Thanksgiving & Whatnot

This could quite possibly be the longest I’ve gone without updating the blog, but, you know, it was Thanksgiving break, so cut me some slack… I was out doing stuff that I could later write about, here. So, let’s see if I can remember what all has happened since last Saturday.
So, let’s begin. I honestly don’t remember what happened during the daylight hours of Saturday, but I can pretty much guarantee it was nothing even remotely exciting. Later that night, however, was a different story. I do remember that I was excruciatingly bored, so I thought to myself, “I’ll go over to Light Up UCF, and watch the movie they have playing, out on the projector.” When I arrived on campus, I called up JM to see if he would enjoy partaking in the mildly amusing festivities. He had, apparently, already caught the first showing of the movie, and did not wish to stay for a second screening. Instead, I ditched the movie idea, all together, in favor of going to hang out with JM and some of his friends from the church group he attends. We made our way across campus, and were treated to some hot coca by one of the guys residing inside. After we had finished our cocoa, we went out into the courtyard area for several sporting rounds of bocce ball. All in all, the night turned out to be quite a bit of fun. Won one of the games of bocce ball, made some new friends, and had a good time, in the process.

Sunday rolled around, but neither Chris nor myself rolled out of our beds in the morning to greet it, in time for church. I apparently just didn’t hear my alarm, and Chris fell deathly ill, so we stayed at home for National Five Iron Frenzy Day 2009. Though now too big, I donned my favorite FIF shirt, threw on the album “Upbeats & Beatdowns”, let it play through to “The End Is Here” (Not exactly in that order, but my point is that I listened through all of my Five Iron albums), and took most of the day to work on one of my final exams. Later on, when dinner time was upon us, in keeping with tradition, I ventured out to see if any of the local marketplaces sold Rhubarb Pie. Unfortunately, that’s a less common type of pie, and there was none to be had. I settled for our traditional FIF day dinner instead: Bacon bits and jalapeños on a Polish hot dog. Really that’s all that happened that day. Happy FIF Day 2009!

The week started again, and after Monday’s Spanish class, I decided, why wait until tomorrow to go home, when I could just leave now? So, I did. Granted, I missed Muffin Monday and Castle, but there’s always next week… As far as I know, they enjoyed some cinnamon muffins and discussed the end of the world. Everyone (and by everyone, I mean all rational, competent people) knows that the world is not going to end in 2012. Instead, I believe that the consensus was that the world would, however, end with a twist, leaving everyone going “Ohhh…” On the flipside, a few hundred miles away, I was in Fort Myers. Upon my arrival, I spent a few hours enjoying the company of my family, before Kory and I headed off to meet Jess, and another girl whom I just met that night, Kaylee. We hung out at Starbucks for a few hours, just talking and whatnot, until we decided to step outside, around the time Kaylee had to depart. While we hung out, outside, we all realized that I had a few tennis rackets in my trunk. Naturally, we headed over to the giant, empty parking lot next door, and had a large game of the tennis variety. Not exactly tennis, but it involved tennis equipment and hitting a ball around, so it was close enough.

Tuesday, around noon, Kory and I were in the midst of driving around when we got a call from Rebekah. We decided that we would meet her at Guitar Center. Why Guitar Center is anyone’s guess, but that’s where we ended up going. After fiddling around (Pun definitely intended) on everything from banjos to steampunk guitars, we decided to head out to Sun Harvest, where we would be meeting Matt and Andrew. After sampling way too much free juice, we spent the next little while outside, in the nice cool air, just talking and catching up. People started to get hungry, and Andrew demanded that we travel over to Rib City, where he would provide cheese fries for everyone. No one argued with that, and it was off we went. Eventually, we were invited to the Sancrant’s place of residence, to view a movie. We settled on Pirates of the Caribbean 3, as I had only seen it one time, previously, but not really paid much attention to it, therefore making it basically like an entirely new movie. That’s basically how we ended out the night.

Wednesday was a rainy day. So much so, that it rained for the entirety of the day. We attempted to assemble everyone, but only Kory, Sarah, Matt, and myself were able to do anything. To alleviate the boredom of the gloomy day, Sarah invited us over to her house to enjoy some Rockband. 5:30 rolled around, and that meant that Sarah had to leave. Fortunately, Matt’s place was right down the road, so we gathered our things and headed in that direction. Eventually we were joined, once again, by the Sancrants. The rain kept pouring, so we spent the rest of the evening, right where we were. Overall, not the most eventful day, but still fun!

