A Week in Review

Claim: I have come to the realization that I am not a very good Blogger. Evidence: I have not posted in a week. Interpretation: Therefore, in order to become a more effective blogger, I must post more blogs.

Anyway, perhaps a lot has happened this week. I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out by how lengthy this blog turns out to be. Monday I went to school and did stuff. After school my parents and I had a meeting with Angela Fuller (My chemistry teacher.) Now I have to do my homework everynight at the kitchen table, go in for the last half hour of advisement on A days, and stay after on Mondays and Fridays. After that, my dad and I came home and unloaded some furniture that my mom bought on eBay from the van. Then I practiced my drums, fed my fish, and went to my drum lesson with Primo. After that I had worship practice at church.

Tuesday: I went to school and did stuff. I asked Mr. Greene if I could pick up the new bass drum head from Ron Cicero because I was getting sick of carrying mine in or using the old one. I went home, called Ron, picked up the head, came home, played a little bass (actually it's a full scale bass) and then I had voice lessons with Mr. Jansson.

Wednesday: I went to school and did stuff. After school and band, I had JukeVox, and we began recording to send in for the National High School Acapella Championships or something like that. The thing is, it has to be a single take live recording, which was hard. Wednesday night, I played acoustic guitar for the Junior High kids at church.

Thursday: I went to school and did stuff. After school and band, I had JukeVox, and we recorded again. I went home and did absolutely nothing except chemistry homework.

Friday: I went to school, took a math test, went to choir and at the end of choir JukeVox recorded. I stayed after school with Angela and worked on my deciroom lab. After that my mom and I went to Cadence and Zebb's and then home. We did nothing for the whole night.

Saturday: I woke up, had breakfast, went to Albany to see Katie play the flute, hung out with her for a while and drove home.

Now: I am going to church

Saranac

Early in the week, my friends Andy, Kyle and Josh all invited me to go camping with them this weekend. I made the decision to go Thursday morning, we left Friday afternoon. It was the annual Young Life Fall Weekend Camp out at Saranac Lake. It was awesome. We spent a while on a school bus and we got to saranac late. We ate dinner and then we went to check out our "Cabin." IT WAS SWEEET!" We had a common room, kitchen 4 bedrooms and an attic. Our room had 3 sets of bunkbeds and a private bathroom. We matress surfed down the stairs. Then we chilled outside for a while waiting for "Club." I met a few girls from Penfield that were really nice and we talked for a while. I don't remember their names though. When the bell rang, Jamie, Andy, Kyle, Alex, Alex, Dave and I went to the side door so we would get good seats. We were like 2nd row. It was pretty sweet. We sang a bunch of songs and listened to Chico Barbados give us his sales pitch on the Omega 3-erizer and Bozo the clown gave us his sales pitch for his DVD with shows 4 5 and 6. Then Karina from Rhode Island spoke. Her heart seemed to be in the right place, but she didn't really rope us in very well. After that we had freetime so I checked out the camp and asked people for a G string because mine broke on the bus ride up. (Its for a guitar you sicko!) After that we had cabin time and hung out until 4 in the morning beating up Alex Aiezza and shaving my head into a mohawk. We woke up and showered the next day and then headed over to the dining hall for breakfast. We had cereal, pancakes, bacon and much more. It was delectable. After that we went back to our cabin to change into something we could get dirty in and then we went to club. Then we went over to the field and played steal the bacon, some weird mattress surfing game and peel the onion. It was pouring rain the whole time. After that we cleaned up and then we had freetime until dinner. We showered and then chilled for a little while. Then some of us went into the hot tub. It was sweet. Then some of us went back to the cabin. we took showers again and then dave and I hung out and played guitar and napped. Then I went to the YL store and bought some stickers and a guitar pick. We had roast beef, mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas for dinner. Then we had club and then we had 15 minutes to walk out in the woods and have complete silent time with God. It was amazing. Then we had freetime. Dave was journaling in the common room and told Alex he was hot so Alex grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed it. He's dumb. Then we had cabin time, then we shaved my head. Then we went to bed. Then we woke up and cleaned our room. Then we put our stuff in the main lodge. Then we went to breakfast. Then we went to club. Then we met with our area for our picture then we hit the road. It was a boring ride home. I'm tired. Mattress surfing was sweet.

Mitch

Mitch VanDenBerghe... Arranger?

It's true, in the time since I have last posted I have began working on some possible arrangements for JukeVox for next year. I have started "Be My Escape" by Relient K, "Miss You Tonight" by LastPageFirst, "I Hate Christmas Parties" by Matthew Thiessen and The Earthquakes (The lead singer of Relient K), "The Best Deceptions" by Dashboard Confessional, "Kings of Hollywood" by MxPx and "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects. There will be more to come I'm sure. Tomorrow I am going on some young life retreat to saranac. Should be sweet. I've never been to young life, but some of my friends will be there so I'm sure I'll have a good time. I'm gonna go arrange some music.

