Jeff’s Blog

We started playing volleyball games today! I’m on a team with only a few good people. All of the other people are really bad, but hopefully the good ones can take all of the shots and we can do well.

I am a valuable server when I do it right, because it’s overhead. It goes right between two people, so no one can hit it. It’s pretty awesome.

Also, as long as we can bump and set, we’ll do fine. When we get three hits in a row on our side, we get an extra point, plus that usually means we score anyway. That’s because they’re encouraging us to use the fundamental bump-set-spike combination, and they reward us if we “try to do it.”

Just now, in the last half hour, I started playing guitar. My main goal is to play bass, but I'm starting with guitar. Already, my dad showed me where a few notes are so I'm getting there.

On my own, I figured out how to play the Dodge Ram bass sting and Bonanza, to mention a few. I just figured them out by ear, since I already knew what they sounded like.

I hope that pretty soon I can actually get a bass and an amp so I can play pure bass. A bass just has the top 4 strings of a full guitar. It's also lower, at least I think. I'll be able to tell when I actually get the bass.

I've been wanting to play the bass for a while now; I think it's definitely the coolest instrument. But I enjoy piano as well.

This morning, my dad and I went snowboarding. When we got there, two of the parking lots were full, so we had to park in the farther away parking lot. We rode the bus to our favorite lifts, next to the main lodge, and got on the lifts.

The first run was excellent, but a little cold and windy. After that, we tried a run that's been closed every other time we went. It was PURE ICE. I'm not kidding at all. After that, we went one or two more times and the top half was awesome powder. The bottom half of the run was icy. The last time we rode the lift up, we got hit by a HUGE gust of wind that blew the lift chair pretty far back, and caught my snowboard. It was difficult to hang on.

At around 1:00 PM, we went into the lodge for lunch. I had a double cheeseburger and a large Dr. Pepper. We ate outside, but it was cold so we finished up and threw our stuff away. Then we ate dessert inside.

When we went back out, it was incredibly cold and windy, and we saw how much snow was blowing around up on the runs we like. We decided to just go home.

On the way home, though, we stopped for hot chocolate in a coffee shop in Nederland. It was really good. Then we drove on a different road than usual, which eventually met up with the main road we drive on to go home. After that we did go home, and that's where we are now.

Yesterday, I passed my set test in gym class on my first try. Pretty much everyone did, though. Today (last period) we started serving. I am not too good at the underhand (which is what we did today) but maybe I'll be much better at the overhead (tomorrow).

Just now I took a math test and I thought I did pretty well on it. I don't know, though.

I'm posting this from Math class, by the way.

Now, in 5 minutes, I have to go to lunch because it's pizza day. We get Bruno's today. Luckily, since I'm done with my test, I can at least be sort of on time.

I've decided to pick up playing the bass guitar. I'm going start out with an acoustic guitar, and then I'll (hopefully) get my own electric bass. Otherwise, we'll just rent one, which would be awesome also. This way, I would be able to play jazz piano, concert band clarinet, and bass.

Hopefully I can take some amazing solos also. But I'll probably just start out with the one in Heard It Through The Grapevine, recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It's fairly simple. If you want to hear it, just go to 8:20 on the recording. Unfortunatley, it's not available on iTunes.

I've been playing The Sims 2 pretty much half of this weekend. The other half was eating and sleeping.

It's an awesome game, and I've gotten my people to the point where they can teleport. They just have to meditate for about an hour now, and then they can teleport to anywhere on the lot. It's so cool!

Also, I made a Community Lot called Jeff-Gym, where the people can go drink coffee, eat at a sit down restaraunt, or listen to a rock, country, or jazz concert with bass, piano, guitar, and drums. My people are good at instruments, so they actually make money from performances.

I play that on the awesome gaming computer. My laptop, however, is not doing so well. It's been running slow, crashing, and it gets worse: the fan to cool it down won't turn off. Hopefully it'll stop when I turn off the computer. But the scariest thing just happened: The whole screen went black, and then, in the center, a big white Apple logo appeared. For a second, I thought maybe my iPod had taken over my computer. I really hope that doesn't happen again, because it was not a pleasant experience.

My brother's basketball team just played a double-header. They lost the first game, but that team fouled them almost every play.

The second game was played much better. In the first half, they were leading by 4. The score was 11-7. Marcus swished a free throw right before the end of the half. With ten minutes left, they were leading by six points, 17-11. The score stayed the same, and then one of our players got injured. In an unrelated event, a player on the opposing team got a techical foul. That was unfortunate, because if it was a normal foul he would have fouled out. Then, with 10 minutes remaining, the score had been brought up to 17-15, with us in the lead. It was an intense 10 minutes, and the other team got countless shots. In the end, though, we pulled through and the final score was 17-15 our team! It was a very well played game.

Last week the game went into overtime and they called it a tie.

It's been snowing since this morning! I got out of bed, and snow was falling from the sky. Awesome! And since it's still going, maybe this will be the first big snowstorm this year!

Today in school, things went particularly well. We graded our food fun tests, and I got 100%. I was really happy about that. In PE, I passed the Volleyball bump test on my first try, something like 6 for 8. You needed 6 for 10 to pass. Last year, it took me a ton of tries, and I had to come in after school to finish it up, and even then I barely passed it.

In band class, some people must have been screwing around, because the substitute said we're not having sectionals tomorrow, just quiz practice. Great, we get to play scales all day. Oh well, she won't be coming back after our band teacher hears that the sub changed the band teacher's plans.

My family and I just got back from the yearly Stock Show. This was the 100th time they had it.

When we first got there, we walked around a little bit and looked at some animals. Eventually, we made it to the arena where the dog show was, but before we sat down, we got food.

The line was long, but after a lot of waiting we got four hot dogs, four bags of chips, and four drinks. My brother and mom both got cheeseburgers because they didn't want to have hot dogs. Because of that, my dad ate 1½ hot dogs and I ate 2½.

When we sat down, the show started. It was an excellent show, and the dogs did things like running through obstacle courses and tubes. One time, they got this slow kid to come in there and set the time to beat for a barrel running competition. His time was about 23 seconds, and the best dog time was 15 seconds. One of the dogs got distracted and went through a tube that was still out instead of going around his barrel.

After that, we went and saw some more animals, and ate Dippin' Dots. Then, we got tired and went home. Outside, it was snowing, but once we got back home it was boring and dry again.

Now we're going to eat dinner somewhere.

I was lucky enough to go snowboarding today. Then again, we go every Saturday. Today was really good because we went on more blues than usual. My dad and I went off to that side of the mountain.

My brother brought his friend with us. They both stayed on greens the whole day, as did my mom.

We met at the car for lunch as usual, and my brother's friend spilled Dr. Pepper on our car. That made me feel angry.

Anyway, my dad and I tried a new run. It was awesome, but it was way too icy today. I'm hoping it will be better the next time we try it.