My Travel Bag

I'm going on an awesome mission trip tomorrow for about 10 days, which I've been preparing for frantically in between a packed work schedule to make up for some of the lost time I'll have missed for awhile now. (*Cough-cough* Excuse for not posting) One of the last things I've had to do is pack my bags. I enjoy traveling, and this task has always excited me. The idea of leaving all else behind which is unimportant, and simply living out of a bag for a week is enticing. I've often had shadows of desires to just hit the road one day with whatever I could throw in a bag or two and just travel and live for awhile. I'm of course too cowardly and comfortable to do that, but it's a fun thought.
So what, after careful evaluation, are the most important things in my life which get the honor of traveling with me, you didn't ask?
Taking up the most room: Clothes. (Boring)
And it's not even a lot, I'm pretty low-maintenance. A pair of jeans, pair of work jeans, a work shirt, 4 other shirts, 3 under/sleep shirts, sleep pants, and enough socks and undies to make mom happy.
Toiletries - Hair (beard) and body wash, dandruff shampoo (can't leave home without it), D.O. for the B.O., tooth brush/paste, and a comb. That's it.
Travel pillow - I'm all for comfort. I recently upgraded to the Total Pillow and am excited to really try it out.
A few good books - Two 16hour drives can get long. Feed your need to read!
A secret snack - Once a fattie, always a fattie. The fear of getting too hungry will always be with me, so I always travel a with a stowed-away snack. I normally bring nuts, that way it's not AS bad for me, and provides protein for energy! Oh, and a water bottle, too.
My iPod Touch - Providing games, music and videos for more entertainment, as well as, note-taking, productivity, and a chance to check my stocks if I hit a Wi-Fi hotspot. I'll get a real smart phone someday.
Camera, and maybe a journal to preserves them mem'ries.
Essential drugs - I'll have a little bit of ibprophen, and antacids, becuase you just never know.

Now, orange ya glad I posted that and you got to waste a few minutes of your life?

Reflections: Proud of 2010

I did some stuff in 2010, most of it I will look back upon with embarrassment. Here are the only 5 things that I think will be looked upon with pleasant feelings.

I saved some money:

Not enough but forget you its a start. My gadget purchases have been curbed significantly and if I continue the positive trend in savings I will be able to run away from my life next summer/fall.

Here are some savings tricks that worked for me in 2010:

1. Automatic deposits into hard to reach savings accounts, the harder to reach and sketchier the online bank the better! I'm pretty sure when I'm ready to withdrawl my bank is going to disappear like in the climax of the movie "Blow" but for now I feel like I am making progress.
2. Curbing youth leadership! In previous years I would do a lot of youth stuff for my church, but due to my hatred of following any church procedure and being taught lessons on attitude, I would just fund all of the events myself. 2010 was the year I gave up that and I am a richer (financially) person for it.
3. Living at home! It rivals the value of living in a prison but instead of being made someone's prison property, I am merely mocked as if I was someone's prison property by everyone who I mention my living situation to.

60% of my youth leadership stuff:

2010 was the year when I just stopped dealing with people in youth leadership who didn't want to be dealt with. There will be a much longer post about this someday but I finally understand that I am not superman and can't win everyone for team Jesus, or even team humanity. My newly well balanced involvement includes teaching instead of babysitting AND I have not taught "preached" to anyone this year (youth or adult), which in my book makes me a lot less annoying than some of the others of the same volunteer job description.

Remaining me:

People have come and gone but I am for the most part am still me. From previous entries and my personality it is clear that I am not always happy with me but my sappy and depressing moments have been well within the C-Minus standard deviation.

Management Material:

Love it or hate it, it is a completed story and I got to work in some of my besties into it.

So 2010 was a year. More reflection will be coming throughout the week. Also SLEEPY CRICKET texted to apologize for not posting and then refused to respond to my text of forgiveness.

ARE YOU READY FOR 2011?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

EE Video Game Awards 2010!

Welcome game developers, players and girls pretending to be interested in games (the only games women be playing are MIND GAMES... and plants vs zombies). Since expedited emotions is equally committed to video games as SpikeTV we are proud to host such an important and relevant award show. With out any future interruption lets get on to the awards:

Game of the Year: Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock

No other game released in 2010 is as committed to existing as the 17th release of Guitar Hero. We here at expedited emotions polled every single person on the planet and not a single one of them wanted nor knew of this games existence. But it is on store shelves regardless, as if by sheer force of the games own will.

