Warthog Demolition

today i made a video, in which i talk about conjunctions and such. it was fun to make, even though i lost my outline and had to freestyle it instead of going smoothly. in the end i think i did just fine, though i over-recorded quite a bit, which makes it more difficult and time-consuming to edit. i did most of my editing at the laundromat, which i got to really late. christin just stopped by on the way home, which was cool because we were both hungry and could get dinner together. we ate and we talked; she left and i edited. that was that.

oh noes guys, tyra only has one photo in her hand.

so after buffy time, i played some wow. ran two heroics and i was top dps both times, which is good because i wasn't sure i was really performing right as elemental. it's new to me, so i'm still learning what to do, but it's probably one of the easier rotations these days. i do have some sub-333 ilvl gear as well, so i guess it looks like i can only go up in damage from there. got one upgrade [new weapon] and bought another with justice points [gloves], so that's good. anyway, i've just realized i had homework due, so i need to go do that now instead of type this. brb.

note: i never came right back. and that tyra note was added later. lolz.

Very Yes

oh Lord, keep me from being a double-minded man. this morning's sermon was excellent, as usual, and honestly i'm just happy that i made it to church. it's been far too long since i've been, and it just isn't sunday without it. after church, we went to see a movie after eating potbelly's for lunch. we saw 'blue valentine,' which was terribly depressing and contained just about the worst direction and cinematography of all time. if there were an anti-oscar for cinematography, this movie would win. like five times. the actors did fine, but it was hard to pay attention when every shot was shaky and zoomed in for effect. yeah, dude. we get it. it's an uncomfortable situation.

after that embarrassing, sorry excuse for a film, christin and i went home and did some school stuff. well, she did some school stuff while i booked my flight for vidcon! that's right, i'm going for sure. i got the ticket for miles only [plus a $10 fee] so the only thing i'm paying for is transportation while i'm there and vidcon registration, which i just completed. good things, good things. christin won't be going, which is sad, but she's not as into it as i am and she needs to work. my income is somewhat expendable, and hopefully after i get back [when the school year starts] i can get a job in my field. wouldn't that be nice?

started buffy season 7, which is off to a good start but i kind of just want spike to be awesome again already. he's my favorite character, and it's kind of weird, but he's been through a lot which is part of what makes him so good. double-edged sword! tomorrow starts the first video of the new week's theme, which is going to be fun. tune in tomorrow to find out what it is, i'm excited to do it. need to work on recording the song on tuesday so i'm not scrambling like i was last week. at least this time i don't work on monday or wednesday, so that's good. i also have to go to the laundromat tomorrow. *dislike button*

Uranium Deposits

i don't think i have an internal clock. or at least, if i do have one, it isn't ticking anymore. if i don't set an alarm or someone doesn't wake me up, i pretty much just keep sleeping. such was the case today, when i woke up at around 1:30pm [because christin woke me] and rolled out of the bedroom at about an hour later. we watched some more buffy, finished season six by the end of the night. it was interesting, because i can see how people dislike that season, but at the same time i think it was good and actually necessary to character and plot development. it sets up the last video season as well [there is an 8th in comic book form].

work tonight was interesting. it was really busy, and i was the only one at lands' end [i know the apostrophe is in the wrongplace , it's a famous typo that ended up in the brand name], so that made things a bit hectic. i had some majorly annoying customers as well, so that was bad times. no break, but the time went quickly due to the lack of downtime. didn't get any training done, but that doesn't really bother me all that much.

i got home and did my homework that was due two nights ago. i don't know what it is about maintaining a 4.0 that makes me feel like i'm some kind of invincible force, but i don't care much about deadlines lately, unless it's the last day of class. it's like the penalty is so negligibly small that there's no worry of it actually making a serious impact on my overall grade. as long as i do well on the work, especially the final paper, everything is fine. this class doesn't even have any quizes or anything, so if i just do what i have to do, i'll get an 'a' in the end. i guess that doesn't put much meaning behind the gpa, but i take what i can get.

Therazane

i've got a theory: it could be bunnies. woke up, took care of some domestic issues, mainly involving banking in various forms. funny story about that: apparently the check card i ordered for christin [she hasn't had one in about a year now] back in september was actually sent to a friend's house. see, christin used to live there. back when we merged our bank accounts, that was apparently the last place she lived, so her side of the account was still associated with that address. weird. and the lady at the bank assured me that it would go to my parents' house, too.

doing all of that took up a lot of the day. we went to the hospital to see our new nephew, evan, and that was nice. happy and healthy, the kid came out with no trouble at all according to dan and sarah. then we went to the mall to get some food and headed back to rhonda's to babysit for the night. fairly uneventful there, but once we got home it was buffy time! we stopped after the wedding episode, which was kind of a strange pausing point, but it's way late now and we're dead tired. so it's time for bed. sorry these blogs haven't been terribly interesting of late.

