Procrastinating

~CHEST NUUUTTSS ROASTINNNNNNNNNN ON AN OPEN FIIIIIIIIIRRREEE~

I have a 14 page essay to complete by tomorrow and I haven't started yet. Why? Because I'm listening to the Christmas Song while eating Hi-Chews, staring blankly at my Facebook newsfeed, and now blogging.. How can this day get any better?

(L5R) Phoenix Gets In There! Thanksgiving Celebration at Church

Last night was a decision between playing Magic or L5R, but my friend invited me to come out for a thanksgiving celebration at her church so I decided to play L5R since that's faster. When I got out of the shower, I got a text message from my other friend saying that today was a 14 proxy tourney. I was supposed to leave at that point, but when I found out it was going to be a proxy tourney I was afraid that everyone would have really good decks. I spent the next 15 minutes rushing to look online for cards that I would probably need, but when I looked at my deck I couldn't figure out what to take out. I ended up only adding 3 Hamstrung, and 2 Proper Deference, but they ended up being useless! Nobody was running duelist's and no one had an honor deck that was capable of reaching 8 honor in 1 turn. The Proper Deferences just became force reduction instead.

Round 1: Spider... Kensai? Whatever.. it was military
I arrived a little late, but luckily I was still able to play! My first opponent was my friend from school who also arrived late. He was running a spider deck with 8 proxies in it, but they didn't really help. My first turn started with Winter's Embrace, which wasn't a very ideal time. Luckily for me I managed to got Isawa Mizuhiko with two Touch of Ice's, which allowed me to reach 40 honor by turn 6. I passed with three provinces. I let him take one on turn 5, so I could have more army for the final attack and so I could draw a card with Counting House. 1-0

Round 2: Scorpion Blitz?
My next opponent was playing scorpion, but I couldn't quit figure out what kind of deck it was.. He bought a personality on turn 1 and bought a farmlands token for it and attached a weapon to it on turn 2. But then The Direct Approach halts his turn two attack, and he proceeded to buy another cheapo personality. Turn 3, he attached another weapon and farmlands token to his second dude and swung with both. Luckily for me, I forgot to bow Family Histories to gain an honor, so I was able to Rout both home leaving his weenies practically useless. Afterwards, I get out two Asako Misako's and then he never ever ever ever got near my provinces again. I passed 40 on turn 6. 2-0

Round 3: Crane Honor
The same guy I usually play against in the finals. The same Crane deck that I out run every time. Except this time I out ran him pretty bad.. (Present tense here we go) Ok, so I go first via die roll, I see Temple to Shinsei and Shiba Ningen, but Borderkeep everything else. I reveal a personality and War of Dark Fire (which can't be played until next turn). Not seeing a second holding I debate whether I should second Borderkeep the -War of Dark Fire or Shiba Ningen along with the personality. I end choosing to just second Borderkeep the personality and luckily flip a Seiden Sanzo. He buys two holdings and says go. Turn 2, my proxied War of Dark Fire hits and I buy Shiba Ningen along with a second Seidan Sanzo putting me at 10 honor, then say go. He then proceeds to buy two personalities, but doesn't gain any honor thanks to War of Dark Fire. Turn 3 I create a Shiba Ningen token (12 honor), then use both of Seiden Sanzos' abilities on it making it a 8/2/2 Cavalry token. Looking at his side, he only has two personalities and 4 provinces so I decide to swing just for the hell of it. He declares no defenders, and then Ring of Water's one of his dudes in. I rout it home and surprisingly snipe a province for the first time in my life. You have no idea how happy I was at that point... The token dies to Seiden Sanzo, then I buy a dude putting me at 15 honor then say go. On his turn he attaches a weapon that allows him to set a personality's force equal to his chi, so that puts an end to my Shiba Ningen bombs. He then buys a dude putting him at 10 honor. Turn 4, I put out another token (17 honor), then Seiden Sanzo it. I then put Touch of Ice onto my Shiba Ningen, then buy a 3ph dude along with Daigotsu Oki putting me at 23 honor. On my opponent's turn he fears being attacked and give me the 3 honor to Touch of Ice (26) and buys a personality putting himself at 14 honor. Turn 5, I create another Shiba Ningen token, Seiden Sanzo it, then buy another guy putting me at 31. My opponent bows two personalities to Touch of Ice, then buys a dude putting him at 18. I could've gone faster throughout the game, but I guess I was playing it safe. On turn 6, I decided to finish it off, make a token, bow two dudes to Temple to Shinsei, and buy a dude worth 4ph putting me at 41 honor. He knew there was nothing else he could do so he decided to try attacking two of my provinces just for the hell of it. I actually succeed in saving one and then win with 3 provinces left over. 3-0

It didn't seem like anyone else ran proxies, but the only proxy that helped was War of Dark Fire. Oh well. It was fun. I walked away with like 5 boosters. It put me in a good mood.

===

After the tourney ended, I stopped by at the gas station to buy some key lime chap stick (which actually tastes pretty good) and some Mint Mojito flavored Orbit gum. It had quite a unique taste, but I have to admit it tasted pretty similar to the Mojito my sister made for me one time...

===

Anywayyyss, I headed straight over to my friend's church and I walked in to hear people up on stage giving vietnamese speeches. I was up in there for a little more than an hour not understanding a word they were saying. It wasn't service or anything, although they were talking about God.. I think I'm a little more reasonable now. Before I didn't want to get anywhere near churches, but now I guess it's not that big of a deal, even though I still don't believe in God. I got to play with their old beat up piano upstairs a little bit. Unfortunately, the sustain peddle didn't work. I swear I had little girls attacking me throughout the entire day. It was like my little cousins all over again, except vietnamese hahaha. Eventually we all got to eat a crap ton of food, which was absolutely delicious! After that we went out to tapioca express and bought drinks, but I didn't really feel like getting tap x since I was already full from the free dinner at church. All in all it was a fun night. I spent the rest of my night typing this page up instead of typing my english essay. Guess I'm gonna have to put that shit on blast tomorrow after school T__T

Kim Bum? Naaahhh

For some reason people think I look like the Korean actor, Kim Bum. I'm not going to post a picture of him, so google image search if necessary. I personally don't agree, but hey, people see my face more often than I see my own.. He's too beautiful to look like me.
-___-

It all started when I was still working at my martial arts school. One of my coworkers told me, "Hey you look like this one actor in a Korean drama I'm watching!" and I was like, "Huh?" At the time, I didn't know what Korean drama's were. After he told me about it and showed me some pictures, I disagreed. I told my mom about it and she kinda agrees. I think she just wishes I look like the guy. She said her coworker really thinks I look like him and provided pictures as proof. The other week, my friend was watching Korean dramas in the library and her boyfriend leaned over and they paused it. He looked up and said, "Hey Tim, go like this!" *makes a strangely blank staring face*

So I made the face and they both started to crack up. Then everyone at the table rushed over to see, but only half of them agreed. I looked at them and said, "Wait.. Is it Kim Bum?" 

"I dunno, it's this guy in the video," my friend said.

"Lemme see the laptop," I said.

