ice_blue_nights

I feel that 2008 was largely a detour in my life, particularly the later parts. I dealt with a lot of drama and stress piled in from all facets of my life, and dealing with it hasn't been easy. Almost nothing went the way that I would have liked and bad things just kept happening. Somewhere along the way I forgot who the fuck I was.

But you know what? Now that I can see it clearly I'm changing things. In the words of Katt Williams: "you gotta be in tune with your star player."

Christopher Curtis is about to start acting like Christopher Curtis again.

So, I'm sick. It's been awhile, but I guess it had to happen sooner or later. One of my coworkers joked at work tuesday about a bug going around and how everyone was catching it.

Thanks.

I woke up feeling like walking death Wednesday morning and decided that it was a good day to stay home from everything -or it would have been if I didn't have a midterm in my assembly class [computer programming]. So I went to that and promptly drove home and passed out for a number of hours.

The rest of the day consisted of: Consciousness. Food, Bathroom, Book, Facebook, and Pass out. Wash, rinse, and repeat for most of the day. A day later and I'm still pretty disoriented. yay.

In other news I finally got fed up w/ bloated proprietary software and made the switch to open source. I'm running linux on my home system now [no dual booting] with emulation and visualization for the software that I can't run natively [Adobe suite, I'm looking at you]. It's pretty much turning out to be everything I ever hoped and dreamed a computer could be.

I'm probably not gonna go out much this weekend. Practice Saturday afternoon, but no real shenanigans or partying till 3am. I just made it through midterms so i get a breather but finals are around the corner and I have slack to pick up.

Although to be honest, I don't really care that much how this semester pans out. I just need to pass so I don't have to sell my soul to afford to pay for any make up classes.

The financial aid office at IIT, btw, is a joke. As is the new registration system. Personal pin numbers? really? So unnecessary. I know 3 people that hadn't even received their pins on the eve of registration. And everyone knows that any popular class is gonna start filling up at 12:01am the night that reg opens. [And btw, considering that I don't really communicate with many IIT ppl, 3 is a lot.]

And about the financial aid office, I'm thoroughly convinced that they routinely delete the inbox messages in their messaging system. I've left about 5 voicemails with finaid, never have I had someone return my call. Ever. Paired with the fact that you're lucky if someone actually answers the phone in their department you basically have to go in person to assure anything gets done. That's why I should just be getting my refund check in a week or so.

...You kno, as opposed to the beginning of the semester? Good thing I didn't actually count on having access to that money. -Oh wait, I did. oops!

And while I'm on the subject, talking to one of my friends who's not particularly happy with IIT once again made me think about how much of a scam college is. Especially private school. Now don't get me wrong, I'm getting a good education. But I'm paying way more than I should for some of these bullshit required classes. Case in point: What the fuck am i stressing out about Physics II for? When in my career as a computer programmer or web designer am I going to have to calculate the electric flux through a random charge distribution using a Gaussian surface? It's a rather easy answer. NEVER. Unless I'm contracted by a physics department. In which case there will be a spec to guide me. And wikipedia. My point is, it's wasting my time. I will thoroughly forget most of what I learned just so that I could-what? become well rounded? That's what high school was for.

I'm actually really looking forward to next semester because I finally get to focus on what I'm here for. Till then, i just really want to move this along.

Never in my life has organization been so important. I usually switch gears a few different times per day between taking care of family, school, freelance work, my day job, my music, and my friends. Forgetting something is usually not very desirable. Especially when it involves my job, so it's all about my calendar, lists, appointments, etc. Oddly, I kind of like it though. Having this much to do forces me to take control of my time and manage it wisely. All that and I still go out on the weekends. And sometimes in the middle of the week. Like tonight :P

Hopefully this is the kind of balance I was trying to get a hold of all summer.

I've had this LJ account for a long time now and used to make journal entries damn near every day. I got all nostalgic and came back on today and took a look at a few of the dated entries and man, I feel old. Reading about stuff that happened years ago, things that I didn't even remember was pretty amusing. Especially remembering how people were back in the day and how much some of them have -or haven't- changed. Spats and drama that seemed so big and important back then are so trivial now. Yet sadly, there are some who would keep it going to this day.

In high school I never really belonged to one clique. Of course there was the crew that I ran with back from our days at Annie Keller Regional that I grew up with. Most of them I stayed fairly close to. But I was just the type of person to float from one clique to another. Hang out with one group of friends here this day and another that day.

