A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Oh god, so much to talk about, so little room. Well, first let me apologize for last week's missing post, since nothing happened last week worth even mentioning I figured there's plenty going on this week to make up for it. The worst part? I WAS RIGHT!
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So, work. Right now the run is over for going around knocking on people's doors and getting their voting info, so I've got to find a new job. Right now, the other 2 jobs I was looking at fell through, but I have heard of a new one that should be perfect. One of the employees working at the Sewaren Public Library is supposedly going to quit soon, and being a small library, they're just going to be looking for one new person. My parents basically ran the damned library for a decade or so, and nobody else their is anywhere near as good with the computers as I am. Plus it's also a customer service job, so I'm already qualified for it having worked for 3 years and 3 total jobs in customer service. Here's hoping that pans out.
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College. Nothing really interesting happening other than my Business 101 midterm exam becoming a group test. Yes, the once in a lifetime event known as a group test happened on my mid-term exam. Basically, my professor ran his lecture at the beginning of class for way too long, and what was supposed to be an hour for the test ended up being about 20 minutes, and the moment he realized this, he shut up, handed them out, and proclaimed a group test. Took a few minutes for it to sink in, but it was great. Other than that, my Solid Modeling teacher is still an idiot, but what else is new...
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I hate diets. I hate trying to lose weight. I hate this whole thing. It makes absolutely no sense. So I believe I already told you guys that I weighed myself before Philly Juggling Fest (237 lbs) and after (270 lbs) and how I am absolutely baffled as to how I could gain 30 lbs over the course of one weekend doing nothing but constant exercise (in the form of juggling and running around) and only having 2 regular sized meals total. I double checked it, and it was right, I was 270. So I've finally figured out that I gained 30 lbs of MUSCLE, seeing as how I had much more stamina and ability to carruy things after the fest, but since then it's been nothing but the same. I'm trying mixing up my diet and exercise schedule, and still no change. I'm still 270. And I didn't emphasize how much I've been varying my routines, I'm trying everything in between sitting and doing nothing all day to running around campus between classes and eating practically nothing to eating 2 subway footlongs a day and another meal. NOTHING IS FUCKING WORKING! ARRRGH!!!!! I'm going to start saving my money up for liposuction now.....
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What else do I have to moan about, OH! The return of Mobius-X! If you don't know, I'll tell you the full story down in the second daily life segment. For now, if you want, just visit the forums. Mobius-X

-- Music Release --
Well, it's been long enough, and after playing two entirely new tracks in my latest DJ set at the Halloween Party a few days ago and getting nothing but great feedback, I figured I'd release those two new tracks. So here they are...

The first one is a track which I made almost a full YEAR ago, right around the time I was doing Better Faster Cars, and as I was realizing that the most efficient tracks (the best results with least amount of effort) were tracks which I laid down an entirely instrumental techno track of some sort, then play a very vocal heavy track over it. VIOLA! Instant success! Of course, it felt like cheating, s I avoided doing that as much as possible, until I realized during my set at the party that that was the BEST way you can possibly mash tracks together, hence why Kanye West's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is more popular than Daft Punk's version...

The next one if in exactly the same situation as before, but I'll hold off on releasing that one for now, because you've already got enough content in this one blog post. For now... Gorillaz vs John Morgan - Feel Invaded.mp3

Reeses2150's Reviews For The Intelligent Human:Heroes, Season 3 episode 6 - The Dying Of The Light:
Now to be honest, this episode was the turning point for me. I was LITERALLY ready to stop watching Heroes, this episode was the last chance to keep me watching, and good god did it! It's FINALLY coming back to rivaling to first season! Things are beginning to come together and make sense, new characters are starting to sink in, and the originally blurred lines which I hated so much are being replaced with finer ones. So now I actually know WHO is on the good side, who everyone is fighting, and I'm starting to get an idea as to what the hell is going on. ALL GOOD THINGS. I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I've got other things to get to talking about, but I just wanted to mention how this episode has finally brought Heroes back to it's former awesomeness, or close to it. I still don't like the whole sob story deal with Matt Parkman and Daphne. But, moving on...


