Sort Of, Man!

today's entry is what i entered for my response to the prompt 'describe the most emotional moment of your life' from the youtube creator institute application. here it is in its entirety:

attempting to describe the most emotional moment of my life using mere words (which are admittedly quite powerful) is like attempting to hold onto a handful of oil in a windstorm. but alas, you have asked, and so i shall answer — to the best of my ability.

the moment i saw my bride walking toward me down the aisle, my eyes berthed a body of saltwater comparable to that of the great salt lake, if not the pacific ocean. the grandest smile on any face, "canon in d" playing over the loud church speakers, white dress on fair skin — it's the stuff of dreams become reality. i had loved her before, but not as i loved her then, in that moment. in that moment, all that we had worked toward in our entire relationship, over the course of the... 4 years? 5 years? i had lost count, and who could think about mathematics at such a time? such a time at which there existed no time, no frame of reference aside from my eyes meeting hers in love, in passion, in complete agreement and oneness of determination and desire.

i loved my bride, and she loved me. it's a simple concept, really, but it felt a whole lot more complicated than that. all that we had been through up until that point had culminated in one single moment, where our eyes met and everything that was good and right in the world coursed through my veins like adrenaline. of course, the adrenaline that was actually flowing was most likely amplifying that feeling, but this is no time for scientific analysis. everything was... warm.

and then it was over.

it wasn't over in the sense that my love for her had ended, nor that that feeling i've just described had faded. the moment had ended, as all moments do, and life moved forward. when you think about a moment and really ponder its significance, it often seems to have existed outside of time. the best part about moments like those, if they are truly as great as we remember them to be, is that they never really stop. moments continue on into minutes, hours, days, months, and years. on april 28th, it will have been four years, to be precise.

to describe a moment is an achievable goal, but to describe a moment like that one, one that lingers on and continues and grows over a lifetime, is impossible. when the music ended, the formalities had been exchanged, we took each other's hands and began our lives together as more than just two people who loved one another deeply — we became a family.

rtotd #0014 - this blog post.

Romanticism'd

today was a fairy-tale. no, wait, that's what taylor swift's day was like. okay, scratch that. today, i posted this, which i'm super nervous about. i'm submitting it to the youtube creator institute context. if i win said contest, i'll be treated to what basically amounts to a free 4 or 8-week seminar [depending on the school they send me to, chicago or l.a.] that's like a condensed film school. which would be great, as i have no real formal training. i still need to finish the application, which i would've done today if i'd had time to write answers to the questions for it.

i spent a lot of the day working, having already filmed and edited the video yesterday, and work was good. i basically worked alone after becky left at 5, because nikkie was in the back dipping chocolate pieces the whole time. working alone sounds like it would be boring, but i kind of like it. making coffee is fun, and i even like it when things get busy and i have to hustle to keep up with a lot of orders. example: a lady came in and ordered three blended drinks at once! fortunately, they were all the same, so making them wasn't as hard as one may imagine.

edit: so after i wrote this part, i ended up talking with my friend cody on tinychat until way too late in the morning. so i never finished my blog post. hence the late posting. and now i will post this, then tonight's post immediately afterward. failure never felt so great! or bad. was it great or bad? i can't remember.

rtotd #0012 - romantic evening at home.

Qur'anic Slag

another day has gone by, and i was indeed quite productive today. i finished tomorrow's video and recorded the stuff i wanted to record [music stuff]. no finished product yet on the music front, but i've got it to where i can work on what's left at night, so i'll probably tackle that later in the week. i got a bit distracted tonight when i was going through my youtube queue, and i ended up watching a bunch of duncan rocks videos. the guy is freaking hilarious. you should definitely check it out.

christin is really loving her new job, which is great since her previous one was so stressful. it makes me quite happy to see that she is less stressed out and more cheerful when i get to see her. that's a definite plus! no work today, which was great, but i did spend a lot of it being productive, so i kinda feel like i did work. christin's inhalers didn't come, which sucks because she's running out of the ones she has. for those wondering, we order them from overseas [it's legit, don't worry] because the american health care system is a joke and we can't afford $50 inhalers. closing tomorrow. it's bedtime!

rtotd #0012 - attempted romantic serenade [mostly a failure].

