Best weekend evar

It began Thursday night at midnight. The infidels (those who believe "tomorrow" starts at midnight) were sweet enough in their little infidel hearts to send me 'happy birthday' IMs and Facebook messages. Earlier that night, I had found out that my iPod was on its way, so I was already in a pretty decent mood.

I woke up the next morning to find even more messages of the same sort. They trickled in all day, so I got to spend the whole day thanking people for their generosity. There was also an email from Monica who's settled in in New York, so I was slightly relieved to hear she's OK and on her feet. I had one more present that day - It was the last day of class. My last day of philosophy was just like any other, but that was really because I'll have that same class next semester. The last day of my history of music class was really cool because the instructor, who I liked, got on his soapbox and explained his theory of how to define music (which was pretty cool, it had a lot to do with abstraction and symbols) and expounded his thoughts on the value of education and pursuit of what makes one happy. Definitely a class I left with a smile on my face. The last economics class was same as always, just a crunch time for a page full of stuff that I'll get tested over. But we liked our prof a lot, and he was the only one I had this semester who got a round of applause at the end of the class. But the real touching moment was the end of my Japanese class. I had the last day of class with my favorite TA, and it was all exam review, but at the very end of the period, he addressed us all collectively using vocabulary that most of us couldn't understand, and in an unexpected gesture of respect, he bowed to us in silence. In unison, we all replied "Domo arigato gozaimasu!" [The same thing as you would expect from the famous song, but replace "Mr. Roboto" with a mark of respect.] Definitely tugged at my heartstrings. I'll miss those TAs (and not my professor one bit) and I really wish I could keep them in my Japanese training.

But moving on to the rest of my awesome day. My weekend of break time had begun. My dear friend Melody graduated that same day, and she threw a quick pre-grad party at her house. I walked over, did some meets and greets, congratulated my favorite attractive female Quake player and went on to do my chore for the day.

I headed over to the Villas on Guadalupe, the complex where I'm looking into living next year, and got a little more information and a lot more paperwork and my mom officially OK'd my move over there. Assuming this process keeps working out like it has been, I'll be living in the coolest complex in town with 3 of my best mates next year. Very exciting.

Dinner with Kris. We met at our favorite Mexican place after he offered to treat me to it. Happy at free food and a meeting with the brother, I found him there exhausted by his constant trips between here and Oklahoma. His car died, and the semester kicked his ass, but the good news definitely outweighs the bad. As a graduation present, his mom's paying for a big chunk of his new Mazda3 that's so cool it makes me jealous. And better still, he's been outright offered a job (which is really rare in the music-teaching industry) by his alma mater, OCU. So, he'll be staying kinda closeby and teaching jazz music for the forseeable future, which will be awesome for me since he's not moving cross-country, and awesome for one of the 36 Emilys I know since she has a jazz musician fetish.

Halo with the guys. We got Suck Factor 42 together to play a few rounds. Since Bungie released the most recent H2 update, matchmaking has been kinda hellish and games are more laggy to compromise for the speedier matchmaking process. So after the first 3 games we play (and are winning) get lagged out, we decide to call it a scrub night and not count any of the games toward our record. Once that happens, we play 2 lag-free games and lose HORRIBLY. Like 25-3. So we all pull a Dane Cook, throw our controllers on the floor and shout, "Fuck this game!" and run out for a late-night Chinese run.

Before we even walked into the door to Wan Fu, we all felt better already. It was a trip over filled with laughs and comedy, and the night just kept getting better and better. After a 2-hour meal over ridiculously good Chinese and a never-ending game of What's Better, we gave up and came home and crashed.

Saturday was a short day. Woke up, goofed around, went to rehearsal for the first-ever Mr. Plan II pageant (which I was in), and watched football for hours and hours.

Sunday was all about Mr. P2. This pageant was hilarious. It was just like Miss America: formalwear, swimwear, talent, and interview parts, judged by some P2 celebrities (the boss in charge, an advisor, a professor, and a famous graduate from last year). It got really crazy on stage. The talents ranged from reading poetry to fire-eating. I sang a cappella and it got a pretty nice response, so I felt really cool even though I didn't win anything. The party afterwards was great. I got lots of love for my birthday, for singing, and there were lots of attractive girls there and a hoppin' dance floor, so I was happy. Late that night, I got home to an email from my mom saying she wanted to go to New York over Spring Break to see the new Monty Python on Broadway show.

That would be a killer trip in the making: travel with Mom, tour the city with my cousin Kelly, chill at NYU with Andrea, see Monty Python live, and have a classy night on the town with Monica. Sign me the hell up.

I've got a ton of reasons to be damn happy with my life right now, and the 40 or so people who sent me birthday wishes are 40 of those reasons. Thank you guys so much for your love and wishes. Yay for being 20!

The Pop Culture Minute

I love doing long, in-depth reviews. But there's too much stuff for me to sift through, so I'm giving the short versions on each before I entirely finish and digest them, or else it'll be March before I can give decent reviews on each.

Doom3: Repetitive, easy, but the production value is top-notch and id's done a great job of putting the psychological element of survival horror into an FPS. Give it a go if you're an FPS player.

Jay-Z and Linkin Park: Collision Course: This is a really good idea. I'm serious. Take the sound of Linkin Park, but get rid of their god-awful lyrics and replace it with some Jay-Z goodness. It's really done in the style of a battle between Jay-Z and LP songs, but the mixing is so seamless that you really don't mind when the LP lyrics rear their head. Jay-Z's verses are hardcore as always and it just puts a giant grin on your face.

Ludacris - The Red Light District: This album fucking owns shit up. Think of the first time you heard "Move, Bitch" or "Roll Out." This is *way* better. The first track "Number One Spot" is alone worth a $15 purchase. It's seriously that good. Get it. Or at least get the first track, and I dare you not to get a giant grin on your face listening to it.

GTA San Andreas: It's everything you expected and more. This game is huge, and if you don't spend 50 hours on it then you're sure to have missed a lot. I've put in maybe 6 hours and I already feel like I've left a ton of stuff behind to make progress in the game. To the GTA-hating cynics, it *is* more of the same, but for those of us who aren't idiots, it's much bigger, a bit better, and the formula's been tweaked to get even closer to gaming perfection.

Eminem - Encore: It's more of the same. A little bit of funny, a lot of darkness, and mostly good rhymes from everyone's favorite whitey. If you're a fan, grab it, and if you're a passive hiphop listener, I'll have to get back to you.

A travesty and ownage

So I got $100 in cash from my grandfather for my birthday. Generous, but not entirely unexpected.

That $100 was spent in its entirety today paying my 4 parking tickets. I kinda left my car parked right outside my dorm for 4 days straight and racked up a ticket a day. Whoops.

But I have another present headed my way. Go to www.dhl.com. Enter in tracking number 16273642372.

That's my iPod, on its way, bitches. I win.

Back from Thanksgiving

Thanks everyone for a good break! Now it's 7:30, I'm well-fed, and it's time to buckle down and get set for a pretty nice pile of homework. I'm in hell week for the foreseeable future (since I have 5 finals starting Thursday), so forgive me if I'm not around.

The big update of the break is I am now in possession of an Xbox (thanks mommy!) While it's not in Austin with me, I'll probably get a few chances over the next two weeks to access Live and play with my teammates. If you're an XBL player, go ahead and add blakerson to your Friends list. Thanks to the ridiculous MS bundles on the system and the Live Starter kit, I'm the owner of H2 (obviously) as well as Top Spin, NCAA Football '05, and Crimson Skies. Should be some fun stuff to tinker with.