A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Damnit, not again. Sorry I missed last weeks post, again! I really am busy and tired now that I've got a full job that I'm working at and all the random stuff like jobs for my parents, keeping up with TV and movies, and socializing with everyone I know and love. I'm just absolutely swamped each day, and I really do have to apologies about it.
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Well Tech.MCC is hit a snag. The summer meetings I've officially dropped, partly because noone seems to have the time or money to go, but that everyone's really lost interest in them since last year. Part of the reason is because Tech.MCC is going through a change in it's core members, because a lot of the older members are graduating and being replaced by new freshmen and sophomores, and though this is wonderful in terms of what new stuff we can do as a club, it really is mixing things up. Since the summer meetings are not happening I had the idea to have at least one or two summer parties at a members house (maybe even my place), but right now I don't have time to think about that.
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WORK! Work, work, work work, work......
I couldn't be happier about the amounts of money I have coming in, but it has the terrible price of sucking up time like you wouldn't believe. It takes an hour to get there and back, that and managing two stores, especially on shipment days, arew absolutely insane. I mean, especially now that shipments only seem to be coming in on Thursdays and nothing else the entire week, it means I'm sitting there and only working for 3 hours total on non-shipment days, and then thursday I'm there from 2 PM until closing time trying to find room to put everything! Granted, it is a bit exciting trying to beat the clock like that....
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Well, I'm still waiting for my degree certificate to process.....
I've already paid them and submitted my application for it back a full month ago it seems, and still no word on whether my certificate is there to pick up or not. I mean, granted, right now I don't have the time of energy to go out and search for a new job in the CAD field, but it'd be nice if they had a system that took less than a full damned month to send me a piddly little certificate :P
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Daily Life:
So let me think, what stories do I have from the past two weeks that would be moderately interesting...
Not much I'm afraid. I mean sure I've had a few hard days at work, especially the Thursday Shipments on the 18th, but reall I've said the exact same story before. I have 3 carts worth of plants per store and I spend an hour throwing away half-dead plants and rearranging stuff to make room. It's a tedious and time consuming thing, but it's not very interesting at all. "I put the hydrogenias up front and they instantly started selling before I was even done, I brought over the kart full of Kalanchoes and put them out next to the Hydros..." Yeah, not very exciting or interesting...

I haven't been doing much traveling or anything thanks to me trying to save money for the IJA, so no go there. I've been hanging out with my old friend from last year a bit recently, but not much to talk about there other than I went over her apartment, played Rock Band and Mario Kart with her and her friends, and then watched a few movies. Again, something interesting to do, but not really to talk about. See this is why I miss working in customer service jobs, because granted I LOVE working for Kurt Weiss, where I basically set my own hours and schedule, and the work is fairly easy, but I don't get to deal with anything interesting like I did back when I was working at Shoprite or Spencers. I don't get to say "And then this one customer came in wearing just his robe and asked if we had any marmalade" or anything... No interesting stories, just the same thing. It's actually a slight bit of a bummer now that I think about it, but again I have the wonderful paycheck and flexible schedule and easy work to offset that and make me love this job!

One thing I have done recently is get SmartFTP working again, so I've finally updated my website with stuff. I'm redesigning some of the pages right now and planning to add more, but for the moment I've uploaded a bunch of new pictures to the gallery, added my deviantart gallery slideshow to my photography page, and updated the juggling page to showcase my juggling videos. I'm planning to make a Stories page, where I'll post story videos and excerpts from my blog to, and I'll also be copying my window media player guide from customize.org onto my website as a page, hopefully with visual examples so that it will be even EASIER to follow for everyone, because I have received a few emails with questions and it's been WAY too long since I've done something relating to windows media player...

Juggle This:
The IJA is coming up QUICK. And my plan is to release my next video "Adverse Reaction, right before I leave. Right now I think I've got just enough footage, but I'm looking to get one more absolutely INSANE 4 box trick I came up with before I start cutting it all together. What trick? Well, I'm really eager to get it and I want to be the first person to get it because I've never seen anyone else do anything similar, so you're just gonna have to wait for it I'm afraid, heheh.

That said though, I talked to Michael Karas recently about finding a roommate for IJA, since I had a hotel room already reserved and the deposit already put in, and he came up with a wonderfully amazing suggestion and tipped me off to something I had no idea about. The Bindlestiff guys had rented out a nearby orphanage and were housing jugglers for the convention at $25 a NIGHT. That is AMAZING. As soon as he sent me the info I reserved the room, and though originally we though "well I guess I'll be eating hundred bucks, I realized that I could just modify my reservation to be for one night, that was I have one night at the end of the con to sleep in a nice suite and then the other 6 days I'll be staying in on the cheap! Thanks so much Michael! You really did save my ass there! Because I'm sitting here looking at a bank account balance of 500 dollars, and I have to pay for gas, the room, food, and whatever stuff I do there. So yeah, thanks a ton.

