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As I wrote my entry from yesterday, I started to think about the fact that this semester will very shortly be over. And with 17 credit hours–the most I’ve ever taken in one shot–I feel a bit relieved. Its been stressful juggling 5 classes for me. I haven’t juggled this many since I took 14 credit hours my freshman semester, and then it was Comp I, Intro to Engineering, LEAD Lab, Chemistry, and Calculus. Then again, as a freshman, Calculus and Chemistry wasn’t a combination that I should have taken.

But just something for y’all to follow me with next week as I sporatically post, here’s my final exam schedule:

MONDAY: Studying all day, taking my Ethics final when I feel comfortable enough.
TUESDAY: Studying all day, taking my International Business final when I feel comfortable enough. Tuesday night, I would have a Recruitment and Selection final, but I took that early as allowed.
WEDNESDAY: “Free Day.” Not really, but I’ll be studying all day for my Compensation Final on Thursday.
THURSDAY: 1pm seated Compensation final.
FRIDAY: Whenever I’ve read it and am done, I have a Training & Development final.

And with that all said and done? I’ll be done for the semester… Of course, Monday I also register for my final class at UCF, and then classes start back up second week of May, but that’s a post for another time…

Usually by this point in the week, I’d be all lined up, ready to go for the whole weekend. Quite frankly, though? I’m a bit behind this time around. You see, I’ve spent all day today working on part of a group project for my Compensation class, and with that on my agenda? I’ve barely had a chance to catch up on my news and catch up on one thing or another. Even sitting here writing this, well, I feel all scatterbrained and a bit out of it. But that’s the by-the-by and subject for another set of times.

That being said, I’d leave you with a picture of a bunny with a pancake on his head, but I’m too lazy to grab it…

Yesterday, I picked up my guitar for the first time in a few weeks and played about half an hour. And it was interesting because as much as I used to love doing it, it was just work for me then. I didn’t derive anything from it. I was “going through the motions.” Playing guitar used to be such a release and something I enjoyed beyond everything, and to have it just feel so “blah”? What’s happening to me?

I think, quite honestly, its the stress. Its the atmosphere I was in.

I used it as a study break and I didn’t feel like it really. I had a small tickle for it, but not the urge to pick up that guitar and let it loose. And I’m hoping that when finals and this semester are all over, I’ll have a little less pressure when I’m on the job hunt that it can go back to being that relaxation. Heck, I’m even hoping that when I’ve got that job secured and I’m working after graduation that I can let it be that relaxation that it used to be.

Because, as I was telling a friend last night, there’s no greater release than playing. There’s a feeling that I cannot put into words at all about being on that stage or just being somewhere with a guitar in hands and knowing that what I’m doing isn’t just putting a smile on my face, but I’m impacting those around me. Even if its just barely hearing me through a wall or the next room over, or its someone blasting one of my songs as they’re away from home and hearing the words and feeling not so alone? There’s something to that that’s just plain amazing…

I’m debating heading to campus a little earlier than my class tonight and spending an hour or so at the fountain on campus, seeing I won’t have much longer to do that…

Last night when I was eating dinner, I grabbed a V8. Seriously. Not because of all of the commercials but because Sarah and I bought a flat of the small 8oz cans from Costco a while back and we’ve been eat drinking them like there’s no tomorrow. And it just so happens that we had out some crunchy baked Cheetos too. If you haven’t tried it yet? Trust me on this one. Cheetos and V8. Combination of champions.

And it sounds weird, I know, but just think of how there are combinations exactly like that in slightly different forms… Its no different than eating a pizza (sauce and cheese) or having some goldfish crackers in your tomato soup. Why, there are dozens of foods like this that we have in the same combination in different forms. Ever think that trail mix which is simply usually nuts and raisins is the same thing as eating a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich?

We think we’re inventive folks with these combinations, but I’d bet if we really looked at some of these foods simplified, we’d realize we’re eating the same thing, in different combinations.

But, who cares. I’m all about V8 and Cheetos. I could live off of that. Throw in some ice cream for my fats, dairy, and protein? There’s a fully balanced diet right there…

Well folks, while people might have tuned in to find out why I was in Tallahassee this past weekend, I’m not going to indulge that one just yet… Instead, I’d like to share a tale of apartment hunting.

Sarah and I had a great 1,200 sq. ft. apartment that we were living in up till the end of March, but the problem was, the lease expired in the middle of a school term. So with that, we were faced with finding a new place to stay till August when I’d be done with school. Not too bad, when you think about it, but when you add in a few key things, well, it makes it all the harder:

Two people living in one room

Cats allowed/not minded

Close to the campus because I have no car

While that doesn’t sound like a lofty list of demands/issues to take care of, well, it’s definitely plenty. And when we were looking, well, there were a few trends that we noticed occured on a regular basis… I’d like to go over them here because it shows just how much of assholes and stupid people can be.

