My least favorite day of the year is approaching, and I'm not happy about it.  It will be quickly followed by another day that I'm not really certain what to do with.  I don't like this time of year.

I have a new phone.  But it's not hooked up to my phone number yet.  Why do I need a phone?  It's simple, really.  My old one died.  Attempts to resuscitate it have thus far proved futile.  And now I have to add all 300+ contacts back into my phone.  Problem is, at least 2 of those numbers have changed since I last backed up my contact list.  I'll try to track those numbers down, but I don't plan on making a blanket request for numbers.  People who need to get in touch with me usually manage, and if I don't recognize the number, I still pick up most of the time.

The rest of the Disney trip was fun, even though I was sick for the second half.  It was fun to sit in their sound booth during the show.  But I was also bored, cause all I did was watch.  And because there were less solos than normal, and they stepped up to the mic for the solo, so you had to do less to get ready for a solo.  But if you've ever heard commercials, you'll understand why that song made the Disney tech's days.  They even asked for the pepto bismal commercial before it showed up, and I was happy to make their day.

I’ve had a good couple of days in Florida so far.  The first day was spent in a couple of parks,
totaling 15 hours.  Then I slept in until
noon and only spent 10 hours in one park. 
It’s interesting to watch this group operate when we’re not working on a
show.  Nobody really wants to split up.  Getting 20 people a spot on a ride isn’t very
easy.  Bathroom and food breaks are much
harder as well.  Keeping people together
becomes a bigger hassle, both from size and from the fact that different people
get distracted at different things. 
Today was better since I slept in. 
A couple of people came by to wake us up, and we just stuck together for
the rest of the day.  We ended up not
using and fastpasses today because we mostly went to shows, and we waited for
lines to shorten up.

The infrastructure here is amazing.  People to clear the streets before the
parades, speaker zones to keep the music appropriate for the float going by at
the time, etc.  Today we went to an
Indiana Jones stunt thing.  They had
three complete sets.  When they were done
with one set, they just towed it away in 3 sections with tractors.  The second and third sections both had flame
and explosion effects.

And of course, don’t think that I won’t be mentioning the
tech stuff.  The sound boards are rather
amazing to see in real life, even though I have been dreaming about them for
ages.  Seeing all the lights and speaker
clusters is also a great treat.  I’ve
seen the theater where we’ll perform once, and it looks alright.  It’s got a great sightline out to the
surrounding area, so we should be able to draw people in more easily than if it
was secluded.

In airport in Orlando.  Being sick during vacation sucks.  But the show went well.  I hope you had a great week.

I'm sitting in an airport in Kansas City surrounded by a bunch of singers.  I actually breezed through security, which was surprising enough.  I feel a bit like an addict, though.  I've been checking my email just about any chance I get.

And we had a few moments of panic, wondering if my bag was overweight and such.  But the worst was when we realized that we were leaving from MCI.  Which actually is the same airport as Kansas City International, but I expected it to be called KCI.  And MCI is kinda similar to Mid-Continent Airport, which is in Wichita.  Last night, that would be no problem.  This morning, that would have been a big problem.

Luckily, all is well.  I will soon be sweating in Florida and Disney World.  Fun, fun, fun.  Have a great spring break.

It was a beautiful day today.  I didn't spend much time outside, but it was still beautiful.  I watched a show with the K-State Singers at the local high school, followed by an excellent performance by their show choir.  Then we went back to campus for rehearsal, which mainly consisted of talking about the upcoming trip and re-recording the bass guitar.

I dropped by the IT department for the college paper, where they were attempting to fix a brand new scanner.  Brand new as in they had just taken it out of the box and then found that it was broken.  They were on the tech support site in an instant message help session.  One of the instructions they received was to shake the scanner to free the  scanning head.  We laughed about that for a few minutes, especially since it didn't work.  I don't know if they ever managed to fix it.

The general election results came in last Wednesday evening, and today marks my return to Xanga, because I spent the past couple of days resting up.  On election day my roommate had to remind me to get food not because I was so focussed on what was going on, but because I forgot what I had stood up for.  The final results were:

I've got to admit that I'm not disappointed that we lost.  We did give Lydia quite a run for her money, considering that she spent a whole lot more than we did ($4000 to our $70).  We didn't get more people to vote, however, as the  voter turnout was the least since 2003.  And my sleep schedule is very glad that I'm done with the elections process.

Now I'm working to get ready for spring break, during which I will be accompanying the K-State Singers to Disneyland for their 24:49 performance.  I know how long it is because I've been working on recording it for the past week.  The singers are an amazing group, but listening to the same 20 seconds of a song several times in a row is not something to be contemplated with good feelings.  Luckily, I think I'm all done with that.  Now I just have to get ready for me to actually travel and all that mess.

The Pirate Campaign made it past the primary elections along with the Peale/Swift campaign.  Now it will be Pirates vs. Peale or Pirates vs. Politicians during the general election.  We're ramping up our campaign in a major way over the next few days.  If you want to follow along, check out the blog at http://votepirate2008.blogspot.com.

Running for public office, even if it is just a student government position, is exhausting.  Especially when I still have classes, work, homework, sleep, and choir to deal with.  I'm lazy enough that I just copy blog entries from the official blog onto the Facebook group instead of coming up with original content.  Also I have to help figure stuff out for our next video.  Our first video was quite a hit, though.

During the debate, I watched the other presidential candidates in the back when I said stuff, and it was awesome to watch them double over in laughter.  It made the lack of sleep completely worth the headaches.

I'm taking time away from Xanga for the next week or so to work on my campaign for student body Vice President.  Here are some links to our campaign efforts:

Our campaign blog

Our Facebook group

If you have a Digg account, we'd appreciate it if you'd digg the article about us.
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Pirates_vs_Ninja

Yes, I'm going to talk about the elections.  And no, you're not going to be disgusted.  You see, I'm running for vice president.  Now doesn't that make it much more interesting?  My running mate, Captain Redbeard Schurr, is a fine electrical engineering student much like myself.  In fact, he used to work with the K-State Singers before I did.

We'll be running for pirates everywhere.  Among our goals we want to turn the Natatorium into a naval academy.  The ice rink should be melted and used of auxiliary training for shallow-water operations.  Cannons will be used to signal the hours, as well as the beginnings and ends of classes.  We also wish to abolish roundabouts, as turning a ship in such a manner is extremely difficult.

And here you thought I was going to talk about the race for President of the United States.  But I'm telling you, this race is going to completely overshadow that one.