Thursday was Thanksgiving Day; Another holiday, somewhat like Five Iron Frenzy day, only more people celebrate and/or know about it. So, preparations were made, and eventually the extended family arrived at the house for the incredibly early dinner. I never have understood why holiday feasts were enjoyed so early in the day, as opposed to normal dinners, eaten around... well, dinner time. But that's a subject for another time. Either way, it was fun! Got to see family that I hadn't seen in awhile, and hung out with my cousin for most of the day, discussing music and such. It's always exciting to find someone else who appreciates progressive music as much as you do, so that was neat. Definitely enjoyed it. Later on, in the night, we were introduced to a game called Balderdash. I'll spare you all the details of it, as I seem to be the only person, ever, who had never heard of it, but it was definitely my kind of game. If I ever see it around one of the stores up here, I plan to purchase it; I enjoyed it that much. Other than that, I think the night went really well; and I mean, it could only go up from last year, as this year I managed not to light my hair on fire. Though I think only a select few people know about that... the rest of my family thought it was the turkey burning... (So, mom, now you know).

Black Friday. Definitely not as metal as it sounds, but still a pretty neat occasion, nonetheless. Or so I've heard. I've never actually been to a Black Friday shopping rush, but I planned on going this year. Unfortunately, I slept through my alarm, a text from Matt, and several dozen calls from Kory. Instead of waking up at 3am, I woke up at 10. We decided to head out and about anyways, later on in the day, to see if any of the deals were still going on. Kory, JM, Rebekah, Kory's cousin, and I, roamed from shop to shop, ultimately coming up with nothing decent. We decided that we would head out to the beach and visit Jess at Beach Gifts. Unfortunately, we weren't able to stay long, as we had to get Kory's cousin back home. Once we arrived back in the main part of the Fort, we headed over to meet Jeff and Russ, and hang out for a little while. We meandered around downtown, discovering new places, and admiring the first appearances of Christmas lights. Sadly, Jeff had to be back to his house around 9:30, to bid his grandparents adieu. Russ was his ride, so, unfortunately, both of them had to leave. Since we were already down that way, we headed over to the mall to visit Sarah at the Disney Store, who had been called in for Black Friday. Once joined by Jess, we waited for Sarah to get off work, and headed over to the Ale House for a bit of dinner before we ended out the night. Sarah had to leave a tad early, but we were, soon after, joined by Tiffany. As is normal for us, we found ourselves standing around, out in the parking lot. With the Swing Night coming up, I decided to teach Jess, Kory, and JM, a few of the basics. So, for the remainder of the evening, we hung out in the back of the Ale House parking lot, swing tunes blaring from the car, swinging in the empty parking lot.

Saturday, I awoke to the texts of an inquisitive Matt Dunn, inquiring as to what we should do. We decided it should be something outside, and free. We settled on Koreshan, as Matt had never been there. You do have to pay $4, per car, to get in, though, so we decided to carpool over in one car. Matt arrived at my house, and we played a bit of ping pong while waiting for Tanni and Kortney to arrive. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the car Matt had brought to carpool in was his 1988 Grand Marquis Station Wagon. Naturally, we rolled down the windows and cranked up some old 80's tunes. Kortney and Tanni were severely embarrassed. Sadly, when we arrived at Koreshan, we were told that the park was closed early for the day. We decided we ought to head downtown, just for the heck of it, since it was such a nice day. Little did we know that when we got there, there would be a festival going on! We wandered in, and I inquired with some of the staff as to what was going on. Less exciting than my first idea, of getting up on stage and asking over the loudspeaker, but it got the job done. We had apparently arrived at the Holiday Jazz festival. Honestly, I don't know what it was really called, but the lady said something that had the words "Holiday", "Jazz", and "Festival" in the name, and told us everything there was free. I kinda stopped listening after the "free" part. Much to our amusement, they had set up a sledding hill, complete with a large bit of man-made snow. We partook in that several times, as well as the giant inflatable slide, and pictures with Santa. Unfortunately, we gave the pony rides a miss... After we had had our fun, we bid the festival farewell, and headed over to meet a larger group of people at Ale House. After dinner, it was, down to me, Matt, Michelle, Tanni, and Kortney. During a quick run to Walmart, Tanni and Michelle discovered at $4 movie bin, and bought about a dozen movies, a piece. Only one thing to do when you have a ton of movies, right? Movie night! We, once again, found ourselves back in the Sancrant's living room, though, this time, watching the film "Yes Man." At the completion of the movie, and after extinguishing the surprisingly long lasting starter log, in the fireplace, we decided to call it a night, seeing as though it was about 2am.