Being unattached was a mixed blessing. One the one hand, it afforded me the mobility to experience different groups of people whenever I wanted. And because I wasn't necessarily associated with "the group" when that silly drama mess went down between different groups I didn't get drawn down into it.

However, The downside is that you can never fully make the commitment to those people that it take to have really close friends, which can be either good, or bad, depending.

As far as gossip goes, I tried to stay out of it. Although I am a Gemini [supposedly a two-faced nature is one of our less-desirable traits] I was also born on the cusp so the Taurus in me balances it out.

Sure, everybody does their little gossip here and there. You know, the harmless garden variety talk. Water cooler stuff. But I'll never fully understand those [usually girls] that just had to talk shit. Mad shit. Ugly shit. That makin-some-girl-not-feel-like-going-to-school type shit.

And no matter how physically attractive a girl may be, traits like those are so very ugly. That you can't hide with makeup.

I come home from school early... to an empty house. I'm expecting any combination of 6 people/animals to be running around, and all I find is Moka laying down all alone in the kitchen.

Now, the weird thing isn't that everyone is out- thats to be expected. But where are the cats? And if they're gone, why are their carriers here?

I really can't find either one of the little trouble makers and I'm a bit freaked out. Maybe they're jus sleeping on the ceiling or something or simply went out for a smoke. Hope they materialize soon.

So it looks like we have two new roommates. One's cute 'n fluffy -and a bit of a prick- and the other is Jessica. Suprisingly the new cat seems to be at least OK with both of our existing pets. Chrissy renamed him 'Latte' upon his being moved here. I found out he was moving in a few hours ago when she came home and said "So we brought Latte with us." I guess I should have been expecting it seeing as how it was Jessica's cat afterall, but it just never occured to me.

At any rate, I'm adjusting to this new semester. I realized that IIT managed to somehow trick me into taking all math classes this semester, even though their courses headings have different departments. CS330, MATH252, BUS210, and PHYS123 (For those of you at IIT). -Okay, I wasn't that suprised, but amused nontheless after the first day of class.

On the music front Dan is on hiatus and we are looking for horn players to fill out the section. Any qualified applicants are welcome for Trombone or Sax. John Peacock has tentatively agreed to work with producing our album and we're to meet for a session next week. In the meantime Ingrid is back in town for a few weeks and filling in on alto sax. Basically whenever she's stateside she's a part of the band now... I think that's how we've worked it out.

At any rate, life is going pretty well right now. Things were rough, but they're looking better. Ciao

Pets:

The Reel Big Fish concert at IIT was cool last night. The crowd was annoying though. Besides being rude as hell to RBF throughout the set there's far too many metalheads at IIT... Honestly, how can people just mosh to everything? Can't stand that shit, having people flying into you when you're jus tryin to groove to some reggae or skank to some third.

It's cool though. It was worth it to see Julian get jumped on and hauled off stage by security after jumping in on Aaron's "woahs!" during... Beer? Don't remember, but it was hilarious.

As far as my personal life, the past few weeks since I got back from Mexico have been rough. Moving into and furnishing the new apartment has been tedious, but every room is basically done with the exception of the living room. We picked up a lamp at Ikea, but thats really it so far. We were joking about throwing a number of fund raiser parties till we buy furniture. Maybe, maybe not, but I'm gonna have people over to chill soon.

holyfuckmuffins!

I forgot I still had this thing. hi.

the docks by ~curtis-j on deviantART

Just when I thought myspace couldn't get any more useless I get a message actually worth reading. My first impulse was to delete it along with the solicitations for free ringtones and hot nude cam pics also residing in my inbox, but after taking a look I realized that it was one of my best friends from grade school. One of the two that no one was able to keep up with. Seems he's gonna be doing special forces work in the military.. random. Myspace still sucks though. The spam rate is far too high to be enjoyable. Still.. thanks to myspace im pretty easy to find. A google search of my name followed by the word ska will return my page as the first result with Peditto as a close second. Pretty nifty.

Oh, btw I'm playing a northside bar called Elbo Room tmrw night at 10pm for any 21+ that wants to check it out. Music starts at 9, we play 2nd.

Well, it's be a nice vacation, but I've grown to miss my journal. Not livejournal per se, but keeping a semi-active dialogue of my life and experiences and sharing them with whoever's interested. I got bored of LJ after a few years when the only people still using it were as heavily laden with high school drama as I used to be -back in high school- and I lost interest. At this point I don't much care who is or isn't reading my thoughts. Nonetheless here they are.

