Breakthrough

I think I might be one of the only person I know of who reads the liner notes in CDs. Sometimes it’s hard to read the small print, but nuggets of wealth can be found. It’s always interesting to see which songwriters and musicians get around to a bunch of different people. It can also be interesting to read what an artist writes on a personal note.




I was reading the liner notes in Colbie Caillat’s CD Breakthrough and I found this written inside:

Hi! These songs are about growing up, experiencing life, love, making mistakes, and learning from them. I recently learned something about myself. For a lot of us, when life gets hard to deal with & keep up with, it becomes easier to give up on & let go of. I found myself doing that a lot & I was slowly falling apart. But…I woke up from it. I realized I wasn’t happy settling for less or letting myself become someone I wasn’t supposed to be due to laziness. I had to Breakthrough my fears, my insecurities & my self doubt. There are so many battles that we all have to go through in life that are for us to learn from, we grow stronger from them. I just learned this. I want to remind myself & everyone out there that we have to Breakthrough all the little things we tell ourselves we can’t do because we are scared and just step up & do them. This record is about becoming the person you want to be, having will power & letting nothing hold you back. So try not to let great things pass you by, start making things happen that you really want in life! I hope these words help you, if you are in need of them.

Kind of a lot to read, but those are encouraging words. Sometime reminders come fro the randomest of places……

Arsenal 2- 0 Olympiacos

This was a Champions League group stage match. It was played at Arsenal’s home ground Emirates Stadium. van Persie and Arshavin scored the goals, respectively. Vito Mannine was once again the keeper. I have a feeling the young guy will be getting some good experience. Rosicky started for a good portion of the match. I will say I was surprised to see Raul Bravo on the Greek’s team. I guess I thought he was still with Real Madrid, but I guess he isn’t. It wasn’t the most exciting game of the night. Fiorentina downed Liverpool 2-0 in another CL group match. My Championship team Reading FC managed to beat Preston North End 2-1. Maybe Reading is starting to get their footing back after such a good season last season and losing Kevin Doyle to newly promoted Premiership side Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Fulham 0-1 Arsenal (A)

I was thinking about what I write about, and I feel like I’m imitating Nick Hornby. Nick Hornby, the brilliant man who wrote Fever Pitch, and several other fiction and not so fiction books. Fever Pitch is about Hornby’s obsession with Arsenal. I want you to read the book, but I will say that he relates Arsenal matches with different periods and events in his life. Kind of like how I do it.




Back to Arsenal. Fulham is a decent team. I respect them, a mid-table team who puts up a decent fight. Arsenal scored courtesy of Robin van Persie, the Dutchman who sometime has trouble making it in. Vito Mannone, a keeper I had never heard of until a match late last season, was keeper for Arsenal. Almunia and Fabianski are both out because of injury and/or illness, so Mannone got the job.He seems to do a decent job. Tomas Rosicky came on in the 69th minute for Arshavin. Hopefully Rosicky can work his way back up to starting consistently instead of coming on as a sub.



Today was a decent day. It started out sunny enough. Now it’s raining. I got three hours of outside work in today. Upon getting home, I cleaned up, did some chores, and did nothing else really productive. We went to Dickson City to do the usual weekend shopping. We ended up at Borders, and before I got there, I was considering buying something. Their music selection is now horrible. Their prices were always high, but now they don’t have hardly and CDs worth buying. And I feel they don’t have as good of a book selection now either. It’s because they’re moving things around. Picture me being confused and wandering around the store to find where they relocated the sports books section. Very disappointing.



I’ll get off my small soapbox now. I’ve got homework to consider doing, music to listen to, and sleep to catch up on.

Season Opener

I don’t really watch a lot of TV. There are a few shows I like to catch when I have the chance, but really, the only show I watch as a dedicated fan is NCIS. Tuesday was the season opener. What fun it was to dance to the theme song even they didn’t change the opening from last year. I was impressed with how the show was put together. Using Tony as a narrator, they used a lot of flashback to bring viewers up to date on the few months they were on break.




Usually with a show, I get really antsy and am always checking the time. Tuesday, I didn’t check the clock until 8:45. That’s a lot longer than I normally go for checking the clock. The next show up was NCIS:LA. I had an early day Wednesday, so I only stayed up for the opening credits. The beginning looked good and I can’t wait to learn LA’s theme song.



Next week will come quickly. And then I can find out all the drama that will continue with the return of a certain person.

Mid-Week

Arsenal had a mid-week match this week. A Carling Cup match. Le Boss (ie Wenger) usually fields a younger side to give them some experience. This match was against West Bromwich. A Championship team. One step lower than Premiership. Arsenal won 2-0. A West Brom player was sent off several minutes before the half. Arsenal had the game in the bag from there.




