Kae, Arren

wow, what a day. we started out early, heading to staten island and taking the ferry to manhattan. it's a beautiful trip, similar to the star ferry only much larger and slower, and a longer distance. we saw the statue of liberty and ellis island on the way, which was cool, but we didn't go to the actual monuments themselves because we didn't want to spend all day there. immediately got on the subway and headed down to greenwich village to see the cosby house. which ruled! we were going to have lunch at mesa grill [bobby flay's restaurant], but realized we were dressed like tourists and got some nathan's on the way to the empire state building.

the view from the e.s.b. was insane. that is all.

headed down to the ferry again after that, because we had decided that we wanted to leave the city by 3pm in order to make it back down to baltimore to see the digitour. i really wanted to go, and christin's feet hurt so bad that we wouldn't be able to walk around and see much more anyway. we plan on going to ground zero in june if johnny and my sister want to go up to nyc for a day trip, since we missed it. digitour was rad. totally rad. gregory brothers are insane live, key of awesome was super fun, and all the other performers were mad fun to watch. love it. we did our little tradition of eating chicken mcnuggets on the bed and watching t.v. together, now it's time to sleep. great day, great weekend, goodnight.

Juergenses

our first day in the city was quite lovely. we got out late, due to some unforeseen circumstances at home [not going to go into it, but an issue arose with the people who were watching the animals for the weekend and our landlords/upstairs neighbors], and we got to the city even later due to some more driving mishaps in good 'ole new jersey. blah. but we got to the station and headed into new york city on a nice train [i missed trains], and christin got her first view of nyc. she said she wished that the taxis were red and green so it would be just like hong kong. ;-D

we spent a lot of time walking today, going from penn station all the way up to central park, then walking all around chinatown at night. we hung out in the theatre district for quite a while, seeing if we could feasibly go see a broadway show while we're in town. no dice. even with the discounted tickets from the tkts place, it would've been spending an awful lot of money to get partial view seats. maybe next time, when we've got some more spending money. after that, we headed to central park and hung out, went to the plaza hotel and f.a.o. schwarz before heading to chinatown for dinner at ajisen ramen.

oh! while we were in chinatown, we found a little dispensary that sold the loquat syrup we really love for when we're sick. it was only $5.50 for a big bottle, so i picked one up. we headed back to jersey on the train and drove home [another disastrous adventure that was comically bad, to the point of laughing most of the way back]. now it's time for bed!

Illogic Co.

today we spent about 6 hours making a 3.5 hour drive because we are failures, and we are now in new freaking jersey. i just want to say that i pretty much can't stand this state. it's probably the worst one i've ever driven through, and i sure hope [for the sake of people who live here] that it's not as bad living here as it is driving here. tolls, bad roads despite the insane income provided by said tolls, no left turns or u-turns anywhere, etc. it's nuts. completely bonkers. we had a good trip, despite this, and laughed a lot at making wrong turns or non-turns.

when we arrived at our friend jackie's place, she had set the place up nicely for us with lots of sticky notes around the house explaining things, and an adventure to find the key. she's a flight attendant on an international route, so she's gone a lot, and she let us stay at her place in jersey for free! which was wonderful. tomorrow should be interesting. we'll be heading to the elizabeth station of the nj transit rail line, headed into the city early in the morning. all in all, a nice anniversary. happy four years, baby. ;-D

Honesty (Part 2)

building upon what i wrote 'yesterday' on this blog, i would like to address the issue of substance. i am getting to the point now where i am seriously reconsidering the 'daily' aspect of this blog, in order to up substance level of it: posting only when i really have something to say about something as it relates to my life or whatever i'm thinking about at the time. basically, we're talking about quality over quantity. however, i have a feeling that [like with all of my previous, non-daily blogging endeavors] i would likely post very rarely.

i like the idea that i'm cluing people in on what's going on in my daily life, because i'd like to think that some people appreciate that sort of thing. since i know i do have at least 15 or so daily readers of my blog, i take that as some sort of evidence that people find it useful. i don't want to lose that connection with my readers, but at the same time, i feel awkward posting half-assed material that basically just says, 'herp derp i ate chili today *fart noise*' or something equally banal. i'm not saying that every post is like that, but with a daily blog with no real structure, it almost necessarily devolves into that at some point, at least temporarily.

