DASH Productions

This weekend my parents and I went to Santa Cruz for the day. Here are some pics that we took when we were there.

Last time I posted I was sitting in an empty room. Now I am home and trying to unpack and organize everything in my room at home. Thankfully, my flight home was on time so I did not spend countless hours waiting in airports.

Many of you are probably thinking, ‚ÄúWhat?!?! Dan had an airport story with everything going as it should?!?!‚Äù Well, the answer to that question is yes and no. Yes, everything was on time, but I was disappointed with how much I had to pay to get my luggage home. As I was packing I knew that I would have extra suitcases, so I went online to see how much extra it would cost for the extra bags. What I discovered was…AHHHHHH!!!!!!‚Ķ.Not only did I have to pay extra for the extra bags, but I had to pay extra for the first bag. So I had to pay for all three bags with each one costing more than the one before, plus one of them was overweight. When all was said and done, it cost me more to take my suitcases home then it cost to get me home.

My plane landed at about 10:45 a.m. San Francisco time, but my mom could not pick me up until about 11:40 a.m. because she was in class. When she did pick me up we returned to school so she could finish work. After greeting my dad I took the convertible so that I could buy myself an authentic burrito for lunch. When I returned to school, I proceeded to break as many rules as I could. On Friday I had a dentist appointment so after that I came to school again and broke more rules.

Here is the list of rules that I broke while visiting school those two days.

1. Dress Code (Flip-Flops, Jeans, T-Shirt and Hat)
2. Facial Hair

3. Eating in the Lobby
4. Chewing Gum
5. Walking in and out of classes
6. Texting in those classes that I was in
7. Probably several others that I don’t remember right now, but those of you that went to SFC realize how major some of those rules are that I broke.

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It is good to be back home again, and I am looking forward to having a fun summer.

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Well, my room is practically empty, my suitcases are packed,  random stuff in rubbermaid bins for the summer, and only a little more than two days left at Maranatha this semester.. As I was putting some duct tape on one of the bins to keep it closed, I realized that my class notes for a test i have tomorrow where in that bin. OH WELL!!

I am writing to say that it is somewhat depressing to have an empty room. Sure, we didn’t have much decoration in the room throughout the year, but now there is less than nothing. The one bright side to an empty room means that I will be home in a couple of days, as long as I don’t have another long airport story.

Last night I was trying to study for a test but was distracted by the sunsets. Yes, that is right. I said sunsets. It was a sunny day maybe 55ish degrees so I was wearing a sweathirt (my Giants one, of course, because they were playing the Dodgers). As I was walking from the coffee shop to my room, I realized that it was a nice pleasant evening, so I sat down on the ground in front of the library and never made it back to my room. As I was sitting there, lots of memories were floating through my head. Some of these memories were of past summers, when I would go to Giants games by myself. I would be in a similar outfit and likely find a spot outside the ballpark to sit on the ground and wait for the gates to open. Oftentimes on those days I would listen to Michael Buble, which was who I was listening to last night. So that combination of outfit, location, and music reminded me of many fond memories of past times.

As I was remembering these fun times of the past, I was also admiring the beautiful sunset. Now, having grown up in San Francisco, I have seen some of the most beautiful sunsets ever with some of the most beatiful backdrops like the ocean, the city skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge. But this one had its own unique beauty as it set over the Dining Complex here at Maranatha. As I was admiring this sunset, I was thinking about the “sunset” of the school year. Tomorrow I start taking Finals. AHHHH!!!! I am almost done with my Freshman year of college. I will be taking some summer school courses online starting in a couple weeks, but as far as on campus classes, I am just about done for the year.

Well, I should probably stop blogging and start studying that way I do well on my finals.

-Dash ?????? ??????? ??????

You must think I am crazy. I post one blog and say that I had a busy day of blogging. Well the truth is that I have multiple blogs and they are all getting some love today. This is my main blog so this is where all the important stuff goes, but to those of you who don’t know I now have two other blogs. I am not sure how long I will keep those two updated because they are actually for classes this semester.

One of the blogs is about baseball. Anyone that knows me knows that I like baseball. Because it is for a class, there are a few posts that are different in style because of what the assignment called for. I do think it is a good blog with some good content on it. You can check it out at bleacherdan.blogspot.com. For those of you who are wondering why I used Blogger for this blog, it is because the teacher made us use blogger. If I had my choice I would have used wordpress.

My other blog is bran new and not quite ready to be shown yet, so I will not share the URL yet. I will, however, tell you what it is about. This blog was given as an assignment in one of my classes. We were told to do a blog on our hometown, which made me excited because I love San Francisco. This blog is actually the reason why I am “busy” with blogging. Because of the limited time I have to make it and all the Information I want to be on it, it is going to take a little bit more work than what is expected for the project.

I should probably get going on my other blogs that count as a grade instead of just this one that is for your enjoyment. Oh, and one last thought…I WILL BE HOME IN TWO WEEKS!!!!!

