busy, busy….

It’s been a little while since my last entry. In part that’s because I haven’t felt like I had anything to say and in part that’s because things have been soooooo busy. This weekend along has been pretty manic. To start of with I took the GRE. As you might have read or heard, I’m looking to go to grad school and the GRE is the Grad equivalent of the SAT. My test was administered at a testing center on computer. The thing took just under four hours (bleh!) in a room that was far too warm for me to be wearing a sweater. The good part is that I got my scores immediately back. I didn’t do to badly (1780) but I discovered I had forgotten some basic math and managed to bomb (in my opinion at least) the verbal section of the test. That really infuriated me. I tend to consider that my strongest area. But the $#@^ test managed to ask me questions about words that I had never heard of, let alone knew. I’m seriously considering reading a dictionary cover to cover to shore up my vocabulary.

Friday night, Don (my Exect Theatre Co coconspirator) and I took in a play at UofR called Closer. Great set. Nice Blocking. But as for the play and performances… well… Great set. Nice Blocking. I can’t recommend this piece. We couldn’t tell if it was just a bad play or a bad interpretation. Probably a little of both. I ended up going out and getting a drink to wash the taste of the play out of my mouth,

Saturday morning I was up by 6.30am and driving out to the middle of no where. Actually Bath New York to be exact,; about an hour and half drive from Rochester. There, in the middle of woods and farm country, I took part in a all day intensive Kali workshop. Kali is a Filipino weapons based martial art that I have been involved with for years. We were working sticks, knives and other nasty things from 8.30am to 5.30pm. My arms and hand today are a little sore. My right palm has a burst blister protected by a Sesame St Band-Aid on it (I sorta like the juxtaposition [see GRE people I can correctly use big words!] of it). I got a huge amount out of the day. The workshop was running for another day (they’re most likely out there doing material as I write this), but I had to get back to town.

As soon as I got back I was out the door again (after a hot shower and change of clothes) to take in my former professor and good friend Peter playing as part of a Jazz Quartet. They sounded great! As of late Peter had been feeling that he might been losing his chops on the Clarinet. But he, and the folks he was playing with were really on. I was a wonderful way to cap off the day: sipping a good (though expensive) red wine, listening to a live performance of Honeysuckle Rose. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have had the second glass of wine as I nearly feel asleep during the third set.

This morning I woke up to discover that my ailing computer is in worse shape then I thought. As such I’m going to take radical steps: format the hard drive and reinstall everything. So if you don’t hear anything from me for a few more days, it’s just because I’m trying to get the computer up and running.

anyone want to make a quick $125,000?

note to readers: this is going to be a short one. Both because I have only 5 minutes to post and because a certain person *chough*tina*cough* at lunch commented that I can only write long rambling blogs

If anyone in the Rochester area reading this has a “Gold #10″ sticker from the Wegmans contest, let me know as I’ll be happy to split the $250,000 with you (as I’ve got #’s 7-9). My guess though is all the Gold 10’s ended up in the little known Wegmans in the middle of Bali.

Other than that, I’ve been sick. Now I’m feeling better. I went to Pittsburgh to see Di and check out CMU’s Interaction Design Program. I’m considering that or doing their one year HCI program + the one year interdisciplinary Social Sciences degree at University of Chicago (basically two degrees in half the time). That and I accidently cut myself demoing how to use a butterfly knife (I was borrowing one and the set up on this one was different than mine) last night at Kung Fu. There you go, everything in two paragraphs… :-)

You can’t handle it

It’s been quite the weekend. So let me start off with the weekly apology to Jenny:

I apologize in advance for any damage Aaron does to your home (or his).

Yesterday we all went bowling to celebrate Aaron’s birthday (also Patrik’s and Chuck’s). Any hoo, after failing to secure the Ninja Spiderman action figure I had hoped to (side note: How weird is the Ninja Spider concept? Basically it’s Spiderman, in his Spiderman costume, wearing a Ninja suit over it. Though that’s nowhere near as strange as the Extreme Sports Hero Spiderman.), I had to find another gift. After running out of ideas I thought: “Hey, Aaron could use some martial arts stuff….” While I was wise enough to stay away from the throwing stars, I did opt to get him two Ratan sticks that he needed for Kali practice. While that was a good idea… giving them to him in the middle of a bowling alley probably wasn’t. Thankfully, before any perminant damage was done, Jenny took control and snatched them away, mentioning something about “how these would be perfect for helping her tomatoe plants grow straight….” I don’t think she appreciated them as much as Aaron. We shall see if he has them at class tonight.

As for the rest of the weekend, Friday I was in photographer bliss. The new camera body I bought arrived late last Thursday: a Canon Elan II with Infrared focus system. The timing for it couldn’t have been any better. I’ve been shooting my friend Tony (pictured above) dj’ing for nearly two years. On Friday Tony got played Red, a big club here in town; his first crack at a large venue. While my old camera (a Rebel 2000) has more focus zones than the Elan, it can’t handle dark rooms. As the clubs usually are not the best-lit places, I typically had to rely on my eyes (which are also sketchy in low light) to focus. The result was a lot of fuzzy pictures/missed shots. Thanks to the Elan II and a 50 mm 1/1.4 lens, I finally got the chance to let auto focus do most of the work. And boy did it get a work out.. I shot about 8 rolls of film documenting the night. They’re all getting developed today… I can’t wait to get back the contact sheets. One of these days, when I get my lazy butt in gear, I throw up a gallery on this site.

Finally, I bought crack over the weekend; or the closest thing to it: a new game for my Playstation 2. Make that a “new” used game (I refuse to pay full price). It’s a fighting game called DOA:Hardcore. I love fighting games; it’s the martial artist in me. I’ve been thinking about getting it for a while and finally gave in. Big Mistake. Basically Saturday evening and Sunday were lost to it. After getting home from my night out last night I decided to play a few rounds. Again, Big Mistake…. I finally pulled myself away and looked at the clock. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was almost 1.00am. My name is Matt and I’m an addict…