Game Player of the Year: Bean

What do we judge a gamer on? Well in Bean's case we judge them on how they manage the play style an emotions of their co-gamers. We just witnessed Bean tell his team that "they are not even good at this game" even after the team just one the match despite his 14 betrayals. His brief comments to the team undid all of the hard work that I put in when reading both versions of the Nativity story to them during the match.

I believe the function of any media is to inspire an emotional response, and when the game can not do this Bean steps up his game and runs his mouth to make it happen.

Reason to not Play Video Games in 2011: Me getting old and realizing all the life I have wasted.

At 27 years of age I have realized that my princess that my princess is in another castle. And that castle is not in a video game, an arcade, and definitely not in a Gamestop. My princess is out there living her life and doing things that matter while I'm sitting her still feeling sad about the failure of the Dreamcast. Oh well at least I never played World of Warcraft (I was in the pre-release beta back in 2003 but that doesn't count).

Here is a list of things that I should have been working on instead of video games:

1. Piano

2. Becoming an art thief

3. Running a marathon

4. Getting a degree that would be valuable in the job market

5. Developing a personality

Where is my WiiMote award for 2010: My Couch

I can't find it but I know its in there somewhere

Everyone who plays the following games can eat my poo:

Call of Duty: Black Ops

World of Warcraft

Any game facebook that's not scrabble

Red Dead Redemption

Sports Games

Wii Games that aren't made by Nintendo or don't have dancing or light gun-style arcade shooting

(this was going to be a longer post but I think the longer ones scare people away and who can compete with the random cat picture that SLEEPY CRICKET considers a contribution)

Thanks for tuning in to this years EE Video Game Awards, please come back next year as it will be our last before the whole end of the world thing that the movies told me was happening in 2012.

Things that I am surprisingly OK with:

1. Hot Dogs
2. The existence of Sarah Palin
3. Microsoft charging more for Xbox Live
4. Christmas stuff starting the day after halloween
5. Both my head and feet under constant attack from environmental hazards in my mother's basement
6. Holding in a bathroom break to finish this post just so I can get it done and move on
7. Revealing personal information through texting to enter contests or get coupons
8. Brushing my teeth while on the toilet
9. Paying at least a 40% premium on computer hardware and phone service due to the device being an Apple
10. Playing games on my touch screen phone on the toilet
11. Leaving an extremely loud scream as a voicemail message
12. Advertisements on Xbox Live
13. The Cash Advance Industry
14. Talking about my feelings
15. Ignoring the news

Maybe tomorrow I will talk about 15 things that I am surprisingly not OK with, or maybe SLEEPY Cricket will post, or maybe I will win the lotto and purchase the Internet... with my first ownership decision being to make every site about dead cats. All of the above listed things have an equal chance of happening.

KEEP IT EASY!

My beard is dead, LONG LIVE MY BEARD

With the Management Material saga completed I was finally able to shave. While there are many good things associated with my baby fresh and baby fat face, here are 5 things that I will miss about the beard:

1. Concealing my grotesqueness. Having a beard made it seem as if my chin and jawline was well defined. It also made my double chin look less doubley.

2. Just the right amount of "I don't give a crap" A beard can show your viewers that your time is too valuable to shave your entire face but you aren't too busy to keep the neck clean (don't ever grow a neck beard ever).

3. It is a talking point. For the past month and a half if I needed something to get the conversation going I could just reference the sweater my face was wearing. If I needed a joke than the punchline could always be my beard. Having a beard is like having the Helen Keller card in Apples to Apples, 100% right answer for any possible topic.

4. Keeps my skin clean. While my beard got touched a lot by me and those that I allow to pet my face, my actual skin was kept reasonably hands free, which allowed my skin irritations to get a couple months off from their tough job of ruining any chance I have of looking like the girls in the magazines. So on my 4th day beard free my skin is still feeling and looking like I'm in a Noxzema commercial.

5. It retains the flavor, smell and humidity of the last 12 hours of my life. Having a beard is like having a facial DVR. If I want to recall a soup or the smell of that pair of underwear I found in your bathroom, all I have to do is pull my beard over my nose, tweak my nipple, and sniff. I am immediately transported back to when the incident took place through the use of my beard's retaining powers and my disturbing attention to detail.

I might write some bad stuff about beards later... my face still kind of hurts from shaving a couple days ago. And yes I know my face is just hurting me but it's killing you.... shut up or I will give you an eskimo kiss with 2 days of sharper than a tac stubble.