School, Socialization, Skyrim.

This week has been quite busy. I finally caught up in every one of my classes despite gaining a social status in the state. I had a total of two English essays, one EAM essay, three math assignments, and three French assignments with a fourth due next week. I managed to knock everything out within a couple of days with the help of this amazing study group I've been getting together with. I'm pretty sure I slipped up witht he English essays, but my professor isn't even worried about anything but the final. A whopping five-page persuasive that determines if we've passed his class or not.

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but he's pretty serious about it.

On another good note: SOCIAL LIFE. Finally, I've been getting out of the house and going places to meet real people instead of joining them on TeamSpeak. As much as I claim to love the solitude, I think my attitude was due to the fact that I had no social life, therefore creating a virtual one. Vicious cycle.

So far I'm liking the college experience and I'm trying to shed some of that influence to my friends. Some have the ambition, but lack the motivation. The others are too busy with other things like their careers and their families. Half of my friends have kids already. I think I started a trend. I'm pretty sure New Jersey is poison, at least it was for me. You can't see it until you get out of the state, which you have to pay to do by the way.

In other news, my buddy Mark has started a blog about the amazing game of Skyrim. It's called "Stories from Skyrim" and it features his character and dragon slaying horse named Golden-Hooves the Dragon Slayer. Pretty unique name, eh? His page can be found in the link below, so if you're into Skyrim, check out his stories.

Stories from Skyrim by Mark H.

Video Games

I have very few things in this world that make me happy. Video games are an example of a daily pastime of mine. Most people would assume that I'm a loser or something for enjoying a video game, but put it into perspective. People watch movies that are influenced from books, other movies, video games, and most importantly, life experiences. Books are the same way. With the exception of some genres such as fantasy or sci fi, books and movies can be described as a reflection of someone's life experiences. Movies are generally the short and straight-to-the-point whereas books are permitted to be drawn out and take time describing all the details. Take a simple landscape for example: A book will tell you that it has many luscious trees, bushes, and clouds, but a movie will simply show you the landscape to see it for yourself. This is where most moviegoers find a problem when the movie they are watching is an adaptation of a book. They see it as either flaky or rushed and exclaim that the book was much better in the sense that it captured you into it's world and the movie just projected it to you.

Now, to my point: video games provide that perfect balance of intricate detail and immersion. They blend together gorgeous cinematics with descriptive dialogue and depth of character. Depending on the game, you can find yourself lost in the world for hours on end, just as you could with a book. You could also load it up and play for an hour or two, then tell yourself you have had enough for now. This compares quite closely with the length it takes to watch a movie and still enjoy a good plot.

Just because something is short does not mean it isn't thorough. This is not always the case, but people need to learn to make room for those who do not have the time to read seven or eight Harry Potter books, but instead opt for watching each movie to understand what's going on.

Now, back to video games. Video games provide me the entertainment I need with the immersion and gameplay that I yearn for, and most video games allow you to do something you can not in most books; control the outcome of the story. Games on today's market tend to have multiple plot twists that you can control depending on how the game is played and how you interact with the characters. This gives reason to play the game multiple times without the player feeling a sense of repetition. Each experience may be so unique that it can sometimes be referred to as a new game entirely. I won't go as far as to name examples, but you get the idea.

What I will tell you is that certain series of video games have as large of a fanbase as some books do. Midnight releases of said games will have eager gamers standing outside of the doors of their local game store, waiting for the doors to open. This can be seen as both blind consumerism and loyalty to the series. All in all, video games provide just as much entertainment to one person as a book would to another. Now that we have that established, I can safely say that I will be standing outside of GameStop's door until Skyrim is released. Later!

Bought My First Vacuum

It's official. I bought my very first vacuum cleaner for my place. I am now a man.

Space Paintings

So I decided to try out spray paint art. I've seen it done in person and on YouTube, and it looks so cool, I just had to try it. Went to Walmart and bought some cheap cans of spray paint and poster board. I had a knife and old magazines to use for detail, and I also grabbed a sponge for tree leaves. I only bought black and white to see how I could do. Here is the result of attempt #3. The first two are okay, but I liked this one the best.