*hands me the laptop*

I looked at it and the title said, "Boys Before Flowers"

"Yup.. That's Kim Bum alright.."

Tonight I asked my friend about it and it went something like this:

Anonymous 8:15 pm
(8:15:09 PM):     you dont look liek kim bum

(8:15:11 PM):     pokerface.

Anonymous 8:15 pm
(8:15:48 PM):   kim bum is cuter

I swear it felt like and arrow shot through my chest at that moment, but I couldn't help but agree..

As honest as it was, my friend was just teasing. (I think..)

(FNM5) Chillaxin Thanksgiving and Drafting on Black Friday

I know it's late, but I had a very relaxing Thanksgiving this year, and I hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving! My dad was off to Arizona to meet up with my Filipino side of the family, while I joined my mom on the Chinese side this year. My sister had work, so she's not visiting from LA until Christmas time. There was only 7 of us total at my grandparents' house, so it was a quiet, relaxing, and peaceful Chinese thanksgiving dinner. Afterwards, my mom and I visited my cousin's house who was visiting home from college in Oklahoma. We spent a couple hours at their house just socializing, then we went home and I played minecraft for the rest of my night.

===

I didn't know what to do for black friday considering I had pretty much no money, so I ended up staying home. But, hey, the card shop was open so why not draft? I did exactly that. When I got there, my friend said "Hey Tim, we're goin to Madfish after this" and I smiled and said, "YES". My night was instantly made.

I started the draft thinking I was going to rock some socks finding a bunch of removal, but towards the end of the draft, I looked down realizing that I had no creatures! Oh well, even though my deck sucked, at least I still got to go to Madfish.

9 Mountain
7 Plains

1 Ferrovore
1 Oxidda Scrapmelter (The strongest creature in my deck...)
2 Sunspear Shikari
1 Abuna Acolyte
1 Glint Hawk
1 Snapsail Glider
1 Copper Myr
1 Silver Myr
1 Iron Myr
1 Perilous Myr
1 Necropede

1 Galvanic Blast (P1P2)
1 Arc Trail (P1P3)
1 Cerebral Eruption (P1P4 or 5)
2 Turn to Slag
1 Revoke Existance
1 Dispense Justice
1 Origin Spellbomb
1 Panic Spellbomb
1 Sylvok Lifestaff
1 Strider Harness
1 Accorder's Shield

Round 1:
My first opponent was the other guy at my pod playing red/white, except he's just a much better player. I didn't agree with his deck at ALL, but he won with it.. His deck was similar to mine, but with stronger creatures.. Go figure. It ran 6 artifacts, and metalcraft.. huh? One of them being Echo Circlet. Huh? It also had 44 cards (18 lands). Huh? Well anyways, game 1, he started off strong, but then my removal got in there and he ran out of steam. Game 2, I started off strong and got him to 4 life. He was stuck on 3 lands, but then he top decked two lands. He was complaining about being mana screwed at first, but once he drew his fifth land, he laid it down, hovered his hands over his lands and said, "UNLOCK". I couldn't help but burst out into laughter. His removal got in, then he pulled out Goblin Gavaleer with Strider Harness, Sylvok Lifestaff, and Bladed Pinions... Along with some other good card with Metalcraft. How many artifacts did he have in his deck again..? Game 3, I got stuck on two lands for the longest time. By the time I got to four, my Cerebral Eruption, didn't quite get there... Wasted turns leads to my death. 0-1

Round 2:
This guy was playing Green/Blue. I didn't remember how this match went, but he toasted me in the first game, and I barely won with a topdecked Arctrail to burn him at 2 life in game 2. Game 3 my Cerebral Eruption failed THREE TIMES. THREE LANDS. Then it revealed a ONE DROP. WHY? It cost me the game. If it got through to kill his 2/2 and 3/3 flyer, then I probably would have won. I was running on luck in that game. 0-2

Round 3:
My friend's friend got paired down with me. My friend drafted infect, while this guy took whatever else was left of the infect cards so it was kinda.. halfassed. It had non infect creatures, and Grind Clock. I couldn't tell what his win condition was.. My removal was more than enough to handle what few infect creatures he had. 1-2

My friend ended up going 3-0 (well 2-1 because he gave the game to someone else), but he decided to drop so we could all go out to madfish. It was amazing. At first we ordered 11 rolls which scared me because there was a lot of rolls, but then they said they ran out of one specific roll which he happened to order 2 of. So we told them to take it off of our bill and we stuck with 9 rolls which was more than enough. First big plate of four rolls came in and we devoured it. We literally ate the last roll on it just as the next big plate of four rolls was being placed onto our table. "Keep'm coming!" we thought as we continued to devour all the sushi. By the time we finished we were all too full to move. One guy noted that we ate it all in less than 15 minutes! He said "Damn, I was just taking my time, but you guys were just going at it piece after piece!!" and then my friend sat up and said, "Well yeah! You HAVE to eat like that when you have Tim at the table. It's either you eat it fast or don't eat at all." It was hilarious. At the same time I felt bad. Even though he was joking, I feel like I really should slow down for everyone else... Well at least everyone was full! After we finished we went to Tapioca Express next door to play with our draft decks. It was a fun night, considering I did nothing for Black Friday.

(Minecraft) Updated Castle

I finally cleared every thing and decided to put a roof!

Now it's super dark inside my castle. Once I start putting stairs and rooms, I'll add more light to each section.

After I placed the roof I decided to make my castle even taller but with a slightly smaller building on top. As you can see in the below picture. I actually finished the second portion of my castle already. I'm now currently working on a third, even smaller portion which is practically going up into the clouds.

When the time comes, I'll punch holes into my castle to add windows.

Addicted to Minecraft

It has been quite a while since I've been craving the free time to sit down and play a single game for numerous hours a day. Periodically, I surf the internet for any interesting new games that might have released recently, and one day I happened to come across Minecraft. I saw pictures and it didn't look like much, but for something with such shitty graphics to be receiving such popularity in this day n' age, I had to look into it further. A game is never defined by its graphics, but a lot of contemporary gamers don't seem to understand that. After a few articles and several youtube videos, I was absolutely certain. I HAD to have this game.

You're basically a little block dude spawned into a randomly generated world of water, trees, grass, dirt, rock, sand, etc etc etc. No two worlds are the same, they're all unique.

Figure 1

Figure 1:

All you can see is your hand. You have 10 hearts that represent your life and empty squares on the bottom of the screen that represents your inventory. As you can see here, I already mined the wood off the tree.

The first thing you have to do is make shelter. The game runs on a 20 minute clock: 10 minutes in the day and 10 minutes of the night. But here's the thing: monsters come out at night! Zombies, spiders, skeletons (with bows and arrows), and exploding creepers. If they kill you, all of your items drop at the place where you died. Then you respawn at the same spot where you spawned when you first started the game, and if you want your items, you have to walk all the way back to where you died. So when you start the game, you have 10 minutes to find and create shelter. It's not too hard to build up a ghetto house. Almost every block you destroy drops on the ground for you to pick back up. Then you can place it on the ground again. Gravity doesn't apply to most of the blocks either, so if you mine the bottom portion of a tree, the rest will still be floating. In the beginning of the game you can pretty much build a small hut made out of dirt, but you want to leave a tiny crack open so you can still see when the sun comes back up because it would otherwise be pitch black inside the hut.