-Dash

Well it is Saturday afternoon, and most of my friends are in the spring play, The Music Man. Because there were not many people out and about (or maybe they were out and about, which is why I didn’t see them) I decided to look through the video files on my computer and make a video of my adorable, cute niece.

Enjoy!

WOW!!! Only 3 weeks of school left!

Where has this semester gone? It seems like I was just home for Cristmas and now I am getting ready to go home for the summer. I am not sure that I like that idea. Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to be going home, but I will also miss all of my friends. Unfortunately this is not like Christmas, it will not be a short three week break. It is going to be almost four months long.

There will be some good parts to to the summer though. I plan on returning to McDonalds to serve “food” to our loyal custormers every day. I am also going to take a couple of online classes this summer, so I should be pretty busy most days between work, school, and sleep

Although in my mind summer seems like it will be pretty long, it will probably fly by as quick as this semester has flown by. Before I know it, I will be back on campus having a great time with my friends again.

For my readers that live within a couple hours (or days for all I care) of San Francisco, it would be nice to see you during the summer, so you should come visit sometime this summer.

Until next time, I will try to jump off the bullet and call some of you sometime so we can chat. Sorry to those of you who thought this post would be about Superman.

- Dash

Well today is the opening day for the greatest sports franchise ever, the Giants (sorry, to anyone that wants to disagree with this, but the Giants are the first and only team in any professional sport to have 10,000 franchise victories). In past years I would have been super-excited, this is not to say that I am not excited because I am. But there is something different about baseball season this year.

I probably won’t watch a lot of games this year. I don’t quite know how to feel about this. I probably won’t even pay attention to see the scores of games every day this year. Have I gone crazy?? That is debateable, but mostly the reason why I won’t watch games is because I won’t be places where I can watch them.

Right now I am in the midwest, so there won’t be a whole lot of Giants games shown on TV, not to mention that I have other work to do most of the time. When I go home for the summer, I plan to get a job. If my work schedule is remotely close to what it was last year, then I won’t watch any games during the summer either.

So at the dawn of another baseball season, every fan has high hopes for his team. But also like most fans, I will probably lose track of how my team is doing until September and hope that they still have a chance by then to go to the playoffs.

I haven’t posted in a while because I have been on band tour. We left the Wednesday before Spring Break, returned about two hours ago, and go back to class tomorrow. During our tour we had concerts in 7 different states (Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Illinois) and we also drove through part of Delaware, which means that I have been in 7 more states than I had been in before Band Tour (I was in PA two years ago). We played in churches of many shapes and sizes. It is amazing how many differents set-ups we had our band in on this tour and my favorites were always when the brass instruments were elevated above the woodwinds (sorry to any woodwind players that read my blog).

Along with the concerts, we also had time to do some fun stuff on tour too (Actually it was all fun). We spent time at Virginia Beach, two historic battlefields, Fredricksburg and Gettysburg, we stopped in Hershey, and we were in Washington, D.C. for four hours. When we were in D.C. everyone split into different groups based on what they wanted to do. I was with three other people who wanted to see all the different memorials and monuments. They are all so well designed and moving.

I have a bunch of fun stories about band tour. Sometime maybe I will have the time to tell most of them to you.

Until then,

Dash

So I wanted to do something different for this post. I haven’t done anything funny for a while so I decided to do something light-hearted. For a while I have been thinking about putting my favorite 25 songs into a list, but I think that would have been really hard for me to do. I only have 3,252 songs right now, but to narrow that down to 25 would have been almost impossible for me. So instead I will give my 25 favorite albums. This should be much easier considering I only have 205 albums. So here I go.

25. Christmas with the Chipmunks (The Chipmunks)

24. Michael Crawford in Concert (Michael Crawford)

23. Round-Up (Cincinnati Pops)

22. How Great Thou Art (Rob Deas)

21. Silly Songs with Larry (Veggie Tales)

20. The Music Man (Movie Soundtrack)

19. Pops Christmas Party (Boston Pops)

18. Brass on Broadway (Canadian Brass)

17. Beauty and the Beast (Broadway Soundtrack)

16. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Movie Soundtrack)

15. Brian Regan Live (Brian Regan)

14. Jurrasic Park (John Williams)

13. Celebration (Canadian Brass)

12. Keep in the Middle of the Road (Outreach Quartet)

11. Greatest Hits (Canadian Brass)

10. Disc Three of The Best of the Barbershop Quartets (Various Barbershop Quartets)

9. Pirates of the Carribean (Movie Soundtrack)

8. Amazing Brass (Canadian Brass)

7. Newsies (Movie Soundtrack)

6. Almighty, Unchangeable God (The Wilds)

5. Return 2 Zero (Return 2 Zero – a quartet I heard at Disneyworld)

4. Show Thyself Strong (Herbster Trio)

3. Noel (Canadian Brass)

2. Pirates of the Caribean: At World’s End (Movie Soundtrack)

1. Summon the Heroes (John Williams)