A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

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Damn has my life gotten busy recently! Sorry about mising last week and being lae with this week, but my classes have absolutely been tearing away at all my free time, that and working on my own projects has killed all the time I've had to do anything. I'll try to update this beter or maybe even write the post a boit at a time throughout the week, but yeah I'll try to keep things going for you.
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Now, for those that care about my juggling stuff, I've got something big that I'm going to be doing probably before next week, and that is the Yo-Yo Sticks I showed off at he IJA festival this year are ready to start selling. So I'm building the websit and the instructional and promo video for them right now. Believe me these things are awesome, and the promo video will show just a few awesome tricks that can be done with these things.
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Tech.MCC, oh boy is this an issue. Of course as you can imagine I'm having trouble with the time, but there are just such big problems right now with the club. The biggest problem right now with the club is communication, everything is coming from me and all I have is the mass email list to send out info. The forums aren't really populated by the general members, and thanks to us not being at the college fair, we seem to have fallen into a place where a lot of students don't even know we exist. So while we've got projects and plans, we don't have a hell of a lot of members showing up to the meetings, and I dlon't seem to be getting many members visiting the forum or responding to the emails. Well, so far that's the only problem sofar, but let's hope I can fix it.....
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College, oh man is my freehand drawing class killing me. I keep saying this but it's constantly looming on my head that I need to fill up a 90 page sketchbook, AND do the massive projects that are due each week, this week being 2 finished still life drawings shaded on the sketch pads. Other than that damned class, which is early in the morning for me too, my Sociology seems to be a little bit of trouble, not because of understanding the points or anything with the class itself, it's that so far, for the first two classes, he's assigned a full page report on something, where we have to use references too. Man is that a little bit hellish when piled onto everything. I mean granted a page isn't much, and it's not hard to make my point, the hard part is finding the type of resources he's aski to back up my point.
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Jugglers on Juggling. Oh now this is a subject I feel awkward talking about, because I've not been able to continue the current season for a full MONTH now. God damn, I hate it, I really know what I want to say and I';ve got an idea how I'm going to make the next set of episodes, I just absolutely don't have the time! By the time I've come home from class, chillaxed for a while, done my work, answered emails and kept up to date with everything I need to, and socialized online, it's already 5AM and it's time to go the hell to sleep! God damnit....
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Juggle This:
So there is indeed more juggling stuff to talk about, and man is it good. One good thing about my new college schedule, and the only great thing about my freehand drawing classes schedule is that it ends at 5 PM, and I then have the ability to go into the Theater and spend as long as I want practicing there every week, and because of that I've made a few MASSIVE things so far. Two weeks ago as I think I said I've made a full 5up 180 with 5 rings, and I could not be happier about that! However, I've also pracitced my 6 ball half shower, and now I can run it longer than I can run my fountain, and my record now is over 40 catches clean on video! Not only that, but I've broken two seven ball records I had last week, I made 38 catches of a cascade and qualified a 7 ball half shower! Absolutely incredible to realize I can do that stuff now, I'm considering trying a 9 ball flash next week! DAMN is that big!

Somthing else I want to tlak about, is that a week or two ago, MisterSampo (Dave) contacted me and asked if I wanted to play a game of J.U.G.G.L.E. against him, and so I, never wanting to turn down a challenge, I accepted. He's busy working on the intro to the videos, and I've recorded two series of tricks that I'm challenging him to do as soon as he finishes the intro. One string is a 5 ball string of 3 tricks,and the next is a 4 ball string of 4 tricks. Of course I'm kinda hoping he can do them so that I can get some more into those strings of tricks.

ALSO! I might as well talk about my next video while I'm here and talking about my jugglign stuff. All those tricks I said before about when I was doing my Thursday practice sessions, they are all going into my next vid obviously. The things I want to say though, is that I went back and looked at my last two vids again, Slow Freese, which was basically my best and most successful video ever, and Adverse Reaction, so far one of my worst. I've noticed the big key difference between the two is music and the colors of the video. Slow Freeze had great, warm music that was slow and had a massive beat to it, and the same types of orange, brown warm colors and massive shots were used in the clips. It all fit and worked together to keep you sucked in. Adverse reaction had none of that, it wans't synced up to the music and the music didn't match the colors or feel of the clips either, it all just felt really thrown together, which to be honest, it was (Windows Movie Maker had crashed on me and I just spent a week trying to save the first edit of the video and just shoving it out due to frustration without even making a second edit). So I'm going to be spending a lot more time this time working on seeing what the tones in the clips are are findign the music and editing that fits with those tones. Also another idea I had is to tie the clips together somehow by adding in between clips and stuff, but right now that seems unimportant after that revelation i had. One thing I'm considering doing though, is that because Adverse Reaction was such a bomb, but that the clips in it were really so good, I'm thinking about taking a bunch of the best clips from Adverse and putting them in my next vid...

