Finals and whatnot

Sup y'all. It's been a pretty eventful week, I registered for classes, took a few tests, and now I'm writing the final page of my philosophy paper. I ended up with a C+ in Macroeconomics, a B+ in Spanish, I'm pretty sure I'll get an A in Latin American Studies, and I'll find out about philosophy in a few days. Overall, this semester wasn't too great academically, but oh well. Three of my classes fulfill requirements and my GPA didn't take too big of a hit.

I'm pretty excited about next semester, though. I'm taking Spanish Conversation and Composition, Spanish Grammar and Writing, History of Ancient Philosophy, History of Ethics, and Islamic Philosophy. I'm really stoked about History of Ethics, because ethics are way interesting and because the professor is a really cool German (I'm pretty sure) guy who has an awesome accent and got his PhD at Cambridge. It should be pretty kickin'. I think it'll be fun having a semester with only classes I want to take.

I'm gonna head up to Arkansas tomorrow around noon. It'll be rough being in a place where it's not still t-shirt weather most days. I probably haven't had to wear a jacket more than 20 times so far this year. It should be pretty cool hangin' out with the Blackman guys for the next week or so. I'm not sure what the internet situation is like in Arkansas, I hear it's still pretty novel technology up there, so I might not post with my regular timeliness.

What I did 11 days ago

So the Friday after Thanksgiving I was hanging out with my homies, and my friend Katie was like "hey Ross, I heard you want to get your lip pierced." I was like "well yeah I actually do I think lip rings look pretty boss." So she was all "well dude, let's go get our lips pierced, dude." So I was like "hell yeah man" so we set out to find a piercing place.

Turns out it's not too hard to find people willing to stick needles in your face in New Orleans, and after an hour or two of searching we settled on Pat's Blue Ribbon Piercing in NOLA Tattoos. Pat seemed like a cool guy, and I was pretty sure that I would look all kinds of sexy with a lip ring, so I went on back into the piercing room and laid down on the operating table with all my homies watching. Pat grabbed my lip with some pliers and shoved a needle through it, followed by the ring. It hurt, kind of like you'd expect it would.

I got up, looked in the mirror, and realized an important point: I looked way stupid. I always thought lip rings looked badass on other people, like Tom Gabel and Davey Havok, but I'm just not as cool as those guys I guess. So the next day I took it out. You can't even tell where it was on the outside. I still have a little bump on the inside, but I'm thinking that should go away sooner or later. So yeah, that was my failed experiment with facial piercings.

Yo yo yo,

Remember when I told y'all about how I had to teach my ESL class when the teacher was gone? Well the first teacher got fired, so I had to teach a couple classes until they found a new teacher, and I had to fill in for him a couple times when he was out of town.

I didn't mind at all, because as the semester went along I discovered that I really enjoyed teaching English. I love hearing the students' accents, and the way non-native speakers phrase things is really funny and interesting to listen to. Last week I was disturbed to realize that I enjoyed grammar.

So last week the site director mentioned that they were looking for teachers for next semester, and my class's teacher recommended me, so I'm totally gonna be teaching ESL level one next semester. It's a volunteer position, so I'm not getting any money, but it should open up the door to internships this summer.

So yeah, I signed up in August to be a TA for 20 hours to fulfill a graduation requirement, and now I'm kind of an employee of the New Orleans Archdiocese. Weird how stuff works out, huh?

Circa Survive

So since I've been slacking off on the posting lately I figured I'd give y'all some mid-week Ross musings.

Last night I headed of with three of my best homies to tha House of Blues to see Circa Survive. Circa is a crazy awesome prog rock band with a singer whose voice is so high he makes Robert Plant and Geddy Lee look like that obnoxious country singer who sings Long Black Train. The show was brutally awesome.

