Pumpkins, Legumes, & Crabs! Oh My!

Picking up where we left off, Thursday wasn't the most exciting day ever. Basically, it consisted mostly of a great deal of homework, with breaks in between, catching up on Heroes: Season 2. That's really all I've got for Thursday...

Despite the fact that Chris and Caitlin ended up leaving for the weekend, Friday turned out to be a fun day. After classes ended, I hung out for a bit, and finished up a little more homework. Once I felt as though I had completed a sufficient amount for the day, Robert and I ventured over to the crafts store to see if we could find a few miscellaneous objects to spruce up our Halloween costumes. Later that evening, I decided to head over to UCF for Swing Knights. From about 8 to midnight, I enjoyed hanging out with other swing fans, dancing, meeting new people, learning new dance moves, and just having a good time. After the dance ended, I returned home and ended out the night, hanging out with Robert.

Saturday, our friend Melinda arrived in town. Around noon, I jumped into the car, and once again, headed over to UCF, to meet her and her mom for a quick lunch. It was a lot of fun getting to see them, hang out, and catch up for a bit. Following lunch, I made my return to the apartment. Robert and I deliberated as to what we should do to keep ourselves entertained for the remainder of the day. We decided that we should go scout out pumpkins, to see which Orlando pumpkin vendor would provide us with the best deals. Once we had completed our pumpkin scouting endeavor, we really had no desire to return home, as nothing exciting awaited us there. We inquired with the GPS on Robert's phone, and asked it to find us some nearby thrift stores. It, however, failed it's task and found us no such locations. We did, however, run across a nifty Asian supermarket. We killed some time in there, for a bit, and ultimately ended up leaving with a wonderful new set of reusable chopsticks! Add those to the list of awesome APT203 artifacts. Boosh!

Sunday probably turned out to be the most fun day of this entire past week. Starting, in chronological order, with the events of the morning, I left the apartment at about 9:50, expecting to arrive at UCF (which is about 7 minutes away), to pick up Bri, and head to church. Well, after numerous setbacks, and navigating my way through several police blockades, I managed to arrive at about 10:20. We immediately hit the road, and made our way to church. After a great service, we were given two options, as far as where everyone wanted to eat was concerned. Half of our friends headed to the mall food court, while the other half headed to CiCi's Pizza. Unable to conquer our indecision, we rolled down the windows on the way out of the parking lot and asked a random stranger to decide for us. Upon hearing his decision, we headed to the mall and met up in the food court with Ryan, Mateo, Stephen, and Jeanie, for some lunch. Once we had finished, we headed over to the Urban Outfitters store and browsed their immense and entertaining array of merchandise. Upon discovering that everyone else had left, Bri and I also made our exit, not forgetting to sample a few pieces of orange chicken, on the way out. On the drive home, we usually pass a bread factory, the smell of which is amazing when they're in the process of making bread. Several times we've discussed stopping in and seeing if they'd take us on a tour, but we've never actually followed through with it. Today we decided to change that. We took the exit towards the factory, and pulled into the establishment parking lot. Much to our dismay, however, as we approached the door, a man stopped us and informed us that they are closed on Sundays. Perhaps we'll try again next time... After dropping off Bri, I headed home and, once again, spent quite a few hours on schoolwork. Eventually, Chris arrived back to the apartment from Fort Myers. We hung out for awhile, until receiving a call from John, asking us if we'd enjoy going crab hunting at Cocoa Beach, again. Chris and I ventured to the coast, accompanied by John, Lindsay, James Greenwood, and Christian. Once again, we caught quite a few crustaceans. So much so that their holding bucket began to overflow. Also, turns out, I'm a pretty skilled crab hunter... who knew? I wonder if that'll ever come in handy for anything? Before leaving the Cocoa area, John decided we should stop by the 24 hour Dunkin Donuts. I don't recommend their peach tea. If you've ever wondered what an antique store tastes like, try one of those. A few other people tried a bit of it, and we all agreed that that's really the most accurate way of describing it's taste. There was just something about it... Finally, we made our way back to Orlando, ending an exciting day.