When the game starts, the best thing to do is find wood. There's usually trees all over the place, so finding wood isn't so hard. With the wood you get you can create a crafting box where you can create just about everything in the game. With that you want to make wooden pickaxes and mine rocks so you can create rock pickaxes. You can also make hatchets to chop down trees faster. You then want to get more wood, and then find coal. With sticks and coal you can make torches, which will light the inside of your house. Coal isn't too hard to find, but it will still take a little searching to locate. Then you want to make a better house with rocks or dirt and light it up. After that, you're pretty much set, and whatever you do for the rest of the game is up to you! People usually decided to search dungeons for better ore like iron and diamond, and more materials to make the house look nicer. But other people like to make crazy pictures/sculptures and other crazy stuff like castles, roller coasters, and water slides.

Figure 2

Figure 2:

When I first started my home, I had nothing to do at night, so I decided to dig around inside my house and go as deep as I could. As you can see here, I didn't dig very deep.. I was mainly looking for coal, so I could make those torches to light up my home.

And then I spent my day time doing daytime stuff like exploring and getting wood, and sand. You can't get those underground. The sand was for making glass in the future and I used sand to place around the ground outside so that way I could trace myself back to home. You have no idea how many times I died from the sun going down and me being lost in pure darkness being unable to find the location of my home.

As time passed by I started to do something with that fat ditch I dug into my house and made the interior actually look like something.

Figure 3

Figure 3:

Those stairs actually go down to the lower parts of my house where I do all my dungeon digging. I kept falling through though, so I put the glass there so I would stop falling down, but still be able to look through.

Figure 4

Figure 4:

This is my little stairway system beneath all that glass. The cobblestone in between the glass was a bridge, so there's actually two sides to my home. Then down here it splits into two separate dungeons.

Figure 5

Figure 5:

Looking to the left of Figure 3, I dug out this little room for myself to place all of the important stuff. I call it the Workstation. The left chest holds all my random stuff, and the right chest holds the building stuff. I don't know why I put two furnaces, and a permanent crafting box lies next to them. There's another in my inventory. As you can see here, there's a little sand in the corner. That's because this area is RIGHT next to the ocean. If I poke a hole in the wall, water will flood the room.

Figure 6

Figure 6:

I found some naturally formed dungeons beneath my house. They have these diagonally carved patterns that steadily go downwards as you can see here. You can find a lot of good stuff inside dungeons. They scare the life out of me though! I have like 50 bajillion torches down there. Getting attacked by enemies in the dungeons is no joke..

Figure 7

Figure 7:

As for the non-dungeon parts of my house, I dug my own holes, as deep as I could. The deeper you go, the better the stuff you will find. I placed the three torches at the top to remind me where I entered. Then I built circular stairs on the opposite side of the wall in order to climb back out.

Figure 8

Figure 8:

Before, I had a little hole on the top of my house to look up and see when the sun would come up, but it was hella ghetto... So I decided to chop off my ceiling and add a layer of glass, so I could look at the sky from inside my house. The exterior of my house looked like this at this point.

Figure 9

Figure 9:

Throughout my experience playing Minecraft, I realized that I die a lot. Especially at night. So I would be thrown into absolute darkness ready to be killed again. So I decided to mine a cave leading from my house to my spawning point and throw a door there. So that way, whenever I die I can walk straight to my house. It was never that long of a walk in the first place, but I felt safer doing this. You can see my initial house in the background on the left.

Figure 10

Figure 10:

Not too long ago I found out that you can add these cool things called Texture Packs to change the way the game looks. I didn't want to make any drastic change so I downloaded this texture pack that makes all the initial blocks look nicer. Comparing this image to Figure 3, you can see that the quality of the cobblestone and glass looks a lot nicer. I also mined out a huge portion of my house in the background for more space. 

Figure 11

Figure 11:

So I realized I wasn't getting anywhere with my dungeon house, so I decided to build a castle!!! Right here I started by standing on top of the doorway of my spawning point (see Figure 9), and laying out cobblestone to draw lines where the outer edges of my castle would be. This definitely wasn't final. A lot of changes have been made. I wanted to make everything symmetrical too. 

Figure 12

Figure 12:

So first I laid out the entire outline of my castle, then I took whatever cobblestone I had laying inside my chest and made my castle as high as I could. As you can see here, I already mined all the dirt off of the mountain on the left and my original house is on the right. The doorway to my spawning point is directly across from here. All of this rock within these walls needs to go! I need a flat land before I start the interior of my castle. Plus I need all the rock to increase the height of my castle. I want to be able to look over my randomly generated world from a really high location. It's going to be super high, and the inside of my castle is going to be awesome. I can't wait to get working on it! Right now I'm doing the tedious work of clearing out all this stuff in the middle...

Figure 13

Figure 13:

Here's the outside of my castle at the entrance. I'll improve the way it looks later. All the mountain on the right needs to go too, so the exterior of my castle looks half decent. Unless I can come up with a creative way to blend the side of my castle with nature. I've demolished so much stuff that I think it's too late already..

===

Some day I want to be able to make things like the above pictures. Some people are fricken AMAZING!

Pull Up Your Pants

You know it's embarrassing when you go out to dinner with your friend's family and his/her mom tells you to pull up your pants..

Tonight I was invited to go out to a thanksgiving dinner with my friend's family and all of her youth group friends/family. It was a lot of fun and the food was absolutely delicious. Especially the turkey! Usually turkey is kind of dry when you get to the white part in the middle, but not this turkey. The entire thing was amazing. It was salty all over, I absolutely loved it.

On our way walking to the house, my friend's mom told her (in Vietnamese) to tell me to pull up my pants. It was embarrassing! I guess everyone has a different definition and opinion towards sagging, but I don't sag on purpose. My pants just kind of hang 2-3 inches from my waist. I don't pull them down past my butt nor to my knees.

It pains me to think that my someone's mother looks down upon me for something like that. Hopefully it's not a big deal to her. I have a hard time communicating with her due to her lack of english.

Five Day Weekend, Thoughts on Groups, Extra Painful Kung Fu, and No Jury Duty!

My school is closed for today and Thursday, so I get a nice five day weekend for Thanksgiving! I definitely have homework, but the semester is almost over, so I'll just have to man up through it. I have to type up my entire 10-14 page essay for english class. It's gonna suck, but it's the last essay for the semester. Otherwise, I plan to spend the rest of my weekend chillin, relaxin, and playing Minecraft. YEAH.

On Monday, I decided to stop by at Daiso to browse their Japanese goods. To be honest, I felt like a little girl in there. Everything was so cute! I ended up shopping on a whim, which is bad because I my wallet empties fast when I shop on a whim. I think I get it from my parents. They always come home with the most random things. So I walked out with a bunch of origami paper, Hi-chews, and a t-shirt with a cute panda on it.

