This Last Week

I've been spending most of my time at school, despite school not having started yet.

I think it's called Band Camp. What I get to do is stand behind a large piece of wood cut up into bits and strapped together by strings, and hit it with a piece of wood attached to rubber, with a bit of yarn wrapped around the rubber.

It's rather quite fun, if you think about it. I suppose the idea is to make the weird metal things and the odd round things sound cooler when they all get hit and spit at at the same time.

Marching Band, it's interesting.

Birth Order, Personality, and Mistakes

(Note: The Human brain is basically magical. We can overcome anything that we start out with, all it takes is quite a bit of effort.)
I've been reading a few articles here and there, and watched a TED speech today, and more and more they seem to be finding that we're very much controlled by our genes. Our personalities tend to be similar through-out our lives from 1st Grade on, while our behaviors change throughout the years, or rather, how we act out our personality changes due to our experiences in life.

Evidently when you were born is actually a bit important to how your personality gets set, so long as your siblings are still around before 1st grade. Of course every family life is different, but there is a general idea for the average family. You can check out the article that explains it a little more in depth here.

Finally, there are some mistakes that the majority of us make that are completely and utterly genetic. Specifically, this research was done on a sort of financial level, where they found people didn't look at the beginning and end result, but they thought of finances as relative to what you have to what you'll get.

In other words, if someone offered $1000 and one of two choices for extra money, those two choices being:
Take a Risk                               Play It Safe
Flip a coin-                                Get another $500.
Heads = Extra $1000
Tails = $0

Most people would play it safe, but when offered $2000, and given two options, being:
Take a Risk                               Play It Safe
Flip a coin-                                Lose $500
Heads = Lose $1000
Tails = Lose $0

Most people actually choose to take the risk, but in both situations you have the choice of $1000 or $2000, or a guaranteed $1500. Not to be completely discouraged, monkeys make the same mistake. See more on that in Laurie Santos' TED speech here.

Weird, I sure went on one there.....

Search on.

Hm.. Odd

A lot of people have been saying "Oh dear" to me lately. Apparently it's happening to other people, too. To be honest, this doesn't usually happen. I know, you're thinking I just haven't been noticing, aren't you? Well, you're wrong. Usually people just give me weird looks instead of actually voicing something, so don't give me any of that!

Oh dear..

So, I've Made an Executive Decision

We'll call it here. I didn't practice for a week, and it was rather torturous. I've begun to go insane, from lack of human contact and instrument practicing (I had a bit of bad timing, as I found out after I'd decided to do this practice ban, my best friend decided to inform me she was going to be gone for a while >.<, oh well, not her fault). From this moment on, it shall be said that I tortured myself for a week, and that is it.

Look at the bright side! It's got me in the habit of doing a blogpost every day. We'll see what I end up blogging about tomorrow, or maybe even later today, eh?

Today's my new band's first practice, we'll see about giving it a name and such, and I'll tell you all about it later.

Keep up the torture, but don't go insane!

These Are Getting Exciting.... ... HA! (Day 7)

See, I fooled you, cause really, it was another day of absolutely nothing! I'm so tricky, I know, I know, you can bask in my trickiness later, but for now, let's put on suits!

Now that we've cleared up that little situation, let's clear up another. I'm not a drinker, and I shall never be, but those suits... are pretty snazzy. I can't even pretend not to be jealous, what about you? I thought as much! Also, I didn't practice one bit today, despite my fingers desperate attempts at trying!

At any rate, I have a song you may want to listen to. It's a pretty cool song by The Shins, called A Comet Appears. YouTube link! Enjoy!

Just keep fooling, just keep fooling...

Well, This /Was/a Prior Commitment (Day 6)

I played my Gig today, which was planned far before my decision to do this no practicing deal, but, it was a performance rather then a practice, so let's go by technicality that it doesn't even count, yeah? Either way, I ended up with blood blisters on my fingers, which happens when you don't practice for ages, then play for 45+ minutes straight. Well, on to tomorrow, which will be the last of a week!

Keep it technical!

Sorry for the Late Update (Day 5)

I apologize for not updating you guys at the end of yesterday, in my attempts to distract myself I forgot to type up a blog post. Nothing happened yesterday, to be honest. I did my best to distract myself, but it didn't really work. I didn't practice one bit, despite the immense temptation to, but beyond that, there really isn't much to say.