Other than that though, just yesterday I found a strange little mini-routine that I found to be quite addictive and probably entertaining. I'd be starting off doing a 3 ball box, and then switch the pattern around to other patterns like a shower or a double box, or a [6,4x][3,0]* and I'd do it all in time as I count from 1 to 8. So I'd do 8 rounds of a box followed by 8 rounds of a shower, etc. Then after going through the basics I'd mic and match it so that it's almost musical. I really liked what I was doing, and I think I'm gonna see about developing it into a short thing I can perform, or at least turn into a mini-routine video.

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

Listen Up!
Ok, before I start, I'm not talking about work in the Daily Life section, so I need to get something off my chest here. The people in HQ who determine what we get in terms of shipments are completely insane, lol. Thursday, they sent me boston ferns when I asked both my supervisor and my rep at HQ for NO MORE BOSTON FERNS! They also sent me three full carts worth of stuff when we had no place to put any of it to both stores last Monday. I know it's what they're supposed to do with the weekly refresh shipment (Monday), but for gods sake listen when my supervisor tells you that WE DON'T HAVE ROOM FOR ALL THOSE DAMN KALANCHOES!!!! XD
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Besides that though, I'm really considering letting the summer meetings for Tech.MCC go right now. It seems that noones attending them, and the two that we didn't cancel had a total of three people, and then one person show up. I love being able to go out once a week, but I really am not sure what to do. I really wanted a less meeting-like thing where it was basically a once every 2 or three week party at a mmbers house, but so far noone seems to be willing to host. Well I'll see what happens there, it's a little low on my priorities list at the moment unfortunately.
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Daily Life:
So let me talk about my day today. I knew last night that today was gonna be busy and/or suck, because either we were gonna get a shipment at work and I'd have to go in and make room for all the stuff they sent me, or I wouldn't need to go into work and instead have to run errands that my mom has been bugging me to do for the past week. Well it turns out I didn't get an email from my supervisor, so no shipment came in, and I was off to do errands.

Before I even managed to do that though, I needed to put away my clothes "BEFORE THEY GET WRINKLED!" *grumbles* "Watch this mom," *smoothes out the wrinkles with my hands* "TA-DA!" but if I did that for real I'd get a nice slap for sure. So I did all that for no reason, and then I was off to the Department Of Motor Vehicles to get my license renewed, as my mother had been panicking about for the past two weeks at least. My old license would have expired at the end of the month, that means I still had 16 DAYS TO DO IT, but alas she's panicking because she still believes I haven't gotten my old habit of waiting until the last minute to do something, but whatever. So I tried going there a few days ago, but the route I know was blocked by a bridge that was out, so I had to turn around and go to work after trying to find the detour unsuccessfully. Today I go to the alternate route my parents told me about, and guess what, IT'S BLOCKED TOO! Luckily I was able to follow the detour and make my way there somewhat easily, filling out the forms and getting my new license without much trouble.

Went back home to drop off all my Id's and my passport and now it's off to college to apply for my CAD Certificate. I'd just completed all the required courses last semester, and now was the time to get the fancy piece of paper I deserved. Of course I have no idea what I'm doing, this being my first time applying for the actual degree, so I get the run-around going from registrar, to adviser, to cashier, to registrar before finally managing to fill out the right paperwork and put it in with the right people. Of course what I love most is that the entire deal is gonna cost me 50 bucks total by the time the degree gets MAILED to the college, they call me, and I go in AGAIN to pick it up. What the hell is that!?

So after I get the run around and things go through, I move over to the theater, where I am free to use the stage to practice juggling on and gather footage while the theater majors watch and do their own thing. I made a few easy tricks, tried a couple things including 5 ring cakes and a nice 4 ring string of tricks, and then I felt I was ready to move up and try to match some of my best tricks for my next video. I was going for three things after that first half hour or so of easier tricks, an 8 ring flash, a clean 7 rign qualify, and 6 ring flat-front wimpy's for more than just a flash. I worked on swapping them around for a good hour before finally pulling off one, the 8 ring flash. My arms are already sore enough, but thn I am committed to doing the other two, especially because I know that I'm not gonna be back on campus to go again anytime soon and I'm as warmed up as I would ever be.

I continued to struggle with the 6 ring wimpys before getting a good 8 catches and deciding that was plenty. I hit the camera again, took a brief break and then went for the toughest trick of the three, the 7 ring qualify with no drops. I qualified twice with a drop after the 15th catch, and though that's good enough, I want this next video to be perfect, so I threw that out and kept going while the skin on the back of my pinky peeled off and the nail on my left index finger separated from the skin. I made it and collapsed into a chair immediately afterward, happy as hell about making the trick. I made my way home before the soreness kicked in, and spent the rest of the night relaxing and converting the videos I'd just gotten.