Tuesday, I arrived to school wearing my awesome new panda shirt, but as soon as my friend saw it she pointed at it and said, "Nice panda shirt... That EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD HAS." I know she meant no offense when she said that, but it made me self conscious almost instantly. At that moment I figured, yeah, the shirt was only 7 bucks, and what asian doesn't like pandas? At that point I wasn't surprised that many asians happened to own the same shirt. In fact my friend had one of her own which she bought from Japantown for only $5. Oh well. I still like the shirt..

It felt pointless to come to school on Tuesday because it was the last day before the break, but I still went anyways. I arrive at 8:30am everyday, but my first class wasn't until 10:30am, so I decided to take a 2 hour nap in the library while sitting at the table with my friends. Later on, just before 10:00am, I was awakened by my ex-girlfriend making a bunch of noise. Shortly after, her friend/group members from her english class arrived to discuss an essay project they had due pretty soon. At first they were just standing there with a blank look on their faces making small talk with my ex. I didn't want them to feel excluded or uncomfortable or anything so I said, "Hey, why don't you guys grab some seats and sit down with us?" After they sat down, my ex introduced them to all of us. A couple minutes later another group member approached us and I saw the same exact scene all over again, "Hey, why don't you grab a seat and sit with us?" I wanted to create a comfortable and friendly atmosphere for everyone. Back in high school it was all about groups and clicks. I don't want the same thing to happen in college.

In my freshman and sophomore year I had different groups of friends that had different agendas and I was always faced with having to choose which group of friends I wanted to hang out with. If I hung out with one, the other would get a little mad, "Aye Tim, come on! Hang out with us!" Or something along those lines.

A little later on, three more girls arrived to talk to one of the english group members, and he stood up. Noticing the three girls I said, "Damn, you a ladies man!" and everyone laughed a little. I turned around and made a little small talk with the girls. I wanted to be as open as possible. I wanted to create a comfortable atmosphere where no one feels limited to just who their own friends are. I want to be able to meet a lot of new people in college, but I noticed a lot of the younger (mainly freshman) students in community college are still clicking up. After the three girls left and the guy sat back down, the english group started having a warm conversation amongst each other, while over to my other side, I see my other friends huddling up talking to each other. Two separate groups sitting at the same table.. And I was just sort of.. In between.. I started talking to both groups (separately) trying to think of ways to get both of them to open up to each other. Unfortunately for me, it was already time to go to my first class. I wished I could have skipped class just to spend more time with these people, but I had to go to class.

It just felt like the whole time I was trying to create an open atmosphere, but what was everyone else thinking? Do other people think the same thing as me? When I talk to other people usually try not to make the other person uncomfortable. If they say something awkward (on purpose or by accident), I don't point it out to them, I just brush it off or play along with them. I don't want people to feel uncomfortable or self conscious or anything when they're talking to me (although I don't always succeed). It just seemed like the groups before my eyes were casually talking to each other like any other day (which is fine), but it's like I wanted everyone to open up to each other. Didn't seem like the thought crossed anyone else's mind. I wonder what other people think in situations like this. I wonder if some people even notice it.

I must have been in a good mood on Tuesday or something because I was like holding doors open for everyone. I just felt like being nice..

After school finally ended, I stopped by at In n' Out to take a piss, except I was holding the doors open for people as they passed through hahaha. After that, I headed over to Michael's (arts and crafts store) and bought a sketch book for my friend. At first I was going to buy a really cheap one, but they just weren't very attractive. I figured, if this person is going to be using it a lot and going to be drawing in it all the time, might as well get something that will last, right? So I decided to buy a nicer looking one. I found some cool hard cover ones with spiral rings so you can flip the cover all the way around. It was a choice between a Sketch Book and a Drawing Book. What was the difference? No idea. I decided to ask an employee, but he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. It was almost embarrassing, but hey at least he tried. I smiled and thanked him as he walked away. The sketch book was cheaper with more pages and had "sketch paper" whereas the drawing book was a little more expensive and had less pages, but had "cream drawing paper". The sketch book had picture of drawings made from pencils and colored pencils, while the drawing book had pictures with charcoal and pastels and pencils alike. And I knew my friend likes to use charcoal in her drawings sometimes. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the drawing book was higher quality, so I decided to pick that one up. Sometimes you gotta put a lot of thought into things like this. It ended up being about $30, but no worries, I think it was a worthy investment. I hope she likes it!

Later on I headed out to kung fu. The same teacher was there again. Even though he can't really speak english he seemed to be more open to me than any of my other classmates. Probably because we met last thursday, and most of the students this time were new to him. He occasionally approached me and whispered things to me like about how tired he was because he had been teaching kung fu all day long. He asked me my age and I found out that he's only 26 years old! I feel bad for thinking he was in his 30's now... He's a really good teacher though. We did so much kicking that all the muscles in my right leg felt extremely sore. They were practically giving out on me, but it didn't feel like muscle fatigue or anything. It didn't feel like I pulled anything either. They just felt "over" sore. By the end of class it was affecting my performance. It hurt to hold stances and even walk (although I wasn't limping or anything). It just REALLY hurt. When I got home, all the adrenaline and endorphins were gone, so I was feeling extra pain. I took an ibuprofen, but I could barely walk when I got home. I tried typing up this blog, but I passed out on my couch. When I woke up, my mom was using my computer, so I tried getting off my couch, but apparently the circulation in my legs were being cut off some how, so when I stood up, everything just instantly gave out on me and I started to collapse straight to the floor. Luckily my mom caught me midway. I waddled my way out into the living room, and then passed out on the living room couch. Later on, my mom woke me up telling me to just go to bed. I was too exhausted to get anything done that night. For the first time in the past month, I actually got 10 hours of sleep. It made me really happy.

A while back I got a letter in the mail saying that I needed to report for jury duty because I'm 18 years old now (and registered to vote), and I was trippin out big time! I absolutely did not want to go to jury duty. Apparently you go in and they ask you questions and based off your answers, they decided whether they want you to be in the jury or not. A long time ago, my piano teacher told me he would be as biased as possible so that way they wouldn't select him. I didn't understand what he was talking about until now, so I decided to do the same thing. Honestly, I don't have the attention span to do jury duty, and if I did do it, I wouldn't be able to go to school for the days that I do it. Plus I wouldn't get paid that much either. It's just not worth it. Maybe when I'm older I would be interested in experiencing it. My mom and I did some research and we found out that if you're scheduled (or re-scheduled) to holidays like thanksgiving or Christmas, then you might not have to do it. Luckily for me I was scheduled for the 24th of November!! I don't have to do anything! And I'm good for the rest of the year too. I was so happy to find out about this.

Today I'm about to go out to a thanksgiving dinner with my friend, then tomorrow I'm going to my grandma's house for another thanksgiving dinner. I'm about to get fat! Can't wait.

(Type 2) Boros Gets Lucky

So I decided to take the Kuldotha Red deck apart and try a more solid build for Boros. It was basically the same list as before, but I replaced the Spikeshot Elders with Cunning Sparkmages, and the Tunnel Ignus's for Kor Skyfishers.