Today, this Sunday morning, I got up expecting to go clean my dad's office, but finding out that he didn't need me to, this week. Instead, I met up with Matt, very briefly, so he could give me something that Chris' mom gave him, to give me, to bring up to Chris. From there I set out to meet my mom at Walmart. On my way over, as I was stopped at a red light, a group of four guys, all looking my age, all with my exact same hair, and all wearing band t-shirts, walked by the crosswalk, in front of me. As they passed, they all turned, noticed me, and began smiling and waving frantically. I felt as though I was an honorary member of their group. It was neat. I arrived at Walmart, met up with my mom, and we shopped around until it was time to go meet my dad and pick out a Christmas tree for the house. We entered the tent, talked to the first lady we saw, and immediately found the Christmas tree that we wanted. They trimmed it up, wrapped it in the festive red and white netting, and we brought it home and put it up. I unfortunately, had to leave, as I thought it wise to get on the road before too late, so I didn't fall asleep on my way back up to the apartment. Therefore, I was not able to help decorate the tree (that is, if it was decorated tonight), but at least we've still got one to decorate up here. Presently, I'm back at the apartment, Oreo is seemingly astounded by the giant bag full of Christmas tree branches, and Robert & myself are currently keeping warm around the fire being emitted from the fireplace DVD. Now, I'm off to do something other than write in this blog...

Valete,
-Nick, Robert, & Chris

Raves, Ant Hordes, and Astronomical Events

Tuesday, was a pretty normal day, for the most part. That evening, however, turned out to be pretty fun. I ended up showing up to the ECG Bible study about 45 minutes late, but the good news is that I arrived in time to be a part of a little bit of it, at least. After the Bible study concluded, I took Bri home, then got in contact with Robert and Ryan Kelly. From there we made plans to partake in the viewing of the Leonid Meteor shower. We waited around until about 12:30am, and then, subsequently, set out on a quest to find a dark place, in which to set up camp. Orlando, however, is a pretty big city, and furthermore, one with quite a few lights. Finding a dark place proved to be quite a challenge. After checking out an areal view of the city on Google maps, we decided that we would drive way down Alafaya, out to a scarcely populated area. Little did we know that along the road, the power plant had set up a rather massive roadblock, which we were unable to pass. We never ended up reaching that destination. We rethought our strategy and headed to some back roads behind UCF. On one such road, lo and behold, we found an observatory. Naturally, we figured it was the perfect place to set up shop for stargazing. We ended up seeing a few meteors, but definitely not the spectacular display that we had been promised. Still made for an enjoyable evening, though!

For the sake of saving you two paragraphs where I ramble on about how uneventful and schoolwork filled, Wednesday and Thursday were, I'll just condense them both into this single statement. Although, I figure whilst I have a free paragraph, I might as well address something important... Do you remember a few months ago when we crushed the ant hordes that plagued our apartment? Probably not, but it did happen. I was there. Anyway, they've found a new way in, and this time they've returned in somewhat legendary quantities. Their numerous legions have swept across the entire apartment. No place is safe. We'll be letting an exterminator handle it this time. As far as the only exciting event that has happened these last few days, is concerned, we brought back the 11:30 O'clock Rave. It's been about two years since that has taken place (Back, during our time at Southeastern), so it's definitely been awhile. Complete with rave music, dancing, glowsticks, flashlights, old timey lanterns, and the ravin' raven, the rave was, once again, the exciting event that we all remembered it to be.

Friday, we finished classes, and returned home to finish (that's right, you guessed it) more schoolwork! Once that was done, JM stopped by for awhile. We hung out til around 9 or so, until he had to depart. Fortunately, I remembered it was Friday (For some reason, for the entire day, I was thinking it was Thursday). I decided to head over to UCF for Swing Knights. Definitely glad that I did. Had a great time, met some new people, and learned quite a bit of new stuff! Overall, a fun night!