It’s been an average week. There have been moments of craziness and moments of calm. School has been school. The usual tests, quizzes, and actually being there. Wednesday was See You At The Pole. It was my last year for SYATP. It’s kind of sad. No more getting up ridiculously early to eat breakfast with my youth group at McDonalds. No more showing what I believe by joining others to pray in front of my flagpole. But I can show my faith other ways. It’s just an end of an era.

Baseball cards, music, and soccer.

Arsenal won yesterday. I don't really have much more on that subject than those few words. I believe a Carling Cup match is scheduled for mid-week, so I'm kind of looking forward to that.

I got a new CD yesterday as well. Colbie Caillat's new one Breakthrough. You can definitely tell that it is by Caillat. She has a distinct style that makes her stand out from other artists. It's definitely an album you should check out.

Finally, a passion that has not been discussed by me here yet. Baseball cards. I've loved them for years. Recently I downsized my collection, but I saved several hundred that are special to me. Some of those cards are the 1989 Donruss set. I'm not sure why, but I really love that set. It is my goal to one day have all of the cards in the set. I think it will take a while to get there. But eventually, I will.

Standard Liege 2-3 Arsenal (A)

This game kind of represents my life this week. Crazy. Hectic. A few glimpses of sanity. This was a Champions League group stage game. At the end of the first half, Arsenal was down 2-1. I only saw the score at that point and resigned myself to a loss. But when I got back on later, Arsenal had taken the lead. I was not too impressed with Eduardo, but he’s been a little iffy so far.

Monday night was just a little crazy. Tuesday was chaotic. A bazillion different things were happening and it was rather stressful. Wednesday was the first night of AWANA, so we had to be there early. Again, a very stressful day. Today was supposed to be even more chaotic because of future soldiers, but that got cancelled because the heavens were opening forth and pouring out its guts.

So now I just have somewhere else to go later and a boatload of homework to do. I can see it being very crazy. Tomorrow is going to be about the same.

 

But I have managed to stay alive. I will live to fight another day. Even if my shorts get put on backwards again, which happened this morning. Thankfully I caught that error before leaving the house.

Manchester City 4-2 Arsenal (A)

I am less than happy about the result of this game. We should have beaten Mancity easily. Adebayor scored. Again. I guess this time the 4-2-3-1 couldn’t beat the 4-4-2. Manuel Almunia scored the first goal. I don’t think that when a ball deflects off of a keeper, it should count as an own goal.

Sad as this result is, there is happy news. Tomas Rosicky played Premier League Football for the first time in 20 months. 20 months being injured and recovering. That has to be hard.

But anyways, Rosicky came on as a sub in the 54th minute as a sub for Denilson. And he scored a goal in the 88th minute. Talk about making an impact.

I am so happy that TR7 is back. I think he will make a positive impact on the Arsenal squad.

A Big Red Locker

At my school, seniors get the nice, big, red lockers.I waited for three years for one of those lockers. Now that I have one, it doesn't seem as big as it did before. In fact, I think I would rather have a small cruddy locker. I know how those work and I find it easier to organize my stuff in a little locker. Maybe i just need some time to get used to a new format and be thankful that I'm a senior.

A Holiday (of sorts) Weekend

There are two reasons why I like holiday weekends. For some holidays, there are more reasons, but these are incredibly general.

1. Radio stations play more music. All the good DJs are on vacation. All the newbies aren’t very good at talking yet. And people would rather listen to music when they are just relaxing.

2. Radio stations play older songs. You know, the ones that people forgot about. There’s nothing better than cranking up a classic. Unless you didn’t like it in the first place.

 

Let’s go back to the summer of………………………. whenever that song came out.

I Think I’ve Lost Mobility In My Left Hand

I just spent 2.5 hours doing summer school work. That much writing makes your hand do funny things.

The Euro assignment is so much easier than the calc because it’s only 2 chapters of outlining and a reading a book. I read the book earlier in the summer and have one chapter left to outline.

Calc is kind of a different story. The assignment is to take notes on the first chapter and do the assigned problems. It doesn’t help that I’m having a bit of trouble remembering the material and the trouble spots I had in pre-calc are coming back to haunt. I take that back. Some of the trouble spots are from Algebra 2. Thank goodness the back of the book has some answers and I can use them to figure out how a problem works.
I didn’t mean to procrastinate on this stuff. I’m known for procrastinating, but I’ve been working on starting things earlier. There is exactly one week until I have to walk back into my school. I think I can get all of this stuff done.

On a different note, I read a story about firemen having to come to Cesc Fabregas’s place. Neighbors called because there was smoke coming out of the place. It turns out that Captain Fabulous burnt his dinner. Bad. But the story made me laugh just as much as the one about the footballer who called the cops because he thought burglars had stolen stuff from his place. It turns out nothing was missing; it was just so messy he couldn’t find stuff.

I think I’ll be done for now. All that work makes a person hungry.