Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in aball321's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
12:31 am	What's a Live Journal? Hi. So... it's been, what, three years? A little less, maybe. Um. So, changes. Life in general has taken a bit of a 70 degree turn to the left and straight on until morn'. I'm a music major now, clarinet performance ladeda. I can sing a lot better than I could before. I can kinda play guitar. I have contact lenses. I'm on my third girlfriend, who is a freshman and five and a half years younger than my second girlfriend, who I dated for five months. Sarah was very happy to discover that she is, in fact, older than my cat. By half a year. I still fiddle with things, but it's endearing now, not annoying (ha!). I can pull off sexy now if I want to. I drink, and make damn good mixed drinks if I do say so myself. I hit on people when I'm drunk. A lot. It's kinda bad, actually. I wear jeans (WTF?) and can do a pull up. Just one, but I'm getting better. I have a razor cellphone. Never get one. There are a few more changes than those, but I guess those are the major ones. Mostly I was just bored and re-reading the smart ass comments that I wrote my freshman year that are, if I do say so myself *shines his badge*, well written and fairly witty. Holy shit there are a lot more moods. Current Mood: quixotic Current Music: My feet are cold. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 5th, 2005
1:59 pm	Public Service Well, I have a term paper topic for my last paper for Humanities core. It was one of those nasty ones where you get to pick your own topic, so I came up with something I found fairly interesting. I'm going to be writing a paper on the effects of music on cultural development, specifically in places (such as some places in the Middle East) where it was outlawed for a while, and is just beginning to trickle in. If you all happen to come across something having to do with that topic, or something remotely close to the topic, do let me know. I'd be most appreciative. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 28th, 2005
9:03 pm	Not In My Job Discription For those of you who don't know (can't remember if I've mentioned it here before, and haven't bothered to check), I'm now officially a "Physics Tutor" for the "Physics Outreach Program". What this means practically is that I get rides around to different elementary schools to give assemblies every friday. Sounds peachy and fun, right? Well, I'm sure it would be, if I weren't the only one on my team A) without classes on friday, and B) with a California Driver's License. What that means for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, is that yours truly gets to drive the van. Well, it means a bit more than that, actually. Now, normally I'm supposed to go into the offices and pick up the keys before we're supposed to leave for the assembly. However, that only works if we happen to plan on leaving after 8:00 in the morning, something which we're not tomorrow. That leaves me with the responsibility to go pick up the keys the day before, and I'm going to quote the lady who talked to me, "sometime in the afternoon". Sadly, Andy's only real time to pick something up in the afternoon is around 5:30, when Choir gets out which, according to the working world (And Andy's hindsight. Concepts of times of activeness have changed somewhat since College), is thirty minutes after "sometime in the afternoon". Thus the fun begins. So I drive over to the offices to find them closed and locked. Well... not to worry, there's an extra set in Bill Heidbrink's office, in Frank Roland Hall. Back to school I go, quickly parking my care and rushing off to the fourth floor of the Physics Headquarters of UC Irvine... to find that the head of undergraduate physics students, one William Heidbrink, had already left for home. Well... not to worry, there are two other numbers on the sheet of paper I have, detailing other rooms that would have keys to open up Bill's office, one of a colleague just down the hall from him and the other the reception desk for the wing... Turns out Professor Heidbrink wasn't the only one who had gone home. However, members of the Ball family do not give up so easily! When one has a job to do, mere material things such as locks, doors, and morals become insubstantial! Thusly, Andy Ball of the Ball Family went into action, doing things years of training and experience has taught him to do. He walked around aimlessly looking for people to ask for help. After much rambling, and a few people who were as disgruntled as they looked, Andy happened to come across a small Japanese man with a bunch of keys opening the door to the reception office! Huzzah! With great leaps and bounds, I overtook this small man and entreated him to let me, a young suspicious looking fellow that he had never seen before in his life, into the office of his respected friend and colleague. Well, after begging for a bit, and writing a nice letter that included my full name and student ID number, he let me into the room to pick up my much deserved keys. Now, as I said before, it is also the responsibility of the Driver to make sure the van has enough gas, and the container of liquid nitrogen is full enough to allow an experiment or two, so back I went to the offices mentioned at the beginning of my tale and went around looking for this van that I had never seen before. Fortunately, UCI vans tend to be rather