First Laptop

in contradistinction to my vlog on the topic from yesterday, this will absolutely be an introspective end of the year blog post. this year was marked by going back to school, vlogging, finally starting a regularly updated blog, not going to hong kong, and... oh yeah, moving across the entire country. i was unemployed for most of the year, which was freeing, enjoyable, and miserable all at the same time. i maintained a 4.0 gpa for the duration of the year, which is a first for me. i did a lot of stuff. but at the same time, here at the end of another year, i feel like i haven't accomplished much.

perhaps it's just my nature to de-emphasize my own accomplishments, or to not see the positive side of some things [especially myself], which is decidedly a character flaw. next year, i hope to be more positive, engaged in the communities i participate in, participating in more communities i've been neglecting or avoiding [a.k.a. making friends locally] and many other things. one of which is that i'd like to talk to my sister more, and that i'd like to start making music again. at least more consistently. consistency in general is probably my main 'resolution' for the new year. happy eleven to you all, may God bless you this year.

25 To Knife

christin-chan is sleepwalking! well, not really. she just came out to use the restroom and scared me a bit. it happens from time to time. today i got laundry done, which has become something of an ordeal ever since we moved to a place that doesn't have a washing machine or dryer. laundromats. yay. it's okay, it's not that bad, just time consuming. while i waited for the laundry to dry, i edited a little something called this video. you should check it out if you haven't already. i'm quite fond of it, but i'm quite fond of most of the videos i make.

oh, another interesting note about the trip to the laundromat! i got there, lunch in hand, computer in the car, ready to edit video while i waited, and realized that i brought everything except the one thing you need to do laundry: the laundry. basically, i'm an idiot. but it's okay, all ended well, since i got to stop by the store to get ritz crackers [amongst other things] which christin used to make our fabulous chicken dinner, which we ate while watching buffy. i disliked angel as a brooding anti-hero love interest, so far i like him much better as a villain.

some other highlights of today include nothing at all. it was pretty dull, flat, uninteresting, other similar adjectives, et cetera. tomorrow is new year's eve, which i couldn't possibly care less about at all, but it means that christin will probably be working super late if her boss and husband go out for it. blech. i work until 8pm, which is when sears closes, but i'll be heading over there after that to hang out 'til it's time to return to the homestead. saturday is a free day for both christin and i, which should be nice considering we don't get a whole lot of time together these days. we may go see a movie and use the tickets mom and dad got us for xmas. thanks mom and dad! and now it's time for sleep.

Rorm Doom

one way we can all ensure that the night goes well is to have a nap in the day. i had one today, for the first time in a good long while. black friday doesn't count, that was more of a sleeping session or blackout than a nap. i didn't sleep well last night, so by the time i got home it was definitely nap time. long day. once christin got home, we had some dinner and watched our show. i hit level 70 on the paladin tonight, which was good, though i could've done it faster. shadowmoon valley is such a terrible zone, i couldn't stand it anymore. slow day, slow night. goodnight.

note: good next-night, apparently.

Dizzy Moose Rag

as you may or may not have noticed, the video didn't happen. i'll be putting one up tomorrow, just wasn't feeling it today as i thought i might not. it's so close to the beginning of the new year that i'd thought of re-launching my channel for its second year of activity, but since changed my mind on that because i feel that my viewership is too small for that to have any sort of effect. i don't know. i would love to take vlogging a bit more seriously, but i feel too disconnected from the world of those who engage in it actively. i've tried to become part of the team, but it just never feels natural. i'm not going to stop, i'm just not vying for exponential growth.

of course, i've been doing this dance with youtube for some time now, over the past year. i've gone from literally zero people watching to 237 subscribers [how many of those are valid is up for debate but there are way over 100 people watching regularly] which is something. i could promote harder or try more, i could be more consistent or pander to an audience to increase views, but i'm really just having fun. if it becomes a 'work thing' i don't think i'd want to do it as much. maybe it would. but i kind of don't want to put forth the enormous amount of effort [or hold out hope for the incredibly unlikely amount of luck] necessary to get to that point just to figure that out. but it's not like i'm totally ruling it out.

today was a lazy day, but i did a lot of thinking about video ideas and cleaned up around the house a bit. that was nice. progress! i ordered all of christin's books for school, well most of them at least, and mine as well. i'm finally 100% caught up on my youtube subscriptions, which is something i haven't been able to say for at least 2 months now. it feels good, but now i have less to watch, or at least listen to when playing wow, but that's what netflix is for, right? work was boring but felt short. hopefully tomorrow goes by just as fast, but i must say that i prefer closing to opening shifts. we'll see how it goes. goodnight.

Missed Anniversary

i may make a video tomorrow, but i haven't totally decided yet. it would be better than sleeping in, though i'm sure my body will completely disagree with that statement in the morning. today i went to nordstrom's and applied for a job at their warehouse, which would be cool if i got it. what i did get was a self-esteem boost when i took the written assessment they give you. when i walked into the testing room, dressed in dickies and a polo shirt with a hat and work jacket on, there was a well-dressed young man taking the test in the desk-stall-thing next to me.

when i left 10 minutes later, finished test in hand, he was still there.

so that kind of made me feel good about myself. maybe basic math and upc/sku order reading isn't his thing. it's not really my thing either, but i'm trying not to be insulting. it's hard to feel good about your superiority without also gloating about someone else's inferiority. and that's the trouble with competition: there always has to be a loser. there's more to be said, philosophically, on that particular topic, but i'll digress for now. perhaps i'll include it in tomorrow's video, which may or may not actually be a video that i make tomorrow. we'll see. i said that already. well, i didn't really, but i implied it. had leftover turkey and watched buffy tonight. christin is well. all is well, in general. for now. was that depressing?

A Place Of Your Own

lazy sunday, wake up in the late afternoon, because your alarm went off late and you missed out on church. yeah, that was the beginning of the day. the rest was interesting. we saw black swan, which was genius as i sort of expected. given the director's track record, it'd be hard for him to turn such an interesting idea into crap. portman and kunis' acting helped as well, and it was just really good. a bit raunchy for some peoples' taste, but i think it fit the story well enough. not recommended for children or the squeamish.

we got home and, surprise surprise, watched some more buffy. it's so good. i can't overstate that, really. we had potstickers for dinner, which were delicious, then ate some more xmas candy after that. mmm. it's nice to have a stash again. mwahaha! but i've got to get back to the gym soon if i want to keep from expanding further, which would be good. got the pally to 66.5 and i've only just now finished hellfire and zangarmarsh. i think i'm going to do everything in outland, even some of the stuff i've never done, like most of shadowmoon valley. i feel like i missed a lot of that expansion and it'd be fun to check it out.

note: turn on my computer and notice this sitting here. bad me!

Hellmouth

remember how i said today's blog may be interesting? no, definitely not. today was a good xmas celebration, consisting mainly of us opening our presents together with the babies. this was my first away from my parents, not counting the one where we were in another country, and i think i did well enough. called them and that was nice, got to talk to steven and julie too. christin liked what i got her, which was the first three rambo movies. yeah! we kind of have this tradition of me buying her a trilogy for xmas, so i continued it today.

after the festivities at home, we went to dan and sarah's and had way too much to eat, played with carter, watched toy story 3 [which was sad] and came back to the house. then we ate some more and watched buffy. we finished season one tonight and watched the first couple episodes of season two. the show is getting really good, and it's totally addicting. i'd imagine we'll be through the series in about a month or so, if we keep it up at this pace. good times. i played a bit of wow after christin went to sleep. hit 64 on the paladin, did an instance with matt and nikki and the gang on the shaman, which was cool. now it's past bedtime.

Eve

'twas the night before xmas and all up in this ma', bud and christin were watching buffy and it was good times. the end, amen. today was day three of retail hell, beginning with an oh-so-lovely three plus hours of the system being completely down. once it went up, things were still frustrating and annoying, with lots of bugs like credit going up/down and returns being unavailable and debit not working, but i survived the day. annoyances, mostly, but nothing as bad as monday or wednesday for sure. the crowds were a bit less, and once things got going, time seemed to pass quickly.

so i've never really been too into the holiday season, ever since i got past the super-excited-about-xmas-phase of my life [a.k.a. when i turned 18 or so], but tomorrow i have to be. i'm here now, on the east coast, and christin's family is all about it. i'll do fine. ;-P it's not like i'm faking it, it is a nice time of year and such, i just come from a family that doesn't go all out and hasn't in a long time. now i'm with a family that is practically the opposite. christin is making me a big turkey breast, which should be magnificent. wait, what? magnificent? really?

aside from the work and the buffy, i managed to get what little shopping i had done today, which consisted of purchasing a snow shovel, cat litter, and a small gift for christin. also, i found the blu-ray she bought me [zombieland] for half the price she paid at best buy when i was shopping, so that's a plus. gonna return the other one. what can i say? i'm a saver, born and raised. when you are as poor as we are, you kind of have to be, and i fill the role well enough. anyway, it's now time for bed, as i'm dead tired from work, but tomorrow should be eventful enough for an interesting blog. here's hoping!