Sedative Memory

today at work, i had an interesting memory that got me laughing. i touched a piece of metal after shuffling my feet [they tend to drag], and got a bit of static shock. the experience immediately made me chuckle to myself, because it instantly transported me back to grammar school. those of you who grew up in the 80's using apple 2e computers may remember how they used to tell you to always touch the legs of your chair before touching a computer. the idea was that the static shock could interfere with or mess up the system. was that ever true? is it still true? i never do it.

today i made this, and i like it. i also worked, which was just fine. i went in early to do training for my transition between seasonal and regular, which is cool because that means i'm not fired. i still don't have a full-time 'real job,' but this one will do for now. today was a long day, everything about it felt slow and arduous. speaking of long, i did a heroic vortex pinnacle tonight, and it took like two hours. and we only wiped once... what's up with that? too much trash there. it's not even hard, either. that second boss is a real pain, though. ;-X goodnight.

Restoration? Shame, Man

today was my group interview, which some of you know was for aflac. upon considering things once i got home, i've come to the decision that it's not something i can do. not only does it require way more time that i've got to give [i want to be out of the country within 2 years], but it's very hard to do, especially for someone like me who can't even get people to sign up for free stuff at sears. blah! speaking of sears, i didn't go to work tonight. the official word is that i was babysitting the kids upstairs, and you know. that's... exactly what i did! christin doesn't like me driving in the snow anyway. did i mention the snow? there's a lot of it.

speaking of the snow, the cold, the rain, et cetera... today when i got back, i sat in my car eating my lunch and listening to the dividing line in my parking spot outside the house. i turned everything off and got out of the car, realizing just too late that i left my keys in the ignition. this is the second time this winter! so i spent some quality time attempting to pick a lock with a less-than-functional tension wrench [not nearly strong enough to turn it], and generally hanging out in the really cold garage. woo! when christin got home, we played in the snow with the dog and watched some buffy. tomorrow i've got to make a video, and i have no idea what i'm going to talk about. that could be potentially problematic.

Queer As Frak

today i was supposed to have a group interview for a job, but some stuff went down [or didn't] and i will be going tomorrow instead. blah. it's okay though. today i worked on this, which took me quite a bit longer than i had expected. the source footage was over 22 minutes long, and it was just crazy sauce, but i think it came out well. tonight i ran my first heroic, stonecore to be precise, and it was an interesting experience. the bosses were challenging, and the mechanics were fun. we got done in a little over an hour and maybe fifteen minutes or so. didn't mind the length so much.

note: blah, i never finished this. got to bed at 4am.

Prerogative: Weird Word

today was fairly uneventful, though not entirely boring. i managed to get a good deal of homework done this morning, and christin got off work early. we headed to the gym when she got home, and worked out for a half hour while watching avatar. boo avatar! it was probably very entertaining to watch me running back to the car in shorts, holding my sweat pants, with no jacket. let me tell you, it was not entertaining for me! i probably should have thrown the sweats on before heading out. it was pretty dang cold.

once we got home, i cooked dinner and we watched some buffy, which was fantastic. christin went to bed and i set out to accomplish the few things i needed to do before bedtime: finish my posting for school, write an outline of tomorrow's video, and do my daily normal dungeon. in doing said normal dungeon, it turns out i now have the right average item level to get into heroics. hooray! so i reforged all of my gear to get me hit capped [which is super convenient] and now i'm all set. didn't run one tonight because it's too late, and i've got that interview tomorrow. oh yeah, i didn't mention that yet, did i? yeah, i should probably do that.

so just as we were getting ready to watch the second episode of our show for the night, i noticed a missed call and voicemail message [phone was on vibrate, i never heard it ring] from a number i didn't know that was in maryland. so i called it back, and it was a guy from aflac! i sent them a resume in response to a craigslist ad about a week or so ago, not thinking anything of it because most of those end up being credit report scammers or fake job offers of some other kind. well anyway, to make a short story shorter, i have a group interview tomorrow at 10am, and if they like me, i'll get a one-on-one afterward. so pray for me! thank you. goodnight.

