Christmas Lullaby

Hello from beneath the rays of sunny florida. I am currently sitting in my room with my cousin Jordan and I decided to post since it's been a few days. Let me recap some of the past week for all ya'lls. So, the flight to FLA was quite nice. Nothing too bad, easy window seat, and a couple that only spoke spanish next to me wasn't the worst combination. Beside the fact that they fell asleep and endlessly drooled on each other, it was all good. I got my luggage ok and was happy to be arriving in Florida, and not in snowy and cold Chicago. I hung out with my grandparents for a whole 24 hours and it was lovely. We went to dinner at this really "hip" restaurant that is owned by the same people who run my favorite place in Florida. The next day my mom, dad, and brother arrived and the fun began. Since than we've been sitting in the sun and just hanging out, not to mention sleeping in and staying up late.Why you ask? Because this kid is new Netflix subscriber and has become addicted the Showtime sensation, Weeds. I have already finished 2 seasons in a matter of 48 hours and I cannot stop. I love the fact that the show is classified as a dramady, which is exactly what it is. There are moments that I laugh quite hard, and moments where I am literally sitting on my bed with my mouth wide open. It keeps me on edge the entire time, I am, like I said, addicted. Speaking of dramatic media, my first night here I had the privilege of seeing "The Black Swan" with my grandparents, not something I would recommend. The movie itself was fantastic and Natalie Portman was stunning. I sincerely hope she wins the oscar, or at least something. That's the kind of role that can mess someone up in their head, and she really was acting out of her mind, like crazy amazing. Speaking of ACTING, I recently started reading a book for my acting class, "The Actor and The Target". I really didn't know what to expect but I have to say, though I am only 3 chapters in, it's incredible. I'm already learning a lot from it! If you're into deep stuff about acting, give it a good read. That means you Rachel Rubenstein. Other than that, there hasn't been much going on. Today my aunt, uncle and cousins arrived, and the party REALLY got started. Tonight we got dinner at a restaurant named LoLa, and it was mighty delicious. There was, of course, no lack of laughs as it always is when our whole family is together. It was a lot of fun and it made me sit back and appreciate my family on this Christmas Eve. LoLa stands for Laugh often, Love A Lot and I guess this will be the deep part of my blog for the night. I decided, after taking a picture of the sign, and thinking about it I sort of decided I need to do both a lot more. I think that at school I have been taking things a little too seriously, and maybe in life in general too. I need to start laughing stuff off, and today I had the chance to grab a bit with an old camp friend and it reminded me how good laughing feels. There are so many memories from camp that make me laugh harder than anything else, and I realized that I need more of that in the rest of my life. So from now on, I'm gonna laugh...more. In terms of Love A Lot, I'm gonna start by showing my love for the people around me more. Sometimes I guess I take things for granted, like people, and I don't tell people how much they mean to me enough. So, that's my "preach" for the day. Give it thought, do you laugh and love enough? Anyway, I hope that this finds you well and that your new year is wonderful and bright. And of course, have a merry Christmas. 

(I have been dying to end my blog like this since I started)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

-Matt

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It Won't Be Long Now

As I'm sure you have discovered, I am blogging from a new website and a new address! Tumblr has been absolutely wonderful to me, but I felt that it was time to move on from that "artsy" stuff and actually start a blog. I was really inspired by some of my friends here and if you want, their websites are listed in my blog description on the right hand side.

So much has happened since I lasted blogged, as always, and so I'll do my best to get where I'm at right now. Starting with last weekend, we knew that all of us here were in the final stretch. There weren't too many finals this week, but enough to have to work. Let me just list for you what I took in the past 6 days: Lib Arts, Music Theory, Tap, Sight Reading, Musical Theatre, Acting, Movement/Anatomy, and Voice and Speech. As stupid as this all sounds, it wasn't all glitter and rainbows. There was plenty of work to be done, and besides that I was working hard on putting this together and putting together something that I'll show you later. While all this was happening I had the privilege of doing plenty of fun stuff this week too.

First I had the opportunity to see the Boston Pops Holiday concert...for free! It was an incredible night and it was a lot of fun. I had never been to symphony hall before, and I was awestruck by the beauty of the building.

Later on in the week I headed over to Mass. General and got my vocal chords scoped. I realize the picture is a little bit gross, but that is what my vocal chords look like! Nice and healthy might I add. After my last final I hopped on a train to Macy's with my friend Sarah who needed to do some holiday shoe shopping. We then proceeded to Urban Outfitters where I bought some very nice stuff with some gift cards I received for Chanukah.That night I had dinner with my core at P.F. Changs and we all got dolled up, which in the end paid off because we were all able to order wine which might I add was quite delicious. To end my semester in Boston, I went with some BoCo friends to the Boston Gay Men's Chorus Holiday concert that one of my teachers was a part of. It was an amazing and "fabulous" way to end my semesterand now I'm here at the airport waiting to hop a flight to Miami.

All semester I have been working on a project that I have been determined to do since before school started. This week I realized I had filmed over 10 hours of HD footage on my iPhone and, as planned, put it together to create "The Faces of Freshman Year - Part One: First Semester." It was definitely not an easy task, but it was so much fun to do. The final product is on my Facebook, and I'll post it here as well. I realize you might not understand all the jokes, or know any of the kids, but it gives you a good glimpse as to how amazing our first semester really was. I'll embed the video at the end of this post. I'll be in Florida for a week, starting today and I'll be sure to post at least once while I'm there. For now I'll leave you with the video and wish everybody safe travels this holiday season. Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you soon! P.S. You can actually subscribe to this blog whether you're a blogger or not and I've included two little buttons on the right hand side that can help you share my blog on twitter or facebook!

-Matt

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