A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Okay, first things first, I'm late with this post again. Sorry. And if you're reading this on my website, sorry for the lack of updates to the front page. An explanation you shall have now. I'm not sure how or why (probably a hijacker/trojan/virus), but my computer, nor any of the other computers in my house can access any ftp site. That's how my site operates now, with ftp. So I haven't been able to change it from home since around mid-october, and I've been updating it via the computers in the technical center at MCC during my free time. Since it's now the time for winter courses, the technical center isn't open and I don't have access to a comp that can do ftp, especially without breaking my schedule of class and work. So that's that. I've been trying to get to a comp for the past week, but it just hasn't worked.

But I said I would explain the system I came up with to fix this problem and I shall do so now. I switched from hosting the file with all of my blog posts on it (the front page of my website pulls from a single file and posts the entry to the page without me having to update the page every time) from my regular site, and now I will be hosting it on geocities, which means I can update it anywhere thanks to the way geocities has a file manager and no ftp site to deal with. So as soon as I get access to a working computer, I will make the one quick fix to the front page, and it'll work forever. So that's it for that.

Listen Up!
I'm not going to repeat myself, especially when I've already said everything I wanted to ay on youtube. So I'll just post it here.


Night At The Museum - 8.1 of 10 A pretty good movie. Nothing really special about it, I mean it won't be sticking in your mind all the way until it comes out on DVD, like Jackass 2 has been, but still a very good movie. Not so much of a comedy as I thought it was going to be, it was actually way more serious, and I was surprised at how good it was for it. A couple good twists in it, and one big one near the end that you won't see coming. The acting was great, and despite everyone in the film being a big name, you almost forget about them (except for Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, their acting was a little less in character, but not bad. I'll say this movie was definitely worth the $7.50 though, no matter who you're with or how old you are. Go see it when you get the chance. I'm actually a lot more excited about the Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer trailer I saw. I've been waiting for F4:2 since the first one.

Daily Life:
I don't actually have a story for once, it's been a slow week. Unless I go back to X-mas eve working at Shoprite, but I can't remember anything noteworthy or out of the ordinary that happened, so I can't say anything. Whatever.

Juggle This:
New contact ball. I jut got a new trick yesterday, 5 ball neck holds. I can do 2 consecutive ones ina 2 count, but not much more. Also, all of my 5 ball tricks are getting a lot better.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Listen Up!
Nothing to announce other than the release date of Project 6. December 26th, 2006. May come before that if I'm lucky, but definitely not after. Then, I will be working on a video from my day at Shoprite.

Daily Life 1:
I said I would talk about what happened with me and the Wii on Sunday. One number. Four. It started off as me going to Toys-R-Us and staying there for a little while until it opened, in the line of about 20 people mind you, only to learn later that the 20 people currently IN line were not going to get Wiis, as the 20 that were getting them had already been sent in. I didn't even bother with the Best-Buy next door, there was a line of 30. So on my last ditch, I drove over to my local Gamestop, just in case. I ended up grabbing the #14 spot in line, and proceeded to wait the 2 hours for the store to open. A couple things happened while in line. The group of two guys right in front of me, I knew one of them, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where the hell i knew him from. The thing was that he knew me as well, but he had the same effect. Don't you hate it when that happens? Ok, so then, after electing one from our group of three to run to the Shoprite Dunkin Donuts to get us all breakfast, and that having been done, one of the people who was at the laundromat that was next door to Gamestop, came out and yelled at everyone in line about us blocking the path of his (non-existent) customers. Granted, the line was going in front, but we left a 4 foot gap in the line, right at the door, so the one guy going in and out could get through without any trouble. After he threatened to call the cops on us, an absolute genius in the line (too bad it wasn't me) yelled back "You call the cops on us, I'll call them on you being parked in a fire zone!". Yes, his truck (the one yelling at us) was parked DIRECTLY in front of the store, in the clearly marked yellow fire lane. We took pictures and everything, and then he moved the truck like a douche and called the cops. Now, forget that for a second. About 10 minutes later, the opening employee at the Gamestop came past to unlock the doors, and as you can imagine, everyone mobbed him going "HOW MANY!? HOW MANY!!!!!!!!!?". He gave a mumbled answer that noone understood and ran through the door and locked it. Smart man. So he comes back out after another few minutes before the store opens and yells, "FOUR!", and then goes back inside. I left soon afterwards, as it's always good to hang out with campers anyway, it's a great atmosphere, and one where everyone agrees on everything about the current situation, yet has completely wild and drastically different opinions on almost everything.