Lands (24):
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Evolving Wilds
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Marsh Flats
5 Mountain
5 Plains

Creatures (22):
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Plated Geopede
4 Goblin Guide
4 Kor Skyfisher (I still dislike them, but they really came in handy!)0
3 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Cunning Sparkmage (A lot easier than the the Elder! Considering putting 4)

Spells (10):
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Journey to Nowhere 
3 Burst Lightning 

Equipment (4):
3 Adventuring Gear
1 Basilisk Collar

Sideboard (15):
1 Journey to Nowhere (In case I need to remove more stuff)
1 Basilisk Collar (Against artifact removal, I might need backup)
3 Mark of Mutiny (It's better than I thought)
3 Celestial Purge (In case I saw mono red, or UB control)
2 Koth the Hammer (Useless)
3 Revoke Existance (Mediocre)
2 Emeria Angel (Never needed them. Wanted to maintain speed)


Throughout the tourney I realized my only weapon is speed. With Titans being the staple of most bigger decks these days, it's nearly impossible for me to win late game. After Sunday, I realized that Boros isn't that consistent too..


Round 1: A fun homebrew deck
My first opponent was playing a UG homebrew deck that ran Kraken's, Leviathans, Octopuses, etc. Quest for Ula's Temple basically. Game 1 he gets 2 counters on the quest before I kill him. I board in Revoke Existance, but they become useless! Well luckily, one hits Ratchet Bomb, but otherwise in game 2 he gets Birds of Paradise and Lotus Cobra, then hard casts that 8/8 Leviathan that turns everything into Islands. It was an embarrassing loss.... Game 3 I out run him. 1-0


Round 2: RUG
The same guy I lost to in the semi-finals of last Friday's draft. I don't remember how this match-up turned out, but he ended up beating me extremely easily. His Mana Leaks and Lightning bolts took care of literally EVERYTHING I played.. 1-1


Round 3: Homebrew Necrotic Ooze
I got paired down this round. My deck walked right through him in game 1. Game 2 my opening hand consisted of 2 Steppe Lynx and 2 Goblin guide. He managed to get 2 Consume the Meeks off, but I ended up drawing into a ton more creatures. Lucky me!


Top 4 Round 1: UG Titan (homebrew?)
An amazing deck for something he whipped up in the morning. Basically he ramps into Summoning Trap or Titans or Avenger of Zendikar. Basically... Avenger of Zendikar, make a ton of tokens. Rite of Replication kicked. Make another 23049823094820 tokens. Primeval Titan, fetch lands, and other ramp spells to make the tokens huge. Swing for hundreds and hundreds of damage...... The guys told me the only way to win was to get nut draws. Game 1 I mulligan into a shitty hand. Game 2 I go turn 1: Goblin guide. Turn 2: Steppe Lynx. Turn 3: Double Steppe Lynx (3 total). Then every top deck from there was a fetch land. Nutty-much? Game 3: I get a hand with Goblin Guide, Stoneforge Mystic, Adventuring Gear, and 4 lands. Keepable? Dunno, I gave it a shot. I get the Guide out, and then the Stoneforge Mystic out with Adventuring gear, then I got him to 10 life. But my Goblin Guide draws him into 2 Summoning Traps, which both get Avenger of Zendikar.. 


I really want to make my deck mono-red, but I don't have the money for it. Should I try playing this deck again next sunday? We'll see.


After the tourney I spent the next hour trading a fatass stack of cards with my friend. It was a fun trade. I'm going to try to make a boros Elder Dragon Highlander deck.

(FNM4) Make Up Your Mind!! What Is That?! Four Colors?!

Tonight I wanted to try a little bit harder since all of the drafts I've done with Scars have been absolute failures. Things actually didn't turn out so bad. Well... Actually they did, but a little better than usual!  

I thought to myself, "I need to pay attention to signals this time," because I never did before and they're really important apparently. I also realized I ruin other peoples' drafts when I mess with signals. Unfortunately I didn't understand the signals at all. I guess it's just going to take a lot of practice.

Ok so.. Pack one, pick one, I open a Steel Hellkite. Bomb; I grabbed it without looking at anything else. Pick two, I'm faced with a foil Darksteel Axe and the rare is missing. What kind of signal am I supposed to get from this? I dunno... I don't remember what the rest of pack consisted of, but my friend told me Darksteel Axe isn't much of an early pick.. I feel bad for not thoroughly examining the rest of the pack now. Pick three I noticed three black cards, a red, a white, some other stuff, and artifacts. So I thought to myself, "red and white probably isn't available.." Not the greatest assumption, but I'm still trying to learn what signals are. Now that I think about it, I should have looked at what the good cards were.. I ended up ignoring the colors and picking a Perilous Myr.. Does grabbing an artifact send any signals? I dunno, I felt so confused at the time. Starting my draft without several artifacts I didn't even know what signals were anymore... Except I noticed that a lot of blue was coming my way. Blue is my least favorite color, but I always end up playing it! It's always passed to me in large numbers, and if it's available then why not take it? So I spent the rest of pack one grabbing blue cards. Pack two, since I took pack one's blue cards, I was being passed more blue cards in pack two. That's just how it goes. Somewhere between pack one and two, I noticed I was lacking removal, so I decided to grab a Bloodshot Trainee to compliment my Darksteel Axe, which then later led me to grabbing a Barbed Battlegear to help him out even more. Since I started the draft with a bunch of artifacts and some equipment, I started to grab white weenies (Sunspear Shikari, Auriok Sunchaser, etc), but that didn't get me anywhere because white was clearly already taken by everyone else. At this point I had already ruined the draft by tampering with the colors and my pool had mixed colors.. It wasn't that big of a deal though because the other two guys at the end of the table were fairly new, so I think they ruined that side of the table more than I did on my side. As pack three came, out of nowhere, I was being passed red cards like crazy! Pick two Arc Trail, pick three Galvanic Blast, pick four Oxidda Scrapmelter, pick five Embersmith. What on earth was everyone taking over these cards?! Pack two went to waste with those white cards, but pack three practically built the second half of my deck. Guess I got lucky.. When I took a glance at my pool during pack three. I had blue cards, some white cards and some red cards, along with whatever random cards I got left with on the last picks. The guy sitting next to me saw my pool too and he was like, "My God! Make up your mind! What is that?! Four colors?!" I was already being blamed for ruining the draft by that point, but it's okay, I was still satisfied with my deck. 

Lands 16:

9 Island

7 Mountain

Creatures 18:

2 Vedalken Certarch

1 Darkslick Drake

1 Neurok Invisimancer

1 Lumengrid Drake

1 Embersmith

1 Bloodshot Trainee

1 Oxidda Scrapmelter

3 Neurok Replica

2 Snapsail Glider

2 Gold Myr

1 Perilous Myr

1 Iron Myr

1 Steel Hellkite

Other Spells 6:

2 Stoic Rebuttal

1 Arc Trail

1 Galvanic Blast

1 Darksteel Axe

1 Barbed Battlegear

I didn't realize I picked up nothing but creatures. I also realized that 70% my deck was control, and I didn't have enough aggression in some cases, but I think thats why I suck at control... I don't know how to play it properly.

