Well I think this entry officially takes the cake for being the longest time between two entries: 7 weeks, almost 8. Yep folks It's been that long. For those of you who have been wondering what's up, thanks for keeping interested. And the rest of you have probably just fucked off.
So in my usual fashion I'm going to touch on what's happened in the past... two months. Tho I'm going to just wiz thru them and touch on the important ones. I'm needing to backtrack through my calendar as there is NO way I'd remember that far back on my own.

Alrighteo, so last entry was right after I had just moved into my place in Santa Cruz. So this year I'm living off campus with Albert and Shannon. It's a nice house, not huge, but just the right size for the three of us. It's conveniently close to campus; walking and with a shuttle bus it takes me only 15 minutes to get to theater arts. That's about as long as it took me to walk from my on campus apartment to TA... Wow. I'm really enjoying being off campus this year. I've got more space and it's nicer and it's more away from campus. As a result of it being away from campus I tend to make better use of my time on campus, I go to more places, hang out at various places, I've spent way more time at the GLBT center this year so far than I ever did in the past three years combined. Anyway, it's a good year and off campus, as much of a forced option it was, it was a good move.

Ok, moving along without making this thing a short novel... The first beginning week of class was nuts. There was the Boardwalk frolic as usual, which was a blast as always. Rode the Giant Dipper twice, maybe three times, gowad I love that coaster. Kinda sad, that was the last time I'd get to do the Boardwalk frolic as a UCSC student. (That's unless I'm here another year. How the fuck that'd happen I have no idea...) Next day, Wednesday me and Zach began the drive down to LA. "But classes start on Thursday!" you say. Right, we had already arranged to not be there. Trip down was fine, minus my speeding ticket. Anyway stayed at a Ramada in Canoga park, really nice place. Free wi-fi, flat screen TV, clean, fancy furniture, nice breakfast options. Anyway we were down in LA to go to High End Systems to take the class on the Hog 3 Console. In short the awesome-est light board, which is used on the majority of all concerts and stuff with lots of moving lights.

So thus we start the quarter. Things were off to a good start, just getting back from LA and learning the awesome Hog 3 console. Intro modern dance was proving to be a fun and exciting class, Tandy Beal is an awesome teacher. Usual socials and mixers for the beginning of the year. Now given that I'd played a deal of Ultimate (frisbee) over the summer I had given thought about playing it here at UCSC. Well I saw some flyers for Slug Ultimate, the UCSC ultimate team. The long and the short of it was I went out for the team on the first day of practice. Well, weeks later I'm still with it and now on the B team. Woooo! It's kinda odd getting back into the organized team sports stuff after being out of ice hockey for several years now. Anyway it's proving to be fun and it's helping to get me out and keeping me in shape.

So next week, (week 2 of classes...) That weekend was the Download festival up at Shoreline in Mountain View, lots of good bands, it was awesome. Got to see one of my favorites Muytator again. Also discovered a new band, Kinky, they're awesome. Lots of hype around Coheed & Cambria, didn't like them at all. But I was there for..... MUSE. Oh fucking yes. I got to see them live, that was so awesome and SO worth the ticket price alone. I ran into lots of folks I knew there, good times. I took off after Muse, that was my band I was there for. Most people were there for Beck and such, tho I'm not a fan of his stuff. Apparently he puts on a great show, but, eh...

So folowing weekend was a great party that Elven hosted at his place. Swanky jazz party, dress to impress. We had a WELL stocked bar and I brought all my bartending supplies. Started out small, grew to be huge. It eventually got broken up and we all got written up. I got off with just a finger wag "don't do it again." (This was almost a month ago now, so it's been resolved since it happened.) Still, great party. I made some nice tips. (Detail: party was on Friday, sat was kinda recovery day... I think.)

So as being on the Ultimate team, there are tournaments we go to... The following weekend the first one was up in Chico. I was a driver, etc... Was a fun time, played A LOT of ultimate and got to experience the Chico party. Wow. Something like 12 kegs there, maybe more. I lost count. So that was a good weekend.