Monday, I awoke early and headed to school for Spanish class. Immediately following, I moseyed over to the IDS office and met with my advisor, about my remaining class schedule, as Thursday will be the day that Seniors can sign up for classes. Luckily, the meeting went very well, and the advisor informed me that I seemed to be on the right track to graduation. On the way home, I stopped by the pumpkin patch and grabbed a couple pumpkins, as today was the day we planned to do our annual pumpkin carving extravaganza. Chris, Robert, and I were joined by Caitlin, JM, John, Lindsay, Christian, and Leslie, and the pumpkin carving commenced! Chris made a volcano pumpkin, JM made a fancy pumpkin, complete with monocle, Caitlin made a headless horseman pumpkin, John and Lindsay made a spider pumpkin, Leslie enscribed the letter "A" into her pumpkin, Robert made pumpkin Cthulhu, and I constructed a pumpkin eating another, smaller, pumpkin. 'Twas a smashing success!


Following the pumpkin carving, and now joined by Ryan Kelly, we returned indoors for Muffin Monday/Castle night. After an exciting Halloween edition of Castle, we sat down for Muffin Monday, this week, with special Halloween edition pumpkin muffins. This week's topic of discussion: Legumes. We managed to not actually discuss legumes, however, but instead dance around the topic, discussing things loosely associated with, or sounding like the word legumes. At first, someone pointed out that legumes sounded like lagoons, which digressed into a discussion about how it would be amazing if someone combined the premises of the shows "Gilligan's Island" and "LOST". We also discussed how George Washington Carver didn't actually work with peanuts, but instead, peanuts were just his cover, as he worked with the Japanese, during World War II, trying to help them complete their work on the Death Ray before the United States could complete the Atomic Bomb. Yes, all of this and more came from the simple topic of legumes. Such is to be expected, and is quite typical of Muffin Mondays...

Tofa! (That's goodbye in Samoan)
-Nick, Robert, & Chris

All We Wanna Do Is Eat Your Brains

Well, once again, it's been a week since my last update. I'll do what I can to fill you in on the happenings of the past seven days. Why not get down to business and start off with Thursday?
Thursday started with my excruciatingly long Education class. Three hours of my professor reminiscing about Vietnam. How that relates to the subject material is anybody's guess. Note to self: Bring your Laptop to the next Face-to-Face class meeting... The rest of the day promised to be pretty exciting, though! We had plans to pick up a new couch, then assemble our zombie costumes for this year's Zombiecon. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, neither of those occurrences became reality. I'm not going to tell you that the day was a total bust, though... Yes, you guessed it! We made a rice bucket! Okay, let's be honest, not only did you probably not guess that, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Well, allow me to enlighten you. Chris hurt his ankle a while back and heard that a good way of helping it heal is to stick it in a large quantity of rice. Don't ask me why rice has any sort of magical healing abilities, I guess that's just the way the universe works. Anyways, Chris bought a 50lb. bag of rice, and we filled one of those large plastic cargo tubs full of it. Rice shoes? Yes. Magnificent, I know.

I was excited that Friday had arrived. That meant that I got to go visit back home. Always an enjoyable time. Spanish class finally ended, I arrived back at the apartment, packed my clothes and whatnot, and headed home. The car ride was uneventful, and I arrived home in time to see my parents before they left for dinner. About a half an hour later, I met up with Andrew, Kory, and Jess, over at Andrew's apartment complex, so we could put together our costumes for the following night. Even though we didn't have our entire outfits assembled, we still managed to creep out some of the apartment complex residents, hanging out, around the pool area, where we were working. We figured that instead of hanging the costumes up somewhere to dry (Also omitting the fact that we didn't actually have anywhere to hang them), we decided to wear them out and about, around the Fort. We stopped at Walmart to pick up a bit more theatrical blood, as well as to meet up with Matt, Kortney, and Tanni. From there, we decided upon Denny's, and ventured that way. Needless to say, three zombies and a guy in a bloody clown outfit turned out to be a somewhat unsettling sight for graveyard shift employees of that particular establishment.