Daily Life 2 / Juggle This:
Ok, now for my Juggling Day at Shoprite. Overall, a great way to spend a shift at work, especially considering the alternative of scanning customers. I have to start before I even get there, as I'm at home, and I've already gotten through the trouble of deciding on and finding all of the props I wanted to bring with me (the final list was 3 clubs [obvious], 5 balls, 5 lacrosse balls [for bounce juggling and if someone else who can juggle came by], 5 standard rings, 3 fat rings [for bouncing and if the wind was too strong for the standards], 2 rubber rings [for me to head catch a volunteers' throw], 3 boxes, 1 staff [balancing], 1 cane [balancing]). So now, I've got to find out what type of attire I want to put on. After thinking it over many times, I just decide to go in standard Shoprite Uniform and apron, an then grab a Santa hat as I'm heading in. So now that that's settled, I'm arriving at Shoprite.
I run in and punch in using the card (you can't just punch in when you're not scheduled to, you have to get a manager to use the card or lend you the card so you can override the punch clock and be counted), and then head immediately for where Santa is. Right in the Coca-Cola room next to the Dunkin Donuts, so I setup shop there, and while everyone else is in nice uniforms and costumes (a couple of the organizers were dressed as elfs), I'm standing there with a red hat and a Shoprite apron. But then again, it fits. So I'm not really going to go into detail or anything, but after a while of trying to find out where everything is happening and get everything running, they decide to send me outside. No problem, seeing as how I like the cold, and get to juggle outside where I have a higher ceiling and more room to move around.
So after my first hour, and having a few kids playing around and the usual stuff you would expect from improvised jugging in public, Dan and a few of my other coworkers/conspirators come out. One of them can juggle three balls, but mostly, we just start messing around with my abilities, like passing 5 balls by me doing 4 and having Dan throw one in and out of the pattern. Whatever, it's all good. So move over another hour, and now it's time for the public service/local news station report. You know that whenever an event like this happens, there's always a local broadcast that noone watches. Either way, so Mr. C--------, along with a few of the other high up store managers here, and even the mayor, come out for a quick video shoot in front of the truck. The guy then got some more footage of whoever else was there, including shots of the truck and of myself. It's good.
Skip ahead another hour. One guy comes up to me, like a few others have, and asks if he could try to juggle with some of my stuff. I don't like being a dick, so as like the others, I let him try, he first did the rings, and to my surprise, he actually juggled them pretty good. So then I ask him if he can do clubs, because balls and rings are VERY easy, almost anyone can do them. Again, he does them pretty nicely. Then he tells me that he is a former local circus performer. What a shock that was to me. So he's sitting there playing around with my props, and he did a really good cane balance on the top of his head, where he then went down to his knees and back up again. So after hanging out with him for about 10 minutes, I gave him my card, and am currently waiting for him to contact me, I hope. I may have finally found a partner to pass clubs with in my area SWEET!
SO things pretty much fizzled after that point. I took a break at the beginnig of my 4th hour, then went back and did some juggling inside before packing up and going home. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I also brought my camera and I took a little bit of footage while I was there (you wont' see it in Project 6, but I may make it all into a quick video, if not a promo video in tandem with some other footage). I gave out a lot of business cards too, at least 12, and a couple people seemed really enthusiastic and even asked me for a quick estimate of cost, so hopefully, I'll get a few gigs. All in all, it was awesome. The only downside to big juggling events and things like this, is that after juggling for 4 straight hours, you get one MASSIVE headache. Remember, juggling IS effectively a cardio workout, because you're doing a lot of light motions constantly and quickly. So after doing it for a long period of time, it will hurt you. But by god it's worth it.

Juggle This:
While I was at Shoprite, I had a really great 4 ring fountain going, and I'd already done a few siteswaps in the same run. Seeing as how my 4 ring trick collection is very small I out of nowhere, tried a shoulder throw with 4. I have no idea how, but it worked perfectly. I tried it a few more times, and made it twice out of every 3 tries, so I got myself a new trick. Otherwise, absolutely nothing else going on in my juggling life that you won't see in Project 6.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Yup, once again, my routine is completely gone, and I haven't updated like I said I would. But then again I've been hard at work on...

