As it turns out I’m not dead. Not only that, but I haven’t even given up on blogging. I’ve just been really busy. That and most of the people that read my blog live on campus and I end up talking to them about what I would write here anyway. But, for the benefit of those who haven’t heard everything from me in person, here’s a quick recap of some of what’s been happening.

DDR

If you haven’t heard of it before, DDR is short for a series of video games called Dance Dance Revolution. The basic idea is that you stand on a four-button pad and have to hit certain buttons with your feet when arrows on the screen tell you to, all to the beat of techno songs. It sounds simple enough, but when it starts going fast and they throw in triplets and other complicated beats, it can be quite challenging.

Bubbles bought a system a while back for DDR and after hearing many glowing reports from other guys on the floor that had been to his house to play, I decided to give it a try. As it turns out, I liked it a lot. Actually, “like” probably isn’t strong enough of a word. I’m addicted. I’ve been over to Bubbles’ house every single weekend since I found out about it.

This last Friday, a group of us went over at around 8:00pm. Some left earlier, but I didn’t get back until 4:15am, and only that early because Bubbles made us leave. To be fair, we weren’t playing DDR the whole time. One of the pads had started malfunctioning, so we spent a good hour or two taking it apart, resoldering all the connections, realizing we’d done some of them backwards, resoldering them again, and adjusting the pad. However, after that pad was fixed, we were able to hook the two pads together which meant we could turn on doubles mode! Doubles mode is where there’s one player, but two pads, giving you eight arrows to keep track of. It’s the normal craziness of DDR except you’re literally running from one side of the pads to the other trying to keep up.

In short, I like DDR.

Bolt visited

On Monday, October 3, Bolt surprised us all by showing up at the YellowJacket meeting. We spent the meeting time watching his and Shroud’s Film Fest movie from last semester, “The Real Story of The YellowJacket,” then spent several hours talking in “The Pub” (Student Publications Office).

In my short time as a birder, I’ve constantly been hearing how knowledgeable Bolt is about birds and how great it is to go birding with him. Despite being quite sick at the time, I decided that I needed to use this rare opportunity to go with The Guru himself. So, after a few hours sleep, Bolt and I woke up at 6:30am, got ready, went downstairs to meet Courtney, and we were off. After missing the turnoff to Highway 254 twice, we finally found our destination. I was not disappointed in Bolt’s abilities; as soon as he stepped out of the car he had started identifying birds by their calls before he could even see them. I had a great time even though I was not nearly as good as Bolt or Courtney at spotting birds. The ones I saw well enough that i could probably identify again were:

• Chimney Swift
• Brown Thrasher
• American Crow
• Blue Jay

Which brings my life list to 12. It was great to see Bolt again, and hopefully, since he’s in Dallas now, we’ll be able to get together again before he runs off to PNG.

Fall Fest

The next week was Fall Fest. Fall Fest is an annual event at LETU where students sacrifice sleep, sanity, grades, and money in hopes of being able to promote their chosen monarch better than any other floor. This year our Queen was Sydney and our theme was superhero based with a tagline of “Super Sydney.” As usual, 41 went all out in promoting her to the campus. We constructed a 12-foot long rocket to transport her in for the week, many of the guys went around in elaborate superhero costumes (Cyclops, The Riddler, Penguin, Spiderman, The Flash, Batman, etc) all week long, we conducted a massive sidewalk and berm chalking campaign, did an awesome Air Band drama performance in Saga, and many other things. Just in case that wasn’t enough to do for the week, Fall Fest happened to fall on the same week as midterms, so things got pretty crazy. In the end, we did not win (for the first time in several years), but were very close. Ludwhig, who was nominated by G2 for King, did win though, so it was still a victory.

Dangerfield

At the end of Fall Fest week, Michael, Spork, Andrew, Schmorgan, Michaela, Ludwhig and I went with Courtney to Dangerfield State Park where her neighborhood from back home was having a campout. When we first got there, Ludwhig was very excited about playing on the swingset, so we all followed him there, picking up a few members of Courtney’s family on the way. It’s been years since I played on a swingset; I’d forgotten how much fun it was! After that we walked part of the way around the lake on a path, then came back to the camp site. For dinner, Courtney’s family generously provided us with hot dogs to roast over the camp fire and lots of other food to go with them. After dinner, we gathered around one of the fires to make s’mores and talk. It wasn’t long before the guitars came out, and we spent the rest of the night singing until it was time to go home.

41 Reunion

The next day was the 41 Reunion that the Alumni Services had put together. The reunion itself turned out to not be that big of a deal, but there were a number of surprise visits that made the weekend special. Igloo, Abu, Aduma, Sam, and many others that graduated before I got here (including some really cool guys that were here in the 80’s) all came down. Igloo stayed in my room the whole time, which was eerily similar to last year when we were roommates. I thought that having a roommate again would interrupt my routine and make it hard to get my homework done and sleep, but we’re so used to each other that it didn’t really make that big of a difference. It was really great seeing all those guys again.

Symphony

This Saturday was the Longview Symphony’s first performance of the season. As always, it was a fantastic concert. I really enjoyed the first piece, Russian Easter Overture Op. 36 by Rimsky-Korsakov. But nothing could compare to the second work they performed: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 by Barber. This piece happens to be my favorite, of any genre, ever. I’ve wanted to experience it performed live for years, and this performance did not disappoint.

Room Renovations

Because it’s Fall Break weekend, I don’t have to feel guilty about not doing homework quite yet, so I decided to get a few projects done that I’d been putting off for a while. I finally rewired some of my lighting so that people on the couch would be able to see homework without resorting to turning on the demon light, mounted my whiteboard, got my three monitor system up and running, and washed all of my dishes. It’s nice to have a clean room again.

In Closing

This took a long time to write. I doubt many, if any at all, will take the time to read the whole thing. Oh well. Maybe I should start posting smaller updates more often…