It took us forever to find parking, because that's how the French Quarter is, and we ended up parking 10 or so blocks from the venue. On the way we saw not one, not two, but four groups of crazy hobo/crustpunk/hillbillies sitting on the sidewalk playing jangly tunes on broken down banjos and fiddles while they howled into the sticky southern night. I wanted to stop and watch a particularly large group of these vagrants, and maybe talk awhile about our mutual love for Hank Sr, but it wasn't really my friends' scene, so we endeavored to persevere. We got to the HoB right when the first of three opening bands* was playing their last song. The venue was packed, and we spent the rest of the song and most of the break after the band finished up getting closer to the stage. We got to with 10 or 12 feet of the stage, so we were sufficiently close to see the show.

The second opener, Code7 I think they were called, couldn't decide if they were hardcore or prog rock, which was pretty sweet. They were something like Pink Floyd's weirder stuff, only with more distortion and more noise in general, juxtaposed with something like this. The singer was acting like he was possessed, writhing around while screaming with his eyes rolling back in his head. It was a high energy set.

The next band was called Dredg (pronounced Dredge), and they were really cool. Much more mellow than Code7. Rushesque. After Dredg is when things got awesome. It didn't take the crew too long to set up Circa's Stuff, and when the band took the stage the crowd went nuts. When Anthony Green, the singer, took the stage the crowd blew up. He's one of those singers with fans who absolutely love him. One girl kept screaming "I love you Anthony" every time it was quiet enough for her to be heard, which wasn't often, because once they started playing they kept up a steady stream of awesome until well past midnight. It was a great show: everyone sang along to every song, there were huge banks of lights, a gigantic (the size of the entire back wall) poster of the cover art to Circa's latest album, confetti cannons that went off at various sFz type moments, and huge (3 feet across) balloons filled with colored lights bouncing around the crowd. During the encore they threw even bigger balloons (6 feet across) into the crowd, although they weren't filled with lights.

Overall, one of the better Tuesday nights I've had lately.

*This particular opening band was two dudes slamming on 8 string guitars, which are almost like a guitar and a bass smashed together, and a drummer. All I can say about them is that they were loud. Very very loud.

Sup peeps,

How's it goin? I know it's been a couple weeks since the last post. I'm a terrible blogger. Absolutely terrible.

I've been up to my usual antics: goin' to shows, doin' homework, hittin' on chicas, all that good stuff. School is going well, even though I've had to work more than I like lately. I got a B- on a philosophy paper, which I'm pretty sure is the worst grade I've ever gotten on a paper, so I decided to stop writing them the night before/the day they're due. Other than that things have been relatively uneventful. I signed up for a five mile race on Thanksgiving Day, so I've been training for that.

I saw a gnarly crust punk band called Star F*****g Hipsters last week, and they totally ripped. I talked to one of the singers in the pit during one of the opening band's sets, and he seemed very reasonable for the former frontman of a band called Leftöver Crack. This chick, the other singer from the band tapped me on the shoulder and said "excuse me bud," because I was in her way. It was rage-tastic.

Other than that I don't have too many interesting stories. I don't go out and act crazy nearly as much as I did last year. But since it's almost 3 in the morning I'll call this post good, and I'll see y'all next week!

Shows and Stuff

I know, I know. It's been 15 days since my last post, but that's not really that long if you think in geologic time. But anyways, here's what I've been doin' lately.

Last week was crazy midterms week, I had three papers and two tests due, but I survived. I'm doing pretty well in all of my classes, I think, but we haven't gotten our midterm grades yet so I could be failing I suppose. But I don't think I am.

I've been going to a lot of music lately, which has been cool. I've hit up Frenchman Street four or five times since getting down here, and that's always an adventure and tons of fun. Last weekend I saw a couple hard rock bands at the House of Blues, and it was okay. The crowd was really weird and consisted of groups of annoying bros (backwards caps, popped collars, drunken yelling), middle aged barflys, and camo hat wearin' redneck kids. Not exactly my crowd, but oh well it was a decent show. Tomorrow I'm going to a show that's a little more my style: four punk bands playing an old warehouse in Mid-City, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Let's see, on Sunday my homie Bryan and I went to mass at the Most Holy Name of Jesus Church at Loyola University, right next door to Tulane. It's a crazy beautiful building, so that was pretty cool.

