www.BrettDaniel.com

Please excuse the joyous screaming. I just now finished my speech project outline after only about five straight hours of work. I keep thinking that this is what college next year will be like, but then I just get depressed. Oh well. Hopefully the actual presentation tomorrow goes well.

Unfortunately I hadn't been able to access the server all day today, so I didn't get a chance to mention going with Katie to Big Sur's rocking concert yesterday evening. I gave the manager one of my CDs while I was there, so hopefully I may be getting a gig sooner or later. And speaking of music, I relaxed a little more than I probably should have today and wrote the beginning of a new song. Every once in a while I get that flash of inspiration and pull a song completely out of the blue. It doesn't happen very often, but it feels good when it does. After that, my family and I headed out to the school's Top 25 Banquet.

The Top 25 Banquet is the annual awards ceremony honoring, appropriately enough, the top 25 graduating seniors. I, along with the 24 other recipients, had chosen our two most influential teachers to attend. I chose my counselor and junior high science teacher.

The banquet began with a little photo session and mingling time then moved on to the opening speech, invocation (which I gave), and delicious buffet dinner. After that, we began the actual awards presentation. Each student got a nifty paperweight/plaque inscribed with "Top 25" and his or her name. The teachers got plaques incribed with a paragraph on why their student chose them. Little did we seniors know, but each of us had to read aloud what we had written. Some tears flowed, clapping followed, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

I decided to get rid of the photoblog to the right because it just seemed to stagnate without any new pictures. That, and I didn't think it fit very well in the overall design of the site. I plan to leave the archives up for a little while longer.

Two interesting points of note: First, there was a gigantic brush fire about a mile down the street from the school today. I think someone set it to clear out some of the underbrush because I didn't see any fire trucks nearby. Second, my house got a new driveway poured today. My parents have decided that this summer will be the home improvement summer, and their first order of business was to replace our cracked and broken driveway. Now tlive're moving on to their next task, repainting the house.

I try not to write about my bad experiences here on my weblog/journal because I usually don't want them published and archived for all to see. However tonight I feel I need to write something about the new PA using a Diskman. This setup worked well in theory, but when I got out on stage, Murphy's Law absolutely killed me. Here is the breakdown of my performance:

1. I place the Diskman on my amp, forgetting that the amp vibrates, causing the Diskman to skip
2. The Diskman skips, so I move it off my amp onto a chair after flipping what I think is anti-skip switch
3. Unknown to me at the time, I instead flip the volume cut switch
4. Now my music is a quarter the volume
5. I turn upevery dial on the PA as far as it will go
6. Still not enough volume
7. I ask if there is any way I could play my CD through the house speakers – No
8. So I take the plug out of the headphone jack and put it in the line out jack, which thankfully brings the volume up enough to where I can play but not enough for the audience to hear it correctly
9. I finally start playing, but my timing throughout the song is completely screwed up.
10. I basically improv my way through to the end.

I have never, ever had such a bad performance. Had it been a concert for a couple friends, I would have taken all tonight's mistakes as a learning experience. However this was a royal screwup. What people heard tonight was not the same piece that I played for the contest.

*Sigh*

All that aside, the rest of the acts were great. I couldn't possibly list all the good things I saw tonight (at least I've listed the bad things), but suffice to say I had a great time watching the talent show. Congratulations to Iris and Papa Smurf and the Puddins for their honorable mentions.

Every once in a while I get a day filled so full that I wish I could spread it out into two or three. Today was one of those days. Because I missed school yesterday, I came home with an unusually large amount of makeup work to do. However, I couldn't do it this afternoon because I scheduled the speech project's required interview for 5:00. My partner Michael and I had planned to meet at 4:00 to finish up some additional work, but with a half hour to 45 minute drive to get to the interview, we decided to head out right away. Luckily, with two quick stops for money and gas, we arrived about ten minutes early.

The interview itself went rather well. Our interviewee Michelle is a therapist and counselor, so she gave Mike and me some unique insight into the psychological impacts of our speech debate topic, corporal punishment. Mike and I have to argue in favor of corporal punishment, but unfortunately Michelle spoke strongly against it. If nothing else, she gave us an insight into what the opposing side (made up of Katie and Debbie) will probably argue.

Have I mentioned that I hate getting MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, bone scans, shots, and blood tests? Well I do. Thankfully, today's round of tests was slightly quicker and more organized than last time; I didn't have to wait around for two hours and I only had to get two shots.

