Going to Cincinnati...

Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving for Cincinnati to interview as a doctoral candidate in composition. The drive is a little shorter than the drive to Bloomington (by about an hour or so), and I've been to Cinci many times before, so it won't be a totally new experience. I'm staying with my friend and fellow composer Tyler Walker and have a fairly busy schedule involving theory and musical theatre assistantship exams/interviews/auditions, a composition seminar, a tour of the electronic studios, a new music concert, and of course my composition interview itself.

Although I'm looking forward to reuniting with numerous friends that go to CCM, I'm actually quite nervous about the whole thing, largely due to this musical theatre audition that I feel fairly unprepared for.

Anyway, I'm taking my computer along with me, so I'll be sure to update you on the goings on in C-town (do they even call it that?). Stay tuned and expect some pics...

Early Voting

Although I was planning on voting in the Democratic Primary on Super Tuesday (February 5th) here in Georgia, I had recently heard that Advance (or Early) Voting was available from Monday through Friday of this week, thereby allowing voters to avoid the lines and vote at their convenience. Sure enough, I went this morning around 8:30 on my way back home from Candace's, and there wasn't a line at all. The whole process took me under 10 minutes and was totally stress-free.

I encourage you to look into it if the thought of standing in lines on your voting day doesn't appeal to you. Check out this government website to see a list of States offering early voting (you'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to do so).

Also, let it be known that this is the first time I've ever voted in an election, whether it be a primary, local government, or presidential election. I've been eligible to do so since the 2000 election but didn't start taking politics seriously until recently. Not to mention, Barack Obama is certainly the kind of candidate that has motivated many people to become involved, despite previous apathy or jadedness, and although he isn't the main reason I got involved, he was a large part.

Decatur

One of the things I've had to get used to when learning my way around Atlanta is that people who actually live in the city itself refer to different sections of the city as totally different areas. For instance, what they call "downtown" is actually just a small part of what us suburbanites call downtown (which would be the whole city, since we consider ourselves to live in Atlanta too). Anyway, one of these areas that is kinda borderline downtown, even for a suburbanite, is Decatur, which has its own downtown sqaure area. Granted, there are plenty of smaller municipalities in the suburbs that have their own downtown (i.e. Marietta, Roswell, and Alpharetta, to name a few), but the difference with Decatur is that it's right next to Atlanta (whereas the suburbs are separated by miles of residential areas).

Anyway, Candace and I went to Decatur the other day for my first time, going to a restaurant/bar that I had been told numerous times I needed to check out: The Brick Store Pub. It's this unassuming and cleanish place that serves okay food but has an INCREDIBLE list of beers...probably around half of them Belgian, complete with brief descriptions of each. That had so many beers there that it's easy to get overwhelmed, but I definitely plan on going back many a time, especially when they get the Decatur Beer Festival going again!

Finished Shining Force

Today I finished the Genesis game I've been playing a lot of recently, Shining Force. I believe it took me about two months or so, but it was worth it. Actually, it's probably a really good thing for me not to have it as a distraction right now, as I'm supposed to be preparing for my doctoral interview trip in Cincinnati and finishing this two clarinets and electronics piece for a friend in The Netherlands that's way overdue.

Overall, Shining Force was really fun, although with this sort of game where you're building up a team's statistics it always happens that you barely get to use them once they're at their top levels (due to the fact that it's almost impossible to get them that good before the end). And although I'm excited to get started playing Shining Force 2 when I return from my trip, it's a little bit of a bummer that I'll have to use a brand new team that's totally green. Oh well. It'll still be fun, I'm sure!

Untraceable

Last night, Candace and I saw Untraceable, a quasi-torture-porn film (as in Saw or Hostel) that centers around a killer who places innocent victims in torture devices which harm them more for each person that views their ordeal live on the streaming website the killer has set up. Ultimately, the film wasn't nearly as creative as Saw or as violent as any of the torture-porn films I've seen, but it did manage to have a sort of message, one condemning our society for partaking in activities like celebrity gossip and reality TV.