I just got Justin Townes Earle's new album Harlem River Blues on vinyl today, and it totally rocks. Justin is Steve Earle's kid, and he's named after Townes Van Zandt, and this dude can write the hell out of a country song. Y'all should check it out.

Hasta luego,

Ross

General Mayhem

Hola familiares!

I've had a fairly action packed week. I really should start taking pictures of all the generally rad stuff I do. I'll put that on my to-do list.

One of the first things I did this week was drop my Calculus class. I decided to get out while I still could when I failed my fourth consecutive quiz. I'm gonna spend the next couple of months brushing up on all the math that I was supposed to learn in high school but didn't, and I'll give Calc another shot in the spring. Oh well

On the bright side, though, dropping Calculus after the last date to add classes means that I only have 13 credit hours. In other words, I can barely call myself a full time college student anymore. I'll have tons of time for activities. My other classes are going pretty well, I have two midterms and a paper next week, but since Calculus is no longer taking up 6-12 hours of my week, I can do my other studying without many problems.

This weekend I got to see a really good hardcore punk show downtown. A couple New Orleans bands and a couple touring bands, in a bar just a few times the size of my room. Rage hard.

I just got back from teaching my ESL class by myself, and it went pretty well. All the students are adults so they were all nice and respectful, and I think I did a fairly good job, even though I accidentally finished 15 minutes early. I don't think I'm gonna become a teacher though.

In other news, I'm coming down with a cold, but it's not super bad, so nobody freak out. And I guess I'll have to learn how to be sick without Mom around to mother me sooner or later.

Anyways, y'all have a good week, and I'll try really hard to remember to take my camera out this week.

Peace.

P.S. Shout out to G&G for the awesome box they sent me, and Dad for the kickin' notebook.

Teachin' ESL

Here at Tulane a bunch of holier-than-thou students a few years before my time succeeded in making "service learning" a requirement for graduation. We have to complete 20 hours worth of "service" our first two years, and 40 the second two. I think the concept behind the whole program is pretty good, helping out the community and whatnot, but it's implemented in a way that really annoys me, mostly because it adds more classes I don't want to take but am required to (take).

So this semester I'm taking Latin American Studies, and the service learning part is working with an ESL program organized by the New Orleans Archdiocese, I think. I'm a T.A. in a level 2 English class, where the people speak more than basic survival English, but can't really have a conversation. In my class there are a dozen or so Hispanics, a few Brazilians, and a French speaker.

It's pretty enjoyable stuff, I mostly just wander around the room and explain things to the students, make copies, and do whatever else the teacher wants me to do. I actually have to teach the class by myself next Monday, because the teacher will be gone, so that should be interesting. It won't be too hard, because this level of ESL mostly involves a lot of smiling, big hand motions, miming, and enunciating the hell out of every word.

In other news, I've got two tests and a paper this week, so I gotta run. Take it easy, y'all.

Mah new room!

Greetings! Here I am, actually posting on a Monday. It's pretty crazy. I figured I'd post some pictures of my room, since only Mom and Dad have seen it so far. It's about twice as big and 4 times as nice as where I lived last year, so I'm pretty pumped about it. In the top picture you can see Xiao, my roommate, sleeping in his bed.

Last week was pretty eventful. On Thursday there was a torrential downpour where the streets flooded almost to knee level. It was pretty cool, I went to the park and played frisbee in the rain.

On Friday a bunch of us went downtown to check out the crushing NOLA metal band known as haarp. Unfortunately they were playing a 21+ bar, so we got kicked out after we saw a few songs from the opening band. We didn't really care and headed down Frenchmen street, where we saw a really good jam band and a 9 piece jazz band with a trumpet player who looked like Lil Wayne.

Saturday I somehow managed to not do a single productive thing. Funny how that works out.

Well that's all the news I can remember for right now, be on the lookout for another post in 7-15 days.

I'm quite alright, don't worry

Hey family!

