To Note About Nothing

I woke up to accomplishment. The accomplishment of being slightly awake.

I paid some bills and cleaned up the house a little. Nothing much of note to note about nothing.

I got to work and found I had time to finally catch up on all the blog entries I was getting behind on. The first three days of the year, and I hadn't written them down at all. And here I was making resolutions, and all I felt was a revolution for de-evolution. Confusion? I'd say so. (Gotta promise to not make my paragraphs so damn weird).

After work, I met up with Cassie, Amy, and Aaron so we could head out to a food truck rally in front of Aaron's work. It had Grill-Em-All, Me So Hungry, and about 6 or 7 other food trucks. After meeting up with Christine and Cory, I tried out a delicious pulled pork grilled cheese sandwich and some duck fat fried fries. Also, I got some of the best shaved ice I've had in years. Not the store bought rock hard shaved ice that you needed a blow torch to even try. The actual, delicately shaved ice that melts in your mouth. So good!

After that, we watched one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (we're finally in Season 5 and we just watched the Spike episode and holy crap I'm self-inducing a geek out).

It was a good episode. It had a Snake dude and slow heart break. All the good stuff an episode of Buffy needs. I can't wait till.... naw, I'll let you watch it yourself.

Topics of Conversation: Food trucks, early digitizing, my own worst enemy, Thursday, Fable III, duck fat, Whedon's gonna do it again, 3-step check-out, the right kind of shaved ice, etc.

-Nate

BORFF!!

Yep!

First boring entry of 2012! I couldn’t go THREE EFFING DAYS without having nothing to really write about. I should try to come up with something, but I’m too busy trying to catch up with this very journal that I’m already late on.
It’s a burden to be this bad at my own tasks I task myself with.

I paid some bills today. BREH!!

I worked at Norwalk. PLAH!!

Watched some Doctor Who. MEHK!!

So bored I’m ending all my sentences with noises. FURH!!

Topics of Conversation: A beard because the people demanded it, Norm McDonald, schedules be damned, Many Mansions, a car hit my head, new ideas for 2012, etc. KORPH!!

-Nathan SCHULZ!!

Re-Teams-Up

Mom had the day off so she was raring to get errands done. This consisted of recycling (a ton of cans, bottles, and SMELLY ASS milk cartons), Staples (I got some refills for my beloved pens), and Black Angus (we had received a gift card from my uncle and I wanted steak).

I grabbed a sec to read more of Oswalt’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (pages 121-138), and stopped off at Best Buy to buy the Black Keys’ latest album El Camino. Sweet googly moogly, this is a great album! Its got this whole 70’s Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and buzzing bass power that just gets your head beeping and bopping all about. I will be listening to this album too damn much.

After we picked up some groceries and brought them home, I left to see Cassie (my girlfriend**). I picked her up from her place, and we went to the Long Beach Town Center. We ate at El Torito, and watched Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron.

This movie re-teams-up director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody (they made Juno together if you don’t know cuz you’re not obsessive like me). The dialogue is less hyper-realized, but is still sharp and funny. And touched with a great rush of disappointment and fatigue, which brings out performances I wasn’t prepared for. And the best performance goes to Charlize Theron, who I can’t help but feel was ACHING to play a character like Mavis Gary.

Mavis is narcissistic, alcohol addicted, and so woefully cut off from all forms of human contact and emotion that you’d think she needed to study ahead of time to know how to smile.

And did I mention Patton Oswalt is in this movie and is amazing, and funny and so very human that I must again vow to kill and eat him to gain all his super-powers?
Its hard to feel bad for Mavis in this film. And that’s mostly because the character quite honestly wants you to hate her. She wants you to feel as miserable and uncomfortable as she feels around anyone that feels okay with what they got out of life. She hates you if you’re in a good mood and she didn’t allow said good mood to exist. But its hard to hate her, because she is so broken and lonely and human that you can’t help but understand her.

Condone her actions? Oh hell no, she’s a crazy bitch, man!

Topics of Conversation: Art School, refills, Ribeye vs. New York, Pi, proud geek, tip percentage, dates and time, googly eyes, zebra stripes, flans abound, wink like a seizure, if only there were no customers, etc.

-Nathan

**I have a girlfriend? What? How? 2011 has a some stories I will try to post some other time…

Oh No, The Subject of Me

Its been a while since I tried to maintain one of these again. A journal. Or diary. Or too-personal blog about me. What a subject. Me. Nathan Schulz. I’m a comic geek with an expanding waistline and a bad habit of not writing enough. This is bad because I fancy myself a writer. A crafter of words. Try and put them together so that others want to read them.

So the point of trying to keep this blog/journal going is for practice. For my memory. And to see if I can make my mundane life JUST interesting enough for people to follow along. Or at least tell me to try better. Either is fine with me.

(Well, as long as you’re nice about me needing to try better).

Into the breach!