Daily Life 1:
Well, it's about time I started talking about the Middlesex County College Halloween Party, isn't it?
Well, to start things off, let me say that it was different than ALL the other ones I've helped with, for a lot or reasons, yet strangely it had the same basic elements...
First off, it didn't rain, which was a first, literally. Every single Halloween party and All College Night had been rained on, but this one was absolutely void of all rain.

Another strange thing was I actually noticed people playing the PC games in the LAN area much more than at previous years. It was like suddenly everyone figured out that I was right about Red Faction being the best FPS out there and suddenly were in on playing it. And oh yes, it was awesome. The best part about it though, was hat at the meeting the night before AND for the first 3 hours of setting up, we could not get the damned LAN connection working right. Suddenly, it began working, and worked for the rest of the night, basically 20 minutes before the party was to start. It was awesome.

But other than that, I had an actual DJ set that I had prepared, as opposed tom last year where I just fussed around with random tracks and did a bunch of on-the-fly mash ups, which I realized immediately afterwords was a REALLY bad idea. So I spent the night before the party recording my 15 minute set and setting it all into one mp3 file, so all I'd have to do at the party is load it up and hit play. I basically kept the dance floor going (which was an already huge by comparison to other parties) for my entire set, and actually getting it to grow around midway through track 2. It does indeed fell epic, and I was getting congrats from Gordo and Paul immediately after, so I know it must have been good.

The rest of the party was pretty much what happens at any party with me. Run between
juggling with the ravers and poi-artists on the dance floor, running to find Mountain Dew and pizza, and playing Red Faction, oh and making sure that things were going well. Then comes the traditional dinner at 1:30 AM at the Edison Diner. Of course, I don't have anything because I'd just had 4slices of pizza during the party and at least 3 Mountain Dews, so yeah. I hung out with the closest thing to a juggler that went to the party, and around my area the conversation drifted to conventions and helping out at them, so of course now I get to do one of my favorite things, talk about juggling conventions! Awesome.

Also, just a quick note, I GOT TO SEE MARY AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ABOUT MONTH! Just a side note of awesome...

So bottom line, the party was awesome, and yeah. If you didn't go, sucks to have been you...

Daily Life 2:
THE RETURN OF MOBIUS-X!!! OH NOES!!!!

Well, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that me and Dan started a website forums back in the day (well, actually he had the idea, I just made it possible), and called it Mobius-X. They were made way back in around 2004, and have yet to completely die. Over the past year, and after a decent run, I left the website (which we upgraded to our own website sometime in 2005), and a little while afterwords, so did Dan. The forum trudged along for a while with the community of members keeping the post counts up, and then just slowly the forum died. Now, suddenly, skip ahead to the beginning of this month. Out of nowhere, a mass email is sent from one of the members about the 4th anniversary of the forum first opening, and a reminder that the website's hosting plan was going to run out at the end of the month. I of course, got this email, and suddenly felt like this forums had been trough too much to just die alone in a shameful nothing instead of the blaze of glory it deserves. So me, and the guy who sent the mass email (Logokas), joined up to revive the original forums (which had been badly neglected ever since the move to the website) and bring back activity.

It has worked stunningly well. Of course, I did 90% of the work after we decided to go for it, and I restored an absolutely HORRENDOUS forum code back to something sleek and pretty that also resembled the layout of the website. Basically, I made the old forums new again, and after sending out another mass e-mail, we suddenly got a FLOOD of old members coming back to post to the new forums.

I of course, didn't think it was going to last, being the realist that I am, but somehow, the amount of posts being made a day has not dropped a single bit in the past 2 weeks since I re-opened the old boards. What's even more amazing is that this amount of activity is the most activity the board has been getting since 2005! Ah, the power of mass e-mails.

Basically, if you aren't joined up to the forums, and will freely admit to being a Sonic The Hedgehog Fan, a nerd, a geek, or a lost cause, join up because you're at the rehab center. Mobius_X

Juggle This:
Well, I suppose I shoudl talk at least a little bit about Jugglers On Juggling and the status of my quest to place in the WJF5 Ring Intermediates comp, so here goes.

