Collin Ruud

Hey all,

Just another update. Not much going on as far as work, got moved to a different residence hall, but that happens.

I did, however, get MARRIED! Krista RUUD and I are now living in an apartment at a residence hall, enjoying life, she's currently teaching, and things are great.

Our new address:

Krista and Collin Ruud
5030 Cherry St.
Kansas City, MO 64110

Send us a letter if you like!

Collin

Yes, it is true. The rumors are true. I am alive.

I've found doing LJ, or blogging, as it were, to be just too time-consuming to do regularly. I have virtually no audience anyways, and my views are not nearly important enough on any topics to have to share them with the world. If I kept up on current events, maybe I would have something to say. But until something is happening that really catches my attention, I doubt I will comment on anything. I'm a pretty laid back sorta person when it comes to politics. I figure why don't we just find out how something works or doesn't work and then try to change it. Works for me most of the time. Maybe I will have to download a blogging program so I can update a little more often.

I don't know. Do y'all think I should?

Just an update, too, as many people I know may be reading this may have no idea what I'm doing right now.

I am currently doing postgraduate work at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. I came here for the Conservatory education, and because I was offered a great deal being an Assistant Resident Manager for a new Residence Hall here. Well, turns out I enjoy the job more than the schooling, and have decided with 99.9% probability to go into Higher Education Administration. That's right, Collin Ruud, president of a University some day. I think that would be fun. I have a friendly personality, I love to help college students adjust, and I'm really interested in researching the First Year Experience. How fun. Yeah, I know you probably think that sounds so amazingly fun that you're jealous. Well get over it.

My e-mail address is cmrwc3 -at- umkc -dot- edu (no use giving out that email addy to all the computers looking for people to spam). I welcome email.

I'M GETTING MARRIED JULY 16. That's right. My fiancée's name is Krista Chernausky. We have a lot in common, we enjoy watching the History Channel, watching movies, mini golfing, you know, all the important stuff. She finished getting her degree in Secondary Education. Krista's gonna be a History and Geography teacher! And, for some strange reason, she wants to teach at Jr. High. Oh well, I could never pull it off, but the world needs more people dedicated to teaching Jr. High :). We're going to go on a honeymoon right after the wedding for a week, and she has NO idea where we're going. This has been the only secret I've been able to keep from her. Part of that is because she has good ways of finding out secrets, and part of it is that I get so excited that I have a secret that I usually give it away early. Well NOT THIS TIME! :)

My most current address is:
Collin Ruud
5051 Oak St.
Kansas City, MO 64110

That address is subject to change in the VERY near future. Please feel free to email, write, whatever. I still keep on my AOL Instant Messenger. My new name is UMKCcomposer. I guess that may change if I don't compose nearly as much.

That's my story. Not much else to it. I live on my own in Kansas City, I don't have many close friends about, and I'm getting married to my best friend. I think that's a pretty good life :)

OH! And I wrote a song! It's for the wedding. You will have to wait until afterwards to have a recording, because NO WAY am I going to let you hear the recording of ME singing it!

That's it.

Collin

You Are a Liberal Republican

When you tell people that you're Republican, they rarely believe you. That's because you're socially liberal - likely pro-choice and pro-gay rights. You're also not so afraid of big goverment, as long as it benefits people and not politicians. You are the most likely of any Republican type to swing over to the Democrat side sometimes.

