I think my favorite thing about sticking with the guitar for so long (I started playing the summer before freshmen year of high school) is that I can see how I'm actually getting better at it. All throughout high school I would go to a guitar lesson every Saturday and loved it. My first teacher was Tom and he was really cool, giving me insight into what I wanted to learn and making the process easy for me.
Then after almost four years of him being my instructor I was changed to Brittany. I didn't enjoy her as my teacher as much because she wasn't teaching me what I wanted to know. She started me in on the first ideas of music theory when what I wanted to do was learn how to play some of my favorite songs then go on from there. My interest in the guitar waned a bit at that point, but I still continued to play. Senior year I was then moved to Beth and she was a teacher that I liked and who inspired me again. She understood what it was that I wanted to do and what it was that I needed to work on without me having to tell her much and the fact that she intuitively knew what was going on was cool. Starting up school for college I dropped the guitar a bit. I didn't take any lessons but I continued to play and practice in my room when I wasn't in classes. That continued on for about two years or so. Then junior year of college (or maybe it was sophomore around Christmas or so) I mentioned while looking through a music store that I always wanted to learn how to play the bass. And I had, I wanted to know how to play the electric, acoustic, and bass so I was well rounded on all three in case the time came up. I didn't think Dad would have been listening and bought me one. I was so excited (and still am, thanks Dad) when I got it that I wanted to start playing right away. And I did, I taught myself one of my favorite songs and had so much fun with it that I looked up at school (and asked Mere about private music lessons offered here, thanks for that too) and saw they were offering bass guitar lessons. I've been playing the bass for the past two years and I love it so much. I might like it even more than the electric, but I'm not sure yet. The fact that over seven (I believe) years of playing every faction of the guitar is still something I'm interested in and find excited to go practice every week. The fact I've managed to pick up things a lot quicker than I used to, and having it pointed out by my bass instructor, is really exciting for me and a great accomplishment. Especially considering I'm such a perfectionist with the guitar and hate when I do something wrong. I'm now understanding a bit of music theory, how songs are created and structured, what all of the notes on the guitar neck are, which works together and which don't, and what is a common trend in songs. A part of me really wishes I did lessons starting in freshmen year, but I'm happy and confident in the abilities that I've managed to take in over the yeras.
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Mere: I usually talk about nothing, so my blogs are mostly boring. And it's my new year's resolution to do one a day, though I'm wondering how much longer that'll last.
Anyway, not much to say about today, it was a normal class day as usual. However, there's one thing that's different. Water, lots and lots of water. And I don't mean how I'm getting back in shape (though I see that in a different way than most people) by drinking a lot of water, I mean how much the snow has melted. That's the one thing I don't like about snow. It's pretty to look at, it's good to get out of classes, but it sucks when it melts, especially all at once and it being during 60 degree weather, like it was today. The snow has melted so much that the paths to get to campus from the apartments and flooded and there's mud everywhere. The water is about two or three inches deep and I have to walk in a BIG arch to get back on path so I don't walk in mud or get water all in my shoes. You can't walk in the tunnel unless you have great rain boots (thanks Mom and Dad) because it'll go up past your ankles. Before we know it, the apartments are going to be its own island and even if we have to take a boat to get to campus, they won't cancel classes or give us leeway to be late. I get it, really, I do. It's not our teachers' jobs to baby us, but have a heart sometimes. Either that or don't make fun of me if I come to class soaking wet because I slipped in mud and fell. Not that it's happened before, it hasn't, but knowing my luck it will. But there's a bright side to everything, the rushing creek is cool to look at, and I got to wear shorts for the first time since October. It's the little things like that that put a smile on your face. (Proceeds to carry umbrella, extra clothes, and rain boots for the next few days while I still enjoy the otherwise warm weather). My four day weekend is over...I didn't do much. That's what you're supposed to do on a four day weekend, absolutely nothing. I didn't have to shovel (I bet Mom wasn't too pleased with that, if we were home we would have helped) I didn't have a lot of homework to do, and now because of that I don't have any homework to do this weekend, and I got a lot of writing done. That's the fun part, getting a lot of writing done.
