A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
So yeah, sorry about the nearly three month long hiatus from the blog. I think it was kinda needed though because every post felt like a chore and writing them became tedious. I would put them off for weeks and then just completely forget about them. Well, the break is over and hopefully you guys are still reading this before I bore you with too much stuff!
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My job at New Meadowlands Stadium is going absolutely GREAT so far, I've got a couple great stories from that place already and every single time I've worked there (save for one) was at the very least interesting and at best fun and AWESOME. I'll talk about it some more next week.
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As for my bartending stuff, I'm STILL on the hunt for a bartending job. I'm noticing most of the reason I'm having trouble is because even though I do have my certification, very few bars are willing to hire first time tenders, so that's making it difficult, because I have a great resume when it comes to customer service, it's what I'm good at and what every job I've held has dealt with save for one or two.
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Being the summer, not much is going on in terms of college, however, the TechMCC Pinball machine is finally starting to take shape, there's still lots of physical work to be done but that's almost all there is to do is the physical work. Oh, and as a side note, I've finally passed off the presidency to someone else this semester, I've made a couple bad moves the past two semesters and really need to give a fresh set of hands the club reigns.
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Daily Life:
SO this years WJF was definitely an interesting one to say the least. No Vova, and no Dietz, it certainly made for a huge opportunity for the juniors to shine once again as they did last year. But let's go back to my usual timeline style of recapping things!

So I arrived a full day early in order to give myself time to sleep in and get over the jetlag, which fortunately was in the backwards direction, my usual time of waking up of noon turned into waking up at 9, which made things SO much easier on me to actually get into the con earlier than usual, but here I go again with tangent details. My roommate for the con was Casey the whole time except for the last day, in which I stayed by myself because he left the day before I did. I didn't expect him to spend the night before the con at Circus Circus, but I was pleasantly surprised when I did, Circus Circus is so far the second best hotel and casino I'd been to on the entire strip, only second to the MGM Grand. I spent a good chunk of time waiting for him and getting some blackjack and gambling out of my system, winning a number of toys in the arcade thanks to the skill based games that I had an advantage at as a juggler. So then he arrived way late in the evening and we went up and got the sleep we both desperately needed, the next day going over to the Riv in order to put our bags in the room and get to the first day of the con.

As with all first days at a con, I spent the first few hours introducing myself around to everyone who came up to me after seeing me on yourube and catching up with good friends, namely Steve Hoggan, one of my best juggler friends (the others being Michael Karas and Kevin Axtell if you were curious) and then finally it was off to finally start juggling. Now being the summer, I really didn't have anywhere to practice regularly beforehand, so I could really feel myself struggling with my rings. That got better as I warmed up and got reassociated with numbers, but still.

So the first day was mostly just that, hanging out, juggling, doing a bit of filming of some AMAZING stuff like a ten ball flash and 5 diabolo runs that you can see in the montage video I made, and then came the evening, and time to go to the Major League Combat orientation. We went over the rules of MLC games again and found that there were 5 teams going for 4 slots, so the last two teams had to end up competing to get in. I was on one of those teams. So the next day, one of the first things to happen was the qualifying round of MLC between "Those Guys" and "These Guys" as we temporarily named ourselves. We were Those Guys, and over a few rounds of Zombie, Sumo, and Kill The King, we ended up sweeping it and claiming our place in the finals as Team Passing Zone. Awesome.

Day two was a fairly relaxed day, enough so that in the evening I was even able to swing over to Circus Circus again and hang out in the Adventuredome. So with that let's move on to day three, where things REALLY started kicking up, namely because it was my day to compete. I thought I'd be less nervous this year, because I'd already competed at the last WJF in intermediates, but I guess that feeling of "Okay, you actually have a shot at this, don't screw it up" really does mess with ya, as I was the third to come out and while I did hit my 5 ring half shower and full reverse on the second attempts, my 6x4 string was a bit of a wash, and the time went by so fast that I didn't get the chance to do much besides that! My hands were shaking a bit and my heart was racing the whole time, especially because I thought I was screwed, since the sheet said that there were 4 competitors, but then as I heard Casey announcing that was the end and they were moving on to clubs, I realized that there was an error in the printout and the worst I could have done was third place! Hey, I'm plenty happy with winning the bronze by default! Especially as I was able to bring my half shower to the table and hit it this year.