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[x] Part 1 -- The Basics [x]
What's your name? :::	Collin
Birthplace :::	Rochester Minnesota
Age :::	22
Age you act :::	20
Current location :::	Plymouth Indiana
Eye color :::	Steel Blue
Hair color :::	Light Brown
Right, lefty or ambidextrous? :::	Lefty (unless golfing or batting)
Zodiac sign? :::	Saggitarius
Height? :::	6'2"
[x] Part 2 -- Describe... [x]
Your heritage/nationality :::	Norwegian/German/Irish/British/French (in that order!)
Your hair :::	It is short. It's almost always been short.
Your fears :::	Scared of no electricity during a thunderstorm
Your perfect room :::	Music Production Studio
What you practically do in a day :::	Compose, play games, now I clean a lot...
[x] Part 3 -- What is/are... [x]
Words you overuse :::	what, the, and crap
Phrases you overuse :::	What the crap
Your first thought when you wake up :::	Where am I?
Your greatest accomplishment :::	Graduating College (Cum Laude with High Honors)
Something you want to do :::	Compose for a movie
[x] Part 4 -- This or that [x]
Pepsi or Coke :::	Pepsi
McDonald's or Burger Kings :::	Burger King
Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera :::	Neither.
Chocolate or vanilla :::	Chocolate
Adidas or Nike :::	Nike
Black or white :::	Black
Bills or Coins ((Think $$$)) :::	Bills
Burgers or hot dogs :::	Burgers
Egypt or France :::	France
Rock or rap :::	Rock
[x] Part 5 -- Do you...[x]
Smoke :::	No
Cuss :::	Not much
Sing well :::	Pretty well
Sing in the shower :::	Yup
Talk to yourself --a lot-- :::	Yeah
Believe in yourself :::	Yeah
Like taking these longass surveys? :::	Sometimes. Don't swear, jerk. What the crap.
Play an instrument :::	Nope. I play 10
Want to go to college? :::	Not anymore
Want to get married? :::	Plan on it
Want to have children? :::	Yeah
Think you're a health freak? :::	Not at all.
Get along with your parents :::	Yeah
Get along with your siblings? :::	Yeah
Think you're popular :::	Sometimes
[x] Part 6 -- In the past month have you..[x]
Gone out of state :::	Yes
Drank alchohal :::	Yes
Smoke :::	No
Get high :::	No
Done any drugs :::	No
Eaten an entire box of oreos :::	No
Been on stage :::	Yes
Gone skinny dipping :::	No
Been dumped :::	No
Dyed your hair :::	No
Stolen anything :::	No
[x] Part 7 -- Your friends! =D [x]
Craziest :::	I don't have any crazy friends. I guess Matt H.
Loudest :::	That would be Matt H. again
Most shy :::	Chris M.
Blondest :::	Can't think of any. Not nice anyways.
Smartest :::	Amanda Kras
Kindest :::	Aaron Munson
Best personality :::	Krista K. Chernausky
Most talented :::	Chris M.
Best singer :::	Aaron Munson
Most ghetto :::	Not nice either. Ghetto is a state of mind.
Drama Queen ((or King XP)) :::	That would be Mike Ritchie.
Pain in the ass :::	Hemorrhoids
The one you just want to strangle to death ((Homer Simpson style)):::	Myself
Funniest :::	Krista makes me laugh the most
Best person for advice :::	Alex Costa
Dependable :::	Chris
Trustworthy :::	Isn't that dependable?
Druggie :::	Umm...
Most likely to end up in jail :::	No one.
Person you've known the longest :::	Garrick Aplin
[x] Part 8 -- The Last... [x]
Last dream :::	I don't remember dreams
Last nightmare :::	hah.
Car ride :::	Can't remember
Last time you cried :::	Never cry. Except always.
Last movie seen :::	Bowling for Columbine
Last movie rented :::	Band of Brothers Series
Last book read :::	Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance
Last word said :::	Maintenance
Last curse word said :::	crap
Last time you laugh :::	at this stupid question
Last phone call :::	to Helzberg Diamonds because I hate them
Last CD played :::	Shane and Shane - Psalms
Last song you listened to :::	You Said
Last annoyance :::	Sweating
Last IM :::	Laura Eley
Last weird encounter :::	I don't understand the question
Last person you hugged :::	Mommy
Last person you yelled at :::	Mommy and Daddy
Last time you wore a skirt :::	umm...
Last time you've been evil :::	before I was saved
Sarcastic? :::	Oh, I'm NEVER sarcastic.
Last time you fought with your parents :::	I just said...today. Just because they were trying to tell me what to do again.
Last time you wished upon a star :::	Never
Played Truth or Dare :::	Way back. Jr. High.
Spent quality time alone :::	Every day.
[x] Part 9 -- I swear this is the last one! -- Randomness [x]
Are you talking to someone on AIM :::	No
Do you feel lonely :::	No
Ever TP'd someone's house :::	Kinda
How about egging someone's house :::	No
Do you not like dislike not like me? :::	Sometimes
Ain't Eminem and 50 Cent just fine? :::	Nope. They suck.
Yo Momma :::	she's nice and pretty.
Ever been so hungry you felt like you could eat the person next to you? :::	He's invisdible. Can't eat nothin'.
What do you think of George Bush? :::	I think he is on TV and I don't know him personally.
Any secret fetishes? :::	Umm...as in what?
Do you like to wear chains? O_o :::	no
How many languages do you speak? :::	2
Damn.. are your fingers tired? Cause mine sure are! :::	Nope
Glad this is over? ((Say yes and I'll stalk you =P)) :::	Yes