conspicuous (and the thing on the keyring that made the alarm go off was useful to), so finding it was not a terribly difficult task. Time to check it out. Shouldn't be too bad, right? I mean, it's only the second day of assemblies, right? There should be enough of each left for another day... right? *ahem* Now, the sheet of paper that I have with me told me how to get to the campus fueling station. What it failed to mention was that telling me to pick it up "sometime in the afternoon" also happened to extend to getting gas. Well... not to worry, I suppose, the gate was still open and as a Californian, I am used to serving myself. Now I need you to use your imagination briefly. Imagine a car-garage type area with big vans parked on either side and two thin roads separated by various miscellaneous immovable junk (such as a couple white tanks, a bunch of yellow posts, etc). Now imagine that the only way to get from the road on the right, the one you first start on, to the road on the left, the one where the self serve gasoline pumps are, is a small cross area cornered by posts on the two corners facing you, posts that are roughly nine feet from each other. Now, I want you to imagine that some bus driver was kind enough to park his bus horizontally roughly nine feet in front of said cross area. Have you ever tried making a 7 foot by 13 foot van turn in a 9 foot by 9 foot area? I have now had the pleasure, and believe me when I say it wasn't pleasant. If anybody asks you what indented the step bumper thingies on either side of the Physics Outreach Program van, don't point them to me. They're still functional... just about half an inch thinner in places. After that grueling exercise, I let out a sigh of relief and parked by the gas nozzles. Then is when I discovered something interesting about this spare set of keys that I picked up. Despite the two other keys with unknown purpose attached to the same key ring as the van key, neither of them were kind enough to operate the machine that would have filled my van's empty belly. After twitching a bit and cursing a few times, I resumed my general method for dealing with such things. However, wandering about aimlessly an a completely barren service area is a lot less rewarding than wandering about in an office building where only half of the people have left. Isn't it funny how we optimists consider ourselves lucky when we find a way out of a dilemma that bad luck got us into in the first place? My way out happened to be embodied in a man named Larry that happened to be working late. Larry is one of the people who takes care of a sort of goodwill stock pile of used office, classroom, and dorm furniture that lives in the service area. Definitely a good place to know about if I plan on living with four other guys next year, but not something I was prepared to contemplate heavily at the time. Larry, sadly, didn't have any immediate way of solving my dilemma, but suggested that my best bet was to be there tomorrow at 7:00 when it opened, get gas quickly, then head back to pick everybody up to leave again at 7:15. Lacking any better options (my mind was dancing around taking the van to a gas station and filling it up with my own money), I thanked him heartily and set off on my merry way. a few nice pretty yellow scratches to the foot step thingy on the OTHER side of the van and a little burnt rubber later, I was back on the road and off to pick up the second thing on my shopping list, a canister of Liquid Nitrogen. Now, Liquid Nitrogen is fairly easy to find if you know where to look. With training and diligence, you can even grow your own in your own back yard. Fortunately for me, I had been introduced to the Physics Storeroom. What we used to keep the liquid nitrogen in is this big jug-like thermos (can't remember the official name for it) which the hose that runs to the big tanks filled with liquid nitrogen conveniently slips into. The thing is... the hose wasn't cold when I first put it in there. Sure, it was a little cool, most metal kept at room temperature seems a little cool. The other thing is... I have never been told that it's a bad idea to try and fill up the cannister of liquid nitrogen up to the brim. There's a certain point where the water vapor just obscures everything, and trying to lift the hose in such a way that it doesn't add to the volume of the thermos is... difficult without the proper equipment. Fortunately, I discovered the box of gardening gloves only after I had frozen the skin off of the tip of my left middle finger (Well... not really frozen off, it's just a bit red. Saying that I froze it off just seems a bit more dramatic.*shoos away the mommy hound*). Finally, with a half full thermos, I headed back to the van to drop it off at the offices again. The thing you have to realize about my experience with cars is that I'm only really used to driving small cars that are low to the ground. I've driven my mother's minivan around a few times, but not often enough for it to count. This van is, however, tall. And the thing about tall cars is that they tend to move around a lot more than cars with centers of gravity not quite so high. This is normally not a problem... unless you happen to have a half-full cannister of liquid nitrogen you're not too keen on letting spill and no real place to cushion it. It is with this dilemma, however, that I finally discovered something about a property of seat belts that has always somewhat disgruntled me. You know how seat belts, when you pull them all the way out of the reel, decide that they aren't going to let you pull out any more until it goes all the way back in? It's for strapping in containers of liquid nitrogen. Back to the offices I go with a big thermos in the passenger seat and a hungry belly. The time is roughly 8:00, three hours worked overtime, and I finally get to go home and rest for two hours before going to sleep. The moral of this story is, eat a healthy breakfast every Thursday morning, because you never know when you'll be running off to In-n-Out at 8:30 at night for your only meal of the day. Part Two: Andy Goes to Munchkin Land will come tomorrow. Current Mood: tired (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 24th, 2005
