A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Well, nothing particularly amazing, I can assure you.
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So college classes start in 2 days. I'm a little bit nervous to see what hppens with these new classes, mostly because of me not having a job and being a little low on money. Sure I can afford a DSLR if I need to get one for Photo2, and I can afford all the books I'll need if it turns out I need all of them, but only just, and that's what's making me nervous. Otherwise, all my classes look like they're gonna be GREAT! Photo2, More Business classes, and the last class I need to get my CAD certificate, all I need is a D or higher and I can be proclaimed legally as a qualified draftsman! WOO!
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So the job hunt is hitting a little snag. I didn't realize that the market really HAS dried up as much as it has. I've already hit dead ends (or what seems to be) with Fed-Ex, Blockbuster, Gamestop, and other local stores. I'm right now running down and seeing if I can get something at Lowes (the cineplex and the hardware store), Best Buy, USPS, and Walmart. Here's hoping one of them goes through...
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I'm really not sure what else has gone on that I can quickly sum up. I've started using Twitter again, /Reeses2150. I got and beat a cold over the past week. It snowed, a lot, and often. Plus I'm still having trouble with episode ideas for JoJ. Damnit, this new format I'm using for the podcast, it's sure leading to a much better end product, but it's just so hard to come up with ideas for. Well at least I met my promise back in the summer to make at least a half dozen episodes before the season ends, so anything from here until the end of the season is gravy.
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Juggle This 1:
Uh, yeah. So I think I've pretty much refined and finished what I could do with "Club and Ball". I think I came up with a lot of good stuff, and the video looks great. I'm happy with it no matter how many views it gets, so yeah.

Because of all thew snow, I can't record my pot manipulation video yet, which I was so stoked to FINALLY be taking one of my old ideas and making a full on routine video out of it. I AM going to do this video, and I WILL also be making a routine video for the picture frame routine, although I can't say when that will be even CLOSE to ready. I'm still coming up with more ideas for it, and it sucks because I can't use the main method I came up with for holding on to it, which was to tape 2 hangars to the ceiling and hang the frame from them, because "It damages the ceiling too much". Ok, I'll give you that, but weren't we already going to repaint my room and the ceiling sometime this year anyways? So what's the point in trying to preserve it exactly the way it is? It's like getting a new TV, and instead of having fun with your old TV (like taking a sledgehammer to it or safely dropping it off a high building) you just throw it out. I NEVER understand that type of logic...

Ok, I've rambled on long enough about that, it's time to let you know what I've ACTUALLY been doing in terms of progress and props. Now, if you've been paying attention to me on Rec.Juggling, I lost one of my 5 penguin balls at WJF5. Before WJF5, I had given away/sold all of my old black and yellow Dube bags to people I was teaching how to juggle. SO besides my set of 5 Dube Illuminated balls, I now only have one set of good balls, and I've only got 4 of them. So I was in the market for some new balls. Of course, I still had hope because even though I had had a fiasco and a field day (at the same TIME no less!) with the penguin juggling 24 panel suedes, I was going to receive a set of 5 of the new 12 panel suedes of the same size. The short story is that I ordered the 24 panels while they were out of stock, waited a LONG time, contacted them asking what the status was, being informed by them that a week ago they had discontinued the ball I ordered and were instead replacing that product with a 12 panel version by a different manufacturer, I got pissed off about them not notifying me or putting out ANY kind of word of this to ANYONE, I complain, I get no response.

Then I remember that I'd tried out the jugglingstore.com Tangent Bags at Juggle This last year, and LOVED the way they felt. SO I go to order them on jugglingstore, and guess what, they have been discontinued as well! DAMNIT! Of course, I had to learn this by calling their office, the only thing that is shown on the website is that they are out of stock. Does any juggling distributor now anything about PR and customer service? Either way...

So I've really (thanks to the 24 panel penguins) become addicted to suede and want NOTHING BUT SUEDE. Then I look around and see that nothing else really fit my liking, and so I get an idea. If I sold all of my bags, and people are still trading FERGIES around inside the community, maybe I can find someone with a used set of Tangent bags that I can pick up! So I put the word on rec.juggling, and I get a response from a guy who's got 5 he's willing to part with. Of course, he can only find 3 of them right now, and so I say to let me have them and if he finds the other two, I'll buy them later. So skip ahead about 4 days for the postal service to work it's magic and here I am with a BEAUTIFUL set of 3 tangent bags. Could not be happier. So then, all of the sudden, about 2 or three days later, I get a message in my inbox from penguin juggling saying my order has shipped! WOO! New balls! Again, wait over the weekend to allow the postal service to move item A from B to C, and here I am, staring at a package that looks really big for only 5 balls. I open it, look at the receipt, and see a note on there saying that "here's 5 extra balls for the inconvenience". GREAT! Still doesn't entirely make up for the bad PR< but at least they've got the right idea to stop me from complaining in a blog about them, or wait a minute....

Well either way, so now I've got a set of TEN penguin 12 panel suedes, and, well, they are the worst bags I've ever used in my life. I have absolutely no idea why they wanted to change the bags in the first place, but these new ones feel EXACTLY like moss covered rocks. I'm not joking. The suede is really shallow, and the bags are overfilled with birdseed to the point of bursting. I thought, "crap. I'm going to have to return these and look for someone else with more tangent bags." But then I noticed something odd.

I put one of the tangent bags right next to the penguin bags, and somehow noticed the size of the panels on each. They looked pretty close to being the same size, so I measured them, compared them, put them up against each other, and guess what. The panels on Tangent bags and the new penguin bags are EXACTLY the same size. I'm thinking, there is no way this could possibly be true. Butthen I figure, I've got 10 bags, let me see what happens. So I decided right there, to see if I could remove enough seeds from the penguin bags, to make it feel the same as the tangent. I did that, and after a letting out nearly half a dixie cup worth of seeds, I sewed it back up, and they feel like EXACTLY the same bag. I could not believe my luck. Apparently, the same manufactures that used to make the tangent bags, are either now making the new penguin bags, or sold the design for the tangent bag to the company now making the penguin bags. Bottom line, they are the same material, same size, and after having removed a half dixie cup of seeds from three more, I have a set of 7 Tangent bags, and a set of 6 penguin bags (which I'm optimistically hoping I can get my college friends to break in for me. Because I have no idea how good they'll be when broken in). Good times.

Juggle This 2:
Damnit! I've told a great story there, but I still haven't said a damned thing about what I've done recently! CRAP! Well, after going to Laguardia Airport with dad to pick up my sis from her trip to Europe, I decided that while waiting for her 11:00 PM flight to arrive, I have a nice ceiling and these new bags with me to practice 6 with. Over the course of the hour wait, I managed 48 catches of 6 balls, 4 rounds of 66661, and came OH SO CLOSE to doing a 5 ball cascade with head balance, then dropping the 6th ball from my head into the pattern. I need to do that move again now. Besides my ball skills, which are amazing considering how long it's been since I practicing anything more than 5 balls, I've been working on my ring overheads.

Now, my ring overheads have been a thing of beauty for a while. The only problem? I could only throw right handed overheads, so although I could run it up to 4 rings, I still had yet to flash 3 ring overheads in 1 count. The short version is, after less than 3 days of practice, all under my 8 foot ceiling in my room, I've qualified 3 ring overheads on camera, and then in the garage flashed 4 ring full overheads with 3 throws. I'm amazed at how much progress I'm getting for how little practice I actually do.

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