Bored? ((Over 100 questions)) brought to you by BZOINK!

So I'm still here at Butler. What am I doing here? Of course, I'm trying to compose. You wouldn't ever believe how difficult it is for me. I have like 16 hours a day of waking time and most of it is spent doing stupid things on the computer (like looking up computer parts, etc.)...

So what do you do when the music stops coming? This is writer's block in a much more deeper way. I don't just not know how to say what I want to say, I have no inclination what I want to say. I don't FEEL what I'm writing. And it's becoming a waste of time to me because I just can't seem to get anything to come out. I have to say, every once in awhile there's a breakthrough, but no composer ever lived on only writing one minute of music a day.

What do I do? I feel like the laziest slob in the world, because I'm here, my computer and my piano are here, but the music is not. Then I listen to things like Shane Barnard (a great musician first of all, and a good CHRISTIAN musician as well, his guitar strumming is awesome) who just totally makes me want to just sit down and play guitar. That kind of musician is not what I want to be though. I want MORE. I want to be able to tell stories in symphonies, to embrace a new kind of music that involves so much more than witty lyrics and good guitar licks. I want to make the kind of music that people go and sit down to and close their eyes and think about how beautiful it is and how much must have been put into it. I want it to make God happy, my friends happy, my parents happy. Every note I put on the page makes me happy, but it's almost like that's not enough. Though I am content with myself and I know I have a good style of writing, I guess what I'm looking for is the breakthrough score that totally blows everything away.

In music history we hear about all of those musicians who set down a new style. Part of me wants that.

That being said, the music I've written so far is good, but seriously now, lazy Collin, you need to get more shelled out in 4 days than 2 1/2 minutes of wind ensemble music and a good idea of what websites have the best deals on motherboards.

Couldn't someone even comment once for me? :(

I should have known
your endless store of clichés
would only make the true
Seem even sweeter

You should have called
when all hope was lost
and the bitter sight of self
Led you to my side

She should have ended
the shattered roots of what
she once never had and
Twisted to make her own

But we should have gone
We should have stayed away
We should have listened
Now it's on deaf ears we should cry.

-----

This is the first poem I've written in a long time. Let me know interpretations and thoughts. Thanks.

Your Life: The Movie by mintyduck
Who will play you:	Orlando Bloom
Who will play your love interest:	Jack Black
Weeks you will stay in the box office:	17
Song that will play during your love scene:	The Bangles - Eternal Flame
Song that will play during your death:	Stevie Wonder - They Won't Go When I Go
Your name:
Created with quill18's MemeGen 2.0!

OK, let me get this straight. If I were a movie, huh? With this response, if I were a movie, I would be:
Hot
Gay
Attracted to an Idiot
A fan of Stevie Wonder
someone who knows who the crap the Bangles are and appreciates them for some reason

That's a lot of assumptions to be making, and strangely enough, not ONE of them is true. I guess these programs aren't really true after all...like when they told me the Thunder Cat I'd be would be Snarfer. Thank Goodness.

