A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
What happened today? Too much, but I'll get to that later. For right now, let's get the usual updates out of the way.
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Jugglers On Juggling. Yes, I know that episode 6 is already a full week late. Believe me, I've got a topic for it and I've planned out what I'm going to say. all I have to do is record it, edit it, and put it up. I should be able to do all of that tomorrow if nothing goes wrong, and then after that I'm back to being out of ideas for episode topics. Ah, the vicious cycle of forced inspiration. I think that episode 7 may just be a special all about rings episode. Because I think they are the absolute BEST and most neglected prop in juggling.
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College, puttering along as usual. Of course today's story has to do entirely with what happened today at college, but that I'll get into later. Let me just say it again. Solid Modeling Professor is an idiot, Photo 1 is fun as hell, Business 101 is easy as hell and the best professor ever, and Art in Industry and Commerce is a simple and fun class. I'm getting at least C's on basically every paper I get back. So things are lookin' up.
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What else to talk about, OH! My next major juggling video! It's basically ready to go! I've already uploaded the trailer, which it has 100+ views just by itself, and I'm going to use that trailer in episode 6 of JoJ. Then the video will be uploaded on the 28th. YAY! Ok, so the first music video is 4 minutes long, then I've got a second bonus video in there because I had so much good footage I didn't want to waste, so add another 2 minutes. It's about 6 and a half minutes long.
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My preparations for WJF5. Everything looks fairly promising. I haven't gotten worse with my ring skills from where I was, and every practice session I do it takes me less and less time to warm up enough to start going through my routine. This may end up being not such a total disaster after all. Wouldn't it be a shock if I were to win ring intermediates? WhOAH that would be awesome!
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Daily Life:
I started writing this post on Monday after coming home from the awesome trip of hell and fire, but then stopped because I just needed sleep after that day was over. So now I get to talk about it! YAY!

Ok, so here I am trying to get my sleep schedule back on track because for the past week, I've been going to sleep at times between 5:00 AM (and no earlier) and 6:45 AM. Needless to say, that's a bit bad, even for me. SO I decided the night before that I would try to reset my internal sleep clock by depriving myself of sleep one night then making up for it the next. Seems to have worked by the way, but the problem was, the day I decided to deprive myself of sleep for, was Monday. So I've got 2 classes, one of which is a field trip for Photo 1 class into New Brunswick, and I'm doing it on 4 hours of sleep.

So the day starts off fine, considering the 4 hour sleep part, and then I walk into my Solid Modeling class. He assigns 2 drawings to be handed in at the end of the period, from parts which we have to take the original measurements on. If you don't know engineering or how much work that is in CAD, it's like asking someone to fix the lawn mower in ten minutes. Granted, it CAN be done, but you'll be rushing like MAD to get it done. So that was fun, and in fact, most of the class had to stay in the class for a half hour after it ended to get the drawings done. So what was supposed to be my hour of juggling practice at 5:00 turned into my 20 minutes of practice at 5:40. Douche.

So after coming back from a horrible session because I couldn't warm up, it was time for Photo1. Now, last week in the middle of my last roll of film for an assignment that was due that day, my camera BROKE. It stopped advancing the film inside for absolutely no reason, and I still haven't managed to fix it yet. SO I'm having to rent out one of the piece of shit college cameras. Why are they a piece of shit? They don't have any light meter inside of them, they don't have the ability to recommend a shutter speed, and to top all that off, you have absolutely no idea whether the film inside is advancing because the slot for the film on the opposite side of the canister will NOT have a firm grip on the film at any time. I developed an entirely blank roll the last time I used that camera because the film slipped out of the grip and didn't advance.

So here I am with a piece of shit camera, running around New Brunswick trying to shoot a series of things the professor wants, in the cold rain and people staring at us. I'm used to the staring and I've got absolutely no problem with the rain, but the thing is to take this series of shots, we had to run around a total of 8 blocks around a square each side. So the total was about 24 blocks of New Brunswick that the groups had to run around from. Now the shots themselves were rather easy, but another one of the problems was we had a hand drawn map, that only I was able to read. Our group would walk around for about 10 minutes before I'd get fed up, hand the equipment I'm carrying (tripod, camera, light meter, backpack, and another camera) take out the map, and point us in the correct direction. This was even more annoying when the blocks turned hilly and we had to walk up and down.

Example, we had to go to a storefront and take a picture of the Boar's Head sign hanging in the window. No problem, did that, waited for everyone else who didn't know their camera from a block of cheese to do it, and followed them downhill to the next shot. The next shot was a picture of a building. They got to the bottom of the hill and then started wondering which building everyone needed to photo. I again, 5 minutes later, unload my shit on someone else, and I say "Ok, in 5 seconds I will tell you the correct building. 1..." and between 1 and 3 I take the map out of my pocket and open it, on 4 I find where we are on the map, which way we're oriented, and where the building was in relation, and on 5, point and go "That one". Guess where it was. Right at the top of the hill we just walked down on the other side of the street...

