A Quick, Late Post for the End of August

Hey everyone. I've been having a pretty good August. It was nice to no longer be in that class all day (though my work schedule will soon take up a large chunk of my life similar to that). I wish I had been as productive as I planned to be this month, but things kept getting pushed back on me. Here's the fun chain of excuses! I was going to clean my bedroom, but that requires cleaning my computer area at the same time. I was going to clean my computer room, but I needed to finish this project I'm working on (more on that later). I was going to finish the project earlier, but I had communications issues. At the same time, I was going to work on the shed more, but I had to wait on my aunt to get some guys to install a door first. I was going to pour some cement, but terrible things kept happening. Fortunately now, things have gotten on track. All that really happened was I was left with a couple weeks after class where I got very little done. Guess I'd better get describing now.

Graduate Project:
This project is basically the same exact project as our final project for the intensive class. The only difference is that was a group project and we had less than 72 hours to complete it. This time, it's an individual one and we have until September 3. It also requires approval by the professor via email. I planned to leave a full week after the class to let myself relax, then I would get started on the project. Unfortunately, I had trouble contacting the professor at the end of that week and it wound up taking another week to just get the project approved. I'm currently breaking from working on it. I work quickly, so having only two (crowded with other things) weeks to do the project is still plenty of time for me. I can't work on it tomorrow, but I'll definitely be done with the whole thing by Wednesday, then I get to pray that technology doesn't fail me and the submission is easy. The project's purpose is to give Seattle U reason to consider the classes I took actual graduate credits at Seattle U. They were graduate level classes, but Seattle U is reluctant to actually give us the credits unless we do this project. I guess they don't like the fact that we earn so many graduate credits for such a relatively small sum of money (a small fraction of the cost it would be if I had done this actually at Seattle U).

The Shed:
I worked on my grandpa's shed more recently. I had to wait for some screen door guys to install a door on the back of my aunt's house because they needed space and I was going to take up that space with crap from the shed. This year is much better than previous years for cleaning the shed. In previous years, I had to wait on my uncle (who was terminally ill and could very infrequently make it out) to determine what to do with objects I wasn't sure were garbage or not. Now I feel better informed on everything in there and he is no longer able to make it at all (he passed away in January) so I made sure to assert to the whole family that they are welcome to take things from the shed and I'll help, but they have to make time or specifically declare things they want because I have final say on everything in that shed and I'm not waiting around for everyone to go shopping around in the shed. I'm getting it done this summer. Also nice is this year we finally got a canopy that I set up outside the shed. In previous years, I would have to spend an hour or more on either end of my day's work on the shed to unpack and pack it. Now, I just put things under the canopy and dive right in when I start and just stop working when I'm done for the day. I plan to pull everything out of the shed, sort through it, then add real shelves and possibly insulate the thing. If I get time, I'm considering fixing or building a new door for it too. I want it to look excellent when I'm done. I'm conquering this thing this year.

Sam & Jared's Wedding/Ocean Trip:
I planned to go to the ocean with Grandpa and my aunt on the second weekend of August. It had been in planning for a long time and I was able to even include the other grand kids (Kathryn and my two cousins) as well as my grandpa's sister (who is turning 90 in a few days) to come as well. That ensured a more interesting time would be had than in March when we went. Unfortunately, when I figured out a day, I didn't realize it overlapped with Sam and Jared's wedding. The date I thought that was on was apparently a Wednesday (should have checked) so it meant I would have to get to the ocean in my own care and late at night, missing the first few hours that they would be there (since they would get there at about 6pm on Friday night). It worked out really well actually.

The wedding was super cool. I got to hang out with cool people there that I hadn't seen in a while. I got caught up with everyone and brought back peoples' plans to tell mom since she keeps asking about everyone. I got to talk to pretty much everyone I wanted. The ceremony was nice and hanging out after went well too. I had originally planned to leave at 9 or 9:30 because I wanted to make sure I got to the ocean before it was too extremely late, but I wound up staying until the end at about 10:30 or 11:00 when everyone went back. From there, I dropped Orion off and continued to my house and pretty much dressed down, threw my stuff in the car, and took off to ocean shores. I got going pretty fast and I'm impressed I didn't get pulled over or anything. I wound up making exceptionally good time and got in at 2am (so about 2.5 hours for a normally 3.5 hour drive). The next day was our full day there and we spent it doing pretty much everything we could do. We got into ocean shores and Grandpa rode the go-karts and my great aunt got to finally see that he could actually do that. People clapped for him a bit because I guess it's not every day they see an almost 89 year old man using a walker getting in and out of and handling a go-kart pretty well. On Sunday, we headed back home, going via Forks to drop my great aunt off at her house. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.

Other Stuff:
I'm still playing League pretty often. Even now with Guild Wars 2 out (which is really good, but more on that later), I still have a huge desire to be doing ranked games. The season ends soon and all I want to do is get to a higher elo. Fortunately for me, some people (mostly just Eric Canada at this point) are working on their second accounts so they can duoqueue with me which will ensure that at least two people in my games are competent. That will be nice. Keir also started playing recently which was really fun while it lasted. He seems to like it a lot, so when he's settled into his schedule at law school, I look forward to playing again. He's getting pretty good and I anticipate many good times in the future.

