Last Senior Reflection Blog (#4)

So my last senior blog yay!

Well just been thinking about the summer recently, can't wait for it to happen! Got beach week with some friends going down to Myrtle (2nd time this year, since I went there with the band a month ago!), have my the family vacation to the caribbean in july, and just hoping to relax right before college. I'm totally psyched for college right now, yet I'm really looking forward to beach week and the rest of summer to hang out with everyone here, because I might not even see half of these people again! Just 2 more weeks to go, 9 more school days if you think about it! :) So I guess it's cheers to graduating high school and good luck to all of my friends out there, I'll definitely miss everyone a bunch

Senior Reflection Blog #3

Alright well, senior years closing up, and I'm practically done with every class, because every final exam is basically a project. But! My point is I just recently finished my music theory final project, which is to make an original composition of music. What I did for it was I wrote a brand new drumline cadence titled: "Snickerdoodles" for the drumline next year, but I don't know if our drumline we'll be able to play it next year, i've made it pretty hard...Either way I'm very proud of myself, it was a long 7 hours of hard work between 2 days to write it all! Hopefully it's an A haha... Although I'm not majoring in music in college, I do hope I continue to do music related stuff like this for fun!

4th Quarter Current Event #4

Ok so the last current event of the year awesome!
Well for the last article, I chose one out of the Washington Post on a movie review of the movie "Up". Up's just came out on May 29th and it's the 10th Pixar Movie by Disney. The review was mainly a summary of the movie more than a review, but the bits of review portion of it did give it positive feedback on the movie. I'm usually a fan of Pixar movies, all of them were better than decent, so I expect this one no different. I've seen trailers for this movie too, and it seemed pretty funny, despite it's a children's movie. If I get a chance to see it, hopefully I won't be disappointed!

Senior Reflection Blog #2

Well, this is sort of a random thought that came across me today while I was at school. To start off, if some did not know, I was drumline captain for Herndon for the 2008-2009 marching band season. Now today I was asked by Cailin Clinton, one of my friends who is applying for the job as a section leader for the band next year, wanted me to look through her application that was going to be turned into Ms. Schoelwer our band teacher. So I thought hey simple enough, shouldn't have many errors, what I found was how much paper work and how many essay were required to even apply to be section leader or drum major. As I read through her essays I thought wow, when I applied for drumline Captain, I was only asked to write 1 short essay not 3 with also a open tryout infront of judges, requiring some conducting use even if you were not applying for drum major. Also as I thought, there isn't really a point of learning basic conducting either with the drumline, we have always used metronomes and relied on our own tap offs. Although I guess this is a price that comes with change seeing how Ms. Schoelwer had just finished her first year here with the Herndon Band. But, definitely a dramatic difference in the application process for captains/section leaders. Just a thought I had about comparing band a year ago, to now

4th Quarter Current Event #3

So this week's current event is on a article on how Bill Clinton sold his saxophone at the Cannes Film Festival for $180,000 dollars to support finding a cure for AIDS. The title of the article is called "Clinton's sax sold at auction for AIDS research" found in the May 22nd issue of the Washington Post. Although it was titled that most of the article contained more about how a lot of other celebrities and stars helped out as well, not just Bill Clinton focused. Other stuff sold were a Fiat 500 car, which sold for $110,000, tennis lessons from pro players Monica Seles, and Jelena Jankovic for $50,000, and a Karl Lagerfeld guitar case filled with Dom Perigon champagne, for $70,000. Lastly, Quentin Tarantino’s new World War II movie, “Inglourious Basterds” had a special screening which raised $84,000. It's definitely sure a good thing celebrities and stars are helping by raising the awareness of AIDS and helping to find a cure!

4th Quarter Current Event #2

OK! so this weeks current event is about the Star Trek movie, and I found an article on Star Trek's amazing box office opening! So partly why I chose this article was that I saw the movie this weekend and I was VERY impressed by it! It made a total of $76.5 million on opening weekend, and even beat Dark Knight's gross money from IMAX showings, now that's intense! Another well important fact from this movie was how well it did on reviews, especially Rotten Tomatoes' 96% on opening weekend on positive ratings, (Which was a 100% at one point on the Opening day, and is now currently still holding strong at 95%).
As for myself I give a great thumbs up to JJ Abrams on the work of this movie. First of all, I'm sure it appealed to major Star Trek fans as much as it did to the general public. As for myself who has no idea about Star Trek, I didn't need to know anything to see the movie. Another thumbs up to the amazing casting of this movie. Chris Pine who had the leading role of Captain Kirk, did amazing in one of his first leading roles. Hopefully it won't be his last amazing leading role considering how well he did! Other roles who did very well was Spock's by Zachary Quinto, Dr. McCoy's by Karl Urban, Sulu's by John Cho, and Simon Pegg who was Scotty.
Lastly what I also loved was the movie's soundtrack, as for being in band, I usually always love a movie with a good orchestral soundtrack. This movie's soundtrack was easily as good as Pirate of the Caribbean's or Lord of the Ring's. So I HIGHLY recommend you see this movie if you love action and a good general movie, don't be turned off just because it's Star Trek!

Senior Reflection Blog #1

Ok well, this is going to be some recent news, just some teenage angst that we all gotta deal with at some point as a teenager.
So you know how they always say, in your first year of having your license you will most likely get pulled over and at least get one ticket, or get in an accident. I got my license awhile ago in April last year and luckily I made it through the first year, happy fun stuff right? Never got a ticket, never been in an accident, sure am lucky to be me! Well today (May 14th) I got into my first accident...rather disappointing news when you think you're out of the clear! Thought I had enough room to back up hit the parked car behind, I said to myself "great...". I guess it also had to do with my frustration with losing my invisalign retainers a few minutes before, loss of focus. Now I have a huge dent on the side of my bumper, but luckily the car I hit only took damage to the license plate. Not quite sure how that adds up in equal damage, but I am sure lucky that his car was not worse. I just talked to the owner of the car, seemed like a pretty nice person, so I think things will be ok.
Overall I view this as an important life lesson. Karma sure does comes back around,and I definitely shouldn't let my stress get me so frustrated. But, hey it's an experience thing, had to go through an accident sometime in life first right?

4th quarter Current Event #1

So my article this week was found in the Washington Post website on some pregame speculation on the 3-3 tied series of the Capitals vs the Penguins in the Stanley Cup conferenc semifinals. I am personally really excited to watch this game. The Capitals have been possibly the best team of all sports in D.C. for the last few years. Teams like the Nationals, or the Redskins (who I'd wish would do better than just getting to the first round of playoffs :( ) never get as far or have as much of a success as the Capitals. As predicted in the article and most likely by all, this will come down to a close game, in overtime or a late goal in 3rd period, especially because every game except for one in this series of the Capitals vs. The Penguins has been decided down to 1 goal margins. Also 3 of the games of the 6 so far have been decided in Overtime.