Bæ bæ (It's Icelandic),
-Nick, Chris, & Robert

Borders, Movies, Dancing, & One Less Bear Than There Would Normally Be

Long awaited, Wednesday had finally arrived! What is it that was so exciting about Wednesday, you ask? Well, Wednesday was the day that Chris and I got to partake in a certain concert experience, hosted by one of my top five favorite bands: Minus The Bear! We arrived downtown, at Club Firestone, and waited in line for about 45 minutes, before the doors opened. We got inside, found a nice area that was rather close to the stage, and waited for the curtains to open. Supporting Minus The Bear were two bands that we had never heard of before. Both turned out to be quite mediocre, the second of which, Chris and I weren't able to tell if they played more than one song (They all just seemed to flow together... and when I say they, in relation to the songs, that's assuming that they did, in fact, play more than one, which I can't be too sure of). As expected, though, trudging through a few mediocre bands was well worth it, when Menos El Oso (That's Minus The Bear in Spanish) finally took the stage! They played an absolutely phenomenal show! The only thing I would have changed about it, was that they didn't play my favorite song by them, "Hooray", but otherwise, the setlist was spot on, and the music was executed perfectly. Sadly, though, despite our attempts to persuade them to return for a second encore, the show did eventually end... Twas a fun night, indeed!

After the normal Thursday routine came to an end, we were invited to attend a movie night, with a whole bunch of people from church, over at AP4. Bri and I arrived at the church, and after greeting everyone and hanging out for a bit, we eventually settled on a movie. The majority vote selected the movie Elf. Now, even though it's not even Thanksgiving yet, and therefore I cannot bring myself to approve of watching a Christmas movie yet, it is a very good movie, so I couldn't complain. Between movies, Jeanie, Kai, and myself entertained ourselves with a short bout of swing dancing, while Mateo showed us his Salsa dancing skills. Eventually, the group settled, once again, on watching the movie Nacho Libre. Not being a fan of that movie, neither Bri nor I felt like staying, so we said our goodbyes and headed over to a movie night at Tom's place, where we were also invited. We showed up for the very end of the movie "Knowing". After the movie had finished, we hung out for awhile, played Wii, and had a generally good time. Overall, this night was also a lot of fun.

After spending a large chunk of Friday, working on my Microteah #2, along with quite a bit of other schoolwork, Robert and I really felt like we needed to get out of the house and do something. Inspired by the aforementioned Michroteach that I was working on, it being about the lesser known operations and projects of the Cold War, we decided to go see the new movie, "The Men Who Stare At Goats", based off of Project Stargate, in which the American military had, under it's employ, no less than 20 "psychic" soldiers. It turned out to be as funny as I hoped it would be, and therefore made our movie-going endeavor a pretty good one. Not the most exciting day ever, but still much better than some previous others.

Saturday promised to be a good day! Thankfully, even though it took an unforeseen turn, it didn't disappoint! All day I was excited to go see the pirate metal band Alestorm, the folk metal band Eluvitie, as well as a few other death/black metal acts. Unfortunately, Chris was unable to attend, and Robert just hates concerts for some reason. So, it looked like it would be me, going by myself. Well, an hour before it was time to leave for the show, Dianna notified me that a group of my friends were going swing dancing, and wanted me to join them. I figured concert by myself, or swing with a bunch of friends. Well, I chose swing. Plus, there was a live band there, so I guess you could say I got to attend a concert as well! A tad less metal than the one I would have been at (Also less moshing, more roc-stepping), but hey, that's the good thing about being able to enjoy basically every existing genre of music; you can enjoy the show no matter what! So, there we were! We learned several new dance moves and the night turned out to be a rather splendid one!

Sunday morning, we awoke and headed over to church, as the normal Sunday routine usually goes. After the service had concluded, we met up with some of our friends for awhile, before heading back home. On the way home, Caitlin told us of different sandwich combination she had been experimenting with, and invited Chris and I over to enjoy some lunch. We all returned back to the apartment to work on the remainder of our schoolwork, for the week. Unfortunately, the rest of the day consisted of that, as well as sifting through duffel bags full of stuff I realized I hadn't unpacked since I've been here. Luckily, I've located my Christmas hats, for when December arrives!