Round 1:

My first opponent was one of the new faces of the night. Surprisingly enough, I actually saw numerous new faces, which is always a good thing. I love to see new players. Not only because they're easy to beat (hehe), but because its always great to expand the Magic community. New players is always a plus (as long as they're not dicks). Unfortunately for this guy, I only saw him play maybe 3 or 4 (not-so-playable) cards before I got him to zero life in both games. I don't even remember what colors he was playing.. (Sorry buddy!) 1-0

Round 2:

My second opponent was a fairly large filipino man with spiked hair. He seemed to be pretty experienced because not only was his deck good (Green and Black), but he was the one complaining to everyone at our table. "Who does that?!" "Come on guys, lets draft seriously now." "Who's ruining the draft?!" "Wow, seriously?" Things like that.. Anyways, I'm pretty sure I could have beaten him, but he had the ONE card that hard countered my deck. Asceticism. Not a single card in my deck could put a stop to that. My Vedalken Certarchs couldn't tap anything but his lands (or be chumps). My burn couldn't go anywhere but his face. My bloodshot trainee became a chump. My Perilous Myr didn't do anything, but chump then go to face.. The way my deck was supposed to work, was to slowly control them and win with the few fliers I had, but since I couldn't target his creatures, I couldn't keep up with him. Game 1 he won with Untamed Might/poison. Game two I started to lock him down, until he pulled Asceticism.. He won with Strata Scythe and normal damage... He pulled out Asceticism in both games.. 1-1

But then he dropped, so technically I got the "win", but not the points, nor the booster pack. Which meant that my next opponent was someone who was 2-0...

Round 3: 

Yup, a 2-0 got paired down to me. Which meant it was going to be an uphill battle. It was the filipino guy that was sitting next to me that thought I was drafting four colors. He was playing Red Black aggro. He said his deck was fast, but he knew my deck was control oriented so he had a feeling I would beat him. Anyways, game 1 he started off with Painsmith. Turn 3, he played Strider Harness, swung for 4, then played another Painsmith. Turn 3 for me, I Arc Trailed both, preventing me from having the mana to play any creatures. Turn 4, he played Vulshok Heartstoker, pumping itself, then equipping the Harness and swinging for 5, putting me at 11 life. Fast deck indeed! I started playing some nice blockers like Neurok Replica to help me out. He managed to get me at 4 life before I stabilized and won with a bunch of fliers on the field. Game 2, I was a little more cautious. As long as I could survive the first several turns, then I could win. Since he was constantly tapped out pushing out his aggro, I knew it would be safe to play my Steel Hellkite. I swung with it blowing up all of his 2 drops, which put him at 15. Next turn I swung blowing up all his 4 drops which put him at 10 life. I somehow had 8 mana and two myrs on the field at the same time, so I swung for 10 the following turn with a pumped Steel Hellkite hahaha. 2-1

I guess my tie breakers weren't so bad, which put me into the top 4! I couldn't believe it I was so happy. To be honest, I actually had the potential to win the entire thing, but luck wasn't on my side in the top four. 

Semi-Finals Top Four:

My opponent was a white man who usually plays Type 2 on sundays, but I guess he was drafting for fun. He was playing green and white I think. Game 1, I started with a 5 land hand and mulliganed to 6 cards. He started off really strong with a Myrsmith, but I stalled with my Neurok Replicas. I ended up being mana screwed with 4 islands begging for red. During that time he was poking at me with a Sunspear Shikari equipped with a Blade Pinions. At this point I made the hugest mistake. I had 2 Neurok Replicas out (one was Arrested), 2 Snapsail Glider, and a Vedalken Certarch. There was a Stoic Rebuttal in my hand. I was spacing out waiting for him to finish his turn, and he played a Tumble Magnet. "Okay..." I said as I spaced off. 10 seconds later I look back down at the table and say "WAIT! Is it too late to counter that?!" I forgot I had the Stoic Rebuttal ready to counter, but then he said, "Well.. You already said 'okay'.." It cost me the game. He tapped my Vedalken Certarch at the end of my turn, then swung with his entire army or myrs and other mediocre creatures. He already had me at a pretty low life so at that point I was panicking. I finally drew a mountain and played Oxidda Scrapmelter to kill his Blade Pinions, but it was too late. His Tumble Magnet allowed him to swing at me with opportunities my deck shouldn't have allowed him to. If I countered that tumble magnet (and maybe was a little less land screwed), I'm almost positive my deck could have taken him. Game 2 I drew maybe 5 or 6 lands in a row? What do you for 6 turns with nothing but land? You lose. 

The other two player in the top 4 was my friend and some other white guy that I played against earlier for fun. My deck pooped all over his deck, and he beat my friend! That means if I went to the finals against him, I would have won! Oh well, until next time.

===

My friends and I were planning on going to Mad Fish for dinner again, but since we both made it into the top four we didn't make it to Mad Fish fast enough. They closed right when we got there! So we ended up going to In n' Out instead. It wasn't enough food for me, but still delicious nonetheless. We spent our dinner talking about drafting, and Starcraft II hahaha. We ended up going home and playing Starcraft until 3:30 in the morning. We more times than we should have, but it was still fun. I can't play numerous games of Starcraft for some reason though. I had an extremely sharp pain on the sides of head from all the constant thinking. I don't know how Starcraft caused it, but it really hurt. Fun night though! I went home in a really good mood.

Fighting For My Classes! (And Parking..)

So this morning, I woke up at 6:35 and sat and stared at my computer until registration opened online. Today was the day most of the freshman got to register for their spring classes, so I was sure many other people were doing the same thing. I was so tired though! When I got to my room, I put on some trance music, turned up the bass, then blasted my speakers super loud. Once 7:00am hit, I tried logging in, but my internet timed out! As soon as this happened I started trippin big time. I closed Firefox and pulled up Google Chrome and logged in there. Luckily for me I managed to get and and punch in all the numbers of the classes I wanted instantaneously. I wanted to check my student record to make sure I actually signed up for the classes, but my internet timed out again. That's when I realized, the server was being overloaded with bajillions of college kids trying to sign up for their classes! I somehow managed to swipe on a 2 minute chance to grab all my classes. I called some friends to check on them and they were still stuck refreshing their internet browsers over and over again. Sucks for them, I guess I got lucky!

I decided to stay at home and sleep for another hour because basically my first class on tuesdays and thursdays is at 10:30, but I still go at 8:30 like mondays and wednesdays because I wanted to build a good habit of waking up early and I liked being able to have a guaranteed parking spot. Recently a friend of mine told me that there's plenty of parking between 10:00am and 10:30am, so I decided to sleep in today and come to school at that time. Here's the pros and cons:

Pros:
- I got extra sleep which made me feel more energetic in the morning
-There was absolutely no traffic, I got to school in 10-15 minutes
-There was time to do other things at home in the morning (IE: last second homework, eat)

Cons:
- I arrived at school at 10:00 and found parking at 10:20.. I think it's because people get out of class around 10:15, so I basically have to wait until the right window of opportunity to swoop on a parking spot when kids get out of class. Unfortunately there's like 50 other cars circling the parking lot like vultures too, so it's not so easy..
- My leg was about to die from the constant pushing in and out of my heavy clutch. My car felt like it was about to blow up after driving over so many speed bumps for 20 minutes.