I did the moon(s) first, then the stars, then came down and did the mountain backdrop and foreground. Went in with the knife and added lightning, trees, and detail to the mountains including some grass. Then went back with the sponge and gave the trees some leaves and finished off with my signature :D

I found some blue and green in my garage, so I tried another using those. The planet on the left looks kinda like earth, but it's moon is green, so yeah.... Anyways, I ended up messing up the sunrays and had to put a mountain there to fix it, so here is the result of that one:

If any of you are interested in this sort of art, it's really easy to get in to. These are both done without ANY prior knowledge. Also it important to WEAR A SAFETY MASK WHEN USING SPRAY PAINT unless you like having it in your nose. I do right now. It sucks. 

Another Week of Nothing

Pretty much the same around these parts. School is going well, I think. We don't really have grades yet, but I took almost all of my midterms with a B average. I'm trying to hold that average because I want scholarships for next year. I scored a 26 on my ACT and apparently that's good.

Other than that, I'm typing this on my brand new machine I built for the upcoming quarter. Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, and of course Skyrim.

Phenom II X6 1065
Gigabyte 970A Motherboard
1TB Seagate HDD
4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 6850
730WATT PSU
and Sunbeam Mid Tower Case to put it all in. My DVD writer wasn't outdated so I kept that, and I also included my optical drive from another computer I had. This system is awesome, but I'm still unsatisfied. I can run Fallout: NV perfectly modded but it still crashes. I'm thinking it's the game's code; very unstable.

And the best part is that I built two of these monsters. My roomate got the same exact parts besides the graphics card. Here's a pic of our desks set up when we put them together last week:

Timeline of My Absence

To catch you all back up with my life, I will give a lightly detailed chronological order of what happened the day I lost my job. 

I was called into a meeting.

I went to the meeting at 8:00am (store hours are 10:00-8:00)

On the way home I get a ticket.

Later that day the same cop pulls my uncle over while I was in the car.

Lets him go.

School starts two days later.

Completely overwhelmed with school because it's brand new to me.

Sort of depressed that my job is closing since it's a nice store and I like the work.

Get over it eventually. 

Daughter leaves a week later and I'm in school, doing my thing.

Car breaks down. 

Fix car a few days later and find out it wasn't really fixed.

Get over that, too.

Go to an interview for this great job opportunity.

Find out the training is only available during the day when I have school.

They tell me to come back in October when they start night training. 

Since then I've been doing nothing. 

So now that you all know what has happened, you could see why I would be excited that October is here. I need some money in my pocket so I can send more for my daughter's preschool. Oh yeah, SHE STARTED PRESCHOOL :D

And she's not even three yet. I love being a dad :)

I'm Back

I know it's been a while since I've written something since my daughter went back home, but I'm back with a whole new lineup of things that happened to me within the past few weeks. I also have a lot of reading to catch up on. Sorry guys. Promise I'm here for good :D

Preview of what's been going on - School, school, and more school. Meeting a few people here and there. My job, or lack of a job, has been really affecting me lately. More on all of this later! For now I'm off to get my oil changed. It's been at least 5,000 miles and I've been too broke to fix it. My Chrystler is ready to blow up anyway.

The Bunny Story and the Owl Story

"Once upon a time, there were three bunnies that lived in a burrow with their mommy and daddy. The burrow was made out of straw to keep the bunnies warm and fluff to keep the bunnies comfy when they went to sleep. Above the burrow was a big tree with a nest in it where three owls lived with their mommy and daddy. Their nest was made out of twigs and feathers to keep it soft and warm when the baby owls went to sleep. One day, the baby bunnies and the baby owls decided to go pick flowers. So the three baby bunnies ran out of the burrow, across the meadow, and into the flower field. Meanwhile, the baby owls flew out of the nest, across the meadow, and into their flower field. There were big flowers and small flowers, tall flowers and short flowers, red flowers and blue flowers, pink, purple, green, yellow, and there were even polka dotted flowers...."


This is my daughters favorite bedtime story that her mommy made up. She came down with her mom for a visit for two weeks and I get to tell it to her every night and sometimes when she takes a nap. Even though she's young, she remembers me and everything about me. She knows colors, names, body parts, animals, and numbers. She's really smart and courteous. If you offer something that she doesn't want, she lets out a petite "No, thank you!"

Cutest kid ever.

