Largo Embargo

another month has come and gone, and a happy reformation day and halloween was wished today. tomorrow is my mom's birthday, too. woo! i slept through my alarm and christin noticed but made the unfortunate assumption that i was doing so purposefully in order to skip church. this was not the case, but we never the less ended up skipping church by virtue of the fact that by the time i saw the clock in a conscious state, it was already 11:30. good times. we spent most of the day doing halloweeny stuff, like carving pumpkins and playing with dry ice. the carving was fun, the dry ice was fun but full of fail.

my tiny azn smiley pumpkin, which can be seen above, was pretty amazing. but you know that now because you're looking at it. just look at how awesome it is! we handed out candy to the kids, made a failure of a witch's brew, watched the amazing race [go team jumba! third place!] and played wow for a bit. both of us were working on world explorer on our horde characters. i dunno which of us will finish first! so yeah, it was a good day, despite missing church. this week, i have to register the car [the title came through], write and record some music, and look look look for a job. not necessarily in that order, of course. oh yeah, and make videos.

Coozie Pumpkin

oh, i slept so late today. it was wonderful. christin woke me up around three and we watched some teevee for a little bit before heading up to becky's house for board games and general weirdness. we got pizza on the way, and it was delicious. christin got yoohoo for her and becky, which i don't get because i think it's absolutely disgusting. we noticed about halfway through monopoly that the bottle had 54 grams of sugar in it. that's quite disturbing. christin had two... so there you go. the sugar must have increased her die-rolling ability by +5 though, because she totally slaughtered me and becky at monopoly.

i still own her face at words with friends, though.

that pretty much sums up the evening. after monopoly, we watched grey's anatomy and talked and all that good stuff. now we're home and i need to sleep because we've got church in the morning. it's reformation day! and halloween as well, but you know, priorities. happy anniversary to matt and nikki, it's their first one. good times. sleep sounds like a good idea at the moment. i slept terribly this morning because it was just so freakin' bright. the window in this room is in the worst possible position. maybe we should get a tiny house after all... haha.

Good Morning, Tucson!

yes, this blog is late, and yes it is retroactively dated for the sake of convenience and due to the fact that it is indeed a blog entry for the 29th. if i had gotten back to my house earlier than 6am, i would have certainly posted it last night. so there ya go. my drive up to newark was not too bad, but was considerably complicated due to the fact that ticketmaster is a cruel mistress. it's as if it weren't bad enough that they charged me over $15 in fees, but they had to make me stop at some random department store i had never heard of in new jersey to print my tickets because apparently the ticketmaster outlets down here couldn't do it.

i got to newark penn station exactly 2 minutes late for my train, which sucked pretty hard. so once i caught the next train into the city, i got to experience my first time in new york running down 7th avenue at 7pm, late for the show i had just traveled for 5 hours to get to. it was overwhelming and i thought i had gotten off a 20 minute train ride and landed back in hong kong. pretty nuts. it's just like it, only a lot bigger, a bit less cluttered, with metal scaffolding instead of bamboo. oh yeah, and considerably less asians but just as many middle easterners.

once i got to the best buy theater, searched by the security guy right after a dude dressed up as harry potter [so i knew i was in the right place], i headed in and fortunately had only missed the opening monologue by joco [as wil wheaton] and the first paul and storm song. fortunately i've seen both of them already, so i didn't miss a whole lot. plus i can probably look that part up on youtube. everything about the show was awesome, especially the talk from grant imahara on being c-3po, marian call's amazing performance, hearing a new joco song before anyone else, and seeing a dude dressed as jareth from the labyrinth. awesome.

after the show, i caught up with mike lombardo, geeky piano musician extraordinaire, and his friend kaitlyn [or caitlyn?] whom i probably should recognize from youtube but i actually don't. she was nice anyway. ;-P we hung out after the show and chatted about music and celebrity and non-celebrity celebrity [internet 'stardom'], which was cool. then i headed back to the train and drove home way too late. that was pretty much my day. it was fun, stressful at times, expensive as hell, but very much enjoyable. sucked that christin couldn't come. next time!

Big Fat Negative

i woke up earlier today than i probably should have, and i made the unfortunate mistake of staying awake after walking the dog. most of the day was spent reading my textbook, doing more dishes [a common theme at this point] and making christin a brown bag lunch. big ham sandwich, orange, bag of chips, chocolate bar, all in a brown bag from lou's. good times! she said she felt like she was on a picnic, which is what i was going for. just like making her feel special at times. i took the lunch to her and spent some time with her and the babies before going back to the house after a cheese log break.

mmm. cheese logs.

christin called her doctor about the blood tests she had done, and they all came back negative. this should be a good thing, except there was one test she was kind of hoping would come back positive. i'm sure she'll be blogging about it soon, so i'll spare the depressing details, but we didn't have the best night tonight. we did manage to watch the big bang theory and community [thanks to shrek being aired on nbc and going late] which was cool. i played a bit of wow after that and now i'm typing this before i head off to sleep. yep, that's about it.

oh. i didn't do a video today. that's probably not good. i wasn't inspired, i wasn't motivated, i just didn't care enough to make it happen today. i've been tired all day and i'm tired now. tomorrow i will be waking up at a reasonable hour [read: before noon] and driving up to the big apple for the first time ever. don't worry, i'm not driving in new york, i'm taking the train in from newark. it should be a good time, i'll be attending w00tstock, which will be awesome despite the fact that wil wheaton won't be there. he's busy! but joco is filling in, which is sweet. excited! bedtime.

Yorever Foung

yeah. going through hundreds of listings on craigslist and only finding one or two that aren't scams and are jobs i'm qualified for... can be kind of disheartening. i think i'll be heading to a job placement agency on monday. we'll see how it goes. i saw a job while searching for someone in davidsonville, which is not too far away, who is looking for a nanny for twin girls. haha. go figure, right? cleaned up a bit around the house, did some dishes, played some wow, looked for jobs. lather, rinse, repeat. my life is kind of dull right now. perhaps tomorrow will be more interesting.

SKU 30862265

i've been sitting here staring at this blank window for about 30 minutes now, and i'm no closer to figuring out what i want to say. today, instead of going to a movie [as is our custom on tuesdays] we stayed in and ate spaghetti. i make awesome spaghetti sauce, but tonight's meal wasn't as good as it could have been. i just don't like wheat pasta for speghetti noodles, it tastes like nothing. penne is okay, stuff like that, but not noodles. it's just weird. anyway, we finally watched some more grey's anatomy and we're one episode short of finishing the first season. yep.

how boring is my life?

played a bit of wow tonight. it's interesting how we do things that aren't fun in order to do things that will be fun once we've done those unfun things. and how some people do the unfun things for so long that they get caught up in getting them done that they've forgotten what they were working toward in the first place. they forget about the fun. people like that should not play mmos. i am not like that, but i see so many people who are driven only by gain gain gain, and they seem to have forgotten about fun. anyway, i'm just spinning my wheels, gearing up my warlock to level for some rated battlegrounds in cataclysm. now that will be fun.

