Totally forgot another exciting event from last week! On Thursday after Sleep District's set at the Westminster Mall we were outside of a video game place at the mall and we randomly met a guy from an Australian hardcore band. Jon really liked his accent haha. Thought he was joking about it at first. They're out here recording with someone London knows. He mentioned they're playing in Newport somewhere and we all said "Hogue Barmichaels?"

...we know everything about where we live...

scratch that...Matty can't help us. Time to do a little kayaking!

So this was actually a pretty good week despite the fact that I was on the brink of a panic attack when I realized how much school stuff is looming in my near future. Monday was Memorial Day and a much needed break from class. Although I spent most of the day "working" on my history paper it was still a nice day off. It felt so nice, in fact, that I decided to take Tuesday off as well. Tuesday afternoon I checked L&L email and what I had anticipated to be some kind of spam mail congratulating me on winning millions actually turned out to be Chance from The Kinzie Affair. He told us that he'd been following our work for a while and that his brother is in A Bird A Sparrow and he's talked to Dan about us before. This is only the second time a band has come to us asking for videos, and although we had sort of decided that we'd try to charge bands who specifically sought us out, we can't charge these guys because we filmed both Goodnight Sunrise and ABAS for free. Hmph. Hopefully one day we can make money off of this. After emailing Chance back, Laura and I met London to pick up tickets for the HOB show on the 5th, and when I said that I was hungry he started listing off all the places to eat nearby...but he failed to mention that there was an In-N-Out 2 minutes away. A vanilla shake and an order of fries later, we decided to make a trip to Costco to check out the various GPS options because we're going to need that for our road trip and for our lives in general. We also saw that Costco sells Disneyland passes, hmmmmm...Laura definitely needs a Disneyland pass.... We walked around a bit more, saw HD Flipcams taunting us from a high shelf, then decided to head to Chain to buy our tickets for Thursday's show. We ended up back at Chain a few hours later to pass out GNSR business cards [we're slowly making a dent in our box of 500] and saw the Down for the Count guys while we were there. Finally got the Kyle story from Nate. Wednesday was somewhat uneventful aside from a near fist-fight at work...kind of a blah day. Thursday I had to meet my insane boss at 9am to go over summer stuff, then that night Laura, Katie, and I went to Sleep District's Hot Topic show and Eye Alaska/Lydia at Chain. Hadn't seen EA since December and I think there's a chance I'm loosing interest in them. I definitely prefer their older songs to what they've written for the new record. Saw Down for the Count again because they're everywhere. Well, not everywhere, just always at Chain. Delicious dinner of French toast at Dennys with Megan and the Sleep District boys and Jon looks funny when he runs. Last night I went to the CRU end of the year bonfire at CDM and dragged Laura with me. She was finally able to get rid of the wood that had been sitting in her trunk for 2 months. But before the beach we went to Costco again and bought a GPS and a Disneyland pass for Laura. Whee! The bonfire was fun. There were some people who I hadn't seen since last quarter so it was nice to talk to them again. The boys decided it would be a stellar idea to jump over the blazing fire pit. We ended up leaving about 15 minutes before the beach closed and put the Magellan to good use: she successfully got us from CDM to Chain so we could once again do some serious business cardage. I like her so far. This might be the beginnings of a beautiful friendship.

So yep...need to power through these next two weeks and get school over with. For the most part everything is all lined up for the road trip. Just need to get my car in for an oil change and I'm still waiting to hear from Matty to see if he's found a place for us to stay Sat/Sun in Sac.


June 12 June 12 June 12 June 12.......

it should be noted that I still haven't really started this essay...

So before I dive into this history essay in which I must decide whether or not the Holocaust was planned [I'm leaning towards not, but we'll see what my final decision is once I actually take the time to contemplate this] I think it's time to consider the fact that last week was relatively exciting. First of all, I applied to study abroad on Tuesday. YAY! Hopefully on January 14, 2010, I will be boarding a plane to London. I'll spend a couple of days there, then head to Cannes for a 2-week orientation, then up to Paris for a semester at the Sorbonne. It all seems so surreal and intangible at this point, but I have all the necessary documents that I need to complete and it really looks like this is all coming together. On Wednesday I found out that I will have a job this summer...THANK GOODNESS. So most of the money I make in the snack bar will go towards studying abroad. Mmmm, yeah, this is exciting enough to blog about: Thursday I chopped all of my hair off and I couldn't be happier. Seriously can't even remember what I looked like with long annoying hair. On Friday Danielle and I presented our French oral final thingy and it went pretty well I think. Glad that's over. This summer my plan is to watch French movies and listen to French music so I don't forget everything by the time fall quarter rolls around. Friday afternoon my family and I drove up to Hanford to see the Mannixes and hear Kevin's stories from Qatar which are too top-secret I guess to be conveyed over the phone. While I was there I finalized plans for Laura and me to stay with them one night during our road trip =D. Everything is really coming together as far as that's concerned too! Without even planning this AT ALL it's looking like we're going to see 2 Bidwell shows, The Bigger Lights, AND The Scenic while we're traversing central/northern California. Pretty awesome. The plan so far, so it's well-documented:

Friday, June 12
Bidwell in Fresno, Hanford overnight

Saturday, June 13
The Bigger Lights in Orangevale, Sacramento area overnight

Sunday, June 14
Bidwell in Orangevale...video shoot, masquerade thing, Sacramento area overnight

Monday and Tuesday, June 15th and 16th
Staying with Cody at the Delta...wheee watersports!