Charlie

It's official. We went to Wal-Mart today for our weekly shopping and decided that we should buy a fish. After looking around at all the tanks, we went with a Betta fish and we named him Charlie after setting up his tank. Since we can't afford a cat right now, I think this is an awesome addition to our place. He takes up no room on the bookshelf, and he's nice to look at. I think after we earn some money, we'll get a bigger tank. We bought plastic skull to put at the bottom, but the tank is really small. It came with an air pump and a light, though, so score 1 for Wal-Mart. After getting a small bag of gravel and some fish food, total cost of a new pet = $23. Not bad.

OH MY GOD CHECK OUT CHARLIE THE BETTA FISH!

As for the rest of the week, I haven't done much. I'm trying to get more hours at work so I can get more money, and I'm trying to finish up my school shopping. I nearly have all of my books and my first day starts on the 24th. I'm excited but hesitant because I was never a huge fan of school to begin with. I'm really looking forward to the social aspect of school. I'm not exactly the guy most people would walk up to for idle chit chat, but being around people my age might give me some incentive to make friends since I have none... yeah.

Anyways, sorry for taking forever to post guys. I haven't been online for a while and I have some catching up to do with all of your blogs. Looking forwards to comments!

Those who claim the credit claim the responsibility. 

Lazy Weekend

This weekend I haven't done anything. My school books have been coming in and now I'm waiting on the last few to finally show up. The past few nights I've been making some kick-ass food. A couple years ago, someone at an old job handed me some pasta and cabbage she had made with some hot sauce on top of it. I decided to remake the dish, and it was the shiz. Fo realz. Can you tell I'm white?

In other news: I won't be vising Jersey. However, my daughter will hopefully be flying down here for as long as she can :D IGETTOSEEMYSQUISHY!!!!!!

I love her more than cats. That's saying a lot. I mean, look at the comparison:

Wherever you go, there you are. -My grandfather used to tell me that. 

My Dad Always Told Me Not To Think Too Much

Or I'd go insane. I think he's right. I had one of those obsessive days where I would thing about something for a long time. Weight each factor and size up all of the competition to those factors. I thought so deeply into something that I could have written a book about that one particular moment I was thinking about. Since our brains don't think in complete sentences, I was having a hard time keeping my thoughts organized, and I ended up projecting them instead of writing them inside of my head. Things would pan out like a movie or a music video. I think a lot of people do this, and even my manager says he rarely has days where he doesn't think this way. I can tell. He's really obsessive about what he does and thinks.

Think. Think. Think. 

Have you ever had a moment that you don't want to end? It doesn't necessarily have to be with someone you love. Hell, it could be with someone you hate and still enjoy it enough. It's a shame that I think this way. I feel like I miss out on a lot of opportunities because my brain get's in the way. Probably why I'm so self conscious.

EDIT: I sound like such a downer. This is not the angst you're looking for. You need to go about your business. Move along. Move along. 

Your car keys are a lot like love. You look everywhere once you've lost them, but they only turn up once you've stopped looking. 

All of a Sudden....Work Ethic!

I don't know where it came from, but all of a sudden I'm not stressed out about going to work ever since I got this job. It's relaxing to know that I don't have to be responsible for doing everything for a change. Today was no exception. It was an extremely lazy day, and I'm getting better at throwing myself at people in order to get them to buy clothing. I'm not used to so much attention. As charismatic as I am, I'm a pretty self conscious person. The day ended pretty nicely as I had company throughout my shift :D

So. Blog. Blog...what else do I want to say. Oh I know! I want to start a thought for the..erm..day? I post multiple times a day, so how exactly do I do this? Maybe thought for the hour? Yeah, thought for the hour.
So my thought for the hour is this:

Don't sell yourself short. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing it. 

Arkansas Has It's Beauty

I was skeptical when I moved to this state, but with sights like Mt. Nebo and Petit Jean Mountain, natural hot springs, and amazing views from everywhere you go, the state has kind of grown on me. Here's a few pictures of Lake Dardanelle, which is practically down the street from me:

The one thing I'd really like to see is the inactive Tesla coil not too far from here. My step brother told me about it when I moved here but I never had the time to go see it. That or I was just being lazy.

Work, Work, Work!