Finders Are Opened

today was quite dull for me. i spent a lot of it playing with specs and doing some heroics on my old main character in wow, my warlock, and it was cool. got to chat it up with my friend chris, who is spending an exorbitant amount of time performing mindless tedium to get an achievement that will no longer be in the game when cataclysm hits. pretty funny if you ask me. ;-D he's a very driven individual, i'll say that much. christin was gone almost the whole day, between work and her job interview, and she came home in time for us to not watch house [but catch up on the big bang theory which was excellent]. but it's okay, it was a repeat.

christin's interview went really well, and she's pretty confident she has the job for sure. this would be a great thing for her, and for me as well, as it will pay a bit better than what she has now and give her a bit more time in the week and flexibility. also, the lady is not insane. that's a plus. she is still waiting to hear from the medical job, which she applied for tonight, so there's always that too. i still haven't heard from the produce company, which is disheartening, so i'll be applying it up so crazy again this week. *sigh* anyway, yeah. not a very interesting day.

note: christin informed me today [in words with friends, of all places] that i hadn't posted this blog last night. i am a failure! i think i intended to write more but never did and got sidetracked. that's very possible. in fact, it's certain. sorry for the failblog... dot org!

Awry Bagel

i wanted to give a sermon recap like i've been doing the past few weeks, but i'm just too tired to do that right now. pastor taylor gave a fiery sermon on psalm 14, calling atheists for what they are in essence: fools. the allegory was from the story of nabal, whose name means 'fool', who completely insulted the king and his servants on a holiday, even after they had provided protection for nabal's whole business. so, as you can see, the name fits, the guy was a total idiot.

by saying in their hearts 'there is no God', the atheist does the same thing, except that instead of denying the king and his men some food, they deny the very existence of the King Himself. and this King did not just provide temporary physical protection for some servants, He provided Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of His elect and bore the wrath of God against those sins on Himself at the cross. that's a bit more of a mis-step, and considerably more foolish. yet they persist in unbelief, which comforts them. i remember it well.

today, christin and i went to church and stayed quite late for lunch. there was cake and mac & cheese casserole, and i ate a hearty amount of each. we came home and played some wow, doing some heroics and stuff with my brother and marcus to get used to the new patch and everything that everyone else already did last week. ha! then we watched the amazing race [go team jumba 4th place woooooooooooo!] and after christin went to sleep, i took my quiz and specced/pvped a bit on my warlock. like kanye west says, it's a process. goodnight.

Mind Bullets

what an exciting day! today christin and i went over to anne arundel community college and got her all set up to register for next semester, which pretty much rules. she's not looking forward to math, but she is looking forward to getting back into the academic world. after that, we got cheese logs [mmm] and went to see back to the future in the theatre, which was definitely an experience i will remember for a long time. as i said on twitter earlier, they just don't make movies like that any more these days.

i know, i sound like an old man.

but seriously, when about 80% or more of new films are adaptations or remakes/reboots of older franchises, something is seriously wrong with the movie industry. or something is seriously wrong with the average moviegoer that keeps going to see all these flicks. an awesome, original story like the back to the future trilogy is what hollywood needs to regain some credibility in my opinion. but that's just my opinion. ;-P back to the future is so wonderfully acted, cast, so very quotable and fun. everything about it is just great. it was a good time.

after the movie, we went back to the house to watch the blizzcon stream. today's events were less spectacular than yesterday's, though the ending concert with tenacious d was quite great. they even had dave grohl on drums, which was a pleasant surprise, though sad because he was clearly injured and not playing at his peak performance ability. the class panel was funny, the cinematic panel, which i thought was going to be lame, was actually really cool. the final match in the wow arena tournament was heartbreaking but entertaining none the less.

all in all, it was quite the eventful 24 hours. after we watched the stream, christin got on and did some heroics with her shadow priest. she's liking the changes. i like them too, for myself, at least for healing, but i haven't really gotten much test time in with it yet. i'll see how i like it once we do some raiding, and even more so when the expansion is finally out. anyway, enough of the nerdy talk, it's time for bed. church tomorrow, excited for that. it's late and i'm tired.

Job's Done

i was a bit nervous at first because the stream for blizzcon before the event started was looking like total crap, but once things got rolling it was pretty much flawless for the whole day. so far the event has been pretty awesome, though it's really not the same as being there. last year, christin and i did watch on directv in a similar fashion to this year's live stream [but only one channel, which meant that the content was very limited], and it wasn't nearly as cool as when we had gone previously in person. that was a great year. the energy and atmosphere make it.

anyway, the announcement was the new class for diablo 3, the demon hunter, and i'm super stoked for that. i was an amazon enthusiast in d2, so that's totally gonna be my class when the game comes out. exciting! can't wait to play with christin and my two siblings, even julie loves diablo. the other announcement was less interesting to me, pvp arenas for diablo 3. just another way to keep their company on the cutting edge of e-sports, methinks, though i doubt it will be balanced enough to be a competitive thing in the end. *shrug*

like world of warcraft arena is... ha!

speaking of which, after the contests were over for the second time [replayed them for christin when she got home from work, which she was at all day, the poor thing], i watched a bit of the wow tournament which was neat. cool to see shaman represented in the arena, though it was less cool that they're all my least favorite build, elemental. there was one team that played with a resto shaman, but they pretty much got obliterated. sucks. maybe at 85 we'll be more realistic as anything other than 'burst on demand'. probably not.

the panels were cool, the contests were cool too. unfortunately none of the costumes were quite as elaborate as last year's winner [that mistress of pain was ridiculous] or the year before [turtle mount ftw], but the winner deserved it in my opinion. the dance contest was entertaining, but the live band was a bad idea... missing cues, playing dull versions of stuff that could've been so cool with piped in music. bad execution. mohr was funny, but not a lot of people get his humor. the co-host, directv chick, was terrible as always. totally uninteresting. metzen is a rock star.

well, that's it for now. tomorrow will be another exciting day of blizzcon, though we will have to rewatch the first panel later because we're going to see back to the future in the theatre, which will be truly epic. christin and i are super excited for that. ;-D we're also heading to the local community college to talk to them about getting christin in for some g.e. headed toward a degree similar to mine. we gon' git us two edumacated indivijials in this here family! i dunno why i typed it like that. don't ask! goodnight.