Unfortunately, when I got a lot of writing done, it came at the expense that I 'messed up' a lot and had to re-do stuff over and over and over again. That's the only thing that bugs me about writing in pen sometimes. And it shows that the hardest part of being a writer is accurately getting your thoughts to the page the way you see them in your head. I can almost guarantee no one is excited to go back to classes tomorrow but look on the bright side, I only have one class tomorrow and it's only one month left until Spring Break. Man, these 100 days are flying by. Obligatory comment about the snow: Where I am we're expected to get about sixteen inches of snow...I'll be a bit upset if none of my classes are cancelled or if the school doesn't close down. I'm thinking about the commuters, here. Really. I am.
Today was a great day, actually. I only had one class I got to sleep in. Hallelujah!! My class for today was Literature of the Renaissance and we were going over the topic of the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages and how they differed from each other as well as what those different time periods meant for life for those that lived during those time periods. What really interested me was when we got onto the topic about Gods and Goddesses. I love mythology, Roman or Greek, and always find it so interesting how their stories differed from each other as well as the Roman or Greek influences changed things about them. I usually can't remember who is who or what specifically each God's or Goddess's back story was, but I always like to learn about it. If our class could consist of only that, I'd be a happy camper. It was my only class for today so I went to work afterwards which was good as well. Then at the dining hall tonight we had a dinner with Cuban and Jamaican influences with jerk chicken and some specialties. My personal favorite from tonight was the Cuban Beef Steak with Black Bean Salsa. It's probably my favorite thing in moody (apart from some of my usual favorites) and I wish we weren't just having it this month. And, I just finished my turn-in for my advanced creative writing class. My idea for the class this time is to do a series of short stories. That way I can work on getting things done in a quicker time frame/page limit and focus on how to tell the story in that frame. This time the main character is a twenty-six year old male. I want to try and write a guy because I'm not used to doing it, and I'm doing an older character because I want to try someone that would be at the age where he can be mature and immature at the same time so it'll give me a lot of leeway for specific things I want to happen. I finished the first one and I'm really excited to see what I come up with for my other turn-ins based around that character. I have a lot of inspiration for it so I hope it doesn't let me down. Haha. I hope everyone had a great day. I forgot to mention from the weekend. My sisters and I went to this Flea market that's near the school because there was a store that we were thinking of checking out before it came on campus. And let me just say, the flea market is AWESOME!!! They have everything there. Clothes, arcade games, pool tables, VHS players, VHS, record players, records, Ataris, Sega Dreamcasts, every video game you can think of, old comics and comic books, game machines that you'd find at places like Fun Land or Chuck-E-Cheese.
It was really cool, we were tehre for over and hour looking around at everything they had to offer. Of course we were recognized as being quadruplets, one woman even said that it was, "so cool, we'd throw Roanoke for a loop." Shows how much she knows, being recognized at the mall and Walmart already makes people go nuts. I always laughed whenever someone would say that we were local celebrities but I guess some people really think that? I don't know, it's kind of a weird thought to me. But like I said, I'm used to be a quadruplet so it's not a big deal to me. There was one thing, however, that I thought people exaggerated about when it came to flea markets. People really do try their hardest to sell you things. I was looking at some perfumes in one woman's shop and before I could stop her, she had grabbed my hand, sprayed the perfume on, shoved my hand in my face to smell it, stuck the bottle in my hand and said it was five dollars. I kept saying I didn't want anything (also because I had no money on me) and she wouldn't stop until I said that I'm partially allergic to perfume and can't wear it. (I wasn't lying, I am partially allergic to perfume, it triggers my asthma from time to time). There were a few other stalls where people almost wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, but it was still pretty cool, a place that I'll be visiting on the weekends more often. Also, today Mack, Mere, and I went downtown to help Mack find the music store so we could get her picks for the banjo. It was really funny, you probably had to be there, how Mere and I had our faces pressed against the window and trying to navigate the roads downtown when there was so much construction going on. We were yelling and talking over each other, trying to direct Mack where to go and she started to yell at us saying she was trying to find the place but couldn't because we were yelling at her and she didn't know who to listen to. Most of our car rides proceed like that, including laughter, music, and when we know where we're going we're a lot quieter. Take my word for it. So, on a whim, my sisters and I decided to make brownies today. We love to make desserts that we hear about and we like to eat a lot of junk food in general so we figured that since we had a big box of brownie mix sitting around, why not try to get rid of it.
