The Catsup Post

Catsup, of course, being pronounced "catch-up".

Cruise Chronicles 4 marked the start of a vast downward spiral for my work ethic last March, a spiral that ended in a 1.7 semester GPA and some drastic changes to my studies.

Before you get out of shape - because, obviously, my school career is of utmost importance to you - I'm still here at Samford, and I hit Dean's List last semester.

However, 2011 was a heck of a year for so many reasons.  First and foremost, I will have been dating the girl of my dreams for eleven months come the sixth of this month.  Herein, you may be able to begin speculating what caused my half-semester-long absence from my schooling.

I was enraptured, entranced, absolutely crazy out of my mind trying to put words and meaning to the fact that I was, indeed, in love.  From about the first of March until the end of spring break, I could not put a million words, let alone two or three, to what I was feeling.  I think, deep down, I knew, but it took a lot of coercing - mostly from Amy - for me to come to terms with the fact that I had a huge, major crush on the girl that once sat in front of me in CP class.

Well, it was an interesting April.  We began trying to work out our relationship; on April 6 we became Facebook official.  Just like any young relationship, there was a lot of growing and adjusting early on.  My adjusting included putting school on the back burner.

Exams came and went, and we had to say good-bye for the summer.  Amy was off to Costa Rica for a seven-week research project, while I returned home and began to look for a job.

After three days of hard-core searching near the end of  May, I found myself that job.  I was offered a job at the Exxon Tigermarket convenience store practically the moment I walked in.  What followed was two and a half months of gas, hot dogs, and cigarettes (only consuming the first two, but selling all three) and a steady income.

In midst of all the work, I had little time for fun.  I think I was able to get to a couple of different pool parties in Hendersonville over the summer, and I did take an overnighter to Alabama to visit Amy and watch the premiere of the final Harry Potter movie.  Five hours of driving, three hours of sleep (maybe) and another long drive home ended in a seven-hour work shift in which I did my job probably only half as well as I should have.  I survived, though, and life went on.

Sometime during the summer, I made the decision that in order to get through my schoolwork and do so successfully, the Facebook had to go.  And go it did.  With the exception of Fall Break and Thanksgiving (and maybe once to check it hadn't completely been erased), I was completely Facebook-less last semester.  The results showed; as I mentioned, my 3.54 GPA last semester was good enough for Dean's List and raised my cumulative GPA to 3.0.

And thus the Semester of Hard Work and No Social Life began.  Okay, I over-dramatize, but it seems like I had no social life sometimes.  The countless study dates with Amy kept time rolling and before we knew it we had been dating for five, six, seven months.  I had a great class load.  Even the boring gen-ed classes were entertaining enough.  I wrote one, sometimes two stories a week for the Samford Crimson (see my constantly growing portfolio here).  My primary concerns were for myself and my girlfriend, and it hurts me to say I became distant from a lot of other people that were once important to me.  We'll get to that in a while, but let's get the six-week interim between semesters.

I was not able to retain my Tigermarket job for the winter break, so I generally sat around the house throughout January.  I did have an incredibly epic trip the week after Christmas.  I went with three other members and two adult leaders of my scout troop, as well as two scouts and an adult from South Dakota, to Florida Sea Base in the Keys.  For a week, we lived on island time, with our only clocks being the sun and tides.  It was a really relaxing and fun week, certainly a lifetime experience that I will never forget.

Shortly after this, the monstrosity known as Step Sing took over my life.  I arranged the music for Gamma Sigma Sigma and AAA's show "User Friendly", based on the premise of the movie Tron: Legacy.

It's a love-hate relationship, me and Step Sing.  At times I want nothing to do with it, at other times I am beyond thankful for the opportunity I had.  Near the end, most of the hate was directed at procedure and contest results with which I strongly disagreed.  All in all, the love aspect came out on top.

After Step Sing, the theme of my life quickly became Reconnect.  For the past three weeks, I've been trying to resurrect my social life.  The best part of it all is that I'm balancing work with that now.  I've still got a lot of night-before-they're-due assignments, but I crack down on studying when I need to and hang out when I don't.  I've been getting into routines, too.  I clean the room every Friday, go to class during the week and do a combination of working, hanging out, eating and sleeping the rest of the time.  It's worked so far this semester.

Tomorrow, I head for the mountains of North Carolina to support the Samford basketball teams as they seek to dominate the Southern Conference.  Not having much schoolwork, you might be able to expect a post or two with details.  If not, I'll be back blogging tomorrow, next week, next month or, you know, whenever.

Oh yeah, that's one more thing.  I'm restructuring CUBS.  And by restructuring, I mean taking away all structure and just doing what I do: write.  Whenever I have time and/or feel motivated, I'll write on this blog.  And it's probably a safe bet to say I won't write this much in a post very often.

Lastly, scientists reported today that the sky is green, roses are blue and violets are, in fact, polka-dot.

Just checking to see if you were still reading.

-Clayton

it's been a while...

happy march everyone! there's some stuff I want to talk about today...mainly sports, but hopefully some more important stuff too...

firstly, congratulations, william hayes, you're the titans' new starting defensive tackle! i think he'll do fine filling the hole left by albert haynesworth, who i'm still having trouble seeing in a redskins uni. cutlers mad at the broncos for trying to trade him for cassel, who the pats franchised away to the chiefs. speaking of franchised, the titans are still waiting to sign bo scaife, but as we all know by now, "wait" is mike riendfelt's favorite word during free agency.



in my top five list, we've resigned collins but lost haynesworth and brandon jones. we have not got anyone from anywhere else. so we're just losing players. what is mike riendfelts problem!?!?!?



so anyway, what else was i gonna talk about?



my life is pretty crazy right now...school, church, scouts, you know, the normal times about four. i actually have homework now, and i'm getting more piled on every night. it's not really good, especially since i enjoy putting stuff off as long as i can. latin and precalc are the big ones. hopefully i'll get it all taken care of soon.

just finished the latin outline...waiting for the printer to work...and for itunes genius to update...

so i should talk about all the stuff going on at church...everyone's getting excited about safe sanctuaries...well...mostly everyone. drive group's dwindling at best and once the policy's in place we will be in jeopardy of not existing at all. choir's getting to be easier than it's been in a while because we're just singing songs from five and six years ago which i already know for the most part, and because i'm getting alot better at reading, that helps too.

speaking of reading, i'm doing the pit orchestra for hello dolly @ jpII. the music is really easy, once i figured out, "hey, i'm playing in like six songs. and they're all in C# so i'm basically playing everything sharp. wow this is lame. but fun!" i did all county last weekend (was it really just last weekend?) and i'm ready for more extracurricular sax!

i alluded to something i did recently in the last paragraph, and practically alluded to another. the first would be all county the second (though not chronilogically) is bye bye birdie.

all county was extremely fun. there was alot of inside jokes that me christopher and brionna allude to twice or three times daily during band class. andrea also went, but she skipped out of band this semester to take accounting. swagger was a big inside joke, and so was the first chair tuba/downbeat/etc. oh and justin.

secondly, christopher and dad were in bye bye birdie last month and i was at six of the thirteen showings of it, i think most of any non-cast member, musician or director, other than mother. it was a really good show everyone who missed it missed a good one.

i don't think i've had a post yet this year...i lost my job and dad is officially unemployed as of last night so the economy's hitting us hard.

other than that, life's pretty much the same...

well consider this blog over.

later,

-cth

Turkey Day Blog

well...thanksgiving's going well...titans absolutely destroyed detroit, but i lost the family backyard football (in the front yard) game. what can i say, my brother's just more athletic than me...oh well

everything's going great


not much more to say

happy thanksgiving everyone!