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

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WOW, sorry guys, I didn't realize at all how busy college would make me, I seem to have absolutely NO time for anything now, between the work I'm being assigned and the time of the classes. I'll see what I can do about continuing things I've promised to do, like this blog, Jugglers On Juggling, and being president of Tech.MCC, but man is it gonna be tough to do all of them and still get done with all my college stuff.
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Most of the reason college is gonna drain my time is freehand drawing. My Sociology course looks like it's gonna be cool and easy, same with my salesmanship and 3d design classes, but not only am I horrible at drawing, but I am gonna have to buy and fill up a 90 page sketchbook by the end of the semester. That is SCARY. That and the thing that sucks is that that class is from noon to 4:00 PM on Thursday, the day Tech.MCC is supposed to meet and ending 2 hours into the meeting. I talked to my professor, and it seems my options are stepping down as president, changing the meeting schedule, or dropping the class. Wonderful....
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Well Tech.MCC, obviously I think I'm gonna try rescheduling the meetings, but the thing is, I sent out the first mass email, and I hadn't heard anything back from ANYONE, about ANYTHING. And noone showed up to the meeting, andI'm about to send a new one asking people to decide when we want to hold the new meeting time, but I'm completely unsure about everything right now. That and the college and noone so far is willing to take the TV off my hands, and after checking my N64, I found the screws cannot be undone, so we'd literally have to tear apart the casing to get at the guts, and there's just so much right now. I hate having ADHD at times like this......
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Well, I suppose now it's time to let everyone in on the biggest news. I don't have a job anymore. NO FAULT OF MY OWN, I got a voicemail from my supervisor last week and followed it up with a phone cal, and she basically said that the higher ups have re-taken control of the tropical plant sections in my stores area and that now the Home Depot employees from the seasonal section are gonna take care of the tropicals. Basically, what was a separate job in my stores suddenly got merged with another job, and now I'm left without one. I have heard though that because I wasn't FIRED, I may qualify for unemployment! Sweet! I've yet to do any real research thanks to my not having the time or ability to remember at the right time, but I definitely intend to check.
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Jugglers On Juggling. Alright, I have to apologize for this massive delay, I just haven't gotten the time to plan out the episodes fully. I've got so many ideas for what's going to be the structure of the next 4 episodes, but right now so many things are running through my mind I can't concentrate on actually putting these ideas into a plan and making the episode. I really do want to make the next 4 episodes of the podcast before bringing an end to season 4, because the juggling videos are the area where I really do think I have some expertise I can offer my listeners. Just stick with me I think, and I'll get them out eventually.
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Juggle This:
Well now that college has started, I have a wonderful ability to go to the theater and practice my high throw moves again. I could not be happier, and have been looking at my schedule to see the regular times I can go in and get some practice and footage gathering time. Right now, Thursday seems to be the best time because all my classes end at 6:00, and so I can stay there as long as I want. I've already been very productive on the first Thursday of the semester, managing to get my first ever 5 ring 5up 180 to a qualify, once without a clean finish, and one with a clean finish. Oh man was that a good feeling to get my first 5up anything. I'm also looking at other times, but mostly it looks like Thursday will be the best.

I'm also really hoping to get a lot of footage, and good footage too, because Adverse Reaction absolutely sucked. I mean, the tricks in it are the best tricks I've ever done, and the lighting/backgrounds are overall the best of any of my videos, but I'm not sure what it was, the video just didn't seem good at all, and I desperately want to make up for that. I'm gonna try something new, if I get the time to. I want to try having some sort of plot to the video, or at least in-between clips with non juggling to give it some sort of story or something. Maybe I'll do something simple and easy like picking up my backpack full of props and walking to the next location where I did a trick, almost like it awould be a tour or my campus. So it could be like a clip of me doing 5 ring stuff in the theater, then it cuts to me picking up my bag and walking out the stage door to the hallway, where it cuts to another trick I did in the hallway. Maybe that could work, I have no idea, but I just know I want to do something.

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

Listen Up!
Wow, so I really am late with this post. Sorry all 3 of you readers, lol.
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Ok, so I did the first 3 episodes of JoJ, the easy episodes I might add, now it's time to actually start working on the big episodes I have planned. I'm betting they're gonna come out after a week delay because I'm still planning out the points to make, but when I do let them out I think they'll do quite nicely. Again, they're going to be a 4 episode series all about juggling music videos, two episodes about music, two episodes about videography, and hopefully I won't be the only one hosting them if all goes as planned.
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I'm really loathing the start of college comign up, I mean it's gonna be nice to finally be having juggling practice space and classes to learn stuff from, but I've really gotten way too used to staying up until 5AM and talking to all my pals over MSN Messenger. Oh well, it's what happens each September....
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So I've recently learned from a trip to the Student Activities section of college that my first big project for Tech.MCC, that was that I was going to bring in my big rear projection TV and we were gonna put an N64 inside of it, and I heard that they don't have the room to house the big TV. So now I have to put out an email asking if anyone wants a massive tV that we're gonna put an N64 into :P That and I also have to figure out other projects for us to do with the Lego Robotics kit.
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Daily Life:
So the big thing to happen last week was what I call, my ultimate day of production. It was Thursday, and by some very bad math, I calculated I made 480 dollars in one day, and that's not really the case, but I'll explain.

