2023.01.08
I have made some notes on Whoop, so I will have some idea what happened over the past twenty days.
During the week before Christmas, I helped Isaac Gomez, who is my coworker, put together his deck for the draft tournament. This was a Monday. We didn’t play test the deck until the thirtieth. He learns quickly. He forgot to attack one round, which led to his loss probably.
On the Tuesday of that week, I updated Jessica and I’s draft decks. I recall begging Jessica to play a round with her deck, but she refused to play. I played a few rounds by myself.
On Christmas Eve we planned to go to a local Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, but Trevor wanted to move that weekend. We didn’t finish moving until after midnight. Trevor stayed the night, and we had Christmas together the next day.
On Christmas Day, I was set apart as the Assistant Ward Clerk over membership. The blessing was so simple that I can easily remember it. It was that I would have everything that I need and do my calling well.
Trevor joined us for church. It felt like a classic Hicken Christmas. I got all the cards that I considered using for my locals deck.
Trevor and I actually made it to a local Yu-Gi-Oh tournament on New Years Eve, but Trevor forgot his deck because we were in a rush after watching Avatar: the Way of the Water.
Jessica had a gift certificate for the movie theater, and it was hard to convince her to go watch the movie. We didn’t even end up using her gift certificate, but Avatar: the Way of the Water was a great movie, a very family oriented film. All the alien tribes were lead by a mother and a father. I think that the story was good, and the characters were well developed. We made sure to watch it in RealD to enjoy the cutting edge technology and graphics.
I worked all week on ratios and my side deck in preparations for locals. I transitioned to a new format, so I watched a lot of videos to learn of the Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card Game format. I won my first match. I played against Dracoslayer with their new support. I lost the first duel, and my opponent surrendered the second round because I took control of his floodgate. In the third duel, we ran out of time on my turn. I won by summoning Vaylantz Genesis Grand Duke with Power Bond, giving him 5000 attack. He sided in an extra deck card to inflict a bunch of effect damage, and he tried to sneak in a win by doing a second turn of effect damage, but time ran out on my turn, so he gave me the win to me. I lost to Spright in the second round. It was my first time ever dueling Spright, so I played foolishly with my hand traps and so forth. The duelist was a great player who actually won a regional. I played Kashtira in the third round. I actually won the first duel! No one knew my deck, so people asked about it a lot. My opponent was a little intimidated by it because I played around his barrier statue flood gate. I had dimensional shifter in the past two matches, but I didn’t know when to use them. I finally used him in this round. In the second duel he locked me out of playing by limiting zones that I could use. We tied during the third duel.
My record was one loss, one won, and one tie. Kashtira is not full power yet, so it was not meant to be a competitive deck.
I cleaned Finley tank on New Years Eve. We were planning to go to sleep early because Trevor was partying with his Chic-fil-A coworkers, but we stayed up to 11:30 PM. I figured that we might as well stay up to see the new year. I used the last half hour of my year to clean his tank. The following week Finley looked as if he just wanted to be left to die. I would check on him every day. Finley’s death was not sudden. We saw it coming for a while. I found a good angle for his house, so he couldn’t hide. He died on Tuesday January third, 2023. I consulted his original own on his age, and he was about two and a half years old, so he didn’t die young.
I arranged a birthday celebration for Trevor Hicken with Joshua Day to meet on Thursday, but it was not well planned. I intended it to be a casual gathering, but it was a little too casual because I forgot to think about dinner; furthermore, we arrived late. Josh was not left without food because he brought pies. He made an exceptional key lime pie for Trevor. I was surprised that some other people planned to come. Isaac actually joined us. He played tested his deck against my wife and won. I helped Josh make a deck, which was actually functional. My wife’s draft deck was not functional the first time that I dueled Trevor with it.
I got the assignment to be an endowment officiator this month. I was a little rusty, making only one visible mistake.
Today was my first attempt to record attendance in the Millcreek 5th Ward as an Assistant Ward Clerk over membership. I met with the previous assistant ward clerk last Wednesday for a little training.
Oh. Jessica and I were running into many excuses to not go to CrossFit, and she rarely went anyways, so I convinced her that we should quit CrossFit. On Monday evening I purchased a open box laptop at Best Buy, which turned out to be mislabeled, so we had to go back the next evening. I was able to run on Wednesday. My body was so weak after the holiday season that I only had to do a thirty minute warm up jog to reach my optimal strain according to Whoop.