Saturday was the big day: Zombiecon '09! After venturing around, with Kory, for a good bit of the morning, trying to find a road that turned out not to actually exist, we finally found Jess' house. Soon after, upon request of Kory, we found ourselves, once again, at his favorite place in the world, Sun Harvest, to sample mass quantities of orange juice, at no cost to us. There, we met up with Andrew and called up Russ. When we had the plans figured out, we headed back to my house to put the finishing touches on our zombie costumes. My mom also offered to provide us with some pizza, which was also very much appreciated! 7:00 arrived and it was time for us to head to Zombiecon! Kory, Russ, Jess, Tanni, Andrew, Robert, and I arrived and hung out for awhile until eventually meeting up with Jeff, Jimbo, Vanessa, and Ashley. Though significantly less organized than the previous year, Zombiecon turned out be quite a bit of fun. The target audience for this year's Zombiecon, unfortunately, was the general Fort Myers population, most of whom's idea of fun is basically getting drunk (Also many of whom did not seem to get the general idea that, at Zombiecon, you dress like a zombie, and not a ninja turtle or a duck). Fortunately, for people such as ourselves who don't partake in such activities, it's pretty easy to make our own bit of fun, involving, but not limited to: Chasing unsuspecting strangers across downtown, photo-ops, the art exhibit, meeting other creatively dressed zombies, and just enjoying the one night of the year where it's perfectly normal to just roam the streets of downtown, dressed as a reanimated, cannibalistic corpse (Though that's really never stopped us from doing things like that on other days of the year, anyways). Overall, it was a lot of fun seeing friends I hadn't seen in awhile, and once again enjoying the wonderful event that is Zombiecon.

Sunday morning, I awoke to my dad telling me that the first thing I'd be doing for the day was going to clean the office. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I like helping out, and cleaning the office, it's just that if you were up until 5am the night before, that's not the most pleasant of morning events. Afterwords, however, I met up with Sarah, for her lunch break, at the mall. Her bus from Miami got back late, the previous night, therefore not allowing her to attend Zombiecon, so we decided to go for some lunch, instead, while I was in town. So, we got to catch up for awhile, and eventually Kory joined us, but by that time, Sarah had to get back to work. On the way out of the mall, Kory spotted a kiosk showcasing the very first Super Mario game. He dazzled the owner of the kiosk with his super Nintendo skills, but we did have to leave, eventually, seeing as though I had to return to Orlando at some point.

Monday brought with it two significant things. First, Chris' brother Philip arrived to stay with us. Secondly, we, as always, had Muffin Monday/Castle night. Although, this time we didn't actually have any muffin mix, so we had cupcakes instead. The topic of discussion was chosen by Caitlin as German U-Boats. At the end of our deliberation, we concluded that they originate somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and even if you don't provoke them, they're still highly aggressive and probably will sink your seafaring vessel. Avoid U-Boat infested waters at all costs.

Honestly, nothing too particularly exciting happened on Tuesday. I'll give you a real quick rundown of the events of the day, plus a fictional event. Let's see if you can spot which one didn't happen: Classes, Mountains of School Work, slaying the hydra that was terrorizing Orlando, and the occasional break, in between, to watch a few episodes of Heroes, or The Office. Also, not enough people were able to make it to Tuesday's Bible study at Tom's house, so we didn't do that either.

Wednesday, we all got to go do something we'd been looking forward to for awhile. Bear Grylls, the host of Man vs. Wild, came to speak at a church, somewhat nearby, in Longwood. Chris, Bri, JM, Kyle, and I attended, and really enjoyed the event. Unfortunately, though, we didn't get to go meet him afterwords, as immediately following his presentation, he was mobbed by a few hundred other audience members. We returned to the apartment, and were joined by Ryan Kelly. We ended out the night, just hanging out, having a good time, and introducing Ryan Kelly to the wonderfully splendid game known as Apples To Apples.