Today I had a late start. Understandable, since yesterday was a late, late night consisting of party favors, 2011 memories, vodka soaked gummi bears, and sparkling wine. To try and balance my brain out, I read some more of Patton Oswalt’s book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (pages 79-120). This is an excellent book, by the way. Oswalt is not only one of the funniest human beings on the planet, but he’s also a really sharp, heartfelt writer.

I, of course, am very jealous, and will have to kill and eat Patton Oswalt to gain his powers. Like Mega Man does to his enemies.

I decided to visit my dad today in the Orange Hills facility that cares for him. This… is not easy for me. Honestly, though the facility is very nice, it has all the aspects of hell that I’ve ever needed. Trapped in your own body, without anyway to clean yourself or try to better your situation. No freedom. And sometimes…. No hope. It takes an act of will on my part to even go to the place.

As I drove to the facility, I stopped off at a restaurant named Taco Mesa. This place makes delicious food, and I could use a few minutes to gather my nerve to go to the facility. As soon as I got my food, my mom called and said she would be heading to the facility as well. I told her to stop on over for some lunch/dinner at Taco Mesa, which she was more than starving enough to agree to. After we ate all our food, I decided on a whim to buy the flan for dessert.

Wow… just WOW.

The flan was quite literally the best flan I’ve ever had. It was amazing. I will have to go there more often just for dessert!

Mom and I then headed over to the facility and talked to dad. He… was in his usual vegetative state. It is damn exhausting to be here. I want out there. I want DAD out of there. I end up just swallowing my despair and read some more.

Topics of Conversation: Too many worries, tacos, Dragon Age, cheese or no cheese, stationary, Flan!, observations, drunk texting, etc.

-Nathan

Easter Eggs in the Fall

Math happened and then I was sitting idle for a bit before heading to work.

I finished up some character descriptions for "The Shrouded City." I only had two or so descriptions done in time for the first draft, which meant that I needed more. This is mostly due to the fact that I had about five characters showing up. I need to get these descriptions out to my girlfriend Cassie and my friend Zoe who was going to look over the script for me. It would probably help to have some kind of details for the look of the people in the story.

I've been borrowing the Lost Season DVDs from Cassie when I realized that the DVDs probably have hidden Easter Eggs in them! I checked the internet, and found out I was right. I'm going to watch them with her.

Been staying up way too late these past few days. It ain't insomnia. Maybe its arrogance? Insomnagance? Arromnia? You decide!

Topics of Conversation: mutually assured destruction, Drive, don't you worry, Halloween costumes, new bandage, chicken, losing thumbs, gimme some ice, missing a ton, idea machine, noodles made easy, letters made to go, etc.

-Nate

Up and Running

The first thing I did today was drop off episode 10 ("Procrasterbation") of the Order of the Triad podcast at Bobby's! It was super early but it was the only way it was going to work with our hectic schedules. Bobby uploaded it to the limejuice site, though we talked a little about getting a more official website up and running, because the original site was running out of room for the all the episodes. A nice problem really, considering that I wasn't sure we'd even GET into the double digits with the Triad podcast.

Later on, I moved some furniture for my mom. It was not fun. Not that moving furniture has been known to be fun in the past. It just had an extra dose of annoying. Luckily Uncle Jon was helping out today. So it went by all right, though the main piece we wanted to move into the homestead was too big to fit through the front. So that was disheartening.

The good news was that I was able to watch Attack the Block with Cassie, Justin, and Amy! Damn that was a great movie. Seriously in my Top Ten movies of 2011. I will go into detail at some point, but I will quickly say that the writing, acting, and camera work was phenomenal. WATCH THIS MOVIE!

Topics of Conversation: Slams, too much stuff, Red State, plantains, crazy English accents, hover technology, cool jobs, Dresden Files, Jesuit futures, Greek food, darker than black, etc.

-Nate

I Can't Draw (But I Try To Anyway)

The second day of school seems to be the polar opposite, at least in tone, of the first day. I started off the day with Computer Art class (PhotoShop and Illustrator). Since he was just getting everything organized and handing out the syllabus we could leave early. But I stuck around to try and get a handle on using the computer and Wacom tablet (which is insanely cool by the way). Here’s a doodle:

After the art class, I then headed to Visual Journalism. Its basically doing the same type of stuff I did last semester, except that I need to take more pictures and video. Plus, I got a new Press Card on the way! I’m looking forward to it.

After school, I headed to Justin’s place to catch up with him and shoot the breeze about the upcoming super hero movies of 2011. After The Green Hornet (which already came out), there’s Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern, and X-Men: The First Class. It’s a busy year to be a fan boy.

I then grabbed some dinner with Sarah at Del Taco. After which I went to Barnes & Noble to grab some moleskine notepads. I got back home and called it a night.

Topics of Conversation: Blizzard, 17 cents, what rhymes with macaroni, what to blog about, white knight, mouth full of fries, Bella is still so stupid, keeping it vegan, correspondent nerd, choking, etc.

-Nate