So I watched the rest of the competitions go and was utterly amazed of course by the level that the intermediate clubs were at along with the endurance competitions, followed of course by the advanced competitions later which were astounding to say the least, I can hardly remember any of them because my brain was just concentrated on trying to keep track of what they actually were doing and soaking it all in. Then after the juniors competition was over the judges were taking a hell of a long time to come up with the results, and since everyone wat sitting there waiting for them, the juniors competitors ended up going and fooling around on stage, to which me and Casey started having some fun. Casey started playing some of the cheezy party dance songs like the Macarena and the Cha CHa Slide, all of them doing the dances mid juggling pattern before I got the idea to do a Limbo contest with juggling patterns in the mix of it! I went out and with another person grabbed some of Drew's canes and used them as a limbo bar for the juniors to either 3up and then slide under or crawl under while doing a low 3 club pattern. It turned out to be quite the awesome thing.

After the competitions was an awesome time, me and Steve recognized that Jason had left the lights on on the empty stage, and we started filming. After yesterday managing to film us doing 5 ring full reverse side by side, we were amped to try passing again as we did at WJF5. After warming up with 7, 8, and ten ring ultimates we moved on to twelve, and after only about 16 minutes of absolutely determined efforts, we qualifies 12 ring ultimates passing. Everyone at the convention heard my celebratory cry the moment we got it, and from that alone you could tell how awesome it was for me! What was even better was that before we started passing we'd both gotten tons of great footage of our best solo tricks in the brilliant lighting for our next videos, me getting everything I could do again from a 97531 with 5 rings to a ton of 4 ring strings, but that wasn't the end! After me and Stave drew everyone into the stage with my shout, people began to do the same as we did, including Doug and Ben, who went and started trying to break more passing world records right in front of everyone's cameras including mine, getting a WONDERFUL clean run of 15 balls that broke the old record by a full 7 or 8 catches! Needless to say, this was one of the highlight days of the con for me!

So the next day after that was another banger of a day. The Major League Combat competitions started right around 2PM after the "Maximum Overdrive" event, which was awesome in and of itself, a big conglomeration of the top level competitors simply on stage trying to do their hardest moves or whatever else they wanted. Our team was the very first one out, and all of everyone being jugglers, we felt like playing up the intro's, of course we went for the classic Purple Cobras entrance, and it looked great. Of course it must have jinxed us (the Purple Cobras lost in the movie XD), as we lost every one of our 4 events to the eventual second place winning team, Duncan. It was way worth it though. Especially as we gave a couple good highlight clips for Jason to use.

Of course after that was probably one of the funniest hours of the convention for me, and noone else got to see it but me, Crizzly, and Jason. Why? Because it was the rehearsal for the Battle for the Presidency show, where I learned exactly what I would be doing during the show after the mysterious email I received from Jason the week before asking if I wanted to be in it but not revealing a single detail. I was to be given a piggyback ride my Jason, and then to fall on top of him XD. If that alone doesn't make you laugh you have no sense of humor! As we rehearsed and figured out exactly how I was going to get up on Jason's back and stay there for the short time I needed to, I realized just how hard the piggyback technique was as opposed to acrobatic positions like a human tower, but that's a random observation you probably don't need to hear about. We found out how to do that, and then I found out the next thing I would be doing in the show. I was going to be crawling with Jason sitting on my back for a jousting match XD! Needless to say I managed to handle his weight nicely and we figured out what would happen during the bit and then I just couldn't stop chuckling the rest of the night. I kept thinking to myself "Thank god I have no shame XD"

So the next day arrived and after another quick rehearsal in the morning it was time for the big show, my bits were some of the very first, so after goign off and getting my big laughs during the Piggyback concentration competition, and then a few bits later doing the WJF Jousting, I came back up and watched the rest of the amazing show. Getting to see Doug's routine again was mind blowing, as well as the debut of Doug and Josh's routine, which was absolutely stunning. Finally the whole thing was over and then it was time a few hours later to head off to the banquet at, of all places, an Indian restaurant 20 minutes away. The food sucked and there was no video thanks to Jason not really having enough time to compile it before needing to get there, but the sign on front made up for it all. "Closed for World GIGGLING Federation" it said. EVERYONE took a picture and had a big laugh at it, and for a moment or two, it truly was the World Giggling Federation thanks to that very sign XD

So after that I spent an extra day bumming around Vegas, I should have asked Steve to go with me in hindsight, but whatever. I had a good sleep on my flight back and arrived home, this time without losing ANY footage or any equipment, which was very nearly a first time occurrence for me! I'm so eager for the next WJF which are going to be in Springfield Illinois, a WAY closer venue AND one which is going to provide for a LOT more convenience and support from the city!

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