Plethora

Better than anything I could write…

6 comments March 25th, 2007

A day off?

Thursday night was a kind of crazy night for Bryce. It started with my checking my ADP check stub for the next day online. I saw I had 1100 after taxes to spend with commission. I did what anyone would in that situation and went straight to the lick to celebrate. Bought some gin for my gin and tonics, some YellowTail Merlot, and my favorite Long Island Ice Tea mix (already mixed, just add ice).

I went home, cleaned, worked out, ate, and got my drink on. I spent around $800 on computer parts:
A graphics card
A motherboard
Another Hard Drive
Some RAM
and a processor.

The next morning I was a hurting boy, I guess Linds and her friend were up till 5 talking, WOW. To be young again. I went to work, tried coffee for the first time (am I a coffee drinker now, yet to be determined) and basically struggled through the day. Halfway through the day I got the shakes yet felt warm (fever?) and was a waste of space. Almost went home early, got home and was just a zombie, couldn’t really focus and came to the conclusion it might be the flu and not a hangover anymore. Did watch UNC’s amazing win, go Heels. I think I called Tim Thursday night, too. Fairly sure it was just a VM.

So I go to bed and am hurting this morning. I have linds take my temp, 100.2 and I make the decision, I can’t go to work. I was supposed to work a double, hosting and then serving tonight. Serving on a Saturday night is huge money, like $100 plus. That about matches working 4 days as a host. So, I was conflicted, but even picturing myself hustling around, asking questions, running food, ect seems impossible right now. I have the shakes, an awful cough, and a fever and it’s about 8PM now. I did get to sleep all afternoon.

One thing to be excited about is those computer parts I bought. It’ll be no time and I’ll be able to do some gaming again. So, this presents another question, do I bring my computer home from Philly for the wedding? Or is that irresponsible to be making gaming plans on the most important days of my life?

11 comments March 24th, 2007

So, do we ever find out the results for the eSIPS or whatever it was?

This year I have decided to run the NCAA March Madness pool, ADP division. I did make the mistake of asking the guy who runs all of telesales if he wanted to be in it, remember this is my boss’ boss’ boss, he could say, “no more telesales” and we’d be gone. Anyway, he said no, but said he wishes he could, just not allowed to. Well, turns out he’d be a good guy not to even tell that I’m running an illegal gambling ring at ADP. I might as well have invited him to a cock fight in the backyard.

It’s a $10 entry, Tony is in it, and we have about 17 entries overall with a shitload more supposed to come in tomorrow. Should be interesting.

I am also taking part in a “biggest loser contest” at ADP. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s for losing weight. That was a $25 entry fee. It goes by body fat % and weight lost (taken as a percent, not total). Before the final weigh-in I intend to not eat, and avoid drinking water like I’m back in wrestling. For the initial weigh-in I was at 147.5 and 18%. At week two I was at 144 and 18%. I have been running and lifting everyday and I usually conclude my workout by sitting in the sauna for 20 minutes. Get a good sweat going.

This week I went with Phil from Applebee’s to play basketball at Temple University at Ambler. (Not the main campus which is in a beyond bad part of town). We intended to just warm up and play some one-on-one (just thinking about one-on-one against me bring chet into a cold sweat) but when we got to the gym there were 8 people waiting for 2 more to play some full-court. Shit. Sunday after Applebee’s I went to shootaround at an outdoor hoop and it was very windy. That was the first time I even touched a basketball in about 6 months. So, seeing a crowd ready to ball I was nervous. My first shot during the warmup missed everything, Phil just laughed at me. It was funny, to compare Phil and my gaming styles, he’s “And One” and I’m “Hoosiers”. He managed to make a pass to someone between my legs and did some trippy dribbling, but luckily we were on the same team in the first game.

It was nice, played 2 games, very diverse group of guys, hicks, whites, blacks, indians, and asians. I wore an SMSU shirt, not one person said, “so I hear they extended Stemen’s contract” but I supposed not everyone is “up on the news”.