Guild Wars 2 came out last Friday and it has been pretty fun so far. There's a World Completion which kind of gives me a clear definition of when I will be done with the game. It's nice to have that definitive end for me and at the same time, it's far enough out that I'm not concerned about hitting it too quickly. Steven, Chris, and I have characters that we only play with each other, so that is fun. Other than that, I play on my main character. I plan to do less of that though and continue playing League more often so I can raise my ELO.

I haven't seen my friend since class ended at all due to conflicting schedules. We had plans to go out last Saturday (a couple days ago) and she was bringing a friend of hers who I assume she was trying to set me up with. Unfortunately, they couldn't do Saturday and asked to switch to Friday about a day in advance. I had to say I couldn't go because GW2 came out that night and I had made plans to hang out with Steven and Chris months and months ago, so it's not like I passed up meeting a girl for a videogame (at least not entirely, there was also commitment to friends involved so its more legitimate righT?).

Outside of those things, I've been mainly relaxing around the house, enjoying my remaining moments of free time before I eventually have to start real work. I got to see ZZ Top in concert last night. It had been a long time since I saw them. I last saw them in September of 2004, the first September in my now very long streak of wearing shorts. Last time, dad had to drive us there, now it was at a casino and I could drink before and after. Needless to say they rocked pretty hard and it was a great concert. Totally worth the money too because I wound up winning my ticket price (and half of dad's) in the casino afterwards while we waited for traffic to clear out.

So in the coming weeks, I'll be working more. I am going to spend most of my time doing this project until I submit it. Then, I'll be working or playing League during the days between then and when we go camping around the 7th. After that, I start looking applying for jobs and I'm going to start my regiment of Korean language study for a couple hours every day. Looking forward to all that. Until later, peace out.

4.0

Well the class is done and once again, my life shall slowly return. I managed to weather the storm pretty well (as you may have surmised from my title, I 4.0ed the term). I called it my class, but in actuality it was a 12-credit term of graduate level courses just condensed into a month. This is the first time I've ever gotten a 4.0 on a term anywhere, so I was pretty happy when I did it. And it was especially good because I don't know how much more school I have left in my life (at least as a student anyway). I feel like I'm actually ready to teach now that I'm done with the class. But since Korean schools are on semesters, I will have to wait a little bit before I can get out there. I doubt this post will be too long, so I'll just get on with it now.

The class:
The 16 students in the class all became pretty close friends and it was sad to see everyone go, but I think we'll all be in touch to some degree. I made good friends with the guy from Mongolia, and if I see only one other person from the class in the rest of my life, it will most likely be him. I might try to find time to travel over there from Korea since he said I should. The night class went pretty well too, it was nice to see the students making progress using methods we were learning to teach them. Other than that, the class was just a lot of work. I didn't play many games at times (most times) throughout the duration of the course, but now I can get back into that.

Tournaments:
There were two LoL tournaments during the class term. One was at the end of the week I last posted on. Eric and Steven were on a team together, but then someone was added to that team who had a higher priority than those two, so Eric said he was fine being an alternate since he didn't want to steal Steven's spot. A couple days before the tournament, another team posted on the facebook page for local LoL players that they needed players for their team due to people not being able to make it. Eric signed up since his other team wouldn't need him (the captain of that team actually referred him) then Eric signed me up as well. Then the next day, Steven said he couldn't go to the tournament, leaving the other team one Steven down. Eric and I wound up playing on the fun team we were on and we got unlucky and got put against the best team in the bracket. We lost by some crazy amount of kills, but we had fun just messing around because we wanted to not be too pathetic looking in defeat.

This week, we had another instance of the same tournament (it happens every other Friday), but this time we had our ranked team with us. It was Steven, Eric, Albert, Eric Canada (filling in for Chris who couldn't make it) and myself. We lost in the first round again, but we really should have won. Nothing much else to say. Next time we got it.

Plans after class:
Well now that class is out, I have a fair bit of time before I can really start working. I figured I didn't want to just work somewhere and only be there for 3 months, so I'm doing odd jobs in the meantime. I will be finishing the shed and my Aunt's backyard this year finally. Also, my other aunt is moving into a new house, so I'll be helping with that. Then, my cousins occasionally need my help with their yard work. Additionally, I have one weekend worth of things to help my Grandma in Vancouver with. And I now may be going to my uncle's house in Kennewick for a couple weeks to help him out there. In addition to all this, I'm still working with Grandpa once or twice a week for pretty much the whole day. Then around all that, I'll be studying Korean and playing League to try to raise my elo. I sound kind of busy with all that, but I doubt it will be more than I can handle. It will feel like a vacation compared to the last month.

Hanging out:
I spent most of my free time since the last post just playing League here and there. I did manage to hang out with my friend a couple times. She suggested throwing a party at her place and inviting just a bunch of girls and I be the only guy. That was kind of an intimidating thought and I don't know if it would happen, but she seemed convinced it would be a good idea. Either way, she has begun looking for people to set me up with so we'll see what happens.

Other than all that, I haven't gotten to do much. My family took a trip over to the tri-cities this weekend to see my cousin's new baby that was born on July 4th. It was pretty cool. I am now facing a lot of promises I made to do things coming up before I leave so I'll probably be starting all that up tomorrow. For now though, maybe I'll finally find some time to have to myself for however long I can get. Until next time, peace out.