2:03 am	Etremital Lethargy Ever reach a period of time where your fingers don't really feel like worrying about typing out a series of Coherent sentences? Not writer's block or anything, mind you, just a general apathy. And it's not because you don't WANT to write anything... you just don't. Well, I have to break that, as I've got an essay and a letter to write. Anyway, the real reason I'm writing this is to give my review of Timon, the Shakespearian tragedy that I went to see (Well... yesterday, if you consider that today began two hours ago. Personally, I feel like the day begins when you wake up and ends when you go to sleep). Though very well done, and despite a very good first half, I found the second half somewhat lacking. I'm not sure whether it was because of various cuts that the director made, or simply because of the way of written, but it didn't really seem to reach a climax or resolve anything. Nothing was really accomplished, and nobody really learned anything. The premise of the whole thing is definitely worth seeing it for, and my favorite quote was when Timon, after snubbing some of the money another character was offering (And also after he cast off his social standing and former life), said "I cannot eat it." Not terribly complex, but it drives home a good point. Very well done on the part of the UCI drama department, too. All in all, worth seeing. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 17th, 2005
10:16 pm	Today's Link I admit it's a sad entry for being away for so long, but thought I'd share a link: http://www.themoggy.com/solos.htm (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 7th, 2005
12:10 am	Link Of The Day http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/206373 Just look how HAPPY he is! If you don't feel it, just start doing the dance along with him and you'll start feeling it. Catchy song too. Guess I should make a post about my classes, huh? Well, that's for some other time when I don't have to wake up at 7:30 in the morning the next day. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, April 4th, 2005
1:15 am	What Goes Around Comes Around Well, as it turns out, I DID end up with a new roommate. Or rather, as somebody else's new roommate. I returned from a weekend at home to find all of my stuff moved (and properly aranged) into the Aaron's recently vacated half of his room. Thusly, I am now Glen's new roommate, and Aaron is now Pat's new roommate. *shrugs* Go figure. Also, Irvine parking policy sucks. My parking permit goes out on a thursday, I find the ticket friday night, and the parking office doesn't open 'til Monday. Have the thing stored at a friend's house, but still a major pain in the arse. Went and saw Sin City again, this time with a much larger crowd (of which almost all of them had seen it before). It was really funny watching Alex afterwards raving about how awesome it was. I think his line was "If there was a line of all the people I hate, all booing me and throwing bananas at me, I'd still go buy a ticket and see that movie!" Classes tomorrow. Means I should probably go and buy my books, huh? (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 2nd, 2005
12:11 am	Plug! Just thought I would drop a plug for the movie Sin City. Quite bloody, and not a movie to bring the young to, but past all that a very good (and very well filmed) noir-style movie. Mom, you'd hate it. Dad, you'd love it. If you're not a big fan of film noir style, then you should probably skip it (as it's rather heavily narrated), but it's a movie I'd pay to go see again. Edit: Well, of course, if you'd like a differing opinion you can go here: http://missingnight.ebloggy.com/. I love the girl dearly, but occasionally I can't understand her tastes. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 31st, 2005
2:11 am	Troubles, Troubles Everywhere, and Not a Stop to Think Garrett is officially the craziest driver ever. He's not really a bad driver, he just refuses to be a sane driver. Whether he's driving with his door open, sticking his body out the window (while Mark in shotgun steered), or yelling "Bear F*cker!" at random passersby, nobody drives quite like him. Fortunately, I talked him out of his idea to try and switch drivers while going down a tunnel at fourty miles an hour. Anyway, I spent the day (and night) at Garrett's house last night, up in Manhattan Beach. We (myself, Addison, and Ryan) would have stayed longer, but he decided on a whim to go to Mexico for a couple days. The day that I did spend there was mostly spent watching highschoolers attempt to practice improv in between the detailed account of the party they had the friday before, including information about all the drugs, alcohol, and sex. Garrett's throwing a toga party for them next Thursday, too, I believe. Those drama kids... After that, Garrett took us out to some trails that headed down towards the beach, and I got to see three college students try to shove a 200-300 pound log into the ocean without getting wet by the light of the moon. I also committed what was probably one of the worst Faux Pas I have ever had the glory of contributing to the world (And my dignity) on Monday. If you live in the dorm, you will eventually (and unfailingly) hear about it. If you do not, you will never hear it mentioned ever again. Current Mood: tired (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 12th, 2005