1) We Have Cats: That means that we’re not getting rid of them. That means that if you don’t want cats or pets, don’t advertise pets allowed. Also, don’t back up on things.
2) Two People Doesn’t Mean…: That we’ll pay twice the rent because we’re sharing half of your space. If there are three people living in one apartment, we’ll pay 2/3rds of the electricity, but if we’re using half the space, we’re only paying half the rent. Yes, I’ve had people want to charge us twice the price because of three people in one place.
3) When We Say Close…: We mean close. Seriously. Don’t offer me something 5-10 miles away that I’m going to have to ride an hour to school on the Orlando bus. And also, when I say I have no car, don’t offer me something that’s not on the bus line, even if it is cheap.
4) And When You Post An Ad…: You need to follow up on it. That means if you’re on Craigslist, check your e-mail. If you’re on Facebook, check your Inbox. If you left your phone number, listen to and respond to your messages. Even if its to tell me that you’re busy, that’s alright. And make it timely, like 24-48 hours. You need to follow through or you’re not getting me in because I’ve tried and its in your hands, buddy.

And that’s where I have the greatest stories…
1) A guy had a 2/2 condo that he was looking for a renter for one of the rooms. The real estate agent himself thought we were a great fit, but when he contacted the condo owner, he didn’t think it was fair to the guy already living there for two people to move into one room. All of this after we already agreed to pay twice the utilities. We weren’t even shown the place. In all honesty? If you’re the owner of a place and someone’s going to pay your mortgage for a few months? In this market? Take it!
2) One guy was going to rent out his room in a 2/2 to us, and we’d have to pay all of the deposits to transfer things into our name, but his lease was through October. With us not needing it past August, it was a bit weird. It got even weirder when he stated that he’d be living on the couch in the living room. So in essence? It’d be 4 people in a 2/2 apartment, and we’d be paying his rent for a few months.
3) One girl replied and everything was perfect, absolutely perfect. I replied to her about her place and I didn’t hear back from her… until two days before our lease expired, a good two weeks after I replied to her. She apologized stating that she doesn’t check Facebook much. That’s sort of sad, seeing I replied not 2 hours after I got her message. Oh well, that’s not as much my loss but her loss.

So all of that said, like I had mentioned late last month, we have moved. Ironically the roommates we have now? They graduated one of my alma mater’s rival high schools c/o 2004. They were freshmen at Hernando High when I graduated Springstead High in 2001. Talk about interesting coincidences…

Oh boy oh boy, so much to talk about from this weekend, but before I crack down on homework, I need to really give a shout-out to LesterChan.net. I use his plugin, DownloadManager for my site here on the discography page for the download of my music.

Well, when I upgraded to WP2.5, the only issue I knew about was the problems with my LJ-Crossposter. Because not many people know that they can download all of my music for free from my site (or make a nominal donation to help out with me running it and bandwidth), I don’t hear about problems much with the DownloadManager plugin. Matter of fact, not until I had a new user drop me an e-mail after registering on Friday (Thanks Spencer!), I had no idea.

Needless to say, I dropped an e-mail off to Lester and he shot me back a link to his blog (which I felt like a fool for not reading and then immediately subscribed to it on my Newzie) which described the exact error I was having and provided a link to the new version to fix the 2.5 difference. Ooops. I feel like a doofus.

Anyways, enjoy folks. Downloads are back up. More later…

I’m fairly new to the world of podcasts and podcasting, so I’m much far behind on things. But at the same time, there’s one that I do listen to each and every episode more than others, and that’s this one right here…

Mike Garrigan’s Podcast

For those who haven’t heard his name from me before or heard me talk about Mike Garrigan, well, you haven’t known me very long. Needless to say, Mike is a guitarist/vocalist/singer-songwriter out of North Carolina. Formerly the lead voice of the band Collapsis and the backing guitarist/vocalist in the band Athenaeum, Mike’s a solid songwriter and has been moving to the world of music production and engineering. And at the start of the year, Mike just redid his website and decided to add in a podcast. In a fairly simple format each lasting about 20ish minutes long, Mike plays one studio cut from one of his albums, as well as one or two live outtakes or new studio recordings, and then uses the other time between the songs to talk about recent shows, recording updates, recording information, or just casual friendly things. A really nice guy whom I’ve had the chance to speak with on one occasion and e-mailed with occasionally, its a nice way to see inside the music business and with his blog on his site helps take some of the mysticism out of recording and reminds you that these musicians we listen to are real folks as well.

