Archive for the ‘Hometown’ Category

Waiting for college

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

I’m so anxious to leave for college. It’s 12:45am and OFFICIALLY, I have 11 more days. :D 10 if you don’t count the day I move in. I’m almost in the single digits, bay-bay!

I’ve got most of my dorm shopping done. I have little things like pads, ibuprofen, surge protector, etc. My family has a bunch of surge protectors but heres the story. The garage of the house we live in was never a garage. It was converted into a room. It was supposed to be a three car garage. Two cars of it is a giant living room, the second car is split up into two rooms of equal size. All that space is mine (yesssss!). The two smaller rooms are my bedroom and closet.

The thing is… there is officially ONE outlet in my room. So we bought one of those thingies that makes six plugs out of one. Then I’ve got one short extension cord with 3 plugs coming out of that. Then I’ve got a surge protector coming out of that. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then one more JUST for the organ in my room. So that’s 5 plus the extension cord. It’s kind of insane. I can’t unplug any of them because everything electric in my room is needed. I’m going to list all the stuff connected to these surge protectors so skip the next paragraph if you really don’t feel like reading.

The first one has my fish tank, my tv, my dvd players (one of them I use for the VHS feature. I lost the remote to it so I use the other DVD player. Along with surge protectors, our family has a bajillion DVD players too.) I see a couple of other things plugged into it but I have no idea what they are. The next surge protector has all my game systems connected to it, plus my iPulse. Then my next surge protector has my Clavinova and a lamp connected to it and the next one has my organ attached to it. Damn.

Hm. So 345 words later, I’m getting to the point of my post. I’ve got all my dorm shopping done and now I just have to pack. I know if I pack now, I will be living on practically nothing for 10 days. But I’m so flippin’ excited to go through all my stuff to take with me. I have no idea what personals to take. I’m going to take my favorite books, maybe a couple of DVDs, a couple of board games… I don’t really know what else. To be honest, I think I could fit all my stuff into my closet and like, 3 under-the-bed storage containers. I don’t know why everyone is freaking out about dorm space. I feel like I’m missing out on something BIG that I’m supposed to take with me… What else should I take?

Oh, I intend on taking my flute with me. I want to get better at it so I’m proficient at a wind instrument. Then my options for ensembles definitely grow. Concert bands/orchestras/whatevers usually need only a small number of percussionists. You can’t have too many people standing around back there. So now I have my flute. I’m also going to take my violin and hopefully get some student to teach me how to play. I need to be somewhat proficient at the violin to take lessons from instructors at the university.

What else should I take that’s personal… Freaking, I have no idea. Of course I’m going to take picture frames… what all is everyone taking that they need SO much space for?!

Edit: By the way! I rushed out, an hour before they closed, to a Borders in a city 30 minutes away just so I could buy one of my $16 memoirs for my english class. My coupon expired tonight. Saved $6 with my 40% coupon. I rushed to the Borders near my house and I got there 8 minutes before they closed. I couldn’t find the last memoir that I needed even with their help. Apparently they had four copies and we looked in two different sections. Oh well. I had two 40% coupons (from two different accounts, mine and my mom’s) and I wanted to use her coupon. The book is $9 so I suppose I can just buy it retail whenever I can.

Editedit: I just got a 30% coupon in my email 14 minutes ago. Damn, son. These people are seriously lean-mean coupon sending machines! It’s like freaking JCPenney. There’s ALWAYS a sale!

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Ordinary days

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

I was going to post yesterday but decided to hold it all in for today.

I honestly have NO idea what I did yesterday… I remember the latter part of my day. Oh! Oh!! I remember now.

For one of my classes, I need to buy 4 books (memoirs). One of them I already bought, read, and am beginning an essay on it. The other three I don’t have to read yet but will need them for class. Well I get a butt-load of coupons from Borders (because I’m a part of their rewards program) and I never use them (because I have no money because UA decided to hardly give anyone shifts (I haven’t worked in 2 and a half weeks (But legally I’m still an employee so… FREE MOVIES!!))) so they go to waste.