2023.01.15
This week was somewhat progressive. Life changes.
Some simple changes in my life has to do with Crypto assets. Since we are in a bearish season, I was looking into buying a Substrapunk, the CryptoPunks on Polkadot. I was also looking into my Kusama NFT. I was informed that my non-fungible token’s blockchain was upgraded, and my link to see the NFT quit working on my blog; in other words, I was exploring Polkadot/Kusama. The newly upgraded blockchain/website recommended an app to view my assets. It is called Nova. I am now able to see many of my assets on that app. I had to track my assets on the CoinMarketCap app before, manually putting my assets into the app, but Nova shows most of my Polkadot/Kusama assets natively without me entering them. I can only see my Kusama NFT in the Nova app; however, since my Nodle Cash assets quit updating on my work phone.
Last night I reinstalled the app, putting my wallet with the rest of my assets on the Nodle Cash app, and I am able to see the Nodle Cash NFT on the app from the Crowdloan. When I installed Nova app on my phone, I transferred my Nodle Cash assets, which I have been mining on my original wallet to my main Polkadot wallet. That is my Crypto quality of life update.
During Trevor’s birthday party the previous week, Jessica asked his about his future plans for the year. Trevor said that he would like to practice video editing, possibly making a profession out of it. I realized early last week that we can reboot the podcast, if Trevor does the video editing and runs the YouTube channel. I asked him, if he would like to do that. He said that all that he needed to do to reboot the podcast is set up his bed frame, which my coworker thought was an odd requirement.
Kyler is up to joining again. He has expressed several times that he misses the podcast. He posted on Twitter a cloud link to a podcast theme song, which he has been producing for me, but the link was not working when I get around to looking at Twitter.
I got the new Vaylantz support cards early last week. It changed my deck from an RNG deck to a search deck. I took out hand traps from my Yu-Gi-Oh Official Tournament deck from last year. It seemed to have so many more options. I dueled Trevor during the third round, and he was surprised that it took all six of his interruptions stop me. That duel was lame.
I dueled some high level decks like Tearlament, Spright, Ishizu during my first round and Sky Striker Runick during the second round. The second round is a little annoying because I realized that the duelist was ignoring some rules of Runick like skipping battle phases and the requirement to summon the Runick monster in the extra monster zone. I told him that he couldn’t summon the monster in the main monster zones, but he challenged me. The monster card didn’t say the requirement, so I didn’t have that text to back me up, but the spell says the requirement. I lost all three rounds. It seems that I need hand traps in this meta.
I sided cards for the first time, and I realized that I should just keep the cards that I sided in the main deck. I will have to test it this week. Trevor and I were considering how to upgrade my deck, and I think that I need to add more powerful extra deck monsters in my deck. A pure Vaylantz extra deck is not cutting it. I do have other extra deck monsters, but I didn’t intent to use them.
2023.03.05
It has been almost two months, and I finally am getting control of my life. It was a ironic because I helped Trevor move from Lindon to Lehi, and he misplaced his Nintendo Switch. He told me on Friday that he found his Switch at work; then, I replied that I actually decided to leave my Switch at work because it is too distracting at home. On Saturday nights I would get home late even after midnight after a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament and hanging out with Trevor. I got tired of my exhausted dysfunctional lifestyle, deciding on a new one.
One odd situation happened a couple weeks ago when I arrived super late on a Saturday night though. When I was driving into the parking garage, a sister drive in behind me. I turn out of the path to let her pass, but she parked in the spot next to mine. She got out asking for help because she was trying to help her friend, but the friend is not answering the phone to let her in. I told her that I can help her, but you would need to move to another parking spot because I can’t park with her parked next to my parking spot because I drive a work truck. The story is simple after that. I just took her up the elevator and dropped her off on the floor of the friend. It appears that my late life had a purpose.
Yesterday Trevor and I went to West Jordan to play Yu-Gi-Oh, and I debuted my new deck there, and a Branded Despia player had to Ra’s Disciple me to secure his win. He was afraid of losing. People started watching, and one guy said that he knew that I was playing Dinomorphia. Only they would play so much Solemn cards. They asked me to reveal my set cards, revealing my Dinomorphia Frenzy. I would have won, if he didn’t snipe my Solemn Warning.
After the tournament a couple friends surprisingly wanted to duel us. Trevor debuted his new deck; although, the friend wanted to rematch his old Marincess deck. I bought my Psychic End Punisher last night. I dueled a Dragon Link guy who had two side engines that he used to defeat me, since I didn’t let him use his main Rokket Dragon cards. He was afraid is Rexterm too, but he sided in a spell that destroyed my win condition.