Anyway, the really interesting thing about seeing this film had nothing to do with the film at all, but rather the theatre itself. Candace decided we should go see this one at the Buckhead Backlot theatres, which despite its name is actually quite nice. The special thing about this theatre though is that you sit at tables arranged in graduated tiers to help recreate the stadium seating experience of a typical movie. While at these tables, you are waited on by numerous servers through whom you can order both full meals, alcohol, and all of the typical movie-going fare. At first I was a bit apprehensive about this, being a movie snob who doesn't like to be interrupted and all, but I eventually warmed up to the idea and think I'll probably go back sometime soon...

Refining My "Crate"

One of the focal points of my life right now, especially as far as music is concerned, is DJing. I've already done a couple house parties since I've moved here, and I'm scheduled to do more in the upcoming months. So, I've been spending a lot of time lately listening to my dance music in an attempt to determine what I should take with me to my gigs. See, when a DJ uses vinyl, he could only bring so many LPs with him (in a single crate) due to weight and size restrictions. Granted, I only use CDs, which are significantly more portable, but I still like to make sure I only bring my very best stuff to my gigs, leaving out MANY albums in my collection for the sake of quality.

At this point, I'm actually refining my collection even further by going through all the CDs that made it into my gigging case and sorting through and identifying the tracks that I consider to be my very best...in other words, the kind of tracks I would pretty much play every time I spin. Now, you could ask me why I don't just burn these top tracks onto a few CDs and just take those...well, I typically pick tracks live, based on the vibe at any given moment, so it's just much more practical to take a look in my case, seeing only one or two tracks per CD that I would consider spinning, not a whole disc of great tracks where it would be very hard to remember the arbitrary order in which I burned them.

Overall, this process is really fun for me and makes me value my collection that much more.

Musical Theatre Music

I only applied to one doctoral program for next Fall, and the one I applied to (The College-Conservatory of Music at The University of Cincinnati) happens to be one of the best musical theatre schools in the country. So, it's not all that surprising that one of their available graduate assistantships is in musical theatre accompanying, a type of piano playing that is MUCH different from classical accompanying. See, unlike classical accompanying, which is strictly traditional notation based, musical theatre accompanying involves a lot of quasi-improvisation using pop/jazz lead charts, something that I was trained to do WAY better than I can sight-read classical music.

So, I figured that in addition to interviewing as a theory TA, I would also give this one a shot. To prepare, I went out today and bought a book with about 75 Broadway hits for me to try to sight-read through, also picking one for prepared performance. I have NO CLUE how good I'll be at all this compared with whomever else is trying out, especially considering I don't know much about Broadway itself or its repertoire, but I figured it was worth a shot...

I'll let you know how it goes...

iTunes 7.6

While I'm on the topic of frustrating technological problems I've encountered recently, last week I upgraded to iTunes 7.6 for Mac, assuming (like most Mac upgrades) that I would be safe in so doing. How wrong I was! The new version is causing problems for Mac users everywhere (as seen on the discussion forums), mainly involving the Not-Responding Pinwheel (the Mac equivalent of the hour glass on Windows) appearing very frequently when trying to browse through your collection. Granted, you can usually listen straight through an album/playlist with no problem at all, but if you want to do anything more, don't upgrade until they've released a fix. Granted, I guess with my hard drive out right now, it doesn't really matter anymore, but still...

External Hard Drive Woes...

My external hard drive, a German-made (purchased in The Netherlands) Trekstor, has been giving me a lot of grief lately. To start, I didn't finally make the plunge to buy a hard drive until I was in Europe (thinking I was going to live there indefinitely), so upon moving back I already had to deal with using a power adapter. Then, a couple months into being home, I somehow managed to irreparably bend one of the pin connectors for the power supply, thereby making it impossible for me to turn the unit on. This problem was only ascerbated by the fact that Trekstor took the better part of three months or so to finally get my replacement part to me (which happened only recently).

So, after that I thought I was in the clear, but today I dropped the unit a couple feet from my desk to my fairly-heavy carpet in what appeared to be a generally mild fall, but now for some reason my Mac won't recognize that the hard drive is plugged in at all! Ugh.

I know most people just use their external hard drives for backup purposes, but I use mine as my only non-iPod source of my iTunes library (i.e. I don't have another copy on my computer itself), so whenever I lose my hard drive, I also lose my ability to listen to music on my computer and my ability to update my iPod the way I prefer.

