I haven't updated in a long time...

So I guess I'll have to fill you in on what's been going on.

Patrick and Todd and I went to see AFI, and they were amazing. A photographer from the Rochester Insider took a photo of us and put it on the Rochester Insider website along with a couple other pictures of attendees and also of the bands playing. A band called Gallows opened up, but I didn't really like them.

Patrick and I decided to try to get closer to the stage before AFI started playing, because while Gallows was playing, we were leaning against the wall on the side of the room. I know it's rude to be getting in front of other people who were already standing there waiting for the band, but I don't really care. I'm rarely a rude person, and if I want to be closer to the stage to see one of my favorite bands, I'm going to get closer to the stage. Of course, if you can seem a bit less rude, why not try?

So I noticed two females making their way through the crowd of people to get closer to the stage too, so I made the decision to walk behind them. I believe it was a mother and her teenage daughter, and I figured people wouldn't get as annoyed at Patrick and I if we were following these two females. They would get very, very annoyed for other reasons though. One such person got very, very annoyed because as I was walking past her, I stepped on the toe of one of her boots. She was leaning against one of the big posts keeping the balcony up, and she had her feet sticking out really far, so it was her own fault really. I don't think you have any right to get mad at someone for stepping on your feet at a concert, especially when you have them sticking out. The problem was, as I stepped on the toe of her boot and she yelled at me, the mother and daughter I was following had stopped, and I couldn't move forward, so I was just standing on this poor girl's toe, unable to move. She kept yelling at me and there wasn't really anything I could do about it, but give her my "oh well, whatcha gonna do?" face and shrug my shoulders. After a few seconds the mother and daughter started moving again to get closer to the stage. When they found the place they wanted to stand, Patrick and I stopped next to them. I think I really freaked the mom out, because I had followed her all the way to their spot and stood right next to them. I understand how that might seem creepy, but I wasn't following her for a creepy reason, just to take advantage of the fact that she's a female. Okay, that still sounds creepy.

AFI started playing shortly after, and they were so good. Possibly the best I've ever seen them. If not, then the best I've seen them since the first time I saw them. I was very sick and had only just gotten my voice back the day before the show (I had lost my voice for about a week. Couldn't speak above a whisper.), and was concerned I wouldn't be able to sing along, and that if I did, that I'd lose my voice quickly. To my surprise, I sang along the whole show and, if I might say so myself, sounded quite good doing so.

I bought a new AFI shirt, and while I was at the merch table, I had an interesting conversation with the merch guy. I asked him if they carry all of the merchandise with them the whole tour or if they somehow get new merch along the way to avoid having to carry it all over the country. He told me they sell out most of the stuff every few days, and they get new merch shipped to the venues, so it's waiting for them when they get there. They just keep track of what they have and what they've sold so that they get everything they need in the next shipment. I found the conversation to be very interesting, because I've wondered about that for a while. I found it unbelievable that they'd bring enough merch for the whole tour, but I also didn't know what other options there were.

A week before Halloween, my cousin Megan (Patrick's older sister) had a Halloween party. I was going with my mom, and we couldn't go until an hour after it had already started, and my mom wanted to leave early because she had to work in the morning, so I decided to stay for the whole party and then spend the rest of the weekend at the house Patrick is staying at. Right now he's living with his friend Aaron. Aaron also came to the Halloween party. I've met him a few times before, and he's pretty cool. He came to the party as The Red Hood, and as soon as he walked into the room I was blown away by the costume. He had a black pinstripe suit, a red mask, red cape, and purple gloves. He looked like he stepped right out of the pages of The Killing Joke, except his mask looked more like Jason Todd's Red Hood mask than the cylindrical mask Joker wears in The Killing Joke. There was a costume contest, and Aaron won. Interestingly, I was also the Joker, but I was wearing the mask he wore in the beginning of The Dark Knight to rob the bank. Patrick was Iggy Pop. He came to the party with a wig on and jeans, and with muscles painted on his shirtless torso.

