Pumpkins

'tis the season for pumpkins, and do I have pumpkin pictures for you!

1st Annual SOMB Pumpkin Carving Contest
Marching band had a pumpkin carving contest, which was entertaining, and I would share who the winner was, but this is my blog and I don't think that's the most interesting part. I was impressed that some of the pumpkins managed to take on alternate identities. Here are three of them:

Now, allow me to explain. South's show this year is "Pirates of the Caribbean", hence the pumpkin with the pirate is South's. North's band is tiny, therefore they have a small pumpkin. The knife is to signify that they are slowly dying (ie, getting smaller). Then, there is the Evergreen pumpkin. Large, and boring. That's Evergreen in a nutshell. Lastly, in this next picture, is the Aloha pumpkin.

This is the Aloha pumpkin because for finals at PCI, the Aloha tuba section all wore our Aussies. It was great, we like Aloha now.

Can you guess which pumpkin was mine? Well, mine was the North pumpkin, and it didn't win the contest. Actually, none of these wonderful pumpkins won, sadly. So, what did I do with my pumpkin?

Ran it over with my car of course! The *smooshing* was recorded and photographed so it could be viewed fondly in the future. Here it is!

1)

2)

3)

More Homecoming Pictures

I said I'd post more homecoming pictures as I found them. Here's one that I may have pirated off a photo gallery's website, so shhhhh. Alas, I couldn't remove the huge watermark they stamped right on top of it, sorry. I'm not that 1337 with photoshop (nor do I actually have that program :( ).

I like it, I think it's a good picture. Sorry about the watermark!

Pi!

I became a proud member of the Sprague Olympian Marching Band my freshman year , attending all home football games to cheer on the team. It didn’t take long before I noticed something quite spectacular about football games. As the time dwindled in each quarter, right between 3:15 and 3:13 left in each quarter, the number 3:14 would flash on the scoreboard. I, of course, screamed "PI!" at the top of my lungs, creating some awkward tension since I was just a freshman. My enthusiasm was not returned by my fellow students when I tried to share my overwhelming love of numbers with them. Time passed, I aged, and yet at every football game, I would still yell "PI!" with 3:14 left in each quarter. Senior year finally rolled around and I was still PI-ing it up, but . . . when the first quarter rolled around at the first game of the season, THE ENTIRE BAND YELLED PI! It was truly the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed or been a part of. I consider this mutual celebration of one of the best numbers ever to be a marching band crowning achievement. That, my blog readers, is something I truly find fun AND humorous!

Last Football Game of the Season

Tonight was the last home football game that I will ever go to in high school, quite the milestone. The football team won, yay, and the band marched and played well. We also were definitely grooving to some pep band tunes (I have way too much fun during those) but overall, things were pretty ordinary. . . .until about 4 minutes left in the 1st quarter. It is Michael tradition to always yell "PI!!!!!!!" when there are 3 minutes and 14 seconds left in the quarter. Well, this was my last shot at a home game to accomplish this, so I was ready. I even yelled to our Drum Major to not start a song until Pi was over.

3:17
3:16
3:15
[1 second long pause]
3:13

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!! The scoreboard freaking paused at freaking 3:15 and skipped freaking pi and went straight to freaking 3:13!!!!! I yelled "PI- wait, what? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" and everybody laughed and it was terrible. I don't know what would possess the scoreboard to ruin the last chance I had to cheer for pi, but it was a cruel thing to do and I will forever hate that scoreboard. Forever. Hated. Boo.

After the game we went to Sharis. I got lost on the way there, I blame my navigator, Margaret. Eventually we made it to Sharis and got seated and everything. That's when the fun began. I was sitting next to a friend who's in college now, and across from us was a freshman flute player. For anonymity's sake, we'll call her "Liz". Here is a picture of "Liz":



She's the one in the black jacket. Anyway, it came time to order DRINKS. Consider the following transcript:


Waitress: Would anybody else like something to drink?
Liz: I do!
Waitress: What do you want?
(Liz is already distracted and talking to somebody else)
Liz (upon realizing she still hadn't ordered her drink): Huh? Oh.
Waitress: What do you want?
Liz: I want a shhhhhhhhhh--
[Whole table just kinda gapes at her]
Waitress: A what?
Liz: I, I, um
Person1: A shhhhhhh-ake?
Liz: No, no, a, um, (waves hands around) a thing, that one thing.
Person2: A shake?
Person3: Liz, are you ok?
Liz (completely confused and overwhelmed by this point): I want a shhhhhhhh- root beer.
[The whole table just kinda stares at her like What in God's name is wrong with you?!?!?.]