What a mess...hopefully Trekstor will be better about getting in touch with me this time...

Shining Force

Ever since I got my Mac last May and therefore had lost the official version of Minesweeper that comes with Windows, I've essentially had nothing to fill my role of mindless gaming that I can do while listening to godless amounts of music. I mean, last year, I played Minesweeper so much that I was able to listen to my whole 90-disc+ Philip Glass collection and rate each piece on my iTunes playlist.

Enter Shining Force, an old game for Sega Genesis that I was obsessed with back then and have now become re-obsessed with now that I'm religiously playing the emulator version. I just turn the sound off, put on my iTunes, and have at it. The game, a Japanese-style RPG, is perfect for mindless playing because you can save each time you finish a battle with your band of warriors, and if you do it right, you can exit each battle just before you finish it, only to have to do it again, just so that you can build your characters' stats up without finishing the game.

Right now, I'm on the last chapter (of eight) in the game, and I'm currently building all my guys up to level 20. The great news is that even though I'll be sad to finally finish the game after all my hard work, there's a Shining Force 2 for Genesis as well, so I'll just have to start all over with another band of troops! =)

There Will Be Blood

Last night, Greg and I saw There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel Oil, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays a somewhat similar role to that he played in Gangs of New York. I'm not usually a fan of period films from American history, but this one had gotten great reviews, and Daniel Day-Lewis is a pretty amazing actor, so I went anyway.

As you could expect, Day-Lewis' performance in this monstrous film over two and a half hours in length was nothing short of stellar, especially considering it was more or less a monologue. For this (his acting), I certainly think the film deserved some nominations. Also, the performance of the supporting role of the crazy preacher played by Paul Dano was quite fantastic. Finally, the music, oddly-enough composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood (their guitarist), was quite possibly the best soundtrack I've heard in a long time.

Other than this though, the film seemed a bit pointless, appearing to shift loosely from scene to scene, leaving me with very little to take home. This is most-likely due to the excessive length and dry narrative style (hell, even Greg managed to nod off during the beginning), but I would like to keep my judgments reserved a while longer for this one, especially considering how much all the critics seemed to like it. Maybe some sort of foreknowledge of Sinclair's novel would have helped, but right now I'm left a little bit in the dark as to why this film is supposedly so powerful. Sometimes I think we give too much credit to single performances when we should be looking at the film as a whole (or maybe that's just the composer in me talking...).

MLK Day

Happy MLK Day! Unfortunately, I'm only starting to really appreciate this holiday now that I'm a huge Barack supporter and have lived in Europe, which everyone has noticed was a liberalizing agent on me. Even still, I haven't done much to celebrate the day other than watch the video of Barack's speech he gave yesterday at MLK's Ebenezer Baptist Church here in Atlanta and watching a little bit about MLK's assassination on the History Channel. I really feel like I've taken this man's work for granted in my adult life thus far, especially considering I live in Atlanta where it all began (and we have a nice memorial center here).

The most poignant moment I've ever had when reflecting on MLK was during the performance of Philip Glass' opera Satyagraha this past April in London, the last act of which is presided over (so to speak) by the character of Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. That visual combined with the fantastic music of the last scene, made for a really striking experience.

One interesting thing that keeps ringing through my head is something I heard another black preacher say at that Obama rally I went to a couple weeks ago. He pointed out how interesting it is that if Barack is elected president this year, it will have been exactly 40 years since MLK's death, almost symbolically being some sort of end to 40 years of wandering through the wilderness, so to speak.

Interesting...

Paramore

If you kept up with my Holland blog, you'll probably know that I like to keep you up to date with my recent musical obsessions. Easily my big guilty pleasure band since I've been back in the ATL has been the pop-punk band Paramore. I had heard their big single "Misery Business" before, originally not thinking much of it, but once I saw the video below of them performing it acoustically, I became immensely drawn to their singer's incredibly charismatic and genuine 'stage' pressence. See what I mean:



So, after much YouTubing, I finally picked up their big album, Riot, only to be even more impressed. In my opinion the best song on the album is easily the current single "Crushcrushcrush", here also seen as an impressive live video.