So I turned 19 last week. Since Crystal and I share really close birthdays we had a combined party at SkaHouse (Kyle's). Generally, I like to do things big. Let me just throw this out there. If I'm going to have my name on something at all I figure it should be worth it and I like to party, so a lot of time and money were invested into making saturday night one to remember. But goddamn if saturday wasn't riddled with problems from the time I got home at midnight that morning.

Backing up a bit- Crystal, Christina, and I hooked up Friday afternoon to do the last of the shopping and to mix up the Jungle Juice. After a Walmart fiasco (we couldn't find the receipt and they refused to let us leave the store without one) we headed to Kyle's to mix it up. The Juice, in my opinion, was amazing. I'm writing down the recipe as soon as I'm done typing this entry to save for future occasions. And for the record it wasn't just some koolaid -actually we used mixaid cuz koolaid is too expensive- we went all out w/ watermelons & pineapples (among other fruits).

The Juice:


15 Gallons of happiness later I drove the girls home and headed back out south to get myself off to sleep. Lucky me, my car died in front of Chrissy's house and she had to give me a jump so I could get home (Driving w/o lights or stereo at midnight is loads of fun). I ended up having to do all this running around the next day to get a new battery for my car, had it die completely on my out in crestwood, had my mechanic have me take him to get something else I needed only to find out that it wouldn't work for me, and ended up back at his place where he hooked me up with a fresh battery that was almost brand new. And just in time because we had a band practice at 4 and I still hadn't changed, packed, or otherwise gotten together the things that I needed to for this party.

So I make it to Kyle's, and although Reggie wasn't there yet everything was looking pretty positive on my end. I was washing shot glasses and cleaning off the counter in prep for the evening and everything was cool... until I realized that in my haste I'd forgotten the legs to the BBQ Grill back home. Stupid, but no big. I jump in the car and head home, grab the legs and sonofabitch my car doesn't start! This is bad not only for the immediately obvious reason -I am now stranded at home with people arriving at the party in 20 minutes- but also bad because with a new battery, my car's failure means that the problem was my alternator also, not just a bad battery.

Geoff and Mikey A were good enough to come down to mi casa to pick me up and bring me back which was like a godsend because I had no idea how I was going to get back over there. Still, by the time that I did get there I was in a frenzy because I hadn't gotten anywhere near finished setting things up, particularly the grill. By the time it was lit -a record breaking 10 minutes from setting foot in the house- it was already dark outside. The lack of visibility combined with my overzealoue use of lighter fluid in jumpstarting the fire contributed to a good portion of the food getting way over done.

Nonetheless, by then I was relaxing. Getting the food going was my biggest concern, and since Chrissy had shown up while I was gone I didn't have to worry about the door- she was handling it. The rest of the night went on pretty smoothly. Very little drama past 9pm and Anthony even made it through with the DJ equipment and the smoke machine. I ended up having a great time despite all the nonsense of the day and hope that everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

So i'm like 5 minutes into the movie and they're already deviating from the plot. :C

So, I just watched a trailer for the Transformers movie and it looks freakin sweet. I think its set to release in theaters 7/4, at least thats what the trailer said. SO far away! I dont expect it to necessarily have a great story, but it looks really cool and I know i'll get a kick of seeing the robots in disguise transform with the new CG technology we have today. Man, I used to love those robots when I was a lil kid. Cartoons were so much better back then. And I know that people say that everything seems like things were better when we were younger, but you're not gonna tell me that the cartoons of today are better than what we had. Most of it is barely appropriate for its target audience. And even if it was, there's little story, plot, creativity, originality, or character depth and development. Not to say that all our shows were great masterpieces, but some were pretty good, and not just by comparison.

Yeah okay, im done. Not really sure where that little rant came from.

Anyway, I think im'a move back to school tmrw. Got a bunch of shit to haul back to campus, but I think its about time. School starts tuesday, feels like time went so fast. I feel really optimistic about this semester, im looking foward to it. My schedule is more structured, plenty of time to study, work, practice, hit the gym, et cetera. I have a lot of swimming to catch up on that I missed first semester because of my schedule, plus I have a six pack to carve out. Yup.

Big plans in the works for this summer including a trip back to Michigan for Barn Fiesta '07. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Get ready. I always have to have some project or some new endeavor to look foward to, else I just get bored. Projects and goals are always a good thing to have. Never settle.

Gonna check out Danny's party tmrw, plus a ska show up in Evanston. Pick it up!

I'm on the final quarter of this damn book and cant seem to put it down...