There is a break while we wait for the drinks to come. Consider the following transcript:


Liz: Do buffaloes have wings?
Person1 (sarcastically): Of course they do, where do you think buffalo wings come from?
Liz: Really? I had no idea. (catches on that something may be amiss)
Liz (turns to ask somebody else): Do buffaloes really have wings?
Person2: Of course, duh.
Liz: Really?
Person3: Yeah, but only American buffaloes, not European ones.
Person4: Haven't you ever seen a buffalo Liz? That furry brown part by their heads is actually their wings folded up.
Liz: I had no idea, really?
Person1: Yeah, why weren't you ever taught this?


Liz continues to fret about the existence of buffalo wings and eventually turns to asking every single person at the table and asking if buffaloes have wings. We all convinced her that buffaloes do indeed have wings. We laughed a lot, Liz was completely confused.


Drinks arrived and they asked if we wanted to order FOOD. Liz's turn:


Liz: I want a shake!

[collective groan and various heads banging against the table]

Waitress: What flavor?

Liz points to the menu that only she can see: That one! Wait, I mean, strawberry.
(she leans over to the person next to her and says I forgot that she couldn't see the menu when I told her the flavor! )

(More collective groaning)


Liz did make a point of telling all of us multiple times that she wasn't stupid.


Liz: I'm not stupid.


But then she'd follow it up with statements like


Liz: I'm going to college!


And we'd all die, figuratively of course, laughing. Ah, freshmen. My college companion leaned over and said "If she were in my section I might go insane". Indeed. . . .indeed.


After dinner, it was time to go home, but I had to drive somebody home first. I'm bad at directions, really bad. It's not a big deal when people tell me how to get to their house, but getting away and back home after I drop them off is a whole different story. Well, tonight was not a good night. I had to turn left/right on 6 different streets before reaching this person's house. Oh yeah, sure, I know exactly how to get home, right! Lost in suburbia at 11 at night, lovely. So, I drove around a little bit and eventually made it onto the main street, but sheesh, come on people! Live somewhere convenient, not somewhere that's going to get me lost! Think of the directionally challenged people out there!

So that was my night, quite exciting. Football, buffaloes, and getting lost. Hope you enjoyed the entry. It's midnight now and I want to got to bed, so bye!

Calculus Prank

Backstory:
There are four of us that sit in a square in Calculus.

I'm Michael. Yesterday, the topic of Anatomy class came up and Michelle shared a story. Apparently they were passing a bleached hand skeleton around the class when somebody thought it would be entertaining to take the skeleton and run its fingers through someone else's hair. Michelle mentioned, quite emphatically, that she would flip out and kill anybody that did that to her.

During lunch that day I passed by the book fair mentioned in my previous entry and saw, AMAZINGLY, a skeleton hand toy with moveable fingers! Jake (in the picture up there) and I bought it.

I brought my camera to school the next day. Jake and I switched places in Calculus so that Jake sat behind her and I sat in a great filming location. I propped my camera on my calculus book and looked at Jake. He nodded. The following, is what happened:



Yes, it was quite the experience. One of our better pranks and a great Calculus distraction. I hope you enjoyed the video, it was very fun in person!

Today

So today I was sitting at the commons before school talking to people. Our principal, Mrs. Bower, came up behind me and pushed me. She claims it was a light push, but I insist that it was a very firm push, that resulted in me being shoved forward into the edge of the table and held there while she rubbed my back.

"Mrs. Bower, the edge of the table is kinda sharp, can I get up?"
"You baby, I didn't push you that hard"
"Um, yes you did, and the table is still sharp"
"Oh fine"

Later on, I left my second period class and *BOOM*, there was a book fair in the hall, that I swear they set up in 10 minutes. Well, the books there this year are actually decent. I bought a book called Cool Stuff: and How it works that pretty much has the neatest pictures and gadgets ever. There was also something else I bought, but I'll blog that tomorrow, because a certain blog reader can't know about it yet. It'll be a good entry!

Also, today was math league and I got 4/6, which I'm proud of. It'll help with extra credit and my Calculus grade.

Finally, I got to take a nap. Mmmmm, nap. I like naps.

That's all, a mundaine blog entry with very little substance, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. These things can't ALL be exciting, so just consider this a setup for tomorrow's entry.

Ciao!

Homecoming

Hello all. Yesterday/today was homecoming and it's time to blog it!

