Serious Business

today i had the best chicken i've ever had in my life. ever. it was amazing. my amazing wife made barbequed chicken that was pre-marinated in italian dressing for 2 hours, grilled on the george foreman grill. it was fabulous! we hung out and played wow together, doing old world stuff like the infamous molten core and blackwing lair. it was a nice trip down memory lane with some friends on the internets. i like! christin had fun too.

i seriously can't get over how good the chicken was.

tomorrow i go put lots of money in the bank and hopefully we can get a bed! and i do some more schoolwork, since i've opted to stretch this week out to feel more productive rather than doing it all at once like i originally had planned. i think i do better that way. my final project will probably wait until the last minute, because i don't want to overthink it. i know what i want to do and if i started working on it now, i'd probably obsess over it. i'm only missing like less than 1% in the class, so the pressure is off. i could not turn in the final and still pass. ;-P

but i wouldn't do that! i'm excited that i was so productive today. christin has been giving me chores [we call them quests] to do on our little white board on the fridge. it's fun! i think i don't have a lot to do tomorrow though, short of schoolwork. we'll see what christin has to say about that. lost last night was interesting. i liked it. a lot of people said it dragged or that it wasn't as interesting as last week's, but i thought it was fine. the jin/sun story has always been something i liked watching. i like them more than some of the other stupid characters on the show.

i'm also glad desmond is back. should i say that's a spoiler? it isn't really all that spoily, it's been more than 24 hours since the show has aired. if i ruined it for you, oh well. stop recording stuff on your dvr, man up and watch it when it comes on. ya haters. sheesh. anyway, that's all for tonight. i'm tired and it's bedtime. gotta get up early and do lots of schoolwork. woot! look, i posted more than 1-2 paragraphs!

Jigga Jigga Slim Shady

taxes done, getting $455 back. buying a bed with the proceeds! tomorrow we'll find a bed we like and get that, and once it's delivered it will be glorious. today was a good day. the dmv still hasn't sent us what we need, so that's frustrating. christin gets her paycheck tomorrow, which is great because we can budget next month. how sad is it that i'm actually excited about things like making a budget for the next month? being a grown-up isn't all bad. sorry for short post, i'm a liar.

The Fire's Out Anyway

got my check in the mail today. the benefits are re-instated! it's on like donkey kong. this means we can get a bed this month! that means no more messed up back in the mornings. yay! i'm excited for that, and that there's no pressure to find a full-time job for a while. now we just need the california dmv to send christin's title and my registration tags so we can register the cars here and be able to claim residency. that way, we can apply for reach and get cheaper doctor's visits, meds, and get my teeth fixed without paying an arm and a leg.

i've got so many youtube videos to watch.

tomorrow i'll be doing my final week schoolwork to get this class over with, then i've got about two weeks off from school. one as a result of finishing early, the other as a result of ashford moving my next class back a week. blah. i need to stay motivated and learn some chinese for the two weeks, make good of the time i have. i've been slacking in that area. i'd also like to make more videos and start recording some music. maybe i'll be able to get a good microphone and even possibly a guitar to start working with. that'd be neat. longer post tomorrow, i promise.

Playtime

tonight we went to a play, to see my buddy from youtube act and enjoy the frivolity. it was grand! shakespeare makes me type funny. anyway, church was great as expected. we learned about jonah and God's love and exactly what sort of love He loves us with. the sort that, as pastor bruce said this morning, loved the ninevites despite their violence in the same way that He loved jonah despite his arrogance. interesting to think about, even more interesting to experience that love first hand. today was a blessed day.

and tomorrow, it's back to schoolwork and everything else the week brings about. my chickenless chicken burger was actually really good, so that's a plus! actually, on the way home from the play we stopped at burger king and i had a real chicken sandwich. the boca meatless one was a whole lot better than the real one. although, i don't know that you could say that burger king's chicken sandwich is technically 'real' either. my wife is so sweet. i'm glad she had a good time tonight.

10x Wasabi Power Ownage

my wife wrote a lot today! she read me an awesome article tonight too, while i ran heroics. it was a good night, a fun night, after a great day as well. we went to our little nephew carter's 2nd birthday party and played with the kids. i've been up all day, since 7am. can you believe it? i hardly can. and now i'm pretty tired, so it's basically bedtime but i've got to write something here because it is a daily blog, after all. woot! let's see. what else can i say?

we went to whole foods today, just to get sushi for christin. i ended up buying vegan turkey because i thought it wasn't real [it is] and i ate a vegan turkey sandwich for dinner. well the mayonnaise on it certainly wasn't vegan, but it was meatless. it tasted... normal at first, but the longer i spent on eating it, the worse it was. it was gross in the end, and i didn't finish about the last third of the thing so i'll probably end up feeding the rest of the meat to the dog unless i can find a better use for it. i suppose doing like damien in mean girls may be an entertaining use. ;-D

hopefully the boca chicken patties will be better.

tomorrow is church, which is exciting because we're actually physically going there this time as opposed to last week where we watched it on t.v. which was pretty unfulfilling. we should most likely get up a little early and listen to last week's service so we can be caught up on jonah. but most of pastor bruce's sermons work as stand-alone messages even if you don't hear them in context, but it's always better to do so. we'll see how we feel in the morning. my tooth is killing me and it's time for me to go to sleeping time.

Anger

so i just drove around for half an hour looking for a place to fill up my 2.5 gallon water bottle for our drinking water for the next week. i failed. food lion was closed, of course, and for some reason they left all of the vending machines plugged in and functional except the one i needed. next stop was safeway, which has an indoor water machine, but it was closed too. i swear i saw 1:00am for the closing time on the door just this evening. i'm sure you're asking why i didn't just fill it up when i was out this evening. i forgot.

and giant doesn't even have a machine at all.

i certainly wasn't going to drive to annapolis, or even riva just to hopefully find a machine that was on and working, because if i didn't find one, i'd be even more upset than i am right now that i can't have a nice, tall glass of water right now because our well water tastes like... well. actually it tastes more like pipe than well, but the point is it tastes bad. and it's hard water, so it's probably actually bad for me. we don't even cook with it, which is why we're out. i made spaghetti tonight for myself, the wife and our friend becky. she didn't eat much of it, but her kid ate a bunch. it was a good night. i'm tired now.

You Was Trollin'

late night update. woo! since i'm still on west coast time on this blog, it's still technically thursday in my mind, and for all intents and purposes here. who needs facts when you have justification? today was schoolwork day, and i got it all done. hooray! tomorrow i've got to bathe our little monster dog, because she stinks really bad. that will be fun, it's always amusing to watch her freak out and roll around on the couch and bed when she's still a little wet, after drying her off. she isn't excited about getting the bath so much as she is excited about getting dry afterward. weird.

my chocolate bunny is halfway gone.

it's raining outside, which means everything's going to be soggy tomorrow. i don't like walking the dog after it's just rained, because she insists on tromping through every bit of mud she sees. she doesn't walk on those parts of the road when it's dry out, only when it's wet. she likes getting dirty. fortunately though, since i'm giving her a bath tomorrow after her long walk in the daytime, this problem will be easily remedied. woot!

a friend of mine, mr. chris, has returned to the world of warcraft. i'm excited because it means i'll get to talk to him more, since he's been a stranger to the online world at large to my knowledge for quite some time now. it was fun filling him in on the changes the game has had since he last played, which was just before the expansion came out. he freaked out because his hunter's pet had a talent tree. i had almost forgotten some of the things that had changed, so when he asked it was just weird to have to explain things that are so basic. but that's the way it goes!

Calbee Potato Chips

if there were ever a night where i didn't feel like typing anything, this would be it. i should've done this blog earlier in the day, but the power was out when i wanted to write. and writing blogs on my phone is annoying. today i had my phone interview with e.d.d. and i think it went well. i'll know in about 10 days whether or not my benefits continue. pray that they will! i spent some time hanging out with elijah, my long-lost now french cohort in crime slash adopted teenager. we played wow for a bit and got my newly 62 priest some gears. it was fun!

christin and i had some danky dank chinese food tonight from dragon house, the local joint. it's the best in the area that i know of, but it's also the only one i've tried. i don't feel like i need to try any other place, though. ;-D got orange chicken this time, which was a good choice. it was actually general tso's chicken, which most orange chicken dishes in the states are, but it was very well made none the less. it's sort of hit and miss with dishes of mixed origin. i prefer real orange chicken made hunan style with dried tangerine/orange peels and spices. it's not as sweet and much tastier.

but that's because i'm a china snob.

funny enough, i've never had orange chicken in asia before. it's one of those dishes you don't tend to order because there are a ton of other great choices there and even if you do get it there, most americans expect general tso's chicken and don't like the actual dish. when i'm in hong kong i like to eat more traditional cantonese dishes, indian food and just typical diner food. yes, i'm a fan of the greasy spoon. if they don't have an english menu, it's probably really good. ;-D

there's an awesome shanghai-style noodle and rice joint in the mall adjacent to new town centre in sha tin. if you're ever in the area, i'd recommend it, it's called top one noodle. the signs to the shop on the directory are all in chinese though, so you'd probably get lost looking for it if you don't know where it is already [note: tracked down the address: shop 31, 3/f, sha tin plaza]. that's enough nostalgia. i've been up for way too long! it's bedtime for me. goodnight, lovely people.

Drinkin' Deep From The Bottle

it's probably a sign that you used too much bourbon in your bourbon chicken marinade when you are buzzed by the time you get through with your meal. or, depending on who you ask, it may be a sign that you used enough. i'm not an alcoholic, so i'm going with the former. it was really tasty but very strong! i shouldn't have doubled the recipe, but i thought the regular amount of marinade just wasn't enough to sufficiently marinate the chicken. next time i'll try the regular recipe and see if my wife can manage eating more than a piece and a half.

sleepin' time.

My Mum's Idea

so my phone interview is actually on wednesday. fail! i want to start getting up with my wife in the morning to spend some time with her and eat breakfast. it will probably be good for me to do both of those things, as i love both my wife and eating. speaking of eating, i've been eating a lot of cereal lately, because cereal tastes amazing. it's like dessert for me, and i eat it that way too. tonight i got some no frills ghetto rice chex and cinnamon toast crunch because they were cheap. the imitation rice chex are good, haven't tried the other.

usually i like to eat waffles for my midnight snack slash random meal replacement food, but every time i use the toaster my fire alarm likes to go off. i hate that fire alarm. i just want to tear it out of the ceiling, but then i remember that someday, if there were a fire, it just may come in handy. i just wish it were in a more conveniently located position, but i guess it is pretty central, given that this apartment is very small. i'd say terribly small, but it isn't terrible. actually i quite like it.

christin went to the doctor today, though i should say that she went to the nurse practitioner since we can't afford to see a doctor because we don't have health insurance [halp obamas? bah.] but it's just easier to say doctor. she has bronchitis, surprise surprise, so they prescribed her some antibiotics which were free, some $20 cough syrup [codeine is expensive, yo] and some $16 cough... things. pills? they're more like gelcaps. the antibiotic is some weird abbreviation that i've never heard of. that's what happens when your wife is allergic to the two major antibiotics.

tomorrow i get to do the taxes. yay! i got some money from my financial aid stipend, which will go to books and groceries, more than likely. we buy a lot of those two things. christin gets paid in a week, which is good because we need to budget next month. i'm budgeting under the worst case scenario assumption that i don't get my unemployment benefits, which i don't think will actually happen because i don't see why i wouldn't still qualify. i'm still doing all the things i was doing in california, i'm just in a different state. i still paid into the system through my taxes, so i should still be entitled to get it back.

take that, governator!

ugh. kind of depressing thinking about how this country is being run into the ground by greedy and stupid politicians. what kind of world is this where our school boards are run by people who don't teach, our health care is overseen by c.e.o.'s who are in it for the money, our banks are just slaves to a dollar that is becoming more and more worthless, given that it is created out of thin air and swirled around. people don't even notice. people don't even know it's happening, but this country is crumbling. it's time to fight back or get out. i'm going to do both, actually.

one before the other, of course. i've been fighting in the form of third party politics for years, but eventually we all know that my heart is in hong kong. oh to be back there now. we may take a trip in september when christin gets 2 weeks off, paid vacation. pray for that and pray about coming if you're interested in doing ministry, or at the very least subverting the oppressive communist government of china to get bibles to people who just want to read about Jesus Christ. talk to you later.

Welcome To My Sub-Reality

going to keep this short and sweet, because my wife's blog for the day covered a lot of my day so i don't want to be too redundant. i've been voting for fellow youtuber dr. noise for a couple weeks now for this contest. check his song out and join me if you wish. the new video is up, so check that sucka out. ;-D special thanks to my awesome nieces for being in it. those girls rock. the party from last night didn't end until about 4am, so i didn't get a whole lot of quality sleep. we watched church on t.v. which was not as cool as it sounds. i'd much rather be there. going to have to catch up on the podcast to hear this week's sermon. it's okay.

tomorrow i've got schoolwork, and i'm going to make the most of the rest of my little recruit-a-friend time i've got left to get a few more higher level characters. i still haven't decided what class i want to play definitely for cataclysm, but since the gear grind right now is so easy, i figure keeping my options open is a good idea. it's fun, i'm having a blast playing and not getting obsessed, which is sort of a new thing for me. i ate a lot today. pray for my e.d.d. phone interview tomorrow morning if you think about it.

thanks a lot to all who read this. it's nice to write.

I Feel Like The Grinch

noise, noise, noise! the housemates upstairs are having a party, and it's loud. i understand, they're drinking and carousing and having a great time, but my wife is trying to sleep. i get the shouting and the stomping is fairly unavoidable, but setting off the fire alarm and letting it go for like a minute before hitting the 'hush' button is a bit much. i'm a tolerant man, but excessive drunken stupidity is where i draw the line when it comes to my wife. mess with me all you want, but not the woman!

today, christin and i went to the eastern shore to visit bob, donna, alissa, caleb and meghan. what a nice day! the kids were a lot of fun, despite an interesting turn of events where i ended up chasing caleb around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes on a razor scooter. we took some rad footage i'm using for a video tomorrow, which should come out awesome. i took a beautiful picture of the sunset:

been playing wow again. it's fun. just gearing my old warlock up, which is cool for now. i'm sure the novelty will wear off once i'm done with the grind, which i'm guessing will be soon. fortunately for now, i'm still having fun with the random dungeon thing. it takes a lot of the crap out of finding a group and getting through instances that i've already done and a few that i haven't done. i've still got the three new ones to do, 2 of which i did on my shaman but the last one which is completely fresh for me. will probably be a while before i get bored of those, but i've got to gear up first before i can even queue for them. crazy!

tomorrow is church, which i'm looking forward to. then a day of video editing and possibly a nice little date with my wife. we got cash for babysitting friday night, which was nice, so we can go to see a movie and have a bite to eat. it's great getting so much time to spend with christin. pray for her health, she's having a hard time right now.

With A Rebel Yell

today i bought bourbon. it's yummy. it's for cooking, but it's also good for drinking. i bought some food items as well, and will hopefully be making lasagna tomorrow. i love lasagna. i also made a video. i think it's funny, but that's because i made it. i'm also making another video tomorrow on how to catch a fictional creature. it's gonna be super rad, i hope. i also hope more people watch my videos and enjoy them, because i enjoy making them, and i want to be encouraged to keep making them. yes, i do need validation. yes, this is a plea for comfort.

i don't know why i'm typing like this.

it's probably because i know that, juding by the time on my clock [read: laptop], this is going to be another short entry. i don't like making short entries, because i feel like i've cheated the day of being discussed, and it was a good day. i also feel like cheating the handful of people that actually do read this out of something valuable to read. of course, if you're looking for substantive value in blog posting, you're barking up the wrong tree. i just talk about my day. if it ends up being poetic at all, don't blame me.

taxes still need to be done, faq video i mentioned like a week ago [edit: i mentioned it on monday. fail!] still needs to be edited and put up, et cetera, et al. we're going to the eastern shore tomorrow for the day, i think. it's going to be a good time, and we get to see some of the extended family. i like bob/donna and their kids, so i think we should have quite the enjoyable afternoon. let's see how many ways i can say the same thing with different words in one paragraph to buffer the size of this post. i count three. actually i didn't count them, i'm just guessing that there were three. were there three?

oh, it was two. it felt like more. we got the hd receiver from verizon tonight, which is cool! we can now watch lost and have it not look super lametastic, and my wife can watch people teach her how to cook things she'll probably never actually cook but she just likes watching [which i totally don't get, but she loves it and i won't knock it] in mind-blowing 720p widescreen! cue the sound effects. no? nothing? what am i even paying you people for?

if you're wondering about the title, it's the brand of bourbon i bought.

Geddan Is Japanese For Awesome

my wife started blogging daily as a result of my blogging daily. shall we start a trend? i find it quite interesting. i should have lots to say, but not a lot happened today. a good thing that happened was the fact that i got my letter from e.d.d. in the mail saying that i've got another telephone interview to suffer through on monday. if you could all pray that i continue to receive benefits. i am looking for full-time work, but to be perfectly honest it's really nice being able to have so much free time to focus on school and creative projects.

that's all for now. i don't really feel like writing more.

There Are No Serpientes In Ireland

happy st. patrick's day! only christians and gullible people should be excited about this holiday, as i have had to break the unfortunate news to many people recently that patrick was really 'just a missionary' and not a destroyer of serpents. there haven't been any snakes in ireland since the last ice age! thanks to truth or fail for that little tidbit. i know, i say 'just a missionary' like going to a country to preach the gospel to people who kidnapped you is no big deal... i know, it is but to most people who find out he was a missionary and not much more, they are disappointed. i'm trying to be ecumenical here!

we 'celebrated' the 'holiday' today by eating [read: not eating, in my case] corned beef and cabbage, the quintessential irish meal of the day, with my in-laws. it was a nice evening. after that, we hung out and looked at cave houses on christin's computer with her father because he wants to live in a cave. don't ask. ;-D now mom and dad are heading back to riva and the wife and i are enjoying the fact that we now have two functional computers in the house. and now, i will play world of warcraft and see what's new in the world of azeroth.

not much, apparently. at least not much that i hadn't already checked out after patch 3.3 hit, and the stuff that did come out since then is stuff i can't see because i don't raid. i'd like to though. when cataclysm comes out, i probably will get back into it if we have the time. it's fun playing with friends! and now it's ridiculously late because i did some runs after my crossweave meeting on skype, which went oddly, and now it's time for bed.

Today Was Tuesday?

i honestly hadn't noticed. strange. today i went out and about and got lots of things done! i fixed the jeep for $25.00 and all i need for now is to get my windshield filled and we can get our two vehicles registered in maryland and claim residency! woot! well, as soon as christin gets the title to her jeep in the mail. in like a million years. wow, energy level way down now.

after that, i hung out a bit, traveled around a bit and got some furniture for the apartment from the enormous goodwill store in annapolis. it was pretty crazy. you can buy goblets there, did you know? you can buy a freaking chalice. thursday night, they're having a 50% off sale for 4 hours, and you can rest assured that i will be there with an empty car, a handful of cash and a cart filled with all the superfluous antiquated food and beverage receptacles i can get my hands on.

tomorrow, i've got some catching up to do on schoolwork, and i may take a few pictures of the new digs. it's decidedly less ghetto — i'm typing this at an actual desk! tomorrow night, we're hosting my in-laws for a very irish dinner. my wife is cooking corned beef and cabbage [blech!] in our new crock pot. i'll be having a sandwich and a glass of irish whiskey to be festive. until then.

The Future Is You

up and down we go, as the rollercoaster of the blogosphere pushes forward on the track toward my untimely demise. how pleasant? when i don't feel like writing a blog, that means i really should do it because i am, after all, doing this primarily for myself. i need to keep the creative juices flowing, so to speak, and i have noticed a dramatic increase of productivity in all areas of my life since i began blogging again after a very long absence.

last night's blog was a mess. don't read it.

even my wife didn't get it. she offered me suggestions to prevent me from procrastinating. this is not a shot at my lovely wife, whom i love more than anyone physically existent on the planet at this moment, but a general notice: if your response to last night's blog was 'bud should stop being such a procrastinator', rest assured that you didn't get it. at all. it's a good thing for me, and it's part of who i am in a good way, though others looking at it from the outside may not agree initially.

i think a large part of the reason why i don't want to type this blog right now is because it's so incredibly uncomfortable for me to sit here like this. if you saw the picture a few days back, you know what my situation is. it's bad. really bad. but among all of the things we need/want to buy for the apartment [computer for christin, bed that's big enough for 2 and doesn't kill my back, and maybe a t.v.] a desk for my laptop setup is not high on the priority list. additionally, until we do get a decent t.v., at least my second monitor must remain in this room because it's our main source of entertainment, watching downloaded content.

i got my assignment done. i was right, it was easy and it didn't take me very long to do, besides the stupid bibliography at the end. silly online sources not specifying location and making me guess in the end! i was also right about obsessing over it once i had turned it in. it's a good thing i just sent it in. i don't know if it's any good.

tomorrow i've got to read a chapter in my textbook, edit the julieandstacy f.a.q. video that i said i would edit today [which i didn't because i was busy editing this] and see a man about a horse. i mean a car. i mean a jeep. christin's jeep.

Track Meet Bonanza

church was fantastic, reflected upon the necessity of inward heart change that leads to external life change rather than the converse. lunch was mediocre, i need to remember never to order anything else with a cheesy double beef burrito because it either induces vomiting or you don't finish one or the other. movie was good, watched alice in wonderland in 3d with my lovely wife and i thought it was surprisingly less tim burton-y than a lot of his other films. home is good, put up a few framed photos of hong kong in the room and caught up on my youtube subscriptions.

i got to help my buddy nic [i keep linking his blog in hopes that he will notice and update it, but now that i think about it, he probably doesn't read my blog] out with one of his papers for seminary. it was neat: he did all of the serious scholarship [25+ footnotes] and i cover the grammar/syntax end of the heavy lifting. in the end, hopefully he gets a good grade and i get to share in knowing that he is a step closer to getting into the doctorate program he deserves, if he chooses to go that route.

speaking of school, i am glorying in my procrastination. tomorrow i have a project due, but i know it won't take me a whole lot of time to do. that should make me want to do it quickly and get it over with, but no. i can't do that. that's too simple. i insist on waiting until the last minute. does it produce a better result? well, i wouldn't know really, because i can't remember the last time i've written a paper or done a project that wasn't completed at the last minute. but i can tell you one thing about a procrastinator's work:

it's honest.

sure, it may be honestly rubbish from time to time, and it may not always be the most well done or fine-tuned piece of work. it's honest work, and i guarantee that i pull out significantly less b.s. to get the work finished than i would if i had a lot of time and energy put into the project. that may sound counter-intuitive, but my reasoning has a lot to do with my personality. i tend to take a lot of time obsessing over minutia, looking up just about everything and going just a smidge shy of looney trying to make something perfect. the more i do that, the more of my insanity goes into the project and the less human it is.

it sounds strange, but i really do firmly believe that crazy people should always procrastinate as much as possible in order to preserve enough of the human element to make the finished project something worthwhile. the longer i spend hacking it to bits and over-analyzing, the more my work ends up looking like someone else's. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that there's another person inside of me that takes over a project if i spend too much time on it, but my life seems to be a constant struggle between the side of myself that is spontaneous and the side of myself that is calculated.

if you've ever read some of the tussles i get into on facebook, you've experienced 'calculated bud' before. if you haven't, i'll spare you the trouble: he's kind of an asshole. the more time i spend on specifics, information, research and content, the less time i spend thinking about presentation. if i just type type type type type and hit send... it's gone. it's done. the problem in the internet venue is that i can always delete and re-type. sometimes i do, sometimes i don't.

for some reason, i have a hard time being objective about my own material. i guess to a certain extent, everyone has that difficulty, but i think it's worse for someone as split down the center in regards to thought processes, manner of execution and general je ne sais quoi as myself. this post probably isn't making any sense at this point, and i should probably stop typing and hit 'send' before i delete it all and no one gets to see what i'm like when i go all stream-of-consciousness on y'alls. ;-P that's all for now.

Asian Spices

sometimes

i think somethings wrong with me because

i was never one

to believe in anyone or anything

it's always been just me

and you know

they've always had big plans for you

just to walk you through and cloud your views

and i'll never say that everything's okay

don't want to say that you're giving up right now

just hold your ground

and don't give up in what you believe

big plans big crash

why be different

when you can't be yourself

sometimes

i think something's wrong with me because

i was never one to believe in anyone or anything

and can't say i'll ever change

i won't say i'll ever change

is it a cop-out to just post lyrics to a song instead of actually posting a blog? guilty as charged. i was just thinking about this song and thought i'd post the lyrics because i don't actually have anything interesting to say tonight. my wife made a video today, and you should watch it. it's a response to my video from yesterday. watch, rate, comment, subscribe, post a response.

love ya.

Nice, Shiny Pieces

the drugs, they're working. this is good. mental note: prednisone tastes disgusting. today was quite good and productive, despite the fact that i woke up at 11:30, which is significantly later than i like to wake up. i have this problem with sleeping, it's a window of time [4-6 hours] and if i sleep more or less than that amount, i'm just tired all day. it's 6 hours, or it's 10-12+ hours.

yeah, i know. weird.

cleaned the house, now it looks all super nice and nifty. still ghetto, considering our t.v. stand is a chair and my laptop and second monitor are on opposite ends of said chair on top of bins full of stuff brought over in the move. why am i describing all of this in text when i could just include a picture? sometimes i forget that technology exists. gotta love it. i'm kind of lazy though. this would involve taking my phone out, taking the picture, plugging the phone into my computer [which would also involve going into the bedroom and getting my cord] and uploading the photo twice.

there, i did it. happy? of course you are. today i made 005 which is about community. i think it's pretty good, and so do some other people. you should watch it and participate in the concept, as i think it will do well for folks who are interested in interacting within a community of other people that care to communicate via the film medium. self-expression, making friends, linking a bunch of people together — what could go wrong? plenty, but it probably won't.

dragon house for dinner. mmm. had fun at food lion with my wife, who is awesome. did i mention that recently enough? it's the truth. she reads all of my blogs, which anyone who has read even a few of my blogs can likely deduce is quite impressive. she suffers through my incessant attitude and mood shifts, my o.c.d. and my wackiness. she's my best friend, my gift from God, my honey muffin bunches bag of burrito breath. yeah, that's my pet name for my wife. deal with it.

charm city art space tomorrow? i don't know if age sixteen is playing, but if they are i'm going to try and make it out to b-more. who's with me?

Time For Chili!

minuteclinic visit: $62.00

prescription meds: $9.99

non-prescription meds: $16.99

buckling down and just going to the doctor instead of complaining about the sinus infection that you've had for the better part of two years without treating: priceless.

in short, i went to the 'doctor' today, which is a good thing, and i begun my medical regimen that'll hopefully bring wellness to myself. i put doctor in 'bunny quotes' because i don't know if she was a doctor or a nurse, and i'm all about being proper, right? right. i also picked up some food at giant and a terribly terrible primatene mist inhaler for my wife because she's out of hers and the ones we order from overseas for cheap because the health care system in the united states is ridiculous (to the extent that i want to scream and curse) forces us to haven't arrived yet.

schoolwork done, doctor done. tomorrow i need to make this house look like people live in it. and by people, i mean non-lazy people. in short, tomorrow night, i need to construct an elaborate hoax in order to prove to my wife's friend that we aren't as lazy and poor as we actually are and pretend that it makes a difference whether or not things are set in order. i suppose it does, but when 'order' means crates and broken computers shoved in corners and closet (singular) because we're too poor for shelves and cabinets, i hardly think it does at this point.

but socioeconomic deception is the name of the game!

i'm sure i'll catch heat for making it sound this way on my blog, but i'm only half serious. really i just use the concept of blatant honesty as both a humorous, cynical storytelling device as well as basically an excuse to continue my laziness. oh woe is me! i'm gonna do it, of course. but this way i get to complain about it in a way that makes me sound as if i'm rebelling against the norms and cultural expectations that society has forced upon me. it's fun to pretend though, right?

I Know...

everything sucks when you're sick. everything sucks more when you're sick and you have to stay up until 1am or later because you've got a meeting on west coast time and you live on the east coast. i'm not complaining, i swear. but i am saying that i'm not going to blog tonight. blaaaaah. for some reason, chrome is not remembering who i am when i hibernate my computer. must be a problem with google's login system, gotta check that out. i digress. i'm gonna watch videos until it's time for the meeting, then i'm gonna go to bed.

Redemption

today i both started and finished a video i had meant to do last friday, which can be seen here. it's my home movie featuring the week before i left california, up to and including the awesome two-night goodbye bash my sister and a few others threw for me. hooray! for those wary of clicking, or those who didn't watch because it's almost ten minutes long: it has craziness, beard shavings, crazy old men dancing, cute little babies dancing and copious amounts of annotations.

it also has a little thing i like to call flava.

since i dropped christin off at work this morning, i picked her up after work [with the dog] on foot, which was some great exercise. it took me 28 minutes to walk, which isn't too bad for 1.6 miles with a monster in tow, and it took us 32 minutes on the way back. there are some pretty freaky twists & turns on the road to our house, so it makes walking a bit more difficult. as soon as we find a good deal and have the money, we're going to buy a kayak or two. it would take less than 10 minutes for christin to get to work by kayak. interesting, no?

i had planned to do some schoolwork today, but i ended up just responding to a couple of posts that were interesting to me and thinking about school. i need to read two chapters tomorrow and do my quiz from last week, which i'm confident will get done. today's goal was to actually edit that video, and i accomplished it though i'm not too happy with mediacoder at the moment. super to the rescue! i had them both, but here's the dilemma:

mediacoder runs great and has very few errors, but always spits out files that i can't seem to get to work with my editing software, which is sony vegas pro 9. super is a pain in the ass to work with and crashes all the time, but always turns out usable material in a reasonably short amount of time.

today, super ran perfectly. running 1-5 file queues seems to be the way to go, as my poor system doesn't deal well with large lists to encode with super. for the record, i am talking about making proxy files for editing, because i can't edit 720p h.264 .mov files on this little 2.0ghz core2 laptop. ;-P i make tiny little 240x180 mpeg2 files that preview quite smoothly and aren't too much of a pain to render down and replace. but today's video had 31 video files [2 gigs raw, 36:51 worth of footage] so it was a bit more tedious than usual.

as far as videos go, since i've got the time and this apartment has great lighting, i'd love to do them more regularly than i have been in the past. inspiration must strike! i have a lot of ideas that i've been kicking around in my head, just got to get them on film. all in good time. school and wife are first! well, wife and school. but wife time isn't prioritized when wife is at work! anyway, i suppose i should stop blogging now and get some sleep. i get up early now. weird, i know.

since it's past 9pm on the west coast, i can probably post this now: i'm very excited that they've chosen to put ben on the 'good guys' side. he's always been my favorite character. stoked. locke was my other favorite, and he's turning out to be a pretty badass villain. i'm glad jack isn't still a whiny little snot this season, and he's starting to get a bit of redemption going as well. tonight's episode of lost was probably the best this season. keep it up, guys.

Aperture Science

my wife has decided that she wants to be a hockey fan, so we watched hockey tonight. the caps lost in a devastating overtime game, ending their home-game winning streak. it was a sad first day as a hockey fan. as a matter of fact, as far as being a viewer goes, my wife is 0-2 as of now if you count the olympics. which i don't, because they're just a marketing ploy to sell gatorade. duh.

this blog is so not happening tonight. i've got a lot to say, but i'm too distracted and it's now way too late. time to hit post and leave you all with an unsatisfying few sentences. sorry! i'll post lots tomorrow to make it up to you. i promise! okay okay okay.

Not Bad, Scorsese

last night, the movie didn't happen because of some ticketing issue. we decided to come home, have a bowl of ice-cream and catch up on our t.v. shows we've been missing for the last couple of months that we've been apart. it was a nice time, and i'm sure something we'll be doing a lot. but we went to see a matinée of shutter island today and it was pretty good. i'm not entirely sure i was satisfied with the very ending, for reasons i won't disclose here because i'm sure a lot of people haven't seen it yet.

but yeah, it was good.

church this morning was great, continuing on in the series on jonah. pastor bruce's sermon was so encouraging for my wife and i, as it was about redeeming a city as opposed to going out to the small outside villages. it's our desire to do work in hong kong, a major city, that there would come forth a large group of chinese missionaries to the chinese people outside of the major cities, which is where a lot of work must be done. i haven't seen a strong emphasis on changing hong kong as a city, and since it has millions of people living there, it seems like it should be a priority.

got to talk about hong kong with one of our flatmates today, patrick. it was cool because he had been there on float in the navy for about 9 days. it's always interesting to hear an outside story of what the city is like because we are so obsessed with it. different people have a different flavored impression of what it's all about out there and how it's like. i love listening to it. pretty much i just love hong kong and everything about it.

tonight, christin and i made dinner and hung out at home in our new place. it really is beautiful out here, and quiet! it's good to be in our own place, even though there are people living upstairs and all, it still feels really private. i'm looking forward to a productive week with my schoolwork and hopefully a successful time at the unemployment office [tomorrow — please pray] and a job search throughout the week. also, please pray that christin and i would make good on our efforts to learn cantonese quickly and efficiently.

Retroactive Anti-Failure

my lack of real world experience in the field of actually speaking cantonese to living, breathing human beings is probably my biggest downfall. today, that downfall was somewhat remedied by a nice lady at the chinese buffet down the street from my new house. it was nice to be able to see if my comprehension skills have really improved well enough to be able to have a fast-paced, 'though i know you're a beginner, you're speaking chinese to me so i'll treat you as though you've mastered the language anyway' sort of conversation. they were, and i was pleasantly surprised.

fortunately, my lack of vocabulary is less of an issue now, but as soon as the other person mentions something outside my realm of experience, i start stammering and sweating like obama without his teleprompter. it's okay though, because most chinese [especially in america] speak a good deal of english. the woman in question was malaysian, but she spoke cantonese well enough, which makes sense given that the business is owned by two hong kong people. it was good, i'm sure i'll be coming back there for the food [which was pretty good for buffet food] and some conversation.

tonight, we're off on a date. johnny rocket's for burgers, bow-tie cinemas annapolis for shutter island. it's gonna be great.

Taste The Intensity

oh motivation, where art thou? i knew it would be a challenge to keep up the commitment [that i now realize i didn't actually ever make] to blog every day, but i didn't know that it would happen so quickly upon arriving in maryland. i don't really want to do anything right now, my motivation is at zero, but i press onward! listen to me go on and on, i'm like a worthless lazy sack of beep-n-beep-n! if you get that joke, you rule. if you invented that joke, i can't believe you read my blog.

i don't like blogs that exclusively talk about the writer's own personal current events, especially when the individual is particularly uninteresting and not notable, but that's all i've got for today so that's what you're getting. the great thing is that i can now justify my blatant boring posts like this one by saying that people may actually care to know what's going on in my day-to-day because i've just recently moved across the country.

ha! take that, logic!

actually, now that i think about it, i love reading crap like that. i love watching crap like that. it's so interesting that despite all of the interesting stuff i watch on youtube, the stuff that can really draw me in is the hum-drum daily vlog. the best one that i watch, which is actually the only truly daily vlog that i watch, is ray william johnson's 'breaking nyc'. he's fairly youtube famous because he runs the insanely popular '=3' which took your mom jokes, bad puns and viral video to a whole new level. the funny thing is: i don't really like =3 at all. i like breaking nyc.

i like the idea that i can check out another person's life in a non-invasive way. i think the reason behind this lies in my fascination with people who live their lives very publicly. a lot of the time, i wish i were that type of person, and i'd actually like to do something like a daily vlog in the future and involve my wife as well. we'll see how well that works out. i think the implications of living a public life are ineresting, especially given the spiritual aspect of being a 'public persona,' sans ego of course. that's the biggest thing to keep in check. can it be done?

wow. i've just realized that i managed to make an entire, somewhat lengthy blog post that's about blogging everyday life without actually blogging everyday life. since i want to keep it that way, and nothing that happened today was particularly interesting to the point that i must point it out to you 'like omg right nows,' i will let the irony stand. ;-D

Arrival

well, i'm here! surprise to my wife, surprise to anyone who isn't in my immediate family [or isn't nick hadley] but i've arrived a day early to my loving wife and my new apartment. my wife is good! my apartment is also good. today was a good day, and lots of stuff happened. i'm pretty eager to get some sleep, so i won't go on about it for too long, but i'll try and fill you all in with most of the stuff that went down.

i woke up in lovely sevierville, tennessee and did my homework for the week after sleeping in until about 10am. it was wonderful. the sleep, not the homework. my aunt sharon [uncle marc is in virginia, presumably on business] made cookies for me and christin which were delicious. the two of us and joel [my cousin] caught up a bit on things and talked about my favorite subject, china. i was on my way out of the boondocks and into sevierville.

let me tell you about sevierville. it rules.

i drove by so much cool stuff so fast that i didn't have time to pull out my camera or phone to get footage of most of it. i did snap a photo of a huge fireworks store, which isn't anything spectacular to anyone who lives outside of silly california, but it was grand. i put a picture below. anyway, in addition to that, there were at least two water parks that i saw, a huge nascar go-kart deal, this building that's completely upside-down that hosts magic shows or something... and a castle that comes complete with dragon. amazingness.

anyway, that was actually most of the amazingness for most of the day, as the drive out wasn't particularly memorable... probably because i had just driven the exact same route two months ago when christin and i came out with the jeep. i got to d.c. at around 8pm, right on schedule, and things were looking good. good, of course, until i exited the 595 toward davidsonville on the last stretch to the house. christin called me. she was crying. why?

she hit a deer.

rather, a deer hit her. left fender, scared the crap out of her... there wasn't a whole lot of damage to the car, and zero damage to her, so in the end it was really no big deal. however, it sort of dampened my surprise and ruined it to an extent. granted, she was still super happy to see me, but it just wasn't the sort of entrance i had wanted to make. ;-P but she was so grateful to see me that she hugged me for literally 3 minutes without letting go. it was the best hug of my entire life, and now i get to have hugs every day. so good! so that was most of my day. what did you do? bwahaha.

tomorrow it's time to check out the unemployment office, catch up on my youtube subscriptions and edit a ton of video footage from the last two weeks. expect two awesome vids on my channel in the next few days! we'll see if i can stay motivated to keep updating this blog daily. i've found it to be quite helpful for me in arranging my thoughts and getting back into the swing of writing on a regular basis. expect more chinese as well, as i've been more devoted to learning it quickly. we now have a standing rule in the house that if we know how to say whatever we want to say in chinese, we must say it in chinese. we'll see how well that goes. ;-D goodnight!

Monday, December 23, 2002

sweetness and light, i love you so much. it's been so few hours since we last talked, but sometimes an hour or so feels like days at a time. the time passed since we'd last prayed together on the phone across nearly 3,000 miles of mineral and vegitation [sic] has gone slower than i could ever imagine. missing you feels like i'm missing part of me. my completion is in Christ and the joy of the Lord is my strength, but since i met you, i haven't been and most likely will never be the person i was. once two strands of thread are woven into this fabric of love, it's hard to see the single threads i once knew. i take my place in the whole that is Christ and His body, and i can only pray that my place in His cloth of majesty is a thread wrapped so tightly around yours. i cherish your company. i love you.

the more i pray with you, the more i hear you open up your heart to the Lord, the further and deeper in love i find myself with you upon looking back. every prayer you speak, whether in your heart or from your lips is of course not for me, but it blesses my heart just the same as it speaks to our Lord and Savior. when i hear you pray, it's like i see your deepest level of love, i hear your innermost being crying out to be all that our Lord, our God, our Best Friend and Daddy has made us through the death and resurrection of his Son. it's really more than words can say, but i hope these few inadequate words will somehow convey my interpretation of your heart's pure and radiant beauty. christin joy, i love you. thank You so much, Lord Jesus, for making this beautiful girl just that. and praise You, my God, for the opportunity to be hers in love.

this just came straight from my heart. i had planned just to write you an e-mail and talk about things, but all that's really been on my mind is your prayer, your voice, you in general. that and, of course, praise to God the Father and Jesus Christ for bringing you into my life and blessing me with your friendship and love. i love you, christin. i really do. and i can't see any trouble befalling either of us that will change that. you have my loyalty, you have my trust, you have my prayers, you have my deepest friendship and adoration, you have my all that can be given which is given from the Lord who keeps me. you have my heart. i pray that your day tomorrow will be the most beautiful day you have ever seen. i love you. goodbye.

We Were Born To Battle

blogging early tonight because i've got some time to kill in dallas while waiting for my friend onan to get off work. today was pretty sweet, i left almost on time but arrived here right on schedule at just about 7pm. i stopped a lot, because i drank like half a gallon of water, a 44oz. pepsi [gotta get it now because i'm quitting after this road trip] and some energy drink from albertson's with a picture of a cheetah on it. i guess that's supposed to mean that i'll run as fast as CHEETAHS against actual CHEETAHS and it'll be a tie and they'll get deported back to PLANO, TEXAS!!!

i'm totally missing lost right now. fail.

speaking of missing things, i miss my wife. i also miss my friends. i miss company at this point, so i suppose it's good that i'll be meeting up with someone i sort of know to chill. and by sort of know i mean don't really know at all because we met through facebook mutual friends. go technology! nic lazz called me while i was in traffic, driving through ft. worth and that was great, he's doing well in school and i'm stoked for him. i gotta get hooooome to my wiiiiife!

when i get tired of music, i listen to podcasts. when i get tired of podcasts, i listen to sermons. by the time i'm tired of sermons [or just can't process anymore] i'm ready for music again. it's really quite a convenient cycle, and i could definitely get used to it. listening to the naked cantonese podcast is helping my language acquisition a lot, which is great because it's beefing up my vocab. that was the biggest thing for me, i can string words together, but i run out of words quickly from lack of vocabulary. working on it! learning with christin and daily vlogging will help even more.

yeah. if i'm not too tired after i chill with onan and i haven't got a free place to crash tonight, i'll probably head back out and get some more miles behind be and sleep at a rest stop. it's probably about as comfortable as that motel 6 was last night, and $40 less as well. ;-P i'm gonna go try and catch up on a bit of my youtube subscriptions now. tomorrow: mississippi ho!

Tired Of Crazy Train

despite my typically random titles, this one is true to an extent. i am not tired of crazy train, but i certainly am tired. i'm also tired of canceling the capitalization of the word 'i' every time i type it on my iphone, but then again, i'm also too lazy to jailbreak it to avoid that particular problem. anyway, long story short, i'm in el paso, texas at a motel 6 and i won't pay for wi-fi so this brief phone blog will have to suffice for now. tomorrow i wake up in about six hours and make the long drive to dallas. pray for me.