It tends to happen when I get into stressfull situations, or recall stressfull situations. It’s funny, because some stress, I can deal with without any issue. Other times, it seems like I can’t stop going over the cause of the stress/anxiety, and not matter how much I try to think my way out of it, it won’t go away. My wife knows when I’m having one of these moments, because my finguers start twitching, and they just won’t stop. It’s like I have a nervous tick or something.

Went to the walk-in clinic one day, and the doctor there gave me a trial of a pretty hard core anti-depressent, saying that it would help with the anxiety. All it did was make me very, very tired. I felt like I had no energy at all. I went to my regular doctor, and she had me try to loose weight. Something about the endorphins (sp?) that are release or something. That didn’t work either.

I don’t quite know what I’m going to do about this. I’m sure about this very self indulgent day where I’m sulking and thinking how horrible this is will go away, and tomorrow will be a better day.

That’s all we can hope for, isn’t it?

I’m gonna try getting into the exercise thing again. I recently lost 15 pounds for no apparant reason. (Yeah, you can hate me now). Oh…. hold on… might the fact that I stopped going to fast food joints regularly have been the reason. Maybe. I’ll let you decide on that.

I’m also going to try to write something into the story that accompanies this blog every day. It may (who am I kidding, it will) suck, but I’ll come back and edit every once in a while.

What am I doing lately. A lot of WoW. I’ve finally got a toon close to level 40, so I’ll be getting my mount soon. A friend of mine (thanks Darin) sent me a link to a great leveling guide, so I’ll pass it on to you now. The site is called WoWPro, and you can find it at:

http://www.wow-pro.com/

It’s helping me get through the last few levels to 40. Then… WOOHOO!!! Mount, here I come.

Well, as I said, here we go again. I hope that you hear from me soon!

Not to say that it was a bad movie. I actually quite enjoyed it. But it could have been about 30 minutes shorter.

Oh well, watcha gonna do?

Taking students that I am teaching to a competitive festival is a whole different thing though. I’m responsible for them. Not in the “They suck so it’s my fault” or the “They rock and it’s my fault” sort of way, but the “I want them to get something positive out of this.” Turns out it may not be such a positive experience after all.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Music festival work in the following way:

1) You prepare 3 piece of contrasting style, for Jazz (which is what we competed in today), it’s usually a swing chart, a ballad, and then, as my high school music teacher used to say, the “Barnburner”. This last piece is meant to be something exciting to end on.

2) You work on these piece for several months back at your school.

3) On the big day of the festival, you go to the venue and perform your piece in front of an audience, and also the Adjudicators (cue the scary music now!)

4) After your performance, you typically get a 20-45 minutes clinic with one of the adjudicators.

5) Later on that day, you receive you some suggestions and a rating from the adjudicators. The ratings go as follows: Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent, Superior.

So there you go. There is a quick and dirty run down of what a festival is like.

Today was interesting. We performed out set in the auditorium, and the sound was just… off. I don’t know if the students where very nervous, or if they just didn’t get enough warm up, but their wasn’t much energy in their playing. They played technically very well though. I enjoyed the performance and thought that it was something that the students should be proud of.

The clinic after the performance was good. The adjudicator was very knowledgeable, and praised the kids a lot. He worked with them on some things that did not seem to be very major.

After the clinic, I had many positive comments from several people who had heard out group. The students however, didn’t seemed to be very energetic about their performance. They seemed to be very…. “whatever” about it. I know, that how teenagers are about everything, but it just didn’t seem like they had enjoyed themselves.

Later on that day, when I returned to the theatre after returning the students to the school, I picked up the adjudication package.

We received a “Good” rating, and placed 5th out of 5 groups. Although I’m not too worried about the placing, the rating kind of bugged me. And not that I thought that the adjudicators had gotten it wrong (although it is funny that for everything that one adjudicator marked us “Poor” on, the other adjudicator marked us “Excellent”. It was like a game a see-saw.

The problems that I’m having at the moment is that I keep thinking about how I’m going to talk to the students about this. I know that I’m happy with out adjudication, but I feel that they will be disappointed. Especially about the placing.

What am I to do. I have a feeling that this is going to keep me up all weekend, as it is tonight. I don’t see the kids again until next Tuesday, so it’s a few days to toss and turn in bed about it.

I got my wife completely hooked into DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online). So much so that we played until 3:00am last Saturday. And I got up with the kids at 7:15 am. AHHHH!

I think I’m going to try to convince her to play WoW. It may be a little bit more… well… helpful.

More on DDO later.

Or, let me change that, I got to see Nicolas Cage trying to be Ghost Rider. Nicolas Cage tends to just act like Nicolas Cage and have the movie revolve around him.

Oh well. Now we just wait until Spider-Man 3 I guess.

I have added a new page to my blog. It is a story that I am going to write, little by little, going back to edit as I move forward.

I have always loved to write. From as early as I can remember, teachers, my parents, friends, have always told me that I was a great story teller. In fact, when my friends and I would play PnP (Pen and Paper) Role Playing Games,  I would usually be the Game Master, as I was the one who usually found it the easiest to come up with Campaigns (i.e. stories) for the the players to adventure through. I have been trying to write a story for years, and I just never find the time to write. Having three kids kind of does that to your spare time.

Anyways, when watching the “Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition” special features, I learned that Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings as a serial that he would send off to his son who was fighting in the war (I think WWII). This got me thinking of the idea of writing my story a little at a time and publishing what I had so far.

I don’t know if this is going to work. As you can see, I find it hard enough to find time to write Blog posts, so finding the time to write a story as well may be too difficult. Who know. I think I’ll just give it a try and see how it goes.

Oh, and WOO HOOO(!!!!!!). The wife just said that, if we can afford it, she’ll by me a Wii for my Birthday. YEAH! Oh, and if anyone who works for Nintendo happens to be reading this post, I would love to do a review of the Wii if you want the send me a free unit!

Have a good one.

Link here

Have a good one.