Wednesday, June 17
The Scenic in Oakland, Delta overnight [?]

Thursday, June 18
Caravaning back down to Anaheim with The Scenic for their show at Chain...going to be a looonng day for sure. Van + trailer = 55 mph = SLOW.



Oh man I am wayyy excited. Just have to get through 4 days of classes this week, a paper due Monday, 5 days of classes next week, then 3 finals and I'm freeeee! [like the weight's gone off my shoulders]

Bahahaha my 17 year old brother wrote this for my mom for Mothers' Day

A Condensed History of Mother’s Day, but like super super condensed, and slightly fabricated, ok so a lot fabricated

Mother’s day apparently was not always to be centered on the mother, so consider yourself lucky that I am still willing to bend to rules and for one day of the year treat you as the most important person out there (God can share his thrown for one day).
In the early history similarities to mother’s day came in the form of the Egyptian prayer to a female Goddess, Isis. I think I see a resemblance between the Goddess (to the left) and yourself, in holding the belief that the staff in her hand is actually a tennis racket turned sideways.
Later on there was some more worshipping of female gods by the Romans and Asians, mostly boring. However, the celebrations of Rhea, supposedly the mother of Gods such as Zeus, became so rowdy and wild that they were eventually banned or discouraged.
The human aspect of celebrating mother’s is a more recent thing that came about with more boring events that probably aren’t significant at all, at least I assume that because I wasn’t willing to read all of it. This is why I decided to come up with a real reason for mother’s day.
At the beginning of the first century (just before birth of Jesus which started us off on our counting of the years to see how much longer our crazy civilization will last) Mary and Joseph had a terrible feud. One day Mary was suffering from terrible nausea due to her pregnancy, which she had not yet told Joseph about. She was probably too stunned by the fact that she had met an angel which told her that she would be giving birth to the son of God, and even though the dad would never be around and she’d be doing all the work, he would still be the most important person in the child’s life (as you can see, Mary was the very first housewife). In order to get Joseph out of the house (yes they were living together even though they weren’t married, it was economically ideal for during this time the stock market wasn’t doing so well and the economy was down the toilet) she convinced him that he must go out and pick her flowers, a giant bouquet, to prove his love to her, or else she would not be sure if she could marry him. Of course Mary knew that she would marry him anyway because she wasn’t about to take care of the most important baby ever by herself. But Joseph believed her anyway, and went out to pick her the most potent smelling flowers in their region. When he finally came back, Mary had built up the courage to tell her about her pregnancy. Obviously Joseph found it hard to believe that Mary could be carrying the son of God and instead believed in the much more reasonable, unfaithful, explanation. He was furious, and Mary was scared that he might leave her. As a final wish before he left, Mary asked him to smell the flowers that he had picked for her. Joseph did, but unaware that Mary had put a charm (I would have said curse, but that has too much of a negative feeling) on the flowers. With the charm inhaled by Joseph, Mary was assured that he would never leave her, for now Joseph was compelled for at least one day a year, no matter where he was, Joseph had to come back to visit Mary, the mother of Jesus, bringing her flowers and praise. This insurance was very useful to Mary, who then realized that she should use it on Jesus as well, her son, so that he, too, would have to come back at least once a year to bring her flowers and praise. If this was not done by either, the husband or son, then each would feel an enormous, unmatchable guilt, which is why, after forgetting to bring his mother flowers one year, Jesus forced himself into exile and wandered the desert for 40 days, being constantly haunted by the devil who constantly reminded him of all the things he had done besides bring his mother flowers. All of this use of the charmed flowers however had caused Mary, herself, to inhale some of the flower’s powerful odor, locking her to the same fate as her husband and son, which is why daughters also have an obligation (although joyous obligation) to bring her mother flowers as well.
There you have it, the completely factual history of mother’s days in the eyes of your son (who better is there to trust with facts such as these?). And after reading this hopefully you can take comfort in the fact that no matter how far away me or your daughter get from home, we will always return for at least (keyword: at least) one day of the year to bring you flowers and treat you like a Goddess. Oh, and happy mother’s day!

Love, Andrew

P.S. Admittedly I have no flowers for you, which left me with immense guilt forcing me to take time out of my day to research the history of mother’s day in order to achieve a higher understanding of this glorious day.

Wow I'm really on a roll with the blogging lately... So I'm pretty sure I had a dream that Out Together's Myspace got a severe face-lift and was transformed into a shrine of sorts to Kevin. Cody and Nathan were suspiciously absent from all photos/about me and the background was a huge picture of Kevin's face. I should double check to make sure this didn't really happen...

I have a midterm tomorrow. Er...today. Yeah, I've studied. Met with Hallie twice this week and we reviewed and brainstormed and such. I should probably be studying more right now, but I really don't feel like it. So I'm listening to a song that doesn't even really exist, and have been for probably the last 45 minutes or so. It's just so addicting. Found some awesome time-lapse videos via Brendan from Valencia's blog. That successfully wasted about 10 minutes. Earlier today I wasted a lot of time organizing my flickr account so that was quite an accomplishment and a superb way to avoid studying. I tried to declare my major again today, but they were about to close for an hour over lunch. So then I thought I'd be proactive and schedule an appointment for tomorrow, but they are closed right after my last class and don't open again for an hour. Sooooo I'll walk in for advising on Monday. I swear they really don't want me to declare and the e-mails they've sent indicating it is imperative that I declare before the end of the quarter are all part of some elaborate hoax.

This is so cool!!!! Especially since Paris is at the end =]

Pixel's Revenge timelapse showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.