so it's a question of balance, really, at this point in time. i think that i will probably push on and continue to blog daily [which aids my neuroticism, just like posting this post and the previous one as though i had written them 5-6 days ago] and just be conscious of what i'm writing. if something is not substantive one or two days in a row, i will try harder to post something really meaningful the next day, and try to keep on top of the 'posting every day' thing. ever since the first anniversary of truly blogging daily, i've felt less motivated to continue to do it on time. now i want to correct that, and continue to do as i'd done the first year.

here's to the future. and with that, we resume our recap.

Greaterest

i'm not fooling anyone. people who follow my blog regularly know that i've been behind for almost an entire week now, and i'm not going to pretend that i remember what happened on tuesday or wednesday, because i don't. instead, i'm going to talk a bit about honesty. it's part of the reason i started this blog in the first place, to be honest with myself and give an honest disclosure of my personal life to my friends and family who read this regularly. it turned into an almost entirely boring, hum-drum recollection of the day's events and reflected a very shallow representation of who i am as a person, as though the things i do day-in and day-out define me.

which, i assure you, they do not.

however, this is not to say that i'm having some sort of revelation [i've known this for a long time now] and will only post substantive things from now on. that's likely not true, as i can only think of so many creative and interesting post topics, and filling up a daily blog with them would be, well, really freaking hard. i could do it, sure, but i don't really want to. scratch that — i do want to. it would be really good for me to do that, and it would improve my writing and deadling-meeting skills even more than my heavy video-making schedule has already. the real, honest truth of it all is that i don't have time for it.

F-Zero Bomb

another work day, but it went fast. i filmed a lot this morning, and this video was posted tonight. it doesn't contain much substance, and i probably won't be posting commentary on it on the website this time, though i usually do. you'll know why in a few days, but that's as much as i'm going to give away! not much to say about today other than that, and i just posted like five million blogs for the past few days, so... yeah.

christin came and visited me at work for dinner, and she bought some new shoes [which she needed] for the trip this weekend. excitement! i came home and edited stuff and read my textbook, which is actually interesting for once. glad i bought it instead of renting it like i was going to. hope i can get this week's discussion posts done on time, in a reasonable fashion. last week in class went well, but this class is a lot more taxing than my previous ones. my teacher actually cares about what we learn! who would've thought? not to say that the other teachers didn't, but they let some pretty questionable material pass for 'a' grades. blah. i'm earning this 'a.'

speaking of the letter 'a': not now, quiznos guy!

Egrets Have Regrets

it's easter, Jesus is risen, but He was risen over 2,000 years ago as well. the good news is that He is still risen after all this time, and death could not hold Him. amen. today's service was wonderful, as all of our church services normally are. i didn't go to easter 'dinner' [i still maintain that it can't properly be called dinner if it takes place at 2pm] because i had way too much homework to do. i got it all done, and it was a marathon of work, let me tell you. read three chapters, did two long discussion posts, and it was great. learned a lot about tibet — the country, not my co-worker.

tomorrow is monday, and i will be posting a video that declares that i'll be taking the week off from making videos. is that weird? does that defeat the purpose? maybe, but that's okay. i'm writing this blog that day anyway, so it's still strange for me to back-write everything when i'm catching up on blogging. i can't get used to it. maybe i should just stay on top of my so-called daily blogging and this won't be necessary. it would certainly eliminate confusion. anyway, i didn't have to work today, and any day in which i am not forced to wear all black is a good day.

we're going to new york city this weekend, and that's very exciting for me. i love the city, mainly because it reminds me of hong kong. i miss hong kong. so does christin, and we're excited to get out of maryland for a little while together and just enjoy one another's company. it's our four year anniversary, and the mini-vacation is very timely, as we've been going a bit crazy under the stress of day-to-day life. when there are lots of unknowns out there, it's good to know that you can plan something, even if it's just a short little thrifty trip. i love you, honey.