Origination

i'm fairly certain that i'd have a very difficult time finding an episode of a television series that was more finely crafted, geniously produced, and flawlessly executed than the musical episode of buffy. christin and i watched it to end the night, and holy crap was it amazing. the plot device was great, the lyrics were funny [i just about died when anya started rocking out], and it was just a great way to force all of the characters' issues to come out in a spectacular extravaganza of singing. good show, bravo, wonderful!

tomorrow, i'll probably start working on tuesday's video early. i've got a few good ideas for what to do it on, but i'm not 100% sure what i'm going to say. the reason i'll get to work on it early [this will be the first time i've done so with this new format] is because i'm working on tuesday night, and i'd like to ensure that i get it up before i leave for work. that would be good, considering i've been doing a lot of the editing at night after christin goes to bed, and that kind of puts a strain on the process. it also forces me to release videos late at night, which is bad for promotion. so yep. not much else to say about today. oh, that and christin's dinner [pecan crusted chicken] was really good.

Nargles Took My Shoes

woke up late, did some dishes, took a shower and headed off to work. yeah, my one day of work all week, and it was fairly uneventful. one good thing is that i have three days next week; another is that they assigned me some training, which means i'm still employed. good news. came home and my parents-in-law brought me dinner. they were spending time here with christin, eating and watching netflix and such, and they brought black bean chicken. i had already eaten, but i had some anyway. it was amazingly good.

christin and i both hit level 85 tonight, which was fun and good times and such. now begins the long and arduous rep and gear grind. ;-P but that will be over a long period of time, of course. anyway, we watched the season 6 premiere, both episodes, and it was wondrous. i'm told that this season is pretty amazing, and so far it's living up to that hype. the cat is currently eating quite loudly. it's way too late, i've got church tomorrow, and i've got to get to sleep. it's ridiculously cold tonight, as it was last night, and finally in single digits. blech. brrr. goodnight.

Mandibles Glistening

'take her out!' said christin. and so i did, but not before spending most of the day on this! the 'her' is monster truck, by the way. this video actually took quite a lot of editing and the raw footage was around 18 minutes because i had to look up a few things on the spot. i was going to say something [which i ultimately cut out for time reasons], and i had to make sure that it was correct before i did. the thing? oh, it was that 'cannot' is one word. it can be two words, but it's usually not. an example of it being two is: 'i can not only swim, but i can dance underwater.'

christin was watching some weird movie about muslims and sharia law; it's about some lady who doesn't want to give her husband a divorce [so he can go marry his floozy], because she doesn't want to give up her children or something. weird. she's like, yelling at the t.v. and that's kind of humorous to me, but she's really sad from it. we had dinner from a local chinese place [hunan/sichuan/cantonese] and it was pretty good. we'll definitely go back! after that, we finished season 5 of buffy, which was totally awesome.

another thing worth mentioning is that johnny proposed to my sister tonight, and she said 'yes!' [i said 'wow!' she said 'when?' and i said 'how about in a year or two after i finish my master's? ... and then she said 'okay, cool.'] that was a long parenthesis. anyway, yeah! i'm going to have a brother-in-law, and a good one as well. johnny treats her well, which is most of what i ask for. good times! yeah! i think i say that in every blog post now. blech! i need some new material. anyway, that's all for today. congrats to johnny and julie, may they be happy together. and go to harry potter world for their honeymoon. yea boi!

Lansing, Michigan

hi, kids. i'm t.v.'s patrick duffy. so anyway, today was interesting. i woke up a bit late because i kept having weird dreams and trying to continue them by going back to sleep, which actually worked this time... which is strange. if i remember correctly from what christin says i told her this morning, i was in an episode of buffy the vampire slayer [helping her, of course] and there were doubles of everyone. and the second one was the real one. yep, very specific. ha! anyway, i spent some time helping some friends online and playing with the animals before heading to christin's place of employment. good times.

so i hung out at christin's work until around 5:20 or so, because she had to stay late. richard had some 'production issue' at work and had to stay late, so christin stayed because we could use the extra money with her job ending soon and all. we hung out with babies, which are more fun once they start talking, and ate cheese logs. they were yummy. came home, watched a movie called 'teeth' which i would not recommend to the squeamish... but it was hilarious. and wrong. then we watched a couple episodes of buffy and called it a night. i finished up the night with homework for my class which is strangely appealing. sent out about 5 resumes tonight. pray for me, please.