Tonight the family and I went to the honor societies' awards ceremony to see Erica get admitted into the French Honor Society. We also saw Charlie's admittance into the National Thespian Society. Congratulations to you both.

Last evening, Nick and I went to see his former girlfriend (and offhand acquaintance of mine) perform a show at her school. Neither of us really knew what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised at how entertaining it was. The show consisted of a bunch of short, humorous skits kind of like Saturday Night Live but funnier. Aside from running a little longer expected, petering off in the second half, and being full of inside jokes about the school, I liked it.

As part of the current speech class project, Michael, Debbie, Katie, and I took a semi-roadtrip to a local college library to to do some research. The trip there was supposed to take only about a half an hour, but by a mixture of Michael's driving, Debbie's directions, and the confusing downtown road system, we made it to the library in just about an hour and fifteen minutes. I feel I must also mention that it was about 75° this afternoon, Michael's car didn't have air conditioning, and only one window rolled down. Luckily, the research itself took an amazingly short amount of time and each of us got everything we needed.

The return trip was far easier than the trip there. Our only problem happened when we found ourselves on a dead end street after turning right when we should have turned left. We were looking for someplace to turn around, so we decided to drive into a nearby parking lot. Unfortunately we needed a special pass to open the gates to get back out, so if it wasn't for a nice lady who opened the gate for us, we'd still be trapped there. After that excitement we made our way (in only about thirty minutes) to a restaraunt for dinner to cap off the rousing research trip. In all, we drove about two hours for just twenty minutes of research. I had fun nonetheless.

If you were lucky and happen live near me, you would have seen the video of my contest performance on the local NBC affiliate about an hour and a half ago. There is something incredibly cool about saying I was in NBC's primetime lineup. For anyone who missed it, there should be a rebroadcast on April 21 at noon.

Now then, I finally have the time and inclination to write about Saturday's prom. It began with a great home cooked dinner at Katie's house along with two other couples. We also invited Jeremy even though he decided not to go to prom this year. After dinner and a great cheesecake desert, we got a bunch of pictures taken then headed out. This year The Powers That Be decided to rent out the Childrens' Museum for prom, which I think was an inspired idea. Even though all the exhibits were closed, we had an awful lot of room to spread out.

The actual prom was, well, just like almost every other dance I've been to (just with nicer clothes). Interestingly enough, I enjoyed myself the most when a bunch of us sat around a table in the back room and told jokes. I also took a whole lot of pictures througout the evening.

After prom, Katie and I went, appropriately enough, to After Prom, a school-organized party at a local movie theater. That, I think, was my favorite part of the night. They had loads of free food, live music (which was cool despite the fact that I didn't like the band), sumo wrestling with big padded suits, limbo competitions, prizes, and of course movies. Katie and I decided to go watch Ten Things I Hate About You, which was entertaining but very much a chick flick. If nothing else, it was cool to see it on the big screen. At about 4:00 Sunday morning (after After Prom... HA!), Katie and I headed home dead tired. I hope everyone who went, expecially Katie, had a good time.

Here are some pictures:

• The three couples who ate dinner at Katie's
• The full dance floor
• Katie and Me
• Jeremy in a weird apron
• Chase and Debbie
• Heather and her date
• Jennifer and Stefan
• Mandy and Peter
• Michael and his date
• A different Michael and Dava
• Brendan without his date
• Ben with a battery and his date
• Molly and Mark
• Rachel without her date
• Ryan and Katie
• Tony and Kim
• Trevor and his date
• Sumo wrestling at After Prom

You'll have to forgive me for not writing anything about prom today; I'm still recovering. I'll probably write something tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a picture of Katie and me.

It may not seem like it from reading yesterday's post, but I'm really looking forward to Prom this evening. I'll post a rundown of the evening with pictures tomorrow after I recover.

I don't know what it was about the past week, but it seemed unusually mundane and monotonous. Sure I had two somewhat interesting events, but aside from that, nothing expecially noteworthy happened. Every day this week my alarm would go off at 6:00, I'd hit snooze three times, actually get up at 6:24, shower, eat, go to school, go to my classes, lift weights after school every other day, come home, surf, do what little homework I had (this week was awfully light), eat dinner, and go to bed. I don't know. I'm sure I did stuff; it's just that in looking back my week seemed awfully boring for some reason. Oh well. I suppose a boring week will make tomorrow's prom that much more interesting.