Hopefully you'll end up hearing from me again before next week,
-Nick, Robert, & Chris

Bagels: They Could Save Your Life

Yeah... yeah... I know... I said I'd get better about updating more often. But don't pay any attention to the fact that I haven't updated in almost a week. Instead, let's jump right into it, shall we?
Friday! Yeah, no... nothing really happened on Friday. Couldn't really get a hold of anyone, and Robert didn't want to leave the apartment. So, just turned out to be one of those boring nights. I suppose, besides classes, earlier that day, that really about sums up Friday. It gets better, though, I promise!

So, Saturday arrives, I wake up bright and early, pick up Bri from UCF, and shortly thereafter, we set out across town to meet up with David, Adriana, Chris (not the Chris I live with), and Ryan for a grand spectacle of sorts: the Toy Story I & II 3D double feature. Considering I'd never seen the second installment of this particular movie saga, the 3D made it that much more enjoyable. The movies ended, and after quite a bit of indecision, the group finally settled on a place to eat. We enjoyed the Ale House, but couldn't quite shake the feeling that our server was up to something sinister... though we never did find out what. After the meal had concluded we left the restaurant and returned to the car. Just then, Chris suggests we head to 5 Guys Burgers & Fries. We just ate... funny right? Nah, he wasn't kidding... That's restaurant #2. But did it stop there? Of course not. Restaurant #3 was Wendy's for free Frostys. Finally, we finished off our dinner tour of the fine cuisines of Orlando and stopped by Walmart. Basically, that entailed all of us wearing all of the cloaks from the Halloween isle, lurking around the store, while simultaneously doing our shopping.

The morning was upon us, again, and so our Sunday began with our trip to Church. After hearing a really good speaker, a few of us (Chris, Caitlin, John, Lindsay, and I) made our way over to Jimmy-John's for some lunch. We discussed the possibility of heading over to the Zendah Grotto, for some Swing Dancing, later that evening. Everyone thought it to be a grand idea, and the plans were made. Fast forward to later that evening... John, Lindsay, and Christian are all ready to leave, from their side of town. Caitlin and I are also ready to head that way. Chris, however, is nowhere to be found. He had previously gone out to do some Parkour, but said he'd be back around 5:30, as we had to leave at 6. Well, the current time is 6:45, but still, no one can get a hold of him. Caitlin and I killed a little more time, and learned some complicated swing moves, including "The Pretzel". Finally, we got a hold of him, but, as it turns out, it was now too late to go, anyways, so we called off the dancing endeavor. Instead, John invited us to come to Cocoa Beach and go Crab Hunting with them. We soon after jumped in the car, met up with them, and made our way to Cocoa. The Crab Hunting turned out to be a lot of fun! I believe that we caught somewhere in the vicinity of around 15 to 20 crabs. And yes, we named each one. All told, Sunday ended on a good note!

I honestly can't tell you that much in the way of exciting occurrences happened for most of the day on Monday. Just mountains of schoolwork. Fortunately, it did get better, later on. Tom gave Chris and I a call and wanted to know if we'd like to meet him for dinner at Olive Garden. After a few hours of hanging out, between the initial phone call, and the actual dinner, we ended up heading to the restaurant, now accompanied by John Michael. 'Twas a lot of fun, and definitely a nice break from the usual Easy Mac, or cereal.

Time and space were not altered in any way, and that meant that the following day was Tuesday, as predicted. It would be kinda neat, though, if the week changed itself up every once in awhile... you know, just to keep us on our feet. But anyways, Tuesday means that it's time to drive 30 miles, out to the middle of nowhere, to teach 2nd grade students for about an hour. The class went pretty well, and the students informed me that I was the nicest teacher they'd ever had. I know that since they're only in second grade, I didn't have a lot of competition for that ranking, but it was nice to hear that, anyways! Later that evening, after returning to this side of civilization, it was time to go to the East Community Group Bible Study at Tom's house. We began our new series on the book of Romans, which I'm really looking forward to, in the coming weeks. Overall, it was, once again, very informative, and enjoyable. After a few quick Wii Sports tournaments, it was time to return home for the night.

