Eric P's for Gears of War/Halo. Good times.

Helped Danielle set up her new MacBook Pro, too...Bwahaha! It's such a pretty machine...*Sigh* one more year.

We got our ACT results this week...I got a 33. Which was pretty cool ;). My lowest grade was actually math (28); my science, english and reading scores were at least 6 points above my math (36, 34, and 35, respectively). Apparently they didn't like my essay, though; I got ann 8 out of 12. Told AJ and Eric (same essay grade happened to them) that we've had some higher-level English classes; they couldn't handle our extreme diction and syntax 8-). I don't think I'll retake it, I'm pretty satisfied.

MY AUNT AND UNCLE ARE MOVING BACK! They've lived in Colorado for the past I don't know how many years (we've only been out to visit them twice that I remember). My aunt finally convinced my uncle to come home; this week they got a house in Negaunee Township, and it's really nice and has quite a bit of land. So we're all really excited for that :)

In other, geekier news, I bought a TI-89 Titanium on eBay. $104 including shipping...When you put tax in to the retail price, I saved $55!! w00t!

Took the AP Literature and Composition placement exam today. Hoping I do well. MUSIC THEORY NEXT YEAR!!! So my class list looks like this: AP Physics, AP Calc, AP Lit/Comp (hopefully), Cultural Geog/Gov, Musicianship (the theory class), Wind Symph, and Web Design. I think it'll be pretty cool.

HALO 3 BETA ON MAY 16^TH I am so pumped for that. 3 weeks of beta-testing one of my favorite series of all-time in a video game. It's gunna kick ass!

That's about all I've got. Most I've written in a while, actually...Probably 'cause I haven't written in a while, but oh well....G'Night everyone!
-Craig

PS: Oh! If for some reason you're in Mqt, not in school, and will be up early Friday morning, come watch the MSHS Jazz Band play at NMU's Jazz Fest! We play at 8AM in Jamrich 103, so be there!

I'll be in Chicago Friday->Sunday (actually, I'll be getting home on Sunday). Feel free to call Friday night and all Saturday/Sunday if you wanna chat. Except for Saturday night, I'll probably be bumming around Chicago...That night is WICKED night :D

So, yea. Hope you guys have a good weekend. I'll be back later Sunday!

-Craig
361-2754

State Solo and Ensemble!

And I got a I! Woo!

Ahem. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Sometimes, all it takes is a little thing.

A little thing can brighten a day.

Like today.

Teresa and I hung out this morning. Which was very nice. I finally heard the All-State choirs.

The rest of the day kind of dragged into oblivion, though. Only semi-interesting thing I did was play games w/ John. Otherwise I practiced scales and read for my classes.

I'll admit, I'm kind of freaking out for state S&E. Scales, mostly. I'm decent at sightreading, and my solo is shaping up well. I just hate scales. I know 'em well enough, I guess....

But just now, my day got better.

My kitty was sleepin' on my bed, so I went to go and give him some lovin'...I stuck my hand under his head and scratched it, and then he wanted to use it as a pillow!

...Yea. so, it sounds lame to you. But it just made my day. Maybe you'll understand if you have a cat that likes to use your hand as a pillow...Maybe not. At this point, I don't really care. I'm just kind of rambling on about it because things have been so hectic the last couple weeks.

And that one, single act of love from my cat made my day ten times better.

I love my cats.

Odd as this sounds, it's true. Ever since I got my toenail removed, I can't curl it. It's not frozen in place; if I reach down and curl it with my hand it works just fine. But with no hand....The other four curl fine. Just can't get the big one to do it.

And no, the randomness doesn't stop there.

( More random rantings.... )