So I lug all this crap back to the top of the hill, and begin finding the right spot to get the entire building in frame. It was a little tough because of the amount of trees there were right in our way, but I found the spot, and took my shots (from the sidewalk). The rest of the people in my group though, except for the one guy who actually knows shit about his rights and photography, jump up the ledge and onto the grass of this private property and start to frame their shots. Of course now, the security guard shows up and starts being an absolute dickhole about us being on private property. You know, the classic stuff "I'm gonna call the cops!" "You'd better delete that film!" ""You have no right to take pictures of this building!". Which of course he was 100% correct about, for the idiot Indian chicks sitting there with tripods and telephoto lenses on the grass. But then he walks over to me and starts giving ME shit.

Now, my feet are already tired, I'm sleepy, cranky, I've already taken the shots I need of the building, and I've only got 1 thing left to photo, so I figure I'm not going to argue with this ignorant ass and make his day, I just grab my stuff and walk away to the next shot which was right down the adjacent street. Now here's the thing, the Indian idiots, are actually ARGUING with this guy. "Oh, we got permission from our professor to take pictures!" "You can't take our film!" "We have the rights!" UHhhhhhhhhhh........

I literally grab them and drag them away meanwhile they're calling the professor on their cell phones to try and fight with the guy. I have absolutely no idea how, but I managed to distract them long enough and convince them to move on to their next shot, meanwhile the guard is following us on the other side of the street. I know he can't do anything to me, so I just smile and wave. The next shot I find, is a tombstone that we have to take a picture of in a graveyard. Now, on the sheet of paper with the list of things to photo, he has on it "Tombstone 17417 + 1793" or whatever, so I and everyone else assumes that it's a specific tombstone with those numbers on it that we need to photo.

Well, after a half hour of walking around the graveyard in the rain with sore feet and a bad temper, I find nothing. So I just say to the other logical guy in the group "Fuck it, let's just photo a random tombstone and go get food." He agrees, we take a picture of a tombstone, and star walking back up the street, when the other group decides to join us, and they ask me and the other guy for help with their cameras. We can't be assholes, so we sit there for another half hour helping these idiots from failing. We FINALLY get done, and I figure "OK, I'm not letting ANYONE else lead me back to the vans, because I don't want to backtrack with the way my feet hurt, I'M NAVIGATING."

So we get back to the place where we're supposed to meet our professor, which was a Dunkin Donuts, and bam, he's not there. Now everyone's confused and wants to go look for him. Again, I say "Fuck That. There's a pizza place across the street, I'm going to get a slice, if he shows up, come and tell me." I walk across the street and look into the window, guess who I see... ... PROFESSOR WHITEY! (that is his actual name by the way, it's awesome)

I yell to the guys outside Dunkin Donuts that he's there, but still they insist on sitting there for another ten minutes while I sit inside eating my pizza. So as soon as that's over, we all pile back into the rented transport vans and head back to Middlesex for cookies and pie (I wish)...

Now, seeing as how we just spent 3 hours in the New Brunswick Rain and class was supposed to end in about 20 minutes, the professor gave us the due date on the shots we took as next week, and boom we were off. Of course, he offered everyone who was in Lot 1 (the furthest lot from the building we were in) to jump in the van and be driven to their cars (seeing as how we just walked 24 blocks through rain in New Brunswick). Of course, I take the opportunity right then. "The van doors are still unlocked" he says, and so I run right into the van with a few others expecting him to be out within the next 60 seconds.

Flash forward to ten minutes later and he's still not there, and I'm jonzing to watch Heroes. He finally comes out to drive us out, and I FINALLY am ready to go home. At this point, I don't want to talk to anyone, walk anywhere, do ANYTHING except get home and watch Heroes. So I put on my Daft punk CD, make my way down 287, and boom I'm home. "FINALLY" is the last thing that goes through my head as I lay back and hit the TV on button...


Juggle This:
So my 7 rings hasn't improved, well mostly because I've been too busy practicing my 4-6 in preparation for WJF5, but that's besides the point. I just figured I'd give an update on that because I still CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT 11 CATCHES OF 7 RINGS!

SO back to what matters, Jugglers On Juggling. I was planning on recording the new episode tonight and having it out tomorrow, but that's obviously not going to happen, so I'm still completely stuck on what's going to happen with it. All I know is this, I'm going to make it a screen-cap episode, where I record what's going on on screen as I'm editing together and explaining what makes a good trailer for a new video, DVD, or pay for project, and yeah, that will be the episode, because there's a LOT of material to cover in there and not enough people really know how to create hype for their stuff. So whenever I get the chance to, I'll be doing that. For now, Enjoy the trailer for my next video, Zero Sixteen...



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