What I did Last Week

So I was out to Adventure Games once again. Now for a total of 4 hours. And what did I do during those 4 hours of being there? I got accustomed with the crowd that goes there, met some awesome people, and got 5 30-card Magic The Gathering decks for free. It was great, too bad I don't have nearly enough money to spend over there, you can thank not having a job for that. But I am glad that I did get something while I was heading over there, and even got to participate in a bit of social interaction and playing games. It was good, although I wish I could go there more often, cause it really does feel like a place I'd want to go to on a constant basis, if only to get away from what goes on in this house. Sucks that this place is outside normal driving range, and outside hours I can hang out over there. And once again, I'm feeling limited in where I can go. Only being able to head on over once a month isn't gonna help me form any bonds of friendship anytime soon. If I wanna make friends, I gotta at least head over there once a week to do anything involving making friends. Cause I can kinda relate to them, although it will be hard working outside my comfort zone, getting to talk more. They've got tons of events going on throughout the week, so it'd be hard to just pinpoint one single day I'd like to stick with anyway. I'd rather go there each day and check out what other people come around there, and observe more of the events that happen. Anyway, that's all I have to say. Hopefully, I can probably get independent living in Scranton, hell, I'd even take Dickson City, where Adventure Games happens to be.

A great uncle died today...

Just a week ago, my uncle was laid to rest. For a while, he's been suffering from an illness that has been giving him excruciating amounts of pain throughout the weeks, until finally, he died. It was as depressing as I thought it would be. Well, I wasn't THAT sad over it. I was afraid of going to see him for a while, wondering how he'd look while under the pain he had suffered. When I saw him in that coffin, he looked normal, nothing like I was thinking. Just a bit old, but that's to be expected. This guy has been around for a while. While I was at that funeral, I never really thought much of how kind he was back in the day. How he took me and my family in when we went homeless for a whole month. I felt bad at hearing that. This guy put up with us for a whole month and I had nothing to show for it aside from a bored expression and a blank stare. When I word it that way, it's kinda heart-breaking actually, but not with what I'm about to say next. When I heard the speech, which pretty much amounted to candy coating the fact he was dead and that 'he is now standing at the doorstep to heaven', I was absolutely insulted. This said absolutely nothing about how he was before he died. If you knew how awesome he was. This man worked his ass off to obtain all the stuff he had. As a testament to this, he had a home theater built downstairs in his basement. Leather and cotton chairs complete with cup holders and two rows of 3 to 2 chairs, elevated for visibility, a widescreen TV, a surround sound speaker set up BUILT IN HIS WALLS, and lights that he can dim with sliders next to them. All of this on top of having to take care of his own family. This was not earned easily. He must've literally worked until the break of dawn to earn everything he had, on top of having a loving wife and child who looked forward to being with him each and every day. And what does it get him in the end? An illness that sends him to death. That is absolute bullshit. This man deserved much more in life than he ever had. He didn't deserve death yet. I'll miss him forever. He was my inspiration. I think a lot of us will miss him, honestly. Especially my mom. She had to live with him most her entire life. But the most heartbreaking thing is seeing my niece run out of the room, crying. I am at a complete loss for words on what to say. So I think I'll just end it here. Maybe I don't deserve to speak for the guy, but I probably would've done a better job than that asshole up on the podium.