Oxen?

w00tstock ticket purchased [$18 worth of fees is a bit excessive, ticketmaster], blizzcon stream is also ready to roll for tomorrow. whew! it's an entertainment kind of month. my video today was a youtube equivalent of a clip show, because i couldn't decide what to do instead of that. i think it came out well in the end. i've got lots of ideas, i just wasn't feeling any of them today. i will be doing a few tomorrow, but not sure if i'll actually release them until later. we'll see. did my homework tonight, just barely in time. i totally forgot it was thursday.

so words with friends is an incredibly addicting game. it's basically scrabble, but the fact that i can manage tons of games with people i know from across the country from my phone... that's insanely cool to me. i'm doing 5 games right now, and it's great. if you want to start a game with me, my user name on there is 'buelnewman' and i will rock your socks off. maybe not, but i am winning 3/5 of my games, and one of the two i'm losing is due to way too many vowels in my arsenal. bad start! not much happened today, so i'm gonna go to sleep. blizzcon tomorrow! poor christin has to work all day. sad. read her blog entry for today. it's good.

Quark Chatter

i am feeling highly motivated, yet wholly unproductive. i'm not sure how those two things work themselves out rationally, but my analytical faculties are less than optimal at this moment in time. i spent far too much time networking in a social fashion today, so forgive me if i don't really feel like typing a whole lot here on the blog. i got in several discussions about bullying and proposition eight and all sorts of other such nonsense that i don't care to elaborate on. check my facebook page if you are interested to read all of that. you probably aren't.

today i did some chatting, some posting, some discussing, some thinking and some chinese. oh, and i did the dishes and the laundry. go me! it was part of my quest, which christin surprised me with this morning. i wasn't expecting it, because it's been at least 2 months since she's made one for me. it was a welcome surprise, though i can't say i enjoyed the chores. well, i could say that, but i would be lying. actually, i did enjoy the dishes. there's something strangely alluring about the productivity involved in doing the dishes: you see instant results.

the laundry was a different story. the housemates leave their stuff in the washer/dryer all the time, and i'm one of those people who is always afraid that other people are going to be this kinds of people who get all uppity if other people touch their clothes... so i don't like to do that. i did it anyway, because no one was claiming these clothes. it's okay, i started the first load at 7pm and took the second out at 1am and no one had moved the abandoned clothing since i moved them, so i put them back in the dryer. no harm, no foul, as they say. yep.

so tomorrow i have kind of a lot to do, and a lot more that i want to do. i need to make a video and do my homework, but i also want to write some songs, record some music, learn cantonese a bit [practice practice practice] and a few other random errands. yeah. i say this a lot, but, we'll see how it goes. the job i mentioned in yesterday's post is looking good — heard from katie that the guy looked at my resume and thought it was great. i'll be expecting a call from them soon, and i'll be sure to keep you all updated.

Due To Maintenance

sleep was refreshing. it was good to be back in my own bed, and to get to sleep at a decent hour, as decent as it gets for me, that is. today i consolidated pretty much the remainder of our debt, went to the store and got a bunch of lunch food for myself and got a good lead on a potential job. christin's friend katie is referring my resume to a produce company that is looking for warehouse people, my area of expertise aside from teaching, so that's potentially good. i also confirmed that i will indeed be going to new york city for the first time ever in my life on the 29th.

and the peasants rejoiced.

i just re-read my first sentence and swore it said 'sleep was refurbishing.' i don't know why. it's not like i'm in the business of the process of maintenance or major repair of an item, either aesthetically or mechanically. yeah, i just copied and pasted that from wikipedia. what are you gonna do about it? nothing. that's right. nothing. today i also ate chicken and rice with my lovely wife and watched community and went to becky's house to see about applying to work at amtrak with her dad. that would be cool. i can't think of what else happened. i took a shower.

tomorrow i'll be job searching again, not eating pretzel logs [stupid wednesday not actually being thursday and amish market being closed]. i may make a video as well, but i'm not sure. i should, because i probably won't want to do one on thursday, and it needs to be posted on thursday. says me. thursday will be great, because i will eat a pretzel log. yes, my life is that boring that eating a pretzel log is the height of my week. actually the height of my week will be friday when i get to watch blizzcon and saturday when i get to see back to the future in the theatre and watch the rest of blizzcon! yeah! peace outside!

Gross Album Art

hey guys. i drove for 12 hours today and stayed up later than i should have already doing stuff for school, so this is going to be short. especially since i just summed up my day and it's only been two sentences. the drive home was very long and boring, and nothing really happened of interest, so i will spare you the monotony. when i got home, i greeted my loving wife and ate dinner with her as we caught up on the amazing race [which is to say that i watched the episode i had missed last night and she watched with me] and watched house. now christin is sleeping, and i am going to join her because i'm ridiculously tired. sorry for the super short blog, but it's been a while, hasn't it? so there you go.

End Of The Line

it didn't take much to realize that this morning's sermon was very easy to relate to my situation in 2007-2008 when i lived in hong kong. paul said that God had afflicted him with the thorn in his flesh in order that he might be made weak and not trust in his own abilities, but that he would rely on Christ and His strength would be made to show through. when i was out there, everything i did was motivated by my own plans, my own desires, and my own schemes to make thing happen the way that i thought was best.

when i got my job, i was so excited. when i found out that the commute was going to be two hours a day, each way, six days a week, i was less excited but determined. i had come out there with my new wife, against all conventional wisdom, and without a working visa at that. to top it all off, we had come there with still changing theological positions and a lack of a solid church to fellowship at. when i got my job, i thought i had all i needed to supply my needs because i had an income. i placed my trust in that income, and that income failed me numerous times.

because i had forgotten to trust God.

some may say that He brought us back to a better situation, to work at crossweave and pay off our debt and someday move back, that it was a good thing that we left. i'm not so sure. i don't so much think that it was good that we came back, because when i think back to that time now, i see nothing but missed opportunity. i see my shortcomings, my failures, my lack, and i wish i could go back and do it all over again only better. what a life we could've had. we can still have it in the future, but we could've had it then. it could've been better.

i've said in the past that it would have been better had we never gone to hong kong in the first place, but i don't think that's true. sometimes we need a reminder that we must put our trust in God first and only, not foremost but only. hong kong was that reminder for me, and now when i think of hong kong, my heart aches and longs to return. but it also aches because i remember the time when my flesh was proven to be insufficient, weak, worthless, and my pride was broken to bits because i could not manage to provide for my family. i think of that time and i no longer feel as though i wasted my time, but i see it as a lesson in humility.

such lessons ought to be avoided, says conventional wisdom from people like my father or my family, but i think i'm for the better. i'm not one of those people who says 'i don't regret anything i've done because it's all made me the person i am today!' because that's foolishness. what i've done does not make me who i am today. it may affect my personality, it may have molded my quirks and idiosyncrasies, but ultimately those things are inconsequential.