I'm getting a bunch of emails for the books I bought on Amazon for school. One of them is already here, and I have three emails telling me shipping details. I hope these people come through. I really need these books. I can't really afford to get them at the school. With that being said, today's agenda consists of work, work, and more work. And also looking for work. I completely forgot my schedule for this week, so that's first. I'm also going to follow up on the job across the street from my work at the gas station. Everyone is telling me that the hardest part is finding something to do when it gets slow, so I think I'll be okay there. I need the extra hours too. Lastly, I need to finish some stuff for my own business.

Oh! Quick note! Since I live in a guest house, I didn't want to take up any parking spaces in front of the garages or the main house, and I noticed that there was a gate over by the pond leading around the property and behind the guest house, then over to the hay field. I followed it around with my car and found an awesome spot to park What's even better is that theres a gate behind our place right next to where I parked. I officially have my own spot, and the trees will keep my car cool :D

So yeah, working today. Need to wake up first, though. I feel like a zombie. Here's a picture of me right now:

Who Else Does That?

I had a cup of orange juice on my desk that I drank. I got up to get some cream soda and noticed there was still some oj left in the cup and poured in the soda anyway. Do any of you do this?

Votes Are In!

Okay so a I know a lot of you commented my last post, telling me you would like to see food in here and some of you used the vote box which turned out to be tied with work and my daughter. I'll try to incorporate all three in this post. I'd like to say a few things about my daughter just to get it out there in case anyone is curious. My daughter, Selena, was born on January 9th of 2009 and she is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Unfortunately at the same time it was announced to me that I was going to be a father, my parents were both fighting at the time, and my mom ended up leaving us the same week. A few months later, my dad said he was moving to Arkansas. So Carly, Selena's mother, ended up moving in with me and my parents and eventually we three moved in with my uncle when my dad left for Arkansas. At this point I was pretty furious with the way my family had broken up just like that, but I never let it get to me.

My anger eventually started to surface in the form of neglect and downright rage. I lashed out at everyone and everything, including my daughter and her mother. Being barely nineteen and having a child puts your mind through a lot, especially if you're unprepared, which we were. I had a full time job, but it wasn't enough. Nothing is ever enough, really. I wanted to be in school. I wanted my own place. I felt like I was slowly losing grip of my own life, and that this decision to have a baby was going to direct my future. It did, but in a completely different way. So needless to say, I lost my own family due to my anger, and they went back to Carly's home. She started college early to make up for lost time in high school, and she's still doing quite well. She made it on the Deans list last semester. I hope my daughter has that ambition. Long story short, I ended up moving around to different houses, including my own car for about a month, and then I ended up here in Arkansas, with my dad. I'm now 21 and in college. So far it's going very well, but we'll save the rest of that story for later.

Work. Okay. I've been off work at the clothing store for the weekend, so no news there. I do my own freelance advertising work on the side in town, so I caught up on some of my work there today. Ebay is a miracle of the Capitalist world.

The moment you've all been waiting for. Food. So when I walked into my kitchen I immediately saw the Pizza Hut box sitting on the table. I must have missed it when I took a shower this morning.

Sadly there were no sliced left. How disappointing. Then I looked in the freezer and forgot all about my previous post, saying that I was going to make Tilapia but ended up making chicken. Well guess what? It's on for Tilapia night. Hells yeah. This Tilapia recipe from Allrecipes.com looks great. Can't wait to taste it :D

Crusty Eyes

I'm having one of those mornings where I just can't get the crust out of my eyes. It's Sunday, so it's lazy day, but I was never one for following a strict code of daily conduct. I need something to do. Something productive. My books haven't even been shipped yet, so no reading. Music isn't exactly time consuming. Writing in my blog here seems to be the only thing worth while, but I have nothing to write. However, this is a good time to tell you guys about my family.

So in my house there's me and Fernando. I met him when I moved down here last year. My intention when I moved down was to be a substitute teacher for the school, and I did get certified, but I haven't had but one job since. Fernando was my dads assistant for his shop. He sells boats, cars, and anything else that has a motor. He's been doing this since he was fifteen years old. Eventually I started working for him too. My dad would buy a piece of inventory, Nando would clean it up and make it look brand new, and I would plaster the internet with it. Even though I'm now a full time student and I have a job, I still work for him every once in a while. Nando works every day, and now that we moved into a new town, there's always something for him to do.