Change

Sorry for the lack of updates, but things have been changing a lot for me recently. For instance, I no longer have my own room. Instead, what has happened is now I have to move back into my brother's room. As for the computers, they will stay out in the garage. Probably for the better, but I enjoyed the convenience of being able to talk to my friends as I relaxed on my bed. The bigger problem is now dealing with all the other changes that have happened. For instance, I am no longer allowed on the computer for as long as I'd like to be, putting a curfew at 11PM. Which I guess may seem appropriate to others, but when your friends don't have free time 'til after that certain point, it tends to get in the way of my hangout time. Still working out a schedule though, although irritating. Change is irritating, as I've discovered the past few weeks. It's not bad, considering I can finally visit places that I couldn't normally visit cause of cost and distance restraints, which are mostly restricted to driving to a job or to get groceries. Point being that it's hard to do, and when the change continues to pile on, it can get a bit stressful, which is something I don't need considering I've been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Can't recall if stress actually affects blood pressure. Will have to look into it later. Actually, the point I was trying to make was that while change is irritating, it's also sometimes necessary. Even the changes that you absolutely hate. I understand that's a part of life, and life is constantly changing, whether for better or worse, it's changing. Sometimes I think the only things keeping me from going completely ballistic is keeping myself occupied or hanging out with friends, or playing video games, or taking part in online community stuff. It keeps the stress away, that's for sure. Although, the meditation idea sounds more and more tempting. So what has happened thus far? I've seen the Avengers, and my god, if you are a superhero fan at all, you need to watch this movie. This movie is EXACTLY what a superhero team-up should be. So high recommendations for this one. Sorry it's not very in-depth, but I don't wanna spoil too much of what goes on. I do know it involves good action, great effects, and an okay story. Now back to playing Bioshock 2.

What I Did this Week - 05/07/2012

My god, it's been hot all damn week! As I've been sitting around cycling through the many topics I'd like to talk about, I notice it's been getting increasingly hot each day. And that's when it occurred to me, how would YOU keep your place cold, or keep yourself cool under the intense heat? Let me set it up for you. I've literally got nothing else to do aside from hanging out with Matt every three days of the week. So mostly I'm just sitting around my desk near a computer which does tend to heat up a lot over time cause of the graphic-intensive games I play. Now to explain why I wouldn't just play lower graphical games, it wouldn't make a difference, especially considering that I have my computer on for most of the entire day. If you are wondering why I wouldn't just go outside, that is not solving the problem. Especially since I have no means of cooling myself down, going outside would just worsen that. Adding onto that would be all the damned mosquito's that'd bite me. Then again, I've ALWAYS had a problem with bugs, but I digress. It also doesn't help that wind is apparently scarce on these mother-of-all hot days. On top of this, I don't have an air conditioner, and I'm in a small room with one window, which I can provide a screen for. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for suggestions on how to keep myself cool. Actually, yes I am, but I already have a method for that. Mostly I'm just wondering how everyone else keeps themselves cool in there house. It can be anything. Even a means to an end. Just curious is all. I just realized I'm not actually talking about what I did this week, so here is the lowdown: had an awesome tabletop gaming session with my online friends, a few headaches, and heading out to see Hunger Games in theaters, which was pretty good for a young adult film. Wish it didn't have so much shakey cam. Also bought the Arkham Bundle from Steam, which included Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year edition, Batman: Arkham City, and all the DLC for it. All for 30 bucks. That deal ended just today. Well, until next time, catch ya guys later.

What I did this Week - 4/22/12

I guess I could talk about how I visited Barnes and Nobles for the first time in my life and found a few books which I bought, all of them sci-fi and have something to do with the games I play; and a manga which I've been wanting to read for a while about creating manga. On top of that, talk about a movie I saw on Friday that to me was hit and miss with a lot of it's jokes, the actors being solid in there roles, at least to me. As for how it affects me, it doesn't. It's just another form of entertainment for me to enjoy without ever having to learn anything. But a lot of that probably wouldn't seem interesting to the people I'm expressing myself to. You see what I did? I summed up my thoughts in a few sentences. Run-on sentences, but I summed them up. That's a bad habit I've gotten into when it comes to typing anything; the run-on sentences. But then again, I'm no literature expert, so I don't even know if they count as run-on or not. And that's what this post will boil down to: the fact that I can't write for jack squat. Sure, I can come up with ideas on the fly, but putting them to paper and wording it in a way that makes it interesting for the target reader is hard in itself. It's much more difficult than I had anticipated, and as such it can be downright boring or uninteresting to look at and read. Sometimes I can just write as it comes off the top of my head easily, and some days I have to actually put a lot of thought into them. And most of the time, I'm set with a schedule I have to keep up with and complete a blog as just another means to an end. And that's not what blogging means to me. Blogging should be a way for me to have a little fun, practice my writing, express myself the way I want to, and just overall get better at it so I can enjoy it more. If I have to force myself at the end of each and every single week to write a blog post just because some guy told me to do so, then I can't do it. It irritates me to just talk about a movie that NO ONE else that reads this blog even knows what I'm talking about. Movie is Three Stooges, by the way. It's certainly not very good to talk about manga, and half the people that I have reading the blog have no clue what manga is. Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate everyone that views this blog and the TWO people that actually commented on it, but I can't continue to make blogs if I can't write about the stuff I want to say. All I really want is for people to look at my work and tell me what I can do to improve it. That is all. I'm not asking for people to ALWAYS comment on my work, just a few things that'll help me be better as a writer. I shouldn't have to explain to people what I'm talking about. The audience I want to target should be able to look up what I'm talking about without me having to explain what a manga actually is. It's a comic made in Japan. See? Wasn't that so damn informative? You'd find a lot better info on the subject online than you would from me. I just want to express my opinions on the subject, not have to explain what the object is. How in the hell did I get more than 47 views from just writing about the process of cooking rather than writing about something I enjoyed in general or enjoyed doing that week? It bugs me to think that THIS is what people are more interested in. I don't even have the type of audience who is into the type of stuff I'm into, so what the hell is even the point of writing these blogs? I guess it's just another one of those things for me to think about for later. And that's what's up.