JoJ is a little dyslexic at the moment. I messed up in recording and uploading the last episode, so the entire thing got shifted over by a full week, but to make up for it, I made the funniest episode of the comic strip yet, and a blooper reel of footage from former episodes. That and I have no idea what I'm going to do for topics after I finish this current series about "The Un-asked Questions About Conventions". I'm thinking about doing a mini-episode as a review of the Penguin Juggling balls, which are awesome by the way, so we'll see what happens there.

As for my quest to get better with rings, through the very counter-intuitive approach of "don't practice them for a day or two and you'll suddenly find them much easier" is working, and though I'm still not able to get my 5 ring 744's, full reverses, and my 4 ring mills mess every time like I want to, I recently learned that I don't need to. I just have to get to be able to do it once every three attempts, at least for now when I'm making the routine video to submit to Jason. Wish me luck...

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

Listen Up!
So first I guess I should give an update as to what my current employment status is. Well, I'm still working going door to door and getting people vote democratic, but I'm looking at 2 other jobs right now that I found on craigslist that I might just be able to get with a pinch of luck. No interview set for either yet...
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As for college, things are finally picking up and projects are due. Finally it feels like I'm doing something. So yeah, I'm just keeping up with everything else because now my assignments are taking up heaps of my time both while I' on campus and when I'm at home. Eh, it's how things are.
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Been talking to Mary a bit more recently. The problem I realized over the last weeks was that she lives REALLY far away from me. Even though she just got her drivers license, which works out great, she's basically the same distance away from me as it is from where I am to New York City. A half hour drive AT BEST. It's ok though, she's on campus and I just have to figure out when so I can see her again sometime, but until then I've got her phone and instant messaging contact info, so we're chatting on there.
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So the last meeting for the Tech Club at MCC went, well, I'm not really sure how to put it. It was a smaller group for the meeting and there was no single thing happening. We ended up playing with Diet Coke and Mentos, fixing someones desktop computer, and trying to get networks working. It was just all over the place, and when it ended I didn't even know what happened. It's ok though, the people liked it, and this weeks meeting will be more planned out, right Gordon?
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Also be on watch, I plan on uploading a new batch of stuff to DeviantART within the next week. So keep an eye on that account.
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And I know I haven't been working on my website. Trust me, I am working on it, but remember I'm working on at least 4 other bigger things at the same time.


Daily Life:
SO. What now? Not much happening in my day to day last week...

This entire week my parents and grandma are down in Florida, and my sister is back at Monmouth, so I've got the house to myself (totally fucking sweet to say the least). That's about all I can think of. Photo 1 class maybe I can talk about how I almost poked someones eye out while in the darkroom. You know that feeling where you push your finger against something somehow and it makes a very nice *squish* and you instantly know it was something bad? Yeah, that happened.She's fine though.

Other than that, I really have no idea what happened last week that I can talk about. I didn't go anywhere, no big projects, nothing. Well, I have been paying attention to the whole economic crisis and am now trying to put all the pieces together, but you don't want to hear my take on that (all companies need gasoline to transport physical things. Gas prices went up, the cost of business went up. The cost of business went up, prices of everything went up. That plus the falling dollar value made people take out loans more than usual, and things are going bad. That and about a billion other factors, but I digress).

Yeah. OH. My DS is finally busted. The top screen has become broken on one side where the hinge is. So that now the top half is only really attached by the wire on one side and the hinge on the other. Yay. I've been thinking about getting it refurbished, but since the DSi will be coming out now, I figured I'd wait for it and just play Geometry Wars on the bottom screen for the time being.

Oh! Another random thing. I've recently discovered the awesomeness that is House MD. An awesome series that rivals CSI (vegas, all the others are crap). The one gripe I have with House is that every episode is exactly the same procedure. Find something that fits the symptoms, go to treat it, another symptom pops up, find something that fits the new symptom set, go treat it, another symptom pops up, and after about 3 or 4 rounds of this they finally get it right. Luckily that's not the heart of the show. And now that I'm on the subject of TV and it's Monday night...