I haven't posted for a couple weeks, because I'm basically a terrible blogger. Just terrible. One of the worst, really. Lots has happened in the last couple weeks, the biggest thing being my move back to New Orleans. I left good ole' Colorado the Thursday before last, and drove and drove and drove. I rolled into the Big Easy at 10 the next morning, after a night filled with coffee, loud rock and roll, and blasting A/C. I blasted Rancid's "New Orleans" when I got into town. It was cool. I spent the weekend unpacking and catching up with all my homies. My new dorm room is awesome, it's about twice the size of my old one, and I only have to share a bathroom with 3 other dudes instead of 30.

Last Monday classes started, and most of mine are pretty cool. I'm taking Intermediate Macroeconomics, History of Modern Philosophy, Spanish III, Intro to Latin America, and Calculus I. Calc is kicking my butt, but all my other classes are either fairly easy or enjoyable, so I'm not too overwhelmed. My philosophy class is really cool.

Last weekend a few friends and I accidentally happened upon a Mid Summer Mardi Gras parade. We're halfway to real Mardi Gras, so the city decided to party. It was pretty cool, a bunch of drunk people running around in costumes.

Overall the year is starting off really well. I'm super glad to be back, and I'm having a blast. I'll totally try to post again next Monday, maybe with some pictures of my exploits.

Warped Tour 2010

Yesterday Skyler, his friends Michael and Michael and I drove to Denver to check out Warped Tour 2010. For those of you who aren't as hip as me, Warped Tour is a big traveling music festival featuring lots of punk and hardcore and whatnot bands. 7 stages were set up in the parking lots by Invesco Field, and were surrounded by tens of thousands of teenagers with elaborate hair.

When we got there the first show we went to was Anti-Flag at the main stage. The show was awesome. Chris #2, the bass player, crowd surfed on me, and for the last song of the set Pat set up his drums on the ground in front of the stage, and I got be there right next to him. They played a bunch of my favorite songs, and it was a ton of fun.

After Anti-Flag we had a couple of hours to kill before Dropkick Murphys went on, so we wandered around, saw a few smaller bands, one of which tossed me a t-shirt, and slam danced in a facetious manner. It was crazy hot, and I ended up spending 20 bucks on water. ($4 a bottle...) We caught part of The Casualties' set, and while I'm not really a fan they were entertaining and their hair was cool.

After The Casualties we headed back to the main stage for Dropkick Murphys, and man, it was insane. The band was awesome, they totally ripped. During Buried Alive, one of my favorite DKM tunes, Al Barr, the singer, and I made eye contact for like 6 seconds while we shouted the lyrics at each other. It was magical. The pit was absolutely crazy, though, and was filled with a bunch of drunk, middle aged, overweight bald dudes with goatees who felt that it was their personal duty to piss off everybody around them. I'm not generally a violent person, but I came close to fighting one of them several times. Towards the end of the set a guy next to me boosted me up and I crowd surfed away from the drunk dudes. They took me up to the stage and for a second I was 3 feet away from Ken Casey, the bass player. I thought about jumping up there, but I didn't feel like tangling with security.

During Dropkick Murphys I got separated from Skyler and the Michaels, so I pushed my way back to the stage for Alkaline Trio. They totally rocked, too, and they crowd wasn't a bunch of morons like DKM's was. After their set I found the kids and they all wanted to go home, so I didn't get to see Pennywise or Every Time I Die. Oh well, it was still a blast.

10 days 'till I leave.

Running

This week hasn't been very eventful, but I did start running again. I ran occasionally with my friend Xiao when I was at school, and he always kicked my butt, so I figured I should start running again if I wanted to keep up.

I got in 8 miles this week, including 3 miles yesterday. I've always been susceptible to shin splints, so I'm only going to run every other day, but I figure that's enough. I don't want to run a marathon or anything. Yesterday was my first time running 3 miles nonstop since April, and it was way hard. I wanted to quit when I was less than halfway done, but I powered through, because I'm incredibly awesome like that. I finished under 24 minutes, too (barely), which was my goal. That's not super fast, but I wasn't feeling great and I haven't been running in months so I think that's aight. When I ran a 5k in 9th grade I don't think my time was under 30, so I guess I'm faster than I used to be.

