Greetings from Pasadena

I'll be living in Pasadena for the rest of the year. Kinda has a cool ring to it.

We got a hotel here for the 29th-31st which will make life much nicer (i.e. no hour and a half drive every day at all hours). We learn things from previous experience.

Disneyland was on the 27th...we sounded pretty good and it was a fun, albeit long, day. Our first Bandfest performance was today and went fairly successfully. We have the final two tomorrow followed by megga laps at Dodger Stadium on the 31st.

I'm dead tired, but I love this stuff.

Since I know you all want to see our wonderful faces on the 1st, here's the info:

• Channel 5 (KTLA) for the best (local) coverage. If you don't get it, ABC would be my second choice.
• We are entry number 45 and will pass TV approximately 9:00 (give or take 10 min or so). You are looking for the Pasadena City College Tournament of Roses Honor Band.
  
• I can be found in rank 13, one off center to the right of the block facing forward. Tiffany is next to me on the right, Holly and Jon are left guides, Lauren is a right guide, Casey can be found on the right side of the block in the third row of trumpets, Mitch is just left of center also in the midst of trumpets, and John, Josh and Joey are in the tubas (can't help you much more there).

Happy New Year!

Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Winter Break

It's amazing: three weeks off. Band, school, finals, and college apps (with the exception of a few things) are done. This whole "stress free" thing is really nice.

On a whim (and a random comment by Dr. Reti) I decided to make everybody at school pet rocks for Christmas. Thanks to my crafty mother, they all are outfitted with bows, hair, etc. Thanks to me they all have weird names.

That free time won't last long. Rose Parade practice starts up tomorrow and is nonstop until the 1st with the exception of the Dec 23-25. We set the block last week and unfortunately I'm not a center again this year, but one off to the right (closer to cameras at least). We're doing some good music and I encourage all to come to Bandfest...it's pretty amazing/fun.

I saw a neat story the other day about a girl on a cruise who had appendicitis and needed an emergency appendectomy. Seeing as the ship was 500 miles offshore that was a problem, so the Navy flew her off the deck of the cruise ship to an aircraft carrier and the surgery was a success there. Pretty cool stuff.

Thanks to our wonderful war in Iraq and the wonderful political idiots running the county the new budget is complete- with deep cuts for scientific education and research. Way to go folks.

If you have 10 minutes, there's a pretty funny clip from Judge Judy about an eBay scammer. My favorite quote: "You may weigh more, but you're not going to be smarter than I am in one finger!" The plaintiff got scammed out of $400 in goods and gets a $5000 settlement. Sounds pretty good.

That's it for now...good luck on last minute Christmas shopping.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Black Friday

Well, we kind of struck out this year, but it was still fun. Karl and I did the ceremonious 3:30am wakeup and journeyed to Circuit City to wait in line. And wait. And wait some more. They ran things differently this year; only 20 people were allowed in every 10 minutes or so, and when there is a line of a few hundred outside, it takes a while. Inside, the store was pretty much empty which took the fun out of the mad Black Friday rush. We only really netted one item (a DVD recorder); I ended up returning the GPS because it was an older model, so I'm still in the market.

Thanksgiving went smoothly and, like all good Thanksgivings, was full of babies, toddlers and weird uncles. It was nice to get everybody together and spend some time eating lots of food. The five days off were an added bonus.

I wish it would get a lot colder. It just doesn't seem winterish until the winter weather starts up. Plus, it's just weird when radio stations are playing Christmas music and its sunny and in the 80s outside.

Annoyance of the week: speaking of Christmas, since we all have to be PC now, Lowes's Christmas catalog is offering nice green "family trees." They're not "Christmas trees" but "family trees." Oh Please.

Pic of the week: That's a pretty big sinkhole.

Video of the week: We've all seen the talking cat Youtube, but now we are able to offer conversing cats. That's scary.

Good news of the week: I'm glad to say that Alex the baby piglet is safe after being found in the back of a toilet paper truck. That must have been a fairly uncomfortable ride.

That's it for now...I'm going to go try to take a nap with Micah.

Turkey Day

Video Game Field Show

One word description: awesome.
I have a new found respect for Cal. Thank Karl for the link.

A Day Off

Happy Veteran's Day!

My apologies for the lack or recent updates. I'm just kinda busy this time of year, that's all. It's kinda nice to take a break and do this.

As you probably saw on my last post, Micah Stutelberg was born a week and a half ago. He takes after his brother and cousin on the awesomeness scale. There's a lot of really good pics and updates on my sister's blog.