Out new place, as I've shown in a previous post and video, is the guest house to the property. It's quite big for a guest house, and we have plenty of room for our stuff. In the main house resides my dad and his fiance. Together they have six kids, including me. I have two brothers, both of which are catching up to me in maturity, at least I hope. Matt is sixteen now and Vinny is thirteen. They share a room upstairs in the main house. Elijah and Seth who are both in between Matt and Vinny's ages, share another room down the hall from them. Seth is an awesome drummer, and he's pretty good at guitar too. Our music room has a set of drums in it along with his guitar, Matt's guitar, and my bass. We talked about starting a band some day. Elijah is a simple guy. He play's video games and plays football. He's taller than me and could probably put me through a wall if he really wanted to. Okay, so lastly we have Emily, or Emma. She's the youngest of all the kids, but the upside of being a girl, she gets her own room downstairs.

The main house is really nice, and we can see Mt. Nebo from the front porch of both houses. Stars are really bright at night, and the lake is down the street if we want to go swimming or take the boat out. I don't plan on staying here forever, but I do plan on making the most of what I have until I'm out of college. I plan on being able to see my daughter every day of my life. All I can do now is push forward.

And that's my household. Again, not too exciting. I'll have more to write about during the week when things actually happen. For now, help me decide what I want to write about, guys!

Finally!

Checked my bank account this morning and I finally got my refund check from the school. Now I can order my books for the fall semester! I have a suggestion for all of you college kids out there. Amazon.com
You save hundreds on books by getting them used. Be sure to get workbooks or any other kind of book you need to write in brand new. You don't want someone elses work in your work, ya know? Also, try Chegg.com out. They let you rent books for the semester at a fraction of the cost of the book. Amazon was only a few extra dollars for my books, and I figured it was worth it to keep them all afterwards.

This will be my first full semester of college. I'm excited but worried I may not do as well as I want to. When I signed up I had Into to Biology, English Comp, Beginning German, College Algebra, and Bowling. Yes, bowling. I wanted the easiest PE course I could find and when I found out that bowling gave credits, I was all over it. So after talking with a few counselors and people I work with, I changed German to French. I want to learn another language, and I refuse to pay money to learn Spanish when I can do that by talking to Fernando. French is also the international business language, and it's an official language in three countries. Maybe more, but these are the ones I know about. I also dropped the biology class and got Emergency Management. It's one of my required classes for the degree I want. The counselor said people that work for FEMA take a lot of classes like this one.

So now with those switched around, my new schedule looks like this:
M W F     8:00-8:50 ENGL Composition I
M W F     9:00-9:50 MATH College Algebra
MTWR    10:00-10:50 FR Beginning French I
T R          11:00-11:50 Emergency Management
M W F    11:00-11:50 PE Bowling

Boring Day

So instead of posting something about my day (which was boring), I've decided to post a picture of my daughter from last year's 4th of July :D

Her name is Selena, but we call her Squishy.

Strange Dreams

I am one of those people that gets such strange dreams when I sleep. Last night I was in some sort of mental hospital that specialized in treating suicidal people, and was wrongfully there (at least I claimed to be in the dream). Now I'm nowhere near suicidal, but they didn't want me to have any sort of outside contact. No phones. No internet. No nothing. Where was my family? My friends?

After weeks went by, I started noticing this strange girl sitting across the room from me. She sat there every day and didn't talk to anyone. I mean, she was beautiful. I wondered if no one liked her or no one could see her or something. So I walked over and introduced myself. She was shy for a bit, but after we started talking I found out a lot about her. The reason she didn't talk to anyone is because she was blind, and no one was patient enough to guide her around the facility or walk her through the park outside. She said it was a hindrance because  she wasn't able to put faces to voices properly, so she asked if she could touch mine. I refused. I didn't want her to "see" me. I didn't want her to know what I looked like. She may say it's a bad thing, but I thought this was perfect.

There was an upside to being blind, she told me. She wasn't able to see the guards in their uniforms,  but she was able to hear them talk like normal human beings. She wasn't able to see the locked gates and the tall fences surrounding the facility. She was, however, able to hear things quite well, and she loved being outside. This is generally where we met up to talk.

