Another Post

So, I kind of feel like posting in the same manner as I did last time, but, somehow I don't think that my teacher would be "down with that". So I will try to do this post on something. Next Monday my entire English class will be visiting the Denny's in Moorpark off of L.A. Ave. That's right, I said my ENTIRE class. OK so we'll have 4 people there but hey, that's a better number than one or two! It should be chill though, I believe we will be talking a little bit about Martin Eden's book 1984, and quite possibly a bit about Kurt Vonnegut's, Slaughterhouse-Five. Oh Denny's, one of my last memories from Denny's was one night after I had just played in the student concert that my most previous place of work was associated with. It was just prior to the concert and all the teachers and a few of the students went out to Denny's to celebrate. We were all there and my teacher Al was going nust over the strawberry shake. It was such a joyous night and everyone was is such a good mood. It was a really good experience to see everyone having such a good time together. For the concert I played a Nirvana number. I believe the title was called Heart Shaped Box. A simple 4/4 time song which, was of my first to play with a group of musicians. They were selling video tapes of the show at a table in the foyer and I was wanting to purchase of a copy of the video but somehow I never got around to it and when I wanted to purchase it, it was too late. My grandmother took pictures of the concert though and she also took a video of the performance on her camera. Since it was only on her camera, the quality was low and the resolution quite small, but I was still able to watch myself play and learn from it.

An Absence of Thought

I am going to start this post with nothing in particular on my mind. I have nothing overly exciting to say right now and I can't seem to think of much more then taking a nap before I go to work today. It is funny because I usually do not take naps. Not even when I am super bored. It is just a simply fact that has always been that I do not take naps. But that seems to be changing. Do facts change? Of course facts change, a white fence is white and that is a fact, but, a white fence painted brown changes the original fact. So with this blog I am officially changing the fact that I do not ever take naps. Now that I have written it down and demolished all sources stating otherwise, Keith is officially an occasional napper. It is this way, it will be this way, and it always has been this way.
Books seem to influence your life quite drastically. I find that after I have read a book, even if it was not my favorite book, it seems to somehow stick to the inside of my head like gum on a shoe. You do not realize it is there until too late and no matter how hard you try to get it out of the mind, there is always a little residue left behind. Then there is the gum that you like and you chew on it for hours upon hours until every last little flavor is gone. Even then, you could stick a brand new piece of gum in your mouth and start the flavor process all over again. That would represent a book you were fond of. You read it and got so much out of it, then you read it again and again to get more and more out of it.
OK, so that is the lunacy of my mind tonight. I will write again later.

Spring Break

So I know that whoever reads this blog is going to get quite a chuckle. Anyways, I just got off spring break and it was quite the insane "break". Instead of having lots of time off and nothing to do for a week, I had TONS of stuff to do! It was pretty crazy stuff everything that I had to do. Not only did I have lots of homework but I was scheduled more at work which was also adding a little bit to the stress because I got moved into bigger sections. Bigger sections mean more tables which means alot more to do. So I just had to learn how to be a little more organized. Along with that, I was at my church a while lot too! Jonathan Butler, a famous gospel singer from South Africa performed with the worship team on the occasion of Easter Sunday. We did alot of more technical songs that Sunday and they all required alot more work then the usual song. So I was at church more to add to things. It was all ok though because Sunday came around, we had a wonderful worship set and it went awesome! We also had another service that morning. 6:30, 9, 11, 1 were all our service times and the band played in all of them. It was a long day because mine started at 4 AM and wasn't over till late that night because I had family visiting from Colorado. My Uncles father died recently so everyone was visiting. So yes that was my stressful week. But I made it through alive and ended up with finding a new VW Passat. It's a 2000 and it tripped out on the interior. Leather seats, cold package, sunroof, 6 CD changer, and the gorgeous color of dark blue for the exterior made it an awesome car. A huge upgrade from my last vehicle. It will be even better once I have it fully paid off.

Audio/Visual Tech Work

So Saturday Tuesday night earlier this week I received a phone call from a friend who was inquiring as to whether I would be interested in working a job for him from Saturday night to Sunday evening. He explained to the majority of the job and I said I would call him back with an answer later in the week. So after discussing the night with some people I decided I would work for my friend. It was a gig at Universal City Walk and it was located at the Gibson Amphitheater. The call time was 11 O'clock PM and we were supposed to go till 3 AM, which would get me home around 4 to sleep until 6 and be up again in time for rehearsal at my church. But the band didn't start playing until 11 PM and wasn't finish until 1 Am so we had to stay an extra 2 hours! We got paid for the extra two hours that made it a “full day” job so that I got the higher amount of pay then a “half-day" would offer. The only downside was that I didn't have one minute of sleep until Sunday night at 9 o'clock PM. Driving Sunday was one of the most dangerous things I have ever done. I was all good though and the band did really well on Sunday. Plus, I was able to see some friends of mine that I had gone on tour with this past summer. One of them was visiting from Colorado so that was a treat. We ended up getting lunch and just chilling at a park for the rest of the day until they had to leave. By that time I had gotten my 8th wind or something like that and was doing all right. Kind of out of it but doing alright. As I drove the 40-minute drive home I slowly became more and more tired. I made it home in the end but realized that driving on no sleep is something to try to avoid at all costs.