Kali Ma

your cut-rate insurance may not pay for apostrophes. if so, you'd better learn how to use them to show possession by clicking here and watching my video slash listening to my song on the topic. and then you should buy the mp3 from our bandcamp page so my children can have food to eat. and by children, i mean animals; and by food, i mean drugs. whew, glad that's over. i hate ripping off dumb insurance commercials, especially when they involve mayhem. anyway, that's mostly what i did today, work on that song and that video. i enjoyed most of it.

my wife does a lot for me. she puts up with my dumb video-making and songwriting, she listens and always supports, and always links my stuff on facebook. she's pretty much the best wife in the world, and i don't tell her that enough. so i'm telling her that right now on my blog. christin-chan, i loving you. i loving you a lot. when i wake up in the morning, i hope i see your face because you said you'd wake me up. but if you read this and you haven't seen my face in the morning, you should probably text me a picture of your face so i can see it. then i'll come bring you a cheese log. you're the best... around.

tomorrow is going to be a day of productivity. i've got non-educational songs to write/finish and potentially produce, and i've got promotion to do. i've also got resumes to send out [well actually i only have two resumes, and i'm going to send those two resumes out to many places, giving the illusion that i'm sending out many of them]. i don't like job hunting. maybe i should make a cover letter and send it with my 'teaching' resumes, linking my youtube channel there. then maybe the potential employer would see how awesome i am at teaching seemingly mundane aspects of the english language to teenagers and want to give me a job doing that.

i doubt it, but it'd be cool.

most likely what would happen is that they would never actually read the cover letter, because they would skip to the resume part and see that i only have 6 months of actual formal teaching experience in a school/centre. then they would likely toss my resume in the proverbial pile [i don't think computers have piles, unless these hypothetical people are printing out e-mails, to which i would respond 'why in the world would you do that?']. but that's enough eeyore for this blog entry. on a positive note: my kitty is really cute. and my new video is getting lots of comments. these two things make me very happy, but not as happy as my wife makes me.

Jester, Court

today was a nothing day, full of nothingness. christin was home sick, i slept most of the day, and we just didn't feel good in general. since last night, i haven't really been able to hear out of my right ear at all, but it comes and goes now. kind of annoying, actually. i did manage to go to the store and buy some stuff we needed, most notably tons of chicken for meals in the future. we're going to start to work on spending less on food because of the forthcoming money shortage. just preparing for that. i really need some consistent income.

if only video-making paid the bills. it seems to be one of the few things i'm good at. christin says i should look into making actual educational videos for use in curriculum, etc. but i really have no idea how i could do that. it would be great, really, but i don't know. i'd think i would have to make a name for myself before i could get into something like that, and that's kind of what i've been trying to do for the past few weeks now on youtube. working on promotion, which is a total bust. no help equals no promotion for me, because i can only spam my friends so many times.

really though, i guess i shouldn't be surprised that people in general aren't looking to help out with promotion, because there's nothing in it for them. short of the satisfaction of helping, i guess, but that doesn't seem to hold much in the way of currency these days. not many people get to do what they want in life and get paid for it, and we can't all do that. i just feel like i'm talented in this area, this and music [which i am utilizing in education as well], and i dunno. lots of people in those fields that don't have much talent are getting recognized, so i guess i feel like since i have talent i would have a chance. maybe. maybe not.

depressing blog is depressing. goodnight.

Intransitive

today was long and arduous and produced this. and a paper. the paper came out well, but we'll see how i did from the teacher's perspective. poring over court cases is no fun, but i made the best of it and i think i picked good ones. good 'ole american education system: totally interesting to read but totally irrelevant for my career choice. i understand that most people going through my major will be into the stuff in this class, but it's really not teaching me anything that i'm going to need to know in the future for myself. america really is a quite self-centered country.

and that reminds me of a brief but interesting conversation i had with my friend mike kaess earlier tonight about the pledge of allegiance. he asked me if it was bad or strange that he thought it was a disgusting practice and something he couldn't rightly participate in, and i told him 'no.' most of the time when i do it, it's just out of politeness. i don't really mean the words coming out of my mouth, like a jack mormon in sunday service, because i'm not a nationalist. that doesn't mean that i'm not a patriot, because i certainly am, but it means that i don't believe that america is the greatest country in the world simply because i was born here or live here.

there are plenty of great countries, and america is one of them. there are plenty of crappy ones, and america is one of those too. it's not all black and white when it comes to countries and the way we feel about them, so it makes little to no sense to me for me to blindly accept that we are the best because we are 'we' and call it good. does not compute. anyway, yeah. this is going up super late because i've been wrestling with the video i linked earlier after writing that paper. the render of the video, which i previewed after i had uploaded it, was bad. so i had to re-do it and change a few things, which took an hour. so it's late. sleepytime.