I got to Lacey's house at 5:30. We had some snacks, very good, and then did the boutonniere/corsage thing. The boutonniere was, evidently, hard to get on, so it took two people and one broken pin in order to get it on me. The corsage was much easier. Here's a picture of Lacey with the corsage:

Then we had the standard "Stand in front of the fireplace and smile" pictures taken. Here's that one:

No more pictures were taken by us after that, so that's all I have for now. When I get more I'll be sure to post them. After pictures we went to dinner at a golf course. They had a great soup that we both ordered (Which was kind of funny. We didn't agree to both get it, we just both ordered it). After dinner we went to the dance, which was actually quite fun. I am not a dance guy, at all. At all. But, I decided to have fun, and I figured that I didn't know anybody there (seeing as it was Lacey's homecoming and not mine), so I would do my best to be social. I met a lot of Lacey's friends, saw a guy from leadership camp (which was neat), and of course danced. Lacey had to take her shoes off (as did every other girl there) and so to avoid me absolutely crushing her feet we worked out this nifty system where during a slow dance she would just stand on my feet. Not only did that make her taller, but I could shuffle around and wander around and she just kinda stuck to me, good times!

They were selling glowsticks at the dance, but we didn't buy any. That didn't stop us from getting any, we just had to be creative i.e. beg them off people and pick them up off the ground. We ended up with a green one and a red one, those were neat. I kept the green one in my shirt pocket and the red one behind my ear. The green one in my pocket was just the perfect distance to grab in my teeth and poke Lacey with while we were dancing. That was fun, until she grabbed the other end in her mouth, stole it, and then started poking me in the face. I stopped poking her after that.

It turns out that the names of all of Lacey's friends are "Josh". I met four "Josh"s. One was scary. The rest seemed normal. We coat checked our flowers at the beginning, so after the dance we went to get them. Not wanting to puncture a lung, I just put my flower in my shirt pocket. It didn't make it out the door, don't know where it is right now, somewhere in Beaverton and not in my house. We went back to Lacey's house after the dance and chatted with the adults a little bit before heading off to Shar(r)i's.

Turns out, every band in the universe goes to Shar(r)i's after any type of event. Sorry Sprague, you're not one of a kind. Did you know that all Shar(r)i's look the same? It made me feel at home. At the restaraunt I met more people, one of whom was Adam. Adam was neat, he seemed strangely determined to win an argument with me. He didn't. Sorry Adam. But, he likes ninjas and snakes on a plane, so he's ok. Everybody at the table had a glass of water except for me, so I asked a waitress if I could have some water, explaining that I didn't have a glass.

"No".

She walked away. . . .

HEY! I want water! She never came back, so later I asked another guy, the manager, for a glass of water. He said sure, and started to get it when the waitress I asked earlier said "Don't worry, I'll get it" and then continued to do what she was doing. I said "No you won't! You didn't give it to me last time!" and then the manager chatted with her and I got my water. Finally. Lacey and I split a cheesecake sundae. Mmmm, cheesecake.

After Shar(r)i's (12:30 AM), we headed back to Lacey's house for some final good bye's and then I went home. I got to bed at about 2:00 AM, only to wake up at 8:30 the next morning for work.

Homecoming was a blast, it's the most amount of alone time I've spent with Lacey, because normally there is a parent there. I'll spare you all the lovey-dovey emotional details because that's part of my blog's credo, but rest knowing that there were lovey-dovey emotional moments. 'nuff said, hope you enjoyed the entry, Snively out.

Post Speech/Pre Dance

Welcome world, to October 21st. This is not a typical entry, this is just to let you know what is going on with me today.

Yesterday was the Willamette Speech Tournament and I gave two speeches. Both speeches were impromptu, but the first one went much better than the other. The first topic I got yesterday was a blue collar comedy quote from Ron White:

It's not that the wind's blowin, it's what the wind's blowin! -- Ron White

That was a beautiful topic because I have blue collar comedy practically memorized and new exactly what context the quote was in. I just spoke about big things being blown through the air and hitting people. My favorite was when I narrated a chase scene between an Amish girl and her house (which a hurricane had lifted off its foundation). The Amish girl lost.


A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. -- Chinese Proverb

This topic sucked. I did NOT want to take the philosophical route, so I went with the literal. I discussed different reasons why a bird would sing. I talked about finding worms, finding a new bird house, and having baby birds. At one point I flapped my arms and made bird noises. . .it was quite pitiful, but I have high hopes.