The suspense was building, I know. You're all most likely wondering: "What's with the title of this post?" Well, as I provide the explanation of the events that transpired on Wednesday, you will receive your answer. After a good bit of homework, it was time to take one of our bi-weekly, full apartment, trips to the grocery store. Chris, Caitlin, Robert, and I piled into Robert's Mini and arrived at the food library. I decided that this week, I'd enjoy having some bagels for breakfast. We arrived in the bagel isle and began to marvel at the many different varieties of bagels. As we searched, a man drove up in a motorized shopping cart, and stopped right behind me. I moved out of his way, thinking he wanted some bagels, but I was wrong. Instead, he had a message for me: "Choose your bagels wisely" he said, "Bagels could, one day, save your life." At that, he continued on his way, leaving us in a state of bewilderment. I still don't know who this ominous bagel messenger was, but you don't just ignore sagely advise such as that. I took heed of his instructions and carefully selected the very best looking bag of blueberry bagels. A few hours later, we got ready to journey across town for the Wednesday night college group. Just before we were about to jump onto the interstate, I got a call from Bri, wondering if we had left yet. Since we were still in that general area, we swung over to UCF and picked her up. By the time we hit 408, however, we realized that College Group would pretty much be over by the time we got there, so we decided to have a movie night, back at our apartment, compliments of our new Roku player, instead! We searched the Netflix "Watch Instantly" selection for a good 45 minutes, before finally settling on a few new episodes of The Office. Though we didn't make it to church, I still feel like we all had a lot of fun.

Now you know,
-Nick, Chris, & Robert

VA (Victory Over Ants) Day

Could Tuesday have dragged on any longer? Eh, I suppose not. Nothing we can really do about the 24 hour day... I suppose we have the Aztecs to blame for that... Either way, though, the day felt like it lasted forever.

I arose at 9am, to "March of the Clocks", my annoyingly too cheerful for the morning, default alarm, and got ready for the day's commencement. First item of the day: Drive 30 miles to a school, out in the middle of nowhere, and observe a class for an hour. Of course, once that was over, it was time to drive another 30 miles back home (Guess what I get to do every Tuesday for the next five weeks). The next several hours were spent on large heaps of homework. Thankfully, 7:30 came around and things took a turn for the better! Left the house, picked up Bri, and headed to Tom's place for the Tuesday night, East Community Group Bible study. We had a great discussion, as always, then enjoyed hanging out for quite a bit, afterwords. Somehow, we got on the subject of paintball, which, subsequently, led Tom to bring out a few laser-tag pistols. Once we got the hang of them, the firefight was on! The house quickly turned into a battlefield, and the ultimate victor was finally decided by a five pace duel. Our adventures eventually led us to Tom's backyard, where we discovered a colossus of a spider. This took us back inside to learn the identity of the massive arachnid, via the internets. Well, that didn't last long... we quickly digressed to watching amusing Youtube videos, and learning everything you could ever possibly want to know about the Wizard of Oz. Yeah... try to imagine the rabbit trail that led there. The night concluded around 1AM, and then it was time to return to our beloved APT203.

Today ended up being a pretty tame day. A bit of schoolwork, a bit of relaxation, a bit of church, and a bit of victory. Yeah, that's right, today we triumphed over the dastardly ant kingdom. After sealing up the cracks in the front door, a while back, we were perplexed as to where they were still coming from. The solution came about as the result of a plan that required the use of an excessively inordinate amount of time. The decision was made to watch a single ant, and follow it's every move across the house. After an immensely long journey, the ant did, indeed, unwittingly lead us to the area of their perimeter breach. Oh, you ants thought you were so clever with your secret entry point, across the room, on the ceiling, but our plan went off without a hitch, and you brought about your own demise! Oh, irony! Actually, is that irony, or does that just suck? You don't know... You don't understand complicated English concepts; you're just an ant. Or, at least, you were... now you're dead. Victory is ours.