And the most incredible thing about this band, by far, is that they're still in high school...

Snow Day No.2

Yesterday, we got snow again in Atlanta. My mom pointed out that it's very rare that we get snow twice in one week like this. Fortunately, I thus far have yet to get in any serious traffic again like I did on Wednesday, and I hope it stays that way.

Ultimately, the weather is kinda nice, really. It reminds me of my time in Bloomington, and snow always looks beautiful wherever it falls. And because it's Atlanta, it'll never really be a problem (other than the traffic, at least). The only question that arises is whether or not I need to be trying to replace my lost Express jacket that I lost just before leaving for Bloomington a couple weeks ago. See, other than this temporary wintry weather, it's not really cold enough to necessitate buying a new one. I miss that jacket though...regardless of how much I really need it.

The Blue Blazer

This is an old story, but as I hadn't yet covered it on this blog and it is a big part of my new lifestyle in America, I thought I might as well talk a little about my new car. I now proudly drive a VERY blue 2007 Toyota Matrix. My main attraction to this car was its superb combination of both "trunk" space (being a hatchback, it's not really a trunk) and its higher fuel efficiency than my two previous SUV's.

I'll leave the rest of it to my Facebook album, also fairly old:

The Blue Blazer

Snow in Atlanta

Yesterday the relatively unthinkable happened: it snowed in Atlanta. The funny thing was the ground temperature wasn't even down to 32 degrees, but I guess the air temperature was cold enough. I'm not exactly sure how much snow we got...maybe half an inch (?), but it's all gone now.

The real problem here wasn't the snow itself, but the people reacting to the snow. See, it was rush hour when it started snowing, which is also when I happen to make my weekly drive out to Johns Creek, the distant Atlanta suburb where I teach at the Korean school. Ordinarily, it takes me a little under an hour to get out there during rush hour, but this time it took about an hour and 45 minutes, making me miss my first lesson (which I'll have to make up later). The crazy thing about the traffic wasn't that there was some construction or an accident. No, the vast majority of the traffic was simply due to Atlantans freaking out when they saw snow. The better part of my ride was spent going 5 MPH simply because, as Greg so aptly put it, when it snows in Georgia, everyone thinks it's the Apocalypse.

Suffice it to say that I was really pissed off, but by the time the night was over, I had cooled down (no pun intended). I'm just hoping I don't have to deal with Atlanta drivers in snow again any time soon, especially not when making my already too distant commute to an underpaying job...

Sweeney Todd

Candace and I went on a dinner and a movie date last night that was funded by gift cards and free tickets given to me by my sister for Christmas. The movie we chose (surprisingly our first movie in the theatre together) was Tim Burton's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd. Being a fan of both Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, I had high hopes for this one, even though I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. My expectations were that it would be dark, that there would be lots of blood, that it was somewhat musical (I was expecting it to be more like Moulin Rouge, not knowing it was originally a real musical), and that Sacha Baron Cohen was in it.

Overall, even though it got good ratings, I kind of thought it was a bit pointless. The excessive blood was fine (and almost a little funny), but the story and characters failed to grab me, leaving me feeling a bit indifferent to the film. All this said, I DO think the music was pretty great, especially the melodies sung by the two protagonist males in the film. This makes me wonder if the problems I had with the film were due to the direction or the original musical itself...

I suppose this film is worth seeing, especially considering so many other people seemed to love it, but it just left me cold and a tiny bit creeped out (but mainly because we were the only people in the theatre and the whole mall was closed when we left...).

The Game of Life

Last night, Candace and I decided to have a chill night in centered around a board game that we were to go purchase at our local Target. Unfortunately, Target's board game selection is a little limited, but we narrowed it down to Mouse Trap (yes, it's still out!) and Life (sadly, Candace wasn't up for HeroScape...). So, we settled on Life, took it home, set it up, and had us a fun time. Candace absolutely dominated (even though I stole her salary, which was three times what I was making).

Hopefully this will be the start of a new collection of board games for us to share and pull out any time we feel like staying in. Good times for sure!