Pharmacology Unit

today i got a lot accomplished. i woke up and trimmed my beard [something i really need to start doing more often] before heading off to work, which was quite dull. that sentence is lexically ambiguous, but both activities were fairly dull anyway, though my razor was not. i left work a bit early and headed to the post office to see if christin's inhalers had arrived in our p.o. box yet. they had not. sad panda. i got home and had a bit of a rest before working on reading a bit for the paper that was due tonight.

christin got home shortly after i did, and it turned out that she had visited the p.o. box as well, which was funny to me. we hung out a bit and i made dinner after helping her out with her mla formatting nightmare and proofreading a short paper she wrote. it's interesting how similar the mla style is to apa, though the tiny differences can be incredibly frustrating. i don't understand these freaking footnoteless manuals and their insistence on in-text citation. it just makes things bloody impossible to read coherently. if i want to know your source, i'll check the endnotes, thank you very much. then, let's see, what did i do?

oh yeah, i made this incredibly important video.

if you've seen it, you likely understand the magnitude of what i've basically decided. it's kind of a big step for me. i'm not really changing my career choice so much as i am modifying it. i still plan on teaching, i still plan on moving to hong kong, i'm just going to teach in a different way and may not have to teach in a class once we get to hk. that'd be nice, not to have a day job, and to just make awesome videos all the time. anyway, after uploading that and having a mild freak-out about it immediately afterward, i finished my paper. and now it's time for bed. goodnight!

rtotd #0011 - super-special foot rub.

Orson Welles

church this morning was much needed and fantastic. we talked about sin, its allure, and why we choose it despite the fact that God is the only true Father of lights who gives every perfect gift. we prefer the false gifts of the evil one, being deceived that we will find lasting pleasure in what only amounts to spiritual death in the end. need proof that God is indeed the One who provides great gifts? look to the cross. couldn't have said it better myself, pastor taylor. he ended the sermon abruptly after making a statement similar to that, because he simply couldn't think of a better way to end it, and he said the rest of his outline would've been anti-climactic.

after church, we had lunch and chatted with friends there before heading home for a brief nap [well, christin napped — i swooned over potential new p.c. builds that i can't afford]. then we went to see sucker punch, which was highly entertaining but lacking in character development. still, we as humans like to see people fighting and triumphing over evil despite the one-dimensional characters acting them out. very stunning visual effects, cool concept practically stolen from an anime, and it was overall just... really entertaining. went with free movie tickets from the parents, from xmas. thanks, mom and dad!

once the movie was out, it was time for dinner. i planned on going home, but christin insisted that if i were going to use the outing for my rtotd today, i had to take her out to dinner instead. so i did! we went to friday's, one of our favorite spots to hit for relatively inexpensive and always tasty dining, and that was cool. we waited a bit long because apparently some servers called in sick and they were way understaffed. they were nice, though, and the manager gave us some $10 coupons for next time [two of them] as a bit of compensation. we probably won't use them because they expire in like 3 weeks [and we don't go out for dinner much], but it was a nice gesture anyway, i think. good on them!

came home, christin went to bed, i drooled over more computer builds and now i'm basically just procrastinating by writing this, when i should be doing homework. i'm getting really tired now, so i should probably get on that. i've got a quiz to take, and tomorrow is going to be a ridiculous day. i open the store at 9am, have to go to the post office on the way home, work on my paper, all while finding time to make my monday video. aiya, that's going to be a tall order. if i make it out of tomorrow with everything done, i'll be quite amazed. goodnight.

rtotd #0010 - dinner [friday's] and a movie [sucker punch].

Narf

oh cancun cantina, thou art a strange and wondrous place. tonight, after a fairly grueling shift at the good 'ole chocolate shop, i headed home to nap before jaunting off to odenton. i met christin and her friends [and other people] at this country-western line dance shindig/club for katie's bachelorette party slash get-together. yeah, i know. i'm a guy, and i'm going to a bachelorette party. seems weird and all, but you know — the things i do for my wife! ;-P it wasn't too bad, we enjoyed ourselves quite nicely. there was a pretty good country band that played live music onstage and their fiddle player was awesome. shook his hand after their 3rd set.

so yeah, we got to hang out there and had a good night. i ate an entire 20-piece mcnugget for dinner, which was both the best and worst idea i had all day. i definitely got the mcgurgles after that, but it was mighty delicious. also, the ability to eat mcnuggets [with sauce] while driving a manual on the freeway is an acquired skill. on the way home, christin and i chatted and spent some quality time together, and we went to bed immediately upon arrival back at the homestead. hence why this is being posted the next day. so it's not a failure, so much as it's a catching-up type situation. yeah!

rtotd #0009 - if you can't guess from the post, you suck.

