A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

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