Denigration Station

it's saturday, and i just worked for way too long at a way-too-stressful job. blah. it was busy for a while there, but not busy enough for it to have been a really tremendous success in terms of money brought in by sales. all in all, we made about as much as we would've made on a typical weekend in one day. this would be more meaningful if we weren't closed sunday this week because of easter, but it's still good. we have so much easter stuff left, it's not even funny. i'm incredibly tired, and i don't think i'm going to be posting much here today.

in fact, i think this will be just about the end of it. it was a long day, and i'm completely worn out. probably taking a break from youtube for a few weeks while i sort out life. once i got home tonight, christin and i had a long conversation about the future, which went partially unresolved because we just don't know what's going on. we talked a lot about florida, which may be a place we'll be moving in the somewhat near future, but i'm not sure. the good thing about that particular state is that i could teach english in a secondary school with only a b.a. which is wonderful. we'll see what happens, though.

Creativity

'now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. and there's a reason. the whole system was invented — around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. they all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. so the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. so you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. is that right? don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist. benign advice — now, profoundly mistaken.

the whole world is engulfed in a revolution. and the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence,because the universities designed the system in their image. if you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. and the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. and i think we can't afford to go on that way.'

— ken robinson.

Breached Wail

today i spent a really long time making this video and you should watch it because i think it's really good and this is a run-on sentence but i don't care because i'm really tired and i don't want to blog right now so i'm going to stop blogging okay bye.

Arise, Chicken!

i've just spent the past two hours working on a song that i should've finished almost two months ago, and i'm pretty happy with what i've come up with. here's a link to the finished product. buy it please! i needs to feeds my kitty. today i woke up a bit late and headed over to hang out with the lovely wife and our nephews [for whom she is a nanny]. that was good times. we played with chalk and watched madagascar and pretended to be animals. i drew four whales. when i got home, i spent like an hour replacing my headlight bulb, which was way too complicated for what it was.

so i headed to the gym after that, to work off my frustration, which was a successful venture. did 20 minutes of cardio, a weight circuit, and some ab work, then it was time to head back home. and head back home i did! christin was taking her fake nails off with acetone and lots of patience. it took her even longer than it took me to replace that stupid bulb! she went to sleep and i chatted up exal a bit before working on the song.

i released the regular version of that song almost two months ago on my youtube channel, so i'm glad to finally be done with it. i had the drums programmed that day, and recorded the guitar parts as well. did the vocals the following week, with all intention of putting it up on bandcamp the next wednesday. that obviously didn't happen. when i opened the project tonight, i had two unedited guitar tracks, an unedited vocal track, and the drums. no bass, no synth, no nothing on the fl studio track, so i went back and programmed the bass and added fx to the unedited files and mixed it all together. two hours later... voilá! and now it's bedtime.

Zenon: Girl Of The 21st Century

it's becoming increasingly difficult to come up with blog titles beginning with the letter 'z.' as you can see, i'm reaching deep with this one. my sister will love it, though. good 'ole disney originals. we used to watch and make fun of and secretly enjoy them when she was the appropriate age for enjoying them [and probably for a while afterward]. wash your hair, brink! seriously, that fool is mad greasy. anyway, the typing of this blog title led me on a horrible journey through many wikipedia pages looking at 'where are they now' style articles on disney actors. *shudder*

today was a work day, and work i did. i worked with becky, which was enjoyable, but the last two hours after she left were absolute monotonous boredom incarnate. seriously, i wanted to cause self-harm at the kiosk. didn't sell a whole lot, but got a lot of traffic coming through the shop, what with it being spring break and all. after the shift, christin and i ate potbelly's sandwiches and saw 'arthur' together, which i should've known was a remake but somehow didn't make the connection. i liked it quite a lot, actually. for some reason or another, it suckered me in. funny and charming/sweet.

after that, we headed home and interneted it up for a bit, while i decided what to do for my video today. here's what i came up with. like? i know christin will. it's honest, loosely edited, and actually a bit longer than most of my recent videos. i downplayed the art aspect a bit, but feel like i supported the theme of 'forms of expression' well enough. anyway, after that, i caught up a bit on my subscriptions and now it's time for bed. i've got two days off in a row now, so tomorrow will be spent with christin at work, and thursday will be house-cleaning and video-filming day. oh, and my new class homework night... fun.