Anyways, things are pretty slow here, and there's not much else to tell. I finally got my financial aid package today, after three or four days of freaking the hell out because I only got one scholarship, but it turns out Tulane gave me more money this year than they did last year, so I get to stay at Tulane and don't have to be $30,000 in debt before my 20th birthday. Life is good.

17 days until I leave fer Nawlins!

The Epic Journey

Yo people, sorry for the late post. I'm just not a good blogger. I guess we all have to come to terms with our shortcomings sooner or later.

Anyway, about a week ago Skyler and I set out for the mountains. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. But the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing more irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge...* So I kept Skyler away from the ether.

The first night we drove to Rocky Mountain National Park only to discover it was absolutely crawling with white people. They were everywhere. We drove south to around Granby and stayed at a campground in Arapaho National Recreation Area. We somehow got a fire started. I'm not sure how, because it was dark when we got there and we were unsuccessful the next two days, but we got a fire started and roasted hot dogs. Oh yeah.

Next day we drove to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, stopping along the way to kick it around Leadville and eat lunch by the Arkansas River (I think). When we got to the Black Canyon, our minds were totally blown. It's the most epic thing I've ever seen. If y'all haven't been there, you need to go. Fo sho. I'm not nearly good enough with words to describe how awesome it is, so I'm not going to even try. But if ya haven't been, get up there.

The next day we drove down to the Sand Dunes and played around all day, at dinner in Alamosa, and drove all the way back to Black Canyon that night. Lots of driving, but a ton of fun. Sunday morning we drove along the south rim of the canyon and looked at all the overlooks. It was awesome. After that we got on I-70 and I drove with thousands of insane people for about 100 miles, when I couldn't take it anymore and we got off onto a scenic byway between Minturn and Leadville. We found a campground about half an hour later in White River National Forest, and stayed there. It was fun because we actually got a good fire built, instead of soaking a couple of logs in lighter fluid and pouring more on when they went out. This time we started with little sticks and worked our way up to logs. Hoorah.

Anyway, Skyler and I survived our trip, and now I've got three weeks left in Colorado.

*This is a quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. Chill.

Yo Peeps

Hello family members and other Ross enthusiasts. I've decided to start up the blog again, due to an outrageous number of requests (and demands. and threats) from many of my loyal followers. Starting today I'll try and get a post up every Monday, so y'all can get your Ross fix.

Last week I decided to try to get a job in the grain industry. I worked a 12 hour shift unloading grain trucks at the New Haven branch of the coop on Thursday. It's a bunch of elevators in the middle of the prairie a 45 minute drive from Holyoke. It was the crappiest job ever. The work itself wasn't difficult. I sat around a lot, and opened up trucks so the grain could go into the pit thing that brings it to the elevators. The part that sucked so hard was the dust. I was provided with a respirator, but after an hour my nose was running like a faucet and it was hard to breath. By the end of the night, after unloading probably 50 or 60 trucks, I could barely get half a breath and my lungs hurt like crazy.

Mom freaked out when I got home and wanted to take me to the E.R. right away, but I was like "Naw, Maw. I ain't goin' to no emergency room," or something to that effect. So I hung out, couldn't fall asleep until 6 a.m., and called the coop the next morning and quit. I missed a loop at the golf course on Saturday because I was so sick, sneezing and coughing up a lung and whatnot, and when I had to miss another loop this morning Mom put her foot down and made me see a doctor.

Turns out I had a gnarly allergy/asthma reaction to the grain dust, and I had to get a shot, toke on a vaporizer for awhile, get an inhaler for the first time since like 6th grade, and get some prescription pills. Now I'm sittin' on my bed in a drugged out haze.

So, that's pretty much what my last week was like. Skyler and I are going camping in the mountains this week, and there will probably be some shenanigans. I'll post pics and let y'all know how it goes next Monday, or maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how soon we run out of money and have to come back home.

Oh yeah, and I head back to New Orleans in 31 days. Wooooo!