First, we got into a bit of a fight to see if the eggs taht we had really wre expired or if they'd still be OK. Spoiler alert, they all appear OK but if I get sick after eating eggs tomorrow morning, we'll know why. And because the four of us can never take what each other says as complete reassurance, we went through many different ways to make sure the eggs were still fresh. 1. A cup of water. If it floats, it's bad. 2. Spinning them, if they wobble while you spin them, they're fine 3. Cracking one open and smelling it. They're fine. So we started to make the brownies and Mere and I realized that we didn't have any vegetable oil. So what do we do? We improvise. Taking some of the flavored olive oil that Mom and Dad got us from a downtown Fredericksburg store called "Taste" (it's a great store, you need to go) we put a 1/3 cup of Lemon flavored olive oil into the brownies instead of the vegetable oil. At first it tasted a lot like lemon so we put in a about four packets of hot chocolate powder into the brownie mix. There was a slight taste of lemon, but we figured it wouldn't be that bad. And hour and twelve brownies later and we have what we call a lemon brownie. Fudge Brownies with a very slight hint of lemon as an aftertaste and it's AMAZING!!!! Seriously, it's that good. I love it, the hint of lemon at the end makes them really good and enhances the flavor of fudge. If you've never tried them before, you really should. As an even bigger incentive to try this, we had three bottles of flavored olive oil to choose from: Herbs, Chipotle, and Lemon. Thank god we went with the lemon. Or else we'd probably have some really nasty brownies floating about our apartment. I forgot to add this part to my blog post yesterday:
Nametags? Really? Can't you at least TRY to figure out which one of us is which first? Ok, I know I may sound like a whiny brat at this point, but you have to think about having to deal with this just about every year ever since I started going to school. This has given me a major aversion to nametags, even when I'm doing it for a business reason. Yes, I'm a quadruplet, so it may be hard for you to figure out which one I am, but please at least try first. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have EVERYONE in the class get nametags because you don't want to single the four of us out? The worst part is that teachers that do this don't even try to figure out which ones we are first. Here are a few simple ways; we have different hair styles, wear different colors, and sit in the same place about 9 times out of 10, please at least try there first. If, after that, you can't figure me out, then give me the option of a nametag. Ok, that part of yesterday is over. Now onto today. Today was really uneventful, I went to class, I went to work, I ate dinner (which was really good today, thank god for London Broil) and then went back to my apartment to hang out with my sisters and plan on going to see the Lego movie with some friends, potentially. The only class I had today was Into to Ancient History and while it's only the second day in class, I'm already feeling a little discouraged. I feel like I'm the only one that doesn't understand what's going on in class. Our first class he just jumped in asking who came first Moses, Julius Ceaser, and Alexander the Great. I barely remembered anything from those times or knew what year specifically (B.C.) when they happened. Then we started talking about Mesopotamia today and I got even more discouraged. We were looking at laws that had been created as well as the idea of how Mesopotamia started and where it is/was situated geographically as well as who were the people that lived in specific city-states and who were the ones that created the politics and who were the first ones to write things down and specific gods that the people prayed to and I. Don't. Know. Anything. I don't recognize any of it at all, it's already making me feel upset and overwhelmed, especially because of the quizzes we have to take where dates are important and I'm not good at all... Hopefully the weekend will be very good to me. I see it as a time where I'll be happy and laughing a lot. Plus, it's supposed to snow all weekend so fingers crossed! See, I can keep a positive outlook on things. :) Is it sad that spring semester classes start tomorrow and I still don't know my schedule? Haha. Anyway, not much went on today. We just drove back to school and once again I could tell how far away we were from our final destination from how I started to lose my voice. Somewhere around the two hour mark of straight singing my voice cracks terribly and that's usually where I start to lose it.