Our first Tournament of Roses practice was yesterday. It's going to sound really good this year...we're playing some good stuff and the instrumentation is very marching bandish. We have 22 tubas, 41 trumpets, 3 million trombones, you get the idea. It looks to be another fun/busy December.

I'm dead in the middle of College apps, so as you can imagine life is so much fun. It's kind of nice...I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel (i.e. Dec. 1), but there's still a good amount of work to do. After those are in, honor band season starts up so I need to start prepping for that.

More and more young folks are declaring themselves bankrupt. Why? Because of $3000-$4000 cell phone bills. All the more reason I hate phones. They're dumb and expensive.

I came across this really cool site where flight pattern visualizations are plotted and set to motion. It's really cool to look at some of the busier times with some of the weird effects. A good time waster.

I hate it when you can't get those overhead bins on planes or buses to close. Nothing says it better than this commercial.

That's all for now...I'm going to go find my cat and take a much needed nap.

Happy Birthday Micah!

Micah Nickels Stutelberg

November 2, 2007
7 lbs, 9 ounces

Happy Halloween!

Poison Dart Frogs

This time of year is fairly hectic. The fact I actually have a chance to take a break to do this is quite nice.

Band has been going fairly well...football games are soon to end and we've done one competition. At Hart last week, we played pretty well but didn't place (no real surprise there). Next week we'll start parade marching which I personally like much more than drill, so that will be nice. Only one football game to go (unless we actually beat AV, in which case we might actually go to CIF for the first time in 9 years).

My audition for PCC Tournament of Roses was last Sunday. The audition itself went fairly well, and I made it again. I think about 11 out of the 15 kids from QH made it, so it's looking to be a lot of fun this year.

Just for the record, Micah has not made an appearance yet...I'll be sure to update when he decides he's had enough of my sister.

A fire alarm interrupted a filming if Conan the other day. I don't know if this video aired or not, but its pretty funny.

A fashion designer in Japan has come up with some "urban camouflage" for fearful pedestrians. In other words, just dress up like a soda machine. I'm gonna restrain from the weird Asian comments.

I came across a list of the ten deadliest animals on earth. Even though dart frogs and polar bears appear cute and cuddly I'm not sure I want to run into any of these guys.

There's a video of a kid impersonating Bush that has been floating around. It's pretty hilarious...I'd say that kid was pretty awesome, but there is some "controversy" about whether its the kid or audio from a Will Ferrel skit. I'm starting to believe its the latter.

That's about it for now...I need to get back to admissions essays.

I'm Tired

Getting home from Rampage at 2am + bells at 7am the next day + T of R audition = one very busy weekend.

National Chimney Safety Week

Yes, today marks the official beginning to that one week a year where we raise "awareness of issues relating to chimney and venting safety."

Sorry for the lack of an update last week. It's getting to be that time of year where we might see a few of those in the coming months so just keep that in mind before starting the hate comments. Last week my mom, dad and I went down to USC to see their wind ensemble play. They sounded incredible (as expected) and played some really good stuff like John Adam's Lollapalooza.

We had out second football game on Friday. All went fairly well, or at least as expected. Music was fine, marching wasn't. Nothing new. We're about 9 sets away from finishing the show so we had most of it down. In the third song, there's a part where we turn around (can you say death and destruction?) and I get to run to the back and conduct. I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, but apparently I bounce a lot when I conduct.

My sister was admitted to the hospital with preterm labor last week. Little Micah just couldn't wait but we're trying to let him cook a little longer for now. Hopefully all will turn out well. It's definitly been an experience passing Matt around these past few days.

I always thought Amazon was a nice peaceful company, but apperently it's different in Canada. Those darn Canadians. Or I guess you could blame MSN.

Leave it to DirectTV to call customers of the Do-Not-Call list and ask if they are sure they don't want to receive promo calls. Doesn't that kind of defy the point?

There are some pretty awesome Rube Goldberg Device videos out there that people have come up with, but this is by far the best I've seen. It goes on for almost 4 minutes doing some pretty crazy stuff. That thing probably took days to make.

While we're talking about doing nothing, it seems fit show this video of the Texas Legislature and how they vote. Scary thing is I can see it happening all over. I hate politicians.

That's it for now...it's almost nap time.

The Bavarian Club

I must say...It's been a very interesting week. The scary thing is, the weekend was even more "interesting," but thankfully in a different way.

I took the ACT for the second time on Saturday. I feel halfway decent about it...at least I was somewhat prepared for the science section this time. I don't know if it was really worth it (i.e. I did any better) but we'll see.