What I did today - 4/13/12

This will be a long line of different blog posts talking about the new stuff I've done during the days to come. So without further adieu, let's start.

Today I learned how to cook some stir-fry. The process was simple in itself, not too complex like what I've done to make both fried rice and General Tso's chicken, using popcorn chicken and a bottle of pre-made General Tso's sauce. I instead started by cutting up half a pound of raw chicken, then cut up some onions and broccoli to add a few vegies into the mix. Carrots needed to be peeled a bit before they were cut. The chicken was put into a bowl and doused with a bit of salt and pepper, afterwards applying some of the Stir-Fry sauce from the Kikkoman brand. It was okay, for the most part. The rice is poured into a small pot, probably about 1 cup or so, and then 1 cup of water is poured in. Cover, stove is turned up high, allowing for the water to boil. As this happens, two tablespoons of stir-fry oil is poured into a separate pan, and stove is put on medium heat. The onions are the first to be put into the pan. Stir until softened. Then the other vegetables are put into the pan as well, stirring those as well. Cook until softened. It was around this point that the rice had absorbed most of the liquid and tenderized. It is okay if some of it sticks to the bottom of the pan, just set it to low heat, or just turn it off all together and let it sit until stir-fried chicken is done. Pour chicken into pan with vegetables and stir in, cooking until meat is no longer pink. about around a cup of the stir-fry sauce is poured over vegetables and chicken, then stirred in. Let it cook until you can cut the chicken down the middle. Serve in a bowl on top of rice.

I guess it was okay to learn a bit more about cooking. Of course, I didn't really have to learn anything about cooking in general. Of course you have to watch and make sure nothing catches on fire and look after the food to make sure it doesn't burn. I knew abit about this kind of stuff before anyone came along to tell me all from just looking it up on the internet, and using a bit of common sense. All I did learn was a new recipe. That's about it.

As for how the food tastes. Well, it's food. Only thing that stood out to me were the carrots. Because I bought fresh carrots and cut them up, I think they were, I guess, sweet then the carrots I'm use to eating, from pre-made dinners. The vegetables weren't as tender as I'd hope they would be. I'd probably rectify that in the future. Maybe add a bit of water and cover the pan before cooking the chicken.

This experience wasn't exactly the most thrilling thing. It was just a very mediocre experience, cause well, I wasn't actually learning anything. I could've probably done most of this stuff myself had I looked it up online or just got a bit curious and tried to find new foods to cook. But I guess I now have something to show off to the family, even if it really isn't show-off worthy, at least to me.

I'm not the type of guy who enjoys cooking. It's just a means to an end, and it's healthier for you anyway. I enjoy gaming and watching things on the computer than I ever will cooking. Now creating something on the computer, that is a whole different story. This is Reese Hoffman, signing out.