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Select Tees suck and are way too expensive. That is all.

I try to keep my blog semi-professional and keep my personal life just that. Sure the reader can get an unhealthy dose of my personal opinions, but to read of what is happening in my life is more rare. This is one of those rare moments that I just have to share, because it was an awesome day. I went to visit my girlfriend for the weekend, which is usual, but the difference was that this was the 3th Anniversary weekend.

Considering my current status I have to be careful with money, so I stopped in and got a rose to give to my gal. When I arrived, she acted funny, and told me to wait downstairs. She then hopped up the steps and came back down soon after and told me to follow. So I go up with her, sensing that there was a surprise awaiting me up there.

My girlfriend never ceases to amaze me with her talent. She is a sculptor, jewelry maker, cake artist, and designer. So awaiting me in the kitchen was this awesome cake!



She definitely outdid me this anniversary for gifts. Once I saw this cake it was decided that we would parttake in some Asian cuisine. So we went to Fuji House and had a Yaki Maki Maki Maki. I even said it to the waitress that way because I got such a kick out of it. Of course once I said it, I made myself more clear. It was actually a Japanese Yakiniku and Chicken platter, Maki Spicy Roll (Tuna), Maki Green River (Eel), and Maki California Roll (Crab). It was delicious.

Having used chopsticks with a little cartoon panda on the paper sleeve, I began to think about a geocache that had been placed outside the restaurant that I had previously found called Happy Panda. My girlfriend's fortune cookie had a great message that fit well in the context of geocaching. The fortune said "You will discover an unexpected treasure." This inspired me to revisit the cache.

So I neatly tore the little happy panda from the bottom of the sleeve and folded the fortune in half then placed the fortune inside the sleeve and placed it in the cache. I had the whole theme going too because I was wearing my When Pandas Attack threadless tee as well. Such a good day.

*EWJ Update Here*

Half-Life 2, LAN Parties, DOD Source, Final Fantasy 11, I've spent a fair amount time with each of these games and I've had a lot of fun on each of them. But my most memorable experience was none of them. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 for NES takes the cake since it is a cooperative game which are by far the most fun. I was about 11 years old and I was at my friend's house for the weekend. When we started we didn't have in mind to beat the game exactly but we sure did turn into a great gaming duo.

We battled the Foot Soldiers with brute force, Mousers stood no chance against us, the bosses were a bit of a challenge but we had them beat pretty easily. Krang proved difficult too since it had two mode, body mode and floaty mode. Still yet we powered through, in a mode of concentration like no other. We made it all the way to Shredder, the final boss. Shell shocked and hungering for more pizza we battled every hologram, and beat Shredder to within an inch of his life but we both died and the game was over.

Even today I struggle with losing in games. I get angry, curse, hit the desk, and just act ridiculous. Mom used to always say "It's just a game." Yeah? Well tell that to all the soccer fans of the world. I am passionate about video games. While I am playing a video game, in that moment, it feels like the ultimate triumph, or failure of my life depending on how I do. I remember vividly shouting a curse word loudly while playing the NES, which was usual when Mom wasn't home, but Mom was home this time. I got the worst hot sinking feeling I think I have ever had that day. The punishment wasn't grand, but that feeling alone was enough.

The peculiar thing was that -- instead of trashing the place out of so much blinding anger we had this incredible rush of energy. It was like we had reached the peak of our lives. So since we were still brimming with energy, we walked -- no we floated through his cow field for over an hour blurting out our excitement to one another, talking of the intricacies of how we played and how we had triumphed, and yet failed. As we dodged cow patties we were truly elated. We wished of course that we had beat the game, which I had done a few times playing the game alone, but never in cooperative mode. We really enjoyed the experience.

I suppose that looking back on this experience, even though I'm not a huge fan of sports, I do understand why sports are so important to so many other people. The passion for gaming and camaraderie I felt that day was almost an out of body experience. Which seems kind of dangerous when I think about it now. I think it would have been if that happiness had been replaced with the rage that I would normally have had. The absence of which baffles me to this day.

I didn't spend time counting how many of each type of coin I found, but here are the results for how much I found in 2008!


Change 2008. from Josh Rose on Vimeo.

Happy new year! Now it's time to collect!

They say that smell triggers the memory the best of any stimulation. I can think of a few memorable smells, but nothing reminds me more of very specific memories than sorting receipts. I remember the period in time, the group of friends I was hanging around at the time, so many different memories and emotions are brought up when sorting receipts. Like the time a friend and I went to the mall (a big thing to do when you live two hours away from the closest one) and were so crazy about Metal Gear Solid 2 that we each picked up a Solid Snake action figure from Software Etc... That's right Software Etc. not Gamestop. There was also the time that another friend and I went to Norde's Games and each bought a box of Magic the Gathering cards and took them back to his place and just tore through them, reading cards, rummaging through each other's spoils, being a bit disappointed by the condition of the brand new cards because a third of them were misaligned to the point to where you could nearly see the name of the next card on some of them.

With every bag of miscellaneous old receipts come the check stubs as well. I was able to piece together a comprehensive history of my grossly underpaid days at Pizza Hut. I was able to easily map my employment history through looking at my check stubs, even though I still don't know what happened to the ones from my days at Blockbuster. I even found my very first pay check, which totaled eight dollars and seventy cents. $8.70! For a person just starting out in the work force, that's a huge blow to the morale, having worked a week before receiving the paycheck, I remember muttering to the person next to me that I should just quit if the pay is gonna be like that. Then there are the random bits of memories that make their way into the bag as well. Such as a part of a label from an art piece that was submitted to the club I used to be a part of, a scribble on this receipt, a calculation on another, a warning of violation a friend I worked with wrote against me in jest that threatened to have my hands severed off as punishment.

To sort through receipts is really a sort of map of what a person's life is like. I will usually pick a receipt up off of the ground just to see what a person bought. They're never profound purchases though; gum, a bag of combos, a soft drink... I suppose that, in itself, shows something about the people who throw their receipts on the ground. The discarded receipts show me that they're horrible people for littering the ground and that they only throw down the small stuff. I'll probably never see a receipt for a 46" LCD Television lying on the ground. Maybe they feel that they're doing a service to the curious folks like me by doing it. I could live without it.

Seeing this history in a bag shows me how frivolous I seem to have been with my money. What if I hadn't bought that speaker system for my car that my neighbor helped me install or that collection of Magic the Gathering cards that I played regularly with a group of friends in college? Maybe I would be richer, but I wouldn't have all the memories.

EWJ in Cast form.

On to sanding and painting.

This is simply a light hearted look at the likenesses of people next to their cartoon counterparts. I mean no harm to anyone by posting these comparisons.

A Gelfling from The Dark Crystal.


Nitz from Undergrads.


A Doozer from Fraggle Rock.


Meg from Family Guy.


These just happen, I don't put any effort into searching for these, they just fall into my lap. In fact, I started them around 2001, so it will be a while before I have more. There was this one man in my home town that looked just like the G-Man from the Half-Life series but I was never able to get a photo of him, but maybe one day by happenstance I will get lucky enough to meet him again.