Juggle This:
So if you haven't been paying attention, I'm heading to the IJA, but I need to talk about two things with it. Firstly, my roommate bailed, and now I'm stuck with a reserved room that I absolutely cannot pay for by myself and only a few weeks to find someone to stay with me, at a time when everyone's already figured out where they're staying! *grumbles* But on the flipside, I got an email from Matt Hall saying that my workshop request was good and that I will be heading up the videography workshop on day two! *cheers*

For the workshop I think I'm gonna end up splitting the hour into fifteen minute segments, because there's three parts I want to cover and then I'll leave a fifteen minute bit at the end for practice. The three segments I'm thinking will go like this... Equipment and setup, Framing/Lighting/Angles, and then editing/footage tips. I don't want to give away the entire workshop right here, so that's all I'll say about it, but I am eager as hell now to be in charge of my first workshop, EVER. Granted, as I look at the schedule, it seems the IJA has at least 3 workshops constantly goign on, so I have no idea how many people will show up for mine, but whatever, I'm ecstatic regardless!

Like I said in the daily life section, I've been doing some CRAZY stuff recently for my next video, and looking back at the trailer, I'm glad I did put in what I did, because at the time I made the trailer I really thought I wasn't gonna get much more footage before releasing the video, so I was debating whether to show all the good tricks in it or not, and eventually I decided to put in some of the best footage I had. So I'm gonna see about starting to edit the video when I finally have the free time to, and I expect it to turn out incredible

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

Listen Up!
First off, sorry about missing last week's post, I really didn't know what happened there, and I'm sorry if this post is late too, seeing as how I got sick yesterday and today (Tuesday Morning/Monday Night) I am feel like death....
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Work is going very well, I'm making enough money to get me to the IJA, and the work is going smoothly enough that I don't need to frett too much over losing the job. I've been able to do more than just water and remove dead stuff, so I've shown myself to be valuable asset to Kurt Weiss I think, and I'm gonna ask my supervisor for her opiinion of my performance so far, to see if there's anything I need to step up my game on or if there's anything I'm forgetting.
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Tech.MCC has been a bit of a wash so far during the summer, I've ended up cancelling 2 meetings in a row out of the 3 we've had so far, and the trip to Diggnation was a wash too...

Daily Life: A Trip to the Live Diggnation
So there's this little podcast network called Revision3, they have a little show on there called Diggnation. The hosts of the show are geek celebrities who have thousands of fans, I am one of them. I was featured on this show in one of it's early episodes (as can be found on my youtube channel), for my juggling, and since then I have gone to every meetup in NYC and juggled at all of them. They did a live show in New York City last year, and I was there for that too, but this one was much bigger at Webster Hall, and as I did last year, I sent out an email to the members of Tech.MCC (and in hindsight I sent it out WAYYYY too late) inviting them to join me. One person did, so here's what happened.

I got all my juggling supplies and packed up the truck to go to work, I spent the 5 hours at Home Depot doing my job and excitedly thinking about what will happen at the show later that night. my work ended and I took the short trip to the Train Station near where I worked, where I was to meet the other member of Tech.MCC, who would then drive us both to the event in Manhattan. Things went smoothly on the way there, including getting through the Holland Tunnel and finding our way to the spot. After nearly 20 minutes of searching for a free parking space, we broke down and went to the nearest parking lot. The price was 35 bucks. We made a deal that he'd buy whatever drinks I was gonna have if I paid for that. The deal was struck, and I broke pretty much even because I only had 3 Brooklyn Laguer's and a Corona at 7 bucks a pop. But that's later.

Once we got in line, we got what we were expecting eagerly, free Klondike bars! Why? Klondike was sponsoring the show, so even as it began to rain outside annd everyone stood in line, we had something good to keep us happy. I broke out a few juggling moves in the line as I did last year, of course this time because of the rain they moved us all inside (and by all of us, I mean the couple hundred people in line) to wait. While in there, there was a space where a stage light was shining, so I took advantage of that and juggled a bit there for everyone, and managed to get some attention and pass out a bunch of business cards, much more than last year. So me and the other Tech.MCC member split up and went our separate ways into different groups, and waited for the hour or two before we were finally let updstairs to the main ballroom of Webster hall. There was another half hour or so of DJ's playing stuff before Alex and Kevin (the show hosts) came out for the pre-show. That was an epic moment, because almost as soon as they got onstage they threw out T-shirts for Revision3, and one of the pure geniuses of the audience threw it back. This turned the audience into a mob, and everyone started throwing random stuff onstage to them, including one guy who took off his belt and threw it up, numerous people threw their Klondike bars (which more were given out throughout the evening), and one group of ladies threw onstage all their phone numbers on a pice of paper! That was fairly epic, and then the best thing of all happened, another Geek celebrity from New Jersey, Gary Vaynerchuck, threw his WALLET onstage from the balcony, and that was how Kevin and Alex found out he was at the show before tossing it back up to him. Talk about epic.