The day after the Halloween party, Patrick and Aaron and I walked to Carousel Mall. Aaron decided to leave early to go to some gospel choir performance, but Patrick and I stayed at the mall until it closed. We love being at the mall, and could spend all day there. The next night we all went to Denny's and I had a Texican burger. It was a burger with cooked onions, jalapeno peppers, pepperjack cheese, and barbecue sauce. That thing was delicious. We got some crayons from the front and we each drew Halloween-themed pictures on the back of our paper placemats. Patrick drew a haunted house, Aaron drew a bunch of random stuff including a scarecrow, and I drew Frankenstein's monster. The waiter, who knew both Patrick and Aaron because they're regular customers there, declared me the winner of our drawing contest. We got some dessert to go (I got caramel apple crisp with vanilla ice cream), and we went back to Aaron's to watch some movies. We watched two movies I brought. Clue, and The Road Warrior. Patrick or Aaron hadn't seen either movie. Patrick and I have almost the same taste in movies so I like sharing movies with him.

Lately I've been really busy, because in addition to my part time job as a janitor, I've been painting my uncle's house in Syracuse so it's more presentable for him to sell. The best part of doing that is lunch. A couple different days I've been there, we went to the Green Hills grocery store and I got a couple slices of taco pizza from the deli and some bottles of soda. The first time I got grape soda, and the next time I got black cherry soda.

The music I've been working on recently is for my album. There's a jazzy song I have which has samples of rain and thunder in it. I've been working on a guitar solo for the climax of that song, and it's coming along great, but my fingers hurt from doing the tapping parts so much. I changed the structure of "We're All Lost In Autumn" and have been working on vocal melodies for it. I added this little bit to it (or more accurately took a bit out) so that everything drops out for a measure after the first chorus except for the guitar and then comes back in. It sounds cool, and adds a little more variety to the song. I've also been working on sort of a scrap book for my album. I am using one of my old binders from college, and I bought some dividers for it. I am making each song from my album a section in the binder. I've been putting things in there like pictures or artwork that go along with each song, and lyrical ideas, and also free-writes I do about the meaning or inspiration of each song. When I'm working on a song, I can have the binder open to that song so that I have those pictures and words right there, inspiring me. And I can keep adding more to the binder anytime I want.

So that's most everything I've been doing lately.

Yesterday was rather productive.

I'm changing the name of my music project, and over the past couple months I've been creating profiles for it on various different sites like Myspace, Facebook, Bandcamp... I've even made an Etsy page because I think it would make for an interesting store for my band's merchandise. I really dislike the various online stores made specifically for selling band merch. Having an Etsy account makes it so not only do I not have to deal with those other sites, but it will set me apart from everyone else. I'm very into the whole "do it yourself" or DIY attitude or approach, one of the things I really like about the punk. Unfortunately, many bands wanting to come off as punk do things like have very simple "punk" looking buttons and t-shirts made, but they're made by the big companies that make everyone else's merchandise too, and that punk aesthetic is just a facade, and is really contradictory to what the merchandise really is: simply merchandise made by a company to be sold to make money and that's it really.

The general attitude seems to be "We need to make a shirt to sell, let's just take a black shirt and slap a logo or picture on it. And if we make it look like someone made it with a stencil and spraypaint, it will look very punk!" One of my favorite bands is AFI, and I wish the band members themselves actually put some work into the design of their t-shirts and other items they sell. One of the new t-shirts they're selling in a package with their new album has an octopus on it. Octopi are cool and all, but what does that have to do with the album? Nothing. So since Etsy is all hand-made items, I'm going to be making a lot of really creative items people can buy, things I'd actually find interesting if one of my favorite bands were making it. This includes t-shirts that I will personally print with stencils (designed by me) as opposed to getting them printed by a company or by using cheap iron-on's. I think that would really set me apart from all the other musicians out there who just pay other people to print their shirts for them or use cheap iron-on's. And it would be something I wouldn't feel bad about selling. I'd feel like a terrible person selling someone a t-shirt when I know the graphic on it is going to fade or peel off the first time through the washing machine.