Despite being in a relationship and missing my family, I was beginning to really fall for this girl. I didn't mind helping her to her room or getting her something to eat, and I could tell she appreciated it. I almost didn't want to get out of there...

But unfortunately, all dreams come to an end, and this one was no different. I never take my dreams literally, and I have no intention on ever finding such a girl. The dream was pretty symbolic to me though. Being such a large man, I never feel quite good enough for anyone, even for this dream girl.

So guys, ever have a dream you thought would be a cool idea for a movie or book?

Summary of the Day: Thursday, July 21, 2011

So here's a summary of today's events:
We took a ride into town to pick up my paycheck from Puffs, also known as the coolest clothing store in Russellville, then stopped at Darrels Too, which is a gas station across the street. Since I don't have many hours and college is around the corner, I need to pick up some extra hours somewhere. Okay, then it was off to the school to check the status of my refund check for my Summer I course in American Politics. I need to order my books! School is a priority this time. No messing around. Last thing we did was hit the laundromat. For a more accurate description of this, see below.

This place was cheap, but the lack of A/C was brutal, and the bathroom was the size of a small closet. So after we did our two weeks worth of filthy laundry, we hit up Wal-Mart so I could get a few things...

Chicken breast and Alfredo sauce. I think Nando was getting tired of the spaghetti sauce, so I mixed it up a bit and make some chicken Alfredo. This was my first meal I have ever cooked on my own that required an oven and not a microwave, and it tasted delicious. Tomorrow I have to work late, so no homemade dinners. Oh, and I never cooked the Tilapia. I'll save that for another night. 

First Thing's First

I wanted people to check out our first place to get an idea of how I live day to day. It's not 100% complete, but we have most of what we need. In fact, today was laundry day! Exciting isn't it? So, throughout my blog I'll take a few pictures of Dardanelle, Russellville, and maybe I'll head up to Mt. Nebo for a day. You can see Mt. Nebo from our front porch in the beginning of the video. Now I get to cook some Tilapia fish for dinner (more excitement)!

Searching For Something New

After countless years wasted on the social networking sites, I've decided that my opinion is only worth much to those willing to listen. So here I am, at 21 years of age, ready to begin my endeavor in the blogging world to see if there are people out there that are like minded. I have found a few people who may reach a certain cynicism on select topics, but with the creation of said social networking sites, those select few have just regurgitated punch lines from clever groups and pages. It's sad to think that no one can be original in the world any more.

Hey, I'm ranting. That's not what I came here to do. What did I come here to do? Ah, yes. To find others that are somewhat like me and maybe even relate to the events in my life. But where do I begin? How exactly do you tell someone your story?

When I was ten... No that's too far back.
When I was fifteen... Almost. I feel like I'd be missing some key points that drastically changed my thought process if I started here.

When I entered high school. Now this I can work with. High school is a common place to find drama, inspiration, and love. Now most kids in high school have this meter of angst that raises with each substantial event throughout their high school career. Someone didn't get enough hugs as a child. Someone was the victim of their parents divorce. Someone had their significant other go out with their best friend. It happens to all of us. The one thing I did notice as I started my college years is that it doesn't change. My observations have led me to believe that people never grow up, they just get smarter at being young, and when you look at it from this point of view, it's hard not to see it.

Think of it this way; a man in his late thirties walks up to an ice cream truck to buy himself a small vanilla cone to cool off in the summer weather. He's pushing 40 years old, but he's a little hot from the sun. Nothing wrong with that. He's got his nicest shoes on and his suit jacket is slung over his shoulder. This man, for sake of my distant point, is acting like a child. He may not have shown it, but when he heard the nostalgic sound of the ice cream truck's little tune as it crept down the street at a mere five miles per hour, he probably thought of running to his mom or dad and begging for a few quarters to get something. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.

So back to what I was saying about high school. That cheating boyfriend of yours or that wretch of a best friend you now hate is all normal. We as adults are a bit condescending when it comes to our younger and less wise counterparts, but that's exactly what I mean by being smarter about being young. We lived through it, and now we get to make fun of others for living through it.

Now where does this leave me? Right here at the computer screen. My name is George. I'm a college student, a part time clothing store associate, and a father, and I will be sharing what goes on in my life, and occasionally giving a glimpse of my past.