I noticed that other cars were arriving after me, but getting spots before me because they were doing what most of us make fun of the most. When you follow someone walking back to their car and wait until they get in and back out and leave. In the shoes of the person leaving, it's the most annoying thing in the world. It happens to me all the time. But after today, now I realize, the desperation of trying to find a parking spot. I tried not to do that, but I missed out on more parking spots than I should have by not doing it.. Oh well, I think I'm just going to stick with coming to school early.

Crazy Hard Kung Fu

My main teacher apparently has a hole in his stomach. According to my mom that's called an ulcer. So he had to go out to Seattle to get it all fixed up and won't be back for about a week. Since he's gone, our master brought over a replacement, Sifu Chen. Or at least I think that was his name. He looked to be in his late 20's, early 30's, but I could be totally wrong, and I apologize if am.. He couldn't really speak any english at all, so my two other classmates tonight had to translate for me. It wasn't that bad though.

At the beginning of class, Master told him something in chinese, and my classmates were like, "UUUUGGGHHHH" and i was like, "Huh? WHAt? What's goin on???" Apparently our master told Sifu Chen to work us really really hard. We spent the entire class doing basics I think, but they were the HARDEST basics of my life. He worked us to the bone. It was pretty legit. It actually took more than half of the class period for everyone to find out I'm still new to kung fu. The teacher was telling me to do stuff and I had no idea what I was doing. He kept giving me faces as if I were half retarded or something until was he finally like, "OOhhhhhh". After that he walked me through everything and made sure I learned my basics properly. By the end of class I was shaking in like every muscle in my body, and was practically panting on the drive home. It was a rough workout, but I really like hard workouts. They release endorphins and make me feel really good about myself. Hard workouts leave a very satisfying feeling, I love it.

Camping Out! Online...

Tomorrow is registration for Spring classes 2011!!! The math class I want only has a few spots left and I know a bunch of students in my current math class want one of those spots! I'm gonna have to wake up first thing in the morning. Registration opens at 7:00am so I'm going to have to be staring at my computer screen before then. My friends are waking up at 6:00am in the morning for it. They said they were going to have all the windows and tabs open and everything so they can sign up as soon as 7:00 hits. I guess I'm going to have to do pretty much the same thing. Except I'm going to wake up at 6:30-6:45ish haha. All the more sleep, the better.

Hmm, I wonder if it's like this at other community colleges? And I wonder if it's like this at universities? I should ask my cousin..

My classes are pretty well compacted. I wanted to take a programming class, but it conflicted with my classes. I also wanted to take a jazz piano class for fun but that also conflicted with my schedule. I'm planning on taking 15 units this coming semester. I think that's enough to handle for now. Especially since I'm looking for a part time job, I don't know if I'll be able to handle it then or not..

===

5 units: Math 20 (Pre-calculus; because I didn't pay attention in high school)
4 units: Chem 31 (Intro to chemistry; because I didn't pay attention in high school and I'm clearly not ready for Chemistry 1A, which is college level)
3 units: Psy1 (Psychology, just because it's transferable General Ed)
3 units: Engl 4 (English 4. Critical thinking/reading and analyzing fictional stuff. Required.)

All the engineering classes I need require Math1 and Chem1, but I screwed around in high school, so I have to waste a semester working my way down there...

(Type 2) Piloting Kuldotha Red

The other night my friend said, "Hey I got a new list! It's pretty good you should try it out!"

November 14, 2010

It's a mono-red Goblin deck that focuses on sacrificing an early artifact to Kuldotha Rebirth then dishing out some super fast damage for turn 3-4 wins.

Lands (19):
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Arid Mesa
9 Mountain
1 Teetering Peeks
1 Smoldering Spires

Creatures (15): 
4 Goblin Guide
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Chieftain
3 Spikeshot Elder

Artifact Creatures (5):
4 Memnite
1 Molten-tail Masticore

Artifacts (9):
3 Panic Spellbomb
2 Mox Opal
1 Chimeric Mass
1 Infiltration Lens
1 Trusty Machete
1 Basilisk Collar

Other Spells (12):
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Galvanic Blast
1 Devastating Summons
1 Forked Bolt
4 Kuldotha Rebirth

Sideboard (15):
2 Sylvok Lifestaff
2 Koth of the Hammer (supposed to Molten-Tail Masticore, but I can't afford them)
2 Perilous Myr
1 Chimeric Mass
2 Shatter
3 Arc Trail
3 Mark of Mutiny

Everyone said it was an easy deck to pilot, but obviously I'm terrible at Magic so I had a pretty hard time. Basically you want to get a turn 1 Kuldotha Rebirth with one of the 0drop artifacts, and then a turn 2 Goblin Bushwhacker and a Memnite then a turn 3 Goblin Chieftain. Or something along those lines.. Anything that will get those three goblin tokens bashing at your opponents face in the first few turns.

Round 1: Elf Aggro
This is the kid who runs Steel Hellkites in his elf deck, which according to my other friend is really bad. As the game started off, none of my goblins were able to push through his Nissa's Chosens, and he was able to pull out his Steel Hellkite which blew all of my goblins up... Both games.. 0-1

Round 2: Some sort of combo deck?
I couldn't figure out what this guy was running. It had Lux Cannons, Mimic Vats, Frost Titans, Renegade Doppelgangers, and Putrefaxes, but otherwise, that's all I saw. He ALMOST killed me in one turn with the Doppelganger and Putrefax, but my deck was too fast. I 2-0ed him really fast. 1-1

Round 3: UB Control
The father of my first opponent. I would say UB is very similar to UW except it runs a lot more removal and Grave Titans/Abyssal Persecutors instead of Sun Titans/Baneslayers. Game 1 my deck managed to do its job. Game 2 I played the whole game with only three lands.. three lands is enough to play one card per turn which can be Mana Leaked... I didn't even come close.. Game 3 was a silly game. I mulliganed to five card hand with one land in it, so I didn't have much hope, but my friend said to never give up so I gave it a try. Turn 1 Spikeshot Elder. Turn 2, swing for 1. Turn 3 Goblin Chieftain, swing for 4. Chieftain gets bounced multiple times for the next few turns until it gets mana leaked. I managed to get out another creature or two and ping him a couple times with my Spike Shot Elder, which he eventually Doom Bladed. The turn after that he played Abyssal Persecutor and started beating me down. I Mark of Mutiny'ed it desperately which put him at 4 life. After that his Persecutor put me at -6 life, but he had no way of getting rid of it. We spent the next 1000 turns waiting until we drew an answer. I was waiting for burn spells (which I boarded most out...) and my opponent was waiting for a way to get rid of his Persecutor. We were the only ones left in the round, so everyone was circled around table facepalming as we went through a long series of, "Draw... Go..." Time of the round was called and it came down to the last 5 turns. My opponent had 3 tries to find an answer to his Abyssal Persecutor. Unfortunately for me he drew a Preordain and scryed both cards to the bottom of his deck. 4 turns passed and none of us drew a thing and then came the final draw... He pulled a Jace the Mind Sculptor. "YES!!!!" I clapped my hands together in excitement thinking that I just got away with a draw. "Wait!" The fat man said, "I can bounce my Persecutor with Jace." 1-2.......

