Independance day +

Sorry I haven't updated the blog as much as I would like to, I will try to write new blog posts more often.
As the title indicates this one has some pictures I took on the 4th.

We were playing around with sparklers, and trying to take interesting pictures of them.  Unfortunately my camera isn't as good for that, but my sister took some interesting ones, because she has a fireworks setting on her camera so she can start taking the picture then shake the sparkler around and it's create a cool looking motion blur type shot.

Kinda like this one, but a lot more so... lol if that makes sense.
Anyways, so far at work all I've been doing is working in the trade in area. You know how the store I work at is a buy, sell, trade video game store, which means we let people bring in used games, and old consoles and we give them either cash or credit for them.  So basically in the two days I worked this week, I just would see how much cash or credit they would get, and would then take what was traded in and if it was games, I would file them and if we needed to, put a case out on display so customers could know we had it, and if it was a console, I had to make sure it worked and then clean it up and package it and put it in the back room so we could sell that too.  Sometimes I have to go out and talk to customers and try to suggest games for them, and try to sell things to people, and it's taught me that I really don't know that many games like I thought I did... I have some knowledge of games on the xbox 360,  because that's what I own and that's what I play, but I don't know many games on other consoles, especially the older ones, and I don't even know all the games on my own console, so now I kinda need to look stuff up online and research and watch video reviews of games new and old, just so I can know what to tell people at work... And many of the other employees seem to already know all about every game or every piece of equipment that goes with every game console out there, and I honestly don't know that much about them... it's possible i'm not as geeky and nerdy as I thought I was... oh well, I'll have to learn.

In other news on the job front... I emailed the guy from Metro Studios, cause I'm still hoping to get hired with them so that I can work somewhere where I'll actually be able to work in video in some capacity, but the guy replied that he had been out of the office and hadn't looked at my resume and DVD of my work yet, so hopefully he'll see something he likes and find some work for me, cause even if it's just part time, i could work part time at both metro and video games etc, and then i'd be able to work in a video production job, which is what I want, and have another part time job to get a bit more money too.

Anyways back to the 4th of July. We went to a park to try to grill out for lunch and play some games and stuff... but we only got to be there for like 15-20 minutes before it started raining.

We started playing some game called "Jarts" I had never heard of it before, but my dad got it and thought it would be fun so we tried it out.

You have two rings and you set them like 20 feet apart, and then you have these "jarts" that look like big foamy arrows and stand by one of the circles and try to toss them as close to the other circle as you can, and you get extra points for getting it in the circle.  It was fun for a while, but the rain ended the game early.

Then once it started raining we left and started driving around, and it stopped raining so my dad decided to drive out to some other park since we were already on the road and away from the park we were just at.  We thought maybe we could get to a park that had a grill and picnic table under a roof somewhere, but when we got to another park there weren't any grills and tables covered by roofs, and it started raining again so we decided to go to this little restaurant that is down town called "The Flying Weenie."  The name is funny and it's this little dirty looking place sorta in the downtown area, but the food is pretty good... obviously their specialty is hot-dogs and other similar foods like bratwurst, but i don't like bratwurst that much, so I just had a chilli dog, and it was pretty good.

This is a picture of my sister at that restaurant, she was making some weird face, so I took her picture... honestly I don't remember what she was doing, but it looks pretty funny.

Then we went home and started watching Back to the Future and playing card games (something my family does a lot, especially around holidays. It's sort of a tradition around any holiday to get together and play card games if we can. Games like Phase Ten, or Uno, or Uno hearts)

But then we started hearing fireworks going off all over the neighborhood, and the rain stopped so we went out side and watched some from the yard, and started playing with the sparklers.  I wish you could have been here for that, it would have been fun, you would have enjoyed it.  All around Cedar Rapids, especially around our neighborhood every year people shoot bottle rockets and other fireworks off, even though it's supposed to be illegal everyone does it, and no one really stops it, so it's fun to watch.

Anyways, I got on skype and it showed you as online for a few minutes, and I tried to type some messages to you, but they didn't go through, and then I tried to call, and then you went offline, and I haven't seen you get back on yet.... It is our usual talking time, but I guess you either can't connect for some reason, or else you got busy with something else...  Anyway I love you, I wish you could be here, and then we wouldn't have to use the internet or even phones, and I could just look at you and tell you how much I love you, and I wouldn't even have to tell you how much I want to hold you, because I could just do it... I can't wait to be with you girlfriend!

I love you!