Heroes. I REALLY want to believe in Season 3. I REALLY do. But the more I keep watching the more I'm starting to dislike it. First off, I've already explained in the post 2 weeks ago that they're introducing WAY too many characters and not killing off enough of them, and that's still true two episodes later. They ARE answering questions, but the answers aren't really giving tht "holy crap!" reaction that they should, more of the "no way that's possible in the canon" reaction, such as how suddenly Mr. Petrelli is alive and the mastermind behind things, how Parkman's father is now un-trapped from his mind-room and working for another NEW company, and all this completely random stuff that's REALLY stretching the limits of what's acceptable within the canon. There's a reason that the episode of Star Trek Voyager, "Threshold" was declared non-canon. But the big problem with Heroes, and so far it looks like they're going in the OPPOSITE direction of the solution, is that it's just getting to be too much. Here's Knox going after Adam Monroe, Hiro killing Ando, Claire suddenly not sure what the hell she's doing anymore, and this whole new company that somehow has managed to slip right past us for TWO YEARS. It's just too much to keep track of.

That and the other thing that sucks now is how they're trying to blurr the line between good and evil. NO! Heroes Season 1 was great because it never did that. It was us vs Sylar and the company. That's IT. None of this "Is Noah good because he's still trying to be a family man but is not willing to give anyone a second chance ever?" crap. We knew what was going on and knew where everyone stood. Now I have no idea who's who anymore, and I don't like it.

Juggle This:
So, now that Philly Fest is over, I've been having that post-convention-"I don't feel like juggling right now" syndrome. HOWEVER! That's not to say I haven't been practicing and doing stuff. Firstly, I finally setup my routine for the WJF and got in my attire, now I just have to record it and send the video to Jason. While I was making it up though, I realized that I only had about 18 moves I was going to be doing the entire time, so I came up with 2 or three new tricks with 4 rings right on the spot and did them kneeling in my room to see if I can do them. The big one was a cross armed sync fountain, which I haven't seen anyone else ever do, and the other I'll leave for you guys to guess at.

That, and the deadline for the Rec.Juggling video is coming up fast, so I'm shooting some more footage for that video, including an arm balance flip. I toss from a hand balance to an arm balance, and from there flip the club 1/2 spin and catch it midway down my arm again before putting it back to the hand balance. It looks epic because I got a really good background and lighting for it, plus it's an awesome trick.

Also, I uploaded a few clips from Philly Fest to my youtube profile, and they're getting a few views, I'm, just not sure whether I should upload Greg Kennedy's routine. It's not that it's not an awesome routine, it's that he hasn't put a video of it online yet and I don't want to steal his thunder. Whatever, I'll wait on it and see what happens, I've got an episode of JoJ to release anyways. Speaking of which...

So having gone to Philly Fest last week, and while uploading video to youube, I started thinking about JoJ and how I hadn't picked a topic yet for the new episode to come out. Then I looked at what I was doing and thought of the best topic I could have ever come up with on the fly, Conventions. Not just what they are and the usual BS, but a lot of the specific unanswered and unasked questions like "How do I call for a game of combat?" or "What do I do for sleeping space?", because most people hardly think about these things until they're already in the situation where they need the answer 10 minutes ago. So I came up with a big list of all these types of questions, and I'll be making the next 2 episodes at least answering these questions. So far it's going very well. Of course the 4th episode isn't even up yet, because I had to do assignments and work over the weekend so It'll be up probably on WEDNESDAY, but hey, it's the price you pay for improvement I guess...