Mariana's Trench Coat

yesterday and today were fairly similar, in the sense that i worked opening shifts both days and had a decent time doing so in each instance. however, yesterday i made this, and today i didn't make that but i am posting that here because last night's post was a love letter to christin and tonight's post is a regular blog post. and that last post was probably a run-on sentence. and i most likely allowed it to be a run-on sentence for the sake of comedy, and planned to refer to it as such in a comedic fashion afterward. intentional humor rules!

in other news, i'm incredibly tired right now.

the only reason i'm up so late is because i had some schoolwork to do, which should have been done last night. my new teacher is apparently a tough grader, as evidenced by my lower-than-expected scores on the previous week's discussion threads. looks like i'm going to have to go above and beyond in this class, which is all about assessment of ell students. wheeeee. fun times. can't you just feel my excitement through these typed letters and words and phrases? it's so much fun to talk and read books about testing, guys. seriously, it's really awesome. i'm not even being sarcastic right now; i really love it. okay, no i don't.

we ate at a local mexican food place, which was kind of disappointing. christin enjoyed her burrito [lol, nerdist joke] literally, but my enchiladas were kind of 'meh.' i don't know why i'd be disappointed though, since it's a mexican food restaurant which is located incredibly far from mexico itself, and thus is unlikely to contain authentic and delicious cuisine! but yeah, i dunno. it got good reviews on yelp, but that doesn't always mean it's actually going to be tasty. maybe i'll give it another try with red sauce instead of the mole they used... that was most of the problem. and now, the problem of being tired must be resolved by sleep.

rtotd #0008 - romantic[ish] mexican dinner.

Love Of My Life

this is not a blog entry, it is a love letter to my beautiful wife, christin joy. ever since i met you, i've loved you so much that it makes me kind of crazy. there have been up times and down times, and we've been through a lot together, but no matter how low things got, i never stopped loving you. i loved you then, i love you now, and i will love you tomorrow and forever on. when you were looking through pictures on your computer today and talking down on yourself, i was having the opposite reaction — seeing you as you were in the past and as you are now, and remembering how much i care for you and love your face.

my wife, my love, my christin: we've been through it all. as you well know from our past, we're no strangers to love. you know the rules, and so do i, christin. a full commitment is what i'm thinking of — and you know you wouldn't get this from any other guy! i just want to tell you how i'm feeling. i really want to make you understand: i'm never going to give you up. i'm never going to let you down. i'm never going to run around and desert you. i'm never going to make you cry.i'm never going to say goodbye. i'm never going to tell a lie and hurt you.

rtotd #0007 - most romantic rickroll ever.

King Of Satan

another day, another closing shift — and i'm opening tomorrow. no fun! but tonight was fun. patti and i pushed our sales up over $300 for the day, which was quite good. that's the kind of numbers we need to be making on the weekdays, with some big weekends, so it's exciting. tomorrow should be pretty heinous, and i don't know if we're meeting with pastor taylor for our weekly lesson, so yeah. video though! good times, good times. i'm still not sure what i'm going to do, i've got a few different options. it's mad late, and i'm mad tired, so it's mad time to log off and sleep.

edit: so mad tired, in fact, that i didn't hit post!

rtotd #0006 - extra cuddling time.

Jesteresque

oh me, oh my. today i made this before heading off to work. it's got a dog in it, which means you should probably watch it. work was good, though i thought it may be dull. i spent about half the time in the stockroom, cleaning up and making room for all the new easter stuff we just got in. it looks like the easter bunny freaking exploded all over our kiosk, slash in our stockroom. interesting for sure. some of this stuff is really nice, but man... i was doing the math and our cost for some of the more intricate pieces is astronomical. i fear for our pricing scheme.

glad that's not my job!

anyway, i wonder how many of my second paragraphs i start with the word 'anyway.' that would be an interesting study. i also wonder how often i use the word 'interesting,' and if i use it nearly as often as i think i do. stopped by the store on the way home from work and picked up a few things. i've been trying to eat a bit healthier, and to shift the majority of my calories to the morning by eating breakfast [a novel concept — thanks tibet, for berating me, and christin for wanting me to be less fat]. this morning i had two breakfast sandwiches, which were dank, yo. deliciousness. and now it's way past my bedtime. lots to do tomorrow.

rtotd #0005 - approximately 30 purple flowers.

