Day 154: Using a Baler

     I'm just gonna warn you right now that today's challenge is pretty lame. Think of it like several lame new things that hopefully add up to at least a mediocre blog entry. So first my mini new thing today was stocking merchandise. I was assigned to unload a pallet of boxed merch and place it on the shelfs. I finished the project and had all the product out for guests to buy and I broke down all of the boxes for easier despoil. After that, I was learning how to use this machine called the bailer at work. Its like a giant green cardboard compactor. It became my job to fill it with the boxes that I had just broke down. It was fairly strait forward but I was still paranoid that I would break it somehow. I then got off work and went over to Gerke's house. There I partook in a hacky sack circle with him and his friends of space cases. I've always gotten the hippie vibe when I look at Gerke and his hacking skills only solidified it. I tried to play hacky sack back in 8th grade, but I've never had such an in depth tutorial from someone. I was shown some different types of kicks and some terminology. I even found out that some hardcore hacky sackers use special shoe lacing techniques to help their performance. So three lame new things later, the entry is done and I hope it's not too lame.

Day 153: Fan Mail

     Before today, I used to proudly be able to say that I had never sent fan mail to anyone. I've never understood the concept of geeking out over people who most likely don't know (or more importantly care) about you. Its things like gossip magazines hat push the idea that celebrities and sports athletes are somehow better then the average human. I remember that whole ordeal when Brittany Spear's chewed gum was sold on Ebay for $14,000. Thats so crazy that anybody would go that far out of their way and into their wallet to feel like they are apart of a "celebrity". So instead of writing to some actor or ball player, I chose to write to someone who I feel is a little more down to Earth than the Celebs and and the gossip churners. I chose Rodney Mullen. Rodney is a professional skateboarder who has somehow been able to literally invent almost everything possible in the skateboarding world while staying out of the spotlight at the same time. His ungodly amount of raw talent on the board and his humble presence are what makes him a life-time inspiration for me. My letter to him really wasn't even about him or how great he is. Basically, the entire letter was me explaining why I was writing to him. I explained the project and some of the challenges I have done, I even threw in a business card from Day 81's challenge (http://aimforeclouds.blogspot.com/2011/03/day-81-business-cards.html) so he could check out this blog if he ever felt the need to. So, as far as fan mail goes, I think that I kept it pretty straight forward, which is what I was going for.

Meet Juliea Roberts Guy. He has 82 tattoos of of her. I feel like
he's pretty familiar with the whole fan mail routine.

Day 152: First day

     So today was my first day at Target. I worked a 2-10:30 PM shift and was on cashier duty. The training process seemed to be almost non-existent for the most part because Mike (My female supervisor with a boy's name) was super busy. She handed me a trainee packet and stood me in front of a pretend cash register that was designed for training people like me. She laid her hand on the packet and said "Look through this then come see me.", then she ran off to take care of Target related things I suppose. So I paged though the booklet and practiced scanning barcodes on the scanner. I had to keep refusing customers that thought my register was open, probably because I looked like a natural at zapping the barcodes. After the pretend time fun at the semi functioning register, it was time for me to tag along another team member and see what they do. That team member was a Masha, a Russian girl with an accent that was sometimes too thick to understand. She was nice and tried to answer any questions I had (while sounding like Ivana Humpalot from Austin Powers). I was eventually moved to my very own register where Masha looked over my work for a while before she thought I could handle it on my own. I spent the next 6 hours or so checking guests and learning the ropes. It was a great first day and the people that work with me seem pretty cool. Hopefully things stay like this.

Day 151: Orientation

     Probably the most boring thing I have ever done in my entire life. I had orientation for my new job at Target today. I'm excited about the job and everything, but man, that orientation was torturous. I sat in a windowless, florescent lit room for four and a half hours filling out fine print forms and watching sexual harrasment videos from the 90's. The chairs quickly grew uncomfortable and my fellow newly hired co-workers seemed to be feeling the strain as well. There were about ten of us total. We were all exchanging yawns and eye rolls while the videos played on. It wasn't the best time, but at least it's out of the way and at least I got paid for it. I start my first day of training tomorrow.

I was the first one there

Day 150: Learn How To Fold A Flag

     It's Memorial Day today so I thought that I'd do something patriotic. I decided that I was gonna learn the proper way to fold an American flag. The hardest part of this challenge was finding a flag to fold, because it turns out that I'm not that patriotic to begin with. After some hunting around, I found a flag (it was about 3 inches tall by 4 inches long) and I looked up a couple videos on the subject. I found out that its really easy to do, all you have to do is to fold it in half twice and then fold it in triangles till it looks like one of those paper footballs. And your not supposed to let it touch the ground because our forefathers were superstitious. I followed the steps and ended up with an inch long triangle. The end product didn't look that great cause the flag was so small, but it totally counts cause I learned the proper way and that makes me a better American...Or something like that.

Before

After

Day 149: Enter A Fishing Contest

     We spent the night in the cabin in the mountains. The next morning we all got ready for the big fishing contest. I had never been to one (hence the reason its my new thing for the day) so my grandma explained. She says that its an annual event where everyone in the area meets up at a certain lake. Then the kids sign up and compete to try to catch the biggest fish. They had a judge on had that would run around the lake and measure each fish with a plank of wood. There is a prize fish that is placed in the lake before hand. If you catch the 21 inch prize fish, then you get the grand prize. Unfortunately nobody caught the prize fish so I never found out what the grand prize was. I wasn't able to compete because the contest was for little kids, but I had a good time watching my brother get his lines crossed with a neighboring competitor. We lured pieces of hot dog to the end of the hook to try to use as bait but the fish weren't biting. Nobody in our group caught a single fish during the contest, but we made up for that afterwards at the cabin, where Sean, Caleb and Colten all caught a fish.

Day 148: Bow and arrows, cinnamon rolls, and wood choppin

     It was a fun filled weekend up in the mountains for me and my family.We stayed the night at my grandparents cabin and did mountain man things. Today's challenge comes to you in 3 parts.

     Part 1- World famous cinnamon roll
     On the way up to the mountains, I convinced my mom to buy me a Johnson's Corner cinnamon roll. Johnson's Corner is this little gift shop/restaurant combo deal that has "World famous" cinnamon rolls. I remember watching the news once and the reporter was covering a story about how amazing these pastries were. So I had to try them, and that was part 1 of my challenge for the day. I tried the hyped up cinnamon roll. We stopped at the highway oasis and ordered a couple of their signature desserts. We were given cinnamon rolls that were comparable to my head. They were enormous in size, but they tasted like any other roll that had come my way.

Part 2- Wood chopping

Grandpa chipped the axe

     This one was not very fun at all but my grandpa insisted that I would love it. He heard about my project and has been all gunghoe about finding things for me to try while I was up in the cabin. He came up with wood chopping, which is totally self explanatory. It was boring, but somebody had to get the firewood. So I chopped away, and split a bunch of logs into manageable pieces. I'm getting bored just typing about this ordeal.

Got the firewood

 Part 3- Bow and arrow
     So heres the fun one. My grandpa busted out the bow and arrows and we set up a target about 50 or 60 feet away from where we were standing. He briefed me about how to pull and aim the contraption and then gave it to me try out. I fumbled with it for a while and shot a couple arrows without much luck. I kept at it and eventually got the hang of it. I ended up hitting the target twice (no bullseye) which really pumped up my spirits. It was a fun time and we finished the night off right with some smores by the fire.