Current happenings in the life of BroEl‏

I was actually going to make a post similar to this one over on ArizUtaku back when school started back up again, but I figured when I decided I was going to create this blog that I was going to save it for here, since I'll be doing much more of that sort of thing on this blog.

Well life is pretty much just your typical standard everyday happenings of events.  Mostly just dealing with school and homework and such, balancing that with my marching/symphonic band schedules.  I'm of course not working right now, partly due to the fact that I'm not really wanting to have to juggle school and work at the same time unless I absolutely have to, but the other part is just simply that I both a) don't get out to find work NEARLY as much as I'd like to and b) finding work comes pretty hard in the first place.  Plus that and this past summer has really been full of certain happenings that have been occupying my mind that we won't go into too much detail as to what they are...... So unfortunately, even though I was hoping to do that over the summer, I still find myself sadly unemployed.  But the search continues I suppose.

School has been really great so far though.  Aside from the symphonic/marchng bands, my other three accademic classes I'm taking this semester are Interpersonal & Small Group Communication, Math 1080 (Pre-Calculus), and a Library Science computer class that I have no clue what it's called, but I need to take to complete my computer litteracy general ed requirements.  I think so far my favorite class has to be the communication class.  We've been learning a whole lot about some really interesting things in the sense of the different forms of communication we all participate in, and I'm actually really liking the group aspect of it.  Mostly just because I sometimes find it much easier to do certain assignments and tests as a group, but also because it gives me a chance to interact with my fellow students more and thus have a chance to meet new people, which of course I'm always up for.  We just barely got put into our assigned groups for the rest of the semester today so I haven't really gotten that much of a chance to get to know people as well as I would like, but I can already tell from this group I was assigned to today that I'm really going to enjoy being in it.  Then there's math, which of course is math, pretty much.  Kind of a stressful class as you would immagine it would be, especially since it's the first class in a long while I've had to take every single school day.  But I think I'm handling it quite well.  The library science one is probably my least favorite though.  Kind of an easy class, and we'll be done with it by mid-October since it's what's called a "block class," but in all honesty I was kind of expecting this to be a class more centered around just simply searching through the school library's databases, and so far it's turned out to be a bit more than that.  Sometimes I swear I almost feel like she's actually trying to get us to write an actual research paper.......

And then of course there's band, which is always fun.  We're yet to have our first home game of the season so there really hasn't been much yet, but I'm quite looking forward to the season.  Band camp was really tough as it always is, but this year seemed especially so.  They're really doing a great job of working us a lot harder and I feel like we're accomplishing much more than we've seemed to typically do in the past.  We did already have our first (and only so far) on-field performance last saturday, and from what I hear it's probably one of, if not the, best ones we've ever done.  So tallent wise I'd say we're doing pretty well.  Size wise however has been quite the dissapointment.  We had these expectations and predictions that our band was supposed to be 100+ members this year, but instead we're more like 40-50 or so, which is about 10-12 or so smaller than we were last year even.  Still, it's been really fun, and hardly a disappointment at all for the actual people that are in it this year.  We already had a blast together back on saturday, and I'm looking forward to how much fun the rest of the season is going to be with these guys.  Especially with how good our football team is going to be this year.  They've already been incredibly impressive in two very close losses to FBS opponents, and judging from the fact that all our returning starters from last year's awesome team are back this year, we might even have a chance to go all the way.

My social life has been kind of so-so I guess.  Been hanging out with Peter, my best bud since the 4th grade, a whole lot lately.  It'd been a few years since I'd seen him as well before he invited me and a few other people we know to go see the midnight showing of Watchmen with me back in March, and also when he friended me on Facebook back in January, and since about then we've been hanging out a whole lot, which I really enjoy.  Add onto that the fact that I've both been reconnected with a good friend of mine from back during my freshman year of college and am making really good friends with some of his good friends and family, as well as the fact that just today I got to hang out with my cousin who I haven't seen in like, 4-5 years and her fiance, and of course not to mention all the friends I'm making in the band program, I'd say life is pretty good.  Definitely much better than it was when absolutely no one was around to hang out with a few years back....... (as much as I love all my good friends from the forums :) )

Anime and Manga has been kind of tough to come by lately though.  Mostly because of all that I've been busy with and all that has preoccupied my mind lately.  I've fallen quite a bit behind on my manga reading for one, so I'm definitely going to have to be doing some catch up pretty soon here.  I've got tons of anime sitting on my shelf that Matt has sent to me, and I hope to get around to watching them sometime, but so far all I've really had time for is the 74 episode masterpiece of a suspenseful thriller known as Monster (which is the series where the picture I'm using for this site comes from.  Quite fitting if I do say so myself. ;) ).  I was hoping to finish it before marching band camp started up, but unfortunately I only got to somewhere in the late 50s before then.  Since then I've only been able to work my way up to episode 68, which is where I stand now.  But it has just been one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had watching an anime before.  Not only does it continuously keep you on the edge of your seat dying to know what happens next (as much as a 74 episode series possibly can anyways) with all sorts of crazy plot twists all over the place, and not only is it very emotionally gripping as well, but the storyline is one of the most geniously constructed ones I've ever seen, albeit a bit draggy at times.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish it out sometime soon so I can go ahead and write up a full-on review of it over on ArizUtaku for you guys.

So, that's pretty much how my life stands for me at this point.  In the meantime, enjoy this stick figure's random killing of people.