Insubordination Rules

once again, i'm still sick. stayed in bed a bit too late after staying up way too late [it's a pattern in my life that is made worse by sickness], and just had a generally unproductive and uninteresting day. i did manage to get out and do the laundry, and christin joined me for dinner while we waited for our clothes to dry. hung out with becky and the kiddo outside the laundromat and made lots of ethnic generalizations to our chagrin. headed back home and caught up on my youtube subscriptions, or rather i tried to and at least got it under the 20 video mark.

i won't say it wasn't a good day, but i also won't say it was. it was just a day. tomorrow contains work. which should make it more interesting, and it also contains a new video, which should make it more productive. we'll see what time i actually roll out of bed and get to work. i'm feeling better today, so it should be a bit easier than it was this morning, but you never know with me. i require more energy! vespene gas? maybe that's my solution.

rtotd #0004 - rita's custard mini-date.

Highest Mountain Peaks

sick. i'm afraid this is going to make two short blog entries in a row. i'd apologize, but i reminded myself last night [really this morning] that this blog is for me first and others second, unlike most of the other things i do with my life. i post this to keep myself creative and motivated, and as a secondary result, it keeps people who live far away from me up to date with my day-to-day goings-on. that was a lot of hyphens. maybe this post won't be that long after all. i tend to ramble and get on rabbit-trails when i do stuff like this. there's that hyphen again!

today i stayed home from church [but christin went, which is good] with a horrible sore throat and general bad-feelingness. once i finally dragged myself out of my room at around 6pm, we went out to the mall to see if torrid had anything good for christin to wear this saturday for her friend's bridal shower thing... they didn't, of course. their idea of clearance price is $50 instead of $75 which is absolutely absurd. we said hi to becky, patti, and nikkie at q before heading off to giant/pharmacy to get some food/medication and i got bagels. they were yummy.

i need to start eating breakfast, and eating better in general. i'm getting fat again, unacceptably so, and it's starting to bother me like it does from time to time. i also need to exercise more, but that will come in time. i need to make the time to do that, but life has been busy ever since i got this full-time job. juggling my wife, the job, the youtubes, and everything else [not to mention schoolwork] is taking its toll on me. i'll survive, but yeah. trying to get focused and motivated in the right direction. i'll get there! tomorrow will be laundry day, and christin is having a procedure. please pray for her if you think about it. thanks!

rtotd #0003: a lovely poem.

G-Chord

oh saturday, we hardly knew ye. today i got up and hung out with my lovely wife for a bit before taking a shower and heading out to work. i worked a closing shift tonight, and boy was it a shift and a half! i ended up being there until 11:15pm, which is way later than i should've been considering the mall closes at 9pm. patti and i had a lot to do, and we got a lot done, so that was positive. once i got home, i got to hang out with the wife again, and i brought her a chai latte and a chocolate bar. spilled the chai when i fell up the stairs [don't ask], but most of it survived. i think i'm getting sick.

note: this is as far as i got before i went to bed after staying up way too late talking to my friend eric about business strategy and marketing.

rtotd #0002: chai tea latte and chocolate.

Flipped Out Of The Pan

i don't like working mornings any more. i'm a terrible salesman and this job is shaping up to be like a sales job, which makes work much less fun. i do love my job, i love making drinks, and i'm good at motivating other people to stay on task and get stuff done. unfortunately, when it comes to 'making the sale,' i just don't have the heart. i hate salespeople. i hate being 'sold' something when i walk into a store, so i hate doing that to other people because i wouldn't want them to do it to me. tell me what drink to make and i'll make it; tell me who to motivate and i'll keep them working... but selling is not 'my thing.'

anyway, despite that little rant, i did have a good time at work today. sold a decent amount, even a couple boxes of chocolate [which always put our numbers up quickly], and it is nice to sell stuff. i'm just not good at going after people, especially when i feel like they don't want to be gone after. when i got home, i recorded and edited this, which i'm particularly proud of. i hope it gets passed around and lots of people like it. it's less on the educational spectrum of things, and more on the entertaining side, which i feel is important to gain some viewership. maybe it's not. maybe i'm doing it all wrong and i suck at youtube. i don't know anymore.

basically at this point, i'm just going to keep going because i enjoy making videos. i want them to be successful, but i really don't want to force it. i just keep hoping one day people are going to just like what i do enough to really promote what i'm doing and the right people will see it and... yeah. if i could make videos teaching english for the rest of my life, that would be the greatest thing in the world. so i'm going to try and make it happen, but without being too forceful about it. i already feel like i'm being too forceful, but maybe it's the same mentality that prevents me from selling well. maybe i'm too nice.

rtotd #0001: dancing in the kitchen.