Saturday evening my mom somehow talked my dad and I into going to the LA Bavarian club. It was a very interesting experience. I'll leave it at that. I wish I knew how to speak German. It was very "cultural" but there were some pretty neat people there. Hey, the sauerkraut was pretty good.

We got home around midnight so the natural thing to do was call Karl and go for a run. We went over to AVC for the Relay For Life, and despite the fact we weren't really sponsored (or supposed to be there) and ran a few miles on the track. The weather was absolutely perfect and the atmosphere really cool. It was a lot of fun. I'll have to do 1am runs more often.

Luke got fitted for his DocBand yesterday. I haven't seen him in person yet but it looks pretty cool. He doesn't really seem to mind it either. He has to wear the helmet for a few weeks while his cranium is under construction. Good stuff.

Pig's are flying. Great...now a bunch of weird stuff is going to come true.

I came across this pretty awesome video of a guy playing along with the William Tell Overture on a drum set. It's pretty cool...and about time we found a set drummer with some class.

Speaking of YouTube, Pitzer College has begun offering a media studies class focusing on watching and commenting on YouTube videos. I wish I could get college credit for sitting here and watching these stupid yet addicting things.

That's it for now...fresh Tehachapi apples are beckoning me.

Ghosts Are Real!

There's finally proof...just keep reading.

Our first football game was on Friday. Since it was the first game, I stayed the traditional 17 hours at school. We had a nice little pizza thing (on Disney princess plates of course) and it was pretty fun. We sounded halfway decent at the game but looked a tad weak. We'll clean it up in time for the next game. QH actually won (amazingly) and shutout Rosamond 42-0, so that was quite nice also.

Karl, Jon, my dad and I saw the first Jethawks playoff game last night. It was a really good game and a fun time (despite my unremitting bloody nose). They pulled it off in the bottom of the 10th with a sacrifice fly...good stuff.

My Senior Project oral board is on Wednesday. It will be so incredibly wonderful to not ever think those two horrible words again (and even better to rub in in the face of those doing it this year). I'm not too worried...all I have to do is pass.

Local commerce tip of the week: Don't buy from Duke & Slims.

Our wonderful president has once again represented this country in a manner only he could. While speaking at the APEC Summit, Mr. Bush started off by calling it the OPEC summit, continued by insulting Australian Prime Minister John Howard by implying that he was part of OPEC, then moves on to insult the rest of Australia by calling them "Austrians," and concludes by walking off stage the wrong way. If you don't believe me or the AP, here's the video. I don't blame the rest of the world for hating us.

This is a neat little site will let you view 360° panoramas from the seven wonders of the world. Pretty cool stuff.

Finally, you may have watched shows like SciFi’s Ghost Hunter, but you’ve never seen anything like this. Everything you’ve seen up to now is either faked, misinterpreted or worse. But this, obviously, is real. Finally, proof that ghosts exist.

That's it for now...I need some food.

Horse or Moth?

Happy Day of Labor

Or, hopefully, lack thereof.

The AV Fair ran last week. I didn't really spend too much time inside the fair (other than a quick walk through and a deep fired Twinkie), but spent plenty of time riding around the parking lot. I worked the trolley for about 2 and a half shifts. Luckily I didn't get the horrid weather shifts (although there was some pretty gnarly wind on Sat...check out the funnel cloud), and there weren't to many drunks either. So nothing overly exciting there. Karl drove on Saturday, and I think he actually somewhat enjoyed it (either that or he was too busy laughing at Josh and I havening to walk confused old ladies back to their missing cars). For the most part it was pretty fun.

Band finished the drill for the first song last week. We're moving along at a really good pace and actually sounding halfway decent (which is much improvement over last year at this time). Our first football game is on Friday. It'll be neat to start the good 'ol football season again.

College application season is in its infancy and my head is already spinning. For some odd reason, I was inspired to organize the paperwork/online junk/essays I have to do this weekend. I took a two hour nap after that one.

I'm going to think twice before biting into Chinese chocolate. Recently some chocolate has become "contaminated in the manufacturing process." In other words, it's now infested with live worms. Yummy.

Google Earth never ceases to amaze. While it's a third party add on, you can now use Google Earth as a flight simulator. I haven't played with it yet, but it's gotta be pretty awesome.

I guess it's too much of a burden to actually look at the ad before placing it in public.

There are some weird commercials out there. I'm not a huge fan of those don't even hint as to what they are trying to sell, but this one is just plain weird. Keep in mind it's an ad for milk.

That's about it for now...enjoy your day off.