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

Listen Up!
So, to all the jugglers out there, I've just updated my juggling shirt store. The Siteswap Shop. I've added at least 7 new designs and updated everything. It's great, so check it out, you never know what you'll find there.
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Now that that blatant ad is out of the way, yes this post is a week late, and there's good reason behind it. First off, I had college work to do. Second, I had an episode of JoJ to make and promote. Third, I had a job to recover from. Last, I knew that this post was going to be HUGE.
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So what's my situation when it comes to college? Well, it's all a mash-up of stuff right now. My classes are all great so far, and even my Solid Modeling class (the one with the idiot professor) isn't too bad because I can still breeze through the assignments in about 1/3rd the time of everyone else. As for Tech.MCC, now there's something that I definitely need help with. The pranking meeting kinda bombed, and I've got no real ideas for this upcoming meeting on Thursday, so I'm really not sure what's going on. That and I also have to draft up a new constitution, give the contact info of all the officers to student activities, and plead with the guys who sign the checks about stationary that should have been printed somewhere else. Enough to make anyone else insane.
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My working situation. Well, when I called up Vino with the specs for the computer that I was going to buy, like he told me to do (this was the last call before I was to be given the check to buy it with), he says that because of the Dow plunging and the economy, he can't hire anyone new for at least 3 months. I'm sitting here now for about ten minutes with a blank stare of "are you fucking kidding me." So now I'm campaigning for the Democratic party and looking for another job or two once that stops.
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So if you couldn't figure it out from the last two or three posts, me and Mary. Yes, me and Mary. Until the club fair a month ago, I hadn't seen here in a year, and now that I have, we got up to calling and instant messaging each other again. The usual talking about nothing and how much work sucks mostly, but that's a good thing. I don't exactly like talking politics because I realize almost no matter what, it's all going to hell in the coming years, everyone else just doesn't realize it yet. But yeah, she's awesome. Probably the best thing is simply something on my end, is that I'm not intimidated or confused by her. She actually knows what the hell she's talking about and has a brain. I love being able to understand and level with someone, especially when it's a girl (to be honest, she's the first girl I've felt that wit5h, and it's great). What sucks is that our schedules are perfectly matched so that we DON'T see each other at all. She'd working while I'm at home, and when I'm at class she's hanging out somewhere else. It sucks, but eventually we'll be able to meet up, although it sucks again because the College administration has somehow FINALLY managed to destroy the corner, how they did it I have no idea.
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Daily Life:
So, seeing as how the job working for Vino didn't pan out (thank you very much economic crisis), I'm stuck campaigning for the democratic party. Don't get me wrong, there's a few really great things about the job, but they're all balanced out by the bad stuff. First off, it's great because it's customer service work, which is what I'm exceptional at, even though I really don't get the same kick out of it anymore. It's also easy because all I have to do is take down stuff on a palm device, and nothing more. It sucks though because I have to walk around constantly and meet a daily quota of houses that I've got to hit. It also sucks because you've got to force yourself on people in order to keep them from slamming the door on you immediately. To boil it down, it's easy work, but you have to sell your soul each time you punch in.

Every shift lasts 5 hours, that's all you're allowed to work. It starts when you arrive and are given the palm and your list of houses to hit. Then everyone piles into a tiny van that barely holds all ten people, and we get dropped off at our respective places. Sometimes you get lucky and are dealt the list with an apartment complex on it, other times you've got a long stretch with houses spanning for 30 blocks up a single road. You never know.

That's basically it for the job. There's no real way to get stories out of it, and nothing really spectacular is going to happen at any time while you're out there. So with that out of the way, let's talk about what I did THIS weekend, and one of the reasons this post is a week late.

Juggle This: PHILLY FEST 08!
So, as my pattern of flopping every year between Cornell and Philly continues, this year was a year for Philly Fest. And I'm not taking anything away from Cornell, but Philly was awesome this year. Firstly, before I get into talking about what happens, it felt really weird for me because this is the first convention I've gone to in the past 2 years that I haven't made a video for. I made one for WJF3, WJF4, Cornell, and Juggle This, and so it felt odd not spending half of my time gathering footage of stuff.

Let me also say, that I've been looking for the topic for my next episode of JoJ, and while I was there, I found it. Conventions. Simple things that people don't know about at conventions like the unwritten or unspoken rules and just a bunch of stuff about how to have the best time at one. So that should be out on the 13th if all goes well with my recording.

Ok, so now let's actually star talking about what happened. So I planned to wake up on the 4th around 8:30 or 9:00 so that I can get there right as the gym oppens, but I really overestimated myself on that one. Even Juggling won't get me too do anything before 10:00. So I get everything ready and hit to Turnpike, and I get into Philadelphia sometime around 11:40. At the exact intersection between the street I was on and the street where the parking garage I needed to be in was, I got caught in a red light as the last car. So I'm sitting right at the front of the intersection, and I start hearing sirens coming from my left. All of the sudden, at least 4 cop cars and 2 bikes show up and block off the intersection so that a MASSIVE motorcycle parade/rally/pack can drive through. This takes somewhere around the order of another 10 minutes to my already one and a half hour long drive down from Woodbridge. What really got me was that 90% of them were all hardcore real American biker types, and then right at the end, about 10 seconds behind the last biker, was a guy in a blue business shirt driving a tricycle, you know, the one that's like a motorcycle with 2 rear wheels and makes you look like a dork/pussy? Yeah. I cracked up right on the spot.