Yasser Arafat

mommy's alright, daddy's alright; they just seem a little weird. that song is stuck in my head. actually, it's not that song per se, but the less than jake cover of that song which is at the end of anthem. that album may actually be my favorite, but i dunno. hello rockview is just such a classic, and i don't dislike a single song on it, which is part of my criteria for records. man, i remember those. records. when people actually made albums containing approximately 12-15 songs that were arranged in pleasant orders to form a cohesive whole. those were the good old days.

also, am i really saying this? it's true. that's the worst part.

it does bother me that bands don't really make albums anymore. granted, i understand why that's the case, and i realize that a lot of bands that are worth listening to still do make albums... i just wish that it were the 'main thing' again. it could be, i could be totally wrong and just looking at pop music in general as opposed to music in general, which is probably closer to accurate. yeah. today i worked an opening shift, and it was incredibly dull. tomorrow i work another one, but i'm working with becky, which means it should be entertaining at least. we always find ways to make the best out of a slow day.

after work, i headed to the u.p.s. store to get something [which shall remain nameless] notarized. it wasn't until i actually got to the place and reached down to grab the papers that i noticed they had been destroyed by a drunken matron of honor [who shall remain nameless] on saturday. so i had to rush to kinko's, print it out again, rush back to u.p.s., get it notarized, then rush back to kinko's again to scan it. lesson learned: i really need a printer. the worst part about it is: when i finally got it scanned and e-mailed to someone [who shall remain nameless], it turns out their e-mail service decided it would be a cool idea to return those e-mails. twice.

if i were an ignorant trend-follower, i'd be saying 'fml' at this point.

however, all is not lost. i'm going to call the dude tomorrow, assuming busy executive types actually answer their phones, and hopefully i can get the whole thing taken care of. i don't like relying on outdated technology like faxes, but it looks like that may be the only way. hope not. maybe dude has a gmail i can use. silly e-mail servers. anyway, i got home and fixed some shell pasta with garlic alfredo sauce, which was delicious. helped christin finish her paper for english and finished my final paper for this class. another one down. two more left. i've got the worst case of senioritis right now. goodnight.

Xotob Emmig

oh work on sunday, how i despise thee. it wasn't a terribly long shift, and i did get to work with becky and everything, so it wasn't all that bad. i'm still just kind of annoyed that i had to do it to begin with. i dunno. the more i learn, the more i feel it isn't right. so that was most of my day today, just working and such. i got up in time to leave, i came home in time to hang out with christin and watch an episode of the cosby show before she headed to bed. that was nice. i ate taquitos and chips and salsa and it was nice. yum. i don't know why i don't make mexican food [or at least fake mexican food] more often.

after that, i headed on them world wide internets with the intention of getting caught up on my subscriptions on youtube [it's about that time again], but cody needed some help with contrast and color correction or something like that, so i decided to help him out first. ended up video chatting with him for about an hour, then watching a few videos before finishing my quiz for school and taking a quick shower. late night shower time is super weird. i always feel like the noise is going to wake people up, but then i remember that it's only super loud to me because i'm in a tiny room with water hitting the walls. lol. bedtime.

note: failtime. didn't go to be right after that, of course. didn't post.