First Theory Class

Yesterday I gave my first theory class to some of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra kids. I was fortunate enough to have the job passed on to me by my Italian composer friend Marco who just got a job teaching in Colombia and needed to find a replacement. Anyway, for our first lesson (which I actually taught twice to accommodate a few students' All-State auditions that day that conflicted with the regular class time), I focused on getting to know where everyone stood with the material and making sure to fill in any gaps so that we would all be on the same page.

Overall, the classes went really well...we covered a lot of ground reviewing, got to know one another, and even got to move ahead a bit. Right now we're talking about cadences and nonharmonic tones. Some of the kids didn't show up though, which is frustrating as it's very hard to get everyone on the same page if not everyone is there. Still, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to start making some serious headway towards getting these kids ready for college theory.

My Father Knew Charles Ives

Last night, Candace and I went to see the Atlanta Symphony play some Adams, Ravel, and Berlioz. Overall, I was a bit surprised at my reactions to the pieces. First off, the Adams piece, a relatively new work entitled My Father Knew Charles Ives which I hadn't yet heard, was BORING AS HELL. Believe it or not, although Adams is technically one of my favorite composers, I fell asleep during his piece! Granted, it's possible I might be losing my ear for modern art music or something, but I just didn't think this piece had that much to offer.

The Ravel was his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which was actually quite incredible. And to think that just before the piece went on I was spouting my music-school bullshit about Debussy being a significantly better composer than Ravel, as if I was going to hate that piece...

Finally, the Berlioz was Symphonie Fantastique, which in my estimation is overrated and not all that "fantastique", but then again, I never was much of a fan of this period of music anyway.

So, I loved the Ravel and was bored by the rest. Kinda surprising, actually.

Writing Shorter Posts...

I've noticed my previous posts have been a bit on the long side, especially when I've added a video or pics. I'll see what I can do about that...

Starting now. =)

Electro

Dance music has kind of taken over my life at the moment, or at least the entertainment portion of it. Although in the past I've seemed to go in spurts when it comes to my interest in dance music, I seem to have settled into a more or less long-term stage that's already lasted for AT LEAST the past four months, if not much longer.

Previously, my subgenre of choice in dance music was trance, but after having spent so much time in The Netherlands where electro is getting really popular, electro is now virtually all I listen to. It's hard to describe a style of music to the average person without offering some musical examples, but if I had to boil it down to one sentence, I would say the following:

Electro is an offshoot of house music (therefore having an average BPM of 130) which combines 80's style synthesizer and rock textures in a noticeably reductionist (even for dance) yet still in-your-face fashion, often rhythmically defined by quasi-robotic patterns and syncopations.

Okay, so that sounds like a bunch of music bullshit, but whatever. =) My favorite thing about electro is that it seems to combine the best of both rock and dance music without seeming like a faddish blend of the two. Therefore, I feel electro, unlike many other dance styles, will actually appeal to the average listener, even the average American (who tends to dislike traditional European dance music by-and-large).

Anyway, all this said, I'm going to leave you with a YouTube clip of the radio edit of my favorite electro song, David Guetta's "Love is Gone." It might not seem to live up to everything I said (you would need to hear a more representative group of songs for that to be true), but it's still fantastic to me, and the video's kinda funny. Enjoy:

Creating My New Social Circle

The main reason I initially wanted to move to Bloomington instead of staying in Atlanta upon my return from The Netherlands was that the deep social circle I was lacking so greatly in The Netherlands (especially until my last few months there) would have been most easily remedied with my friends from IU that still live and study in Bloomington. Although this IS true, I had given too little credit to my old contacts in Atlanta. See, during my undergrad years being in my long-term relationship with Julie, I managed to push away virtually all of my friends from high school, while simultaneously being content enough with my insular relationship with her that I didn't make many new friends, ultimately leaving me a bit friendless post-breakup. So, when I thought about returning to Atlanta, I just saw my hometown as a sort of past friendships graveyard (with a few exceptions) with very little promise over anything greater.