I started the day nice and early, waking up around 8:30 or so and getting ready for a big performance coming up at the Goddard School where I perform every summer. This year was special because the students were all going to perform along with me for "circus week". I went in for two days to teach the kids circus type tricks like balancing on a balance beam and jump roping, and on the last day, I would perform and then Emcee the show where all the kids went up and performed. So Thursday was performance day, like I said, and we started off with me getting there just in time
to start my performance, and it was outdoors and windy, so I had some trouble, but I managed my entire ball routine with only two drops, which I was able to kick the ball back up from into 4 and then 5. Then came the volunteer segment, which went pretty well, and finally the clubs, which I did bomb a bit on, just because I have such a small set of club moves I can do, and it was too windy for me to even consider doing rings. Well either way, I managed to pull through it somehow, and then it was on to emceeing, which was pretty easy. I was cracking jokes and announcing the tricks as the kids did them one by one, class by class, and the parents obviously enjoyed it, the kids did too. So I ended everything there around noon and went in to get my paycheck, $275 dollars total. a hundred bucks for the performance, 50 to Emcee, 100 for the day of teaching, and 25 for travel. Was pretty good.

As I was on my way home, I hit the most brutal traffic jam I think I have ever been in by myself, literally moving less than a mile in a full half hour. Eventually I made it home around 1:30, just in time to grab my paycheck from work from the mail and deposit them both on my way to work. My work check was about $125 bucks, so I made a 400 dollar deposit right to my bank account, doubling it's size. So then I headed off to work for a MASSIVE shipment day, seeing as how we'd skipped shipments the week before and were in desperate need of everything at both stores.

I got a really nerve racking call though before I left for the stores though, and it was from my supervisor. She said very simply, the higher ups were going through stores and evaluating them, and that she basically just got her head torn off after they visited one of the other stores because there was so much dead product. I knew there was a lot of half-dead stuff at my two stores because I was being lenient with throwing things away, the shelves were empty enough as it was. So the moment I got into my first store I went to the back to start the water tank filling, and immediately grabbed two carts and got rid of ANYTHING that had more than 3 or 4 dead leaves on it. I basically went through half of the stock and got rid of it, replacing it all with the new stock and basically doing a full-reset of the store, fixing the labels, rearranging where everything went, and finally watering everything. It took a good 4 and a half hours, but I finally finished my first store and headed off to the second to do the very same thing again.

Now the main difference between stores one and two is that store #2 has it's tropical section maintained every morning my the employees before I go in, so everything is usually well labeled and watered, that and the way the tables are arranged is much better. So as I got in and did the same thing, whirlwinding my way through half-dead plants and shuffling around where everything went, I suddenly realized that I hadn't seen the higher ups, or received a call from my supervisor. In fact, I still haven't received a call from my supervisor almost a full week later about it, so I guess I must have been doing a good job. Well whatever the case, I finished up in about 3 and a half hours on Thursday, ending the day by arranging and watering the outside plants after the store had closed, giving me a full 8 hours, and eighty bucks worth of work. Needless to say, I went home tired, and content about my bank account.

Juggle This:
Well I do have to say, despite me not going to MCC since last week to practice rings, I have found myself improving with a few big things regardless. I have been working on my 4 ball stuff. I was watching the Terminator movies again the other day, and all of the sudden I found myself standing over my bed with 4 balls in a shower pattern, and just trying stuff. I somehow hit the right sequence to throw me into the 4 ball box, and as I ran it for 9 or 10 catches, I stood there completely dumbfounded at how easy it felt to me. I don't remember how long I spent practicing, but I know the movie went to the sequel as I as trying to get the pattern solid. I then also found myself noticing the similarities between the 4 ball box and the sprung cascade, eventually deciding to try doign the sprung cascade again, and after a few minutes of trying to get the muscle memory to forget the box and remember the cascade, I saw the pattern running for a good 10 sets of catches with no problems. Needless to say, my face was beaming.

I eventually set up my tripod and recorded my best runs of both tricks, and I haven't been able to stop doing them for the past 3 days since. They are indeed awesome tricks, and they make me so excited to juggle again because I'm realizing how much 4 ball stuff I have never done before that I should be able to do, and then from there all the 5 ball stuff I have yet to learn, it's like feeling what it was like to get my first 5 ball flash again, it's absolutely great and I'm loving it so much.

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