Warbly Marbles

the wedding was fun. i'm tired now. i don't really want to type this out... but here goes. i got up at a reasonable hour today, which was great because i actually went to bed at a reasonable hour last night as well. wow! got up and headed to the thrift store to find a suit jacket, and picked up a snazzy charcoal with blue pinstripes. classic. tenth doctor status. couldn't find the matching pants, so i went to target and grabbed some, as well as a black shirt and an iron/board. which we surprisingly did not own before! talked to kueker on the phone, which was fun.

headed home, thinking i was totally going to be late to this wedding because i had it in my head that the location was way up near baltimore... it totally wasn't. it was in pasadena, which is just north of severna park, which is just north of arnold, which is where christin works. in layman's terms [a.k.a. for california people], it was about a half hour drive in the rain. and boy did it rain! the wedding was still really nice, though. the choppy water behind us made for some pretty cool pictures, especially when they went outside during the breaks in the rainfall. good times.

didn't get to eat anything at the wedding because there was only one option: surf and turf. no thanks on both, as i'm allergic to the surf [crab cake and shrimp] and not fond of the turf [steak, which was well done, much to christin's chagrin]. danced a bit, looked gangster with my pinstripe and fedora. had to complete the outfit, right? i'll post a picture tomorrow, if i can find a good one on facebook or something. ha! anyway, we headed to cancun cantina after the wedding, which was mildly enjoyable. i was kind of tired, so we didn't do much.

drove home, and here we are! christin is passed out on the couch with degrassi playing on t.v., and i'm typing this blog which is way longer than i expected it to be. four whole paragraphs, wow. tomorrow i have to work, which i'm pretty unhappy about, but it was kind of an extenuating circumstance, so i made an exception to my 'i don't work on sundays' rule. at least it's a short shift, and i'm working with becky. i like working with becky. time for sleep. goodnight!

Veritas Schmeritas

today i made this. i'm still not sure what i think about it. commentary, as always, on the website. i opened today and worked until 4, which is a nice shift because it's not too long. went to the bank, sold a ton of strawberries, hung out with tibet and becky. they're the best. patti came by at 3:50, of course, needing a bunch of stuff moved from her car. she's so funny. ;-P left, came home, shot and edited the video [not much editing involved], then headed up to baltimore for the rehearsal dinner.

it was at a seafood restaurant called mccormick and schmick's, on pier 5. quick trip, no traffic. i was kind of worried about the food, because it was about 85% food i can't eat and 10% food i don't eat. the likelihood of something falling within that remaining 5% actually being on the menu for the dinner was pretty slim, but i had chicken piccata. it was really good, despite being served on a bed of mashed potatoes. i ate them together and it wasn't too bad, but i generally don't like potatoes that aren't julienned and fried. ;-P open bar was great. had a jack&coke and some fairly expensive scotch. 'twas delicious. and now i'm tired.

edit: and now i'm failing again. again!!!

Umbilical

so i was pretty much right about hating life today. i did make it to 5:30, though i almost wish i had just gone home early. we ended up canceling our weekly meeting [which has not been so weekly] with pastor taylor and ken, because christin just wanted a night off from doing stuff. she had a bunch of homework to catch up on, too. i slept, maybe a bit too long. i was so freaking tired. last night i didn't sleep but 3 hours, because everything kept waking me up. first i couldn't get to sleep, then my wife's morning kiss woke me up [it usually doesn't], then i just stayed up and couldn't go back to sleep for the rest of the morning. miserable.

i need to change my sleeping schedule/habits. like for realsies.

this means that i basically need to be less busy. i don't want to give up on the 26 weeks this year project, but i also don't know how i'm going to feasibly accomplish the entire year with this schedule without driving myself and my wife insane. i need to find a balance. i can't really cut down on work at all, because we can't afford it, and school... well, school is almost over. thank God for that. two more classes after this one, which is over on tuesday. speaking of which, i need to remember to order my book for my next class. i'll do that tomorrow. goodnight.

Tariq Trotter

today i made this. i rather like the song, but i'm not sure what i think about the video. it's mostly just macro shots from my front yard on a gloomy looking day, which gave it the right vibe for the song. i upped the blues on all the color correction to make it extra depressing, but with a twinge of hopefulness. i hope it was effective. i've been updating individual pages on my website every time i put up a new video, so if you go there, you'll likely see a blurb on the song and video and a little bit of commentary. also, you can buy the song here.

http://fecklessman.com ← as if you didn't know.

today was a really, really long day, and i've been up way too late again. i'm pretty much going to hate my life tomorrow, and i don't know if i'll make it 'til 5:30 at work. we'll see how that goes. then on friday, we've got a rehearsal dinner for the wedding christin is in... at a seafood restaurant. oh joy of my life. i have no idea what i'm going to eat, if anything at all, but their menu says they have mac & cheese as a side, which is pretty winsauce. maybe i'll just get that. but that's 2 days away. focus, bud. one day at a time.

edit: speaking of 2 days away, it's friday now, and i've just realize that i didn't actually post this last night when i was supposed to have done. silly!