Listen Up!
My next juggling video, is to come out within the next 3 weeks. I know, I've already finished the whole thing, but as people will know me, even when I'm done with a project, I'm not finished yet. Either way, expect Project 6 to come out sometime before the end of 2006. I won't say anything about what's in it. Another announcement, tomorrow morning, I've got inside info on where a shipment of Wii's is going to be, and will be there to pick one up. I'm not saying where, but you can probably guess, so I'll report back if/when I have it.

Daily Life:
Today was awesome. For once, I actually know why. It was my day at Shoprite that made it all good. I came in today on a good note, I had just finished watching Numb3rs, which I mussed the night before, and it's probably the best episode in the series so far, but I'm getting off track. So I punch in, and my two favorite managers are there to tell me what to do. They tell me to lockup and hand out the plastic bags that are sitting on the front, then go to the back and get the rest of them and pass them out, then go back one final time for paper bags. Normally, I'd be a little bummed I'd have to do this, but I don't usually do it at the beginning of my shift, when I had just had a Mountain Dew and am not tired and dead on my ass. So instead of, "ah hell." I'm thinking, "This ought to burn up about an hour of my shift." So I'm midway through running back to get the second boat of plastic bags, and one of my loyal customers (yes, I have followers at Shoprite) catches me and informs me that one of the original three from my batch of employees, Kyle, is coming back to work here after having quit about 7 months ago! Us three, the third being "D" as I call her, are a pretty tight group, and it's just great when all three of us are working the same shift. So then, later in the night, I see him for myself when he's shopping, and I ask him. He verifies it and says that they're retraining him, and that he'll be back on the registers by next week. I then finish the second batch of bags and tell D, and she's in disbelief, and then the manager standing at the next register confirms it again, and now we're all in a good mood.

So I finish all of the bags, including paper, and it's about 5:40 (I came in at 4:00, as I always do). The guy on register 21 (the opposite end express lane and my 3rd favorite register) has to go home, so the manager sends me there. What makes it even better is that Kelly is on register 19, so I can chat and bag for her when i don't have customers, sweet! Then, about an hour and a half later, around 6:57, I get sent on my lunch break.

I hear that there's a banquet upstairs, and my break actually came early enough for it, plus it's a 30 minute lunch break, so I get to spend even more time relaxing and talking with some of the other people on break. It's all good. So as I'm going through the stuff that's LEFT on the banquet, I see what it's for. It's for the actual anniversary of Shoprite, and I see the pictures from a show that happened while I was not scheduled, where Santa visited the store, and there was a couple of performers there too. I was a little bummed, as I was someday hoping that I would get the chance to perform a routine or something at my own place of employment. It'd be a great change from the typical being on register, I'd get paid extra, and I love juggling. There's no bad that could ever come out of it, other than juggling for too long and possibly going home sore, but that happens on regular duty too sometimes. Going back to the story, I'm about 20 minutes into my break, and I decide to ask Mr C--------, the head of this Shoprite, who's in charge of the shows each year, and he tells me, and then asks why, so I tell him "Because I would like to perform in next years show." So naturally, he asks "Well, what can you do?", "Juggle", "Really!? Well, are you scheduled to come in on Wednesday?", "Huh?", "You know the Coca-Cola truck from the Christmas commercials? It's coming here on Wednesday, along with Santa.", "Cool!". So he then pulls me into his office, we talk about what's going to happen and what I'd be doing there, I gave him my business cards, finish planning, and so I'm going to perform on Wednesday from 4:00-8:00, which is my normal hours anyways. So I'm thrilled about that. So you'd think my day can't get any better right?

I punch back in from break, as the conversation had to be cut short so I wouldn't be late going back, and I'm told to bring some garbage to the back. I do that, and then the manager is having a big dilemma of who to send to the outside register (guess who's there, D) for a break. The reason being that she doesn't want to send someone outside without a coat, which nobody else on the registers has one, even though I'm already volunteering. So reluctantly, she gives me a tiny coat that basically only covers my back and nothing else, and sends me outside. I don't mind the cold, in fact, as a lot of people may know, I love it. So shoot to me outside, scanning people for a HUGE outdoor sale we're having of Christmas items, all marked down to the point of insanity, and me sitting out there handling everything like nobody else. The three store-heads, including Mr C-------- are out there, and he mentions to the other two about me coming in to juggle on Wednesday, so I throw them my business cards and explain the whole thing. Halfway through me being out there, I didn't see it, but as two police officers were escorting someone out of the store for something, he had a heart attack and collapsed onto the ground right before the exit. So the ambulance came in, and last I heard, he's doing fine. Later, I even scan my old 5th grade teacher, who I'd lost track of, and we chatted a bit while I'm scanning her order, and then I throw her a card so that she can then read this later.

