It's my birthday!

...and I'm here to talk about it.

Well, actually, no.

I haven't updated since end of May. I always intended to, but two things:

- Something really really shitty happened, and I wasn't in the mood to do anything for about two straight weeks...including work. I thought I might get fired. Glad I was able to accomplish a bare minimum that is keeping me employed for the summer, and I'm now trying to work hard to make up for the shitty two weeks.
- After that, I grabbed a hold of myself, and shook myself really hard (not literally) and re-evaluated my state of being (woah, deep). While I think this blog was on the right track, I don't necessarily need to do something every week. I thought about the things that have really been making me happy recently, and decided to focus on those.

So, I've enrolled in a weekly improv class (we meet on Thursdays) and though I've only gone to two classes so far, they have been great and I feel like I've already learnt something from them. I'm also running a weekly Supernatural role-playing game for my brother and a bunch of friends, and it's been fun cooking up the story. I started dating someone, so far it's been great. I also hosted my first ever karaoke night at PK Creek, and had many surprise friend appearances, it was great :). Glad I could help Rooven by taking over one night. Also last week, I hung out with 2 Nintendorks and their SOs, one of whom lives in Toronto, the other was visiting from Boston. We went to Korean BBQ and then to Second City and both of those things were fantastic.

I'll try to update this blog about once a week with a bunch of stuff I find interesting, but I won't hesitate to post stuff even if I missed out on previous weeks. Reports of Anime North and the karaoke fundraiser and other things that happened over the last two months may never make it on here, but that's okay.

I have two reports in my backlog now and a third one coming up, I'm just finding it very hard to get to writing them. Rest assured I will have them completed this week. I promise!

Week 11 was my semi-striptease at Anime North (there will be a video)
Week 12 was my MC-ing a karaoke fundraiser
Week 13 was last week, and I made a Chuck costume for a costume party.
Week 14 is this week, and I'll be running in the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

So stay posted, these updates will be coming up, I swear!

The 404s Improv RPG Episode 3 is up

Well, WAS up a long time ago, I just forgot to post it here. I think it gets really good starting this episode, but I'll let you all be the judge of that. We're now posting the videos to the official 404s Youtube channel instead of my own.  OK, without further ado, here it is!






Tomorrow, I will be posting my Anime North report (for week 11), and for this week I will discuss my experience emcee-ing our Karaoke Fundraiser event that we held on Wednesday June 2nd.

Will I ever write that Super Mario Galaxy 2 review? I've been so busy I'm only 10 stars in. So far, it's been magical...oh and so fantastical...

Also, I've been keeping up with my pushups/situps, though I decided to repeat pushups week 2 because I'm not building my strength as fast as I'd like. It's cool though, and I am enjoying my morning exercises.

Week 11: preview of a death-defying stunt!

I know some readers of this relish the idea of watching me in pain. For example, I got several in-person commendations about my mushroom-eating video. This week, instead of reviewing Super Mario Galaxy 2 like everyone and their grandmother have done in the last week, I will up the 'pain' ante at our Saturday night improv show at Anime North.

As part of The 404s Improv Comedy, this weekend we're performing 4 shows at Anime North, Canada's largest fan-run anime convention. When I say large I mean, over 12,000 people's worth of traffic over the 3 days of the weekend (Friday night to Sunday afternoon).


But what does this have to do with pain? Well, for the first time for our group in Toronto, we will be playing a game called Mouse Trap. The idea is: two improvisers perform a usual scene, but barefoot and blindfolded. And on a stage filled with MOUSETRAPS, ARMED and READY TO SNAP. So of course I saw this as the perfect opportunity for me to do something fun, get hurt, and blog about it in the process.


Will there be video? You had better believe it!


And if I just gave away confidential information, to the 2 or 3 of you who read this blog AND are going to Anime North AND aren't part of The 404s...shhhhhhhhhh, keep this info on the down low.

Oh, I'm also hosting an anime-themed game of Family Feud, which should be fun seeing as I've never watched the show and have no idea how the structure goes. Also I don't know much about anime anymore.


Edit: Apparently, turns out we have no mousetraps anymore and won't be doing the game. So, host a gameshow will have to do. Not quite as death-defying, but I'm sure it will be painful (for the viewers at least), and I definitely won't have time to figure something else out as I'll be busy all weekend. But I'll try.

Week 10 pt 2 : Soccer has taught me I need to keep my legs shut.