Anyway, that wasn't even the point of this blog entry. I just totally went off on a tangent. One reason yesterday was productive was because I finally have the url www.facebook.com/jacobsshadow on Facebook. They have a lot of ridiculous rules like you have to have a certain amount of fans before you can have a url, and you have to have been on facebook for a certain amount of time. If you have a newer account, it has to be verified. I actually had to get back my old account so I could make it an admin of the page so I could use it to change the url, because my new account isn't verified. So anyway, I finally got the url I want. That's important to me. The url's for all my various sites match.

The other way in which yesterday was productive was the recording I did, which I talked about in my last entry. I didn't know if any of it was usable at the time I wrote the entry, but last night I spent some trying out the clips I recorded, putting them into the song. The first one I did actually had airplane sounds in it. I don't remember there being an airplane when I was recording that one, but apparently there was, because it was loud in the recording. I used two of the six takes in the song, layered over each other, each one slightly panned to a different side. I think it sounds pretty good, and will sound even better when I record the guitar parts for real. For now it's just the demo, which has softsynth guitar sounds filling in for the real guitar parts I am going to record when I'm done writing the song. The recordings of the leaves are a little bit tinny sounding from my camera microphone, but it doesn't bother me. And I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to my music, so if it's good enough for me, it's good enough.

To me it sounds like someone walking in leaves on the recording, but maybe that's because I recorded it so I know what it is. I'm not quite sure if just anyone listening to the song when I release it will be able to tell it's someone walking in dead leaves. Maybe I'll let a few people hear it and see what they think.

Anyway, I'm going to be seeing AFI tonight with Todd and my cousin Patrick. It's hard to believe for some reason. I'm sitting here in my room right now, and sometime this evening I'll be standing in front of a stage watching AFI. Should be a good time.

Recording Leaves and ducking under ducks.

I'm home alone for most of today. I had to feed the animals since no one else was here to do it. We have a cat, a couple rabbits, and a bunch of ducks. We used to have geese, but they wandered off. When I was bringing the duck food to the duck food dishes, ducks were flying at my face. I was ducking to dodge ducks.

Most of this autumn has been really wet. It's been raining a lot. Days when it doesn't rain, it's still wet from the day or two before that it did rain. I love rain, but for several months now I had been planning activities I need to do this autumn for my album. One of them includes picking up red leaves for the album art, and I've been doing that. It's not a problem picking up wet leaves, but it would be much more pleasant collecting leaves if everything wasn't so wet. The other main activity I wanted to do was recording sounds for the album. Probably the most important one I planned to record was the sound of me walking on dead leaves to the beat of the outro of the song "We're All Lost In Autumn". For this I need dry leaves. Crispy, crunchy leaves. Not soggy leaves. The last time we had a day where everything was really dry was the day my aunts and uncle came to visit a few weeks ago, and I was thinking about recording it then, but I had to do a lot of cleaning because of my relatives' arrival, so I didn't record then. I've spent the past several soggy days wishing I had recorded that last dry day.

Finally today I decided it was dry enough to do some recording. I prepared. I had the guide track put on CD and in my CD player in my pocket, with my headphones on. I was all bundled up because it's rather chilly outside. I had my camera batteries charged. I went outside and started on the deck. The plan was to press play on the CD player to start the guide track, which I had a four-beat intro on to get the beat in my head before I started walking on the leaves, and after I press play, I'd press record on the camera, and start walking on the leaves while holding the camera. On the 17th beat of leaf walking, I would stop in my tracks, for that is to be the end of the song.

On about the third beat, the ducks started making a whole lot of duck noises. I maybe wouldn't have minded so much but not only didn't I want duck sounds in the song, but they were being so loud I think it was probably drowning out the sound of the leaves under my feet. I walked to the front of the house (the ducks were behind the house), and started recording in the driveway. I feel like they knew exactly when I was pressing play, because each time I'd try recording they'd start making a lot more noise. I got frustrated and decided to walk away from my house. I kept walking down the dirt road until I couldn't hear ducks anymore. The leaves on the dirt road weren't good enough because they were so packed down from cars driving over them.

