The Final Frontier

So classes start a week from today. I'm still waiting for a book to arrive which is, oddly, taking forever to get here. I think I have everything else though, which is good. I only just realized that my online English class is an accelerated course which doesn't start till October 25th so that'll put even more pressure on me to do the work. Oh well!

I've also been looking at flights and my options to get to Frankfurt. Unfortunately only United and Lufthansa fly non-stop from Washington so that limits my options if I don't want to stop somewhere. I'd gladly fly Lufthansa longhaul but I don't like their 3-3-3 seating on the 747s and they don't have personal TVs either. I'm really excited about the option to fly British Airways via London but we'll see if my dad goes for that. Other than that I can fly American via Dallas but they don't have a Premium Economy section like BA or United have..but their Business is cheap (bout $900) compared to United or BA so maybe I can do that. We'll see as it's still not set in stone that I'll fly there.

Aside from that, Amazon finally shipped me the new Iron Maiden album which I received yesterday and have been loving ever since. On first play I love "Satellite 15...The Final Frontier," "El Dorado" (both of which were released before the album came out), "Mother of Mercy" and "When the Wild Wind Blows" but I'm loving the other ones more and more as I keep listening. Overall it's a fantastic album and am amazed they can still put out such quality work in a time where most other music sucks. Bruce sounds fantastic as always and there are a lot of songs that really showcase his vocals, and the rest of the musicianship is evident throughout the album ranging from intricate to heavy-hitting riffs. I'm going to have to change the picture on the right side but I have no clue how to go about doing that so I'll wait till my girlfriend does it for me haha. Speaking of which, if you're into Japanese fashion at all (lolita, gyaru and stuff, I wouldn't know the beginning of it all but so it goes) or want to read stuff in German about general life in Germany for the hell of it here's the link to her blog: http://marie-antoinettes-soliloquy.blogspot.com/ ,

Idleness

So I'm still spending my days doing absolutely nothing, which is fine with me seeing as this coming semester is sure to be a tough one. I already know one of my professors gives a ton of small work to do every week paired along with a lot of reading, and I'm sure my online English class is going to be nothing but writing so that'll be tough. My only question mark will be the Medieval History professor who I've never taken anything with but his ratemyprofessor.com profile has excellent marks so here's hoping...

I've also got to get back into working out and eating healthy. I've been under constant stress over the past year and a half or so and I've allowed my health and well-being to take a backseat to everything else. I need to spend less money on going out and spend more time watching what I eat. Plus I need to add more time exercising other than the 2 days I go to the gym a week now.  Have to find that motivation, which is something I've never, ever been good at, but it helps that I might be going back to Germany in the winter and I'd like to meet my girlfriend's family in decent shape...can't go around being a walking stereotype of the fat, lazy American...haha. I've been thinking about trying to go Vegetarian for while to see how it goes, which will be tough being the avid meat eater that I am but it's a healthy way to go and my girlfriend is a Vegetarian so I might as well get used to it though I won't allow her to take meat away from me forever! Mmm steak.

But I digress. I've still got time before class to get my things in order and be ready for the semester. Here's to a strong start!

Position and hold...

So the last few days since my last post have been uneventful. On Sunday I had to drop off my dad at the airport and after I went to the park across from main runway and watched planes land for almost 2.5 hours. I also brought my scanner along with me so I followed along with the Tower and checked Flight Aware on my phone to see where planes were going to or coming from. If nobody forced me to leave, I could stay forever. No problem. Being a domestic airport (other than a few Canada bound flights), the highlights for me are the 757s and the 737-800s that come in as they are the largest commercial airliners that the airport services. I need to go back on a clear sunny day with my camera so I can take better video. And now you've learned about my whole airplane enthusiast hobby :D.

Aside from that, I still have a couple of weeks before class but I'd like to get myself back in the right mindset. For a while now I've been meaning to start reading more as I really don't read much and being that I'm a history major, I'll have to start. When I was a young child I would read everything and anything but with the start of middle school that all ended. Anyway, I bought most of the books I'll need for this semester and I've already begun to read one of them. I don't want to unwrap the main textbook until I know it's the right one otherwise I'd drive into that.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog! No idea how or why you stumbled across here but I do hope you enjoy your stay. I'm really a first time blogger and I can't say I've read too many so all this is mostly new to me. I don't really know how one starts one of these bad boys or whether people post a mission statement for their first post, so to speak. I can't say I have a theme or a general direction that I want to take this but will say that I decided to start a blog as a way to stimulate some parts of my brain that I feel have deteriorated over time due to general stagnation on my part. I don't want to use this as a way to preach or anything but want to share my general ideas, thoughts or whatever randomness comes to my head. In short, you'll probably see everything from intellectual ideas, to day to day general life things, to the most absurd things I can probably think of.

I will add a couple of things to the above. You won't see me post about politics or my thoughts on certain popular political topics as I do think it can be divisive. I'm all up for having an intelligent and respectful discussion on political themes but I don't want this blog to become that so I will try to stay away from it. James Madison had a great quote which I think summarizes my thoughts on the subject: "A zeal for different opinions..divided mankind into parties...and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good." Okay, that's all the political stuff you'll get out of me.

Also, I'm a history major at the moment so don't be surprised to find my random babblings on whatever historical topic I might be studying at the time. I love history and I'm always looking to learn and get opinions from other people as it fascinates me how they see the same events in different lights as others.

Anyway, I hope some of you stick around and if you don't, have a pleasant day on this series of tubes known as the internet.