Yeah, that's right... the sandwich got the picture to represent the day. It really may have been the most interesting item of the day.
Moving onto Monday, but skipping past all of the schoolwork. Bri invited Ryan Kelly and I to a prayer event on campus. It was pretty neat, and we stayed for about an hour, but as we had people coming over for Castle Night/Muffin Monday. We returned home, with about five minutes to spare, before the evening's events started. We, soon after, settled in and enjoyed this Monday's viewing of Castle. Afterwords, we migrated to the table, broke out the Banana Nut muffins, and decided on a topic. Whilst Ryan Kelly was cramming the entire muffin into his mouth, just to see if he could, Robert suggested that the topic of discussion be "the Border between the United States and Canada." We all got to wondering how thin the border line actually is. Because really, if there is a border line, the line itself has to be occupying some space, however small that space may be. Do they let people live on that line? If you live there, are you automatically a US/Canadian dual citizen? But then we got to thinking... who does the line belong to? Neither country is going to just give it up, so we figured that the only logical answer was that it belongs to Mexico. That's just the way it is... don't think about it too hard...

Do Na Da' Go Hv I (That's apparently goodbye in Cherokee),
-Nick, Robert, & Chris

All The Wolrd Is Mad

Sunday, the last day of the week, or in the case of some cultures, the first day of the week. Either way, that's not the point. The point is, Sunday had arrived. We woke up early and set forth to church. At the conclusion of the service, we met up with our friends, to say hi, but opted out of going to lunch, as all three of us (Chris, Caitlin, and I) had a lot of homework to do. So, there we were for the remainder of the day... The apartment, our prison, with schoolwork playing the role of warden. We were all looking forward to going to Lindsay's birthday dinner, later on that night, though. Unfortunately, we, once again, had to opt out of that, as well, for the same reasons as before. Overall, I'd give the day a 3/10 on the exciting scale.

After Monday's classes, Chris and I ventured down to Park Avenue CDs to pick up tickets for this Wednesday's Minus The Bear concert! After procuring the tickets, we headed back to the apartment, but first decided to stop by the "greek" store, and see if we could pick up the greek letters we've been wanting, which would subsequently turn out apartment into the pseudo-fraternity Pi Pi Pi. Unfortunately, no such letters were to be found at this store. They were nice enough to tell us where we might have a better chance of finding them, but since, by this point, rush hour had arrived, we decided to call our driving expedition quits for the day. We returned home and awaited the arrival of Muffin Monday/Castle night. Our normal group gathered round for this week's episode of Castle, and upon it's completion, we began this week's Muffin Monday. I either failed somewhere in the mixing process or the baking process, or just spread out the batter too thin, cause the muffins turned out rather odd... We dubbed them "Wee-Muffs" and proceeded forward. Per the suggestion of our friend Kasey, and stemming from a previous conversation about misconceptions that Oklahom(ians?) had about misconceptions that Floridians had about people from Oklahoma, we are brought to this week's topic of discussion: Crazy Hill Folk. We quickly took notice that "crazy" and "hill folk" were pretty much synonymous, and only one of those phrases was actually needed to accurately sum up the idea. This, although still keeping in theme with the discussion, sparked up Robert and his animosity towards manatees. He informed us that Tennessee just passed a law that makes it legal to eat any animal you hit with your car. Naturally, we helped Robert devise a scheme to capture a manatee, drive it to Tennessee, place it in the road, and then hit it with his car, so he would finally have a (legal) excuse to eat one; something he has wanted to do for a very long time. We also decided that, since none of us have actually experienced crazy hill country for ourselves, we're going to stick with our collective mental preconceptions of all of it's occupants having ostriches as their main mode of transportation. Thus concludes Monday.

Today, being Tuesday, meant it was time to go teach. I arrived in the front office, and realized that the father of one of the kids in my class was there. He was picking up his son, as he had been suspended from school. For what, you ask? Well, the answer is a tad on the horrifying side... The kid was being picked on, on the playground, the day before, so today he brought a knife to school... Yes, that's right... A second grader brought a knife to school, with the intent to exact vengeance upon a fellow second grader. Truly, all the world is mad. Despite this, I still had to go teach the class. Today was, however, my last day. I thought I was going to be relieved that the teaching program had ended, but the experience actually turned out to be kinda fun, so I may miss it a little. On the bright side, not having to go back does mean that there's slightly less of a chance of me getting stabbed by a knife wielding second grader... After a few hours of finishing up some Spanish homework, it was, once again, time to head to the ECG Bible Study. On my way to pick up Bri, I was rerouted several different times, by several different sets of police officers. Why? Well, because there was apparently some sort of shady dealings going on by some rather unscrupulous characters in a couple of the parking garages. I know this because they sent me the same text message, about it, 5 times, via the UCF emergency alert system. Also, apparently, earlier today, one of the classroom buildings had to be evacuated due to some sort of threat. Once more, I reiterate: All the world is mad. On a more positive note, the Bible study, this week over Romans 5, went very well, and I feel as though a good time was had by all. Also, trailing off to a random tangent, three interesting facts that I was not made aware of until tonight were that 1) My favorite comedian, Daniel Tosh, was preforming at UCF for Homecoming tonight. It would have been fun to see, but I feel like the Bible study tonight, with wonderful friends, was just as great. 2) Homecoming is apparently this week. And 3) Tomorrow is apparently Veteran's Day. This, I'm told, means no classes tomorrow. Definitely excited about that. I should get a UCF events calendar... then again, the surprise is kinda fun... keeps me on my toes.