All this said, once I decided to stay here (mainly for professional and financial reasons), I took it upon myself to try to reinsert myself into the social scene here, using Facebook as my main tool. In a way, I almost treated the whole thing like a giant friends-oriented dating process, sending old acquaintances from high school messages informing them that I had just returned from Europe and that I was trying to see who all was still around the Atlanta-area, concluding my message with a simple (and intentionally ambiguous) "we should catch up sometime." This left the ball in their court: if they thought I meant we should just update one another via email, we could do that, but if they thought I meant we should get drinks sometime, that was also possible.

So, I went on many a first-date-like drink get-togethers with a bunch of old classmates, and just like real dating, by the time the night was over, you could usually tell with whom you felt a connection and with whom you didn't. Granted, now that I've started dating Candace, I haven't had the vast amounts of free time I had earlier to just go out with random friends from high school, but there are certainly a number of people I reconnected with over these past few months that I am looking forward to catching up with soon. Ultimately, this whole plan worked quite well, and now I feel very connected to what's going on here in my unexpectedly exciting hometown.

Supporting Barack

Last night, Greg and I went to a Barack Obama gathering (pictured above) to watch CNN as the New Hampshire primary results came in. The event was held at The Verve Lounge downtown. It was a bit crowded, but it was nice to stand amongst other Obama supporters.

I was disappointed by our near loss to Hillary last night, but after Iowa (and the fact that last night was very close), I have high hopes that Obama might be able to take the nation as the Democratic Presidential candidate.

In case you haven't heard much about Obama, here's a great first video (actually in two parts) to check out, his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

Making Money

One of the main reasons I decided to stay in Atlanta instead of moving to either Bloomington or California was that I felt my fairly strong list of connections here in my hometown would make it easiest for me to get some sort of freelance career rolling. Sure enough, the vast majority of my current money-making engagements are through connections. My gigs at the moment include the following:

Teaching Privately
I currently have one composition/theory student, one guitar student, and four piano students, all of which I found through personal promotion via flyers I put in private mailboxes in local neighborhoods.

Teaching at NAC
One day a week I teach three piano students at a Korean school in Johns Creek (one of the distant suburbs of Atlanta). The 45-minute drive is a bit of a pain, and the pay isn't nearly as good as with teaching privately, but all of my lessons are back to back, so it's not so bad. Plus, they've been continuously getting me new students, so pretty soon this might be significantly more lucrative.

College-Prep Theory Teacher for ASYO
My best-paying gig (at least rate-wise) is teaching a quasi-AP Theory class to some of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra's potential music majors. The only negative to this job is that it's semester-based, so if after Spring semester we don't come up with another class for me to teach in the Summer, I'm not going to be generating any income from this job until next Spring.

Random Gigging
Like any freelance musician, I'm always up for taking random one-off gigs such as playing piano for parties, DJing, working with the UGA CORE Modern Dance Company, copying work, and whatever else might come my way.

Dance Class Accompanying
Although this hasn't yet begun, I'm scheduled to start accompanying for a weekly dance class run by my friend and collaborator, Beth Lewis. Accompanying in this context is actually better described as live free improvisation with a pulse, which I always find really fun.

Piano Class Instructor
Although this is just starting to get off the ground, I have been hired as the piano class instructor for the Breve Music Centre (also in Johns Creek) where I'll eventually be teaching older adults piano in classes of a maximum of eight students. One atypical side to my job description is that I'm also in charge of recruiting my students from a list of local Active Adult Communities. Thus far, nothing has been set in stone yet, but we're still working on it.

Bloomington Trip (Day 4)

Well, our trip has now come to an end. Today was essentially just a self-explanatory travel day, getting a mediocre brunch at Scholar's Inn in Bloomington and doing dinner at Panera in Nashville. Upon arriving around 10:00 pm, Candace got to meet the family for the first time. All in all, the trip was fun, and we got to cover a lot of ground, meeting a number of my friends and seeing all the essential sights. Here's a Facebook album covering much of it:

Indiana Trip with Candace

Thanks again to Dave and Carla for letting us stay with them!

Bloomington Trip (Day 3)

Our last full day in Bloomington was spent by first getting bagels at the Bloomington Bagel Company with Dave for breakfast and then heading towards Indianapolis, stopping on our way at the Oliver Winery where we had some free tastings and a tour of the facilities. Once in Indy, we spent the vast majority of our time at Circle Center Mall, which is interesting if only because the mall is built into the city, being on the second and third floors of several city blocks and connected by indoor bridges. We shopped a lot, stopping to get lunch at Penn Station, and ending our mall visit at H+M, which I LOVED in Europe and have been dying to go to since I came back (one or two are arriving in Atlanta this Spring).