Thankfully, it makes the trip that much shorter. Bright side, I'm getting practice done on my singing. I'm not saying that I'm good, but I'm not saying I'm terrible either. Also, I learned that it's really hard to sing lower notes. Yes, my voice is kind of deep, not like super deep, but slight deeper than a girl's voice is normally registered (up until I get worked up or start going on a rant, then my voice gets high and squeaky. I actually learned something about deeper voices on females in corolation with guys from the book The Male Brain. It's a good read and very informative. I enjoyed it, anyway. But, yeah, I was singing to the song Hanging By A Moment by Lifehouse and I prefer the deeper parts of the song (best thing about being four of us is that we can harmonize/sing different parts of the song that are our favorites and it still sounds good. I think so anyway) and it was actually pretty difficult to do. Anyway, here's the big news. There's only (about) 3 months left of the school year. February, March, April, and part of May (before exams). And those 3 months are going to fly by. I never knew that time moved so quickly, it seems just like yesterday that I was in second grade with my friends, looking at the chart that listed all of the years that students graduated in and thinking 2010 would never get there. Then freshman year I thought 2014 would never get here. Jokes' on me. So what do I have planned? Well, I'm blogging more, hope to get some more things self-published, and I'm hopefully working with an online magazine called Twin Life so that way I'll have a lot of different things to use as a writing sample if I ever need to when it comes to applying for jobs. Plus, all the extra writing will help me improve, there's always room for improvement. Forgot to mention this before, but I got a month down in my resolution of trying to blog for a year. So far, so good, though now I think I'll have more to talk about once the spring semester starts, rather than trying to find something interesting to say. You'd think that being a quadruplet there's always something going on, but we can to turn our entertainment off at some point, people. Haha.
So, yeah, Spring Semester starts Wednesday and I'm excited for it, but at the same time dreading it because there's one class that I'm not too particularly fond of taking, but have to because I put it off since freshman year so that's my own fault. And, you can't enjoy every one of your classes but I digress. I have a big grab bag for the different kinds of classes that I'm taking so it should keep me interested in some way. Plus, with the different kinds of classes, you all shot be entertained with how I'm able to keep up with my blogging, what goes on as a senior is about to graduate, and everything in between. On a side note, don't you hate it when you're writing something and it never comes out the way you want it to? That just happened with a chapter of a story I wrote and when I'm done with it, I might just delete the chapter entirely. But such is life, everything can't be perfect. You know what I never particularly understood? What gets you into different fandoms. For those that don't know what a 'fandom' is it's 'the fans of a sport or famous person'. This also includes TV shows, bands, books, movies, cartoons, anything you can think of where there's a community of people that like a specific thing, it's a fandom.
What I always wondered is what makes it that some people can get into a fandom that others may not enjoy. For example, I don't get the hype over Doctor Who or Sherlock but from being on tumblr and looking on Facebook I know it's really popular. A show like that doesn't interest me, but shows like Chicago Fire and Chicago PD (which Mere and I had just recently found as well as spent the past three days watching) are types of shoes that we can easily get into. And don't get me started on elimination game shows like Amazing Race. (I could go on and on about how much I lovee them). But what's more interesting to me, or slightly worrying depending on how you look at it, is what makes some people get so invested in the fandom that they get emotionally invested. (And when I say emotionally invested, I mean like fans that have cut themselves to get Justin Bieber's attention). I've seen people say to other people 'you're not a true [insert fandom here] fan if you don't do this, don't think this is funny, don't say this, don't act like this' and it's really ridiculous to me. The fact that people enjoy the fandom is what should be the point of watching the show or listening to the music. Some people, yes, are going to be more invested than others but should it get to the point where fans are rude to each other or let it control their lives? There are some people online that Doctor Who is all they talk about and that's it. I get they like it, but there has to be something else you're interested in. How far can fandoms go? The fact that every new celebrity or band is getting fan names (like Beliebers, Kitty Kats, Gleeks, Directioners) is making it so that it's not as fun or clever anymore and are just annoying. Am I saying that I've never felt like this or done things like this? No, you should have seen me in high school up to my freshman year of college and being a big fan of something I was proud of. Now I find it kind of silly. I can be a fan of many different things but not have to get to the point where it's all I think about or become rude to fans that haven't been in it as long as others. I think fandoms should be a place where people are welcoming to others and so everyone can just agree on enjoying whatever they're supporting. And, like writing, there's always going to be something that you like and dislike. |
About Me
Loves anything red. Rock music, playing the guitar, drawing, writing, tattoos, and sports are some of my interests and hobbies. I like to laugh, I like to think I'm funny. I talk a lot...just a warning. Archives
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