Breaking Into Gringott's

just as i start to get comfortable, reality sets in and shocks take place to throw things back into the usual turmoil. we got some bad news today regarding christin's job. hopefully it won't all happen, but it looks like at least some of it will. she will only be working at her current job until the end of march, and she will likely begin working for her brother as our nephews' nanny indefinitely at that point. this is good for many reasons, but bad because they cannot afford anywhere near what she is making right now. we're going to have to either find another child for her to take on, which would be fine, or i'm going to have to miraculously obtain a high-paying full-time job in the next three months.

guess which one we're shooting for, primarily?

it's just as well in the end, i should be working full-time. but being out of full-time work for a year has left me embittered and frustrated. the long hours of filling out applications that seem to vanish into the ether, the total lack of responses from most places that i call and pester about jobs, it's all just so discouraging. i'm trying my best, and school is almost finished, but now the pressure is really on for something to happen, and soon. in lighter news, we started watching buffy the vampire slayer season one today, and it's quite amazing. good end to a bad day. now i must sleep and prepare for a 6:45am-3pm shift of maddened last-minute shoppers.

The Failure

oh me, oh my. today was another day in retail hell, just like monday. system was down for a good half of the day, manual price entry and all, which was just unbelievable with the crowds in the store today. it's almost unbelievable that such a thing could be going on during literally the busiest time for retail shopping all year, but nevertheless it is what it is. i got my lunch break illegaly late, and i did get off on time, and i did get a wonderful compliment [as well as my first incredibly rude lady] which were all pluses. but the rest of the day was decidedly double plus ungood.

then i came home and basically passed out for a few hours.

having elijah gone is a different experience in this house, since this is the first actual day in which we've kind of been in the house together as a family without him. it's good settling in to 'normal' and everything, this house really is a lot better than our old one. the animals like it, i like it, christin likes it [especially the kitchen] and it's been good for us. tonight we watched a national geographic show about this crazy prison that houses mostly rapists/pedophiles/etc. apparently our friend vince is going to be working there... nuts! and this female prison in jessup, md which is not far away. scary people. no work tomorrow, lazy day. paladin is now 62. and now i bid you a fond goodnight.

Anger In The Forge

it's so late and i'm so tired that i really don't know what to type. took 'the boy' to the airport today and his plane went out, which is good. we were worried about the flights being canceled because of the weather in europe right now, which is awful, but he's well on his way by now. sears was not as bad as yesterday, but still quite busy and draining. oh, retail. i need a new job! christin has exciting stuff in the works, some good prospect coming soon, which would be a real help for us financially. we hope it works out, and a full time job for me would be icing on the cake.

man, i never realized how much i took it for granted that i'd be able to stand up for 6-8 hours at a time and not feel it in my joints. sure, i know i'm out of shape, but my knees are killing me. i need to get back to the gym, and now that we live so close and things are calming down in the east coast newman household, that's a real likely thing. i'm probably going to head there on thursday, my day off. i know, i'm a glutton for punishment! i work tomorrow at 6:45am, which is going to be the death of me. hyperbole, of course. same shift on friday, xmas eve. blah. it's money, though. i got decent hours this week, which is good. thing are well. time for bed!

Ras Trent

it was the worst day in retail so far. today the entire system was down, and when i mean down i mean all the way down. to the point where we were manually keying in sku codes and prices and calling managers for approval for almost every single customer. lines all day, non-stop apologizing to customers, frustrated co-workers, overworked managers... it was a mess. the sad thing was that the shift was only six hours, but it felt like an eternity. so tired. i work tomorrow too, but not until 5pm. christin made delicious pizza for elijah's last day, and i got him his favorite ice cream. we watched zombieland on blu-ray, which was an early xmas present from christin. love that movie. paladin is level 58 now. sleepy time.

What On Earth?

i've always taken things like washing machines for granted. the only other time in my life where i didn't own one was when i was in hong kong, so i thought 'well that's different.' because it's another country and all. but even then we had a washer at a couple of the places we stayed, just not a dryer as well, and we had to put up the line. but then we just took our stuff to the cleaners, which was not cheap, but it was very convenient and no work. today i went to the laundromat. it's not bad, i'm not complaining, it's just different. it's something out of the norm for me, and i thought it was worth mentioning on here. that's all.

tomorrow i've got to work again, and it's our last full day with elijah here, at least for the forseeable future. we played some wow tonight, which was fun [got my paladin to level 56], and we finished up firefly and serenity in the daytime with christin. that was wonderful. i love that show. tomorrow i'm the lunch reliever work person thing at work. heh. 11:45am-5pm, which is a weird shift. it's barely 15 minutes over a 5-hour shift, necessitating a 30 minute break, so they get me from the times they want without having to pay me for a half hour of it. strange. but it's a paycheck. i've got a prospect in the works for a new potential job, but i won't be releasing details at this time. just pray for wisdom. thanks.

Samesong Distribution

saw tron legacy today, which was pretty good. the 3d was excellent and actually enhanced the movie, unlike some others that have came out using the gimmick technique in recent history. the story was fairly unmemorable, and some of the things weren't very well explained, but olivia wilde was fantastic and jeff bridges was jeff bridges [a.k.a. amazing] even when he was cg jeff bridges, which was pretty convincing as i've said earlier on twitter. yep. i liked it, even though over 50% of critics did not. take that, mainstream film criticism.

on the way home, we returned our samsung failure and picked up the sony version from best buy for $20 less, only to get to the house and realize that we got the wrong one. there are apparently 2 of them with nearly identical boxes and item numbers that have one number difference, but one of them has wi-fi built in and the other does not. oh, and there's a negligible price difference so there. but we got it home, signed up for netflix, and watched about 6 episodes of firefly with elijah. he's just about done with the series now, which is sad and happy all at once. and now it's time to go to bed. christin isn't feeling well, and laundry must be done, so we're not going to church tomorrow. sad. goodnight.

Indian Corn

i am quite upset with samsung right now. they hath failed me! i got a blu-ray player with my xmas money from my dad and grandpa, since we've inherited [at least for a while] a nice hdtv, and elijah and i had a hell of a time getting it set up. we got it to connect to the internet, but none of the stuff worked. seeing as how we don't have any blu-ray discs, and the streaming netflix feature was the only real selling point for the item. so after a few hours of beating my head against the wall trying to get it to work, we are going to take it back tomorrow.

which is good, because the sony one is actually $20 less.

anyway, besides that, the boy got his hair cut and i got my cheese log. it was delicious, as per usual. christin worked late tonight and we got a little bit of leveling done while she was gone, but not near as much as we'd have liked. christin and i played a little bit after she got home as well, which was nice. i work a lot next week, including the day elijah leaves, which is kind of lame as would be expected. i work that night, so i get to drop him off a bit early and head back hopefully in time to make it to work. let's just hope it doesn't snow or anything.

note: i should really stop writing blog posts so late, it messes with my ability to remember whether or not i actually hit 'publish'.

Peppered

it snowed today for the first time this year, meaning the first time it's been more than just flurries that don't stick to the ground. we got about an inch and a half at the house, and the dog is loving it. she likes to go for walks in the snow, so we stayed out a little extra long today. it was fun. christin made beef for dinner and i had leftover lasagna, which was tasty. we got to play a bit of wow as a couple, which is nice, and we hit level 84 and did about half of uldum. neat zone. i always like playing with christin, and i'm glad we're leveling slowly together. i'm in no rush to hit 85 and start the grind, i'm enjoying the new content.

we put up the tiny fake xmas tree today, which was fun despite the fact that i'm not really big on holiday decoration or 'decking the halls' if you will. it's about three feet high and we crammed it full of tons of little ornaments and candy canes. we didn't get to put the lights on because we don't have anywhere near where we've set it up to plug it in and the strings of lights christin got are way too long for it. seriously, like 4x too long, it's hilarious. so i'm going to see if i can get a little set of 25 lights or maybe 30 or whatever it comes in that's smaller than 50. target for that and cat food, amish market for cheese logs [been too long since my last] and trying to get to level 60 on our alts. exciting for us, boring for blogging!

Governments Don't

i have five minutes to type this before my computer automatically shuts down because it needs to install updates and i don't want to hit 'postpone' again. ha! so work today was pretty brutal. i got to work at 8:45 only to learn that i wasn't actually scheduled until 9:45 [thanks, schedule] and yeah. i worked until 5pm, headed home and we went to the in-laws' for lasagna and pecan pie, the latter of which i did not eat, but the former of which was delicious as expected. yep.

i don't have to work tomorrow or friday, which is good because elijah will be leaving on tuesday and it'll be cool to spend a bit more time with him before he goes. it's been a good vacation so far for him and for us as well, though it's been a little weird and crazy at times with the whole 'is he gonna stay with us' thing, but in the end it's just the best decision for him to go. he may come back next summer, which would be cool, but we'll see where we're all at by that point. who knows, maybe i'll get my degree and start applying places and by this time next year, we'll be in hong kong. well, i can dream. i'm incredibly tired! goodnight.

p.s. two minutes left. you know i rule. owwwww!