Jesus Christ has made me who i am today.

and that is all that matters in the end. not what i've seen, what i've done, how i've failed, but how Christ has paid my debt and transformed my life by the power of the Holy Spirit. this is not some mystic thing, some holiness perfectionism, some 'life transformation' in a moralistic sense, but a plain fact. no matter who i am personally because of what's happened to me in the past [and by extension, no matter who any one of God's people is], it is His Spirit that defines me. my failures reflect that. i will boast in my weaknesses that the power of Christ may be upon me.

for the sake of Christ, then, i am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. for when i am weak, then i am strong. — 2 corinthians 12:10 [esv]

Voyagers!

georgia is a beautiful state: trees, sun, lots of people and lots of history. today we went to a walmart that was way too big, and a target that was average-sized. guess which one didn't have what we were looking for? at target, i got a soft pretzel that was not as good as the amish market but surely passable. i also got a shirt which will remain undescribed, as i will be sharing it with christin and i kind of want it to be a surprise. i'll be wearing it on monday, so look forward to that, honey. ;-D we went back to the house and watched another old t.v. show.

watching someone else's nostalgia is interesting. of course i can't get as into it as they can, but i can understand what they're feeling because i have similar shows that evoke similar reactions. it's like empathetic bonding and associative connection when i watch 'tales of the gold monkey' and the one we watched today, 'voyagers!' which is basically like dr. who only they are fixing history similar to what the bronze dragonflight is doing in azeroth... only you never really run into the infinite flight that are messing things up. they just get messed up.

anyway, it was cool. we had dinner at an amazingly good restaurant called little szechuan, which is a chinese pet peeve of mine. if you're going to romanize a chinese name, why wouldn't you make it easy to read? why would you use polish phonemes instead of just writing it like we write the name of the region the food is from, 'sichuan'? whatever. the food was phenomenal. it's on the martin yan [of yan can cook fame] top 100 chinese restaurants in america list. we had a lot of leftovers, so i'm hoping to bring some up to christin when i drive back monday.

tomorrow is sunday, and i'm not exactly sure where i'll be going. i want to go to the o.p.c. that's like 40 minutes north, but we'll see. matt goes to a 'house church' for lack of a better word, and i am not really interested in going, honestly. church government is important to me, and i'm loyal to my denomination at this point. but just the same, i don't want to offend my brother-in-law. if he's cool with it, i guess, i'll probably go to the o.p.c. if i am up to the drive. anyway, i'm beat and it's bedtime. goodnight, everyone.

Kennesaw Mountain Landis

today i climbed a big mountain with no water. it wasn't fun. but getting to the top and talking on the way down was great, as was the museum at the visitor's center below. i learned lots of things about the civil war that i didn't actually know, and i also learned just how [unsurprisingly] sympathetic to the confederacy people down in the south are. it's not so much the bias that surprises me, it's that they almost begrudgingly side with the confederates out of blind loyalty despite the fact that they disagree with the sole reason for secession.

after that, we came home and watched some more of a weird old t.v. show from the early 80's. it's called 'tales of the golden monkey' or something like that, and it's quite bizarre. then we went out to dinner for italian food at a pretty sweet restaurant. the food was good, though i have admittedly high [read: near unreasonable] standards for this particular type of cuisine. ironically enough, the best italian food i've ever had was a restaurant in hong kong. go figure!

tonight was consumed mainly by getting homework done. i did my discussion questions and my quiz [which isn't due until sunday] and that was good. it took a long time to read the chapter, but it was worth it because i learned a bit and reviewed a lot. i got through the quiz without really consulting the book much, which is a step up from the way i usually do things. in typical buel fashion, i disagreed with the one answer marked 'wrong' on my quiz, and filed a complaint with the teacher. these rarely end in my favor, but i protest on principle. ;-P

i spent a good deal of time on facebook tonight, probably a bit too much. that's why it's 2:34 in the morning and i'm still typing this up. it's way too late, and i have no idea what time we're meant to be getting up in the morning, so i should probably stop writing and just go to sleep. i should be able to fall asleep tonight [unlike last night] because i'm dead tired, physically, from the hike this morning. 'murder me, harry!' november 19th feels so soon! lots to do this month. random statement. ending.

Just Kidding!

so fortunately, there is a nearby neighbor with internet access and a wireless router that doesn't have a wep key [his foolishness] so i get to connect without driving around. woo! this is gonna make dealing with school for the next few days much more pleasant. i was kind of worried about that on top of all the activities i'm sure matt has planned for us all, but now it seems like not so much of a big deal. i can handle it late night like i usually do. last night i even downloaded and wrote down all of my schoolwork for the next five weeks just in case. i'm weird.

today was a lot of driving. last night i couldn't fall asleep, and believe me i tried, so i pretty much only got a few hours of sleep tops since yesterday. then i drove for about 12 hours from annapolis to atlanta. yeah, that was fun. actually it was! we had a good time. i was really tired at one point and that was kind of stressful, but other than that we had a great trip that was very good from a brotherly bonding perspective and a good times railroad production value standpoint as well. we also got bangin' mexican food for lunch on the way in north carolina. go figure!

i made the video [which is slowly uploading and surely won't be available until tomorrow] a few days ago, but i posted it tonight. it's a bit different from my usual videos, it's a bit more serious, so i'm wondering how it's going to fare on the interwebs. hopefully it will make people think, talk, converse, share and grow. i also hope it will give me an opportunity to minister to the lives of people who are coping with death and dealing with the questions that surround it. we'll see how that goes. tomorrow is sure to be a fantastically fun-filled day, so i'm going to bed to get some sleep. goodnight, all.