Serving in the temple last Friday was nice. There has been a lot of changes in the temple recently, and I am learning the changes of the initiatory this month. The words of the clothing ordinance is very different, but the phrase “who is dead” has been removed from all the ordinances, which is a hard habit to stop, since I had used it for more than ten years.
February was my last month, training as an endowment officiator, but the endowment was changed too, so our training has been basically thrown out. I was performed well as an officiator in January until the last week when an elderly woman fell. Several people rushed to her as I stood back listening to her if additional help is needed. The sister of the witness couple was a nurse and sat down quickly after assessing her. Her husband did the same. The elderly woman had two granddaughters, comforting her after we restarted the session. We completed the session, and the husband wanted to be expedited through the veil. My assistant previous asked me if I thought that we should call for help, and he left to get help. The trained security team went to assess her in the celestial room. I was informed after that I acted in error because not calling for help did not represent the church well. It was interesting because we recently had a levels emergency training a couple weeks ago, and the temple president’s training did not match. He said that if we can manage the situation it is level 1. If we can’t manage it, it is level 2, and security should be called. I heard from a distance that the elderly woman had a condition, but I wasn’t told directly and I didn’t discern the words spoken at a distance. There has been some emotional difficulty processing these experiences of transition and training. I believe this not serious fall of the elderly woman was an important part of my training. I can’t trust that the pedestrian assessment was accurate, and I should have called the trained professionals. I don’t feel too bad for letting the elderly woman fall because the temple president candidly said that during the day during a winter a couple weeks ago, they struggled to open the temple, and everyone, attempting to prepare it, fell; furthermore, the heavy machinery operator fell off the machine, breaking his collarbone.
2023.03.26
I appear to only have a few stories from the last entry for the past couple months, but they were informative. The two main things that I can write about, adding to the last entry summarizing two months, are the following: JWright’s 2023 Las Vegas Trip, and my ministry to the Millcreek 5th Ward. You can tell that I talk about more important things to talk about when I summarize months compared to a couple weeks. I wrote a list above, but I will delete it. The intend to write about the following to get caught up for this entry: my new less distracted routine; adult prom; my attempt to prepare for visit my grandparents, who recently was put in a rest home; my minor cold; my aspirations to be a content creator, being cut down again; and ordering my Dinomorphia side deck with the TCG Player app.
The changes to the temple ordinances were implemented when I was in Las Vegas for the JWright Company trip. I didn’t mind throwing out all my endowment officiator training because I was rightfully about to watch the beautiful changes in the endowment as an assistant to the officiator. Some ordinance workers were just attending the session without doing proxy work.
The JWright Vegas Trip was fun. We arrived on Wednesday. Jessica joined us, and we were driven to our hotel in a limousine. We had a 15 dollar room allowance to buy food. After dropping off our stuff in our room, all we did is find a place to eat where we can use our allowance. We just ate at a burger place. Jessica wanted to get selfie in front of a cool sign, but it was lite, and the lighting didn’t work for pictures or at least our cameras.
Thursday was the training. We attended a training for about six hours. I basically did the same thing as last night, deciding to get breakfast at a hotel own place. I got a Danish pastry and a slice of pizza. I thought that it would be easy to find the training hall, not giving myself enough time. Jessica joined me last minute for breakfast, and was running to my training located in an unintuitive location. My boss called me to direct me.
I seem to be part of the show because there was a form to fill out and a bingo. I said that I hoped that the Las Vegas Raiders were going to win the Super Bowl that weekend, and two bingo squares had to do with me. One required them to beat me in a foot race, and the second required them to buy me a Las Vegas trinket. I only had to race one person. They were hoping to have me race multiple people to race me tired. I got two Las Vegas trinkets at the company dinner. At the training, they read a couple fun forms to get to know people, and mine was one of them. The company dinner was very nice. I sat across from Gary Hicken. I was finally able to have a good conversation with him after working at JWright for two and a half years. I sat next to Breck and his wife, who said that he mentions me a lot. There was a salad buffet, and meat was served Brazilian style. After dinner, we stayed up late, watching the Uncle Drew movie. I would rate it a seven entertainment wise. It seems that seven is universally known as average. The story was good but shallow. The character development was good.