Hat's In The Cradle

since moving to a house that is approximately five minutes away from the gym [down from around 25 or so], we have gone to said gym exactly zero times. i call that an atrocity, and seek to have it remedied as soon as possible. hopefully, we'll get out there tomorrow, but i doubt it because lovely christin-chan is feeling sick tonight. this means that she may be potentially sick tomorrow, and thus unable to attend the gym and benefit from its gymmy goodness. i shouldn't have typed that, now it just looks like i misspelled 'gummy' or something. blah.

today i slept a lot and went to the store, intending to get jasmine rice but ended up coming home with $45 worth of food. it happens. i got some good stuff, though, and i wouldn't have spent so much if i didn't keep seeing large items we buy regularly on sale. stockpile! spaghetti-o's and cheerios. wow, old 311 reference. weird! i've got my next week [read: two weeks] of videos all planned out, and my video for tomorrow outlined, so that's good. school is going well, but i've got a paper due tomorrow. it's a short one.

Gregorovitch Bolshevik

you said you'd be online, but i'm knee-deep in old reciepts. if that statement makes no sense to you then you should probably watch this. i'm hoping for some cross-promotion that will make this song and video a 'hit' or whatever. it'd be cool to have something i'm known for to get the ball rolling and let people know i do music. christin and i will be working on an e.p. very soon, for which most of the music is already written and pretty much none of the vocals/lyrics are done. i'm slacking in that area for sure. it'll get done by the end of february for sure.

this morning, we had a work meeting, which was basically just an hour's worth of the store manager lecturing everyone on customer service practices that will never actually get done. because everyone there hates their job too much to care about pleasing customers. i got a '10' on customer service, though, which is good news. i don't 'sell' enough credit cards for that to make me a valuable asset to the cashier team, though, which is kind of sad. not that i really care, as i am not interested in staying at sears longer than i have to. though getting more than 5 hours a week [which is what i have next week] would be preferable for the time being.

today i worked on the video, which took a really long time, after having lunch with becky and mike at the cheesecake factory. it was terribly disappointing, in terms of the quality of the food. my four-cheese pasta tasted like michelina's budget gourmet frozen dinner. no joke. if you put them side-by-side, you would never know the difference by the taste. but christin had a good burger, and all the other peeps enjoyed their food, and it was free. so that was good. anyway, yep. that was most of my day. no church tomorrow, christin is doing matron of honor stuff and i have been up for way too many hours today.

Faith Is Buffy

and vice versa? not anymore, though. so i got a lot accomplished today, but i can only talk about some of it openly. i finished a song! i can't tell you what it is or link you to the finished project yet, but i can say it's awesome and that the music video is gonna be great. i may get it done tomorrow, but that depends on time. i have a stupid work meeting [storewide] tomorrow morning at 8:45am. can you believe it? that's the earliest i've had to wake up since... i think since black friday, but now i just don't remember. i've been doing mostly closing shifts lately.

got the laundry done as well, which isn't usually something to brag about or anything, but since we use the laundromat now it's sort of memorable. lots of quarters, stuffed in my little mini-m&m's container that was in my xmas stocking. hehe. christin and i spent some quality buffy time, and we are almost through season 4, which is getting really good. i knew spike would end up a good guy in time, he's just too good of a character. anya is delightfully awkward. tara is like a brick wall that just stares at willow all the time. hope she gains some depth.

p.s. the jonathan episode was hilarious. bedtime.

Errrbody In The Club

today i worked on a track that you will hopefully see [and by see, of course, i mean hear] very soon, for which i will be making a music video on my channel. what an awkward sentence. anyway, speaking of my youtube channel, here's thursday's video. comment on it and stuff, i'd like to hear your feedback on the issue. good times. that was most of my day, that and schoolwork. i like this class more than i thought i'd would, despite the fact that the book is utter crap and cost way too much to rent. blah. i should've just bought it to resell, but i always forget to resell. anyway, that's all for today because that's all for today... yep.

note: fail fail fail fail fail late post.

Deathly Fallows

i love the day after it snows. the snow remains, but the hassle of driving in the snow fades into the blessed obscurity of yesterday. it's not as cold as the day before, which gives the illusion of being a warm day, despite the fact that the temperature is still below freezing. i didn't do much today, but i did write a song [it's a parody and it may be on my channel tomorrow], and i did pick up a book at the library. it's called 'country driving' and it's about china. i like china. a lot. nic lazz asked me for to checkin' it out, so i did. we read another book about driving and china last year, so it's almost like a tradition for us or something.

and you know how us orthodox presbyterians love tradition!

nic would laugh at that sentence if he read my blog, but i'm pretty sure he doesn't. if i were him, i wouldn't read it either. he's at seminary, so he's got so much to read as it is that i'm surprised he has the time to read a quasi-political travel book in the first place. but i don't look a gift horse in its mouth, and if friends were horses, let's just say that i don't think my wagon would be going anywhere very quickly. i have few and maintain fewer, but i'm trying. i made a pudding pie, but i fail at whipping my own cream. now i know why people pay $0.50 more for the can of whipped cream: because whipping heavy cream sucks.