Emulsifier

not much of a day off, really. i slept through a lot of it, which was wonderful. christin went to hang out with becky at her house while i stayed in and worked on some music stuffs and cleaned the house. got the rest of the guitar bits recorded, but no work on the vocals because i had to do the cleaning of the houseing. that's totally a word. listened to hank green's 'this machine pwns n00bs' video l.p. on youtube, which was lovely. i had heard most of the songs already, but it was nice to hear some of the higher quality versions of old favorites.

christin got home and we went out to get dinner, which consisted of us going to the mall and eating there because i was supposed to go in for something or other [which i never did because someone else ended up doing it]. we got stuck in traffic on the way, like stopped dead traffic with an accident right in front of us. so we keep seeing all of these emergency vehicles going past us on the shoulder, at least 10 of them, and i start thinking this must be the accident of the century. nope. it was one motorcycle. in an odd twist of fate, though, the car that he hit [or hit him] was a state trooper. weird. we had thai max for dinner and came home for sleeping time. and that's the current time right now. goodnight.

note: next-day post. blah!

Drenched In Absinthe

today was, by comparison to yesterday [and as the relative length of this blog post shall surely indicate], wholly uneventful! i worked a closing shift, which was fortunate because i didn't get out of bed until 1pm. i walked the dog and made my internetses rounds before taking a shower and sitting down to hammer out song wednesday. i finished writing the song in literally 10 minutes, then tried to get it recorded for about an hour. i eventually got really frustrated and ragequit, then headed off to work. i think i already mentioned work. yeah! so i went there.

work was somewhat dull, but i got to make a bunch of neat stuff. we made another blenderized cupcake [birthday shake] and i made a blenderized coffee cake with espresso and it was pretty good. i still need to perfect that recipe, but it's very similar to chai and would probably go great as a very high-calorie breakfast drink. ha! good for mall walkers, i guess. anyway, once i got home, i made this video and attempted to catch up on youtube subscriptions. that didn't go so well. i had to re-install chrome, and i'm still having issues with flash, as my tweet-stream reflects so clearly. blah. it's bedtime once again! productivity must occur tomorrow.

Chatting And Such

tonight was highly eventful! went to the show at the sidebar in baltimore after working a successful and non-boring opening shift. to my pleasant surprise, all of the bands were good! when i heard the first band play, i was kind of not sure what to think from their sound check, but after the first few songs, they turned out to be incredibly interesting and talented. their sound was unique, at least to me. they're called neutron bomb, and they're from baltimore, so if you know what they sound like, explain to me some other bands that sound like that. because that is good.

next up was rare candy, a video game rock band [also from baltimore], who completely ravaged the crowd with amazing versions of video game music from a wide range of games. the keyboards sounded ridiculously great, and while the drummer wasn't spectacular, he held it together pretty well. after that, mike [lombardo] played with the trio, and they were fabulous. really tight, you can tell that a lot of polishing goes into their songwriting, which i knew already, and they've been playing together and practicing a long time. they're definitely music nerds. it was fun hanging out with andy and alex after the show, though mike was busy being a sort-of rock star and i didn't talk to him much.

driftless pony club closed out the night, and they were highly entertaining. ran into craig, a.k.a. wheezy waiter, quite a few times before they played, but didn't want to get all fanboyish and be all lame. their set was good, they're also very tight, which makes sense since they've been together for 11 years. though the touring drummer was surprisingly good. i'm always skeptical of late additions. when they played 'inspectors of inspectors' [which is my favorite song], and they got to 'so please stop your asking' [which is my favorite part], i sang it loud enough that craig heard it and looked straight at me and pointed. which was cool. ;-D

then we talked for about 15 minutes after the show.

it was cool to see that craig was just a normal dude, not that i ever doubted it. for those interested, we talked about beer vs. whiskey [me: 'i don't really drink beer. i'm a whiskey person.' craig: 'oh, i like whiskey too. i'm an alcohol person.' me: 'well you motto was 'get drunk' for a while back then.'] and discussed 'the wire,' which is his favorite show that is apparently filmed in baltimore. actually, he found out from the owner that some of the scenes were actually shot in the bar they were playing at, so that was cool for him.

note: yay for not posting this super late last night!

Brainiac

it's way too late to be typing this, given that i need to be at the store in less than five hours. but alas, i am a slave to tradition! gonna be short, though. today i made this after work, which was good. i closed with nikkie, and we didn't do so well in the area of selling things. we did get a lot of stuff done, and the case looks good. the chocolate case, by the way, in case you may have been thinking we were in some weird lawsuit. anyway, today was fairly uneventful, and christin is feeling much better and going to work tomorrow. yay! speaking of tomorrow, we're going to see driftless pony club and mike lombardo with some nintendo-rock band at the sidebar. woo! it's gonna be off the chain, yo. for serious. one paragraph updates! goodnight!

