A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
THE GIANTS ARE IN THE SUPERBOWL! I WENT TO THE NEW YORK JUGGLING CLUB! SUNLIGHT NONE IS GETTING BIG HITS! I AM HAPPY!!!!!

Ok, so maybe not that happy, but Go Giants, hell yes. :: So music mashing is doing great, I'm starting to understand the idea of the multiple layered recording. Where you'd record the initial mash of just the instrumental layers or whatever, then record a mashup of THAT and whatever big lyrical hit points you want, then record a mash between THAT and something else, etc. The track that I'm really using this really well in sould be out in 2 weeks. :: Windows Media Player is cold. Haven't done anything for a while, but still people are coming to me for help with whatever they need. I'm not even up on the latest code changes in WMP11, but still they come. That's how you know you've left a mark in a community, when people who have problems come to YOU for help, even after you've "stopped" (not really) doing it. :: I've decided to redo my personal website, and the first step was redoing the front splash page. Looks a hell of a lot nicer when you go to http://reeses2150.com now doesn't it? More to come on that. :: Juggling videos. I have one recorded, edited and ready to go when I feel like it's been long enough since Sunlight None. I also have The Stupid Tricks Video, which is ALMOST ready to go, but I just need a little more footage to better it up. As always, I've got another idea for one that I haven't started yet, but that should be cool when I do it. :: College is about to start up again. Goddamnit. AT least this semester again though, I'm getting help with gas money. I'm driving Mark S. in Mondays and Wednesdays and I'm getting 7 bucks a week for the gas. Heya!

Oh, and one more thing. GO GIANTS!

-- Music Release --
Satisfaction To Eternity. This is actually the first mashup I ever made and thought good enough to record. I did this one back at Middlesex County College on Gordan's laptop, and I'm amazed when I think about how I haven't released it yet. Fox Amoore is an incredible pianist, and I've used his piece "Dance To Eternity" before as part of my competing in the World Juggling Federation. But that's enough about that, it's an incredible track on it's own, and I figured it'd sound even more awesome switching between another song and it. The other song is just one of the sample songs you receive when you get a copy of Virtual DJ. DJ N'Erick - Satisfaction. It's an ok track, but it's really great for mixing with other tracks. So here it is, an all instrumental track, Fox Amoore vs DJ N'Erick - Satisfaction To Eternity

Daily Life:
So before I talk about my trip to NYC this past Thursday, I need to talk about some things from work. At least one strange, bad, or noteworthy thing happened at Spencers the last 3 days I worked. So the first was something that happened on Saturday that I forgot to mention in my last post. I was working the closing shift, which is the usual now, and the entire shift was pretty much uneventful. Just like any other day, stopping shoplifters, helping confused customers, and cleaning the store. Then comes closing time, and I'm sent to guard the door for a while. Every night at closing, at 9:30 or whatever our closing time is, we'd close the front doors, but not lock them, and for 5 minutes, one of us will stand there to keep people from coming in and let the people out. We've got me, Lora, and Megan working, so it's just the three of us. There's about 4 customers left when I'm closing the doors, and I close the doors and everything is normal. 5 minutes later, I start cleaning the shelves and putting away all the products, then I realize that there's still a group of two left in the store. Lora and Megan notice them too, and we decide that they look like they're almost done and let them finish as we start cleaning up. The problem is, that they weren't done, and they basically kept looking through the shelves for about 10 minutes while we were coming in and cleaning after them. They finally decide their done just as we're about to walk them out, and they head to the register, so Lora takes care of them as we continue cleaning. Note, Lora is supposed to count the register every night to make sure everything adds up, and she can't do that until the last customer is out of the store. The customers suddenly start looking back at stuff they put back and at the stuff on the front of the register, and it basically takes them ANOTHER ten minutes to finally pay and leave. So we only can NOW start to really do the things we're supposed to do, and it's 9:50. We're only supposed to be there until around 10:00, but because of them we all punched out around 10:20. So that sucked.

So skip ahead to Friday, and we're starting to prepare for Inventory next week. Where we count up ALL the items in the store and clean EVERYTHING. It's gonna be fun, but on Friday we decided to get a head start on it, so everyone was cleaning, and I got the wonderful job of cleaning the floor underneath all the shelves. This is fun, because I have to unpile all the stuff from the bottom shelf, remove the bottom shelf, then with my handy-fuckin-dandy dustpan and brush sweep up all the crap, dust, and items that fell underneath since the last time they did this (about 6 months ago). Then I have to reassemble the lower shelf and put everything back. All this has to be done, while on either my knees, stomach (if my knees hurt too much that I don't care how bad I look sprawled out on the floor), or if I'm in the corner, in the fetal position laying on my side. That sucked. Plus I was sore and tired afterwards for basically the entire night. But hey, now it's done for the next 6 months.