Cropped Mops

today i did this and it was fun. today i also went to work and that was not fun. not so much because it was work, but because of the weather. when i drove to sears, it was raining very lightly. that rain turned into freezing rain, which turned into sleet, which turned into snow. thankfully, it happened in that order, otherwise driving home would've been even more of a chore than it already was [25 on the highway, 40 on the freeway]. but the worst part was the fact that there was practically no one shopping, on account of the bad weather and such.

and the fact that it's tuesday night probably didn't help.

so to say that it was 'slow' would be like saying that i'm 'a little bit picky,' which is just a massive understatement to say the least. let's put it this way: i worked in the high-end clothing part of the store and i rang up a grand total of $625 worth of merchandise during my 4-hour night shift. for a frame of reference, my average is over $2,500. let's put it another way: there were only three cashiers scheduled for the night shift [we have three cash wraps and one of them, the one that i was at tonight, usually requires two] and one didn't show up... and it didn't even matter because there was never a freakin' line.

yeah. that slow. i got on my phone a bunch and twitter kept me from going completely insane, but i got kind of reprimanded for that at the end of the day. whatever. dude probably only said something because he had to. like the l.p. guys aren't messing around on their phones in the camera room half the time anyway. ;-P dead as a doornail, bro, what am i supposed to do? just grin and take it while hearing the same 30-minute dvd of pop songs plays incessantly? i guess so. got home, talked to the wife for a while, ate some good pecan-crusted chicken, edited video and caught up on subscriptions. now it's time to sleep.

Brigands Abound!

it was cold today, but i didn't notice so much because i spent most of it inside. i'm in firm agreement with john green when he said that mankind created inside so they didn't have to deal with outside anymore. i think it was 21 degrees, or something like that. anyway, i'm wearing my thermal and i'm indoors, so that should tell you a bit about it. i've outlined my video for tomorrow and i'm kind of looking forward to it, though it'll be interesting if i can keep it entertaining. it's kind of a lot of, well, information. edutainment is the buzz word, but it's a bit heavy on the 'edu' side. maybe i'll make the chicago manual of style and the ap stylebook actually fight.

that will make more sense tomorrow. no spoilers, probably. i don't have the budget for that kind of a production. i finished the music for something i've been working on for a while now, which is good. i can't talk about it yet, because it's kind of a surprise, but it's a collaborative effort between myself and a friend who happens to live in england. it's going to be amazing, if i do say so myself. anyway, that's that. first week of school down. four job applications put in tonight, hopefully i'll hear back from at least one or two within the week. things are getting down to the wire and i'm getting kind of nervous about it. video tomorrow, then work if i don't get snowed in.

Animagus

sick. missed church again. sucks. today was a lazy day in the newman household, which makes a bit of sense considering i spent most of the morning in bed clutching my stomach and the rest of it just eating soup and relaxing. watched some buffy, season four is improving, and talked to some friends on the phone and on skype. spent most of the night working on homework for my new class. the book is absolutely terrible so far, very hard to read and hardly informative. fortunately though, the discussions seem lively enough and people are posting interesting stuff. so it may be a good class after all.

note: post fail, this is as far as i got and i've got nothing to add. ;-P

Zeke Neighbors

despite my better judgment, i actually got up before noon on a saturday. christin and i went to the aacc bookstore to pick up the remainder of her books, which only cost us $3 thanks to us being poor and our country being essentially a welfare state. then we headed to the amish market for cheese logs [mmm, cheese logs] and saw true grit at the harbor center. it was really good, that's all i'll say. the acting was terrific, and the dialogue was great, but that's pretty much to be expected with coen brothers movies. not a huge fan of non-space westerns per se, but jeff bridges and matt damon in a coen brothers western? come on. what's not to love?

came home, talked to daks, finished buffy season three and started season four. first episode of season four, well i'd hate to say it, but finally an episode i didn't like. i knew it would happen sooner or later [and i'd prefer it to be sooner so we don't have another lost repeat], but it's still just a bit disappointing. anyway, hopefully it'll pick up soon, because yeah! they did lose some major characters that went over to angel, thankfully the three most annoying ones, but that's no excuse! well, not a good enough one for me. i was wrong though: i thought her roommate was gonna die really quick for sure. ;-P goodnight.

