It's the halfway point.

The year of 2009 has held good and bad memories for me, but that was only the first half. Today is the official halfway mark for the year, so happy birthday and a half to those born on January 1st. Now that I have introduced today's post, I shal ramble on about the events of the day.

In the wee hours of the morning, I woke up. It was about 6:45am and the only thing of importance I needed to do today was turn in my final paper for Government which I have been taking since June 5th at Northlake. My paper was over two different questions, one being about the best way to influence the government if you are a citizen of the United States, and the other topic being over the advantages and disadvantages of free media, the paper went smoothly, and I expect the grade to be good. I'm still awaiting the grade, but I assure you, when I find out, you will know. Moving on, after I turned in my paper and talked with a few people up at Northlake. Courtney is still kinda grounded from me, because last night I was talking with her, and apparently we can only talk on the internet now, but as of today, I haven't heard from her...so I have no idea what's going on. But I hope and wish the best for her in this troublesome grounding period. This Saturday, I plan on going with her family after I get off work to an AirHogs game near Nokia Theater. I have no idea what that means, but I suppose I will find out. So, to continue my morning, I went to work out, and got home around 11:15am. I don't really remember if I ate lunch, I probably didn't so I am going to blame what happened an hour later on the fact I had barely any food in me. Therefore, preventing my ability to think straight.

After I got home from working out, I called my mom and let her know I arrived safely, because she's big on the whole safety thing. Of course, what parent wouldn't be...especially my parents. After I talked with her, I got my iPod out of my workout bag and set it on my desk next to my phone. My phone was plugged in and he was happily charging. I checked my email, and got some bad news from my manager at work. The days I needed off for my camping trip were denied, somewhat. It appears there might be a chance that I can go, but he certainly didn't make any promises. So this made me feel a bit sad, so I thought I should listen to some music. I turned on my computer and started playing some songs, this reminded me I needed to charge my ipod for work out. I needed my other iPod cord since I was using the other one for my phone. So I went upstairs, and this is when the whole "no food in me, i can't think straight" thing comes into play. Obviously not being clear in the head, after forgetting what I went upstairs for, I started looking for things to do, as I had already completed my chores for the day and didn't feel like reading at that moment. So, I looked through the dumpsite known as my closet for something to entertain me. I saw old magic equipment from my magician years, and I saw board games. Vintage clothes and paintball pants led me to my old collection of rocket parts and accessories. Now, already being a pyro, I instantly took this as an opportunity to watch some sparks and have some harmless fun, that was my first mistake. I set up my vice on a small wooden table that I use to burn insence on, and mounted a rocket engine within the strong grips of the vice. I had some old brick flats, which are like heavy duty material made to mimic bricks. I set one up behind the engine, as I didn't know how far the spark trail would shoot from the rear of the engine, and I also set one up infront of the engine, since the small explosion used for getting the parachute out of the rocket would also be taking place. After I got a water bottle, and wet down the area around the engine and the two flats i used as flame guards, I filled the bottle back up and had it on stand-by just incase something happened to go wrong. I put the igniter in the engine, stood back, put in the safety key, and pressed the launch button. Oh no. A very loud hissing noise with a huge trail of sparks emitted from the rear of the engine. My flame guard had worked well, so everything was very controlled. Once that had gone off, i waited for the small explosion to happen and go in and clean up the mess. That whole sequence of events was my second mistake. And the third mistake I made was not remembering how much smoke these little engines actually put out. Nothing was on fire, nothing went wrong on my engine ignition, but then i heard an even louder buzzzzz coming from the hallway outside of my room. It turns out smoke detectors really do work. This is when my blood started pumping faster than ever. I had absolutely no idea how to shut one of those things off. So I looked on the device for some sort of button and found nothing but the test switch. So, I got up on a stool, and while fighting the noise, reached up, took the cover off the device and took the battery out. This finally disengaged the alarm and I thought I was in the clear. When I went downstairs to check on my sister and her baby, she was on the phone with my mother. Luckily nothing serious came out of this event. I told her what I did, and I told her the safety percautions I took to prevent any major damage. OF course, everyone knows that fire is unpredictable, and even I hate myself for pressing that button, but boredom and lack of food does things to you. So after the smoke cleared out of my house, I went to my bedroom and took all my fire equipment, as I call it, out and put it somewhere I wouldn't be tempted to mess with it again. And that's how that portion of my day went.

After all that happened, I settled back in my room and read my book, Trust No One, before going to work. I then put some food in my belly in the form of a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, and made another sandwich to take to work along with a bag of sun chips and a water bottle. At work, the day went normally. I started out getting caught in traffic, which made me a few minutes late. Then arriving at the castle, I went inside and changed into my guard costume and went to the green screen area to help dress the guests for costume photos. Jess, a coworker was told to run cards and direct traffic flow through the castle, so I was left alone at the costume rack dressing parties of folks. But that only lasted a few minutes when I was joined by Erin, she and I got to dressing the people pretty well, then Jess came back and Erin went back to shadowing managers for her internship thing she is working on. So after table call, which is when everyone in the castle is called to their different sections inside the arena, I went to spot booth 4 and fired it up and sat in the booth and read my book some more. I believe at that point I was on page 38 and 2 hours later, I had read some during work and ended up around page 60. The book is great so far, which is weird, because I usually can never get into books. But I guess boredom does things to a man. Of course, through all of this, I am hoping Courtney has contacted me in some way to let me know what is going on with the whole grounding thing, but I still didn't get anything from her except two pieces of flair on facebook. Which I was happy I at least got that. But tomorrow hopefully she will call me or something. I don't know, though. So, after work ended, I came back home and read my book some more and started writing this blog. And that was today.

Tomorrow I wonder if anymore fun adventures will come my way. We shall find out I suppose. Until next time, I'm Matt Wofford, and I love Courtney...a lot.
Peace.

-Matt