Viszuntlatasra,
-Nick, Chris, & Robert

Remember Remember The Week Of The 5th Of November

According to this part of this blog entry (But not in actuality, at the moment), today is Tuesday. By now, you all know what happens on Tuesday mornings. Why not just skip ahead to when I got there? Better yet, why not tell you all that I teleported there, just to make this part of the post a tad more interesting. You can't prove that I didn't... Anyways, I arrived a half an hour beforehand, as usual, to get prepared. Today, however, there was a substitute. I talked to her a bit, whilst getting all of my materials put together, asking her things like how the day was treating her thus far. She responded, telling me that it had been rather stressful, but just chalked that up to blaming it on it being Monday. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was Tuesday, she seemed stressed enough... The teaching part went well, although the students somehow got it in their heads that I'd be bringing them donuts next week. I'm somewhat displeased with whoever told them this; not because I'm some terrible person who likes to dash 2nd Grader's hopes and dreams to pieces, but because I can barely afford food for myself, let alone 20 other people. Oh well... Later on, after 5 grueling hours of attempting to learn the Spanish language, it was time to head to Tom's place for the ECG Bible study. We all had a rather enjoyable time, and after an in-depth look at both Romans 4 and Wii Tennis we decided to call it a night.

Wednesday, as my last class ended, I received a call from Kory, who informed me of his whereabouts, presently being in downtown Orlando. I'm always excited to see friends from the Fort, so I ventured downtown to meet up with them. For about an hour or so, Kory, Jess, Danielle, JM, and myself meandered about, downtown. They had come up, however, to see the Thrice & Brand New show down at the House of Blues, although, Kory just came along for the fun of it. So, everyone else left, leaving Kory and I to go entertain ourselves. We headed back to the apartment, met up with Chris, and just hung out for awhile, until the concert had ended. We headed over to Downtown Disney, to see everyone once more. Kory and Jess, however, were too tired to drive three and a half hours back home, so we invited them to stay at our place. Upon our return home, Kory and Jess made themselves well acquainted with our ramen supply. Intrigued by our Roku player, we all decided to watch some Dexter before going to bed. We realized it was time to call it a night, just about the time we all woke up at 3am, all having passed out during the show.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November. Thursday, I awoke to find Kory and Jess, out in the living room, enjoying more ramen, and more Dexter. I took the opportunity to finish my schoolwork for the day, so we could all hang out for awhile, before they had to leave. Once I had completed my homework, and they had had their fill of ramen and Dexter, we decided to check out Roadside America and see if there were any new odd destinations in Orlando. Much to our delight, we found a 4 person spaceship, and decided to check it out; definitely a good find!

From there, we decided to head over to Downtown Disney, and hang out for a bit longer. Tonight, however, was my turn to go to a concert; so, unfortunately, we had to head back to the apartment to drop them off, and so I could pick up my ticket. Though, to make the absurdly long ride through rush hour traffic, across Orlando, a little more bearable, we decided to do a little something to celebrate the 5th of November. We spotted a tall lifeguard chair, on the side of the road and decided to pull over. Wearing my Guy Fawkes mask, and with a sign, in hand, reading "Remember Remember The 5th of November," I climbed to the top, and sat for a little bit. Some people understood and and greeted me with smiles and waves, while others seemed to be in a profound state of bewilderment. Both were acceptable reactions.