A case of the Monday's

Good evening,
Today, being that it is monday, I had a case of the monday's. I didn't wake up until like 6:40 this morning, and then when I got to school, I had math 1st period, which is hard on a monday, 1st period. Then I had choir. Then I had lunch, chem and study hall. The day seemed so long. After Symphonic Band, my dad picked me up from school and we went over to my Grandma and Grandpa's house to mow the lawn. After that, I came home and practiced for my drum lesson, then I had my drum lesson and Worship practice at church. Monday's are always very busy and I am always very tired.

That's it.

Encouraging

Hey,
I know I already posted this morning about last night, but now I'm going to post about today. I woke up at 6:00AM after going to bed at 1:00AM, because I had to be ready for Andrea to pick me up for church. We got to church at 7:15 and set up and had our soundcheck and pep talk and then we prayed. Then 1st service started. Worship was amazing all 4 services, at least for me, because it was the first time in a long time that i feel that I was able to fully worship. After church, I went to lunch with my parents at the worst restaurant ever, in gates by the super walmart. I think it was called West Gate Family Restaurant. Never go there. After that I came home and set up my drums, then I did my math homework, and then I had band practice with my new band "Crank 211" (http://www.myspace.com/crank211) It was actually really encouraging. Frankly, until tonight we sucked, but tonight we did really well. We have four songs learned, we just need to brush them up, and then we're going to hit the studio and record them, and our first show is December 21st at Olympia for Holiday Havoc '06. This band is getting alot better and I'm happy to be rocking out again.

Shalom.

It's Been One Week.

Good Morning,

It's been a few days since my last post. Last night I had a JukeVox concert at Roberts Wesleyan College. We had to be there at 5:45 for the sound check, I was the second one there, then we waited for other people to show up. When almost everyone was there we went to the "Green Room" to warm up. By the time we were done warming up and ready to go on stage, everyone had shown up except Amanda, and she was the soloist in the second song. So we ran through "In The Still of The Night," "Warm and Fuzzy," and "Kokomo," and as always, all the drama people were flipping out (Basically everyone except for Josh, Leah and myself), and it was really pissing me off. Maybe it's because I've played on stages with different bands so many times that I am really comfortable with performing, but I never get worked up about a performance. Anyway, after our sound check we ate some sweet pizza, and everyone else was flipping out, and they wanted to warm up. Josh and I were like, "didn't we just warm up, or what was that?" and everyone else seemed to be really nervous. So we went to the "Shewan Recital Hall" and did all the same things again. Amanda finally showed up at 6:30, because she thought that was when soundcheck was.
We went on stage around 7:30, and we sang our 3 songs. It went pretty well, except for the bass microphone stand started slowly descending. I did vocal percussion for the first time live in Kokomo. The other groups were excellent. I recognized a few of the people from Vocal Infusion from Charlie Cote's memorial service. They sang one of the songs they did at his service.
After the show, we sold some C.D.'s and then Leah. my mom and I went out to Zebb's. Leah and I hung out in the Arcade for a little while and I won her an orange lion in the claw game. We ate dinner, then we dropped Leah off at her crib, then we went home and I went to bed around 12:45AM. It is now 6:31 and I am waiting for Andrea to pick me up for church. I'm tired.

thats it.

Dissapointment.

Aloha,
Last night I was too tired to post a new blog, so today I will post two days worth of stuff. It's snowing right now. Good ol' Rochester. Anyhow, yesterday I took my road test at 2:00PM in Brockport. The lady who proctored the test had a nice enough personality but she did not seem to like me. First of all, the first thing you are instructed to do on the test is leave the curb. Now, before you leave the curb, you make sure you put your seat belt on if it isn't already, then you put your turn signal on, check your mirrors, and look over your shoulder to make sure there is no oncoming traffic, all of which I did. The lady claimed I did not look over my shoulder, but my dad saw me do it from where he was standing. The second instruction she gave me was to go to the end of the road and turn right, so I turned my signal on, stopped before the crosswalk, and since there was a parked vehicle obstructing my view, I slowly moved forward to make sure there was no oncoming traffic, and the lady claimed that I was obstructing the flow of pedestrians, even though there were no pedestrians, and i was only in the crosswalk when i was making sure there were no oncoming vehicles. Third, she added points because apparantley I fail to anticipate actions of other drivers, because I passed a car with no driver inside, and did not turn my head to make sure there was no one in the car. The fourth and final thing, was that when she had me parallel park, i did fine parking, but i did not realize that she had me parallel park so closely to a curb that protruded extra far. She asked me to back out, and the curb was right behind my back wheel, and I had no choice but to hop the curb to get out, and she added points for that. Now, that one was partially my fault, but the other things were not, and I feel like I should have recieved my license yesterday. I had a total of 50 points, and the total needs to be less than 30 in order to recieve your license, so I rescheduled for November 22nd. Hopefully I will pass then.

I am sorry, but i think i lied when i said I would post two days worth of stuff, because today was pretty uneventful. I'll post tomorrow.

Mitch