So I had an absolutely briiiillliiiaant idea. Okay. It’s actually not that brilliant or ground-breaking… but I decided to buy my books with my coupons. Haha. Okay fine, I’m more excited than I should be but I’m saving a ton of money. I dug through my email and all but one of the coupons had expired. That one was due to expire last night. So yesterday I ran off to the bookstore and saved $5 with one of my books. I got another coupon (40% this time. Lasttime it was 30%) and I intend on running to the bookstore again and getting the second book. Seriously though, these savings will add up.

I’ve already done all my dorm shopping and I think I’ve saved a lottt of money so far. For everything that didn’t need to be cute or stylish (medicine, toothbrush, household items), I bought at Walmart. My friend Jasmine thinks Walmart is the devil. Random fact. Anyway, I saved a bunch there. Then my mom made me a duvet cover out of two flat sheets (Okay, the story of how I came across my comforter is one insane story and I shall tell it some other time.) I’m taking a few things from home, like storage containers and tools (I’m taking tools JUST IN CASE! I don’t want to find myself needing a screwdriver and thinking, “I -knew- I should have brought that!)

Alright this isn’t very exciting so I’ll blow through my day today.

I woke up, showered, ate breakfast then went to donate blood but they were overbooked and said “try again later” and I was like “yeahhh nope” because the blood drive was at a college nearby and most of the people there were students who were in the middle of classes so I didn’t think I’d have a chance. I might go another day though. Then I went to check my schedule at work. This is my last week I am legally an employee and the third week they didn’t give me a shift. It’s not that I’m a bad employee. Nobody is getting shifts. It’s really crazy.

I played Halo 3. Kicked ass and also got my ass kicked.

Aaaaand now I’m here.

Aaaaand now I’m gone!

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First post!

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Well. Allegro Vivo is back. I know I said that at least twice the past few years but this time I’m serious. As you can see, (if you used to be a lurker around these parts (haha I like how cool I think I am)) a lot of pages have been either deleted or rewritten. AV has gone down to the bare minimum and I will work to add more to the website. To be honest, I’m only really interested in the blog portion of my website but we’ll see where life takes me.

Let me briefly introduce myself. I am Tara. I live in California and am going to attend a UC (University of California. There are 9 campuses). I don’t plan on mentioning exactly which one I’m attending for privacy reasons. However, I think it will become quite obvious which one I go to after a few months. Oh well. I still won’t explicitly mention which one for privacy reasons. I understand this is a public blog. I just don’t want people typing in UC***** in Google and finding me. Oh whatever.

I’m leaving for college in 17 days (I’m not counting or anything!). I’m incredibly excited and cannot stop thinking about my new life. It’s not that I dislike my life in my current hometown (which is three hours away from school). I have quite a nice life, in a nice area, with a nice social and musical life. I’m just ready for a change and a huge jump in independence. I’m mostly super excited for the experience of being in college, living in the dorms, just being in a new environment, etc. I plan on studying Psychology. Psychology is just absolutely fascniating to me so I’m also excited to be focusing on that. For 12 years, all I (and everyone else in the class of 2009) have been studying is general education. Now is the time to plop down thousands of dollars to study exactly what -I- want to and something that will -greatly- impact the rest of my life. (Disclaimer: I totally understand that english, history, mathematics, etc also greatly impacted my life. I hope you all understand what I mean with college education though. (Should I have capitalized “english” “history” or “math”? I don’t think so but for some reason I’m questioning myself…))

This is a really long first post. It’s an introduction post really. Oh! I forgot to mention -why- I brought AV back.

I’m leaving home and a lot of close friends and family in the next few weeks. I may or may not have time to regularly contact them. I decided that I was going to update my Twitter a lot more with updates and pictures so my family and friends could get a glimpse of my new life. Then I decided I should blog to make it a more personal experience. I could say “I just got back from board game night!” or I could write a few paragraphs about how exactly my night went. I plan on littering my posts with pictures and videos (from my YouTube account) once I get settled in.

Well. Here we go!

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