Finally, the time came to go see Mute Math & As Tall As Lions. We bid farewell to Kory and Jess and headed over to the House of Blues. On the way there, we received a call from Robert, informing us that he had been in an accident. Thankfully, he was okay, and the person that hit him will be paying for the repairs on his car. We arrived at the show, and as we waited for it to begin, we ran into Danielle Sater and Matt Capps, which was a nice surprise! As Tall As Lions opened, playing an incredible setlist. After a brief intermission, Mute Math took the stage. I have been to many, many concerts, but I still stick to my opinion that Mute Math does the best live show that I have ever seen. The entire band switches instruments at random, at some points, all of them are playing on the same drum set, the lead singer is doing flips off of pretty much everything, the bassist, on occasion brings out the classical stand up bass, keytars are in great abundance, as well as people jamming on them atop their pianos, the guitarist is playing the distortion pedals, as though they were their own instrument, they let the crowd play some of their homemade instruments, the drummer is crowd surfing around (On his bass drum), large amounts of improvisation (by the entire band) are thrown in during solos, and pretty much the entire set is destroyed by the time they're finished. Basically, they do everything except play their chairs as instruments... no wait, they do that too... Reset!

Thankfully, Thursday was full of enough excitement to last us two days, because the enthralling events of Friday consisted of (after an excessive bit of schoolwork, mind you), not only, going to Walmart, but also (Brace yourself for this one), Target, as well. Yeah, I know you're jealous...

Zaijian,
-Nick, Chris, & Robert

A Day Of Cats & Medieval Torture (No Animals Were Harmed In The Making Of This Blog Entry)

Skipping ahead, through the time/space continuum, leaving Monday morning's classes and schoolwork in it's wake, we find ourselves in the midst of Monday afternoon. Needing to go deposit this month's rent check, Robert and Chris decided to tag along, in hopes that the bank would once again provide them with coloring material. We left the apartment, and after disposing of our pumpkins, but before making it more than five feet from our door, we are greeted by our across-the-way neighbor, who has something to inquire of us: He wants to know if we would be interested in adopting a kitten, who has apparently been wandering around the apartment complex for the last four days. Unfortunately, none of us thought it was the best idea, but that didn't stop us from playing with it for a little bit, and ultimately attempting to guilt trip Robert into adopting it (That wasn't really our goal, but it made for a few hours of amusement). JM said that he might be interested in adopting it next year, if we did decide to take it in until then, but if that doesn't end up being the case, then perhaps we'll try to make sure he at least ends up in happy home on the Island of Wayward Kitties. Time will tell...

Upon arrival at the bank, we discovered that the coloring books that my roommates had been looking so forward to were unavailable. This aggravated them to a point, but as Muffin Monday/Castle night drew more near, they eventually forgot about it. JM, Ryan Kelly, and Caitlin arrived just in time for Castle. After this week's enthralling new episode had concluded, we all gathered around the kitchen table for Muffin Monday. That is, all of us except for Ryan Kelly, who was sound asleep. We gently persuaded him to awaken... that is to say we pelted him, from across the room, with no less than 40 tootsie-rolls, until he finally got up to join us. This led us into our topic of discussion, for the week: "Ancient Forms of Torture, Brought Back In Modern Times, But In A Slightly More Comical Fashion." Utilizing candy in lough of rocks, as a form of stoning, was only the tip of the morbid but still somewhat entertaining iceberg. Other highlights included actual hangman, in which you had a chance to save yourself, depending on whether or not you were able to guess the obscure hidden message laid out before you, as well as a new spin on water torture, taking a form resembling bobbing for apples, in which, as your captor dunks you, if you manage to somehow retrieve all of the apples, they'd consider sparing your life, but then chalk your victory up to you being a witch anyways, and that'd be the end of you. Sorry, you really don't know what to expect with angry mobs...

Herete, (That's a Greek salutation, this time)
-Nick, Robert, & Chris

Halloween & A Lot Of Free Chicken

Gather round, settle in, maybe bring some snacks; we have a week's worth of catching up to do. So, if you're all comfortable on your tacky sofas from Rooms-To-Go, then let's get on with it, shall we?
Tuesday commenced forth, as each preceding Tuesday for the past four weeks has done: Driving across town, once again, to a scarcely visited, remote corner of Orlando, to teach my assigned 2nd grade class. After that was over, I completed my long journey back, and killed the next several hours with mass quantities of schoolwork. Night fell, and it was time to head to the East Community Group Bible study. The study was good, as it usually tends to be, and as always, we hung out for a bit afterwords. One such event during this time included the breakdown of one of our friend's cars, as they tried to leave. And though my infinitesimally small automotive expertise came in about as handy as I thought it would (That being, it didn't), we did manage to get the car back in working order. We concluded the evening with several hours of conversation, until we all felt it was time to call it a night.