Without Internet

it was brought to my attention at the last possible minute that i will not have a reliable internet connection for the next 4 days. to quote philip seymour hoffman's character in the big lebowski, 'this is our concern, dude.' it may have been a bit nice to know a little more in advance, but it's not like i could've planned for it any better anyway. i guess it's good that i didn't bother bringing my keyboard and external monitor with me. ;-P but i will be hitting the nearest wi-fi spot to do stuff for school and i assure you the blogs will continue to be daily.

today i played some buggy but interesting world of warcraft and checked out some of the new stuff in store for cataclysm. so far, i like the way things are streamlined, but a bit of the things are sort of frustrating. lots of people are complaining about stuff, but it's mostly because they aren't thinking fourth dimensionally. wait, no. because they're not realizing that the game is no longer balanced around level 80, it's balanced around level 85. there's going to be huge differences between now and then, so it's gonna be naturally imbalanced in the meantime.

and that's enough of that.

we got good news from a close personal friend of ours regarding our living situation. turns out we have a friend who is currently renting a basement apartment from a relative [her sister i think?] and she is looking to possibly move out, but only if someone else can live there that can help the relative with her kids a few mornings a week. she's in nursing school and super busy, so yeah. i think it's going to work out just great as long as the sister is cool with everything. that would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

no news on the job front. out of at least 12 applications to places to work, i've received one e-mail back, one notice that the position was filled, and zero calls. ugh. i'm gonna keep plugging away at it and hope for the best, though i doubt i'll be doing much job hunting while i'm down in georgia. no, i'll be chasing a shiny fiddle made of gold from a red pajama-clad wacko. wait, no... that's an old song, not reality. i'll be eating millions of peaches... peaches for me... wait. dangit. what's real and what's not real again?

p.s. i am changing my youtube upload day-of-the-week from friday to thursday, because getting people to watch videos on fridays is like pulling teeth. that is all! carry on!

Ibanez? No, Cherokee.

lots of things to say tonight, and i'll probably short-change you because it's late and my brain is just on overdrive so i'll likely think faster than i can type and forget things by the time the keystrokes are completed. unnecessarily and uncomfortably long opening sentence? check. proceed with the incoherent ramblings! today i applied for a lot of jobs and wrote music for a song i wrote last night. the song is about harry potter. well, it's about wizards within the harry potter universe. well, it's a hypothetical dealing with my own potential lifestyle if said universe were real.

yeah, okay, i'm a huge nerd. moving on.

tuesday night is usually date night, but christin didn't feel like going to the movies. so we stayed at the house for the evening and did our thang. she applied for a job, which is great, we looked at some places to live and did general internet things and caught up on last week's episode of the big bang theory, which was fantastic. i started the process of installing the new world of warcraft patch, but as of now i'm working on my third consecutive installation. this one looks like it won't fail. thanks a lot, laptop with tiny hard drive.

after christin went to sleep, or rather after she was supposed to have gone to sleep [she was still up], i went to the movies anyway because the film i wanted to see was a limited release and i wanted to make sure i got to see it in theatres. also, because today is $6 tuesdays and i'm cheap. so very, very cheap. so i saw 'waiting for superman,' and to say that it was an excellent film would be one of the greatest understatements i've ever made. so i won't say that. it was life-changing, from my perspective as a future teacher. yeah, to say it's life-changing, that's a start.

watching the documentary, which details the abject failure of the united states' public schooling system and the repugnant evil of the teachers unions, really woke me up to the way i'm treating my current educational experience. i'm sitting here in a theatre, hearing these stories about kids in crappy parts of the country placing their hopes and dreams at the merciless hand of the charter school lottery... and i can't help but think that i would be wasting my time if i were aiming for anything less than learning to be the best teacher i could possibly be.

i know that i'm already a good teacher, and i know that i won't ever be a 'bad teacher,' much less a teacher as horrible as some of the ones shown in the film. however, i'm not taking my schooling nearly as seriously as i should be, in the sense that i'm sort of sifting through theories and ideas and practices and holding on to what i already believed from my limited experience as a teacher and calling it good. i'm looking at school as a means toward a piece of paper that will get me a visa to teach in hong kong.

and that's just totally unacceptable.

granted, it shouldn't take seeing a documentary to make me realize that education is valuable, but the relative ease of skating through classes [i put virtually no effort into the majority of my classwork and i'm still maintaining a 4.0 gpa] makes you complacent. it makes it easier to look at things the way i did before i saw it. i needed this film, i needed something to make me care more than i already did about education. i needed something to make me believe that, as taylor mali said more crudely than i will re-print: 'teachers make a difference, now how about you?'

yeah. so i'm not going to go into all the things i said in my head after seeing the movie, about how i would pledge to read more and take more interest in the subjects or devote more time to going back and re-reading textbooks and memorizing theories. i'm not going to make any sort of public promise like that, but i'll say that i'm surely going to make a greater effort not to cheat myself out of my own education in the future, because i'm surely doing that now. for now, it's time for bed, and we'll see what that means in terms of practicality tomorrow.

Haymitch Abernathy

anger is an emotion i'm not particularly well-versed in either displaying or overcoming, but if i had to choose an emotion to match the day, anger would be it. i'm not so much angry right now, or i'd probably not be writing this, but i spent the majority of the day angry, insulted, frustrated, sad, confused, discouraged and depressed. of course it had to come right after one of the best days i've had in a long while, and after re-iterating a wonderful sermon in my previous blog post, the content of which would have been wise to consider during the day's events.

if i weren't a massive hypocrite, that is.

so i'm not going to get into it, but the basic gist of the situation is that christin's boss [who is also our landlord, and who also makes christin pay her end of taxes on top of paying her what amount to slave wages when all things are considered] is now forcing her to take another two weeks' vacation in december, this time without pay. which is against the law. since christin is a salaried employee, it is illegal to force a vacation when the employee is willing and able to work. but she is going to do it anyway, and basically make her make up 80 hours worth of work next year.

speaking of next year, on top of all this, she let christin know today that she's only going to have a job until next june. at that point, she plans to put the children in daycare [good luck with that, they bite, they won't last a week] and christin is basically s.o.l. so yeah. that's why i was angry. and i lied, i'm still angry about it, i'm just calm enough to explain it in text form, but doing so is causing the anger to return. we are now looking for a new job for christin and a new place to live because this situation is ridiculous, as well as looking for a job for myself.

though i feel at this point as though no one will hire me.

in my anger, i had to leave the house before i caused massive destruction to it, so i went to d.c. and rode the train in to the national mall. there was a youtube gathering slash acoustic concert there that i knew about, so i thought i'd check it out. it was cool, despite the fact that i was the oldest non-parent there and one of a handful of males. i got to chat with mike lombardo, a piano player and songwriter who did a competition with christin and i a year ago. he's a nice guy and i'll see him again if i do end up going to w00tstock. which i really want to.

so i came home, missed house and talked to christin while she was still awake. the tone was just generally depressing, so that didn't go too far. we don't know what we're doing. all i know is i'm in need of income, so i'm working on that. i applied to six more jobs tonight, on top of the four other jobs i applied to last weekend, so i'm hoping for some calls back tomorrow. we'll see how it goes. i also wrote some lyrics to a new song i'll probably write music for tomorrow, and i finished the video i recorded on saturday. it's about death, but it's not depressing. it'll be out this week.