2:42 am	And They Complain! People amuse me. It is amazing how much dedicated people know about their subject of choice, be it Star Trek, Pokemon, or X-Men. Listening to them banter just makes me laugh, comparing this that and the other minute detail that makes everything work out to make Wolverine the best mutant. And yet they complain when I, an innocent and completely serious bystander with no previous experience in whatever universe it is they call home, attempt to "analyze it too deeply"? Absurd! It is my right, nay my DUTY as a Smart Ass of America to make their obsession ridiculous by analyzing it too deeply, and do they thank me for doing my civic duty? No! They don't even understand what it is I'm doing, let alone appreciate the sweet irony of my incessant attempts to probe! They take me seriously, even criticizing me for the lack of foreknowledge and the inability to grasp that which is important (Read: explosions and the pretty methods thereof), and instead focusing on the minute petty details (Why do the things Gambit charges with "Kinetic" energy explode after five seconds? What does he draw all this excess energy from?) As a proud Smart Ass of America, I demand understanding! I demand that people realize just how much I am mocking them and their silly obsessions! I demand that my sarcastic criticism be heard! Let my people go! ... ... ... ... ... Good lord it's late... (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 10th, 2005
1:08 am	They Sell Air In Cans! How cool is that? Addison sprayed me with something out of a can... "Non scented dust remover" is what it's called, I believe. No chemicals, no perfume, no liquid... it's air in a can. What kind of world is this where you need to buy air in a can? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, March 4th, 2005
12:44 am	The Writing on the Wall "Oh, hi! Do you guys live in this dorm?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "Are you drama majors?" "Yeah." "Actually, I'm physical science undeclared" "Ah" *watches the direction of diologue shift sharply towards Jordan* Also, what does it mean when two of the people in the choral group I'm singing in look like two of the music teachers I've had? Specificly, Alex Eugenio and Mr. Basillio. I can't decide between "Odd coincidence" and "Bad Omen". However, I do get a solo where I bark like a dog. The music for the song his hillarious... there's this one part that's really slow and somber about "A white kitten along the shores of a lake" which goes immediately into the women singing "Alligators! Alligators! *scream*". On a different note, got an A on my (second) physics midterm! Now all I need to do is pass the final and I'll pass the class. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 3rd, 2005
12:02 am	bink bonk (Comment on this)
Monday, February 28th, 2005
10:48 pm	Observation You'd think that after being so paranoid about getting locked out of the room while in the shower, my roommate would be a bit more careful about doing it to me, hmm? Especially after he saw me getting into the shower and said "Shower time!" just before he left. Well... fortunately I take my pants into the restroom with me when I shower, so I was half dressed anyway, but I had to borrow Garrett's shirt and Ryan's flip flops before heading down to the mesa court housing office to borrow a key to the room. Well, at least it leaves me with a story to tell. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 27th, 2005
10:37 pm	One of those days Ever have one of those days where you wake up and you're just hurting everywhere? Well, I had one of those, except the pain was limited to my left big toe, my left pointer finger knuckle (the bigger one), and the middle of my tongue. Just one of those days, I guess. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 21st, 2005
12:18 am	The Clarity of Innocence I sit in a bubble suspended above a murky sea. Above me the sun shines brightly, and around me the world is beautiful. Such things I see! Beautiful beyond words, they are wonders that continue to amuse and amaze me. Still the turmoil of the water below me intrigues me. I prod at it, unable to penetrate, but able to see a little into its briney depths. There I see many like me, beautiful like the world around me. I join them as they join me, neither above nor below the stormy waves. To me they seem wonderful, glorious things, a feeling that grows as I listen and talk with them. But they tell me of each other's ugliness, and though to me they are still beautiful, I begin to wonder. I look again to the water below me, wondering at its contents. So much of the turmoil is so simple, so easy to understand. In the murkiness there is a clarity I am able to perceive from my elevated position, a cleanliness imperceptible to those who move below the filmy surface. Yet as I look even deeper, there is so much more that I don't understand, that I don't want to understand. It is both inviting and repelling. And then I look again to my surroundings, magnified and purified by my bubble, a bubble both resilient and delicate. And the world is beautiful (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 16th, 2005
