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Archive for July, 2009

Everyone Hates Dentists

Posted by mikevilla on July 29, 2009

Today started out as a good day, started taking a turn for the worse, and then became glorious.

I heard a new remix that I like. Finally. It’s pretty good stuff. Check it out. Also, sold “the beast” aka my Canon 1D mkII a couple days ago. Then today I sold every single stinkin’ piece of Nikon stuff that we had in our house. And got a job offer out of it.

I’ve decided that dentists are the most hated people on the planet. They dig around in your mouth and cause a lot of pain and have nothing but bad things to say about dental hygiene. Then they try to make small talk with you while digging around in your mouth. That always ends up well. This all occurs sometime after you’ve finished shelling out $5k for braces and sometime before you’re about to relinquish another $1,500 for a crown. Awesome.

Another great experience at the dentist: The nurse/dentist/lady was cleaning my teeth today with some kind of mini axel grinder and freaking nicked the inside of my cheek! I literally almost punched her. Then she went on pretending like nothing happened and preceded to blast water into the gaping cut on the inside of my mouth. At that point I probably really would have punched her if my cheek hadn’t already gone completely numb.

In case you haven’t figured it out on your own, that wasn’t the glorious part of my day (that would be the camera/job offer). On that note….

Peace yo.

Posted in Random Rants | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Welcome to Summer

Posted by mikevilla on July 27, 2009

Today I decided that summer has arrived. It’s been two months since school ended, but summer was slow on the upstart this year.

Summer is what happens when you have no school. It’s what happens when you work, come home, swim, hang out with friends, and stay up late. That is all that summer is. If you happen to live in the big AZ you can add 115° days and 100° nights. But that is everything summer. Summer is waiting. It’s hangtime. It’s the ski lift ride up.

The past couple months have been way too exciting/adventurous/epic to be considered summer. It hasn’t felt like hangtime. It’s felt like life.

This week summer started. I finally moved into my room [before this week all of my stuff from college was literally just sitting in boxes in my room], I’m incredibly comfortable in my job, and the routine movie nights, random sports, and crazy outings are in full swing. The last reminder of my California life rolled back west yesterday. Now I’m puttin’ along somewhere between the Chimes Chapter and Epic Eurocityness. The days are slowing down and the weeks are speeding up. I don’t really understand how time manages to do both of those simultaneously.

The final sign that summer is here lies in the radio.

The very first thing I do when I get home is flip through the radio stations. It doesn’t matter where or why I’m driving – the radio is on and blasting. The songs are new summer releases or old favorites that I haven’t heard in awhile. There probably aren’t more than 30 or so songs that cycle through the stations, but that’s ok because they’re the summer soundtrack. They’re the ones that will become the nostalgic reminders of this year’s events.

But then summer comes. And the same songs that were instantly repeatable just yesterday are now drilling into your brain, begging to be replaced by newer ones. Preferably ones that are slightly more original than the previous 30 that all shared the exact same drum beat.

There’s my moment of nostalgia, now onto bigger and better things: The uke.

No video tonight folks. Turns out I suck at playing it at the moment, especially at midnight. But here’s some loverly snapshots:

Uke-9992

Uke-9996

Uke-9999

You might be wondering, “Is that a V on the uke?” Yes. Yes indeed.

Uke-9993

Uke-9994

Next on the to do list: building a hard case for it.

That’s all for tonight folks.

Rollout.

Posted in Random Rants, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Metro Station

Posted by mikevilla on July 27, 2009

Remixes are getting incredibly lame. I love remixes, covers, crazy variations of songs… Anything that changes up an already spiffy song, but some of the remixes I’ve heard lately have been way over the stupidity line. Keeping a song exactly the same and throwing a no-name rapper over the top of it (a la “Keep Bleeding” [Leona Lewis] or “Don’t Trust Me” [3Oh!3] does NOT make it a newly marketable song. Neither does a new drum beat or base line (think the most recent version of “I’m Yours” [Jason Mraz]). It makes it appear that all the record companies care about is the ca$hmoneyflow. Oh wait. Never mind.

Just for the record, the above paragraph does not  refer to anything that the band Metro Station has done. At least not yet.

In other news, three days ago I was just coming home from work when I noticed a large, triangular package sitting on the counter with my name on it. I literally freaked out. The uke had arrived.

I was going to delve into a long poetic essay describing how freaking awesome this lovely ukulele is, but then I realized words definitely won’t do it justice. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll post some photos (and possibly videos?) of it.

This evening Kelsey, Felicia, and I decided to bomb around Downtown Phoenix and Mill Ave on the Metro. For those of you not in the know, the Metro [aka light rail] is a relatively new thing for Phoenix. If I recall correctly, Christmas break was when it finally got up and running. The Phoenix Metro Area is pretty large, something like 4.3 million peeps all chillin’ around here, but we haven’t had any decent form of public transit. $1.4 billion and one city train later, we still have no decent form of public transit. But it makes for a fun, cheap form of entertainment for college students. Ok, history lesson over, on with the events of tonight:

Meet at Lux, Kelsey’s obsession.
Buy tickets for light rail.
Miss first train.
Wait for next train.

Metro-9983

Metro-9987
Hop on light rail.

Metro-9962

Metro-9963
Train decides it’s done for the day in the middle of the route.

Metro-9966
Get off light rail.
Wait for other train.

Metro-9985

Metro-9984

Metro-9989
Hop on light rail.
Get off light rail at Mill Ave.

Metro-9986
Mosey down Mill.

Metro-9979
Pizza.

Metro-9974
Mosey up Mill.

Metro-9980
Hop on light rail.
Kelsey and I get off light rail, Felicia is eaten by light rail.
I head home.
Felicia’s fate = undecided.

Metro-9988

Peace yo.

Posted in Lots 'O Photos, Random Rants, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

One heck of a status update

Posted by mikevilla on July 21, 2009

Once again alohas, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated and once again I’m not sorry cause I’ve been too busy diggin’ life. I mean massively diggin’ life. There’s probably 87234982305 different things I could write here, but I’m not really in a write-a-freaking-book-on-a-blog kind of mood. But, really quick:

Very epic shooting/caught by cops video. Awesome Syracuse trip with the fam. Way awesome Boston trip with Bethc/Nate the Mate/Ski. Ukulele on order. Crazy busy at work. Massively massive monsoons in AZ. Lightning strikes so freaking close to my house. Senior photo party way the heck out in the West Valley all this week.

And the past month visually:

Epic Manly Gun Stuff Part Dos:

Syracuse Gloriousness:

[also thoughts on the new logo?]

Syracuse-1978

Welcome to the family:

Syracuse-2119

Syracuse-2133Syracuse-2137

Flowers: Taken by Caroline [aka girl in above photo]

Syracuse-2174

Syracuse-2210

Syracuse-2275

Syracuse-2354

And the Bostonians:

Boston-2762

Boston-2770

Boston-2777

Boston[2]-2396

Boston[2]-2408

Boston[2]-2414

Boston[2]-2420

Boston[2]-2465

Boston[2]-2480

Boston[2]-2527

Boston[2]-2595

Boston[2]-2622

Boston[2]-2735

Posted in Lots 'O Photos, Planned Lifeness, Trips, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »