Ballroom Blitz

after my alarm went off for the third time, signifying that it was 11:15am, i got up, put some clothes on and went outside to walk the dog to find that it was indeed raining sideways. no, seriously, that's what they call it: 'sideways rain.' i know, weird right? it wasn't raining particularly hard, more like a strong drizzle [oxymoron?]. but by the looks of the bay at what is normally referred to as the beach down the street, you would've thought it was a freaking monsoon. 'tumultuous' is the word that comes to mind. [i took a video of it on my phone, which i may upload to my other youtube channel tomorrow, but i can't be bothered right now.]

once i returned home with the sharp, high-pitched noise from the neighbor's house alarm [i guess, i still don't know exactly what it was], i took a deep breath and headed out to glen burnie to pick up the x-ray from my dentist's office. flimsy piece of paper tucked safely under my shirt, i ran out to my car like a weirdo, covering my belly to preserve the surely unnecessary evidence of tooth #19's extensive decay. it was off to the hospital for said tooth to meet its very, very timely demise at the hands of dr. allan v. garfinkel, d.d.s.

couldn't make up a more fitting oral surgeon's name if i wanted to.

to say that i was nervous as they explained to me that i would be fully conscious and not under a nitrous oxide induced analgesia would be a grave understatement. i think i cried a little bit, just thinking about how horrible my previous experience under the same circumstances was. i sat down and talked with dr. garfinkel about it, and he assured me that my previous dentist was an utter failure [that's for sure] and that he doesn't hurt patients. ever. i signed my forms, paid my co-pay and sat down in the room marked with a three.

now i'm not so melodramatic as to say that i thought i was going to die, but i'm also not so proud as to say that i wasn't afraid. i was very, very afraid, though admittedly irrationally so. this guy was a trained professional, he knew what he was doing, and i really had no reason to be afraid of him doing something that i'd had done on two other occasions already. but in my mind at least, this was different, because i'd had nitrous the other two times. laughing gas was my crutch, my refuge, my hopeful ally — but now it was gone.

after what seemed like an eternity of waiting through bad pop hits from the past three decades for the local anesthetic to take full effect, i entered into one of the most uncomfortable hours of my relatively young life. to say painful would be a lie, because it didn't really hurt aside from one point at the end where the infected bone area was disturbed. no, not painful, but definitely very uncomfortable. i must have sweat off a pound's worth of weight [and i could stand to sweat off a few more], and my fists were sore from clenching, but i made it through and the doctor said that my bone, my roots and my gums were fantastic.

but most importantly — i was fantastic.

the culprit of my crimes against facial comfort and general oral serenity gone, i left dr. garfinkel's office quite quickly, thanking him for his work with gauze packet and prescriptions in hand. the drive home was full of numb-faced relief, followed by a clumsy adaptation to the regimen of clindamycin and percocet. lovely, dizzying, high-inducing percocet. gauze, gauze, gauze. milkshake, pill, yogurt, salt water. makeshift frozen green bean icepack. rest. sleep. wake up to blog... sleep again.

Port Williams

people call me crazy a lot, which is good, because technically i am. i was never officially diagnosed, but i remain completely confident that i've got a mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder. but that's not what i'm talking about today. people call me crazy because i wear my hat, the iconic orange beanie [a.k.a. 'the beacon of hope'] at pretty much all times, regardless of the weather or social situation. the latter is part of my personality, but the former is what i get pegged for more often than not.

they always say something like 'jeez, man. aren't you hot wearing that thing in this weather?' when it's hot, and i always reply something like 'no. heat doesn't really bother me all that much.' what i mean to say by that is that heat doesn't seem to affect my head as much as other people, which is counterintuitive because my mother always told me there was some sort of connection between body temperature and the head. whatever. the point is, i'm so used to wearing my hat that i could be in hong kong in the middle of the summer with it on and not notice.

but cold is a different story.

since my sophomore year in high school, i stopped wearing two things: jeans and shorts. i still don't wear jeans, though i had a pair of my mom's old, old jeans that fit me perfectly in the sense that they were super tight and looked 'hot' on me according to my wife. anyway, i don't wear them because i don't like the way they feel. sometime about five years or so ago, i bought two pairs of dickies shorts and started wearing them. people were shocked and used to say things like 'wow, that's what your legs look like!' and 'i'm blind!' which were totally valid. but that wore off and now people don't think twice when they see me rocking the shorts.

it's weird how some things change and some things stay the same. people comment when a thing is there and they comment when a thing isn't there. i suppose it is a little strange that i wear my hat [the style of which is meant for cold weather] in the summertime, and that i switched to shorts after years and years of wearing slacks year-round. it's also weird that for the first time in my entire life, i'm thinking about seasons because they actually exist here, in the sense that i've got to think about what i can and can't wear when the weather gets cold.

and yes, i'm saying this [and this is taking up my entire entry] because today is probably the first day in the last 4 months when i could wear long pants comfortably. sure, i could get away with shorts, and i did. but the leaves changing color and the average temperature dropping slightly every week reminds me that soon, very soon, i won't be able to do that anymore. my wardrobe will be dictated by the temperature, which is something very foreign to my warm, san diego mind. winter should be interesting.

Number Three

today was incredibly productive and somewhat entertaining. first the production. i worked pretty much all day, though i took my time at some of the locations i went to. they were pretty much all marinas, and i don't go to those very often, so i chilled and enjoyed the scenery. it was good times. i also got the jeep looked at and [praise God] it's actually working fine now. hope it lasts. i would've finished work sooner, but i ended up going home at around lunch time for food, gas and to charge my phone [i do all of my work on it] because i forgot my charger. it worked out because i had to pick up the jeep for christin anyway.

christin made barbeque chicken for dinner, which was delicious, but that's not really the somewhat entertaining part. that would be when we went to the movies to see 'devil,' which i should've known was going to be a big mistake. i'm now convinced that everything m. night shamalamadingdong touches is destined to be pure crap, even if he didn't write it or direct it. he just came up with the story, but apparently hired some 'him wannabes' to finish the screenplay and direct, because it was just plain awful. there was a bit of a fun factor in that it was so cheesy and predictable, but mostly it was just annoying.

you guys must think we go to the movies a lot. here's the run-down. we go out once a week, and to minimize the cost of what we go out to do [which is usually dinner and a movie] we cook food at home and go on tuesday nights because tickets are only $6 instead of, like, $200 or whatever they're charging for full price these days. it's good for us because we still get to go out once a week, but we're not spending tons of money on it anymore. anyway, once we got home, christin headed to bed and i typed up my listings while watching redlettermedia's reviews of avatar and the star wars prequels. they are pure genius.

tomorrow will be interesting. i've got to finish editing a sketch i said i would do about a month ago now because, well, it's been a month and my nieces are anxious. then i'll probably end up filming and editing another short video as well, but i don't know if i'll actually do that. i've got to apply for more jobs, go to the gym and cancel our membership [we are just going to do this crazy thing called 'going outside' and 'walking' that i've never heard of before] to save us another $50 or so a month, which is good news. it's late and i'm tired.

also, thanks for reading, guys. it means a lot to me that so many people are interested in my daily life. i try to keep it interesting for you. if you haven't noticed or missed the entry where i talked about it, there are ads on the blog now. i tried to keep them unobtrusive and non-annoying as much as possible. they're there so i can make a little bit of money for the effort it's taking to keep doing these every day. i'm probably not supposed to tell you to click on them, so i won't, but if you wanted to do that, it would be fantastical. thanks again.

Altruism

this hasn't been my best day, but it hasn't been my worst either. it all started when christin woke me up around when she's supposed to be leaving, telling me that her jeep [which we just fixed] was not starting. the lights wouldn't even come on, and she didn't have time to mess with it. so i drove her to work and came back to see if i could finagle the battery into responding. i got the lights to come on, but the car wouldn't start. didn't put much effort into it, but i got angry and kicked the car and slammed a few doors on the way in. then i sent a series of horribly depressing and rage-filled text messages to christin and went back to sleep.

it wasn't my finest moment.

when i woke back up, i decided i had to get something done, so i went out to work and made a bit of progress before it became painfully clear [on account of the rain and all that business] that i needed two things: an umbrella and a new pair of shoes. i'd fixed my old shoes with shoe goo, but they broke again, and i didn't feel like going that route again. plus, with winter on the way and rain to boot [it's supposed to rain all week], i just needed something new.

so i went to target and picked up a pair of $20 airwalks which i paid for with a $10 gift card and the $10 christin's mom paid us back for the book we bought her on the interwebs. our friend wrote it. it's great. the shoes? generic but acceptable. the umbrella? overpriced but large and functional. i drove back to the house to finish up the bit of work i got done and clean out my car a bit. i got through the front seat, which was a major accomplishment, and i may finish the back tomorrow. we'll see how that goes. cleaning is not my forte.

christin made chicken adobo tonight, or at least she tried to. she cooked it a bit too hot, so the marinade sort of burnt off and caramelized. the chicken was delicious, but it was just like salted chicken you'd get at a take-out joint in hong kong. took me back, yo. not really, i never got that chicken because all the bones were still in. i have a thing about bones. they're kind of gross. i can live with it, but if i can avoid it i will. christin took the bones off my chicken tonight, and that's why i love her. well, it's part of the reason. then we watched house and went to bed.

i stayed up a bit later, as i usually do, did some homework and caught up a bit on my youtube subscriptions. down from three whole pages of videos to seven, and the ones that are left are quite long. i'll tackle those in the morrow if i feel so inclined, though i'm sure they will slowly pile up as usual and i'll end up reacting to stuff super late. ha! i got another video response on my 'power' video today, which can be seen here. it was nice, but the guy didn't even address me by name or at least say my username correctly. major faux pas, bro.

Message Redacted

i've had this domain for a long time, but it's been the same crappy placeholder page forever with no relevant links. now it has a new crappy placeholder page with relevant links! so it's totally better. i may make a simple website up there to house my various stuff, not that i really need one, but if i'm going to continue down this road of marketability and self-promotion [the good kind], i suppose that organization is key. we'll see how that works out for me.

church was great. the substitute pastor [lol] talked about dominion, covenant and what sort of book genesis is. he had an interesting take on it, not that i was surprised about the content, but about how he described it. check out the sermonaudio page in the next few days if you're interested to hear it yourself. quite good. ;-D after that, we went to the in-laws' house for lunch, which was quite delicious and a good time. they made me eat way too much dessert. terrible!

went to a restaurant and then a bar, because the restaurant's screens weren't so great, to watch the football game. it was a sad, sad game. i was rage-tweeting through most of it. oh chargers, why must you fail me? it's still early in the season, but the special teams really needs to pick up their game. bad times. after that, i headed home to watch the amazing race with christin because a guy we watch on youtube [kevjumba] is doing it this year with his dad. he came in 7th place at the end of the round, so good on them. it was an entertaining episode.

tomorrow i've got to work all morning and get the rest of my homework done. then it's back to looking for a solid, part-time job to make a bit more money. this month has been hard, and this last week we are kind of barely scraping by. christin gets paid on thursday, but that will be gone quickly. i'll have a decent sized paycheck between this week and next, but we'll see where it all ends up. debt is still under control, but if i don't start making some more money soon, it's going to start catching up again, and that can't happen. goodnight.

Wii Are Epic

my day began with my wife waking me up looking for peroxide and bandages, because our landlord [who is also her boss] cut his finger open with a hand-saw while trimming trees in our neighbor's front yard, which he owns. strangely enough, this was not the most interesting part of the day. i got up and headed out to deposit our $40 worth of 'win' from a class action lawsuit against our former gym, then to go to the store. it was a seemingly routine trip that probably shouldn't have been as eventful as it was.

when i was turning left into the bank parking lot, i noticed my friend justin was ahead of us. so of course i waved, etc. and we lined up for the drive-up atm. usually when it's crowded, i just hop out and use the walk-up, but this time i thought i'd just stick with it. it's a good thing i did though, because he left his card in the machine, which he later informed me was the third time in two months. after regaling me with the fantastical story of his fiancée elyce's grandmother getting her cane stolen from church [she's 90 years old, mind you], we went our separate ways as they set off to deliver her two replacements.

the trip to the store was expensive, but unmemorable.

so after i got back from the store and unpacked all of the groceries [read: let my wife unpack all of the groceries while i hop online and check youtube/twitter], christin informed me that becky wants to 'find food,' so we set off on an adventure. we ended up at the mall with the three of us plus her 2-year-old, brody, despite the frantic calls, text messages, and general douchebaggery of becky's 'baby daddy.' one thing led to another, christin and i ate at big easy [mmm, bourbon chicken] and the guy actually ends up showing up.

now i had never met this guy, and i've heard nothing but bad things about him. i knew a bit about what he was into, and they've been on-and-off for almost 5 years now. i'd never even seen a pic on facebook or anything. for some strange reason, i pictured him as an average-sized, average height, half-latino gangster/bro hybrid. so you could probably imagine the shock and awe on my face when i finally saw the hulking, white bread, pro-wrestler-esque monstrosity approach the table and begin cheerily making kissy-faces at brody.

yeah. that was weird.

so after the mall episode, we end up at becky's house playing rock band on the wii. i hate rock band, not because i'm not good at it, but because in order to be good at playing drums for rock band on expert mode, you have to play like a retard. see, there's this delay between hitting the pads and the notes actually registering that makes it nearly impossible to keep up with songs, especially when they're all by the beatles [of whom i am not a fan] and at least half of them are more obscure b-sides. not fun.

then the girls and becky's mom played wii bowling and talked about setting up a wii bowling team because they're pretty good at it. becky gets way too into it, to the extent that she does a little spin move that looks something like a cross between an excited little kid cheering about getting to go to disneyland and ryu from street fighter executing a dragon punch. quite amusing. now i wish i got some video to show its truly epic qualities. but alas, i lack... and i digress.

after the bowling, things calmed down. while christin played sonic the hedgehog and complained about the fact that non-emulators don't have save states, becky and i decided it was a taco bell night. $19 and two trips down the street later [they forgot my quesadilla, the replacement for which contained unmelted cheese and looked as though it had been sliced by a blind caveman], we enjoyed our heartburn-filled late night cuisine and chatted a bit before calling it a night. and what a night it was.

p.s. i made this today. watch it.

Grid Format

i think there were a lot of things i was supposed to do today, but i also think that i forgot all of them. maybe they weren't important; maybe i'm just forgetful. the book for my next class at school cost me $60 on amazon, which is insane to me. i haven't paid more than $40 for a book in who knows how long. maybe the myeducationlab that comes with this one will actually work, as opposed to the book for my current class, which didn't seem to want to work for me. thanks a lot, amazon.

actually, i quite like amazon.

the raid tonight was a total mess. i was messing up, the pick-up healer was not very good the third healer was not on his a-game tonight. blah. we only managed to get past the first boss on regular, and didn't even down deathwhisper because by the time we got through trying the achievement on regular and the weekly with that and whatnot, it was so late that people just wanted to quit. lame. after that, christin watched her show [as time goes by] and i hung out with some youtubers on my buddy peter's tinychat. it was a good time. i've got to remember to do that more often. social interaction is good, right?

Don't Sweat The Technique

the jeep is fixed, this video is posted, the big bang theory season four has launched [with a superb first episode] and my homework is done. ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the blog! *cheering* thank you, thank you, i'll be here all night! well, actually, i'll only be here for a few minutes while i type this. as you can guess from the opening monologue, all that stuff [and a bit more] forms the bulk of what i did today. check out the video and discuss the resulting mental stimulation that arises from it in the comments section, won't you? yes, you won't! well, maybe you will.

i had a good time today, despite the fact that i'm not feeling terribly well. it's this tooth. the huge, gaping hole in my mouth is like an intravenous drip of infection to my face and the rest of me. blah. i'd go see a doctor and get some antibiotics or something to help with the sickness, but there's really no point since i'm getting the tooth pulled next week. it'll just come back between now and then anyway, and i'm sure i'll get prescribed some antibiotics by the oral surgeon as well, since it's obvious that i've got infection dot com up in this ma'.

anyway, now that we're not talking about things that are totally disgusting, i totally ate two mega delicious cheese logs [pretzel + cheese = yum] today from the amish market. it was great. and i got to hang out with becky and my wife and the babies and our neighbor and yeah. i also got to chat on skype with my buddies exal and way, as well as my homey josh millan [shmillan!] on the facebook. word! and now it's bedtime, so i'm going to head out. i need a shower like whoa.

Real

today was spent largely waiting around for things that didn't happen. first i woke up at an ungodly hour to take my wife to work and took an exorbitant amount of time getting to advance auto parts, where i purchased new battery cables for the jeep. then i came home and awaited instructions from becky regarding the guy i'm supposed to be taking the jeep in to, because i don't know him and her dad recommended we take it to him and blah blah blah. so i read and read and read. then i find out at about 1:00 that it's not happening today.

so i read some more and do a bit of work from home, because i can't see myself going downtown to get a few listings done in just a couple of hours before christin comes home, which i'm waiting for. it didn't happen. i forgot that she was going to the pub after work. she walked there, which is good for me, because i'm feeling nauseated and a bit sick, so i crawl into bed and take a nap. then i go pick her up from the pub and eat food i shouldn't have eaten for dinner. i catch up on my youtube subs [down to 1 page again] while doing my daily random heroic.

then i get off the computer and sit down to read again. between last night and most of today and a lot of tonight, i'm now finished with mockingjay. and i realize now that i've read it, that the book mirrored my day. every sentence i read, every chapter that passed by, i was just waiting for something that never happened. i was waiting for that moment in the book that brought me to the place the first book had me riveted, waiting for more... but it never really came. it had its moments, but it was overall too disappointing. if you haven't read the series, do. it's good. the ending was just a bit too realistic for me.

in technical news, i got approved for adsense today. so you'll see tiny ads on this blog now. why they think this blog was important enough to get ads placed on it, i've got no idea, but i'm not going to turn it down. since i work part time and don't make enough money, the thought of making a bit of it through something i enjoy doing is something i'm going to pursue. i've also been approved for revenue sharing for one of my youtube videos, the dan brown one, which is weird. it makes me think that i may be onto something. i may make a video tomorrow talking about it.

Catching Fire

today i got a bunch of things done. i sent in a few parcels that i'd been meaning to get out yesterday but the absence of my social security card thwarted the previous effort. serious business! i also did a good deal of reading and schoolwork, which was good. finished my paper that i hadn't bothered to finish the day before because i couldn't turn it in anyway, and christin and i saw a movie. easy a. it was good. emma stone is good people, i like her style. i'm not sure what else to say. i feel like i set the bar to type long entries the other few days, but now i've got nothing.

note: you'd think that since i had already posted a late entry today, i would remember to actually post this one instead of leaving the browser window open. again. failure.

Four Tones

so last night, my internet went out for a while, hence no posting. just didn't feel like doing the whole iphone blogging thing. it's annoying. so i took a drive around the area, a long one, and read a bit of 'catching fire' before coming back home to sleep. i'll probably finish it today. yes, it's that good. my day until then had consisted of getting random things done, like yelling at the dmv and scheduling my tooth extraction. pulling. it's gonna suck. it's next week. i'm going to call them back though, because i think i heard something about them saying they only use a local anesthetic. if that's the case, i'm going to cancel or see how much it'll be with nitrous, because i'm not paying twice as much to get it done the same way by someone else.

Judy Is British

wow, guys. can you believe i'm down to 14 videos in my subscription boxes? also, i unsubscribed to two channels today because i realized that their videos just aren't that good and actually kind of annoy me more often than entertain me! yep. i have a list of nine things i have to do tomorrow, and i got everything done today that i wanted to get done [besides make it to church. thanks a lot, my unconscious self, for turning the alarm off instead of hitting 'snooze'!] so let's talk about that.

i woke up way too late to get to church on time, so i went back to sleep. my wife, for some reason, let me sleep way too late for any human being. she insists she tried to wake me up, but her idea of trying to wake me up is talking to me. anyone who has known me as long as she has knows that i'm not the kind of person that can be reliably awoken by such means. she knows too, but she's sick so i'll give her a pass on that one. it's her that was annoyed with my sleeping late after all, not me. ;-P

so i went to safeway to pick up groceries for dinner tonight and that was good times. i logged into youtube and found out that dan brown had responded to the video i posted yesterday, which i'd kind of expected him to do, but strangely my video was getting a lot of traffic. like, a lot more than usual. i thought he tweeted my link or retweeted my tweet about my link, but nope. i guess enough people watch the 'recent activity' and noticed that dan liked/commented on my video and noticed it was a video response and that's all it took!

and now i'm 17 subscribers up. holy beans! that's awesome. now i feel obligated to make videos more often. i won't do it tomorrow, though, because i think i'll probably spend all day doing those nine things i mentioned earlier. plus waiting a bit longer may bring some more viewers and even some subscribers my way. that'd be nice! then i can thank everyone together! just kidding, i don't do that. i thank commenters, not subscribers. i'm almost done with the hunger games, which means i need to go buy catching fire soon. so good.

everyone send christin love and encouragement on facebook, twitter, and her newest blog post. she needs it. she's still sick and has to go back to work tomorrow to pay 'da billz for this poor student over here. it's okay. i'm finishing school so i can go to work in hong kong and she'll never have to work again if all goes well. i hope it works out that way. anyway, goodnight.

Husband And Wife

today i made this for work and this for not work. check 'em out! that's most of what i did today. my lovely wife had to work from 4 until like 1am, which was lame, but we still got to raid. we wiped a lot on heroic dreamwalker and almost got it, but then we did rotface with 9 people and got heroic festergut to 8% with only 9 people, which is just absurd. we rock. next week, i'm feeling another wing achievement. ;-D but right now i'm sleepy. can't stop reading the hunger games. it's so good. i want to keep reading but it's so freaking late. goodnight.

Vivacious

oh my, where to start? well, i woke up at 9am after about 5 hours of sleep and did my routine on the interwebs. christin called me at 10 to bring her inhaler over, so i did, and i got back to doing my thang and looking for an electric wok and a microwave to make cooking in the apartment easier. basically right now if we want to make anything that can't be made in a george foreman grill, we have to go upstairs. it's a hassle taking pots and pans and all the ingredients up and down on a regular basis, so it makes our desire to cook fall, which is the opposite of ideal.

so after a bit of that, i called the dental clinic to see if they could take me earlier. at about 12:00 i finally got through to them and they said they could take me at 12:45 — in glen burnie. now that doesn't mean anything to most people, but it's a good 30+ minute drive from my house, so i had to book it. on top of that, i had to get gas on the way, so i ended up being a few minutes late. being just a few minutes late is the worst, because you get pushed back for missing the appointment and you were just barely late.

basically, after doing a quick x-ray, the dentist told me exactly what i was expecting, i need a root canal. there's just one catch: the damage is so bad that i would likely need crown lengthening done, which is basically when they drill down into your bone, and it's a surgical procedure. so to save the tooth, i would basically have to pay like $800 minimum for the root canal and crown in itself, as well as an additional fee to an oral surgeon to have the crown lengthening done. all in all, it would basically be three dentist's visits and a ton of money.

in other words: bump that, yo.

now the conventional wisdom and practicality gifted to me through genetics on my father's side of the family tells me that the solution is simple: just pull the tooth. unfortunately, i already have a neighboring tooth missing, which complicates things in the whole 'being able to chew' arena. on the plus side, the other missing tooth is a really small gap [it was from a baby premolar that never grew out and got all nasty, first tooth i ever had pulled]. on the negative side, i would have to get it pulled by an oral surgeon, because there's no way i could handle a molar pull without some form of anasthesia/analgesia. i tried that once. it wasn't pretty.

so what should i do? i think i'm just going to pull it. the sheer cost difference alone is so great that even if i ended up getting an implant done [if i got it on the cheap] it would cost about as much as i would spend saving the tooth... and i wouldn't have to do that right away. at this point, i'm so used to chewing with just the right side of my mouth that i don't think it would be a problem. but now i don't know if i'm just talking myself into it because the price is right, or if it's the right thing to do. the dentist seemed to lean toward just pulling it, but i'm still not sure.

in other news, we downed the first four bosses of icc 10-man on heroic mode tonight, which was a huge accomplishment for our raid team. especially since we were wiping on heroic marrowgar for hours last week. it was just a bad week. this week was great, and we didn't even have our whole team! well, at least not our regular team. the warrior we had in our hunter's place was crazy good damage. christin got three pieces of loot, and her gear is looking nice. ;-D for dinner, i made bomb chicken fried rice. it was delicious. and now i'm tired.

note: wow, two really long posts in a row. interesting.

Emily Way

yeah, so that didn't last long. as predicted last night, i didn't continue the cleanse today. i decided that not being in pain was more important than cleansing my body of impurities or whatever that crazy dude says about it. so i had a pretzel dog [not so good] and a cheese log [delicious] at the amish market for lunch, and went off to the mall to take care of some business. i was there to get my wife's ring fixed, because one of the prongs was chipped, and to see what stores were hiring to see if i can land a part-time job. i figure i'm at the mall so often, i might as well work there [insert mallrats reference] so yeah.

some tea shop called teavana is hiring, so i may look at that. kids gap [gag me] and american apparel are hiring. on top of the fact that i don't support american apparel because their company is terrible and hires illegal immigrants to make their shirts, i'm definitely not enough of a hipster to work there. they actually ask you to send in photos of yourself with your resume. that should tell you something. actually, it should tell you a lot of things. all of them bad.

during the hour it took to fix christin's ring, i decided to take a walk, which i had already kind of done so i ended up in border's. there was a huge promo display for mockingjay, so being the total conformist i am [lolol] i decided to pick up and read the first two chapters of the hunger games. it was really good, and now i want to read the rest of the book and the other books and such. and i will probably end up buying the boxed set, but i can't really buy it now. so i'll probably just read it whenever i've got free time and decide that hanging out at a bookstore is a super fun way to spend a few hours at a time. because it totally is. it totally is.

man, i'm a huge nerd. love it.

i got the ring and headed home through ridiculous traffic in light rain, and hit the grocery store on the way home. i got some healthy snacks [well, relatively healthy] and other stuff at fresh market [who is also hiring] and safeway. then i came home and christin cooked stir-fry that took way too long to make. i didn't like it because she used tofu, which is squishy and nasty in my mouth, but it would've been great with chicken. the green beans and peas and the sauce were great, though. yummers. then i did my homework and such.

my new diet is basically this: no soda, no fast food, one sweet per day. if i can handle all three of those and get my weight down through that and exercise [which shouldn't take long, because i have excellent metabolism when not gorging myself with all three], i may start drinking one soda per day like i said i would before. but no high fructose corn syrup or corn sugar or whatever the corporate machine wants to call it next. yep. pepsi throwback, baby! it's good. anyway, that's the gist of it. tomorrow i'll be working on the sketch i recorded weeks ago and started editing last week, and i will make a video response to dan brown on my second channel!

Zladkov

today was my first and potentially last day of the 10-day master cleanse. the saltwater flush was bearable, the lemonade was actually quite delicious, and i wasn't feeling hungry all day. there are some side-effects, though. taking pain killers for my tooth, which is pretty much necessary at this point, gives me a raging stomach ache. tonight i'm feeling really dizzy and nauseated, trying to drink more water and just hoping it will go away. hopefully i'll be able to sleep. and having to be near a bathroom for so much of the day is annoying too.

anyway, that aside i had a very productive day today. i cleaned our room, like proper cleaned it, with vacuuming and everything! it looks nice. i need to go through a bit more stuff and finish up one corner before tackling the dreaded closet. that's not going to be fun. christin gave up on the diet at about 5pm today and brought home a bunch of food. it was making her feel horrible and she's sick. so she brought home a bunch of healthy food and had good stuff to eat for dinner. at least we're being motivated to eat well now. gotta get exercising too.

note: upload fail again. baaaaah!

Which Goose?

oh, today. why do you pain me so? well i did exactly what i said i'd do yesterday, and it was quite a frustrating day. the dmv, once again, is driving the failboat across the ocean of ineptitude. the lady assured me that my tags would be on their way as soon as some blah blah blah approved blah blah blah authorization, et cetera. my car loan bank apparently failed to process the request that i sent to them a month ago, and i had to fax that in again, too. failure. hopefully they can get that sorted out in three weeks, which is when my registration must be paid.

i bought three bags of lemons, a 32 ounce bottle of grade b maple syrup [that will last about 2.5 days or so] and some cayenne pepper and sea salt. we got a purifier for the tap, which will save us a ton of money and hassle since we're no longer buying bottles of water from the store and/or filling up old ones. it tastes good. i'm kind of looking forward to the cleanse, but at the same time i'm just realizing that i have little to look forward to in the week that is not food related, given my relatively sedentary lifestyle. oh well, it's only 10 days.

p.s. for those who read this and follow me on youtube, the sketch i referenced last week on my facebook and here will not be done until friday. i'm taking a week off from videos this time, since i'm super late anyway. i just don't want to record another one a few days after the first one when there is supposed to be a week between videos. so there ya go. though i expect i'll record a few extras this week because it may be a bit slow, what with the lack of eating and all. i'm still looking for a more permanent job. pray for me, please.

Perfecting The Antigen

i've been on planes and in airports all day today, and i really don't want to talk about it. chargers got rocked by a crappy team, and i really don't want to talk about that either. i came home and got my mail and the california dmv still has not sent me my registration stickers, and i really don't want to talk about that either. the good news is that my animals are good [my kitty is thinner and purring/sleeping on me right now as i type this] and the reach program benefits are going to be so good for me and christin.

tomorrow i get to read the dmv the riot act, call reach and schedule an appointment for a dentist, and look for a job. i'm also going to whole foods to pick up lemons, cayenne pepper and grade b maple syrup for our detox lemonade. 10 days of eating nothing and drinking a ton of that stuff and laxative tea. i hope it works. it's gonna be a crazy couple of weeks! we ate enough on vacation to last my body a few weeks alone, so let's hope i can drop some weight and get into a comfortable workout schedule soon. woo! go team newman!

Like A Stone

wow. where to start? so church this morning was good, as per usual, and we learned about the 2nd trial of job [boils all over his body] and his wife's terrible exhortation to curse God and die. that's what we call a bad wife. afterward, we went to crossweave's anniversary lunch banquet deal, which was cool. we saw our friends and some new faces, while we waited for amber and forrest to arrive from l.a.! it was so cool to see them. amber and christin went to the beach while forrest and i went to nic lazz's house and talked theology. good times.

after a few hours, we got port of subs for dinner [freaking delicious] and headed to the night service at escondido o.p.c. with nic. it's at his school, and he was checking it out for the night and we wanted forrest to go to a presbyterian church to see what reformed churches are all about. we spent about half of the time at nic's house talking about the regulative principle of worship, which was actually the subject of the night's sermon. i loved it, but christin and amber weren't tracking. they missed the beginning, though.

once we had chilled a while after church, we headed over to jared's house sans nic to hang out with him and cat for a bit. it had been a long time since jared had seen either amber or forrest, so that was cool for them. we talked china, played with arthas [a cat] and got caught up with life. jared is doing well, which is good. after they left and i got my schoolwork done, christin and i hung back a bit before driving back to my parents' house. it's our last night, and we've got to be on the road in less than six hours, so i'm going to stop typing now. my next post will be back on the east coast. farewell, california.

Up The Decibels

it's september eleventh and despite all of the recent events that should have called attention to this fact, i almost managed to completely forget. people keep telling me to 'never forget' but i still don't exactly understand why. i mean, don't get me wrong. it sucks that people died and that buildings got destroyed because of a handful of idiots working in tandem, but i don't see why i need to keep on remembering this day in particular.

maybe it says something about where my cultural identity is found, but i remember june 4th every year. sure, less people died, but it's more important to me. i still can't believe it happened. post-mao china seemed to be going in the right direction as far as i can tell, and that even was almost like a crushing death blow against democracy in the country. it's really sad. there are still vigils every year, and i think there should be, because china has not fully recovered. america is back to business as usual, unnecessarily picking fights with other countries.

anyway, yeah. today was just a day to me. i went and visited nick at the bar, we got some lunch there. after that, we heard some genealogy talk and war stories from my grandfather. it was a good time. i've never heard him talk about the war [in vietnam] before. he didn't mention 9/11 either, so i guess that says something about it. after that, we went to matt and nikki's for probably the last time this trip. we spent about 2 hours wiping on halion [stupid laser cutters] and an hour in ulduar. that was cool.

church tomorrow. excited.

Clever Comebacks

christin got her hair colored today, so now she's a blonde with red and brownish highlights. i would include a picture, but that's just too much work. i went and visited my old workplace and saw all the people there, and eric was actually there. that was strange, but good to see him. things there don't seem so much 'good' as they are 'better'. after my nostalgic visit, i went to the 55 to visit nick and see what's going on. he is doing well, and we're hanging out tomorrow afternoon.

i stopped by bank of america to get christin a new bank card, because for some reason they haven't sent her one even though hers has been expired for half a year now. what's with caliornia companies and organizations not sending stuff on time? if my california tags aren't waiting for me when i get home, i may scream. fair warning. we spent like 4 hours wiping on heroic marrowgar and hard mode flame leviathan. that was horrible. ruby sanctum tomorrow, lunch with nick and visiting my grandpa!

Get Some Noodles

today we went to the beach [eww] and then up to temecula to visit brian and lisa and the babies! mckenzie is getting so big, and their new baby is super cute. christin is in love. after that, we went back down and christin dropped me off at home while she headed out to dinner with some friends from her old old work... amron. where she worked years ago. hooray for keeping in touch! we made a couple silly videos at the beach, so expect one or two on buelification tomorrow or something.

note: i came in to do work this morning and clicked on this tab randomly and this was still open and not posed because i am a failure. failure!!!

Signed Open

looking at pictures of asia makes me wonder why in the world people wouldn't want to live there. seriously. people are insane. i'd give just about anything to be back in hong kong right now, just to be there. patience. degree first, then job, then move. bah. i just want to go. when we arrived in the baltimore airport, i looked at christin and said 'it feels like we're going to hong kong.' and it made me sad because i knew i wasn't. but i knew i was going to california, and that made it a bit better.

just a bit, though.

today was spent hanging out with ritchie and barry from crossweave, which was a good time. we got to talk about a bunch of stuff, and ritchie got me all caught up with people and experiences here that happened after i left. good times. i got in-n-out, which was delicious, but as usual i couldn't finish my burger. i don't know why, they aren't that big. maybe it's because it was so early and i hadn't eaten anything at all. i got home and christin and i played a bit of wow and just relaxed. then i finished editing my video and posted it. it's long, but i'm happy with it.

we had arby's for dinner, which was good but not exactly california-esque in any way. we also got christin's new glasses today, which look great and she can actually see now. hopefully this means she will want to drive more often. ;-P i'm getting to the point where it's difficult to drive and even hard to see my computer screen for extended periods of time without squinting. i'm really super sensitive to light, and a three year old prescription doesn't help, i'm sure. anyway, that's today. tomorrow it's beach morning [eww] and visiting with brian/lisa, homework, work and i'm not sure what we're doing tomorrow night. depends on whether or not jared calls me. goodnight.

Planning Life

today was mostly spent relaxing and catching up on youtube videos while my lovely wife had lunch with lederle. she had chicken adobo and halohalo, which she enjoyed immensely. i went to 'coffee' with nic lazz, and we talked about church and life and the future. craziness. after that, christin and i joined about 10 other people at kinaly thai in san marcos for nikki's birthday dinner! which doubled sort of as stacy's as well. all of our birthdays are around the same time.

after dinner, we went to matt and nikki's to hang out. we watched some cataclysm stuff on the big t.v. because we are huge nerds, and then proceeded to look at schools and places to live in philly. yeah, nerds do that stuff on vacation. we found out that the school christin and matt were gushing over was about 4x as expensive as they thought it was going to be, so they looked into another and looked at places to live up there. looks like we're doing 2 years of community college first if it works out and we move up there. we'll see how it goes and when it happens.

usually i forget to post these, but this time i just failed. i didn't write this last night, i'm writing it the next day, but i'm leaving the date as yesterday because it concerns yesterday and i'll do another blog tonight on time. woo!

The 700 Club

this show makes me sick. i haven't changed it because i'm in my brother's room and i don't know where the remote is. it's just this guy talking about money and prosperity and heaven and all sorts of nonsense. ugh. i'm ashamed this dude claims to represent what i believe. got up early today and took the rental back and the fam down to the airport. they're in hawaii now! craziness. then we came back up and relaxed at the house for a while, and i got some schoolwork done. took a three hour impromptu nap, which was weird. hanging with nic tomorrow instead of today.

i haven't uploaded a video to youtube in a week, that's pretty crazy. i'm going to edit my vlog i did on last friday tomorrow, just because yeah. i don't want to miss a whole week. i should really go and film some stuff with matt this week too, get some keven stuff going. we'll see how that goes. christin and i had souplantation this afternoon for linner, which was nostalgic and delicious and i'm still full from all the salad and bread. mmm. that makes me miss daks. blah. got on wow and did my dailes and steven's as well. gotta get that frost, son! i've been up for a long time, so i think it's time for bed. goodnight.

Report Card

oh my, today was long and tiring and it's not even that late yet. we went to crossweave for church this morning, which is now meeting at ritchie's house. crazy. saw a lot of people i miss and had a good time to hang out. larry talked about giving and finances and what-not. next weekend we're going to harvest o.p.c. to visit that congregation and nic lazz and his lovely wife... who where there last night at the party! that was good to see them. yep. going to coffee or something like that with nic tomorrow night.

after church we went to a labor day party with my brother and sister and their drunken friends, most of which i knew, and we played a game of beer pong. it was my second time playing, and first time with christin, and we beat my brother and sister, which was pretty exciting because steven is really good. he was going easy on us, but we beat them with pure skill, baby! it's a good thing we won because i don't really like beer and drinking it is the worst part. blech. at least we had decent beer because we brought it. ;-D sam adams octoberfest. mmm.

and now we're home and my family [sans dad] leaves for hawaii tomorrow, and we get to get up early and take our rental car back. we're using julie's car while she's gone, which is good because i think rental cars are stressful. i always feel like i'm gonna mess it up or something. ;-P anyway, we had a good first week of vacation, this week looks to be a bit more relaxed with less running around and everything. good times. goodnight.

iBlog

it's late and i'm tired and i'm posting this in the toilet on my phone because i don't want to get my laptop out of my bag and turn it on and type up a blog post. today was a long day, full of excitement and adventure! first, we finally killed the lich king [a.k.a. beat world of warcraft for now] on the 2nd pull today. it was awesome. then we went to norte for my birthday dinner and i think almost thirty people showed up, which was nuts. i got to hang out with mostly everyone and it was a great time. after that, we went out for frozen yogurt with matt/nikki and kyle/stacy and went back to the unwin household to watch the big bang theory. can you believe they've never watched it? crazy! bedtime bedtime bedtime.

note: blaaaaah i fail, it was a long day, sue me.

Piranha 3Don't!

so yeah. piranha 3d was a lot of boobs and a lot of fish. notice the order. the scenes of ridiculously cheesy violence were wonderfully done, but surprisingly a bit too chaotic in terms of sheer volume and proximity to one another. the movie was a lot of build-up and a burst of bloodbath mayhem. with a lot of boobs in between there. also, i don't know if i mentioned this already or not, but there were boobs. lots of them. naked ones and clothed ones. and booties.

this blog post may bring in some traffic.

earlier today i filmed a vlog, which i haven't edited yet. i brought my laptop back from matt and nikki's house to edit it in the morning, but i'm just now realizing that i left my camera there so i don't have any of the footage. oh well! looks like it's going to be two days late instead of one. i'm on vacation, sue me. after that, we raided lich king and got him down to 30% which was good, but not a kill. then we saw the ridiculousness that is piranha 3d and got mad afterward when we realized that machete came out tonight. junk. then we went back to matt's and watched an episode of 30 rock [which is awesome] before heading home. and now it's bedtime.

It's Been Awesome

today was my birthday, and i am now 29 years old. i don't think it's weird, i don't feel old, and i don't feel anxious about being 30 next year at all. am i a freak of nature, or just level-headed? like, is everyone else just neurotic and self-deprecating or over-exaggerating? i think so. but that might just be me being arrogant or silly. or both. in the end it doesn't matter. my cake was a wheezy waiter cake, which made me quite happy. i'd post a picture here, but i'm lazy.

at great risk of this blog becoming a food blog, since i've been mentioning what i'm eating pretty much every day here, today i went to submarina for lunch. it was delicious. then tonight, my mom got us george burgers, which was nostalgic and also delicious. the reason i'm mentioning food all the time is because it's one of the biggest things we miss about california, besides our friends and family, of course. yeah. tomorrow will be exciting! i'll tell you all about it... tomorrow!

p.s. today's date is 90210 and it's my birthday. lol!

Beatdown

i've got to get used to having to actually do my blog posts by midnight local time, since i'm so used to only having to do it by 3am east coast time. see, my google account is on west coast time because if i change it, i'll have to go back and manually change the date on almost all of my blog entries since the beginning of this whole daily blogging thing. and that would just be annoying. ;-P plus it gives me some margin of error for videos/blogs when i don't get them done until late.

today we relaxed and slept in, and it was indeed glorious. we ate delicious mexican food for lunch and matt made us scrambled french toast [which is exactly what it sounds like] for dinner at his house. it was a good time hanging out there. got to see him and nikki, of course, as well as cat, jared, erik and juli. lots of people. erik/juli were moving out today, so they were coming by to pick stuff up from the house. jared's moustache looks ridiculous... ly awesome. we had del taco on the way home because we were still hungry, and we talked about the future. birthday tomorrow!