but I don't give up ;)

"People are always more attune to their own faults by finding them in others. Whenever I find myself criticizing someone, I turn the criticism around to improve myself. Likewise, whenever I see one person accusing another, I look for the faults of the accused in the accuser, and finally search for the same faults in myself. If I find them, I meditate and try to fix them. If I don't find them, I rejoice."

It seems like Ghandi should have said that or something.

So I had a birthday party this past Saturday, I'm now 18. The morning after, I got up and this dark feeling washed over me, like my heart was dying, like I was becoming an old man set in my ways! It was so scary!

Haha. Got you. Fool. Now stop asking me how it feels to be 18. It feels like the last two days of being 17. Just playing ;)

So I got a funny gift. My Mom got me a scale that measures body fat percentage and hydration levels, two very useful measurements for a serious athlete. I watch my weight obsessively because I'm pretty big for a cyclist. Cyclists can be as small as 110 lbs, average is 140-150lbs at my height, and I'm 175. So I'm always worried that I'm storing body fat in my muscles where it's not visible, an that I'm carrying that useless weight around with me. I eat so much though, that any attempt to cut back is almost unbearable.

But thanks to this sweet new scale, I can be reassured every morning that by body fat is at 5%, and that I only have about 4 lbs that I can safely lose. My metabolism is so fast, I could do that in a week. No worries :D

So while I've been trying to eat less, I've been utilizing the craving-killing properties of maté. I've been unable to find anything to increase my willingness to do unpleasant busywork. Homework still sucks, it still takes too much time, and it's still a poor learning aid. So to ease the tedium, I've been playing guitar. It's been about a week now, I've been taking simple lines from songs I like and playing them by ear, which is how I learned to sing. Sometimes I play the line on the first try. I'm amazed at how learning to sing has improved my pitch perception. I can literally look at the guitar frets and see the sounds. It's sweet!

Now that I have some birthday money, I'm thinking of picking up a Bass Guitar. I really like the feel of Bass, and I'd like to learn it concurrently with 6-string. Then I could get a drum machine and have my own rock band ;)

I think part of what got me into guitar was the two concerts I've been to the last two weeks. Kaisa and I went to see the Dropkick Murphys and Third Eye Blind on consecutive weekends. The character of both concerts was very different.

At Murphys, I discovered how much I like mosh pits. I fought for 20 minutes to get to the front row. Then, on the last song, I got up on the stage and rocked out like a total Rock n' Roll freak on the front line in front of the entire crowd.

Third Eye Blind was a lot more laid back, but I thought it was a much better show. Sure, the 40 foot long stack of Marshall amps at Murphys was cool, but 3EB gave a lot better performance. The highlight of the show was during the song "Jumper". When it got to the solo, the bassist soloed, the lead guitar soloed (for like 10 minutes), the drummer soloed with strobe lights (Sweet!) then the singer and lead guitar broke into Stairway to Heaven (which nobody expected at all). Then, they got the entire crowd to sing the solo before finishing the song. They got a double encore :D

So to go with my recent penchant for having fun on weekends, my birthday party was epic. It started Friday night, with like 10 people at my friends house, loud music, movies, lots of Monster, everybody hyper, it was great :D Then, everybody crashed at my house, my Mom made us a big breakfast, and we went to see the movie 21. After that, I went a couple friends who turned 18 last week to get some cheap cigars to celebrate. (Tobacco is disgusting kids, stay away from it! :P) Finally, I had everyone back to my house where we watched funny movies on You Tube, had a huge dinner (I ate so much that day, it was absurd) and I finished off the night with a long drive with Kaisa. It couldn't have been much better!

So I got up the next day and realized "I'm not as fat as I thought I was!" which I think is a pretty good start to my adult life ;D

Leave Kudos,
Chris

One liner: For as a man is, so is his friend.