I walked into the woods. I realize this might not have been such a good idea since I wasn't wearing bright colors and I have no idea whether or not it is hunting season. I really don't pay attention to which times of year it is legal to kill relatively defenseless animals. There were logging trails I haven't walked down before, and I walked very far down them, recording the part several times. Picking up nice red leaves whenever I saw them. When recording the sounds of nature, you really start noticing all the unnatural sounds buried beneath the natural sounds. The subtle hum of the motors in my CD player that makes the CD spin and the laser change position, the vague sound of cars a half a mile away on the main road... At one point I even heard an airplane going by. When you're waiting for an airplane to go by so you can't hear it anymore, it really takes a long time. It's like watching a pot of water on the stove waiting for it to boil.

It was kind of difficult to record what I was recording. I had to make sure I was stepping right on the beat so it will sound right in the song, and I had to be counting the 17 beats so I don't make one step too many. That's more difficult than it sounds. I also have a cold, so I had to make sure I wasn't making any sniffling sounds or coughing. I ruined a couple of takes by coughing. There were also several takes where one step out of the 17, the leaves just didn't sound right. It wasn't enough of a crunch under my feet or something, so I'd scrap those takes. I got 6 takes I think are possibly usable though, and later I'll put them on my computer and see if there's anything I can use.

When I walked back to my house, I noticed the ducks were silent again, still behind the house, so I decided to try recording again there, because the leaves just sounded so nice beneath my feet. I pressed play on my CD player and record on my camera, and by about the third beat, the ducks started making a lot of noise. I know it's just my imagination, but their duck sounds really sounded like an evil cackle, a lot like Skeletor from the 80's Masters Of The Universe cartoon. It sounded like they were laughing at me.

Surprise!

Around Saturday at noon, my dad came back from the airport with my aunt Nancy and aunt Andrea. My uncle Adam had missed his first flight that morning so he had to schedule another one. My mom and my aunt needed to go grocery shopping to get some stuff for the surprise party on Sunday, and they were going to Super Wal-Mart so I went with them. I spent the majority of the time talking to these two guys I know from high school who work in the electronics department. I usually talk to them for a while every time I see them there. I'm not really friends with them or anything, but I enjoy talking to them when I see them. It also helps me kill time while my mom's grocery shopping because she takes a long time sometimes, and there's only so much time I can spend looking at things in Wal-Mart before there's nothing else to look at. Anyway, I bought the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on DVD, and a LEGO set:


This set looks so cool. I really love all the minifigures in it, and that robot is awesome. I love the clear dome at the top, and who doesn't love red light bricks? There are so many cool LEGO sets this year. A lot of the Agents sets, the Space Police sets, and I love the new Pirate sets. I don't have any of the new Space Police or Pirate sets though. This is the first LEGO set I've bought since shortly after Christmas when I kept finding big sets on clearance at various stores.

Anyway, when we got back from Wal-Mart, Adam was at my house. It was really strange at first. I hadn't seen him in 8 years, and I was being really quiet the whole time. He is less than 3 years older than me, but he still seemed much older. He looked like you'd imagine a computer programmer to look, I guess. He had pretty ordinary glasses, a polo shirt, shorts, and some Nike sneakers, and short, curly hair. He looked like a grownup. The next day he dressed more like a kid or something, it was kind of amusing to me. Haha. Anyway, he is pretty cool. As I got more used to him, we talked a lot more. He plays guitar, so we talked about guitars and music quite a bit. His favorite bands are Tool and Chevelle. I also told him about how some of my cousins and I have been talking about making music together. We call it "cousinband" when we talk about it, but if we ever get it started, we'll probably come up with a different name. A lot of this side of the family is musically inclined, and I think I probably have the least natural talent out of everyone else in the family. I told him if we ever make some cousinband music that I'd let him know so he could make some contributions, possibly in the form of guitar parts, since he's our uncle, and he's only a little older than us so he seems more like a cousin anyway.