Santanic Panic

i'm in a blogging funk right now. i just really don't feel like detailing today. it was disastrously non-productive. i did get yesterday's paper and video done, which is good news, but i dunno. i just felt like i didn't accomplish much today. i know i did a lot, and i recorded the song for tomorrow, but i'm not 100% certain i like it. the video component will really determine if i've accomplished what i wanted to with it. i'll be filming that in about 5 hours when i wake up. fun times. sleep now, and forever hold my piece of music that i just wrote until 4:30 in the morning.

Re: Stress

life.

daily.

typical.

downright normal.

this, my day-to-day.

by all accounts, average

the projects rise, the pile grows

oh, how the workflow fails to flow

a worked-up boiler, heat increased

pressure builds, with no release

in sight, this day may never end

betwixt my rushing thoughts, transcend

the agony, that rising steam

'till all i've left to do is scream

of all the days, why now?

wholly consumed by.

overwhelming.

persistent.

mounting.

stress.

Quinto Comma Zachary

church was wonderful this morning. pastor taylor talked about God as our father, and how we have the perfect life in Christ offered to us and still somehow choose the world. as if anything the world offers can compare in anyway [it can't], yet we are still tempted and drawn away by its allure. sad. after church, i headed home and ate quickly before mom-in-law mom came over to do taxes with me. that took about 3 hours or so! turned out i owe about $552 to the state of maryland [thanks a lot, rhonda] but the federal government is giving us $3,550. that should cover it and pay off the remainder of our credit card debt!

once taxes were done, christin and i ate pizza to celebrate the large return, which was unexpected. we watched an episode of doctor who and relaxed together before christin headed off to bed. i decided to stay up a while longer and watch a few videos, as well as do some work on the website, which i did. i think i'm going to use squarespace for the legitimate site, because i'm having a hard time motivating myself to design something really functional and elegant for my website, and i really need to drive traffic to my videos to promote myself. yeah! so that may happen tomorrow, but probably not. here's why!

tomorrow will likely be incredibly stressful. in the morning, i've got to write and record a video for monday, as well as work a bit on my assignment which is due tomorrow night at midnight mountain time [2am here]. then i have to work a closing shift at the store and head back to finish said project in time for the deadline. doesn't sound like a whole lot to take care of, but it is to me. i'm glad i've gotten a bit of downtime since the contest ended, as it's really taken its toll on my mental status. however, i'm still a bit nervous about the results of the contest. we'll see what happens! i always say that... oh well.

Always The Tone Of Surprise

so the contest is finally over with [at least the voting portion], so life is significantly less stressful now, right? well, not really, but i have one less thing to think about. we went to my niece meaghan's birthday party on the eastern shore today, and that was fun. they had a bouncy castle and a huge trampoline, so let's just say that i got exerted myself physically way more than a nerd of my calibre should ever do. it was pretty nuts, yo. so after that, we headed back to the house and watched some liar liar on t.v., followed by 'the hangover' and chinese food. both were excellent.

we got on our computers and such, and i started playing some league of legends, which is a game that i've not played extensively in a long while now. it's fun! i got to play with my friend edwin tonight, which was exciting, and i chatted on skype with exal while i played for a bit. that was also quite excellent. christin went to bed a few hours ago, and i'm just now getting tired, so i think it's time i joined her. tomorrow, christin has to go get her dress altered, so i'm heading to church solo once again, which is okay. after that, mom is coming over to help me do taxes... no fun. but it must be done! then i'll probably have to pre-film monday's video, because i'll probably open on monday, which sucks, but oh well.