Saturday was much easier, it was a normal day, except for one thing that happened right in front of me. Now, we don't have any policies about kids or parents bringing toddlers/babies in to shop. Never have, never will. It's their decision and their responsibility for what the kids see and hear. So it wasn't weird when a guy brought his two year old daughter in with him, even when he let her roam free inside. That's all perfectly normal. What wasn't was when the kid, for no apparent reason, decided that the middle of the store would be a great place to fall flat on her face. I was standing on the side of the store keeping an eye on a group of kids that looked like they might shoplift something, and out of the corner of my eye, I see her suddenly move forward and put her hands up. I turn my head to see her face-plant into the stiff carpet (luckily she didn't fall on the tile, but the carpet's not exactly that much better than the tile anyway). Now, even at 2, most kids know when you fall forward, you put your hands out in front of you to stop you from smacking the ground with your head. Not this little ball of intelligence. Arms straight out above her head, and in fact, they hit after the rest of her body did. I haven't heard a thud like that in years. Sounded like dropping a bowling ball onto the floor of your house from above your head. Fortunately, her father was right there to swoop her up and get her to the medical place in the mall, but that was slightly disturbing.

Juggle This:
So I took a trip to New York on Thursday, I was originally going to go to the Diggnation meetup, but it got canceled the day before, and I decided that instead, I'd head over to the Carmine Street juggling club. But before I went there, I got to go to the Dube store again. But let me start right from the beginning.

I had 2 choices for buses. Either catch the 2:20 or the 4:00. There was no others in between, and the 2:20 was a little early for me, but the 4:00 seemed like it was pushing it for time. Well, I woke up at around 1:30, so the 2:20 looked good, until I had breakfast, caught up on posts and everything, and watched some TV. I figured as I was waiting, "Hey, Dube is an awesome place, but the jugglers club doesn't meet until 7:30, and if I get in NYC at 3:00 or so, I'm not spending 3 hours in the Dube store." So I remembered that for all the previous Diggntion meets how I'd take the 4:00 bus to get in by 6:00, and I thought it'd work. Well, that happened to be a bad traffic day at the Lincoln Tunnel, and I got into the Port Authority bus terminal at around 5:40. I called Dube and told them I was coming in and that I may come in REALLY close to closing. They said they'd wait up. I got through the bus terminal, and got the one cabbie in New York that didn't know where he was going. He actually asked me what I thought would be the fastest way to get downtown. I got to Dube at 5:58, and managed to get the stuff I came for, and head out for some pizza. I spent about 10 minutes in Dube, and didn't get any pictures or anything, but I do have now 4 more rings. 1 black airflite ring, 2 more yellow airflite rings, and one large spinning ring (babache style), and I also picked up a few more balls while I was there because as I was looking at them at the register, I realized they were the ones I liked and needed more of so I could practice 7 better. I should have got one different colored for counting, but whatever.

So I left Dube, snapping a pic of the lobby's floor map to prove I was there, and caught a Cab to head over to the Gym for the Carmine Street Irregulars. I still had an hour before it was going to start, and it was starting to snow outside, so I ran into the pizzeria across the street and grabbed a few slices for dinner and energy for the club. I never forget how great it is to have authentic New York Pizza. God that stuff is good. So I finish that and then go apply for membership with the gym (since you can't just go in and pay a one time, you need to sign up for the yearly, which is 75 bucks. Sucks, but it's worth it to hang out with Sky, Paris (maybe), Cindy M, and a bunch of other jugglers ranging from first weeker's to jugglers who are better than me by leaps and bounds, whenever I have enough money to go. Unfortunately, I forgot that MADfest was going on, so Sky wasn't going to be there, but hey, there was still plenty of a turnout to make it worthwhile. As for what I actually did when I was there, oh man. I qualified 6 rings again twice, tried flashing 7 a few times before realizing I'm nowhere near ready for THAT yet, got an awesome 5 ball string on camera (because of the comments about Sunlight None not having enough combo's in it), and inspired someone to do more box juggling. Sweet. No combat, but hey, for less than a sixth the price of any other convention I've went to, it was pretty damned good.

So I spent the 3 hours there, didn't take as many pics as I wanted to, and didn't even get any pics of myself at the actual club outside of video footage, but hey whatever. I got back into a cab, took the next bus back to Jersey, and now here I am blogging about it. Kewl.

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