I’ve been thinking for a while about writing more reviews for this blog, and its something that I’d really like to start doing. But the question is why don’t I just do that? I mean, its easy to really just quickly review something, so why not just do that? The fact of the matter is because of the time I spent working for the UCF Independent? Its just not that simple for me.

Back from 2001 through mid-2004 or so, I was a writer for one of two campus papers before it folded and was bought out by the main paper. And my specialty was writing CD reviews, so I got it quickly down to an art. And when you’re writing reviews, you need to have it all down to a formula, especially when you’ve got two to three albums that you’re working on weekly like I often do nowadays. So what’s my formula?

I start off with a casual listen through of the album as a whole from start-to-finish. I let it sit in the background and then just do what I need to do. If it catches my attention, I’ll let it do that. If it just sleeps in the background? It does that. I just let it pass by and be there. After that, put it aside. Over the next day or so, I’ll not listen to it and see if something’s stuck with me. If I remember any of it, if the riffs or lyrics have caught me. After this day or two passes, I’ll take another listen to it, trying to pay a little more attention to the album. I’ll let another day or two pass, and then after that, I’ll play the album a third time (at least) and start writing the review while I’m listening to the album. I find that when I do it this way, it lets the album grow on me and be a lot more than a precursory glance to the album. If you just listen to it once, or listen to it back-to-back in one day are you really doing it justice? You need to let the music exist with you. Music is not an individual process but part of the biggest picture of life and expression. If you just take it as music and entertainment? Fine. But really if you let it live with you, you get so much more from it.

And that’s why when I reviewed She & Him and Joe Hedge’s albums? I feel like I did a crappy job. When I did the album reviews, I had only heard both of those albums only one time. I felt like I didn’t give them that chance to really grow on me, but in my quest for content to fill on those days? I felt strong enough to write up more of a “commentary” on the album. I wish I could feel better about them, and maybe eventually I’ll write a “part two” to the reviews, but still. The originals stand as they are, and I just hope that they were enough to give my inital opinion…

Hey folks, today’s blog is another one that I’m posting from my cell, and rightly so. See, its sort of hard to post somethign from “home” when you’re not really there.

Last night after I got out of class, Sarah picked me up from campus and we started driving and whammo, we ended up in Tallahassee, Florida. With an 8am commitment up here, we had to make sure that we got into town with plenty of time to spare. But that being said, we’re going to have a heck of a time and do our damndest to enjoy it as much as possible. And that being said, I’m going to sign off for now, but when I’m back on Monday morning, you’d better believe that all will be revealed…

Until then? Just pop on a good CD… Personally, I’d recommend the new Panic at the Disco or the new Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Reviews of both coming soon…

So on Tuesday night, I received another e-mail about my graduation. This time, it was from the College of Arts and Humanities, where my English degree is classified under. According to them? I hadn’t met with my advisor yet.

Wait, what? What are you talking about? I did that on Friday, March 28th before meeting with my business advisor. This was something that I wanted out of the way and done with. So I e-mailed back, and when I woke up yesterday morning, I got a response that I needed to meet with a CAHSA advisor, not my major advisor. Damn it. I made that appointment for that afternoon.

So after another thirty minute wait, I got a third check off on my degree audit. Why? Because they needed it for THEIR records as well. While I understand their need, the disruption to me and my schedule wasn’t much appreciated.

At least, though, its done with, and I can leave this weekend to parts not too far unknown or far away… More on that tomorrow…

…is getting up early the next day.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been juggling a completely horrendous schedule that has me up till 2-3am and then waking up at 7:30am and running a fully normal day. Thusly, its no wonder that I’ve been drinking as much energy drinks as I’ve been finding around me and looking for other alternatives…

Normally this rant would include a complete disclosure of what my week looks like, but I’m waiting till Monday to make a fairly big announcement for myself and Sarah. A few friends have heard it in real life, and I’m making sure that its expressed to those whom I care about before I just go blabbing it openly online to whomever might stumble across this blog.

Still, with my lack of sleep, its no wonder that just now after watching my Countdown from last night? That I passed out on the bed for two hours.

Naps? You are my friends…

Last night when I was shopping at the Wal*Mart Neighborhood Market where I used to work, I was going to buy a 4-pack of my usual Amp Sugar Free Tall Boys that I’ve switched to after the fallout that I had a few weeks ago from too many sugared energy drinks… And then, I saw something that had half the caffeine at half the cost.

If you haven’t heard yet, Aquafina has four new fitness/flavored water types out. I had actually tried one of them a few weeks back when I tried the Peach fiber one, but last night I decided it was time to try some caffinated water. Yup, caffeine in water. And personally? I can tell you that its nothing to toot your horn at. The caffeine boost is minimal at best. The flavor from the water isn’t too bad, but there’s not much reason to get it. Well, I guess there is seeing its only $2.50 for a 6-pack. Not too bad price-wise.