Archimedes

christin is sick. somehow, she got a wicked crazy stomach ache, and now she can't hardly move. it's very sad. on top of that, she just got something else that she hasn't had in a long time, making for a particularly painful day for her. so much for a day of rest! so i stayed home today to help her out, and i ended up going out on two separate occasions and picking things up from the store. we had an okay day, all things considered, and i did catch up on my youtube subscriptions [almost], but it was still no good for her. oh well. she'll feel better in time.

tomorrow should be interesting. i've got to make a video and i have no idea what i'm going to do. it could be anything! i'll probably start thinking about it when i wake up, which will probably be after noon, given the current time. it's really late. heh. anyway, i finally start my class [which works] on tuesday, so that's a good thing too. i have some of the work already done, so it's almost like i don't really start for another week again, but that's alright. working tomorrow from 3-closing, should be quite dull as usual. monday nights are the worst, but i still love my job.

i watched two things relevant to teaching today, both of which were recently linked on my facebook wall, so i don't feel the need to re-link them here. that and i'm too lazy to do so at this ungodly hour of the morning. anyway, it's good for me to watch this stuff and get my creative juices flowing, with regard to education, because i'll be finishing my degree very soon and hope to start working in the realm of education. i'll probably start out with tutoring in my spare time, just to build something for a c.v. for once we get back to hong kong. and with that, i must sleep.

Zora Mask

so today was my first saturday off since i started my new job, and it was quite nice. we got up late and had a good day of relaxation, followed by a trip to dan [christin's brother] and sarah's place for dinner. mmm. bourbon chicken. after that, we headed to the movies and saw a late showing of 'take me home tonight,' which was surprisingly hilarious. i think my sister would like it a lot. it was weird hearing topher grace cuss, though. this may be the first movie i've seen with him in it, and the first thing i've seen him do besides that 70's show.

it's interesting how our perception of peoples' personas on television are so easily shattered when they make the jump to the big screen. we know someone as a character for so long that, essentially, they are that character for all intents and purposes until proven otherwise. for example, nathan fillion is malcolm reynolds, despite the fact that he is castle now. i think some roles are so iconic that they define a person's career, and some can move past it [joseph gordon-levitt] and some can't [mark hamill]. interesting to think about. church tomorrow. sleepy time!

Your Face

if it were a few years ago, i'd have been super excited because today is 3-11 day. now i'm just all like 'whaaaaaat?' and it's not a big deal to me. guess i'm not as much of a superfan as i had thought. so at least one of the o.p.c. missionary families in japan are okay, which is good news, but things are still crazy weird there. work was good tonight, we did okay for a friday night. new video is getting a lot of comments, but still lacking in views overall. i don't know what to do differently at this point, it's getting really frustrating. maybe i'm just doin' it wong.

christin is looking at pictures of hong kong and i'm realizing how often we ate western style food at home. weird. we were new to the place and didn't get as much exposure to asian cuisine as anyone living in southeast asia should, so i blame that. toward the end, when we lived in sai kung, we were a bit more adventurous but still got pizza hut and yoshinoya a bit too much for my own liking. just for the sake of convenience, really. heh. i can't wait to get back there, we really need to plan a trip. gahhh! hong kong!

Xi'an

kind of hard to blog about anything right now with a huge earthquake slash tsunami wreaking havoc on japan. that's just nuts. thinking about and praying for the o.p.c. work there in japan that's doing so well that they are considering turning the missionary service over to the local church. i wonder how they are dealing with the destruction. of course i'll be thinking about them and praying, but i know that God knows what's going on and all of this will be made to promote His glory in the end. tragic, but it holds a purpose, just like everything else.

today was a good day, and i made this video. i worked a closing shift with patrick and had dinner with the lovely wife at the little thai fast food joint in the mall. it's good stuff. it's not real thai food, there aren't even any peanuts in any of the dishes [whaaaaat?] but it's still tasty. i got to leave a bit early tonight because it was mad slow and we cleaned fast. i also got paid tonight, so i dropped off my check on the way home. good times. been reading up on chinese history some more today, but it seems to be very long, involved and repetitive. i'll be getting into the specifics soon enough. that's exciting. goodnight.