God this is a long post, ok. So the outside register closed up at around 9:15, and I headed back to the front, where I'm now going to go on my 15 minute break. So I then get another 15 minutes to chill, followed by one final half-hour of just bringing cardboard from the front to the back balers, and then doing returns before punching out and going home. All in all, it was a pretty awesome day. As a bonus for all those who have just read this, I shall link you now to some pretty entertaining video's I made back in sophomore year of high school. gmail- 3ln.productions, password-theletterb, I think it's about time I shared all of our random video's publically.

Juggle This:
So I got 40 catches of 5 rings. AWESOME. Only problem is, well, you'll see in the video when it's released, I got the whole mess on film. I realized I haven't even TOUCHED my clubs since November, bad. So I gotta start practicing with them again.

So I'll make another blog post at the end of Wednesday with a few updates on whether I got my Wii or not, and how my gig on Wednesday went. Until then...

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Well, now that I've already blown my whole blogging routine to hell within one week of starting it, I think it's time to make one more post before going back to the Tuesday blog. Nothing's really happened, except for awesome-o-day, which was on Wednesday of last week. Story Time!

Daily Life:
Awesome-O-Day. Wednesday the 6th. Ok, so first thing that happened which was awesome was that on the night before, on tuesday, the set of 6 brandy new juggling rings I ordered came in, 2 days early! Hell yes. So I'm screwing around with them as I'm in that 3 hour section between two of my classes at MCC, and I start doing really well with them. I then decide to try doing 5 rings, as I've never even tried it before. I successfully flashed all 5 on the 2nd try. So I go ahead and try qualifying them now, which obviously was much harder. It took me about 8 tries to finally qualify, and from there I was qualifying 5 pretty easily.

Also, during that 3 hour section, I was revered as a god, as I had brought in folding chairs for everyone in the corner. Here's the deal, the management got pissed after the fire alarm incident (read blog post "Nuetrality Theory") and took away all of the chairs from the corner, except for the benches on the end sides of the room, as they're nailed to the floor. So we collectively decided that at least one of us should start bringing in chairs to sit on, as a message to the guys upstairs that they can't stop us, and we did nothing wrong.

Then, after that 3 hour section, came my last class of the night, my "Introduction To Technology" course, which was a bs course if there ever was one. Either way, we were completing our final projects today, which were lego robots that we had been programming (as groups of 3 people) to go over a bridge, defeat an obstacle, and then pick up and object and transport it back to the start. Harder than it sounds. Either way, we ended up with a REALLY slow robot, that worked 90% of the time on the day of the competition (as the groups are obviously competing against each other.). We have as many tries as we can do in 3 minutes. It takes out robot 2 minutes to do one cycle. So we basically had one shot to get it right, and we were the first to go. We got it absolutely perfect on the 1st try. We were really scared though, because noone else's was working until the day of the comp, so our goal was "get it to work, don'y be fast, just make it work.". Then all the sudden, everyone's started working, ad they were running at 30 seconds to go all the way through. We were a bit nervous. In the end though, everyone else either failed their attempts or got it after the 2 minute mark, so in the end, WE WON. Awesome. The turtle does beat all of the hares. And that was the end of my awesome day.

Juggle This:
5 ring cascade, as I said before. Completely awesome, yes. Also, I've been doing a strange shower trick recently, that I have a hard time saying in siteswap. It's basically a 3 ball shower, that I would throw one 5, hold the other two then throw them at 4 (synch), catch the 5 and throw it at 1, catch the two 4's and go back into the shower. So the siteswap is ...51(4415)51... I think. Either way, it's a nice 3 ball trick, and I'll be doing it in my next video, which will have a shower section on it.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Yes, I'm early. But that's a good thing, no? Ok, I really didn't want to have anything else interesting happen to me between today and tuesday, as this post is already big enough as is. To add more to it, well, you'd not want to read it then. Not that you want to read it now, but whatever.