Haven't been making too many appearences in the public eye lately. Mostly i've been hanging around with the fam and my closest friends. I'm really lazy with making plans and hanging out. A bad thing to be when people have a habit of waiting for you to make plans to hang out before anything happens. I already know that there'll be more than one person that i'll end up not seeing before we go back to school because of such. Peple that I thought I would. The time is passing so quickly though. How is it New Year's Eve already?

Speaking of which, tonight we're ringing in the new year at kyles. It's been awhile since there's really been a party there and I'm really looking forward to it. It wont exactly be like the old school parties with all this nonsense, it's gonna be so much better.

Anyway, the most important thing that I learned this year was how to be honest with myself. That includes not kidding myself. Accepting my weaknesses. Then I can really work on them. I'm often a perfectionist, and that'll probably never change. But im also a slacker. When something comes easily to me I don't always work hard at it. Changing that will probably be my New Years resolution

For the first time in awhile im damn near perfectly content. I dont have much to complain about, i love my life, and almost every important aspect of it. Its great. Being so used to getting fucked all the time, i've been waiting for the other shoe to fall, but it hasnt and i've learned to let myself jus enjoy being happy. And being happy and having a lil money doesnt hurt either. It's nice being able to go out to dinner n whatnot. rawr. And go shopping. Man, I dont care what anybody says; shopping is fun. End of story.

Been busy as a bee, haven't had time for much outside of class, work, and chillin w/ Ghrai. Even music, among other things has taken a backseat the past 2 weeks. But with final projects in and all im about to be practicing a lot. Me and Joe jammed some tonight, it was straight. He turned me into a Dave Matthews Band fan. I never knew how awesome musicians they were cuz the only shit i heard from them was mundane radio bullshit. That DVD has changed my mind.

Well, I have to be up early, lot to do, so i'll catch yall later. Party Saturday? I think so!

So I skipped two classes today, and spent a good amount of time jus chillin and hanging out w/ a few of my closest friends, then went to class, and then work. It was a very good day.. with the exception of finding out that I went over on my phone bill last month. First time for me on my own line.. good times.

The band is gonna be going in the studio again soon, this time to work on a full length. It feels like its the right time, we'd jus be finishing up a long stint of shows, two of which out of town, some big, some small, but they all take a lot out of you. It'll be nice to hunker down and get that work done. So yeah, I have a lot of practicing to do because perfection and precision is the name of the game.

I've been feeling amazing lately, and the timing couldnt have been better. Thinking more deeply into that, I'd like that say that I dont believe much in luck, nor in fate, but what about God? That I haven't quite figured out yet, but i've definitely been through enough shit in my relatively short life to question the existance of an all knowing and compassionate supreme being. But with His existance neither here nor there, it remains that I simultaneously refuse to believe in luck or fate, but somehow feel that the world is more than concurrent coincidence. Yes, what you jus read was an almost direct contradiction, but thats the way I feel about that right now. Its special, but enough existentialist philosophy for now.

Cee-Lo Green is the shit.

This weekend has been packed from sun up to sun down. To recap, starting Friday afternoon:

Evanston Show
UIC Party
Chillin @ MSV
2 Hrs Sleep
Shaporone for Brian w/ Chicago Children's Choir at Macy's Holiday Window Opening
Hannah Birthday Lunch at Ed Debevics
The longest/best Band Practice to date
Band Dinner at Red Lobster
Met at MSV for University of Chicago Party
Party turns into an Adventure
Hookah Bar
2 Hrs Sleep
Group returned home

So I grabbed a sandwich from 7Eleven. And now i'm here. Very soon I will be passing out. Please don't call me.

I heavily suspect that for some reason god does not want me to ever see Exempt play, because for the past year everytime I've planned on going to see them play, something's happened. And tonight is no different; somehow we ended up being ask to play in Evanston. I think we'd have to play a show together before I ever see them live. Anyway, have a good show guys! That goes out to Anon as well.

So the band's packed tight with shows through the end of the month, and it feels really good, finally. But jus when everything picks up, of course drama must rear its ugly head. I won't talk particulars, but in the words of tony: "life must think I'm hot cuz it fucks me over every chance it gets." And while a little dramatic, that's kinda how I feel right now.

But besides that I'm fairly content right now. Life isn't so hard, and I'm enjoying school and most of the people on campus. The lack of girls was killing me, but the party outsourcing had been making up for it, mostly.

I've jus learned to be content with myself, no sense in looking for something I don't want. That spells trouble.