B.F. Sword

oh my. i left work at 11pm tonight because my boss has lost her mind [she knows this]. we spent most of tonight setting up furniture, which she brought in her creeper van. it wasn't terribly hard work, but very time consuming, and we had lots of trash and cardboard to take out in the end. the good thing is that we talked a bit about what may happen if youtube decides they're going to send me off to chicago for 8 weeks [or l.a. for 4] in the coming months. nothing was really decided, but i'm glad that i have an awesome boss who is willing to work things out with me. this really is my dream, and i'd hate to pass it up for financial reasons.

speaking of financial reasons, we still don't know if we're losing our second car in may or in august slash september. so there's that. i know, right, first world problems... but christin and i have very conflicting work schedules in places that aren't near one another, so going down to one car would be a really big adjustment and kill a lot of spare time on both of our sides. for me, i can't really afford to lose more time, as most of it is spent between working full time, doing school full time, doing youtube pretty much full time, and being married full time. that's a lot of full times for one dude, let me tell you.

note: went to bed a bit earlier than expected last night and never finished this. whoops!

Candyland

i woke up a bit early today and posted the new video, which i had filmed yesterday. i'm happy with it, but my parents said the music was a bit on the loud side. i guess that's probably true, but to me it wasn't worth re-uploading over. no one else complained, so that's good, but we'll see i suppose. tomorrow is the last day of the contest, and i'm pretty relieved. i'm not sure when they announce who made the cut for the top 50 [if they do actually announce it], but it'll be good to know if my friends and i actually do. nervous.

okay, so i just watched a lot of the submissions, which i hadn't actually done until now, and let's just say that i'm considerably less nervous now. i don't want to sound overconfident, but... yeah. trying to be nice here, so i won't say any more. i worked what felt like a marathon shift today [though it was really only 8.5 hours], and i've got to work the closing shift tomorrow night as well. not looking forward to that, but just the same, it pays the bills. and i get paid tomorrow! huzzah. that was not very enthusiastic. well, it doesn't help that i'm dead tired now. oh, i finally caught up on my youtube subscriptions. yeah! bedtime.

Darkened Schtein

this whole 'writing two blog entries every two days' thing is getting a bit ridiculous. i need to step up my blogging game. ;-P times have been nuts. wednesday night, right? this is wednesday's blog? yeah, it was ladies' night. i remember it well. actually, it was just absolutely insane. we had a bunch of people in to dip strawberries and make dessert cups and such, which required a large amount of preparation. it was a pretty big hit. my wife and her mom came, they had a good time, and we did a good amount of sales. so that was that.

when i got home, i uploaded another promotional video for the contest i'm in [vote!] to add to the one i put up in the morning. two channels, we're rockin' it. i hope i win, but more than anything, at this point i just want it to be over. lots of stress! pressure to make awesome videos, which i know i do already, so yeah. this is totally incoherent. i think i'm going to stop trying to talk about a day that has passed, trying to remember something that happened yesterday. that's just weird to me right now. no idea why. on to the next! yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Echinacea Is A Scam

i woke up and went back to sleep a lot of times this morning, but ultimately ended up getting out of bed by around 10am. walked the monster dog, checked my social media, and started uploading today's video which i had filmed yesterday. the one thing i didn't do before work today [besides eat something, which is something i often don't do before work] was film the video i was supposed to film before i left for work. this is why i had nothing to edit tonight when i came home! so i get to film that video, another video, and thursday's video tomorrow. before 1:10pm! stress.

tonight i spent some time catching up on my youtube subscriptions and chatting on skype. i didn't mean to spend the whole night doing that, but i will say that it was nice to not have anything to do, really. nothing due for school, no pressing reading, no editing, just some time to watch videos and chat with friends. i ended up video chatting with cody for about two hours, a half hour of which was me talking to nic lazz on the phone in the other room. that was fun [both]. nic is doing well but a bit frustrated with church, and cody is on his grind as usual. good times.

i'm excited for lots of things, but right now there's too much to think about. we found out that we're losing the jeep in may, which is bad news, but we'll deal with it. apparently we've got a friend that can lend us a car for a while, but we don't know how long that will last. we'll probably just have to suck it up and live with one car [very inconvenient] or suck it up and buy one for christin-chan. that may be a better option at this point, though i'm not terribly excited about borrowing more money to buy things we can't afford. we'll see what happens. time for bed.

