Song: Dire Straits – Money For Nothing

Well the worst is over, for now. This weekend, and flowing into Monday and yesterday, I was a studying fiend. My Accounting 219 (Not-For-Profit and Governmental Accounting) class had it’s final last night, and it was cumulative over 9 chapters. That may not sound like a huge deal, but you should see this textbook. It’s like a novel! Hardly any graphs or pictures or even color. Every page is white, or sometimes blue. The index is horrible (it lists one page for “depreciation” when I know for sure “depreciation” shows up a ton more than just once!)

It was a lesson in balancing lots of priorities: I had just dealt with my grandfather’s passing, had to check on Mila the cat, had to keep band practice going (we are less than a month away from studio time!), and had to keep running (sadly, working out was out of the question because of the time it took) all fit in around studying these 9 chapters. I was even studying during lunch breaks at work. Ugh!

I showed up to the test and of course the teacher was late. I don’t think he was ever on time! So I congregated with the rest of the students outside the classroom and sat on the floor and reviewed the old tests, last minute. This was actually a good idea because the test turned out to have many questions directly stolen from these old tests. Maybe they were twisted around a bit, but they felt very familiar.

About halfway through taking it we were alerted by the teacher that we would all have to leave the classroom and go downstairs because of A TORNADO DRILL. Normally NOVA wouldn’t schedule this on a day when classes are giving tests, but apparently our teacher had just found about this. Our test was supposed to be next Tuesday, but since our teacher wanted to go on vacation he bumped everything on the schedule up one week. I guess NOVA figured no one would be giving a test the class before the last class – but they were wrong! Luckily it didn’t seem to phase me that much.

I think I did alright on the test, although I doubt I’ll come out of this class with an A. A solid B is what I’m thinking. Of course I still don’t know how I did on test #2 (the one before the final) or the second big project we did because the teacher still hasn’t graded them. Well, we’ve run out of classes, how am I supposed to find out how I did? The teacher said we can email him next week to find out. Uh, alright… Not exactly the best way to do it in my opinion. But like I said, at least the worst is over. For now. I still have my online class for another 5 weeks, and Fall semester begins right after that!

Updates:

Added a page about my Warmoth Stratocaster to the Stuff section

Song: Elementary – Crutch

Sorry I haven’t been blogging very frequently. There have been a lot of big events that have been pulling my attention away from the computer. And the death of my second grandfather, Richard “Jay” Emory Mills, or Pap to all the grandchildren, was one. Pap’s death happened just under half a year from Pop Pop‘s.

Pap lived to almost be 89. Next month would have been his birthday. That is a tremendously long life. He was a man of few words who enjoyed the simple pleasures. He was a Civil War buff and really enjoyed sports and especially college football – many a time he would ask me about how JMU was doing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a big sports guy so I could hardly give him a good answer! Luckily my cousin Zack was way into college football (he played at Penn State) and his sisters Jessica and Catherine both played basketball, so they could make up for my lack of interest in sports. But Pap and I had a similar love of music, and for awhile, the drums.

Pap could just fall into another world and listen to music (his favorite time period of course being the big band era, when he was young). I asked him once which popular bands he saw when he was younger and his response was “all of them!” While in the hospital recently, one of the last things Mom brought him was a CD player so he could listen to his CDs. It was that important to him. He was in the Navy band as a drummer, and most probably the influence I went to when choosing my first instrument (while I started on the piano, it was chosen FOR me). There was a line in 5th grade to choose percussion, woodwind or brass. I believe both Stan and I wanted to be trumpeters like our grandfather Pop Pop, but when I tried “buzzing” on a trumpet mouthpiece, I just couldn’t really do it. So at the last minute, I made an about-face and headed into the percussion line. I’m sure one of my reasonings was, well Stan’s going to be a trumpeter like Pop Pop and I’ll be a drummer like Pap! And while I do not consider my first musical love to be drums anymore (4th or 5th?), it was because I was a drummer that I became to understand songwriting differently (and easier in some cases) than others. And this was in no small way because of this man.

As I alluded to earlier, Pap’s health was in decline for a while now. So as surprising as his death was, in some ways it wasn’t such a surprise. I’m grateful that Mom called me the Friday before he passed and had me talk to him. He couldn’t really talk but was able to listen to me, and I told him what I was up to. Then I said “Bye Pap”. I’m glad I was able to say goodbye in some way.

His funeral was on Thursday and it was a somber event. The presentations were nice, and my grandmother, Gram Gram’s flower arrangement and note to Pap were very touching. The mood lightened during the meal after the burial – it was nice to sit and catch up a little with my cousins and just remember funny stories of our past. I also got to learn how Pap and Gram Gram (funnily enough, all my cousins just call her Grandma) met – at the bowling alley! Nothing like what I imagined.

Well, life goes on. Do what you can while you’re around and make it positive.

Updates:

Removed Batman: Arkham Asylum and Curb Your Enthusiasm: Seasons 1 – 6 from Current Interests
Removed The Calvin And Hobbes Tenth Anniversary from and added Rolling Stone Interviews to What I’m Reading
Added my new Sony Cyber-Shot to the Cameras section
Removed the old version of the website (1999-2002) from the Stuff page
Updated the Batman & Robin theme

Song: Brooks & Dunn – Brand New Man

Well, I’ve run 10 days in a row now. And I think I’m going to take a break. I know, I’m bummed about it also. I made the self-bet that I would run every day in July. But my knees have been tender after the last two runs, so in order to keep them in good condition I’ve decided to change up the rules a bit.

Instead of 31 days in a row, I’ll do 30 days in sets of 5 days in a row, and a few days off in between. So I’ll still use my little running man at the bottom of each blog to keep track of overall, but I’ll also use checkered flags to mark each 5-day checkpoint. So, because I’ve done 10 already, that’s 2 checkered flags. Super nerdy, I know. I love it!

Updates:

Removed There’s Treasure Everywhere from and added The Calvin And Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book to What I’m Reading

Song: Nirvana – Rape Me

I hate when people think their hero is so bad-ass because he went to jail or got arrested, but holy crap is this awesome stumbling upon Kurt Cobain‘s mug shot (thanks to Wikipedia)! He is no older than 18.

The story was, he and some other vandal friends were out having some good, clean fun by spray painting some walls. The cops showed up, and everyone scattered. Poor Cobain was the only one caught and arrested. I don’t think he squealed on his friends, so he got to go around for a few days and clean off graffiti – some of which was his own that he had done previously.

Music begins with this guy for me, so every time I stumble upon something new that he’s associated with, it’s always like rediscovering something very familiar and close to me. I feel like going and listening to all my Nirvana tunes! …In chronological order!!

Updates:

Removed Killing Floor from What I’m Reading