So I'm sitting in Fairbanks building right now, just thinking about nothing at all. It really is a nice thing every once in a while to just get a little time in which I don't have to do anything. No one ever comes here. It's pretty nice, actually. This may end up being the easiest 3 credits I've ever earned, all for the good of my minor (Computer Science).

In other news, I just got accepted to the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, which is a great music school. Check me out in all my glory. I do believe that is the first grad school to accept me unconditionally, and yes, it feels nice.

Anyways, I think I'm going to go back to living, instead of relying upon electronic methods to make me feel important. After all, how many people read this? Oh yeah, zero.

Sorry about yesterday's rants. Sometimes when I get irked about one thing I'll take out my aggression on a multitude of things. I just think that there's so much in this world that doesn't make sense to me. It seems like the world is pushing itself to the brink and it almost feels like I'm the only one that sees this all happening. I know that's far from true, I have plenty of friends who tell me they see it too. It's just like what do you do about it? That's the real question.

How do you solve a broken world? Maybe it's time we stopped worrying about making ourselves feel good and start maybe caring about others. Just a thought.

I'll start by making me that way.

I, at one time, was quite good when it came to writing poetry. I seemed to have a grasp of the descriptive, and was able to apply it in a way that my thoughts, no matter how unorganized or disheveled, would be comprehended, even appreciated. I even had a fan club one time. While attending High School in Indiana, I had two people in Kansas City, Missouri that absolutely LOVED the poetry I wrote. They talked about me in their website with such enthusiasm that I would even be inspired by aforementioned enthusiasm. I was basically feeding them my inner poetic thoughts, organizing the things I believed in most in a way that they enjoyed. To be honest, I liked it. I wrote some pretty darn good stuff.

Then I thought I had fallen in love.

I don't know how Shakespeare was able to put his love into words so beautiful. All I could do was think about what rhymed with "eyes" and how I could put the words "I love you" at the end. How corny. My poetry career ended the minute I fell for this girl. I mean, don't get me wrong, she loved what I wrote, but the problem was that no one else did. Looking back on it, I have to admit. It sucked. It was so cliché and bland, and the word "cries" always was in it (being the only word I could think of other than 'marital ties' that rhymed with 'eyes'). I stopped writing poetry then, and short of songwriting haven't written poetry since.

I am convinced that love can be a blessing or a curse. I am only 21 years old writing about love, but this is the one thing I think I may have a handle on. I've been in only 3 relationships so far, but all of them have exceeded 9 months. I know. That's like forever, isn't it? Anyways, the blessing and curse thing. Think about it. Some schmoe falls in love with this girl, falls head-over-heels for her, and all of his life is dedicated to extolling her. Gag me. What good does that do for anyone? Correction, after that way-too-in-depth relationship is over, what good has that done for anyone? For me, that kind of crappy relationship only taught me one thing:
Don't do that.

I've been in relationships way too physical and way too emotional and borderline terrible. I've been in relationships where the aftershock has been tremendous. The calls after the breakup are painful and only leave you feeling worse. That's the problem with relationships. They're so hard to break off because admit it, things are at least a little better than miserable when you have someone to hang out with. It could be worse.

You could be friendless.

There exists a true love in the world. Whether I believe that God has made people that are perfect for us or not is unimportant. What matters is that God cared enough about us to give us someone. I don't care if it's a dog, cat, girl, boy, best friend or imaginary, it is someone. I think the worst problem someone can make is to start believing that love is only romantic and that telling someone of the same gender that he/she loves him/her is somehow wrong. How is it that we can tell someone that we have dated for 2 weeks that we love them, and yet feel uncomfortable to tell our best friend of 20 years that we even care that they are around? It's madness. God commands us to greet one another with a kiss. He didn't specify it was only those of the opposite sex. Obviously God wants us to understand that true love is not romantic, it is something so much deeper. So deep that it has its own Greek word.

Agape.