Ciao,
-Nick, Chris, & Robert

Sputnik, Swing Dancing, & Orlando Traffic

Please allow me a few seconds to formulate some new excuses for why I haven't updated in a few days... First, lets start with the fact that my professor suddenly decided to annihilate whatever free time I once had. Also, I've been trying to find some new Modern Swing music. Fun results include "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy", "Wolfgang Parker", and my personal favorite "Movits!" (Swedish Swing Music with hip-hop vocals. I love it because it's amazingly different... check it out)

Well, from this past Thursday, the only thing that I can remember is that I absolutely conquered my Microteach #1. I have a somewhat large fear of public speaking (Then again, the fear of public speaking is more prevalent than the fear of death), so I thought I'd fly right through the speech in about 5 minutes (As opposed to the 15 minute minimum), and do terrible. Turns out, I passed the minimum requirement and reached 21 minutes. As I passed 15, I was told I hit the mark, but the rest of my class encouraged me to keep going, as they were apparently really enjoying my lesson. Not the most exciting thing ever, but it was the most exciting event of that day, plus I'm one step closer to conquering my fear of public speaking. Boosh!

Friday turned out to be a lot of fun! After Robert introduced me to the show "Burn Notice", I decided I'd head over to UCF for Swing Knights (Swing Dancing). I tried to see if I could get people to come along, but everyone I asked already had stuff going on. Robert was going to join me, but due to the fact that the floor of his room is comparable to an abyss, he sliced his foot open on a crowbar, and was unable to even fit his newly bandaged foot into a shoe, which subsequently meant that he was now unable to join me. So, I made my way down there thinking that since no one else could come, I'd just stay for the free lesson, then head back home. On my way out, however, I ran into some friends I hadn't seen in a year or two. They convinced me to stay for the dance, and I'm glad that I did. I had a really good time! Afterwords, I returned to the apartment and ended the night with Chris and Robert, as we watched the delightfully odd Japanese film, "Battle Royale".

Saturday ended up being a pretty chill day. Our only real event of the day was that Robert and I went to go see Zombieland. I didn't have very high expectations for it, thinking that it would be cheesy and crude. Surprisingly, it was neither. It turned out be a really good, really funny movie. If you enjoy the Zombie genre, I highly recommend it.

Sunday, we woke up and made our way over to Church. After a really good church service, a few of us moseyed over to Zaxby's, once again, for some lunch. A few hours later, we concluded our lunch and discussion, and made our way home. Upon our arrival, we remembered that October 4th is Sputnik Day! Since we forgot to actually make any plans, Robert improvised and made us all some corndogs, for dinner. Not your typical Sputnik Day celebration, but it worked, nonetheless. Later, we were invited to the G's (Grant and Graham's) place for the hang out extravaganza with the two of them and Crystal. 'Twas a fun time! We enjoyed some Apples To Apples, Jenga, Cutthroat Pool, and some other game, the name of which, I can't remember, that we'd never heard of before. Either way, it was a lot of fun. Sadly, we had to depart home and continue our college studies. I've decided that the whole school thing kinda ruins college...

Today, after hours upon hours of homework, Robert, JM, and I rewarded ourselves with some half price sushi at Kirin Sushi. The first time I've ever had chicken sushi. It was actually pretty good. Afterwords, the three of us returned to the apartment, only to find Chris and Ryan Kelly waiting for us. While we waited for our blueberry muffins to finish baking, we enjoyed a few rounds of Rockband. Once the muffins finished, we all sat down and it was tasked to Ryan Kelly to choose this week's topic of discussion. This week: Orlando Traffic. We decided that it was better than Canadian traffic (Consisting mainly of yaks), and definitely better than human trafficking. At some point we digressed to discussing how the stems of falling apples disrupt the earth's orbit. Either way, it turns out we were all deceived, and that Ryan Kelly secretly changed the topic of discussion to himself. Surprise! Later on, Caitlin joined us for our Monday viewing of this week's new episode of Castle. We've noticed that each week, our Castle viewing group seems to grow. The first week, Caitlin joined us, the next week JM and Caitlin joined us, then this week we added Ryan Kelly to our group. At this rate, by the time the season finale comes around, our living room may not be able to accommodate everyone.

Oyasuminasai,
-Nick, Robert, & Chris