Yahhh Trick Yahhh!

two videos, once again, here and here. i'm quite proud of both, and i spent longer on them than i'd usually spend on a video, mostly for the first one [the second was quite simple]. the main reason is probably because i had to move things around in the house for the first and shoot multiple angles, which i haven't done in a while. this means i have to use multiple video files, which takes more time to convert individually and replace with proxies for editing, et cetera. i prefer to use one file if i can get it all in one shot, or as few as possible. anyway, i'm rambling.

another reason why it took so long to edit is probably because my computer decided to crash a few times while editing. bah. and this was the first batch of editing, which i did before i went to work, not the second batch i did when i got home. work was dull, but it's work. i've got the same schedule next week [only nine hours] but that's alright. i've begun applying for more new jobs again because the nordstrom's thing probably won't work out. i passed the test, as i knew i would, but they aren't hiring right now. they're going to keep my application on file and yada yada yada, you know the drill.

well, at least, i know the drill.

usually when people say 'you know the drill,' they are referencing a drill like a military drill. but i like to think of a dentist's drill, because dentist's drills are painful. actually, i don't like to think of them, but... hang on, now i'm just being silly. you know what i meant. rambling in a blog, how very bud circa early 2010. speaking of which, i'm rounding up on my first anniversary of blogging every single day. i should get a prize or something. should i go another year? let me know in the comments. just kidding, i know you won't.

christin's boss made her work extra late tonight. the worst part is that she doesn't ever apologize for being super late, nor does she ever let her know what time she's getting back. that's kind of... ridiculous, in my opinion. and they never see their kids, basically, which makes me wonder why they even had them in the first place. doing the math, they are going to be 72 years old [if they're still alive] by the time their girls graduate from high school. i don't know about you, but i find that incredibly, incredibly disturbing. that's all i've got to say about that.

Xander Harris

half a rap, half a song, lots of ideas. that's what i accomplished today. i also got a bandcamp site up for all of the background music on my videos, which can be seen here if one is so inclined. some of it is free [the cheesy stuff that i didn't spend much time on, but can still be used] and some of it is very cheap, hence the separation. anyway, today was a good day. i got a lot of rest after a night of not-so-great sleep, which was the second in a row now, and i got a lot accomplished. school started again so that's moving along as well, which is good.

tomorrow i call nordstrom's warehouse to see if i passed my test, or should i say to confirm that i've passed my test, and record two videos. i was only going to do one, but then i saw this video and now i'm going to do a video response to it on my second channel. the huck finn thing is just ridiculous. in other news, apparently there were some explosive packages found in state buildings in maryland today. so much for the safety provided by the crackdown on everything everywhere in our country and the abrogation of our personal privacy and freedom! good thing we're winning this fight and we are soon to be free of terrorism. heh.

note: post fail.

Woe Is Thee

it feels good to create again. i've been working on some music for an album lately, which is good for me, and i'm excited to see it starting to take shape. i'm going almost 100% electronic, by necessity only, since it's way too much work [and expense] to buy, mic and record drums and other various instruments. the acoustic guitar and voice will be the only 'played' instruments, but i can assure you that in no way decreases the amount of time, patience and ability it takes to complete a track. i just spent about 2 hours getting the fake drum kit to sound a bit more natural and setting up sort of a template to use for the tracks.

anyway, video-wise, things are doing okay. i made this today, which i'm quite proud of and happy about, especially considering the whole filming and editing process took less than an hour, with the exception of rendering the final product, which i had to do twice because i made a few mistakes. i'm getting better at doing this stuff quickly, which is good because if i start working full time sooner than later [which is both the plan and the hope], i won't have as much time to devote to videos. that's okay though, since youtube is still just a hobby.

tonight i had work, which was just fine. quite boring, it was a slow day, but all in all it was just a bit of money in the end. that's the important thing: steady and reliable income. maybe when i've finally finished this album with my lovely wife, i can promote it a bit better and make a bit off of that. i've got a couple higher profile internet musicians interested in collaborating, so who knows what could happen. that's sort of a dream of mine and christin's: being professional musicians. she's got the voice, i've got the chops. i say why not make it happen, at least in our spare time.

