Wednesday, October 31, 2007

I bike to work most every day. I park my bike in the teacher's lounge and then change in the bathroom a few feet away. My supervisor was looking for me this morning so I could fill out an incident report about a fight which involved a teacher getting injured that I had witnessed and helped break up yesterday afternoon. She came into the lounge while I was in the bathroom and I overhead this conversation:

Super: Is that M...'s Bike?
Random Teacher: (says something I couldn't quite hear, asking clarification as to who I was)
Super: Kinda, He has a stutter?
Random Teacher: Yea! (says some other crap I don't hear)

So, apparently, to people who don't know me well, the best way to describe me, nay - my most distinguishing attribute, is that I stutter. Douchebags.

Although, honestly, I don't really care. I just thought it was interesting. I'd kinda forgotten that I stutter.

Posted by Dreqan @ 08:28 PM PST Link | 3 People give a shit!

Monday, October 29, 2007

I call bullshit! BULLSHIT!

According to CNN The Gap is "deeply disturbed" to learn that sweatshops are being used to make their clothing. HOWEVER, THIS IS NOT NEW NEWS. Well, at least the sweatshops aren't. The Gap pretending to care is new.

In fact... I do think I may have even mentioned this before... wait...wait for it... Oh here it is, I told you all about The Gap using sweatshops 5 YEARS AGO!

Wow, I've had this blog along time...

Posted by Dreqan @ 06:06 AM PST Link | 14 People give a shit!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The bike trailer project is going well. I decided to use EMT conduit instead of wood. It's about $4 for 10 feet, so the project is no longer free... The huge trailer will probably cost around $30 in parts (6ft by 2.5ft) and my smaller one, for shopping, will probably cost $20. However, that's not bad for a high quality, light-weight steel trailer.

I plan on building one for Brian too to haul his juggling gear. After building three together we think we might be good enough to start making a bunch and sell 'em for $100 or more a piece. We'll see. I'm 70% done with my first one, the huge prototype, and so far things are going great. I'll post pics when I'm done.

Posted by Dreqan @ 07:45 PM PST Link | Click here to give a shit

Thursday, October 25, 2007

I need a bike trailer. I have a bike trailer. It's 9 feet long and awesome, but it's in Cedar Falls, Iowa, hiding under my Dad's deck. Mmmmm..

Too big to ship... and the next time I'll be driving to Iowa will be RAGBRAI in almost a year. So... Any of you want to drive to Oregon? Pssh...

What I will most likely do is build a bamboo trailer but instead use dumpster wood from local framing projects. I can get a lot of 2x4 that way and then rip them to 2x2. I *think* those will be strong enough. I plan on making it around 6 feet long with a plywood base and maybe foot high walls. With luck I can do this for the cost of nails and the electricity required to run my saw. Oooh, and I'll need to go to CAT to pick up used bike wheels or grab a little kids bike from Goodwill and get the wheels off that.

Why do I need this you ask? Why, to carry juggling props and two unicycles (one over 5 feet tall) to our performances and practices, of course. Trucks are for suckers and so is buying gas. (It's $3.00/gal in Oregon, which is low for around here.)

Also, and this is a much lesser reason, we often only get paid in free beer. I'm tired of turning down free beer because I need to drive home after the show. Beer is for after parties, but driving home is not. Trailer FTW!

And before you more responsible types say anything - No I don't bike drunk. However, I'd fail a Breathalyzer long before I'd be too tipsy to ride my bike safely. (It only takes, what, a beer and a half to fail one of those things?)

Posted by Dreqan @ 07:24 PM PST Link | 3 People give a shit!

Monday, October 22, 2007

The GreyMatter Jugglers were in the news again! This time we took up two whole pages!

Go here for the online article or go here for the PDF of the newspaper.

Wee!

Posted by Dreqan @ 08:37 PM PST Link | 14 People give a shit!

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Acclaim from our Sept 22 show at UofO's Intermingle:

Andrew Levad, a freshman math major, was one example. He walked by as performers from Earth DescenDance Fire Theater and GreyMatter Jugglers danced and juggled with fire in the amphitheater, and ended up sitting down and watching for the remainder of the hour.

"It was amazing," he said. "It was like every sense was overloaded with - it was incredible. I'm speechless."

9/24/07 The Daily Emerald

Posted by Dreqan @ 11:53 PM PST Link | Click here to give a shit

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Jimminy Christmas, I have 3 shows coming up in as many days. Tonight (thursday) we perform a fire show withThe Black Rose Burlesque, Friday we are ambient entertainers at some event that I just heard about, and Saturday we have a non-fire show at Qehn's assisted living place. Crazy!

Posted by Dreqan @ 04:07 PM PST Link | 16 People give a shit!

Saturday, October 13, 2007

I just got paid a fat bill to take a youth suicide prevention course online. Apparently since I'm a pseudo-teacher now I get to take really obvious online courses for money. Sweetness.

This course was about as common sense as you can get - but I may just think that due to my exposure to scores of depressed folk and my own little battles here and there. I hope there aren't a whole lot of teachers out there who actually learn anything NEW from these videos. It seems like most folks would have learned most of this kind of thing from life experiences by now.

I think it's funny that I work with a lot of student teachers and they are all around 21 years old. People assume I'm a 21 year old student teacher as well. NO BITCHES, I'M 27 YEAR OLD INSTRUCTIONAL ASSISTANT WITH A WASTED MICRO DEGREE! But y'know what? I don't really care 'cause getting work as a teacher is effin hard - whereas work as an IA is pretty damn easy. (says the guy who still has a temporary assignment)

Posted by Dreqan @ 10:48 PM PST Link | 15 People give a shit!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

I need envelopes in order to mail a dude a check for $10 so that I can get 150+ pictures of a show we did a few weeks ago. *sigh* Stupid $10.

Another dude, Louis, just lets us have 'em. Then I edit them so they look like this:

It's fun.

Posted by Dreqan @ 08:48 PM PST Link | 3 People give a shit!

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Finally I can start posting here again. I've been very busy. Of course I just finished cycling across the country again - an adventure that you can read all about at the Team RoadShow Journal.

Since I've gotten back I've landed a job tutoring Special Ed at one of Eugene's highschools. It's a pretty sweet deal and I get to bike 9 miles to work and back. 18 miles a day makes me a happy me. Before I got that job I was substituting and ended up at a 10 day assignment teaching kindergarten at a French immersion school. I don't speak French (as most of you know) so that was interesting. The kinder's were awesome and I miss them a lot. I got to have three recesses a day where I played with 22 smarter than average kids. It was pretty awesome.

I've also been performing a lot:

We (The GreyMatter Jugglers) have been doing a butt-load of shows. I finally finished our website and have tons of photos and a bit of video of our performances. If anyone in Eugene happens to read this check out the main GreyMatter Jugglers site for updates.

(yes, I am attempting to get the website better ranked on google with those links)

We've also teamed up with Earth DescenDance fire dance troupe for most of our shows. sirK of Earth DescenDance is helping us clown and do crazy skits. We've moved far beyond just juggling. I left for the summer to go bike and came back to some crazy shit that has only gotten crazier since I came back. It's pretty damn fun, I tell you what.

Posted by Dreqan @ 09:48 PM PST Link | 1 Person gives a shit!

Folks, my address has changed since I moved. If you want it e-mail me dreqan at heyisthatguypeeing dot com

That is all for the sticky today!

Posted by Dreqan @ 09:19 PM PST Link | 16 People give a shit!