Wednesday came, and after classes and schoolwork had been completed for the day, I figured I'd head on over to Goodwill, to see if I might be able to find some new dress-shirts, as most of mine are now two sizes too big for me, and I'm sick of switching between my two remaining shirts, each week. I had no luck finding anything decent, but my search will continue; probably sometime this next week. Wednesday's been pretty compelling so far, right? Well, not much changed in the evening, either. There was college group, but we all felt as though we still had too much school work to do, and agreed to give college group a miss, for the third Wednesday in a row. We'll definitely attempt to make it this upcoming week, though...

8am. Alarm number one rings out obnoxiously. This event signifies me being able to register for next semester's classes. I arose from my bed and headed over to my computer, with the MyUCF website already fired up and ready to go. With a quick confirmation of my course shopping cart, I had all of my classes. All except one: "Special Permission Needed To Enroll For This Course", was the error message. Despite the fact that I took care of acquiring that special permission last summer, I wasn't surprised to see that nothing had actually gotten done about it in the UCF system. 15 minutes later, I found myself in the registrar's office, and after a quick conversation, I was completely enrolled for next semester. On my way home, I noticed that I had a free Chick-Fil-A breakfast coupon in my car. I figured I'd seize the opportunity and partake in an early morning poultry feast. The aforementioned events took place just before I remembered what was planned for the upcoming evening. That evening, Bri and I ventured over to First Baptist of Orlando to see the President of Chick-Fil-A speak. This, of course, included free chicken sandwiches. So, both of my meals for the day ended up being courtesy of Chick-fil-a. Not bad. The event was pretty great, and the evening turned out to be a lot of fun.

Classes for the week ended Friday afternoon, and what we were left with was the question of how best to keep ourselves entertained. For a few hours, Robert, JM, and myself set out on an expedition around town, checking out different thrift stores, purely for amusement purposes. No one ended up buying anything, but I did manage to procure a free Rise Against poster. Definitely can't complain about that. We returned home, and Robert decided to spend the rest of the evening in the most thrilling way he could possibly think of: a nap. Then there were two. We check out what we could do in town, and eventually settled on the dollar movie theater. It actually turned out to be $2.50, but I can forgive them of their deceit, as that's still incredibly lower than the absurd prices at the regular movie theater. Unfortunately, we arrived at the cinema an hour and 45 minutes too early. Thankfully, just down the road was park avenue CDs. A music store can entertain me for hours, and it would have if we didn't have somewhere to be. While we were there, though, we discovered that the Anti-Pop music festival was coming through Orlando on November 11th-14th and bringing with them a few amazing artists, including Minus The Bear, Copeland, Ensiferum, Alestorm, and Eluvitie. Guess what we're going to be doing that week? Anyways, getting back on track, we returned to the theater and concluded our night with a showing of the film District 9.

Enter Halloween Saturday. The first part of it was spent like any normal Saturday, except all of it in costume. The people of Walmart really seemed to enjoy my costume, though none really understood what it was. As it got later in the day, we decided what method of trick-or-treating we might go for. We chose a neighborhood and decided to follow along with a group of other random beggars. That, however, didn't turn out so great. The relentless chorus of parents, in this group, disapproving of the college aged trick-or-treaters, eventually got to the point where it was annoying enough to make us devise a new plan. Instead, we met up with a group of people JM knew, and decided to continue on with them. Definitely a much better idea, as well as one that made for a much more enjoyable experience. After we felt as though we had acquired enough candy from strangers, Robert, Ryan Kelly, and I set out to First Baptist for the annual Halloween party. 'Twas a grand time, and a fun way to end out the day. Plus, thanks to the few remaining farmers left in America, we got to set our clocks back, for one more hour of sleep. I'd thank them, but I know that in a few months, it'll be their fault for taking that hour of sleep back from us; so at the moment, I remain neutral on the subject.

This morning, after enjoying my extra hour of sleep, we made our way to church and enjoyed a great service. After lunch at the mall, Chris and I made our way back home. Several hours of schoolwork later, with occasional "Heroes" breaks in between, Chris and I headed to Downtown Disney to pick up tickets for the Mute Math/As Tall As Lions show coming up this Thursday. We got there, got our tickets, checked out the new hot air balloon, and watched the people at the magic shop preform some of their wizardry, for a little bit, before eventually heading back to the apartment. Now we're back and the time for sleep is fast approaching.

Ma’a Salama,
-Nick, Robert, & Chris