That’s all.

6 comments March 14th, 2007

Writing

This post is mostly for Miles, but anyone else that can take something from it.

I recently read Fahrenheit 451 and at the end of the book there was an interview recording with the author. Obviously the guy is a good writer, coming up with such an important book. I found what he said about writing very enlightening.

But first, the book is about a world where no books are allowed. Firemen go to people’s houses and burn the houses down with the books inside. And one firemen has a change in heart after one lady allows herself to be burned with her books. Then it turns into a “Big Brothers VS Him” type situation. Interesting book. Most of my readers shouldn’t read it.

Anyways, the power of description is important in writing. For example, lets say you’re in your room and you hear a loud bang in the kitchen. You write, “I was in my room playing where’s my hand, home edition, and I heard a loud noise from the kitchen.” Ok, that’s decent, but you could take the same situation and really make it come alive with your description of sound. “I heard an explosion of sound” “…and then what sounded like a herd of elephants running through a forest” and it goes on. Makes the reader really think about what it sounded like. I read “a loud noise” and I would associate that with a specific sound, maybe pans being thrown to the ground, since it’s a kitchen. Maybe Chet would think it’d sound like someone crashed through the wall, David would think something different, and so on. If you can better describe the sound you can really make the story accurately come to life.

Same with smell or any of the 5 senses. In the interview they asked him about his detail in writing about the smell of the burning houses. He said when he decided he wanted to be a writer he went to the library and read a book about each of the five senses. Once he had a good understanding on the senses he got over that hurdle and was able to really create that image in the readers minds.

What are your thoughts of this post? Honestly. Should I stick to “what’s going on in my life” or try blogging about things I have no business writing about, or what?

7 comments March 8th, 2007

The Palestra

So there’s been some confusion about what it is. An event? Something Roman (ooo I love Romans). Well, it’s a college/HS basketball court in Philly. Considered the most famous court in the country. It’s small, 10,000 people, home court to UPenn (Ivy League Snobs). But, the game we went to was a good one, very energetic crowd and was pretty packed for a mean nothing game (UPenn already clinched an NCAA tourney bid).
Here’s the last play.

6 comments March 6th, 2007

Newsbleep

As Miles wrote on his blog, I wrote last months newsbleep. To be honest, and I think Miles will agree, it didn’t turn out the best. Why?

1. Poor organization. While writing stories for the Spur and writing in college courses I learned the value of a good outline. There was no outline or organization. I thought, “ok, so I’ll write a newsbleep, what should it be about? And then I was like, we could do the death of Miles and have him die 3 separate ways. There ya go. And at that point an outline should have been born, but it wasn’t.

2. I wrote the entire episode for Big Stone, people that would’ve been at Big Stone, my house, our pets, ect. This is noticeable at parts of the newsbleep. I.E. A david mauling was the second re-write, first it was supposed to be Hogan killing Miles. That’s right mom, Hogan. I even thought it was kind of clever and related back to an earlier newsbleep with Miles and Holli wanting to poison the dog. No BSC, No Hogan, and David played video games all day so he wasn’t even in the newsbleep, hence, no david rausch.

3. I am not as good as Miles. All of the newsbleeps have been well written and humorous so far, it’s been a hard act to follow. Hats off to Miles for sure.

That being said, give me a break, maybe someday I’ll try writing another one and put more thought and care into it. I have Miles the misfortune of trying to do hamlet with a 1st grade class of the special kids and the ADHD kids. However, I did like the acting of Miles’ crew, I thought everyone involved did great, Miles did great, but if you watch the episode and something seems off if you analyze it you’ll realize that it really did come down to the writing.

Here’s a picture of a balloon trick I did at Applebee’s. Took forever, but I’m awesome like that. Hell I’ll put two pics in.

5 comments March 6th, 2007