The Spring Break Wrap Up

Hey there everybody,

This will be a two parter as I had an unfinished post that was going to be posted last Friday but life happened and I became to busy to finish it. I will post that once I get finished with this one.

The weekend went well as far as MFCs (Midwestern Fencing Championships) go. Big tournament with lots and lots of teams and fencers from all around, including both Varsity and Club fencers. We finished in 8th place overall (around 20 schools were there) so we did fairly well. Our men's sabre squad finished 7th, which is a vast improvement from our standing last year. (It turns out that winning schools is important to doing well.) I personally ended up in 22nd place out of 70(-ish) sabre fencers, which is 2 places better than I did last year (yay improvement!). The entire thing was very close to going much, much better or much, much worse and a few touches here and there would have had dramatically different results, but that is just how life goes.

I'm now on spring break for the rest of the week. I've got a few days of relaxing and composing that will end in my birthday this weekend. I was given a book, "Treason" by Orson Scott Card, from a friend and will start reading it once I have some time to myself. I like Scott Card, but he does tend to get a little bit too philosophical in his novels as they progress. We'll see how this one turns out.

I'm going to take a nap and read a book. Take care everyone!

The Eternal Morning

It's been a long weekend and I've still have a lot to do. Our tournament went off splendidly, the movie premier sounded like a great time (The MSU Advanced Screening was a success! for more details on that) and now I have out tournament data to fill and polish and then finish the edits of my short stories. 

For a tournament to remain rated highly (such as ours, being a C1/C2 event (There really isn't a difference, just size)) the top people must finish in the top region of the results. Our tournament was defined by the two Cs (a graduate student from UofM and a high schooler from Toronto) and two Ds (one of which being myself and the other being a former MSU captain), and all of us had to make top eight in order to keep the tournament a C event. 

This was fine for the other three, but I was having a bit of trouble in pools (probably because I hadn't been fencing for most of the week (data input...) and was sick, but those are really just excuses) and was a bit concerned that I might not place high enough to keep the tournament a C. My first DE was against Chad, another kid from our club that typically travels on our third spot when we compete in the collegiate scene and it isn't unusual for him to beat me even when we're both practicing regularly. We started by him taking the lead 8 to 1 by the break, which freaked me out quite a bit. Then I realized that I should just fence and not worry about what the score was (I'll thank Ben, my captain, for verbally slapping some sense into be at the break). We went back out and I started actually going for touches and managed to eek out a win 15 to 13 (Yay comebacks!). 

He was not happy about losing, but I'm happy that he was a good sport about it afterwords. Went along to the next DE for the round of four and lost 8/9ish to 15 to Austin, a friend from RFC (Renaissance Fencing Club in Troy) which sucked, but it happens sometimes. All in all I ended up 6th place (exactly where I seeded from pools) while Ben and Austin both got their D ratings from tying in 3rd and Sierra got an E, which she's been working at for a while (She's probably out to get her D now as well, but she'll just have to wait until the next tournament). Turned out to be a great tournament for ratings (not for me but that just happens some days).

Unfortunately I was setting up for the tournament when the premier of Apocalypse Theory was airing at Well's Hall, but I hear that it went excellently. I managed to see it at the Cast and Crew viewing earlier in the week and was thoroughly entertained by the excellent film work and acting. I had a very small role and I was pleased to see that I didn't look as awkward on camera as thought I might (a true testament to their skilled editing team). I wish them further luck as the film makes its runs through the festival circuit. 

I've been ignoring my writing for a couple days as the tournament set up and tear down took its course, but I've got a slight stretch of time as we are headed to the west end of the state to celebrate my Grandmother's birthday (on my Dad's side) today. I've suddenly realized how little time there is left until the deadline for submissions (three days!?!) and I need to get into high gear to finish editing them and fill out the application. We'll see what I can do with them... 

We also have power rankings to fill out on Monday, which needs a finished and polished database. The process is rather simple and easy for the other fencers, but it's kind of nightmare for me. Thankfully it needs a constant internet connection, so I do have free time to work on writing until that becomes possible to begin fiddling with. All of that doesn't even begin to start to touch the Microbial Genomics exam and essay I have to do this week, so that studying will have to happen at some point. 

Lot of stuff to do and very little time to do it, but that sounds like a normal week for college. I'll probably not update this for a few days until things settle down. 

Catch you later Pokemon! 
(Wow, really scratching the bottom of the barrel here :/) 

The Days After

Flogging Molly was an amazing show and I am slightly upset that we didn't order tickets soon enough for the ground level. Next year I suppose. I've never been to such a high energy show, and I was pleasantly surprised how much I really enjoyed the punk aspect and I am a sucker for traditional irish music. We may have stayed up after the concert listening to more irish music till 4 am, but that is neither here nor there. On another note I stumbled upon Bon Iver's AIR studio recordings on Youtube, and I think that I may need to start listening to them. They are a nice counterpoint to the residual energy from the concert.

Got the shredded draft from my fairy god-editor and am particularly happy to see that most of the editing was what I knew needed fixing, but there was also lots of character development that I really need to flesh out. Cutting an entire paragraph that didn't fit too well, and it'll be posted after the main body for you're perusal. Fairly standard tropes, so it'll be interesting to see how much further I can twist it into something interesting. Still need a new concept for the second portion of the submission, but that may come in a flash of inspiration. I'm thinking of a counter point to the heavily atmospheric first story and have a few settings in mind, but I'm not sure what plot hook to hang them on. I'm going to have to develop this a bit further I think.

That'll have to wait until later, as I am headed out to celebrate my Grandpa's birthday with my Mom's side of the family. It's going to be some sort of craziness, but in a very entertaining and reassuring way. I am fairly certain that it will be a grand time. Then I get to study on Sunday in prep for my lectures this week. I think that I'm going to attempt to study beforehand and try to pre-empt my bad habits... but really why do I kid myself?

Adios Astronaut



Culled excerpt from Submission 1:

"There were no great beasts in this land. The pods that rained onto this barren rock brought fresh carbon and insulating gasses, then nitrates and ammonia with the first microbes to help cycle and stabilize the atmosphere of the planet. This took hundreds of years until the satellites deemed it ready for the next step. Fewer than 2% of planets made it to the second step, but this one had. The next pods came down with mosses, lichens, and algae. This step was a crucial first test, and then more pods came down with grasses and ferns and such. After these settled they began with small animals. These were important to control the grasses and regulate the carbon. Trees and fish and the like came next. After 300 years of slowly adding new variety to the ecosystems, it was ready for the first humans, it was ready for them."

Good explanation of a sci-fi terraforming, but too much detail for the story without matching the flow of overall story. I wasn't a fan of how it looked after I wrote it, and it stuck out from the more organic approach taken by the rest of the story. It's not a bad segment, but it wasn't the way I wanted to approach it in the end and it didn't read how I wanted it. Crazy thing to post 'bad' writing, but I figure it's better than posting writing and thinking it's awesome. "Blah blah blah look at how cool I am", I prefer going: "Hey look at how much I suck, but it's not too terrible." If you really want to see terrible writing just look at some previous posts on this blog...