Bet It On The Horses

if you knew there was a sure defense against any tactic your enemy could potentially throw at you, would you sit back and concoct a scheme of your own instead of running to it? of course not. but we do this quite often, if you think about it. the eleventh psalm illustrates God as our refuge, our sure defense against the wiles of the enemy, though his bow may be drawn and his string loaded and poised to strike at a moment's notice. we know we have this refuge, yet many spend so much time worrying about what to do in certain situations.

what we have in scripture is not meant to be accessed and pored through in a panicked reaction to cataclysmic events that shake us to our core. it's not meant to be a 'last resort' or something we go looking through in times of trouble. it's a wellspring of knowledge, comfort and joy that is meant to be read, loved, cherished, memorized, studied, agonized over and instilled deep within our souls. if we do this, we will have no need to worry when troubling times come our way, because we'll have exactly what we need to overcome them — the assurance of God as our refuge and our strength. the promise of life through Christ our mediator and intercessor.

it's a suit of armor, not a hidden bunker.

this is what i learned this morning in church, and it was a wonderful sermon. i spent the bulk of the day hanging out with ken fields, one of the elders at the church, while christin was at some sort of conference for doulas in baltimore. we talked about theology, football, but mostly hong kong, as i showed him a lot of the pictures we took when we lived there. now i miss it even more than ever, though his suggestion that there are likely many abc's in the church that would be willing to take up the task of establishing a church there in the future.

one of my biggest concerns with moving back to hong kong in the future is being without a good, doctrinally solid, reformed church. as far as i can tell, it's the only real downside, aside from dsl internet and a distinct lack of mexican food. aside from a 1689 reformed baptist church on the island that we visited once [which is like 'close, but no cigar' from my perspective], there is just a huge lack of fellowship there. plenty of charismatics, plenty of anglicans, plenty of emergents. i long for a presbyterian church to be established there. someday.

i didn't get to watch the game, but the chargers lost tonight. of all teams to beat them, why must it have been the raiders? we've lost both division games, to the two historically worst teams in the division, which is just bonkers. it's not going to be a good year. rivers is throwing like mad, but as the get-up kids say, one star player doesn't make the team. amazing race tonight was pretty intense. they had me going for a minute, but team jumba is still alive and kicking! next week should be exciting. schoolwork and job search tomorrow. booooo!

Diazepam

something terrible happened today: christin made me watch grey's anatomy. i'm trying very hard to dislike it, but it's so unfortunately well written, well cast, and well acted that it's near impossible to hate. oh well. ugh. i didn't need another t.v. show to get into, dangit. horrible. and a chick show at that. do i have to surrender my man card now, or what? we've watched 6/9 of the episodes in the first season today, so becky [i know you're reading this and laughing at me], we'll probably need season two pretty soon. or should i say, 'stat!'

well, i feel sufficiently emasculated.

earlier today, while christin was hanging out with becky and drinking way too much chocolate milk [there are certainly worse habits], i was filming a video. it won't be put up until later next week, as my most recent video still hasn't received an acceptable number of views to justify releasing it yet. it's about death. kind of heavy, but i treat it with a bit of humor and some honesty. hoping it will encourage some good conversation and get people interested, let them see another side of me. funnily enough, it all started with me brushing my teeth the other day.

i also took some time to record some backing music for said video, which ended up working out just great once i got it all recorded. i should really re-record the bassline and get rid of all the clicks and annoyances, but i kind of wanted it lo-fi and ghetto sounding, so i guess it can stay. last night when i got my guitar i pretty much immediately started playing around with it and ended up writing the chorus to a song about a particular video game... it's a surprise for now. expect it to be completed and recorded quite soon. church tomorrow, for reals this time.

The Pumpkin King

christin was sick again today, so she didn't go in to work. it always sucks when that happens, and not for the reasons you'd expect. it's not the whole 'missing a day' thing that would reduce her pay, she always makes it up in the end. it's the guilt trip that gets laid on her every time she needs time off. it's really, really wearing on me and i can't really do anything about it, just have to sort of take it. her boss views it as this major inconvenience, as though it's devastating her life to *gasp* stay home and spend time with her children. it's not like their checkbooks are gonna take a massive hit from missing one day's pay — they can definitely afford it.

anyway, i recorded and edited this today, which concerns this task for the dan 3.0 project. check it out if you've got the time. i think it's a good idea. ;-P after that, i went up to baltimore to buy this guitar from a dude from craigslist that's almost identical to my old guitar. feels the same to me, i'm digging it. i got back and we raided ulduar hard modes again, or rather we wiped because we could not get a decent group together. it's always hard when flame leviathan is the weekly. blah. tomorrow might be better, we'll see how that works out when the time comes.

since i've got this guitar, expect to see a lot more posts about new songs i'm working on and stuff, because i want to get back into writing music again. this includes the light-hearted, fun 'the perfect place' stuff that christin and i were doing for song-fu as well as the worship songs slash modern hymns i was writing back when i had the other guitar. now that i have both a guitar and a decent microphone, i'm going to be recording them in my free time [which i have a lot of] and also working on a super secret project for christin as well. bedtime.

Emergent Literacy

you may have noticed that the ads are gone. apparently, my account was disabled due to 'invalid activity' which basically means that google felt like disabling it. i can appeal and possibly get it back, but i don't really like ads anyway. i saw it as an easy way to make a small amount of money just for doing something that i do everyday anyway, but unfortunately google has decided to deny me that small pleasure. if it's going to be that difficult, i'd rather not clutter the blog with ads. oh well.

i have no more stitches in my gums. *cheers*

today i worked on my new website and got a visually appealing navigation with functional coding, which is a huge accomplishment for me. learning to use div/span instead of tables is certainly an adjustment, but i like that i don't much have to worry about different browsers interacting with the tables differently anymore, or piecing images together in tables. those things were annoying. now i just get to stare at the split-screen code/preview in dreamweaver [which is the reason i use it at all considering i end up writing the code by hand anyway] instead. i can live with that.

all i need to do now that the look is there and the code is bangin' is to make the links work and come up with some actual content. the bulk of the site is going to be embedded video-based, linking from my youtube account through an embedded player. i've got an idea of how i want it to look in my head, but translating that may prove difficult. i'm trying not to shoot too high, because i would like to have the site up and functional and full of content by the end of the month. we'll see if i meet that goal. i might actually get it up sooner.

tomorrow i've got to do a video. i kind of want to do a sketch, i've got a half-baked idea for a new geekin' out video, and i've got a great idea for a talky video response. i'm sure people are getting sick of video responses now, but i really think this one is such a good idea that it may be worth the effort. maybe i'll throw in some character-acted meta-insults to lighten the mood and make people forget it's just me talking again. and i'll keep it under 3 minutes. how's that sound? i think i just decided what i'm doing. i need to do another 'button' video though. hmm.