So the show began, and there were a number of noteworthy bits that happened, one was a random drunk person who jumped up onto the stage and was promptly removed by security, that was funny as hell. Another cool thing mid show was that someone threw onstage (not part of the mob, but during the show) Kevin's jacket which he had left at a taping location 2 live shows ago in Texas. How much more epic can you get than that? I'll tell you how epic, when one of the show's sponsors sends out chicks with a t-shirt gun, and both the hosts end up firing it off into the rafters, at the same time they took turns throwing more Klondikes into the balcony, half of them covered in hard ice that made them, essentially, rocks. Fucking Win.

After the show was over there was of course the mad rush to meet them for a photo-op in the corner while the DJ played. I missed this last year because I had to catch a bus, but luckily this time, thanks to the Tech.MCC guy, I could stay as long as I want, and maybe even catch Alex, who is also a juggler, and do some juggling tricks with him after the mob went away. Of course I did get the chance to get a photo op, that's what's off to the left here, but unfortunately as soon as that was over the guards rushed both hosts back to their isolation booths for the rest of the night. That sucked for me, but that was just the beginning of my woes!

On the way out, I found I only had 30 dollars of cash on me, so I had to pay some with my debit card to the parking guys. As soon as that happened we drove down to Canal Street to enter the Holland Tunnel. All fine and stuff, of course the second we hit Canal Street, the first light we went through was yellow, and we went pretty late, we saw one flash as we entered and another flash as we exited the intersection. The NYPD had set up an auto-ticketer on that light and thanks to the economy have cranked down on it's leniency setting. pissed me and him off, but that was again, nowhere near the end. The next light was pretty slow with the way traffic was going through, on both sides, and we got stuck in the middle of the intersection as the light went red, thus, we were in the way of traffic going through, fine, we moved up as far as we could for people to get through behind us. You'd think that the cars wanting to get through woudl go through the opening we made, nope. One asshole jumps in as soon as the light on his side turns yellow, so now we have the green. As the car in front of us pulls up, he jumps in and squeezes through in front of us, nearly clipping of the bumper as we went. We both flipped him off instantly, and IN THAT TIME, ANOTHER asshole driver decided to make a left turn and nearly smacked us head on as we went to get the hell out of the intersection. Now we're both a little bit pissed.

We're about a block away from the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, and things are at a dead standstill. Absolutely stopped. We sat there for 20 minutes before the line moved up enough for me to squint and read the sign that said "one lane open". ONE FUCKING LANE?! Yes, only one lane of the tunnel was open, with everyone crowding to get out of the city. Finally, the line moved enough where we could turn out of the line, now fuming, and hit the West Side Highway to the Lincoln Tunnel instead, wasting gas and time. I have no way to describe other than that my hair nearly burst into flames each time we hit a red light. This continued and it seemed like every light all the way back to the fucking train station where I'd parked the truck, was turning red right in front of us. It was hell, and I sat there appreciating EVERY red light on the route home from there. *grumble*

Juggle This:
I've done some reflecting recently, and what have I come to realize? I hate summer and what it does to my juggling. I don't have the big roofed spaces on campus to practice in anymore and I don't have my props and camera constantly on me like when the semester is going. I feel bad about it because I look at my youtube channel and see it's been weeks since I posted anything good, and I'm gathering footage for Adverse Reaction at what seems to be one trick a week! DAMNIT!

I really do want to be recording stuff, it's just that ll the stuff I want to do is with rings and needs a high roof. I can't do the stuff outside because of the constant wind that results from living between the Turnpike and a river, and the garage ceiling is the highest ceiling I don't have to go out of my way for, and that's only 9 feet high or so, not even enough to do 6 rings under. I mean I have spent some time outside getting ball and club footage, but the thing is it's all been for Adverse Reaction and nothing worth posting by itself to youtube.

But besides that though, I've been doing some work pre-planning what's gonna happen with JoJ season 4, and it seems like I have a dedicated co-host for this season and a few topic ideas. The thing is, right now we've only just started planning out ideas and stuff, I have no idea what I'll be doing for video or what we'll do in terms of recording or what. Right now it's just ideas flying around, but one thing that I do have down for sure, is that before summer ends, there will be the next season of JoJ beginning.

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