After returning to Bloomington, we listened to Dave's recent recording of Re-Callings just before heading out to La Charreada (note: NOT La Torre) to meet up with Adam and Lauren (and eventually Iddo and Sophie) for some Mexican. Once back, Dave showed us Dance Dance Revolution, on which Dave has acquired some serious mad skills (I sucked pretty badly though). This reminds me that that morning Dave also showed me Nintendo Wii for the first time...we played Wii Sports: Bowling, Boxing, and Tennis, all of which were pretty fun. Anyway, after DDR, to finish off the trip right, Dave and I played a game of Magic, somewhat attempting to explain the game to Candace as we went along. Naturally, Dave won.

Today, we're driving back to Atlanta, but I'll try to journal twice sometime soon in order to catch up with my posting.

Bloomington Trip (Day 2)

We're now halfway through our trip, and I feel like it's already going by too quickly. Yesterday was pretty much just Candace and my day around Bloomington alone, starting with breakfast at the Runcible Spoon, then showing her around campus/downtown, meanwhile getting lunch at Falafels.

After chilling at Dave and Carla's for a bit, we grabbed a late dinner at Upland before trying to get some drinks out. We initially tried getting into Upstairs, but the guy carding wouldn't let Candace in on account of her sun-baked hologram on her otherwise normal (and totally legit) license. Fortunately, we got into the next place we tried (Nick's), but the night could have turned pretty sour had we not been able to get in anywhere.

Today's going to be a little more active, and hopefully we'll be able to hang out with some more of my friends, especially considering it's our last full day in town.

Bloomington Trip (Day 1)

Well, Candace and I are now hanging out at Dave and Carla's place in Bloomington after a full day of driving and then an evening of catching up with everyone. As usual, we stopped in Nashville for refueling and lunch, but since I recently lost my heavier jacket and we knew Bloomington was going to be cold, we spent some time in a nearby mall looking for jackets. There, while in JC Penny, we were approached by a woman working there who said someone had accused us of doing something wrong, an accusation which utterly baffled us considering we had been in the store for only three minutes and had walked straight to the jackets. Anyway, we felt a bit uncomfortable, so we just took off, jacketless.

After arriving in Bloomington, we headed over to Dave and Carla's where they treated us to a delicious meal before we all headed out to The Vid (a local bar) where we met up with Estel and his girlfriend Alyssa. The bar wasn't very packed (being the Thursday before Spring semester begins), but we had a good time catching up (which inevitably involves making fun of me as much as possible). =)

Bloomington Trip No.3

Tomorrow my girlfriend Candace and I will be leaving for a three night visit to my graduate school, Indiana University. This will be the third time I've visited B-town since leaving permanently about a year and a half ago. My goal is to try to visit three to four times a year (as time and finances allow) until all of my friends have moved onto other places. As always, I'll be staying with Dave (for which I'm always grateful), and we're catching everyone just before Spring semester starts, so hopefully we'll get a lot of time to hang out with whomever will be in town by then.

Candace and I have a few things planned, and I'll try to take some pics to post here (via Facebook) when I return. Also, I'll try to blog while there, but I can't guarantee anything...

Happy New Year (and Blog)!

For those of you who followed my exploits in Holland at Ryan is in Holland, the time has come to move on. As you probably know, I moved back to the USA almost four months ago, and although I have occasionally posted on my old blog concerning unresolved Dutch-related matters, my recent blog presence on the internet has been lacking. So, with what amounts to the closest thing you'll see me do in respect to a New Year's resolution, here I am starting my new Atlanta-based blog on January 1st, 2008!

As we speak, my family is about to sit down to the traditional (and therefore dreaded) Southern New Year's dinner of collard greens and black-eyed peas (ick!), so I'm gonna keep this one short, but hopefully I'll be able to update this blog with the frequency I managed on the old one. I'm just a little afraid my life now isn't all that interesting by comparison though...