A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Wow. Last week's title was perfect. This week SUCKED. Why? I'll explain later on in the Daily Life Section, but first! :: I've finally gone and uploaded that series of box tutorials I promised everyone. So far, I'm inspiring quite a few people to run out and dust off their cigar boxes. AWESOME! :: I've got another batch of DeviantART.com photos almost ready for upload. So expect that by the end of the month at the latest. :: Don't worry about me running out of stuff to post to YouTube in the coming week. I've recorded a magic trick video, a video of me qualifying 7 balls under 8 feet, and two more music mash-ups to post. :: The Iselin fair gig seems to be going GREAT! I'm not selling any DVD's yet, but someone will pick one or two up eventually, and I've already gone through a dozen and a half fliers, and met two jugglers. More on that in next weeks post, where I'll be talking about nothing but my week long performance.


Daily Life:
Thursday the 10th. One of the longest days of my life. Not the worst, not the best, just the longest. So let me give a short little preface. I haven't been to the NYC Juggling club for over a month, in fact, probably more than 2, and I was feeling the need to go all throughout the week before, so I made plans to go that day. I also got scheduled to work early that day with ACME Railings, as usual, just installation help. So I already knew it was going to be a long day.

So 8:00 pops up, and I head out to ACME railings like I'm supposed to in order to pile into the car and go install. I'm never told, nor do I really care, where we're going to be installing. Little did I know, it was actually a job in NYC, so on the way through the Holland Tunnel sitting in the passenger seat I'm thinking "Man, if only I knew I could have brought my stuff and just stayed in the city all day." But I dismissed that thought when we got to the job site and had to do our thing. So we get there, and I realize now exactly what we're working on. We're fixing up the bad section of a new railing, on the rooftop of a building 5 stories tall in the village. Did I ever mention I have a slight fear of heights?

So the first sucky thing of the day happens when I'm told there's no elevator and we have to carry 80 lbs of equipment up to the top up these very high steps. Needless to say, I don't need to do any sit-ups tonight, I've already done my exercise for the day. So we then go to work and it's just one minor problem after another with this stubborn section of railing, which just so happened to be the section that will be blocking people from falling off the front of the roof. Hooray for me. Luckily, my mind was somehow more active this morning, and I was able to come up with simple solutions for all those problems faster than my boss could even notice the problems. Score one for me.

So either way, we get that job done, finish with the railing, and leave for lunch. Of course, we're already in Manhattan, so we go for the nearest pizza place, which just so happened to be the pizza place from Spider Man 2, and while we were in there, a tour group shows up and starts talking about all the wonderful things about NYC water, Brooklyn pizza, and the usual NYC tour stuff. Hey, it's new York, that type of stuff is part of the daily routine. So we finish out pizza and head back to Jersey. We stop off at another job site and put the finishing touches on the last of the interior railings for a new veterinary clinic before I get back to the shop and drive home around 2:00, way ahead of schedule. NOW, the real fun begins.

So now, my plan was just to catch the bus and go to the Carmine St Gym for the juggling club at 6:00, but I figured that since I was already home early enough, and I needed to visit the Dube Store to exchange a few things anyways, that I'd drive into the city and go to Dube and then Carmine St. Thus saving myself at least $30 in cab fare alone because the nearest subway to EITHER place is at least 10 blocks.

So I drive in and visit the Dube Store on Broadway, things go without a hitch, I find a great parking spot only a few blocks away and I exchange a few of my bad illuminated balls for a new set, plus pick up a few things from the freebie bin. Good times there. I go outside and drive to the Carmine St Gym, and I find a GREAT parking space (or so I thought, more on that in a few minutes) on the same street as the gym, and so I take it and head inside. The club meeting was great as far as meetings go, despite Paris not being there. I showed up early, and the only other person besides me there for a little while was Marcus Monroe. I had an impromptu monkey-see-monkey-do session, where whatever he was trying, I'd try too. I never knew I could do the things I was doing, I managed to get a 66661 with the 1 behind the back on the first try, a new 744 record of 10 rounds, and later in the meeting a 97531 to a 744 for 2 rounds. That and I had a good time passing with my usual friends there, coming up with new interesting 4 person patterns.

So the meeting ends, and everyone's ready to go for food as usual, and so am I. I haven't eaten since those slices of pizza i had now a few blocks away and hours ago. So I go back to where my truck was parked, only to see that it wasn't there. Now here's the setup, the person who was living in the building right in front of where I was parked was using the street as a dumpster, and there were bags of garbage taking up 2 car lengths of the street. I look down at the ground and notice that the space between the garbage bags and the yellow zone behind where I was parked was less than the length of my car. Basically, I unknowingly parked illegally and was towed.

Now I'm up shit creek, but luckily I have a slowly breaking paddle, also known as $40 left in my wallet and a cell phone with enough charge for two calls left on it. So I call the police and get redirected to 311, and am told by the live teller that I'd have to wait until the morning to claim the truck. Great. So I rush to catch a cab, and barely catch the 11:15 bus back to Jersey, in the meantime calling my parents. That was what kicked my ass more than anything, and I hope they realize it, that I could care less about the money and the inconvenience (sure it still sucks and I want to avoid doing it ever again, but it's not that huge of a deal), was that they had a big trip down to the new Myrtle Beach house planned and were leaving tomorrow, and I'm not the registered owner of the car. So almost no matter what, I'd be throwing the worlds largest monkey wrench into their carefully laid out plans.

When I get back, I get the scolding I accepted was coming the entire bus ride home, (I just wish that after the 3rd wave of insults and bashings they'd stop and worry about the monkey wrench), we dial up 311 again and after a bit of research, we find out that the truck can be picked up at 24/7 in the city. SO one last trip up the turnpike and into Manhattan to go and get the run around. Needless to say, it wasn't really as bad as I thought it would be. The truck was in good shape after being towed, midway down the Turnpike my dad starts cracking jokes and that's a great sign, and after the asshole security guard at the place told us that there was noplace to park and threatened to tow us, we found a parking lot where the guy in charge was understanding enough and great enough to let us park there for an hour free of charge (off course we tipped him afterwards). Still sucks having to pay the ticket, but I'm taking mass transit into NYC from now on.

So finally, I'm home again and it's 3:00 AM. I've gone into NYC three times today, and I've been up since 8:00 running around. And I still haven't eaten since the pizza, but I'm too tired to even think about that. I collapse into bed and wonder what the hell's going to happen to me tomorrow.

Next Week's Post:
An entire review off what happened at my big charity gig at the Iselin Fair, which you can still see me performing at if you're reading this before July 19th.

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