Then again, seeing Starbucks is giving away some samples of their new Pikes Place roast of coffee today (Source: MSNBC.com), well, that’s enough to energize me to action… Even if that action was just to post it on HeyItsFree.net… Man, I should really write my post and plug Goob there, seeing I haven’t posted about that site or on that site in ages. I can only wait till things quiet down for me…

And with a final exam tonight? I’ll need all of the caffeine I can get…

My wife and I have taken an affinity to a new show we found called Torchwood. When the first season debuted on TV, we watched it non-stop. DVRed every episode, and watched it as soon as we could. Beautifully written British sci-fi.

And then, as the first series drew to a close, there was a Doctor Who reference… And I sort of knew that Torchwood was connected. I mean, afterall, Captain Jack Harkness was a character that had roots in Doctor Who. And then at the end of series one of Torchwood? Jack leaves with the Doctor. Oh sure, he comes back for the first episode of series two, but still…

The thing is, the more I read on Wikis and other sites, the more I get drawn in. And that’s not the half of it…

So after a brief stint of a character named Martha being over on Torchwood and her being a very likeable individual, Sarah and I got interested and decided to watch an episode of Doctor Who. We were lucky enough to catch “Blink,” and did one of those “Holy shit” double-takes on the episode. Although, according to most ratings, its one of the better episodes of the series as a whole. Even still, it was enough to make us want to watch it.

But there, sort of lies the problem. You see, we can start watching this new series from 2005, but in actuality, we’re coming in on the “end of something bigger than that.” Because of the way Doctor Who has evolved, this series is sort of only a continuation of the other 9 series/actors to play Doctor Who.

And look at me, thinking we finally got in at a good point. Even still, its a show we’ve added to our “must watch” list… And to give you an idea how indepth it is and the connections of the shows are? You can start googling one thing for the show and end up on Wikipedia, and the whole half hour plus that I’ve been writing this entry? I’ve been flipping between about 10-20 different articles. Its just that well tied in. Beautifully done.

In light of my post from yesterday about health, I’d like for this Sunday’s Share to be a fun little website that I’ve had bookmarked for a while…

WalkJogRun.net

I was directed to that site almost a year ago on one board or another when I mentioned a goal of mine was to someday run the Disney Marathon, and I’ve used it since. Its a great way to map out trails or paths to continue running to best train yourself with the roads you know and not have to take your car out and reset your odometer to check to see how far you’re going. You can tell the site how many miles an hour you’re running, your average speed you wish to maintain, everything, and it’ll tell you the length of the route you’ve chosen and how long it takes you to complete it at that speed.

And I still use it. Its shown me that I live about 1.67 miles from the center of my campus if I were to walk, my old apartment was 1.92 miles, and that if I were to jog around my apartment complex, two laps is two one-hundredths short of 1 mile.

So when I went for a jog on Friday? I know that I ran a mile. Of course yesterday was 3.25 miles, but that’s because the treadmill told me so…

9 Things to Stop Worrying About Right Now - Source: MSNBC.com

It seems that every single day there’s some new study that’s well founded that tells us what we should and shouldn’t do in regards with this or that diet or food concentration. One day its water, then eggs, then salt, then sugar, then fiber, then meat, then…

You know what? I’ve got the secret to healthy living right here:
1) Laugh
2) Smile
3) Love
4) Live

1) Laugh - Like the Readers Digest column, “Laughter, The Best Medicine,” there’s a truth to that. If you can laugh at the stupid things and see the lighter side in life? You’re starting things out on the right foot…
2) Smile - Okay, so some of us have shitty humor. If you do? I’d advice that you at least smile about things if you can’t laugh about them. A smile invites another smile, and we feel good when we see someone smile and have to smile ourselves. Contageous and healthy.
3) Love - Share yourself in any way possible with anyone possible (except for beastiality, infidelity, and incest). Love is something you never run out of. And when you do, you can always find more in what people give you in return.
4) Live - This is the most important one and what we often forget. With all of the talking heads on TV and the new secondary glowing idiot box of our computer monitor, we forget sometimes that there’s a world outside… We should be active, energetic, and come back here and then tell all of our friends the cool things we’ve done away and invite them to join us next time.

And with that, its time for me to depart and get on to the four steps so I can enjoy my own healthy living…

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About The Site


Thanks for stopping by, folks! My name is Adam J. Cohen, and I'm a guitarist/songwriter in Champaign, IL, recently relocated from Orlando, FL where I'm a UCF grad. Here, you'll find vignettes on my life, setlists from open mics and reviews, and whatever else crosses my mind. Enjoy!

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