Waiter Wheezing

i just ate an entire cheese stick thing from papa john's. yeah, i'm a fatty. today felt like a really long day, but that's probably because i woke up before noon and worked a closing shift at the store. we did well tonight, and rachael and i came up with a pretty amazing drink. it was insane, i can't even describe it. it was like a liquid birthday cake. blenderization! it's a word, look it up. tomorrow i have to do a video, and i can't decide what to do for the last 'versus' because there are so many different options. aaaaahhh! i can't pick just one, but just the same, this series can't go on forever. versus week two? maybe.

tomorrow i close again, as well as on friday night. boo! they say i lost my mind — charlie sheen. that song is stuck in my head. you should listen to it here. craziness. going so long without properly doing schoolwork is kind of weird. i guess this is what it's going to be like when i'm finally done with school altogether, though sometimes that feels like it'll never happen. i mean, i know it will, but i've been doing school in one incarnation or another for pretty much my entire life, with very few exceptions. it's just a thing i do, and once it's over... i dunno. i think i may feel like i accomplished something. i hope so.

Vork's Idiosyncrasies

mad ducats, yo. that's what i be raking in. nah, i'm just messing with you. i do get paid on friday, though, which is nice. today i made this after i got home from work. it was a slow day, as it usually is on weekdays, but i made an epic chocolate bar. well, tibet [my co-worker, not the country] made it for me and i bought it and om nom nommed it. i also made christin a chai tea latte before i left, which she enjoyed. she said she wanted one on twitter, so i brought it home to her. i think that makes me a pretty good husband. and very humble as well, right?!?!?

that was a joke, by the way.

while i was at work, i read the entire wikipedia article on china, which wasn't so much informative [it was a lot of stuff i already knew], but it was still interesting. i'm desiring to brush up on chinese history, so i started there and plan to expand out from there, since wikis are usually a pretty good base to begin with. lots of sources, and what-not. anyway, i close the next three days and christin is working as well, which is good and bad. she doesn't want to be there anymore, and she won't have to be at the end of the month, but it's good that we'll not lose the money from her getting the time off. makes it less sucky.

i still haven't finished last week's song, which is lame. i don't think i'll finish it tomorrow, because i just don't. it's really late now, and i can't imagine forcing myself to get up early enough to record the last bit of the second guitar part and the vocals, and i haven't even begun to program the bass track. granted, i don't think that last part will take very long, but it's just not something i've been putting much thought into. i think i'm going to try and get it up by friday, but at this point i am sort of feeling like i'm spending a lot of time and effort in areas in which i'm not really being rewarded. patience, young skywalker.

Urgent Delivery

today was a day of magic and wonderment! actually, it was mostly a day of working and drinking a lot of tea. i was drinking tea at work and reading about tea, while it was busy, and that led to me going and spending way too much money at an unnamed, overpriced tea shop in the mall. whatever man, i gots me a 2-cup infuser and lots of oolongz. ;-P anyway, yeah! when i got home, i hung out with the wife and we had southern-style bourbon chicken [which was a little dry but a good recipe] and watched last week's episode of 'v,' which was excellent.

what can i say? i'm a sucker for sci-fi remakes/reboots.

so i open again tomorrow, which i'm not super stoked about, but i am happy that i will be meeting with pastor taylor again. that is, assuming he's still wanting to meet. his father died a few days ago, which is sad, but we trust that we know where he is now. i also need to do a video tomorrow. even though i know the topic and title of the video, i still sort of feel like i have no idea what it's going to be about because i don't know when i'm going to find time to film it, nor where i'm going to film it. i'm trying to film in new places because my thumbnails and ending screencaps are getting kind of repetitive and annoying me. time for sleep!

Trock More, Dude!

while we failed to get to church this morning [for a very stupid but somewhat hilarious reason], we did make it to the eastern shore to hang out with family and have some delicious chicken. christin woke me up this morning talking about a cyclone full of bees coming to destroy major cities, and a superhero in the form of a giant wave of some sort named 'breezy billows' or something like that. i'm sure christin will remember the actual name and post it as a comment here tomorrow morning or something, but yeah. it was bizarre. she said 'why can't i come up with stuff like this when i'm awake?' i have no idea.

so at bob and donna's, we hung out with the kids and did strange things and, as usual, made strange videos. here is a link to one that i will share only here, because this video is very strange and i think i look absolutely horrible in it. but i also think it's pretty freaking funny. anyway, dinner was good, and it was good to see bob and donna and the kids. they're completely remodeling their house and it looks amazingly great. brand new kitchen, all new appliances, new siding, floors, the whole nine yards. pretty intense stuff! now it's bedtime, because i've got to get up early for work. i'm working with becky! exciting.