So one would think after all of this crazyness, I'd take a break right? Nope.... Following my weekend in Chico the next weekend it's off to Vegas! (We're at Oct 20-22, fri-sun now.) So a whole bunch of us design students from theater arts headed up to Vegas for LDI, which is a HUGE lighting and tech trade show that happens once a year. All of the latest lighting, projection, stage, trussing, sound, light boards, pyrotechnics, special effects, etc is there. It's awesome. That was a GREAT weekend, lots of cool shit, lots of hanging out, and whatnot. This was actually my first time going to Vegas. My overall thoughts about it, it's "OK." The overall atmosphere of Vegas doesn't totally grab me. For one I really miss CA's no indoor smoking laws. And also given that I don't gamble that removes a lot of stuff. However the entertainment is endless, along with the bars and there were some good looking clubs there. Wanted to hit up at least one club, but never got the opportunity to. Anyway, still a great trip.

Wow, that brings me right up to this weekend. So this weekend was Rocky Horror picture show, good times as usual. Dylan really took it seriously this time, made a few trips up to SF to go shopping. Ended up getting a pair of custom fit leather trousers. Actually look rather nice on him. QUITE expensive. Anyway.

Alright, other things to talk about that I haven't touched on. So one requirement for intro modern dance, is to take three other (just one drop in each) different styles of dance. So I took intro jazz dance downtown at Motion Pacific and also took intro hip-hop, and at a place in Soquel took a Scottish country dance class. (We had to do a cultural dance project so this covered both requirements.)
Well, intro hip-hop was a fun class and at the end of the first one I decided to continue to take the class. So I paid for that and such. And that's been a fun start of my week. It's every Monday evening so it really helps to get my week off to a good start. I've felt I was doing well which was confirmed today at the end of class; I was chatting with our teacher and she told me "Hey you did really well today!" Which was nice to hear. I'm already thinking of continuing and taking another round next quarter.

On the DJ front, I finally purchased the CD player I've been meaning to buy. No I didn't get a Pioneer CDJ-1000Mk3. I DID get a Denon DN-D4500 which is a dual-deck player. No scratching, but it's a really good solid unit. A VERY good investment, my skills have seen major improvement since I started using it. Traktor was just proving more problems than it was helping. The big pain is that I have to make CD's of everything, which takes hours upon hours. I don't want to put tracks that later on I'm going to say, "Ah dammit! I want to play that one next, but noo it's on the same disk!" So it's a tasking procedure to make disks that are well thought out. In addition to ripping my vinyl collection. It's a slow process but it's moving along well. I've got a decent quantity on CD already. I've been mixing more regularly recently, and I'm really enjoying it as I've got things down nicely.

A new mix will be coming your way in a short time. Hopefully I'll be following that with my demo mix, which I plan to mail out to various venues downtown and maybe some of the colleges on campus. Yes, I hope to DJ in town, and ideally continue from there. Especially in Santa Cruz there is a saturation of hip-hop DJ's, and at that most of them aren't that good. I want to change things up, and get some good groovy, funky, techy house tunes going. It's a bit lofty of a goal, to actually establish myself as a known DJ in at least the area, but I'm going for it.

Anyway, on the theater front. It's been pre-production for two pieces this quarter. I start out the year with nothing in fall, and now I'm designing on two shows, practically overlapping. I'm doing media for "The Shape of Things" which goes into tech this weekend. I'm also doing a lighting design for a dance/movement show down in the barn, "Bending Tradacion." Tech ends for one, and starts for the next, with only one day between. Yep, it's nuts. AND I've got an Ultimate tournament to play as well one weekend. (Fortunately we're hosting it so I'll be in town.)
Crazy times ahead. But hey, this quarter already has been probably the best yet: I've been quite busy with everything but enjoying it all, and
still having social time.

So that's all for now. Thanks for hanging in there and making it to the end. Damn thing took an hour to write without leaving out details. So as per some update pages have said, the plan is I'm going to save some content from the forums (along with a full database archive) re-appropriated, but I am getting rid of them altogether. The content system is getting an upgrade and I'm going to tinker with some new features, shall see...
And, ummm yeah. There you go. So another thing for myself to do is to get back to regular blogging and web site work! Righto, that's all for now!