Searching For A New Vehicle

So recently I have been looking to buy a new vehicle. I haven't yet decided exactly what I want but I know that I am going to get a car. Most likely a sedan. I have looked into a lot of coupes as well but I don't know if that's whats going to do it for me. I am looking for something that can accommodate at least a minimal setup for my drums. Good gas mileage is a must have but I also am interested in something that looks stylish. Sometimes I think a Jetta would suffice but then I rethink it and don't know if I want a car that everyone calls a chick car. I think the Passat looks a little more sophisticated but along with the sophistication comes a larger price than the Jetta. Both cars are very similar. One of the things that would make getting a Jetta a plus is that fact that my father used to work on them and as long as it isn't a super new model, then my dad could fix virtually anything that went wrong with it. That brings up mileage. I prefer something with low mileage but if I end up getting a car that my dad can work on, a high mileage is less of a factor due to my father being able to help fix it. Sometimes I think I should just get a loan and buy something nicer and work on paying that off but something tells me right now that I should just go with what works well on my budget and stick with that. So all-in-all I believe I will end up purchasing a Jetta and using that to help transport myself around. If anyone reads this and decides that they would like to give me a Lexus IS300 or possibly some Mazda or BMW. Just leave me a comment.

Serving...

So as many of you know, I work at a restaurant. Islands is the name. We offer quality food served safely. I got a job working for Islands in December of 2006. I began working on the day after Christmas which is the 26th. Never had I realized how much went into serving people at a restaurant. To attain the position of server while working at Islands one needs to start off as a host. Hosts do lots of little chores. Their first and ultimate responsibility is to seat people when they walk into our store. Islands holds them to a standard of opening the door for guests and giving them an enthusiastic greeting! The host will then take them to an open table that will be decided upon by taking into account the number of tables each server has and who was last sat. You find the server who is the least busy and you give them the new table so as to assure them quality service and a quick meal. Hosts also bus tables and keep the restaurant clean. They empty trashes and restock napkins along with keeping buckets filled with a sanitizing solution full and clean. The next position at Islands is the backserver. The backserver is the person who puts food that came out from the cooks into the proper order, ensures that the food is what the person ordered, and is responsible for making sure that every order has the proper condiments and extra foods that the person ordered. The backserver position can be a very stressful job because people hold you responsible if the food came out wrong and it's the backservers job to keep food moving on the line and never stop working otherwise all the food would just build up in the window. In order to work a backserver shift one should know all the abbreviations for the foods and each individual modifier. After one has mastered backserver they are ready to take on the takeout window. Takeout can sometimes be compared to serving and sometimes it is even harder then serving. As a takeout person, one will have to take and order over the phone or in person, then enter it into the computer, wait for all the food to come out of the window, check the food, individually box up the items, package the boxed items and provide the customer with the necessary utensils and condiments in separate containers. Once the takeout spot is mastered then one will be ready to serve. After training for multiple shifts. More to come next week.

I went horseback riding just the other day. It was February 25 to be exact. The day was a beautiful and breezy one. The perfect day to go riding. Not too hot. Not too cold. I went with my friend Tara who owned the horses. Arriving at the ranch, we noticed that the horses were quite dirty. We tried brushing them down but, to no avail. The dirt from the recent rains was embedded down into the fur of the horses backs and sides. To wash the horses would take too much time so it was decided that we should just ride the horses the way they were. A little bit of dirt would make the experience even better. So, we saddled up the horses and soon we were off. Tara and her family own a nice little piece of land out in Somis and we rode on her property. First up a small incline and then down a long incline. Talk along the subject of differentiating between a hill and a mountain seemed to interest us. So we talked. Soon we were back to where we had started. Then we started off again. This time in another direction. We began traveling along the road and soon the decision of riding to the top of a large incline presented itself. We call it a large incline because we still had yet to come to find the defining terms between a hill and a mountain. So we backtracked and began our journey up the incline. The incline held a path and the path led to the constuction of a new home. A new home Tara and her family would live in someday. Someday soon. After checking out the half built home we were off to descend the large decline. My horse was hungry. My horse stopped to eat. I stopped. I was not hungry. I wanted to move along. The horse moved along. Eventually we can upon the same clearing that held the ranch. The clearing was full of green grass and we stopped. Tara and I decided to let the horses eat before dismounting them. After the horses were done, we took them to their homes and disassembled the saddles. The horse I rode decided he liked me, not only as a rider but as an itching post and preceded to rub his large nose on my shirt which covered it in horsehair. After we put away all the tools used to ride, we left. Riding is fun and I enjoyed it alot. Being able to sit on a large creatures back and control its movements seems to thrill me somehow.

Jamming with the band

So over the past two weeks I have been pretty busy. A lot of my time has been consumed in pursuing my dream career of playing drums in a praise and worship band. I try to spend at least an hour a day playing random stuff while the click track is clicking in my ear. But sometimes I hook my MP3 player up to my ear phones and jam to a song from one of my favorite artists. But I decided I would like to play drums with the band at my church and so I asked the leader of the band would I could audition and he told me to just come down one Thursday night while they were rehearsing and I could sit in for a bit. So I did. The band heard me play and said, "aight!" Brigg the team leader asked everyone what they thought and pretty much everyone said he's good. There was one guy though who said he thought my time wasn't sitting in the pocket just right. So he gave me some tips to practicing that could improve my timing. That's where I got the click track idea. So Brigg told me I was in with the group and I could jam with the guys. He also decided that I would start off playing percussion so as to learn all the songs the way they play them. So the next Thursday that there was practice I went and learned how to play the congas to one song. But they liked how quickly I picked up the congas and told me to be at the church on Sunday and 7:45 to rehearse real quickly before the services started. So I ended up playing in all the 3 songs that we played on Sunday and by the time we were done with the first set my hands had started to swell up because they weren't used to playing the congas. Plus, the drums were right next to me so I had to play super loud which meant hitting the heads much harder. All-in-all I believe I did really well and I know for a fact that I had a blast!