It's been a while...

...hasn't it?

Did you miss me? You did, didn't you? Didn't you?! You can say it. Don't worry. I won't tell anyone...

Well, I'm back, but unfortunately, I've been kept so busy that this post will have to be brief -- or at least I will try to be brief...

To sum up, here's what's happened to me. First and foremost, as some of you are well aware, my laptop takes about 15 minutes to boot normally. Well, this time has been increasing up to about 30 minutes. It's high time to reformat my little trooper and start all over again. In this interest, since I cannot find any of my copies of Windows anywhere (which absolutely boggles my mind -- not a hard thing to do -- ask anyone), I have decided that my baby will use Linux. Which distro? I don't know. For this, I have called upon the local Linux expert, the great, the guru, the Josh. Some of you know him as Agent K.

Ok, fine. I know him as Agent K. You have to ask him if he will allow you to call him that.

...Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever called him that. Although, I'm sensing another reason to get the evil eye from Agent K if I ever call him that, and we all know that my goal in life is simple: bug people. That's it. ANYwho, I'm rambling. Let's get back to it.

I downloaded Gentoo, on the basis that it had a cool looking logo, and it came highly recommended by many of its users. Plus, it was also free. Free is a major plus to me here. Then, after a night of downloading this 700 MB file, I consulted the great Agent K and found out the Gentoo is a more advanced Linux. The more friendly distro to use is Debian or Slackware, but he recommended Debian. OK, no problems. Debian it is.

...Or so I thought. My DVD-ROM on my laptop is bad. This is old news to me, old news to some of you, and news to the rest of you. Needless to say, with a dying optical drive, installing an operating system would be difficult, to say the least...

Josh found the online install files, and we loaded them up on my computer. Wonderful news: my network card doesn't work with Debian. Major points. NOT! I can't download the files!

Oh, BTW, I should probably insert in here that my OS (Windows XP Professional) is currently hosed. It gives me a stop error and reboots while the OS is loading. To all of you fans of mine who do not know what this means, essentially, while the Windows XP screen is loading with that little bar that runs across the bottom of the screen to let you know your computer is actually running, it gets a blue screen of death, and reboots. This is a bit of a vicious circle as you may imagine. It reboots, loads XP, crashes, reboots, loads XP, crashes -- you get the picture? I'm sure you do.

"You're rambling again!"

Sorry.

My dreams of having a Linux-based computer seem to be getting further away. I need to purchase and optical drive (I need to anyway, not just for this OS install). Besides, the one distro that's stuck in my mind as one I really want to try is Xandross. It looks so cool, and it works with the programs I want to use!

Anyway, so as it stands, my personal computer is out of commission. This makes blogging difficult. And it's hard to justify blogging at work, except on lunch, and you know how I can get going...

As for this past weekend, it was pretty full.

I went to a play with Sarah, A Christmas Carol as put on by a group of actors in Little Washington. It was really good! I loved Scrooge. He was played by an old man, about 93, I believe? He was awesome! The fact was that he couldn't remember his lines, so he had a script with him on stage. But his acting was so awesome that it entirely made up for it. Where others up there were lacking in expressiveness, he made it up for them and then some! I hope that if I ever get to be that old, that I am as adventurous as he was, i.e., being able to do stuff along the lines of taking on the leading role in a play. If I'm confined to a bed or a wheelchair, I'll be one cranky old man. But I'm determined to not let that happen to me...

No, I don't mean to tempt Providence...

On Saturday, John and I did some chanting in the Chapel at Christendom, something that just the two of us hadn't done in a while. It's great to have bigger group there, but at times it's nice to just have two or three. Maybe it's just me, but John and I seem to blend very well. We have a similar range, and as much as it may be contested, I like the sound of his voice much better than mine. His voice is much richer, whereas I have a decently large range for a bass. He can sing lower than I can, but I can sing higher.

Speaking of singing lower, we started one chant way too low. I can't remember what it was. I'll probably know it as soon as I hit "Publish Post", but it was way too low. The Holy Rood was cleaning the chapel while we were chanting. It looked like Lizzie was about to break out laughing whenever we hit those low notes. If I had warmed up to them, they would have been within my comfortable range, but since I had not, they sounded like I was scraping rock bottom. It's kind of a good thing that Lizzie didn't break out laughing, because that would have set the guffaws in motion in the loft where we were. Goodness knows we had a good laugh about it when the chant was over...

Later, I went Christmas shopping with Dane and Sarah. I bought a lot of stuff, including six pounds of yumminess. I won't say what it is, because one of the readers of this blog will then find out prematurely what she is getting for Christmas (MOM!), and I couldn't spoil that for her, now could I? ;)

That evening was the Campion Christmas party, so I went to that for an hour or so. I stopped by Kelly's room to let her listen to a CD: Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop. I heard it for the first time that day, and one of the first people I thought about who would enjoy this was her, so I had to let her hear it. Anyone who is interested, talk to Kelly. Assuming she's not swamped, I'm sure she'll play a couple tracks for you.

After that, in the same evening, the tux was donned with a red cummerbund, red bow-tie, a derby with a red feather, and a black cape with red lining. (Notice a theme here?) There was a Christmas tree decorating celebration at Christine/Sarah/Carissa's, and I was not going to be outdone. I wasn't. :) I spent a good portion of the time joking around with everyone (as is usual), and finally called it a night about midnight. They were discussing turning on a movie. It was a bit late for that, so I bid them farewell and left. On the way back, I stopped by Martin's for wrapping paper, and got back to Dane's about 12:30.

Mass was at 10AM on campus. There were two soprani, three alti, four tenors and six basses. A bit unbalanced? Yep. We compensated as necessary -- Lizzie sang with the soprani on one four-part motet, the rest were three-parts, and the schola sang the bulk of Mass. I took brunch quickly and rushed back to wrap gifts. I am horrible at this as anyone can tell you, but I'm sure it's the thought that counts.

I delivered presents to Christine/Sarah/Carissa's house and then left for Old St. Mary's, after picking up the leftover pounds of yumminess from the girls which I had brought over the night before.

It was the Second Sunday of the month, so at Old St. Mary's, there was the usual Solemn High Mass, celebrated by Father Pope. I sang with the schola there (a group of basses who sings everything at my range -- it's awesome!), and with the choir. There were (I think) three basses (four with me), four tenors, six alti, and eight soprani (???). It was a much better balance. I could actually sing like the subwoofer powerhouse I used to be! No offense to the normal choir, but it's hard to really sing when on normal days the basses outnumber the other sections.

...Subwoofer powerhouse? What the heck am I smoking?!

After Mass, Dr. Poterack took the choir to dinner at Amphora's (sp?), and I behaved myself, for the most part. I got a kick out of showing off the pictures of AJ, Anya, and Hannah to my fellow choir members. The girls who saw them all seemed to like them. The guys who saw them all had the standard reaction: "Yeah. Cute. What's going on in this picture?" I would know. I'm a guy. I do this to every other kid in the world. ;)

And that sums up the weekend. I was in bed by 10PM. It was great! And I've been busy ever since...