The word just sounds so Greek, so beautiful. I know practically everyone has heard the sermon on agape, that it is a word that represents God's love for us, a never-ending, always forgiving love that lasts for eternity. This is a wonderful thing. The other awesome thing about this kind of love is that we are told to do it to everyone else. Somehow, we can grasp the concept of God's love enough that we can actually express that love to others. To me, that seemed unimaginable. God has a way of proving us wrong all the time.

I am not married. At least not yet. I still feel that love is something that can be shared between a man and a woman, as long as there is substance to the relationship, some sort of respect that's built upon God's true love, rather than the world's view of love. This worldly love will always leave us feeling empty inside. I feel that divorce is often caused because we think that love is a feeling. The truth of it is that feelings change and love is too steady to be a feeling. It is a promise. God gets angry at us all the time, and yet He still loves us. He would never divorce us. It's because He, of all people, realizes that His love is a promise, not a feeling, and that He never breaks His promises. Marriage is a promise before God. Love is that promise.

Friendship is another promise based on love. If I always based the status of my friendships on how I was feeling, I would have no friends. Simple as that. However, I love them enough that my promise takes precedence over my feelings.

Amazing love indeed.

12 year old girls dressed like skanks? No, thank you.

What is the world coming to when pre-teens have a compulsory urge to dress with as little clothing as possible? Since when does "Bad Girl" make for a good t-shirt slogan? Seriously? Wait until you're old enough to make your own decisions, THEN you are free to decide that the world is your own nudist colony. But please wait. At least get a chance to realize that dressing like that is one cause of underage pregnancies. Don't read too much into that, I'm not placing the blame on just the women. Just look at yourself in the mirror some day and ask yourself if that's REALLY how you want to be noticed. I'd prefer if you can make an impact by being a HUMAN BEING, not just as some body.

OK I'm done. I have to get going anyways. Maybe I'll have more to write about later.

I DON'T NEED TO ENLARGE MY BODY PARTS!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!

Jeez, the number of people who make half a cent per e-mail sending me crap about herbal supplements and enlargement tablets shows me how sorry the world is. I'd prefer paying more taxes to provide more jobs to the people who are so needy that they resort to ticking me off to make a few bucks.

And just so I know, what the crap is that stupid text stuff at the bottom of those messages? What is that encrypted stuff supposed to mean? I'm thinking Conspiracy Theory.

Okay, this may be the only rant I make today, but it's getting on my nerves and I think it needs to be said.

I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR LITTLE SNOOKUMS BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND.
Who gives an honest crap about that? Seriously? If you two are so freakin dependent on one another's away messages to prove to yourselves your true feelings, then maybe you need to reconsider the relationship. Do you really need to be reminded?

Furthermore, is it the right media to be expressing those feelings? As an away message addict, I've had it up to here (imagine where here is) with people who leave messages that are only important for one person. Get over them. Tell them in an e-mail if you need to remind them constantly. Stop wasting my time with stupid sappy away messages.

My girlfriend leaves away messages about the fact that glow-worms don't actually glow: it's their poop that glows. Now THAT'S an away message that means a lot to me. I'll take that any day over stupid crap that makes everyone in the world (but one)'s gag reflex take over.

So stop it already!

Wow, now this is pretty cool. I'm using Semagic to do my LiveJournal work, and it's a pretty nice format. I really like this. However, the detect music part is going to reveal what most think is a horrible taste in music.

Anyways, John Adams is a modern composer of music, and I've been listening to him a lot. I'm a composer, by the way, and it's interesting to hear new sounds from other composers. Call me a sap, but I'm not into that pop crap. I dig jazz and "classical."

That's just me though.

Well, I decided to switch over to LiveJournal, since it was just an aspiration of mine to be on LiveJournal. Let's hear it for free.

Anyway, I really don't like the whole "trading comments" crap that people do all the time, but I'm going to try it out. Basically this is going to be a page for me to just write down my thoughts. I'm sorry if I offend someone, and I may not agree with everything I write. I'm just writing what I'm thinking, and sometimes it may be strange. Just warning you. Anyways. Here's my LiveJournal.