Free Tracks

so this happened today. the funny thing is that if i wasn't posting this blog entry the day after it was supposed to have been written, that wouldn't have been a link! i filmed it today, but it's actually tuesday's video. wow, the timing in this post is already really awkward, and we're still in the first paragraph. hooray for confusion! just go with it, bud. you're talking to yourself through text again, aren't you? yes i am. yes i am. the reason i pre-filmed that video is because i thought i wasn't going to have time to do so on tuesday because i was meant to open, but my schedule got switched anyway. weird! but good, because i prefer to close.

i worked from 3pm-closing, which is a weird shift, because it's not quite long enough for a break but just long enough to want one. it was a really slow night, and we made like half of what we were making regularly the previous week. it didn't help that it was a ridiculously nice day today, which means that people don't typically go to the mall. we like crappy days! that means people want to spend more time inside. the concept of hoping for bad weather is quite interesting to me. anyway, i woke up earlier than i had expected today, and i got the video written/filmed. now it's time to edit! do you like how i'm pretending that i actually posted this last night? it's pretty much because i'm awesome.

Gandalf Complex

most of today was spent catching up on some much needed sleep, which was quite enjoyable. i did miss church, but there's no way i would've even heard the alarm if i had set it. i was pretty much dead to the world. i've had a lot of exceptionally long days lately, mostly stemming from this whole new career goal thing i've been spending so much time on. it's great, but it's starting to take its toll on my sanity. i may need to back off a bit, but it's going to have to wait until after this contest is over. speaking of the contest, the website i linked yesterday is done and looks good, and the video up there is actually relevant to the content.

good times. anyway, today i also spent some time with christin, watching cooking shows and what not. i caught up a bit on my youtube subscriptions once she went to sleep, but i'm still incredibly behind on all of that. i may have to accept defeat in that area sooner than later, but we'll see. i've got at least 20 or so on my queue that are waiting to be watched while i'm doing other things, because they only need to be heard. so yeah, the number is decreasing, but it's still quite intimidating. i spent way too long writing about that. this is a good sign that i'm tired. i've got work tomorrow, and a video to pre-film so i don't drive my wife nuts on tuesday night. time for sleep, so i can wake and work again.

Heralded

what's there to say about today? i worked from 11am all the way until 8:30pm, and i'm incredibly tired as of the writing of this blog [and it's been 25 hours since that time, because i'm writing this the next day]. i had a great day, because i figured out that my video from wednesday made it to the semifinals of the youtube creator institute contest, which is super exciting. if you want to vote for me, i revamped my personal website into a voting portal where you can vote for me and three of my youtube friends who also made it to the next round.

http://fecklessman.com

so that's good news. i spent a lot of tonight once i got home working on that website, which took me a bit longer than i had expected. i also chatted with my friends justin and exal [also youtubers] about youtube politics and such, which was nice. stayed up way too late talking with exal on skype voice chat, but had a good time. he's a cool dude. you should check out his youtube channel here! if you like wheezy waiter, you'll definitely like his style. he makes good original content for shizzle. anyway, yeah. that's enough for this blog. time to write another.

rtotd #0017 - failure, part deux.

I Quit.

this will be my last blog post. i'm just not feeling it anymore, and i really hate the fact that my life is so public. i'm going to be keeping my thoughts and feeling to myself now, rather than sharing it with everyone out there on the internets. if this upsets you, too bad. i'm making this decision for me, because it's my life and i can do what i want. also, why do you think i owe you blog posts or something? it's not like you ever do anything for me. i post and post and post and you guys don't even so much as comment on my stuff except the random sporadic crap i see. it's insulting! also, if you believed anything i just wrote, april fool's.

rtotd #0016 - abject failure!