Friday was chill. The company bonded over Top Golf. We took the long route walking to the place, and I stopped to see a man standing with one leg and a crutch. I was going to donate to him money because I had five dollars cash on me. He was actually raising money to build a local Buddhist temple. He gave me two bracelets, asking for ten dollars, but I only had five dollars. We arrived late at Top Golf because the GPS was confusing, but we walked in with Isaac. We coincidentally walked to a crosswalk at the same time. I surprised him. Jessica was resistant to play at first. I only got one good swing. I had to persuade her diligently, and I finally got her to play with a compromise. I realized that there are targets very close to the line of fire, so I told her to try to chip shot the ball at the close targets. She finally agreed to it. She did so well that she beat me in points, and she started aiming for further targets. After Top Golf Jessica and I worked on completing some of the bingo squares. We went to the Bellagio Fountain and their botanical garden. That’s about it for the trip.
My ministering companion is Tanner Short, who is actually the nephew of Kevin Short that served with me in Jamaica. It took us several months, but we finally get something rolling. We mainly serve two people. Sister Thompson is a beloved mother of an active son in the ward, who I am good friends with. She said that she would like to go to the grocery store to buy flowers, since her groceries are typically delivered to her; however, when I asked her if she would like the go later in the week, her reply was “why?” I am still working on a time to take her out. She is about the age of my grandparents. The Magalhães are a faithful young couple in their late twenties on the path to careers at a university. We are still working on organizing a group date. One was planned for this weekend, but the patriarch did not confirm until the day of, and I am recovering from a cold. I seem to be caught up as of last entry. I will get to this entry’s topics.
My new routine is working well. I only play Nintendo Switch on the treadmill as I work out after work. It worked out well for the first week, but the Duelist Cup is happening, which had me stay later than usual, and I set off the alarm as I left. At least it doesn’t keep me up late at home.
Joshua and Martha Day invited us to go to an adult prom, and it coincidentally coincided with Jessica and I’s seventh anniversary. The pictures that we got from the photographer are not social media worth or worth to be viewed by other people, so this lowly blog may be the only place where they are published. They show that I was able to convince Jessica is try cane rows. We arrived ninety minutes late, and there was a raffle. Everyone got a minimum of one ticket, and we had an advantage to win. Seeing everyone entries, we chose the least filled jar for the highest probability to win. When we met up with Josh and Martha, we told them our strategy. Martha cheered for us, when the raffle was announced, and she called it correctly. Jessica would have felt more nervous, if Martha did not cheer for us. She was grateful for her. If anyone, reading this, knows how I participated in dances from my youth, you would be surprised that I looked like a normal person on the dance floor. Martha and Josh are my witnesses. You can ask them about it if you don’t believe me. I can only dance if I am following Jessica because she loves dancing. Martha attempt to inform me that my grandparents were put in a care facility, but I told her that I am intending to get updated on my vaccines before I visit them.
I have been feeling the possibility that I may be getting sick for a few weeks. Ordinance workers have many very close interactions with people. I am exposed to many people. I will write about my ambitions, but one reason that it was shut down is because I got sick. The senior project manager returned from a vacation on Monday, and he called in sick the next day; then, I got a fever that night.
I realized this past week that I had a good opportunity as Battle Spirit Saga was launching in the United States. The launch event was in Las Vegas. The opportunity is that I wanted to start a card game media business, being a founding YouTuber of Battle Spirit Saga. I had to let it go because my team was not united. I was going to create the content. Trevor was going to do the video editing, and Jessica was going to run the social media channels. She agreed to it, but she wanted me to tell her what to spell out everything for her to post. A social media business requires a lot of work, and each member of the team need to pull their weight. I didn’t want to drag Jessica along in the business, so I had to let the opportunity go. It appears that many husbands may have to let go of their ambitions, when they are married to conservative wives. My business was going to be called Dragonbolt Gaming. The cold that I developed was the nail in the coffin for my Battle Spirits Saga YouTube idea.
On Thursday night I had idea to convert my Dinomorphia into a Counter Fairy deck because the deck is horrible when time is running out in a Yu-Gi-Oh match. Counter Fairies can nullify the life point cost of counter trap; furthermore, they can give me life points, when I activate counter traps. By the way, whoever has the most life points when time runs out in a match wins. I downloaded the TCG Player app, ordered the cards, and established a card selling business there called Dragonbolt Gaming. Yesterday I logged in all the cards that I think has value above ten cents; although, it took all day. I only have one card that has potential to be a good sell within a few months.