Variety

talking about today would be almost identical to talking about yesterday, the notable difference being that i spent some of my time after dinner/buffy talking to my friends pappy, way and exal on skype. that was nice. i've been feeling distant from the youtube community and thought it would be good to spend some time reconnecting. also talked to my sister julie and traded links back and forth for a good hour or so. always good times. my new class started today, and it looks like it may be a bit more interesting than the last one, which feels like so long ago even though it's been less than a month since that one ended. only a few more to go.

starting this new video schedule has me nervous. trying to write more music also has me nervous. i dunno why, it's good for me... i guess i have some fear of rejection. apparently not enough to where i would start doing things with the express purpose of pleasing people in mind or anything like that, but fear of rejection none the less. my subscriber base is small, and my average view count is half of my subscriber count, which renders the subscription number fairly moot. but that's quite typical. at this point, i'd like to be getting views in the triple-digits at least, but that's seeming to be more difficult for the past few videos. it hasn't been long but really, it shouldn't take that long. i'm bad at promotion.

so how do you do it without selling out? without becoming a pandering shill? how do you network without feeling and coming off like a fraud without a genuine bone in your body? i don't know the answer, and i'm sure there are a large number of corporations that wish they did. i guess i'll just keep plugging away and asking friends and hoping they listen and do, but that hasn't worked out so well in the past. i'm a terrible optimist. i need to do something about that. i'm determined to both finish a video and write a song tomorrow. let's see how far that determination takes me.

Under Armour

today i made this and this, the first of which is a video about brands, the second of which is a video about yesterday. i'm trying this thing where i schedule myself again, only a bit more than i'm used to in regards to videos, in order to keep myself motivated creatively and take youtube a bit more seriously. i do have the urge to create, more than one may think, and i've become lazy with my own artistic expression, so this is my way of trying to get back on track. the schedule is every other weekday, which translates to m/w/f one week, t/th the next.

2-3 videos a week, 10ish per month. it's doable.

keeping on schedule will be trying, but there's more to the schedule than that. i was thinking about setting types of videos for different days, like video responses on a specific day and skits on a one day or another. i'm not sure if i'm still going to do this, but i just might. if i come up with something more structured, i'll probably announce it here, as this is the truly consistent, constant, steady stream of information. the center of the fecklessverse, if you will. anyway, i had a good day. christin came home and you can probably guess what we did. yep! we're boring and predictable... and hopelessly addicted to buffy. almost done with season 3!

Tread Worn Down

this morning during church, i engaged in a little thing i'd like to call 'restrospective introspection' or 'retrintrospection' if you will. it's always interesting to think about how you would've reacted in the past to a thing you're experiencing in the present. during pastor taylor's sermon [which was a sort of introduction of james because we'll be going through the book of james] i realized that, had this been unregenerate bud hearing the sermon, i would've thought of the fact that james never really mentions the fact that he's Jesus' brother as a negative thing.

instead, it's quite the opposite. james never mentioned his potentially social status-increasing [or severely decreasing, depending on the society] relationship with Jesus for a very simple reason: his epistle was written for the express purpose of ensuring the dispersed jewish population that they were saved by grace alone just like the gentiles. prideful boasting of one's position or title as the brother of Jesus, the cousin of mary, or anything other than 'a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ' has absolutely no place in a biblical epistle. the factoid i once would've received as either a throwaway piece of trivia or a proof of the bible's inconsistency or unreliability, i now regard as quite a powerful message.

today was christin's 27th birthday, as many of you on facebook know, and we spent it at church, having panda express for lunch and outback steakhouse for dinner, and watching a lot of buffy the vampire slayer season three. it's getting really good. did i say getting? i meant that it was always good, from the first episode, and it's still getting better. good times. giles is still the man, eliza dushku looks hilarious with all that make-up on, oz cracks me up, et cetera. once christin went to sleep, i played the paladin a bit [level 73 now] and now it's bedtime. school starts back up this week. aiya. so close to graduating.

Sound The Charge

as first days of new years go, this one wasn't too bad. it was about 60 degrees here in the middle of winter, which was kind of bizarre to me [though it's like that all the time in california], but other than that, it was your average lazy saturday. christin and i enjoyed watching loads of buffy and we even played some wow tonight. we're about a few instance runs and a quest or two away from 85, which is good news because i think we're going to start raiding soon. well, if we can get enough of our raid team ready. we'll see how that goes. i say that a lot.

whoa. i just looked at the timestamp. crazy!

tomorrow is church and christin's birthday, which should be fun. we're going to outback steakhouse for dinner, which is nostalgic because it's the place we ate at after we got engaged for realsies. we've been good lately, which is excellent. so far, since we've been in maryland, things have been a bit of a struggle and everything from time to time, but now that we're in this new place and things are kind of settling down, we're doing well. we could be doing better, of course. i could have a full-time job, for instance, but aside from that i can't really complain. God is doing something. i'm not 100% sure what, but then again i rarely am.