Speaking of being musically inclined, that evening, we played the board game Cranium. My mom and Nancy were on one team, my dad and Andrea were on another team, and I was on a team with my sister and Adam. We were doing terrible at first. We had to do so many of those "humdingers" where you have to hum the melody of a song and the other people on your team have to guess it. I am terrible at humming, and the song I had to hum was "Don't Worry, Be Happy". I thought they'd get it right away, but they didn't get it at all. Those are the only words I know to the song, by the way, so I just kept humming that part over and over again, those 6 syllables, as everyone stared at me. Haha. The time ran out, and I yelled "Don't worry, be happy!" From then on, my sister and Adam did all the humming, and they are both amazing at it. During the Pictionary-like parts of the game where someone has to draw a picture, my sister was the designated artist, seeing as how she is a really talented artist. It was really funny, because we had some old pieces of paper from when we played the game years ago, and they were just sitting around the table. She had to draw an eyeball with her eyes closed, and I guessed what it was, and then I looked over at one of the years-old pieces of paper and there was an identical eye drawn on it, so apparently she had gotten the same card when we played it a few years ago. It's funny that she's so consistent, and she didn't remember drawing that eyeball before. She also had to draw a convent at one point, and later I found an older piece of paper with an identical convent on it. She kept joking about how even though she's been taking studio art classes in college, her art skills haven't grown at all.

Adam is allergic to cats, and we have two, so he was barely able to breathe all weekend. My mom was digging through the medicine cabinet and she found some Benadryl or something for him. While looking through the cabinet, she found a plastic bag full of candy, which I'm guessing my sister stashed in there a while ago and forgot about. She's always buying candy and not finishing it or not even starting it. There was a bag of gumballs in it, and a box of gobstoppers. I asked her about the candy, and she said she didn't remember it, but that she probably did stash it there since she's always doing stuff like that. So anyway, I told her I was thinking about putting it in my Mickey Mouse gumball machine, which is older than I am. I think it's from the 60's or 70's or something. But I didn't want to put them in there without asking if I could, but she said I could. Then she was talking about how she loves old fashioned gumball machines and wants one for her apartment, and she was talking about one of those HGTV home decorating shows or something where some woman made a gumball machine into a lamp. We both agreed that that was kind of stupid, because she took something really cool and made it into something rather ordinary. I said "If you're going to make an old fashioned gumball machine into anything, you should make it into a fishbowl." and then I kept thinking about the idea, and said "You know how people put marbles in the bottom of fishbowls? You could even put marbles that look like gumballs in there." My sister loved the idea and now she says she's planning on doing it.

Anyway, we all piled into our minivan and went to the surprise party for my uncle Mike. It was actually a pretty funny excuse that the host (Dave) made for inviting Mike over. Usually for surprise parties, people do things like invite the guest of honor over for dinner or something, and they have no idea anyone else is there, but Dave came up with this elaborate story about hurting his ankle and needing to get a chair out of the attic so he needed Mike to come over and help him get the chair. So Mike was on his way over and we were all there in the living room. His family pulled up in their minivan, and got out. His family came in first while Mike was obsessing over his parking job, and they were of course in on the surprise. Dave went outside with crutches (he was faking the hurt ankle), and was talking about the chair in the attic, and we could all hear Mike talking to him about how he also hurt his back recently so he didn't know if he'd be much help, and we were all trying not to laugh inside the house so he wouldn't hear us, but everyone was giggling. He walked in the door and we all yelled "Surprise!" and he just stood there quietly with a smile on his face, but like he didn't understand yet what was going on. Then Dave set his crutches down as he was walking in the door, and was like "It's a miracle! My ankle is healed!"

I think I was actually possibly more surprised than Mike was when he walked in the door, because he had shaved his moustache off. I don't think I've ever seen him without a moustache before, except in photos of when he was really young. I think he's had a moustache since before I was born. I've seen him with a thin beard before, but never without the moustache. I still wasn't used to the moustache loss when the party was over. He also told me he's thinking about growing his hair out now that he's retired from the army. He was a bit of a hippie decades ago and had long hair.

After a while, my sister and my cousin Patrick and I walked down to Westcott street to go to the new age bookstore there. I like going in there. It used to be better like five years ago before they changed management or whatever. They had a section with books about music. I have a really good book I bought there years ago called "Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy" and one called "Sacred Sounds" about the healing powers of music. The first one is way more scientific and philosophical too, and it really interesting. The "Sacred Sounds" one has a lot of new age BS in it that I don't believe, but it's still rather interesting and has made me think about certain aspects of music in another way. Anyway, I didn't find any books I wanted this time, but it was fun going there.

