Saturday, 22nd of December, 2001
I spent the day basically at home, practicing, resting, and shuffling stuff around on my website. But later tonight I went to Andrea's house, where Eric, Andrea, Beth, and I hung out (I guess Natalie too). Beth and Andrea had beforehand put my Christmas gift together too, so we had a little gift exchanging time.
Friday, 21st of December, 2001
My band on my Timex Datalink finally broke. I'm so happy with how durable it is! But I went to the Timex Store to get the exact same band, and they had one that is very similar, but it isn't curved to hug the side of the watch like the original. So... we'll have to see if this generic design is as durable as what came with the watch, cause I really like the original band. But otherwise, the quality of the metal, if nothing else, looks better.
I went to Borders tonight for a HOP Nite, and they lined up a bunch of artists, poets, and musicians to present their stuff. Some of my friends played Music of the Night in quartet form. It seemed half the people I know were there, and a bunch of us regulars went to Il Vicino for dinner and then to the AMC-12 to view Ocean's Eleven. That movie was actually pretty cool and very entertaining. Afterwards, we all hung out at Beth's house.
Thursday, 20th of December, 2001
So I finally got this file over to my computer, scanned from an eBay ad... "Everybody needs something" I must have laughed for minutes at this.
Mom and I went to China Star buffet on Manchester today, and it was really nice. Their buffet had so many different dishes I totally overstuffed myself in food... as much as Thanksgiving dinner.
Wednesday, 19th of December, 2001
I went shopping with Hannah today, and it didn't occur to me that my brother's elementary school was singing at the Galleria until we were at the Galleria. He played some piano in the beginning too, and it sounded nice in the mall. He got to sing his solo on "Santa Claus Rock" too, which was cute and interesting. But I'd gotten most my shopping done before, and Hannah got a lot of her's done today, so it was nice.
Tonight was the Ladue High School Orchestra's winter concert. It was aweosome! They played Mozart's Divertimento K. 138, and that brought back Chamber Music Camp memories. Then they played a contemporary piece by Ives, and a string arrangement of Borodin's Nocturne. That piece is really cool too! Overall, all night, I was really surprised at how well the balance was, the violas were nice and strong, and very pleasurable to listen to. It makes me wish some of the professional recordings I own had such strong viola sound! Then they played the best Corelli concerto ever! The Concerto Grosso in G Minor No. 8! I hadn't realized exactly which Corelli they've been talking about all this time, and wow! We played some arrangement of it in 7th grade I think, but the whole thing is just so cool! Parts of that and the Elgar Serenade almost made me melt in my chair, it sounded so nice and rich. Then they finished the concert off with Sleigh Ride! Good stuff, all night, from all time periods of music. It's impossible to have anything bad to say about the selection of music for this concert. I loved it so much, guys, it was great!
So I've given up trying to get my computer to work on my parents' LAN, there's really no explanation for why I can't get an IP from the DHCP server... all the other computers seem to be fine with it. Argh, why does nothing seem to work for me at this house. Owell, instead of sitting around fighting with it just to get a 21.6k connection that we get here, I'll just pull out the 14.4 and hook it up. Hey, it's not bad at all! I mean, AIM and email doesn't take up nearly that much bandwidth.
Tuesday, 18th of December, 2001
I moved all my essential stuff out of Danforth into my wagon, as it's the last day it will be officially open. It was funny seeing all my essential stuff: computer, clothes, discs, books, things of that sort all in my car at once. Trying to get this website uploaded onto the Mindspring members web server took up a significant part of the day... enough that it wasn't worth it anymore. I uploaded onto Primary Network instead, but they don't give me as much space, so I had to scrap the Photos section was well as the journal and music. Looks like I'll be buying hosting over the summer or something. After strolling tonight, I went with Paige and Ricky to the JV Ladue vs. Kirkwood hockey game. Kirkwood squashed Ladue pretty badly, but owell, it was fun.
Monday, 17th of December, 2001
Today is all-out shopping day for me, spent some time in the Galleria and picked up gifts for people. There's actually this cool store there that I never ntoiced, Dry Ice. I was pretty impressed. And of course, there were the usuals, and I stopped regularly at Software Etc. to play this driving game on the X-Box. Weekday mornings are great for shopping, avoid the crowd and all. I bought a "Buzzclip" for my cell phone, which is a belt-clip device that detects whenever there's a strong incoming signal on the phone, and vibrates. It doesn't seem to be that neat of a gadget, though, as the button that tests the vibrator easily gets smashed and sets off a false alarm, and it's still not exactly the most compact of things when a belt-clip is not needed, and normal pocket operation is what I want. Owell, we'll see if I grow to like it, if not, it'll get returned. Tonight, I brought my brother over so we can play a little foosball and make sure things are basically working right, and it seems to be.
Sunday, 16th of December, 2001
I played a violin offertory duet with Hannah at her church, Memorial Presbyterian, this morning. In the afternoon, I went with a group of friends to see Ballet Midwest's last performance of the Nutcracker for this year. It was really cool, I hadn't actually seen Nutcracker before. Afterwards, Hannah and I started to figure out how to put together this foosball table. It's actually slightly annoying, as a lot of it uses wood screws to hold together particle board, but that's what makes it fun anyways. I finished it up later tonight, actually, and it's really pretty cool.