8:51 pm	They don't understand I like fiddling. It's something I do when I'm not doing anything else, a reason why I usually have to have my hands in my pockets, because they feel odd out in the open and not doing anything. I think it's also the reason why I hate mechanical pencils: They don't survive my fiddling. I take them apart and put them back together a few times and they stop working. Pens are better (especially the big fancy ones), as they tend not to break so easily. This is a source of much bemusement and befuddlement for my physics lab mates. They put all this wonderful, very simple mechanical equipment in front of us, and they only use it once or twice as the directions tell them to, and then stop! Well, when you put toys in front of me, I'm going to fiddle, dang it! You figure stuff out when you fiddle, stuff you wouldn't ordinarily find out by just thinking about it. This is why the line of beads I got from the Mardi Gras dinner has seen so much use; they go twirling through the air, wrap around my fingers, and whack against Aaron's hide when he pets me. Don't ask. When I was a kid, I used to play with Mighty Maxes. If you don't know Mighty Max, it was basicly a small thing that opened up into a sort of scene, where all the different parts fit nicely and made different parts of the complete thing. That was a terrible description, but hopefully it helps some. Normally, you'd expect kids to play with these little scenes, wouldn't you? Well, I did that a *little* bit, but mostly I just took them apart and put them together again. It's just something I do, for whatever reason. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Kingston Trio (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
11:22 pm	Two things One or two things happen after I watch a good movie. It leaves me with a certain happy heavy feeling that leaves a smile on my face, and it makes me wish I had (or glad that I have) somebody to share it with. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 13th, 2005
8:53 pm	Life begins after eight Now, I tend to have a very clear schedule on hours and their classification. 6:00 am 'til noon is morning, then 'til 5:00 is afternoon. 5:00 until 8:00 is evening, then after 8:00 is night. This hasn't changed. However, despite classifications, instead of doing my usual and winding down at night and heading to bed a few hours into it, life tends to dwindle into the wee hours of 2:00 or 3:00 more and more often. In fact, things don't really get off the ground until 8:00 or so. Brief interlude: Do you have any idea how hard it is to write and sing at the same time? Anyway, Friday was Live Nudes. To give you an example of a shift in times, Live Nudes doesn't even START until 11:00 at night, and usually goes for an hour and a half to two hours. After that there was a Prado gathering to watch a couple episodes of Family Guy, and then the decorating of the Valentine's Day Tree. All told, I got to my room about 2:15, and went to bed about half an hour after that after having a chat with my friend Michael. Conversations at that hour are interesting, involving such things as Leperkhan Wherewolves (The properly spelled variation appearing in the Live Nudes show before, curtiously illustrated by Bonnie. She's really good), and Doom Flames of Doom marshmallows. Notes about that evening: Do you know how annoying it is to be in the audience of a loud and receptive crowd, being loud and receptive, when the two guys on either side of you REFUSE to have a good time? I refused to let it ruin the show (And it was a damn good show. One of the better ones they've done). Also, about Valentine's day; In elementary school, we make valentines for everybody in the class (and the ones with candy attached were much preferred). In High School, there were candy grams that you could purchase, and have delivered to your sweethearts. College? In college, instead of ordering a bouquet of tootsie pops and rose, we slap down a dollar to have a condom delivered to our special sweethearts. How picturesque. Saturday, I went to Black Comedy at 8:00 (It isn't an African-American comedy, it isn't a dark, somber comedy, it's a Black Comedy. Thusly, it is performed in the dark). After that, I joined my friends in watching The Big Lebowski, and then from 11:00 to 2:00 we went bowling. You see, a year ago, saying 11:00 to 2:00 would automatically infer that it had happened in that bridge between the morning and the afternoon, assuming, perhaps, that we had lunch somewhere in there. Nope, not anymore. Now the trick is, how am I going to convince my body that it needs to get to bed early in order to wake up for my 8:00 class tomorrow? Current Music: Rant and Roar (Something Jordan recommended. It's good) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 9th, 2005
11:35 pm	The things we do It's amazing what you can find to entertain you while you should be studying for a midterm. Me? I juggle (or try to). My record thus far is 8, which isn't bad for starting earlier today. I don't like midterms. (1 Comment |Comment on this)