Round 4: BYE?!?! WTF WHY

I ended up not making it into the top 4, but the deck was still a lot of fun to play. There was someone running a Boros deck there that night which he went to the top 4 with a 2-2 record, which was pretty nice to see. I'm always a supporter to Boros. My other friend was testing out his recently built boros deck on me too. I was really glad to see boros decks there that night. It makes me want to give my Boros deck another shot next Sunday. But then again I should put more practice into this Goblin deck too..

The Past Week In a Nutshell..

I haven't had a chance to blog on here in a few days. A lot can happen within a few days! I've been pretty busy lately, I usually don't blog unless I have a lot of time to just sit down and pour out my thoughts onto my blog. So lets seeeeeee....

It turns out that post I made about killing two birds with one stone was completely wrong. Just a quick recap, I had an essay to write for English and a speech to prepare for Speech class. Both were supposed to take a side on a debatable topic, so I thought I was going to be able to do both on the same topic. Unfortunately it turned out that the english essay was only supposed to be one of three things: racial profiling, terrorism, or illegal immigration. It concerned me because I didn't pay attention to any of the class lectures regarding those three topics. So basically I walked into my weekend knowing I had two assignments to finish that I hadn't even started yet.

Thursday (November 11): Most K-12 schools had no school today due to Veteran's day, yet I still had school! Oh well it wasn't that big of a deal. I was planning on staying at school (or going home then coming back) to see a live student speech for extra credit for my speech class before kung fu started. The extra credit would've really helped, but I ended up doing something else instead.. Kung fu was a lot of fun. We did sparring tonight! Sparring is always ridiculously tiring, I actually only went up once because I have like..... No stamina. Oh well.. My teacher actually said my punches and kicks were really good, he said that I just need to learn more grappling. During the sparring match I participated in, I was actually able to successfully pull off one take down! You wouldn't believe how proud of myself I was. My opponent's entire leg just somehow ended up in my arm's grasp as I spent the next 5 seconds trying as hard as I could to trip him, which eventually worked. That pretty much made my night. I think I beat him by one point. After kung fu, I was invited to meet up at one of the dorms near DeVry University (I think), to cube draft. We managed to get six people in on it, and it turned out being a lot of fun. The deck I drafted ended up sucking huge balls, but it was still fun nonetheless. I ended up going home pretty late.

Friday (November 12): Since it was Veteran's day yesterday, most of the K-12 schools got both Thursday and Friday off, so a bunch of high school friends and I decided to hang out today. Unfortunately for me I was the only one with a drivers license so obviously I ended up driving the entire day. It kinda sucked having to drive all over the place, but it was still fun. The initial plan was to meet up at Bay Fair Mall (I think that's what it's called) and watch a random movie at the Century Theaters over there, but then the planned changed. I was supposed to go pick up one of the guys from San Leandro area and bring him back, but I didn't want to drive out that far. Luckily for me, he took the bart to Union City so I wouldn't have to drive so far. I called the  girls asking them what the plan was and they told me to go rent a movie, but we didn't know what movie to get, so we ended up just grabbing Jack Ass 2. That movie's always entertaining hahaha. Quick sidenote: I rented that movie from the Red Box and I STILL HAVEN'T RETURNED IT YET. WHY DO I KEEP FORGETTING. Apparently it's a dollar per day you don't return it. I think I owe them like 5 or 6 dollars now. This sucks.. Anyways, we all met up at one of the houses and started watching Jack Ass 2, but then half way through the movie we got kicked out of the house because the girl's dad came home... I didn't know we were unwelcome at that house, a clearer heads up would've been nice.. So the other dude and I were just sitting in my car outside not knowing what to do. I decided to call the girls and ask them if they could just ask the dad if we could go inside the house. Instead, the girls pretended to "go to the park" and we all drove to Quickly's down the street. It was too expensive there, so I ended up driving everyone to Church's Chicken afterwards. The chicken was delicious and I was using a lot of gas, but oh well. Turned out the father of the house didn't mind us (males) coming inside, so we just spent the rest of the day playing Guitar Hero 3. Come nightfall, we all met up at my friend's youth group church thingy. To be honest I didn't know I was going to a youth group at first. I generally try not to go to anything religious because I'm Atheist and I feel uncomfortable being around a bunch of people who believe in something that I don't. It makes me self conscious to be within a community of people who believe in something that's the complete opposite of me. I know they probably don't care, but that's just how I feel on the inside. I never hurts to meet new people though. All of the youth group kids were really open and kind, it was definitely a pleasure to meet all of them. The guy running the whole thing even did an icebreaker thing so we could all get to know each other a little more. To be honest I don't remember a single thing anyone said about themselves, but the fact that we did it anyways made me feel a lot more comfortable around all those people I didn't know. That stuff works! It was movie night tonight, so we all watched To Save a Life. It wasn't the greatest movie in the world, but I definitely enjoyed it. I mean, I'm no movie critic, so I usually enjoy anything I watch. I really enjoyed it in the beginning and middle, but as the end approached, the movie started getting sort of... "God" intensive. It got a little too religious for me in the end, but hey, I shouldn't be one to complain because over all I enjoyed the movie. Makes me curious to see what other youth group days are like. When I got home I spent the rest of the night playing Minecraft.

Saturday (November 13): See previous post: "Back on the Bike! Catching Up With a Good Friend"
Basically I wanted to spend this Saturday starting my essay and speech, but I ended up spending the entire day at Logan.. Oh well.. Sunday for sure!

Sunday (November 14): I usually spend my Sundays playing cards, so I wanted to spend my afternoon playing some cards, then the rest of my day on homework, but the tournament ended up lasting the entire day! When I got home I tried starting my essay, but since I didn't know anything solid about racial profiling, terrorism, and illegal immigration, I spent the night researching and reading instead. I'll do the tournament report on a separate blog.

Monday (November 15): Today I had to buckle down for a pure homework day. Both my speech and essay was due Tuesday, so I had one day to start and finish everything. I wanted to take advantage of my three hour lunch, so I spent my entire school day researching and starting off my essay. I managed to get half of it done, and then finished it as soon as I got home. The essay really sucked. In fact, I have retype a lot of parts, but it was just a quick rough draft so I'll fix it later today. I then spent the rest of my evening half-assing my speech. All I was able to do by midnight was make a power point and an outline. I would have to make the note cards and actually plan out what I wanted to say the next day....

Tuesday (November 16): My lack of sleep was really starting to take a toll on me. Friday and Saturday I got 5 hours of sleep, and Sunday and last night I got 6.. I decided to spend my first two hour of school taking a nap in the library. It really helps, trust me. After my first class ended, I desperately tried to finish preparing my speech. It was so last second, it ended up sucking pretty bad, but I think it was worth at least a B..

Today: I want to spend my day relaxing today, but the essay and speech screwed me over so bad, I need to catch up on math now! I also need to go proofread my essay too. Eh, a little homework after school won't kill me. Oh yeah! An old man came first thing this morning and tuned our new baby grand piano. It sounds amazing!