Saturday, 24th of November, 2001
Tonight I went with Beth and Andrea to a night of music and dessert presented by the Kirkwood Chorus. Ricky was in it, and sounded very very good.
Friday, 23rd of November, 2001
The Turkey Bowl is a big deal with Kirkwood and Webster Groves High Schools, and Andrea and I got to witness some of that at the varsity hockey game today. Then later tonight, I helped Beth babysit her neighbours, as they had requested a guy to join her for the evening. It was relatively smooth, the typical children-going-to-bed routines. Then I proceded to join Jim in checking out Club Liquid in downtown St. Louis. It was actually very nice, as DJ Dan was in town, and it was a really nicely done party. Ridiculously thumping bass, tons of smoke, soap, bubbles, confetti, lasers, lights... it was nice.
Thursday, 22nd of November, 2001
This morning Hannah's Aunt was celebrating a big birthday and 6 of us Strollers decided to get together and play a little for the guests. That worked out really well, it was nice. Then I went with my family around noon to a huge Thanksgiving dinner hosted by our pastor. I definitely got to eat all the Thanksgiving goodies, and afterwards by popular demand my brother and I played a little something for the people there. I was told to bring my violin beforehand, but I basically took requests on the spot ranging from "Turkey in the Straw" to Hymns.
I spent the rest of the day fighting with Windows 2000's networking features, as I had upgraded Dad's computer from Win98 SE, and I needed the Internet Connection Sharing to work. I did get the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive to work properly, though, and it's very nice, as we're using it to backup data. I also bought a SIIG Fast-SCSI-2 card for it, since it's a SCSI drive, and the label on the anti-static bag was so interesting I stuck it on my cell phone.
Wednesday, 21st of November, 2001
My parents have been going without a working VCR for a while, so we finally fixed that at Circuit City today. We were already set on getting the Hitachi VTFX665A, and there happened to be an open-box one there for $66! So we definitely got that, and to not feel so obsolete, we also got the Apex AD-1500 DVD player for $90. S-Video is a good thing, and I didn't even know our ProScan TV had S-Video inputs until I got home. Woah!
Then I went back to campus to clean my room. That involved some interesting things, like a paper cup of fermented grape juice.
Tuesday, 20th of November, 2001
Strolling rehearsal was canceled today for Thanksgiving or something, so I went back to my parents' house, ate dinner, played chess with my brother, and slept there.
Monday, 19th of November, 2001
"Now finally I might have stable tyre pressures in my car..." - famous last words. Front right tyre is still leaking. Took it in, sat there with 2 mechanics as they sprayed the tyre over and over again, not finding anything. After inflating it to 60 psi and about 20 minutes later, it finally dawned on one of them to wiggle the valve, and woah! Bubbles started shooting out. So this time, the valve stem was replaced.
This afternoon, Beth and Andrea gave me a needed haircut, and it's actually a pretty short one this time, but I like it.
Later tonight, Joe had a craving for off-campus food, so we went to Steak and Shake. Then we were involved in the moving of a 6-foot-tall letter "E" from the "EN WEEK" sign originally on top of the Olin library. It just barely wouldn't fit in the Cavalier, so we walked it back. Yes, that would be down Forsyth, across campus and the South 40. But now there's this huge "E" in Joe's room! It took us until halfway there to figure out the optimal way to carry it too, which is, to carry it sideways on our shoulders. It was hilarious!
Sunday, 18th of November, 2001
So the St. Louis Youth Symphony played this awesome concert today at Powell Hall. We played Beethoven's Overture to Egmont, Mozart Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for Violin and Viola, K. 364, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Op. 35. We had a cut-down orchestra for the Mozart, and they accompanied a couple of SLSO guest performers. Their presence obviously helped boost the audience, in both sheer number and music-appreciation level. The hall was actually decently filled, more than I'd seen so far. It was definitely a very cool concert, good music, good playing, good audience. I loved it.