I went home after that second speech and crashed. It's now 8:22 and I'm calling the tournament ever 15 minutes to see if I made it to finals, at which point I would have to drive into Willamette and give a speech at 11:00. That'd be nice, it really would. I would be one of 6 out of 39, crazy odds.

The plan for the rest of the day involves homecoming. I'm driving to Beaverton this evening to go to the Southridge homecoming, which I am really looking forward to quite a lot. It should be a very good time, what with the music, dancing, and girlfriend :)

So yeah, that's a quick recap of what's been happening, I'll keep you posted on other stuff as it happens, ciao!

Live Blogging from Speech Tournament

Hello blog readers. It is Friday at about 9 in the morning. I am blogging from the Willamette speech tournament. I'm missing school to speech. The sad part about all of this is that my first speech isn't until 2:30, therefore I just sit and bum time off of other peoples' laptops. This is Brent Jones's laptop, I will be finding more later. I'll make sure to let you know whose laptop I'm on.

I'm doing Imptomptu today, hopefully it will be as exciting as last time. Bye bye for now!!!!!!1!

College Writing battle of the sexes

lol!!!

Over at the College Writing blog (http://spraguewriting.blogspot.com) there is a huge battle between the Men and Women for superiority. It's getting quite amusing, because here it is 11 at night and half the class is on attacking each other. There have been 40 posts in about 30 minutes! This is wonderful, the comments are worth a read, especially Nick Wales's. Enjoy!

College Application Essays

I found this neat little GIF on an MIT media lab PhD's blog. I think it is an accurate depiction of the college application essay process.

WARNING: Graphic!

Tea Party

So here's the story. On Wednesday after school I was bombarded by the girls in my section, practically begging me to come to their tea party. Call me crazy/male, but I was hesitant, but after I got home and talked to my parents they decided that I should definitely go, so I did. Today at noon I arrived at my first "Tea Party". Little did I know, it was a big deal.

It was hosted by Jessica Gamez, shown here on the left:

Note: This picture was obviously not taken at the party. . . but all three were in attendance. That's Molly there in the center and Hannah on the right.

There were going to be like 15 people there. . . and I was the only guy! Well, that just wasn't going to work, so I made a couple of decisions.

Decision 1: Get Greg (that guy that always comments in my blog, pictures to come).
Apparently he lived close to the tea location, so I grabbed a navigator, hopped into my car, and drove to what we thought was Greg's house. We weren't sure, so I grabbed my phone and called him. Here's the transcript:

RIIIIING. . . .
Me: Hello, is Greg there?
Some Person: Yeah, just a second.
Me: Greg? This is Michael.
Greg: Hello.
Me: What color is your house?
Greg: Um, tannish?
(I look at the color of the house who's driveway I'm parked in. Tannish.)
(I notice a basketball hoop)
Me: Do you have a basketball hoop in your backyard?
Greg: Um, kinda.
Me: Right, can you please come out front?
Greg: Um, ok.
(Greg walks to the car. Before he knows it, he is kidnapped and taken to the tea party)


Task 1: Mission Accomplished!

Decision 2: Get Truman.
This was easier, I just called him and told him I needed his backup. He agreed and came right over. BTW, you can read about Truman in an earlier post, I believe it's in October of last year, check the links on the right.

Task 2: Mission Accomplished!

So, now there were more guys, which made it better. Overall, the quality of the tea and tea goodies was very good. Apparently it was a real English high tea thing, with authentic food (mmmm, food). So, we wined and dined for a while and then started taking pictures. Paige (some girl there) and Truman needed pictures for a project in Creative Writing, pictures of a Soap Opera Truman wrote. This is when things got funny. There was a scene that I was supposed to attack Greg with a knife. Here's me plotting my attack:

I'm evil looking, eh? Here's me being chased by Greg because he discovered me.

Yes, I know, we're good actors. It practically looks like we froze in mid-stride, AMAZING! This is when I injured myself. You see, we were all kinda hanging out behind my car when the hostess's mom came out with a camera. This was the cue for the guys to run and hide. Well, Greg and Truman were smart and ran. I attempted to dive into the trunk of my car. Now, this is not a seemingly complicated thing to accomplish. It requires opening the trunk and leaping in. Well, somewhere between opening the trunk and leaping in, I somehow screwed up. You see, the back of the car wasn't exactly open all the way when I dove in. . .to the edge of the door . . . with my head. *Crunch* (Molly starts laughing and can't breathe). It hurt, a lot, so I had to sit down for a little bit. Here's me in my injured state:

Yeah, I'm pathetic, I know. We discovered that I had actually broken skin and was bleeding out of my head. Oh, and I had a bump on my head that was incredibly amazingly abnormally big. Yes, it was bad. Well, we eventually ventured back inside to take more pictures. Many of the pictures were nice, my favorite is this one:

Yes, I am about to assassinate Greg, poor Greg. That pretty much concluded the Tea Party, because we had to leave to go to marching band. If I remember any more good details about it, I'll update, but that's pretty much the gist of it: Truman, Greg, knives, Bump on head, Molly hyperventilating, Greg getting stabbed, and the Marching Band. Mmmmm, senior year, yes, definitely full of memories. . . and tea parties.

U of O: Festival of Bands

I'm not normally a philosophical person, but I've decided to give it a try. I'm tired of competing in marching band, I just like being in marching band and having the audience love us. Screw the scores, I want to have fun. So, that being said, I won't be griping about the scoring at U of O this year, I'll just be talking about the good stuff. . .

So, without further adeu, FOB!

Call was at 8 am and we rehearsed until about 10:00. We got a lot done, definitely cleaned some stuff in the closer that we needed to, and then we went to change into uniform.

We loaded the busses by seniority (w00t, seniority!) and I sat next to Greg, behind Jake and Hannah, and near some other people. It was during this bus ride that I discovered the absolute crazy-cool song "White and Nerdy". White and Nerdy is my official theme song now, just a heads up. The music video, is a little extreme, but most of the lyrics apply to me (because anybody that actually wants to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special is just weird). Anyway, we listened to Weird Al all the way up and had a good time.

Once we got to U of O we unloaded and changed, went to warm up, and got ready for our prelims performance. Here's me leading our sectional, giving my "inspirational" "pep" "talk" before we hit the field.

After that we marched prelims and it went very well. It was one of our better run-throughs. The drum break that I talk about in a previous post was a huge crowd pleaser, they went absolutely wild! We had our picture taken, and for the goofy one I stole all the plumes from my section and pretended to eat them, that was exciting. Then we changed and went to watch some bands. After that we ate dinner and got ready for our Finals performance. The finals performance went even better than the prelims performance, and I was very satisfied, a good final performance at U of O, because I won't get to play there again :( We changed back into street clothes and headed back to the stadium to watch more bands. On the way I bought a new OMB CD (2002). We saw a bunch of good bands, but my favorite was Grants Pass because they had UMBRELLAS! They all pulled out a blue umbrella from a holster on their uniforms and had an AMAZING visual!

After finals, the green garter band played and we all danced/moshed/pretended to know how to dance. Then we all went down a bunch of levels to the front couple of rows and pretty much just went out of control, jumping, crowd surfing, screaming, dancing, yelling. . . it was a blast!

That's me in the beanie. Notice that in the first picture I seem to be plotting something, and that in the second picture I've jumped on to the person in front of me and we're falling forward onto the kid in the black jacket. That kid in the front row of the second picture is in my section. He is screaming. He actually comments on this blog, so if you ever see a comment by "Patrick", just remember the screaming kid, ok?

Yeah, basically, that was a blast. We sang the fight song, danced the robot, and generally had fun.

The bus ride back was subdued because certain chaperones refused to believe that they had signed up on the party bus (even though it was CLEARLY labeled), so we pretty much just talked and discussed strange religions. We only had one "rave" before we got yelled at.

We got back to school at midnight and I made it home by 1 o'clock, at which point I slept. . . . . . .

That was U of O, an exciting day, with some judging issues that you can look up on OregonLive.com if you care, but I'd rather focus on the fact that it was fun and we pleased the audience, because that's what marching band is truly about.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Blog!

My blog is 1 year old today! For the last year he (I've decided it's a he) has experienced many exciting adventures and many scary problems, but he has pulled through like the best of them. He's heard about football games, defective forks, rain, fire, Truman, MIT, and countless other things, all in an attempt to help me better explain myself. And so, I raise my glass to you, Mr. Blog, and I toast you on this your 1st birthday, and I have this to say.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS YOUR 100th POST TOO?!?!?!?!?

OMG BLOG! You're growing up right before my very eyes. I want to thank everybody that has taken the time to comment on my posts, read my posts, or lie to me and say that you've read my posts. You are the folks that make this blog still thrive and the folks that have pushed it to 1 year and 100 entries. My blog is now going to relax and enjoy the rest of his birthday with a little music and some cake. Regular posting to begin again soon. So long, good night, and good luck!