Sangre Sonando

wow, what a busy day. i probably won't type much here, because the middle finger on my right hand is in pain [i cut it at work today] and it's annoying me. woke up around noon, hung out with the wife a bit, then headed to work. we did really well today, thanks in great part to the chocolate demo we did from 2pm-5pm. lots of fun, brought in lots of business. i had thai max [new place in the mall] for dinner, and it was good! it's not real thai food, but it's quite delicious. i recommend the bang-bang chicken. anyway, it's time to sleep.

and time to not post this. failure is me! i stayed up way too late.

Rango

today was another long day, but a lovely one. i spent some time making this, and i think it came out really wonderfully. i didn't get up early enough to really work on the song, so i'll probably be doing that in the morning tomorrow if i get up early enough. if not, looks like it'll be sunday or nothing. which means probably not until next week because we're going to the eastern shore on sunday. man! i'm a busy individual. i worked with becky tonight, which was really really fun. we didn't sell as much as i wanted, but we made quite a few customers for life.

did i mention on this blog that i love my job? i really do. it's a great job for me. i get to be out in the public [sort of] and making things and experimentating [i know it's not a real word]. and at the same time, it's not super stringent like sears was. i liked the customers at sears, just not the fact that i always felt like i was trying to sell something that wasn't awesome. now i sell nothing but good products that are awesome and that i really care about. that's pretty rad, if you ask me. i also get to make coffee even though i don't like the taste of it. weird! but good.

anyway, after work i went home and edited the video, which took way longer than it should have. christin kept me up talking for quite a bit, which delayed the process slightly, but i had a great time talking to her and joking about stuff. i watched a few videos on youtube while my video was rendering, and after hearing some of these charlie sheen quotes... i kind of want to find out what the big deal is. i haven't seen anything. maybe there's a primer to the whole insanity and debacle or whatever somewhere on the internet [i'm sure there is], but i need to find it and see what's going on. because some of those quotes are totally insane.

Quickly Laa

it was a long day today. i got four hours of sleep last night, tops, and it's really late now, so i'm not sure how coherent this post is going to be. or whether i'll actually finish it and get it posted tonight. not likely, now that i think about it. anyway, i opened this morning at about 8am, worked until 3:30 and headed home for our meeting with pastor taylor. we went over two points of the first chapter of the [westminster] confession, which is some serious progress for us. we go slow, because we get talking about related issues, etc. it's good times. i'm something of a theology nerd.

so after the meeting, christin and i hung out a bit and ate leftovers. i played some games and messed around on the computer while she talked on the phone and watched some dumb shows and a few episodes of iron chef. that show is fun, but it's always reruns... and they always play the same ones so i know what happens. anyway, yeah! christin went to bed early and i didn't stay up much later because i was just way too tired. got about 10 hours of sleep, which was very good. this is bud from the future writing, by the way. retroactively dated blogging for the win!

President Nick's Son

today i made this, which took up a lot of the day. i also officially switched classes so i don't have to worry about the mounting ridiculous workload being thrown on top of my technical difficulties for school. hopefully, all of that will work out quickly. tomorrow i open, and it's way too late for me to be going to bed. i'm going to get like 4 hours of sleep if i'm lucky, but that's kind of okay because i got a lot of sleep today. anyway, we had dinner at the fields' house, and my lasagna was a huge hit. always fun to hang out with them and enjoy their company. i've got quite a bit more to say, but it's just too late and i need to get some sleep. goodnight!

Oral Carousel

how could a person call another person wack? this morning, christin made me breakfast in bed, and that was super awesome. thanks again, honey! french toast with peanut butter and syrup, yum. i went back to sleep for about another hour after that, then got up and joined her in the living room. she spent most of the day cleaning the house, and when i came out to help, it was all done for the most part. so i sat with her and watched a bit of t.v. before eating some lunch and watching a few videos on youtube and responding to comments on my latest.

work was good, and we did okay for a tuesday. weekdays are always really slow, so it's not really a surprise, but we did alright. nikkie created an amazing thing today, which we're either going to call 'trifecta' or 'triple threat.' which do you think is better? it's basically a big milk/dark chocolate triangle with chocolate cake, marshmallow icing, and graham cracker stuffed inside. it's ridiculously amazing. we've been making a lot of seriously delicious treats lately, so if you live in the annapolis area, you should totally come get something. yeah!

also, i made some bomb iced tea tonight.

tomorrow i've got the day off, and i need to finish all of my work from the past two weeks while i have the time. i've also got to finish writing a song, record that song, and do a video for it. the video for my songs always ends up as something of an afterthought, so i don't know what i'll do for this one to make it better than the previous offerings. i guess it really depends on how much time and effort i want to devote to the video as a whole, but yeah. we'll see what ends up going down in the end. now it's time to get some rest. goodnight, all.