So I make it into the convention space, and first thing I see ifs that the guy who gave me a couch to sleep on for Juggle This, Adam, is there, and he's learning to pass 7 clubs. This is the guy who couldn't juggle 5 balls when I first me him only a few months ago and is now learning to pass more clubs than I can. I also notice that a lot of the big new-school names are absent except for Marcus Monroe and obviously Paris. But there was no Wes, Joe, Dave, Laura, pretty much nobody from the upper NY state crew at all. It got me a little bummed, but hey, there's plenty of awesome jugglers to balance it out.

Day one was pretty well good. No real stand out moments that made the entire convention, just the normal good moments like playing combat, buying stuff, and winning games of one club horse. Actually, I take that back, I met a group of guys passing rings (the best kind of passing, and also the rarest for some reason), and after a while doing front to back 3 person stuff, I got to qualifying 7 ring ultimates with one of them, which was epic. Oh, and also being able to practice the ball rolling surface again and managing to get an 8 ball fountain down to an on command trick with it, but that's going too far into it. Back to the general convention stuff though, one thing I did do wrong was that I barely took any breaks for the entire 7 hours before the show started. Bad idea. My adrenaline was going pretty good so I didn't feel that much, but once the show started and I was sitting down, I felt my feet slowly becoming more and more painful. That is the absolute WORST. The show made up for it though. Greg Kennedy, was awesome as usual. The kids from Penguin Juggling Co did absolutely great. Josh did good, though a little bland in the performance style. The last act absolutely killed though. If only I could remember who the hell it was...

So once that was over, it was time for the annual party. I ran out and joined the convoy to the place, and while there, realized that I hadn't eaten since the Subway sub I had before I got onto the Turnpike at about 10:20. There wasn't much there in terms of food, but I wasn't really hungry and I decided that I was already burning fat and should continue to do so, so I didn't eat anything more than a few crackers and stuff. Instead, I noticed Marty in the corner doing cheap bar tricks with coins, so I grab a bunch of toothpicks and show off a few tricks that I know. It was great, until 10 minutes in and I realized, that since everyone was a juggler and as such were just as stubborn as anyone, I had to wait there for 30 minutes before revealing the answers to each one. Then, I became the victim of a fabulous new one that I hadn't seen before. Basically a pile of matches represents a number and you have to tell what the number is. The trick is that the number is simply the number of fingers that the guy is putting on the table, but you're too concentrated on figuring out the toothpick portion that you never see it until 20 minutes later when you're back starts hurting from being hunched over the table and you finally see it out of the corner of your eye. I never got the guy back because I was already out of toothpick tricks.

So after getting a good bit of sleep on the floor at the party, I awoke to find everyone getting ready to go for breakfast and then day two. Mind you, my feet STILL hurt from yesterday, and not only that, but I'd slept on my hand wrong and it will be painful to juggle ALL DAY, the problem is I don't know that yet. So breakfast is good, we get back to the convention, and I get out five rings. The very first throw I cringe and realize exactly what's going on with my wrist, and now I'm mad. I deal with the pain though by getting a bunch of good tricks and building enough adrenaline to block out the pain, so yeah. More combat, more awesome stuff, and then right at the end of the convention, I get some footage of me doing new diabolo tricks I'd learned and me qualifying a 7 ball cascade with 16 catches.


The best part was actually when the gym closed at 5:00 and I walked out to the parking lot to find 2 other people still juggling out there because they didn't want to stop. I join them, and we keep going until sometime around 6:20 when we all realize at the same moment what time it is. Awesome.

Overall, a great convention. By far not the best, but as I've learned about things in life, it's usually the most subtle ones that end up being the best and most memorable. We'll see what happens with that phrase, and we'll see what happens at the WJF, seeing as how I'm most likely not going to Cornell this year.

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