Daily Life:
Ok. Saturday the 2nd. Shoprite. Not so much a hell day, as a day that's to weird to describe in less than the entire story. So here's the entire story. I come in as I normally do, punch and get my till. When I'm done counting, it looks like I may be $5 over, but for some reason I ignore it and continue on. When I get to the front, the manager tells me to go fill up the cleaner bottles, and to make sure we have enough, as we're running short. It's been a while since I've done anything away from a register, so I embrace the opperotunity and i collect bottles from EVERYONE. Not just from the registers, but from the photo lab, customer service counter, and even some from the food court and sub shop. So I fill them up, and as I've explained in the past, the room is barely big enough to fit a person in, so I try something new. Usually, I'd leave the door open and have the cart halfway through it holding it open. This time, I just piled and hung all of the bottles around the empty compartments and hooks on the walls, closed the door and did it all without the door being in my way. I finish that and hand them all out, then I'm sent to get paper towels. This was slightly interesting, as I had to use some of my object manipulation skills here. Basically, there was no room to maneuver the ladder around to get to the towel boxes, plus, it was a busy day in the back, because they had 4 trucks to unload, and I had to stay out of the way, even though the ladder was taking up 3 ft of a 4 ft hallway of palettes. So I'm constantly either sliding down the railings of the ladder (bobsled style, literally. Feet on the rails as well as the hands behind, sliding all the way down) to reposition it, or being on top of the ladder and jumping the entire thing around (weighs around 50 lbs) to make space for someone to get through. So I finish that, which was awesome, and then head to the front and pass them out.

At this point, I have realized that there are NO bags on the registers, NONE. The spare boxes of plastic bags were used up hours ago, and people are down to rationing. Plus,there's no paper left, so once we're out, we're out. Now, remember those 4 trucks I told you about? We have one palette of plastic grocery bags in the back of one of those trucks. Problem is, they've yet to unload that truck. But once they do, guess who's going to unload the palette and distribute all those paper bags to the front registers...

At this time, there has been a changing of the guard, and one of the other managers is now reorganizing everyone's pickup envelopes. (If you don't know, once a cashiers till reaches between $750 to $1000, the cashier needs to get a "pickup", which is the managers taking $600 out of the till. It's a security measure to prevent losses from theft. The $600 is placed into an envelope with the cashiers name and number on it, and the spare envelopes are kept in the till room in an improvised filing cabinet. Basically folders hung from 2 rails in a crate.) So I was asked to help with that, and then once I was done with that, I began rebuilding the "cabinet", as the folders were barely attached, unordered, and old as hell. That took about 2 hours, including the interruptions to bring garbage and cardboard to the back, helping a few customers find things, and even bringing a scooter (a Rascal scooter, with a basket. Because our Shoprite is nice to old people) outside the store for someone (those things are awesome to ride when they have a full charge). So I finish with that and go on my break. Nothing special happened then, except for the fact that I somehow managed to burn up about 4 hours out of my 6 hour shift without even touching a register.

So I get back from break and the palette of bags has STILL not been unloaded from the truck. We've been waiting on them for about two and a half hours. So the manager sends me to the back to check and see if they have either unloaded them, or whether I can somehow weazel my way in to grab the bags and unload them, like that's a possibility. So after spending another 10 minutes in the back checking all 4 trucks and seeing which ones didn't have the bags on them, I head back to the front and they tell me to go do returns. Barely 5 minutes after I start that, they call me back to the front. I already know why, but I still have a cart full of returns that I have to, well, return! So I drop that off at the front and head to the back, where I begin unloading the bags and bringing them to the front. Unfortunately for me, there's only about 5 people on registers, so I have to do everything myself, lucky me. I am incredibly thankful that one of the managers got her hands dirty and handed out the first load I brought out to all the registers, Megan has earned +5 respect points and +1 hero point. I'm dead already as I hand out the rest, and when I finish, I still have about 45 minutes to get rid of before my shift ends.

I haven't gone on register all day, and it's been a while since I've done that. It's a useless piece of info, but whatever. I spend the rest of my night doing returns, bringing the CD rack upstairs, and random cleaning up on the front before punching out and going home, completely dead on my ass. I actually didn't want to get out of the truck when i got home, simply because I was already sitting down, and I didn't want to get up. It was good though, I think I probably lost about a pound today, in sweat alone. So that was my day at Shoprite, how was you're day?


Juggle This:
Just so that this isn't a completely one-piece post, I'm randomly providing you with what i've managed to get recently. I did 2 consecutive chin-rolls with 3 clubs today before I went to work. Awesome. I also long-ran a 5551 (siteswap), as opposed to simply doing it as a trick. I've come to the conclusion that siteswap patterns are hard.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150