To Create

i did a lot of thinking today. thinking when i woke up and rolled out of bed to check websites and social networks. thinking as i walked the dog. thinking as i went to visit christin at work and went to drop off clothes at the goodwill. thinking while i listened to one of my regular podcasts with rainn wilson, you know that guy from the office, who is apparently a weird new age baha'i spiritual guru sort of dude. blech. i'm not sure i ever figured out what i was thinking about today, but i did a lot of it for lack of real conclusions about things. blah.

oh, and i got a new chair for christin.

when i got home, i sat in the shower with the warm water running over me and thought some more about life, direction, happiness, Jesus, the english language and various other things. work. i really want to create for a living. i suppose this means that i need to create things that people would be willing to spend time, money or energy on. similar to this blog, in the sense that i've now got a bit more pressure on myself to try and make this thing worth reading. to come up with content every night and write for more than a few minutes about how my day went. and now i'm filling up paragraphs about 'thinking.' whatever that means.

i don't know. i did some work on my website tonight. i'm re-learning html, because the game has changed and i'm tired of being so behind that i have no idea what i'm doing and my code ends up looking like crap. i'm still using dreamweaver, but i'm writing most of the code by hand. it's just for quick reference, it's just easier this way. i'm learning the old way, by looking at peoples' sources and copying them [which is harder now] in the sense of experimenting with things they did and figuring out how to replicate it.

it was fun to create something.

actually, all i really managed to do was create a basic layout that doesn't even include much real content at all. but my website is designed to be sort of a portal to all of my different media outlets like this blog, my youtube page, my twitter feed and the like. the bulk of what i did was set up feedburner and customize a script with css to make it look nice. i've got it looking the way i want it to now, though once i change the colors i'm sure it'll have to be re-edited. people don't like white on black, bud!

tomorrow i go back to the dentist. i'm tired of talking about my mouth! i feel like i felt when i was vlogging/blogging about my car pretty much non-stop a while back. but yeah. the swelling is down by a lot today, and the stitches are falling out on their own. i don't even know if there are going to be any left for him to remove tomorrow by the time i get out to glen burnie. ;-P but at least he can look at my mouth and tell me if everything is kosher. hopefully it is. also on the table for tomorrow: homework for my new class and community at 8pm. good times.

Donkey Kong

well i was halfway correct yesterday: i only had to make one phone call, and i didn't have to go to the mva after all. it seems that my faxing in the letter within 60 days counts, and they're not going to penalize me for the california dmv's sluggish reply to paperwork. the state will call me when they get my title in, and all will be well. unfortunately, my inspection certificate expires in 30 days, so i've got to get a temporary [one year] registration and temporary title in the meantime if it takes longer than those 30 days. not so bad, really, in the end.

today i did a whole lot of nothing, with the exception of sitting on hold for an almost criminal length of time, until christin came home. we played with the animals a bit and headed out to the mall for our weekly tuesday night date. this week, we splurged and got dinner at the mall as well as going to our $6.00 tuesday movie at the cinema. christin had a teriyaki chicken bento box at the sushi joint which smelled and tasted amazing [the chicken, not the sushi] and i had a chicken sandwich at chick-fil-a [wheat bun, baby] and fries from five guys. it was delicious.

we saw 'the facebook movie' which was as much about facebook as troll 2 was about trolls. it was interestingly written and played, as all the factoids about facebook and its development were all things we already knew. it was the interaction and drama between the characters that i had not heard about, and the acting was wonderful. the dialogue was speedy and sometimes overbearing, almost like an episode of gilmore girls at times, but it was well executed in the sense that the main points got across through the technical speak. it was a good movie.

it was very fincher, in my opinion. not just the typical, dark and brooding backdrop and fincher's trademark color palette, but the feel of it. the underlying depression, despite the fact that every single thing possible seems to be going well as can be for the protagonist. the manipulation that undermined the other characters, one way or another, and the very sad ending. i guess you could call it an ending, i wasn't really impressed with the way it ended. there was no real resolution in the end, but i guess that's what happens when you tell part of a story that's probably still in the process of developing. i guess. i should look it up.

anyway, that's enough of that. after i got home and christin went to sleep, i set about thinking of what to do until 2am when i had to take my medication. conveniently enough, i noticed that my buddy from youtube named peter was hosting a tinychat, so i hopped in. i got on cam and typed, because i couldn't really talk while christin was sleeping a mere 6 feet away, and it was a good time. i recognized most of the people there, but a few were new faces, and it was fun to just chat and socialize. a good end to a good day. tomorrow will be interesting, depending on if i do what i think i want to do with my time tomorrow. goodnight.

Last Pizza Pocket

i've just finished writing a 7-page final paper and accompanying lesson plan, so forgive me if i'm in any way lacking in eloquence. i just got up to go to the toilet and thought to write 'i am so relieved that tomorrow is one of those days when i literally have nothing that i need to do' when i realized that may not be true. so i looked at my maryland driver's license's issue date and did the math and realized that there is something i have to do tomorrow. i have to make at least two phone calls that i don't want to make, and potentially go to the mva.

the first phone call will be to the bank that owns my car, because i faxed them the letter to get the title forwarded to the state of maryland twice now and they haven't let me know anything. and the state hasn't called either, so i don't know what's up with that. the second is to the mva because by law i'm meant to register my vehicle within 60 days of claiming residency in the state. however, if i don't have my title transferred, i can't apply for a maryland title and thus cannot register the car. so hopefully they will be understanding.

yeah right, it's the mva.

well this sucks. i had already begun dreaming up a lovely blog post in my head during those 40 or so seconds between thinking about not having any responsibilities and realizing that i had one looming above me like a crushing hammer of annoyance. wait, crushing hammer of annoyance? see what i mean about the lack of eloquence? these are the jokes, folks. feel free to laugh. so i'll have to save that blog topic for the next time i've got a day coming up where i don't need to do anything. but realistically, that day will never come. there are always needs.

i guess what i mean is less that i don't need to do anything, and more that there will be absolutely no serious consequences were i to shirk my responsibilities for the day. and for the most part, that's every day for me. sure, there would be some consequences, but nothing so catastrophic that it would send me spiraling downward into a pit of hellish hellishness [really?] or anything. that's the blessing and the curse of being technically unemployed: you aren't really tied down to any one schedule, but in the grand scheme of things, you are somewhat insignificant.

what i'm really trying to say is that i need a job. unfortunately, i've got a weekend trip planned in a week that i can't get out of, so having a proper job right now is pretty much a non-option. which is good, because so far no one wants to hire me. i'll try quite a bit harder to find some sucker to let me work for them nice person to hire me once i get back from said trip. i know, i'm so clever. i'm the cleverest. today i worked on my paper, and after that was finished, i watched elmify videos and wished i were as good at vlogging as she is. the end!