Strong, Consistent Girl

i was pleasantly surprised to see that i only had to work until 5pm today instead of 8pm, but sad that my total hours for the week went down from 30 to 20. oh well. work went quickly, but took up a good portion of the day. after that, i headed to the old apartment to pick up a few leftover items. i never really, truly realized how inconvenient our old place was to get to until tonight. it was like driving an hour out of the way just to take care of an errand. nasty. i stopped by the store to pick up chicken, which christin cooked and it was amazingly delicious.

we played a bit of wow, did the second instance [throne of the tides] and it was neat. a couple cool cut-scenes and i don't think we wiped on any of the bosses. we didn't do one though, the tank left before we could, so we still have a quest to finish in there. we'll have to run it again before we hit 84. i'm really enjoying the expansion, as i'm sure you can tell from these blogs. our friend josh joined us with a friend on earthen ring tonight. it was nice to see him on the server. ;-D it's bedtime! i've got work at 8:45am tomorrow, and dinner at the in-laws' place... lasagna! yum.

Bad Boys

for some reason, i thought the 'cops' theme song started differently than it actually does. so at one point today, i randomly blurted out what it sounds like [or what it sounded like in my head] and it cracked christin up. that's my amusing anecdote for the day. love it? good. today was a lazy day, slept in late, didn't get much done in the way of productivity. christin stayed home from work and went to the doctor, and it turns out she has bronchitis and ear infections in both ears. nasty. so she got some antibiotics, which apparently aren't free at giant anymore, and such.

hit 83 today, after christin went to bed, elijah and i finished up vashj'ir. cool zone overall, lots of neat stuff. a few annoying points that may be bugs, but other than that it was great. the lore was really up front and there was less 'silliness' than some of the stuff blizzard is known for. the quest line with 'budd' was really funny, i was glad they brought that character back. he's a real nutter. ;-P anyway, it's time for bed because it's way too late. work tomorrow for like 9 hours. ugh!

note: fail fail fail fail fail.

Colonized

this morning, pastor taylor delivered a sermon that was very similar in content and tone to one i did last year at crossweave. it's funny how that and another instance earlier in the week bring my mind back to thinking of the time i spent preaching and teaching there. it was a good time, but it's a time past and [to my knowledge] not something i'm meant to repeat in the near future. i miss my friends in california, but i don't really miss 'there' all that much. it's nice here. despite the impending snow and the cold, i like it. our church is a big part of that.

it's funny how we ended up at trinity reformed. we were going to a big church in annapolis, a p.c.a. church, and it was okay. we were just sort of showing up, worshiping as a couple and leaving right after the sermon ended. the church had a large membership, so it was easy to blend in and not be involved. it was something i hid behind, thinking about how i always felt pressured into ministry at every small church. trinity wasn't so. we found the church on the o.p.c. website, and only went there because it was the closest one [35 minutes away, though now we're about 20 since the move]. we love it there. i'm glad we went.

it doesn't feel like sunday, even though we had church today. i've got a paper due tomorrow, which should be no big deal, and then i'm done with school for the rest of the calendar year. that is exciting. next week is all work, tuesday-friday, half nights and half mornings. it's going to be a busy week, and possibly our last with elijah staying with us. it's been fun. we're still not done unpacking, but the place is looking considerably more like home. christin is still not feeling well, but i think it's different this time. it usually happens when we move houses. i think she wore herself out and made herself sick moving yesterday. she'll be staying home tomorrow.

whew! it's way past bedtime. only reason i'm still up is because christin gave me and elijah the green light to continue leveling up without her, and we finished out to level 83 and did just over half of the vashj'ir zone. it's pretty cool so far. you get a seahorse mount, and as limp-wristed as that may sound, it's actually pretty neat to ride. it feels really fast, but mostly just because you move so slow underwater without it. the quests and lore are cool, which i'm reading and enjoying, but elijah not reading and skipping ahead is still kind of annoying. ;-P anyway, sleep time.

Films About Nature

i've been staring at this screen for a while now, wondering when i'd think of something to say other than just that today was a long day of moving and i'm tired. that's pretty much all i've come up with at this point. i'm kind of at a place in my life right now where, despite the fact that there are a lot of things going on and things are changing and progress/improvements are being made, there's just not a lot of depth to focus on and talk about regarding it. we moved today, we're about 33% done with unpacking, and our new place is quite wonderful. but that's all i have to say about that.

oh my, am i turning into forrest gump?

most days are typical. i work or don't work, i do school stuff, i read, i watch videos and play wow, i spend time with my family. it's good to have a routine, and it's good to be stable. the whole situation with elijah [which may not be a situation if he doesn't find a job in a week and two days] makes it a bit more interesting to talk about, but nothing really substantial. i haven't even been making videos consistently, which is weird because i have a whole other person at my disposal to bounce ideas off of and talk about and film with. weird.

now i really should go to sleep, because it's a half hour later than i wanted to stay up, and i am pretty much exhausted from driving and packing and unpacking and hauling and lifting. it's been a long day of moving and i'm tired. there, i said it. happy now? or not. ;-P i'm so sarcastic. the cat doesn't like it here, but i think she'll get used to it and be okay soon enough. she was hissing and hiding behind the huge couch earlier, but now she's sitting on the couch arm next to elijah who is sleeping next to me. she'll come around. more tomorrow. church tomorrow. i need it.

Irradiated

oh, the packing. all day today, pretty much. this morning was spent sleeping and eating, but the rest of the day was spent organizing all of our crates and bins in the house into piles, then putting them back in a more organized fashion. tomorrow is the big day, so the pressure's on. after we did that, christin came home from work [she worked super late] and we threw ourselves at stupid yogg-saron and failed for a couple hours. it's getting quite annoying now. we're probably not going to bother trying again until we're all max level. we got some bad luck this time.

this is likely to be the last full night in this house, and i'm not terribly sad about that. it's served us quite well, and it was definitely a Godsend, but there are many things i certainly won't miss, and christin will miss those things even less. going upstairs every time we want to cook something on a stove, that's one. having a full kitchen and a large closet with plenty of storage space is also a great selling point for the new place. it's exciting. we'll be spending most of tomorrow doing that. i'll be moving stuff all day tomorrow, so it's probably not going to be too interesting to blog about.

note: posted next day because i'm a total failure.

Former Fatty

sick! christin gave me her sickness. sad times. i stayed home from work today and basically sat in bed until 2pm, which is less fun than it sounds. i'm still tired, drained really. i spent most of the day working on packing stuff, which means consolidating our crap and moving it into bins. tomorrow i'll hopefully finish the rest of it in time to actually move on saturday. we've got all day and most of the night, so it should be easy enough. then we played some more wow, almost finished every quest in mount hyjal [got the achievement already but we still have a few more quests, we're level 82]. got our alts to 45 after that. slow day, dull day, boring day. they happen.

Jet Coltsman

the job hunt was interesting, and the early morning is now wearing on me as it's currently quite late at night. we got a lot done, between about 12 applications on paper and online combined, so we may see some progress sooner than later, which is about when elijah needs it. we stopped by best buy to get christin a wireless adapter for her desktop and i couldn't believe it was $65! so much. so we're going to see about running a cat5 cable downstairs instead, and if we can't do that we'll try the crappy usb one we have. last resort: paying way too much.

mount hyjal is totally awesome. we did about 2/3 of the zone so far, and it's really, really fun. we'd started leveling a bit early in the day because christin took a half day. ;-/ she's not feeling well. we brought her five guys for lunch, which was amazingly delicious. between the jobbing, the wowing and lots of phone calls to various social workers and other people [liz, elijah's mom, included] i am just totally worn out. it's bedtime, for sure. tomorrow i've got work in the morning, which i'm not at all looking forward to, then alissa's recital at 7pm. that will be good times. goodnight.

Elect

another day, another day of work, another expansion for world of warcraft released. flew around the old world a bunch today, and it was really neat to see everything from a different angle. the new stuff has been highly enjoyable up to the patch and now that it's hit and we can fly around and go to the new zones... it's really exciting. i've been playing this game for 6 years now, and it's just incredibly surreal and bizarre to see that the zones, areas, quest hubs, etc. that we've been so used to for the past half a decade are now totally different.

we won't be really playing for reals until tomorrow, because then christin will be able to level with me and elijah. that will be fun. speaking of elijah, he and i will be going out tomorrow in the morning to look for a job for him, it'll be his first real job. if he can find one before his flight out [a week from tuesday], it looks like he'll be staying with us indefinitely. so that's news. helps us with rent, helps him with life in general, etc. anyway, i'm going to sleep early tonight, so that's about it. i may write a bit more before then.

note: and now that i come to write tonight's blog entry, i shall actually post this one from yesterday. blah!

Hot Stepper

and so begins the packing. well, at least the organization before the packing. going through our stuff in big boxes, etc. and arranging it all and getting it ready to be moved to the new place. exciting! the rest of most of my day was not eventful, however. elijah and i played some wow, i went to work which was annoying, and did a bit of homework as well. i swear, sears is one of the worst managed companies i've ever worked for. no one seems to know what they're doing.

maybe i'm working too hard, but when i walk by literally 5 people doing absolutely nothing with a handful of stuff that has to go back to different departments [which is not actually my job, but i can't make the people who are supposed to do this job do it]... and they don't even look at me or offer to help or anything. it's mind-boggling. truly mind-boggling. anyway, not to complain. i make a decent wage in terms of the difficulty of the job vs. the amount of money i'm paid hourly. the hours suck, but it's work. going to be looking more intently for a better one once we get settled in the new place. cataclysm in 10 minutes, but i'm going to sleep. goodnight!

Deeper And Steeper

the guest pastor today at trinity reformed was great, and i thoroughly enjoyed and was blessed by his message. he discussed a portion of scripture that, honestly, i would normally breeze past. it's the first 7 verses of joshua chapter thirteen, talking about dividing up the currently unconquered and not-yet-possessed lands amongst the israelite tribes. there was a lot to say about god doing the work and providing the victory, all joshua needed to do was divide the land up. despite the fact that he was far from the ideal candidate [he was very old], God chose to use him.

elijah seemed to enjoy the service as well. he hadn't been to church for about six months or so, and honestly i can't really blame him. the only church nearby that isn't an abomination [read: catholic] is entirely in french and hard for him to really glean anything from the message and fellowship with the saints there. i think it's good for him to be able to go to a proper church. anyway, today was fun. after church, we ate lunch at kfc [don't ask... i had a hankering] and headed home to catch up on the amazing race and community. then i caught up on homework and cried as the chargers got totally destroyed by the evil raiders.

stupid raiders. seriously. ugh.

all in all, it was a great day today. lots of time spent with friends, christin and i got some time to ourselves, and elijah and i got to get our new characters on wow to level 30 and get dual specced before 3am, which is an accomplishment in and of itself considering i wasted some time selling off crap from my main's bank and sending stuff to a bank alt. good times. tomorrow we'll get into a few instances, which will be cool, before i have to go to work at 5pm. should be excellent! until then, this is me, signing off. wow, that was lame. don't ever let me do that again. goodnight.

SunnyD & Rum

today was long. too long. i'm actually insanely tired right now, just sitting here thinking of what to write here, but i can't think of anything. i did what i said, in the sense that we messed around and we made another video, which is on alissa's youtube channel. check it out here, it's pretty awesome and all that jazz. she's hyper-tastic. got home at around 3:40 and did my best to clean up the house a little bit, because apparently rhonda's got people coming over here tomorrow to look at the place. yeeeeeah... no comment. wait no, not really. comment.

it's kind of annoying, honestly, partly because it's on a sunday and partly because it's just very inconvenient for us to have to be here when she's trying to sell the apartment we're currently paying rent for. meh. and now i've just realized that my homework is officially three days late. i hope they accept it three days late, because man. i just completely forgot to do it tonight. i knew it was going to be two days late yesterday, because i couldn't have possibly done it last night, but now i'm just a failure. bah! work was boring, but not too slow. kept me busy. big easy for dinner — it was delicious! goodnight.

Xenophilius Lovegood

today was a good day, i didn't even have to use my a-k. wait a second... i always have to use that. it doesn't matter if it's a good day or not. i think i just wanted an excuse to reference ice cube. anyway we made this today. it's excellent and bizarre. starring me as eugene and elijah as eugene's buddy, samuel, as well as our nieces who just kind of dance with us in our 'crew' of peeps. it's a new thing. we wrote an awesome rap song to go along with it as well, so you should probably watch it and like, dance at your computer while it plays. seriously. no one will make fun of you.

christin just pulled an enormous tick off of one of alissa's cats. eww. off her face too... nasty. we are on the eastern shore yet again, babysitting for our nieces and nephew at bob's place while he and donna are having a night out at a company party. good times! we made that video, at pizza, and we just got done watching the newest iteration of 'a christmas carol' with jim carrey. you know, the animated one. i had seen it already but christin and elijah hadn't. they liked it. so yeah, it wasn't the most exciting day in the world or anything, but dude! new video!

tomorrow should be interesting. we may record another video, maybe for alissa's new youtube channel that she started last week. then when bob gets back i'll have to head back to the other side of the bay [the western shore?] since i have work from 5pm-closing again. hope i get off at a reasonable hour, and i hope we finally get yogg+1 down and get that much closer to the drake we have been working on. blah! cataclysm tuesday. so excited! we move next weekend. also excited! got paid today, which was wonderous. and now it's bedtime.

Granite

another day, another dollar. it's been almost a week since i'd worked, and it was almost like i didn't have a job again. or like i was on vacation or something. anyway, it was strange. even though i was scheduled until 11pm, i actually got off around 10-something and headed back to the house. that's a good and bad thing. i get paid tomorrow, which is excellent, and it looks like our funds are doing a-okay for this month and next. just trying to take things slow and carefully in order to make sure the move and everything goes smoothly.

today, i introduced elijah to the wonders and greatness of the cheese log. mmm. amish market. i'm on a bit of a pretzel kick lately, i just freaking love soft pretzels. it's a problem! we went to visit christin at work after that and hung out with her for a bit while we enjoyed our cheesy goodness, and the babies were being good for her. one was a bit of a pain, but one always is. then we went to the house and leveled up our new toons some more, doing a bit more of the new content. dungeon revamps are totally boss, and the way quests work in dungeons are wonderful as well.

note: unfinished blog is unfinished! posted late due to noobery.

Oh Yeah, Baby!

today was a lot of chores and a lot of quests. we re-subbed elijah's wow account in preparation for the upcoming expansion next week, and we started leveling some new characters. when christin got home, she joined us and we started some others to play with her, since elijah and i will be going quite a bit faster due to having more time to level up. good times. not really much to say. christin got her new woot! shirt in the mail today, which is awesome, and she had a meeting with rachel to meet her other kids and her husband. cryptic! anyway, tomorrow will be amish market, dog bath for monster and work from 5-11pm. boo that part.

Another Month

thus ends another month. into the black, words to the ether. granted, many read this, but many more will never even think twice about it or regret not reading it. does it matter? not in the end, unless your goal is to know me. i feel that i've done well enough to communicate enough of who i am through this blog to sufficiently give someone a picture of buel newman. i'll continue. when i hit the one year mark, i'll decide if i want to continue doing this daily. i probably will, thinking right now, but i hope such discipline remains a priority for me. it'll serve me particularly well once we've gone back to hong kong.

speaking of which...

i've been mentioning the struggle between the decision to go to seminary or not, and at this point i am unexpectedly leaning away from the idea. there are a lot of reasons that i won't get into here, and i don't want to simplify it, but the basic gist is that i'm just not sure it's the right move for me at this point and season in my life. going back is the biggest and most important thing, and i want to do it right. but right now i'm thinking that may not be best served by heading off to two to three more years of school before going out, as well as essentially rendering my last few years of work toward the end of teaching english rather pointless.

anyway, that's enough musing for the day. today we got the jeep 'smogged' and it passed and all that jazz. good for two years, which is [in my opinion] hopefully more time than we plan to be in this state, let alone the country. elijah and i hung out during the day, spent some time with the wife at her job and then escorted her to school to register for her classes. good for christin! then we went to the mall and had delicious fake chinese food and hung out at lovesac. then we came home and watched some south park, some movie and some firefly. he's liking it more now, which is excellent. i find the repeat viewing equally satisfying as the first. ;-D

Keep Or Jot

today we celebrated becky's birthday! elijah and i went out and got her a cake, then came back to the house and watched plinket's phantom menace and avatar reviews [they will never get old] and an episode of south park in which they made fun of hoarding and inception at the same time. well played, parker and stone. well played. once christin got home, we made the cake and watched last week's community, which was great, before heading off to check out our new place we'll be moving into in another week or so. good times!

it's gonna be totally awesome.

once back home, becky came over and we had spaghetti. the sauce was bland and no one told me, which makes me angry! well, not really. elijah said it's because he's been having bad french food and airplane food, so anything is better than that, and christin genuinely liked it. i have higher standards for my own food, i'll say. i put some more garlic and some salt on it and it tasted great. all in all, it was a good night, and the cake was delicious. it was most definitely not a lie. i called my buddy zach kueker and my dad, and elijah and i watched the pilot of firefly, which was just as good the second time. he seemed to like it. bedtime!

Plush Twin Size

i just heard a t.v. pastor just explain that he was the most loving pastor in the world. ha! strange thing to say. today was a whirlwind of sickness followed by feeling quite a bit better, followed by a lot of video editing [final product] and culminating in the picking-up of elijah from the airport. it's cool to have him here. we got him a little inflatable bed and at current, he's asleep in the living room after a long flight. i just finished my homework and am getting ready to head to sleep as well, but i had to finish this, of course. no failure tonight!

so yeah. the next few weeks will be interesting, between hanging with elijah and working at sears sporadically and moving to crofton. we'll probably be playing a good deal of wow, chatting it up, making him watch firefly for the first time [jealous!] and other random things. we'll definitely have to hit up d.c. and baltimore, and film many many videos. it's gonna be so fetch. lol! now i'm tired. i apologize for the shortness of this post, but the excitement in the coming days should translate well to text, and thus shall make up for it eventually. i bid thee good morrow!

In Dreams

they say you can't die in dreams, but i have several times. more often than not, it involves being bitten by a snake and dying from poison, which has happened in at least 3 dreams that i remember from my childhood. it's been a while since i've died in a dream, and last night it happened and it was one of the most vivid and realistic dreams i've ever had. notice that i say 'dream' and not nightmare because it wasn't particularly frightening, at least not for me. but when i actually woke up and everything, i seriously had to check to make sure i was able to move.

and the weird thing is: at first, i wasn't.

it took a few minutes, but i could move again. it was probably mental, but i seriously felt paralyzed to the point where i thought that i had died and 'resurfaced' in my room but i was actually dead. it wasn't the case, of course. it was a weird dream. christin was giving me a back massage and telling me to relax, and i made a joke about not relaxing and having a heart attack. right after that, like some kind of cruel irony, my heart stopped for no apparent reason. it was bizarre. then i got a kind of strange throbbing pain that pulsed quickly, then faded into a sharp constant pain. then it was gone when i woke up.

so yeah, i don't know if that's what a heart attack feels like, but that's what it felt like dreaming. the dream shifted from third-person to first several times, but until i was 'dead' it was first-person during all the pain. at the end, just before i woke up, it was third-person again and i could see christin fall on me in frustration and sadness. it was pretty miserable, but then she was next to me when i woke up and i realized i had been dreaming. technically, i knew i was dreaming all along, because of the location [out in front of my parents' house, 3,000 miles away in california] but yeah. weird.

oh, and in case you were wondering, my last thought before i died was: 'no, Jesus... i can't come yet... *pause* well i guess this is it.'

Why?

oh, black friday, you are a horrible creation of consumerism. i woke up at 2:30 in the morning just to get out the door and eat and be at work at 3:30am, though 'woke up' is a bit of a misstatement because i essentially didn't sleep at all. i fell asleep for a few hours from 10pm-1am but couldn't manage to stay sleeping long enough to get anything resembling rest. the first hour of work from 4am-5am was pure chaos, with lots of customers and pretty much a non-stop line. then it just kind of turned into a consistent, busy day.

so basically it wasn't all that bad.

it was just like a really busy day for the most part, but a really busy day as a cashier in a notable department store filled with impatient customers that generally aren't interested in all of the dumb promotional questions i am obligated to ask them. also, i had very little sleep and worked a 10.5 hour shift. after i got off work, i went to hang out with my wife in the mall at the new lovesac store. it was nice to relax for a couple minutes on weird alternative furniture that i will probably never be able to afford. we had a lovesac store at our mall in california, so this wasn't the first time i've checked it out, but it's cool that there's one here now.

after that, you'd think i would go home and pass out, but no. i went to best buy because i broke my mouse and stole christin's, leaving her with a crappy one with no side buttons. so i got her a new cordless one that suits her needs pretty well. i walked around the store and checked out the 'super sweet deals' on stuff i'm not allowed to buy because we're poor and can't take any of the stuff on a plane to hong kong when we move. it's fun to look, though. i ended up getting back to the house at 5pm and expected to pass out but ended up recording a probably hilarious video. i say probably because i haven't edited it yet, and don't remember most of it.

then i took a nap and woke up in time to raid, which was eventful but not necessarily productive. i was dps for the most part this time, which was a welcome and fun change for me. i need to go and reforge my melee gear and get all mail. ;-P anyway, that was my day, eventful and insane. now i'm sitting here the next day and wondering why i never posted this blog last night. i did get pretty sick over the course of the day and went to sleep pretty much immediately after the raid was out, but i still should've hit 'publish'. oh well, i'm a failure. black friday!

5, 6, 7, 8!

work this morning was ridiculous. whoever thought it was a good idea to have sears open today is mentally unstable and must be destroyed. well, that's an exaggeration, but it was dead. i probably rang up between 6-8 people the whole time i was there, and thankfully i got to go home early. i came home and took a short nap before heading over to our brother bob's house on the eastern shore. we ate dinner there and it was great! christin's turkey and pie were fantabulous. i would've tried the turducken [chicken inside a duck inside a turkey] but the stuffing in it had shrimp.

after spending some time with my crazy nieces and getting more than enough exercise to work off all of the turkey, rice and pie i ate, we headed home after picking up christin's car and the monster dog from christin's parents' house. and here we are. my feet stink. they always stink, though. now i am trying to force myself to stay awake long enough to not sleep too long and end up tired, so i get to go to sleep at around 10pm tonight. only an hour and a half to go! happy thanksgiving, all. black friday, here i come. 3:30am, ugh. i promise these blogs will get more interesting after the hectic weekend.

Un-Morning Person

i have to be at work at 6:30am tomorrow, on thanksgiving. this does not please me. much of today was spent in deep thought and prayer on the topic of yesterday's blogging, but no conclusion was immediately reached. that's probably a good thing. i didn't make a video today, like i said i would, but i did set up my rig so i would remember to do one sometime tomorrow. it's been far too long. i think i may revamp and re-launch my channel on the 1-year anniversary of my first for-reals vid. as with all things i announce on this blog, we'll see how that goes. it's unfortunately bedtime for me.

Bullstrode

considering, thinking, wishing, hoping, missing, longing, desiring, returning, remembering, laughing, enjoying, pausing, sighing. a sentence which is not a sentence which makes sense only in my mind. why do i commit such things to print, or in this case text publishing? because this blog should be, to some extent, an outpouring of what i think, feel, do and live. this is today, essentially. granted, you could throw in 'cleaning' and 'watching', but they didn't fit the theme. i'm currently torn between the logically superior route and the agonizing pain of being so far from home.

ambiguity can be fun, but it's usually just frustrating.

i watched a few videos from a friend on youtube, he's in japan right now, and it really made me miss asia and think about hong kong even more than i already was. i've been thinking about it a lot. my dad says 'whatever will get you to hong kong, do it' because even he thinks God wants me there in the end. i think he's right, of course, but i'm a bit biased. i want it to be right. still, i'll work toward that end with all my might. if that means seminary, so be it. for now, i'll trust in the promises of Christ and submit myself to the elders of the church and seek wisdom with how i should proceed. it's quite simple. unsatisfyingly simple.

Driving

it's weird when you play a game for a long time. massively multi-player online games are always changing and phasing from one world to the next, but you always take for granted that you can always go back and do the old stuff for nostalgia's sake. now, six years after the original launch of world of warcraft, the entire 'old world' is changing completely. a lot of that old stuff is now gone. it's cool in one hand and sad on the other. i'll probably be staying up way too late tonight to get a few things done that i never did in the old world, just because i can't ever do it again.

i'm sure i'll keep on remembering those things as the years go by, talking to new players who have never seen it [which i can't even conceive of] about the 'good old days' like i'm an old man talking about the 1950's or something. in the end, it's just a game, and it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but in my mind it's a new day. we've been playing this game for a long time and we've invested a lot of time and energy in something that has a great community which we still are constantly interacting with. a community of real people with the same experiences. it's wonderful. i'm glad to be a part of it still, even if the cataclysm today changes everything else physically. it's a new world, but the memories live on.

note: i certainly did stay up too late... so late that i forgot to actually post this! i thought i might add more musing, or recount the day's events [which were negligible] but i got sidetracked.

Prophetic Fools

now everyone seems to want to try and get me to seminary. i don't really know how i feel about it at this point, considering my patience with schoolwork is wearing thin, even with such an easy load of coursework in this program. i can't really bring myself to imagine going through the stress and trial of seminary work, learning two more languages when i'm having a hard enough time with one, and just the general discipline. maybe i'm just too comfortable, too lazy, too something. a few years ago, i would've jumped at the opportunity, but now i feel like it's out of reach.

maybe it is, but maybe it isn't.

i'm thinking about it. i'll give it honest consideration, but right now i can't envision myself honestly sitting down and saying 'alright, let's stay in the states for another three years so i can finish a very expensive master's degree program.' maybe it's because i put it like that, but that makes it seem so much worse than it probably is. i could be worrying for nothing, or just be building myself up so i've convinced myself that it's a bad idea. maybe i'm selfishly giving in to the fact that i'm pining for hong kong so much that i'd do just about anything to get out there as soon as possible — even work at another english centre.

either way, i'm not sure how it would work out. having my wife bring home the majority of our income has been working sufficiently for us for this year, but she has expressed that she would rather not continue doing it for an extended period of time [and understandably so]. i don't mind working, but if i were to take on a seminary course load, and do it right and get it done on time, i would not be able to work at the same time. and i'd have to move back to southern california if i wanted to go to the best school [which i would because i would view anything else as bordering on a waste of time and money], which produces all manner of problems. indecisive, abruptly ending blog over.

Maryland Certificate

i've had some boring days in my lifetime, but this one just about takes the cake. i literally stood at the electronics area today doing absolutely nothing from a work perspective, just talking to other associates and customers and helping people who were clearly not going to buy anything. before my lunch break, i didn't ring up a single customer. this is because, for some bizarre reason, we had about 12-14 cashiers working today. to put that in perspective, there are four working the morning shift and three at night tomorrow. yeah. pretty big difference.

after lunch was a bit better, but just as slow in terms of time dragging on and on. by the time i got home at around 7pm, i just kind of wanted to pass out, kind of like i did yesterday, but i managed to stay awake and raid and all of that. we didn't get yogg+1 down in the end, sad times, but we may get to do that next weekend. we'll see if i can manage to keep myself awake for that on black friday. i have to be in to work at 3:30am, and that is not looking to be a good day, especially considering i work until 2pm. overtime is good, but yeah.

i managed to get off tomorrow, which they scheduled me despite the fact that i was pretty clear about not being able to work on sundays, so that's a good thing. this means i get to go to church! it also means, sadly, that i only work two days next week: thanksgiving [from 6:30am to 1:30pm at that] and black friday. yikes. i think i'll survive, though. i'll have some days off this week, so maybe that means i'll actually get some videos done for my youtube channel, which i've been neglecting pretty seriously for the past couple of weeks. it's sleepy time.

Phone Books

so i was so tired when i got home today that, after taking care of some business up to and including posting yesterday's blog, i totally fell asleep. and by fell asleep, i mean went to sleep. but i got back up at 11:30 and made potstickers. they were delicious. i did this because if i had slept through the night i would've gotten way too much sleep, and that's just not good for me. it just makes me more tired. i think i've addressed this in a previous blog, though that was likely so long ago that it isn't even relevant. now i'm wondering if any new readers went through and read all the old blogs. that would be very time consuming. i'd be really impressed, actually.

oh, i also did it because i had homework.

today i worked from 10-6 and learned that i've been scheduled to work on sunday, which is so not happening. i'm getting more comfortable at the job now, and it's actually kind of enjoyable when the day goes by quickly, a.k.a. i'm not standing around doing nothing all the time. did you guys know that i once quit a job for that reason? my job was essentially to do nothing and sit in a car all day long. it was the best and worst job ever at the same time. figure that one out!

upon reflection, a few youtube comments and a review of the book, i've determined that i just totally imagined the idea of harry taking draco's wand by disarming him formally, because it didn't actually happen. it happened just like it did in the movie... i guess i read it in. you'll see why it's important though, in the final battle between harry and voldemort. that is, if you haven't read the books yet. and if you haven't, you should, because they're better than the movies. anyway, that's about all that's interesting that has happened today, and tomorrow is likely to be just as dull, though i'll try to think of another topic to talk about as well.

Elder Wand

pre-note: this post is about the new harry potter film. if you haven't seen the movie or read the book, and you care about spoilers, don't read this post! that is all. move along.

liked: the movie was very true to the book for the most part, only a few changes and most of them made sense from a film-making perspective. making hedwig sacrifice herself to make the death a bit more meaningful was wonderful, and the minor changes to speed scenes up and get them out on the road were necessary. overall it was probably my favorite of the seven films, and it had a great 'middle movie' sort of 'empire strikes back' feel to it, which agrees with the reviews. well acted by all, but especially emma watson whose dialogue basically drove the film.

disliked: the pacing could've been a little bit better, though it was an improvement on the book. the omission of wormtail's death was understandable, but i felt kind of cheated out of a strong moment from the book. getting rid of 'potterwatch' and the scene with dean thomas and things like that kind of disconnected everything further from hogwarts, which again is understandable, but the short scene on the hogwarts express sort of made up for it. the scene was confusing, and i may be wrong, but i didn't see harry disarm draco at malfoy manor. dunno how they're gonna get around that. that's pretty integral to the storyline.

anyway, all in all, it was a good day. waiting in line was fun, made some short-term friends and drank way too much pepsi, but i made it. my legs were so cramped! not excited that i have to work tomorrow, but that's life i suppose. it shouldn't be too bad. becky and christin were kind of off their rockers the whole time, but they had a lot of fun. i think my second viewing of the film will do a bit more to solidify my opinion on a lot of things, and possibly clarify some things i may have seen wrong the first time around. that'll be tuesday. ;-D for now, it's time for sleep!

note: posted the next day for obvious reasons.

T-Minus 22 Hours

today was a much needed day of rest, and as such, not many interesting things happened. however as far as my body is concerned, the day was very interesting. it was interesting not to hurt and ache by standing in place or pacing for 8 hours, so that's a good thing. tonight christin and i caught up on community [the bottle episode was so good] even though we will miss both of our main shows tomorrow night because of harry potter. woo! i'll be waiting in line from about noonish to midnight so it's going to be a long day for me. long, but fun of course. ;-D

we've been watching the neighbor's cat for a while now and she's so cute. she's really tiny, only a few months old, but she's not growing super fast because she's a runt just like ours. it's awesome. we feed her and play with her every day, so that's a nice break from life as usual. we move officially on the 15th of next month, and our rent is paid for the whole month of december, which is also good because we weren't sure what we were going to do about that. christin is indeed working the first 2 weeks and we're not losing money or having to work off tons of extra time, so all that's good too. i get my work schedule for next week friday. that's not gonna be fun.

It's Cornelius

nothing like retail to make getting back into the swing of things exponentially less pleasant. today was slightly more like a real day at work, given that i was on the sales floor for the duration of my shift. granted, at least 60% of that time was spent doing absolutely nothing because it was so slow. i'd say i can't complain, but of course i can! slow means boring for a cashier, we need things to do or the time passes, well, slowly. at least it seems that way. that's what they mean when they say 'it's a slow day today,' isn't it? i thought so.

excuse me, the dog is salivating profusely.

she does that when she needs to go out. most of the time i don't notice, because i've got headphones on this late at night. i've been trying to catch up on my youtube subscriptions, but it's proving to be a quite impossible task. i always get distracted by some other form of social media, watching some other thing, following link trails, writing something, looking something up, doing schoolwork, or any number of other things keeping me from just watching the videos that are cluttering up my sub box. tomorrow, i plan to actually clear that box out, once i've cleaned up the house and done the dishes. go dishes. we've got some nasty ones.

i also need to make a video tomorrow, considering i didn't do one last week [youtube was kind of broken, so i didn't want to deal with that], and also considering that i will be spending most of the day on thursday waiting in line for harry potter and the deathly hallows part one, which we've got midnight showing tickets for. excitement! so that's my near future. obviously that night will probably have either a late blog or a next-day makeup blog, as i will be gone late in a similar fashion to my new york excursion. that is, of course, unless i do a blog in the day from the theater or something. that's not likely, but we'll see.

Strawberry Nerds Forever

the first day of work is always filled with repetitive training on common sense issues to keep the company from getting sued, and this day was no exception. i learned that essentially everything is incredibly dangerous, all male customers are potential perverts, and any discrimination or other harassment issue is always sexually based. well, at least that's the idea you'd get from the basic training program for your typical department store. oh, and despite the fact that children could essentially injure themselves with any object, thousands of childrens' products are recalled yearly for the same underlying reason of avoiding lawsuits.

if that doesn't tell you something...

anyway, the day went pretty well. it was long and kind of boring, but i made it through an i didn't want to shoot up the place on my way out. i actually didn't ring up a single customer [i'm a cashier, if i didn't mention that before] but i watched just about everything being done and i think i'll be able to do the whole job myself tomorrow as long as i can ask people questions if i get confused about something. i had a most delicious chicken enchilada grilled stuft burrito [with nooooo sour cream] and it was just great. one plus about working at the mall: food court. house tonight was pretty intense! back to work tomorrow.

edit: i had fully intended to post this yesterday, but didn't because i was working on some visual aids to accompany the story, sort of in the style of allie brosh. that never happened. it's okay, i don't want people to like that and expect it of me, considering i do this daily and that would just be way too much pressure, man! *tweek voice*

Kind Of Weird

i have work tomorrow. like, actual work. real work where you get dressed a certain way, go to a building, clock in and do repetitive tasks for approximately 8 hours. as the title implies, it's kind of weird. i mean i clocked in at my last job, and all that stuff, but my work was really relaxed and casual regarding the other elements. a lot of the time, it didn't feel like i was working so much as i was doing something i just did every weekday. the last time i felt like i was really 'going to work' was when i was teaching in hong kong.

hopefully, my next job will be just that.

well, that's about as long as i can wax philosophical on that topic. if you thought yesterday was dull, today was just as vegetative. we did leave the house, or i should say houses since we spent quite a bit time at the neighbor's again, to look for a shirt for me. for work. we didn't find one, actually i just ordered two online that should be arriving on tuesday. we ate linner [that's lunch and dinner in one lazy meal] and came back to hang out. we spent a lot of time together this weekend, and it was really nice. missed church today. don't ask.

Nobody Knows

action-packed! no, wait... anti-climactic. we went to the school this morning to take care of christin's registration and financial aid, but they told her that until her financial aid was approved, she can't register without putting money [which we don't have] down for it. so we left there early, heading to the mall to get some lunch and get my schedule. i was expecting a hectic one, but i actually got four days next week for easy day shifts. cool! anti-climactic just the same, but cool. then we headed to the neighbor's house [we're house/catsitting] and watched t.v. while doing laundry.

once we got back to the house for tonight's raid, pizza ready, it turned out that we had some core members that were going to be missing and the raid didn't happen. we ate pizza and christin did a few achievements, discovering the wonders of the awesome and well-planned wailing caverns [oh man, where is my sarcmark?] and we watched some more t.v. instead of killing yogg-saron. oh my! we are so interesting, aren't we? and now it's late and tomorrow is church, so i'm going to head to sleep. yeah... another one of 'those' blogs. i'm sorry i'm not more entertaining.

Rocko's Modern Life

there's kind of a reason i blogged what i did yesterday, and the main reason is the fact that not a lot happened yesterday. today was kind of the same. it was full of running errands and such. i got my hair cut, which i suppose is interesting to a certain degree. so it's kind of short now, but that's good because i don't want to deal with it at work. i go in tomorrow to finalize papers, and i will probably start work on monday. good times. that means i should be getting some income soon. in other good news, it looks like the place we were planning on moving to is good to go for december first.

i talked to daks on the phone for one hour and thirty-eight minutes today. he's doing well. i find it a bit strange that, despite the fact that i blog pretty much every major happening in my life on a day to day basis [and he reads all of them], we somehow managed to talk about me for the majority of the time. i guess i dominate conversations. or maybe i'm better at making my somewhat boring life seem less mundane than daks is. ;-D whatever the mystery, it was a great time. we mostly talked about weather, school and chinese. i thoroughly enjoy at least one of those topics.

tonight we slammed our heads against the wall virtually... oh, i mean we made more attempts at yogg+1 for the meta-achievement in ulduar. so hard. the fight is really fun, so that's a plus, and we may just get it down tomorrow night. that would be good, considering i can't assure my raid team of my availability from here on out, given that i'm now working in retail. elijah, the 16 year old son of the oppenheims, whom we used to live with, may be coming to visit us next month. that's well timed too, because our new place will be bigger than this tiny slice of a house we are currently occupying. going to aacc for christin in the morning. fuuuuun. sleep time!

洗衣館

i don't know his name, but i do know that he gave me the old price every week until i was gone, even though he let me know [in broken english that was much better than my broken chinese] two months in advance that the prices were going up. i don't know his wife's name, but i do know that she stayed 20 minutes late one day because she knew i'd be coming. and somehow i know inside that she somehow knew inside that i would have been, to put it crudely, 'totally screwed' if she hadn't done so.

i don't know if i'll ever see them again, but i do remember their collective assumption that we would meet again someday, even though i informed them on my last visit that i would be returning to the united states a few days later. i don't know if their business is still operating, but i do know that the last time i saw him, he was watching the franklin graham crusade on television quite intently while the large metal colanders spun wildly behind him. despite the shortcomings of both graham's methodology and the orthodoxy of the local churches, this gave me some hope that i may indeed see him again, though maybe not this side of eternity.

most people would probably totally disregard such a seemingly trivial individual, but when you miss a place so much that it hurts, even the most common of occurrences come rushing back to mind with totally vivid realism. the stale nearby wet market air, fresh with chopped meat and loads of locally caught seafood. the noise of a busy bus terminus. the total visual disconnection from the meaning of the area — not a rainbow in sight besides the brightly tiled pillars and walls of the train station. and, oh God, the glorious scent of those perfectly pressed and folded clothes.

yes, when you miss a place that much, you remember your laundry service with great fondness, and spend hours contemplating the welfare of its proprietors. i never knew them, but they were part of my life. they are part of my home. they are part of hong kong, and right now i am not. i'm far from home, even in my home country. in this moment, school cannot be finished quickly enough. right now, my pace of language acquisition is unthinkably unacceptable. today, i just can't wait to get back home.

White Glove

my cat is way too happy right now. she manifests her happiness mainly by purring excessively and sitting on my knee, resting her front paws in the space between my keyboard and mouse. this is a very cute thing, until you need to stop typing and reach for the mouse. then it's a game of either driving the cat crazy by reaching under her, or driving yourself crazy trying to reach around her, while she is rubbing her purring face all up on your hand that is trying to make the move. the most adorably frustrating experience in the world, no? yes. yes it is.

today i was supposed to get a drug test, but i decided to wait until the last minute [well, at least the last hour] and traffic was nuts, so i ended up getting there at around fifteen minutes until closing. and the dude went home early. go figure! so i have to go in the morning tomorrow to make my 48 hour deadline so people don't think i'm a drug addict that is trying to cheat the system. yeah, that's me! crazy, drug-addict bud. i know, it's a standard test for jobs like this one, the applicants for which i would assume may very well be drug addicts. it's a living. that's basically the only eventful thing i've done today, and all i feel like typing about.

Minor Victory

as most of you already know through other forms of social media [though blogging isn't strictly a form of social media per se, so 'other' may not be the most accurate adjective], i now have a job. this is the part of the vlog where i cut to an alternate personality and say 'wow, bud. could you have phrased that more awkwardly?' and then i cut back to the first one and yell 'yaaa, trick, yaaa!!!' wow, bud. meta-blogging about vlogging now? i can't even handle myself. yes! i have a job! it's at sears, but it's a paycheck. i'm slowly realizing what this will mean.

working in retail is sort of a way of forcing yourself into a time warped dimension where nothing is certain, because your schedule is constantly changing. this means that my availability to do things other than work is also erratic, and usually greatly impeded by the looming possibility of work at any given time. i hope to minimize this downside, but don't really see how i can. as such, i fear that my level of participation in the area of blogging and vlogging will most likely suffer as a result of this job. well, definitely the vlogging [because of time] but maybe not so much the blogging. i'd imagine that work will offer many amusing anecdotes to fuel potential blog topics and interesting posts.

stay tuned, sports racers... racin' sports.

ze frank references. ha! am i sure i know why i don't vlog more regularly? i think it's because i'm of the opinion that i won't ever amount to much. that kind of kills my motivation. anyway, today had more things happen in it than just getting a job, christin and i also met with our pastor for our first confession/catechism 'talk' or lesson or whatever you want to call it. it was great. we got through the first section of the first article and covered just about every topic you can imagine. that's what happens when you get me talking about theology. christin tracked well and enjoyed it, and we celebrated the new job by going to friday's. it was delicious.

we got home and i fed the neighbor cat and headed out to the movies to go see 'inside job' which is surprisingly not about 9/11 as i would expect it to be. it was about the financial crisis, and my response can be summed up by the two tweets i sent out after leaving the theatre... they do well to place blame on de-regulation for causing the crisis to accelerate and worsen, but fail to address the factors that started it in the first place. it's sort of like throwing gasoline on a fire, then blaming the gasoline for making the fire burn things. in the words of the great philosopher billy joel, 'it was always burnin' since the fed was creating fiat money!' that wasn't a verbatim quote? oh. well it should've been.

note: i apparently didn't end up actually hitting publish last night. this blog looks unfinished, so that's probably why. i tend to get distracted late at night. the last thing i remember was christin asking for a cup of water and 'the burnies' [read: calcium carbonate], and i probably just went to bed after that. yeah, i think that's what happened. when i got on my computer today, my blogger tab wasn't even open, so there ya go. that explains the late publishing. yaaa, trick, yaaa!!!

Cinnabar? Eww.

all things considered, i'm robert seagull. wow, that's not how i wanted to start this blog, but that's what happened. i also didn't want the title i chose, but that's what ended up coming off of my keys and onto your internets. onto? into. i'm having prepositional issues tonight. i've got a preposition for you, mister anderson. wow, bud, stop. this is madness. anyway, all things considered, today was a rather uneventful one. i dropped off my gamestop application [read: didn't interview] after some homework, then i came home and did more homework. woo. so much fun, i know!

now granted, i took a break in there to hang out with the wife, watch house [which i must say was great tonight, and i hope the new character sticks around] and generally do things which are done in the newman household in the evening. most of which revolve around the internet. incomplete sentence. fragment. consider revising. i hate microsoft word, and sometimes i wonder why i still use it at all. but then i remember that i don't want compatibility issues. but then i remember that i still end up with them when my teachers use macs. stupid macs.

see? i can't win.

this is where the tech-savvy nerds that read my blog recommend open office. i used that before, but now i have word and i have no real reason to switch to open source that has just as many issues with compatibility as 'the real thing' [which, for the record, doesn't say micro machines on it anywhere, nor is it an inferior carbonated cola beverage] when i have a copy. though i admit that the legitimacy of said product may return 'false' on the boolean scale. which is not really a scale, now that i think of it. actually, now that i do think of it, it's probably more like a scale than what is commonly referred to as a scale.

so yeah. tomorrow i have an interview at sears, which i'm not looking forward to. i've got to make myself look somewhat presentable [read: brush my hair and put on a shirt that has a collar] and go down there at 2pm and smile and nod and pretend that i really, really, really want to slave away as a cashier in a department store. but i really, really, really want a paycheck, so honestly, pretending that will be significantly easier than it would've been about five months ago. so that's a plus, right? right. christin has an ob/gyn appointment at the same time, and we've got our first appointment with pastor taylor for church membership. yeehaw!

Retro But Not Active

the concept of a king is pretty foreign to us freedom-loving democracy advocates in the u.s. today. back then, the king was the state, the representative of governance and the sole authority of the government. in the 20th psalm, we have an account of the people of God praying for their king, an act that was akin to praying for the country. i don't think it's necessarily the same as praying for the president, as he's not the sole figure in charge of the country, but it's got implications on how we should direct our prayers. in all things, we must rely on God.

church was good. set up our first actual meeting for membership [tuesday from 5-6] and asked for assistance for the incredibly great cost of registering my car, which pastor taylor had offered weeks ago. just now got the actual number, and really anything would help. i had a property claim for like $120 and the state of california sent me around $60, which should tell you something about the economic state of affairs in my former place of abode. yeesh. maybe it's an installment or something, that would be nice. yeah. that's all for today. gamestop tomorrow.

Treasurer Of The State

i slept for a good eleven or so hours today, or rather at least i laid down for that long. it was good for me, because now i feel good enough to go to church tomorrow. mission accomplished, as far as i'm concerned. so yeah! i've got church tomorrow, dropping off my application [and hopefully interviewing] at gamestop on monday, and an interview at sears on tuesday. is it weird to say that i hope gamestop hires me before i have to work at sears? i dunno, i've worked in a department store before, and i just have bad memories of it. upselling credit cards and 'special offers'. ugh. target memories.

but really anything at this point will be better than bringing home no paycheck. there's something to be said for going to work and taking something home that adds money to the bank account, even if it's small. receiving wages, getting what's coming to you, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like it matches the amount of work you put into it [and sometimes the amount of work people put into it doesn't match the amount they receive... i'm looking at you, politicians]. it's good. i miss that. christin is watching me type. i don't like that.

so yeah. i'm gonna stop typing now because christin is watching me, and i can't type with people watching me. but now she's not watching anymore, so i can type some more. there we go. good times railroad!!! tomorrow should be good. i miss church. i need to rub christin's feet, and tucker is not a packet of mayonnaise... just for the record, you know, in case you were wondering about that. the dog smells really bad, and she needs a bath. she also needs breath mints of some kind, because damn. just damn. and with that lovely parting thought, goodnight.

Vindicated!

so the still un-named mazda [we'll call him the negromancer for the sake of clarity] is now officially registered in the state of maryland. that's a huge weight off my shoulders, despite the fact that it cost me $240 plus all the other extra money i've spent getting it ready to be registered. hopefully our church will be able to help us with that, as they've offered to do so. in other news, i've got an interview with sears *grumble grumble* on tuesday, which is good, and i'm applying at gamestop and a few other places in the mall.

also, mimiron is hard. just sayin'.

tonight, after the mostly failed raid, christin and i watched something we didn't even know existed at all: the epilogue to 'lost'. it's a 12-minute short that details a bit about what happened after the last episode, you know, between jack plugging the big stupid cork and the unitarian universalist heaven 'ending'. it was neat to see some of the questions answered, and my favorite character [ben] featured. we still don't know why walt is special or what that means, but we now have some idea as to what happened to the kid. and in the words of shirley from community, 'aww... that's nice!'

i've been writing a bit, but nothing really serious. i haven't recorded anything either. i'm going to try and get a bit done next week, but if i get hired somewhere and start working, i probably won't be making a whole lot of progress on the recording front in the near future. we'll see, i guess. getting a paycheck again would certainly be nice, though. tomorrow, becky is going to come over and hang out while christin and i go through the crap in our closet and containers in search for the missing video card that's supposed to go in her computer. that should be interesting! then another raid night. yeehaw!

Epic Drugs

i feel sick, my head hurts, my day was wasted, i cried today for the first time in a long while. and that was not a real sentence. this won't be long. nostalgia is eating me alive. i'm sitting here at four in the morning, reading wikipedia articles about hong kong, wishing i were there and that i spoke cantonese fluently. i know i'll get back, i know. reading up on lost made me think of it somehow, and reading friends' posts made it even clearer. i don't like being here. this country is no longer home. i don't feel welcome here.

tomorrow i will be going to the mva to register my vehicle with money i don't have. next month i will be moving to a new place and i have no idea how we're going to manage the first month's rent when christin's paycheck from this month is being deducted for rent for this past month. i need a job, and at this point i'm going to be stopping by the mall to get something seasonal, just so we can make some progress financially. we need to be ahead, not behind. student loans are one thing, but debt from the past that just won't seem to die... that's a killer.

Yes, Only 2,267!

the title of this blog post is the number of digital downloads [assuming $1.00 single song downloads only] i would need to sell to pay off all of our debt. i think this is doable, and while i am unemployed, i think i'm going to put more effort into getting some songs written/finished, recorded and up on the bandcamp page i made for our band. yeah, christin and i have a band, didn't you know? we're called 'the perfect place' and we're awesome and you should listen to our music and download it. all 2,267 of you! preferably soon.

is this all a good idea? probably not. but at this point, it sure feels easier than finding someone who will employ my terribly under-experienced ass. it feels like the harder i try, the harder it becomes to even get calls/e-mails back from people who aren't trying to scam me. i'm going to keep at it, for sure, but it's just really, really frustrating. i'm hoping that even if i don't make a dime by selling the music i'm working on, the act of writing and producing it will serve to keep me sane. just thinking about our finances for the next two months is making me a bit crazy. bedtime.

Quantum Leopoldt

it's interesting that about three years ago, i wouldn't only have thought the picture below this was funny, i would've bought right into it and seen it as good advertisement for church. now i see it and consider it blasphemous and a clear violation of the second commandment. what a difference a day, a confession, and a firm grasp of reformed theology makes, eh? most people would look at that and say 'wow, you've gotten really uptight then. that's funny and eye-catching.' but i'd have to agree and disagree. the image is funny, that's for sure, but only as a caricaturization of how ridiculous the church has gotten. it's eye-catching, but in the wrong way.'

yeah, we saw that sign on the way to the movie theatre to see 'hereafter' yesterday, another movie about the afterlife that assumes some sort of ambiguous unitarian universalist heaven concept. the script was okay, the child actors were terrible, matt damon's character and the french girl were all well developed, but in the end i didn't feel like anything was accomplished. we made the unfortunate mistake of going into the wrong theatre at first and seeing the last 10 or so minutes before realizing our mistake. i should've known that the movie wouldn't start so random with no previews. ha! silly us.

after the movie, we came home and christin did some more 'exploration'. after she went to bed i picked up a bit of that as well, watched some youtube videos [i'm almost caught up] and tried my best to solo karazhan as an elemental shaman. that was interesting. a few of the encounters take a bit of time and strategy, like the big bad wolf. for that fight, my totems ended up doing most of the damage while i kited the boss in a little red riding hood costume and hit flame shock every time i was out of it. it was pretty funny. maiden is doable but too much work, i got up to curator and i'll probably finish the rest tomorrow.

note: faaaaail. left this window open again.