Well that was fun - almost 90 minutes on the soccer field. The ball went between my legs more often than I would like to admit. As a goalie this is not good. But I also did a couple of dives, scored a legit goal, and ran around alternating with others in the goalie role. Lots of fun was had, but sadly no pictures were taken (cameras and soccer balls do NOT make a good combination, surprisingly). I'm going to try to make this a weekly thing - I had really low stamina so my cardio could use a lot of work and this is a great way to do that.

Week 10: Go go go, allez allez allez!

I started my week going "uh-oh, I have no idea what to do for this week". It is now Sunday afternoon, and until 5 minutes ago that was still the case. Now I have two ideas: the first I'm doing for sure, and it's going out to play soccer this evening with some new(ish) friends. Last summer I tried to start a weekly weekend soccer thing, but it was too hard to coordinate mine and my friends' schedules and it only lasted for 3 weeks or so. I love playing soccer, even though I'm pretty out of shape lately (unless round counts as a shape hur hur hur).

So I just received a call from Shane, a guy I've known for a while from way back when: we went to the same UWA hardcore wrestling shows some 4-5 years ago, he works at Image Collections (the comic book store I shop at), and we hang out at karaok enights. Safe to say we're friends by this point. So anyways, he texted me to see if I liked soccer at all, and I was like 'Heck Yeah!'. So I'll be reporting on my experience tomorrow, maybe with some photos.

I also just started playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, which reminded me I could write a review on it. But I haven't played enough to write a review (only about an hour in), so maybe I'll try hard for next week.

Also, this was my first week of working, and already I've stayed late on a Friday night (yes, Friday night!) completing a proposal to the Alberta government. Now, I know that this is the modus operandi for consultants, BUT I'm an internal consultant, so I'm not exactly doing the same stuff that consultants like the ones who work at McKinsey do. I also don't get paid nearly as much as those interning at consulting firms. Anyways, this is too much whining for the extent that I stayed late for (which wasn't very long). Any other day I wouldn't have minded. But it being on a Friday night ground my gears. I guess that's part of what comes with the territory of being a summer MBA intern.

Week 9: Let's Get Physical, Physical

For this week I decided I needed to get back into exercising regularly. I've made several attempts to do so over the past few years, none of them all that serious. I decided to try to stick to doing some simple exercises every morning that strengthen my core. Something I could spend 10-20 minutes on in the morning and be done with. I wanted there to be no need to go to the gym or even leave my room necessarily.

I remembered Aaron, a friend of mine from the 404s, had at one point been going through the One Hundred Push-ups program. I'm not sure how well that worked out for him, but I checked out the website and it seemed like something I could follow. Exercise three times a week, only about 10 minutes each time, and within 6 weeks, you're supposed to be able to do 100 consecutive push-ups.

"That's not too bad" I thought to myself. "I'm pretty sure I can do at least 10 in a row now".

So I took the initial test, and collapsed onto the ground after the 16th push-up. That made me feel pretty good about myself, beating my own expectations.

"Awesome!" I thought. "This puts me into the advanced bracket!"

This meant that I would do more push-ups per rep when training. So I did my exercises on Monday, and then again on Wednesday. At this point my brother passes by and tells me I'm not doing it right. So I get curious and look for how to do a proper push-up on Youtube. This guy ends up giving a pretty decent explanation.



Instead of the above, I was doing more of a half push-up, not going all the way down so my shoulders meet my elbow level. So I started trying to do them the correct way and collapsed at 4. Uh-oh. not nearly as impressive as I thought I was. So I'll be restarting the routine this week with a lighter, but proper workout.

I also joined the related Two Hundred Sit-ups program (which actually should be called the two hundred crunches program as that is what they advise you to do) and that is going really well. I have no trouble doing 80 consecutive proper form crunches at this point, so 200 in 60 weeks seems very achievable.

In case you're interested in doing crunches yourself, there are a couple of important things to remember while doing crunches that I learned from a gym trainer when I last went to a gym:

1. Rest your hands behind your head, but don't use your arms to pull yourself up. In fact, your neck shouldn't be moving. A good way to prevent this from happening even by mistake is to make sure to be staring at the ceiling at all times.
2. Make sure to tense your ab muscles while rising, the same way you would if you knew that someone was about  to punch you in the gut. This ensures that the right muscles are getting the workout.
3. As long as you're following the above tip, you only really need to go up a bit to do a proper sit-up. Say, about 35 degrees.
4. Breathe out as you rise, breathe in as you descend.

This dude will show you:



Anyways, I'm determined to stick with these two programs. Exercising like this has felt pretty good so far, actually.