Concerted Action

cold weather is ominous. i always feel like something is going to happen whenever the weather gets a bit colder. it's probably the wind blowing. i close my eyes and type, and i just get that feeling like any minute now, something really creepy is going to happen. but it doesn't. the wind keeps blowing and the cat keeps purring in her bed, and my wife keeps sleeping, and i keep typing. things keep on going just as they should. the train keeps rolling on. i should be thankful for such stability, it's a rare thing these days. or at least it feels that way.

blogging has been good for me lately. thanks for reading. seriously, i mean it. the knowledge that people are reading is fueling me and inspiring me to write for someone other than myself. the stuff that i write for myself never ends up being any good. when i was in junior college, the second year or so, i wrote an entire screenplay for a movie that was pretty much written entirely for me. it's a good thing i don't know where that is, because it was terrible. it was basically a rip-off of another movie that i still haven't seen [capital records] with some veiled kevin smith references. the story was dull, and the actions of the characters made no sense. i just wanted to write something, and i thought it was good at the time.

it wasn't.

writing for an audience is different. it's not so much that i sit writing, knowing what my audience wants to read, because i don't really know that. it's more that i know that someone will take the time to read it, regardless of whether or not it's something they may want to read or may have wanted to read before they started reading it. people who have been following this blog should know by now that it's almost never the same. i change it up on a daily basis. sometimes it's just a recounting of the day's events, sometimes it's straight up narrative, and sometimes it's knocking on the door of being considered art. in any iteration, whatever it is, rest assured that it is me.

you are reading me.

i use familiar devices like the one i just used in order to pull you in and emphasize statements and make points and make you think that everything is fluid and similar. it's not really, but i can trick your brain into thinking it is. that's the beauty of the written word. or the typed word, as similar as it can be. thanks for sticking with me through it all and reading, and if you haven't been with me this whole time, thanks for reading at least now. feel free to go back and read earlier works, though i can't promise you it'll be enjoyable. also, feel free to comment. i fear that feature is incredibly underused. i know you have a google account. everyone does.

in other news, i've decided that i'll be changing the layout of this blog sometime soon. this will be done in order to further accommodate people who apparently are not cyborgs like myself and don't enjoy reading white text on a black background. it happens. it will probably look something like what my domain looks like right now, in terms of color and basic general concept. blue and white, because i'm very uninteresting. i may add in a splash of orange because i like the color, not because i know anything about design. i couldn't care less.

today was a fairly uninteresting day, and the swelling and annoyance has not yet lifted from my face. it doesn't feel like it's worse, it just feels like it's not getting any better. maybe a little bit. i really was expecting it to go down faster, but it just hasn't. it's starting to get on my nerves. but i don't think it's something worth calling the surgeon over, so i probably won't go that far. i have a final project due tomorrow, and i've not even looked at the rubric. mistake or challenge? you be the judge. i say challenge, but of course i do. it was my choice.

Nothing, Really

i hate when i forget things that someone told me a while before but never reminded me about. this is because i often forget those things and if you expect me to remember them and take zero steps to ensure that i've remembered them, i'm likely not to. this morning would be a good example of that. my wife kept waking me up casually, then started yelling at me. i asked why she was insisting that i get up, when she looked at me like i was stupid and reminded me that today we were going to the eastern shore to celebrate her dad's birthday.

yeah, i probably should've remembered that.

but she didn't remind me yesterday. granted, she shouldn't have had to, but it's kind of the way i am. i need lots of reminders, especially at the last minute. you'd think that someone with a memory like mine, i'd use a day planner or at least the calendar on my phone, but i don't really use it much. when i do, i always remember stuff, so i should probably get more organized and do that for more things. i'm one of those people where if the alarm doesn't go off in the morning, i don't wake up. i basically have no internal clock, or it's just so angry at me from all the years of abuse and change and misdirection that it's completely given up on working.

anyway, the birthday celebration was fun. the girls gushed about how much they loved the video i put up with them in it, and instantly bombarded me with ideas [mostly bad or derivative to the point of copyright violation] about what to do for the next one. i should just make them their own channel! we ate bourbon chicken, talked and hung out for a few hours and then it was time to go back. on the way home, we visited christin's friend in the hospital to see her newborn son, which was good for christin and boring for me, and then headed back.

fell asleep almost immediately and woke up just in time for the raid tonight [more ulduar hard modes, we're about halfway through the meta-achievement]. i'm not taking the percocet much anymore, but i've been super drained lately. i think i mentioned that yesterday. is it sad that i can't remember that far, back to what i wrote only last night on this very blog? i could find out by clicking a button, but that's far too convenient. no, i think i'll just let it slide. the swelling is still pretty bad on my mouth, so i'm kind of concerned that there may be a problem. it could just be from the infection. if it's still this prevalent on monday, i'm calling the oral surgeon back. church tomorrow.

Yoo-Hoo

the day after, the aftermath, le dénouement. today was a beautiful, typical autumn day in annapolis and i spent most of it in bed. something about getting a tooth ripped out of your skull does that to you. it's not like it hurts all that much, it's just uncomfortable, and my energy level has been pretty low since yesterday. i guess that probably has something to do with the fact that i didn't eat a whole lot of anything yesterday, and today's total calorie count was probably pretty slim as well. mental note: eat more tomorrow. i'm getting more confident in my ability to chew, but my paranoia in the area of keeping my wound clean is getting the better of me.

perhaps it's good that i'm paranoid about food getting in there and mucking things up. maybe now i can create a compulsion to brush my teeth as soon as i'm done eating anything all day and my teeth will be nice from now on. wishful thinking, most likely. my teeth have always been bad. so today i picked up a free bike for my wife, which is good news because we both need exercise and i have one i can use in the garage already. christin went to hang out with becky, and i stayed home and raided ulduar hard modes with my brother and matt and the raid team. it was good times, and we got four achievements done.

so it's october now. that's weird. september went by pretty quickly, but this past week dragged on pretty miserably. probably because we were really poor, which never helps things. but now christin just got paid and i should be getting almost $200 from patch next week and [if things go as well as they've been with these new ads on my blog] another check from google in the near future. good things, good things. do these two things combined qualify me as a professional writer or journalist? that's kind of cool to think about. i should write more, like proper write. maybe i'll use this blog as an outlet for that, or a test field. how do you feel about being guinea pigs?