We went for another walk later, and I picked up a red leaf from the ground. I've been picking up a few leaves lately since it's autumn, and the album I'm working on is very inspired by nature, autumn especially, and I want to incorporate a red leaf into the album artwork somehow. So I've been picking ones up I think look good, and I'll decide which ones I want to put in the album artwork. The one I choose will just be scanned or something I'm sure, but I was thinking about maybe taking like 10 of the others and actually preserving them somehow and putting them in the album insert for real and those would be part of the deluxe editions or something. I think that could be really cool. I've put a lot of thought into how I'm going to present my music, and I want to make it very special.

Anyway, we got a lot of group photos taken at the party, so if anyone sends them our way, I'll possibly post a few. Patrick and my sister and Mike's two kids and I were all being very silly by the end of the party even though we were all very tired. We were doing that thing from that improv comedy show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" where one person puts their arms behind their back and someone behind them puts their arms under the first person's arms. I don't know if I explained that well at all, haha. I kept having people be my arms because I was saying a lot of really funny things and making funny faces that went well with their arm movements. It's a shame more people don't know how to have fun at parties without alcohol. We were all sober and being really silly and having a lot of fun.

Adam had to leave this morning, so my mom and Andrea took him to the airport, and my dad took my sister back to her apartment. This morning while my sister was still here, she and I filled up my Mickey Mouse gumball machine with gumballs, and it was only half full, so then we put gobstoppers in it too. They are a different size than the gumballs and the gumballs say "dubble bubble" on them, so I'm not in danger of breaking my teeth on a gobstopper trying to chew it thinking it's a gumball. Haha. Here's Mickey:


I haven't been using the computer much this weekend because I've been so busy with family stuff. I think I'll work on music for quite a while, and probably put together that LEGO set today.

Second post ever.

This weekend my uncle Mike's friend (since they were kids) is throwing my uncle Mike a surprise retirement/birthday party (I think he's turning 60 or something, and he's retiring from the army). Some of my relatives that live far away are coming to stay at my house for the weekend because they can't stay at Mike's house. That would give away the surprise. A few of my aunts will be at my house as well as my uncle Adam.

These are relatives on my mom's side of the family. My father's side of the family doesn't really get along anymore, so I never see them. My mom had 6 siblings: 4 sisters and 2 brothers. My mom's parents got divorced years before I was even born, and her father married a woman that was about my mom's age. I can't remember if she was older or younger, but they're right around the same age. My grandfather and his new, young wife had two more kids. A daughter and a son. The son was actually born after my older brother was born, so my brother and I have a half uncle who's actually a bit younger than my brother.

My family goes to Florida about once a year and have since I was a kid, usually to visit my mom's sisters (3 of them live down there). We still go every year because in addition to those 3 aunts of mine that live down there, my brother also lives in the same city as one of them. He's a very talented video game designer. Anyway, when we were kids and my family would take road trips to Florida, we always stopped in Virginia to stay with my grandfather and step-grandma and their two kids, my half-uncle and half-aunt. We called them aunt Jennifer and uncle Adam despite the fact that they were both kids too. My brother and I would sleep in Adam's room and hang out with Adam while we were there. Naturally, since my brother and Adam were older than me and right around the same age as each other, I wasn't treated nicely all the time. I don't harbor any hard feelings about this though, that's just how kids are, especially boys, when there's an age difference like that. I wouldn't even be surprised if I was annoying.

In 2001, my grandfather died. I think Adam was in his first or second year of college. I thought it was very strange that my uncle was just college-age when his father died, but I guess that is what happens when you're in your 60's and have kids. So anyway, the whole family went to New Jersey for my grandfather's memorial, and we were all staying in the same hotel. That was the last time I saw Adam or Jennifer. I was 16 years old. A couple of years later, Jennifer got married, and I would have gone to the wedding except I was starting college, so I didn't get to go. After my grandfather died, and Adam and Jennifer were pretty much grownups, we didn't stop in Virginia anymore on the way to Florida, so I haven't seen them in years.

I found aunt Jennifer on facebook a while back, and I think that triggered the family getting in touch again, because just a couple days after I was having a conversation with Jennifer on facebook, her mother (my mom's stepmother, who if you remember, is about my mom's age) called my mother, just to talk. I guess it might have just been a coincidence, but I have a feeling Jennifer had told her mother that she had talked to me on facebook, so her mom decided to call my mom. Fast-forward months later, and my mom has been in contact with both Jennifer and Adam, and this surprise party for my uncle Mike was coming up. My mom invited both of them, but Jennifer can't make it, probably because her (I think 6 year old) son has school, but Adam can make it.

My mom was having trouble coming up with the sleeping arrangements since various relatives are going to be staying here, so it turns out Adam is going to be sleeping on my bedroom floor. It's like things have done a 180 or something. I used to sleep on Adam's floor, and now he's going to be sleeping on my floor. I feel very weird about it because it's been about 8 years since I've seen him, and I don't even know if he's cool or anything. I'm sure we've both changed since I last saw him (I wasn't very cool then), and I think my perception of cool has changed a lot since then. I'm 24 now, and my brother just turned 27 a week and a half ago, so that would make Adam 26, almost 27. Although the age difference doesn't seem nearly as big now as far as the numbers go, I have a feeling that he's still going to seem a lot older than me, and that to him, I'm going to seem young. He's been out living life for years, and I've been living with my parents for years.

This is sure to be an interesting weekend.

First post ever!

Some people I think are awesome, like Collin and Austin, have blogs. I felt left out.

I feel like my first post should be something special, but I can't think of anything special, so it's just going to be ordinary. Speaking of ordinary, the word "extraordinary" never sat right with me. I know what it means, but it always seems to me like it should mean "more ordinary", describing something that is exceptionally ordinary. Something so ordinary that it couldn't simply be described as being ordinary. "That's so ordinary that it's extraordinary." You know how sometimes when you say a word a bunch of times it suddenly looks like it isn't even a word anymore, because it just sounds silly. That's happening with "ordinary" right now. Who would read this blog? Seriously.

I like making popsicles out of Jell-O. Jell-O popsicles. It started out with me just using Jell-O. I made some Jell-O, but instead of putting it in the fridge to chill and solidify that way, I poured the colorful liquid into a popsicle mold and put it into the freezer to freeze and solidify that way. It's slimy and delicious, and when it melts, it doesn't drip. It just becomes Jell-O. After a few successful batches, I decided to start getting really creative. Frozen Jell-O has a really interesting texture and consistency, which reminds me of frozen banana, so I got some strawberry banana flavored Jell-O, and cut up a banana, and put it all into the popsicle mold. It was amazing. The banana and Jell-O basically became one entity when they froze. Next I tried "melon fusion" flavored Jell-O and I cut up pieces of watermelon to put in it. When I cut up the watermelon, there was a lot of excess watermelon juice, so I actually used that in place of some of the water in the making of the Jell-O. The frozen watermelon had a really strange texture, but again, it was a total success. After that, I don't know what happened. I tried mixing grape Jell-O with grape Gatorade and freezing it. Terrible. Then the other day I tried this:


One of the worst ideas I've ever had. For some reason, the Jell-O mix didn't even dissolve in the sparkling iced tea. It's too bad too, because I bet it would have tasted amazing. I wasn't feeling very confident before starting either, so I consulted my Oblique Strategies cards.


Interestingly, that was randomly picked from the deck, and it was about recipes. Probably the only card in the deck about recipes. Of course, I still didn't really know how to interpret it, so I don't think it even helped me.

Anyway, in other news, my A Fire Inside tickets came in the mail yesterday. My cousin Patrick, and my friend Todd, and I are going to see AFI on October 16th, and it's going to be a good time. It will be my fourth time seeing AFI live. It will be Patrick's second time, and Todd's second time.


I saw AFI for the first time in 2003 after Sing The Sorrow came out, and then twice again in 2006 after DecemberUnderground came out. Of the two times I saw them in 2006, one time I went with Patrick, and the other time was with Todd.