Satanta!

I spent a couple of days in Satanta with my girlfriend Bekah's family. Satanta is a little (about 1000 people) town in Kansas. While it would drive me nuts to live somewhere like this, it was a great visit. I really do belong in or near bigger cities. It is actually a very relaxing place to be. In a way it reminds me of visiting my grandfather in Burlington, North Carolina, except that its even smaller than Burlington. There's just no need to rush around out here for anything.

Bekah grew up in Satanta, so its been neat having her point out different places she spent time growing up. I also got to meet more of her family and her dog.

Overall a good trip and I think it'd be fun to come back and visit again some time.

Two days in

So its been two days since I've been a "professional" juggler. It is interesting, because I quit my job at the university, yet, I'm just as busy as I was before I quit. I think this is a good sign.

Learning to juggle

I started juggling when I was 14 years old. I was putting something back in my brother's room one day when I saw a can of tennis balls. He had just started playing tennis. He only kept it up a very short amount of time, but if he hadn't done it at all, I may never have gotten into juggling. Anyway, I saw the can of tennis balls and thought to myself "I wonder if I can juggle?" So I picked them up and made two throws and catches a few times, and then three. I thought that was kind of cool, so I kept trying it. My Mom was out for a few hours, so I decided to come up with some tricks and write a little routine to show her when she got home. I ended up "inventing" the half-shower, reverse cascade and maybe a couple other tricks. I was hooked after that.

At the time I was also volunteering at Mill Mountain Zoo in my hometown of Roanoke, VA. One day shortly after learning to juggle there was a special event at the zoo and I saw a juggler there. I was amazed at what he was doing, but didn't get up the courage to go talk to him. A couple weeks later I decided to see if I could find someone to give me lessons, so I picked up the phone book and found a juggler in the yellow pages. I called him and set up my first lesson. It ended up being the guy I saw at the zoo that day, David Bear Stuart. It seemed pretty surprising at the time, but Roanoke is fairly small and at the time there weren't many jugglers performing in the area.

David taught me for a while, introducing me to clubs, rings, devil sticks and diabolos and letting me watch his whole juggling video collection. After a bit, he ended up just getting together to juggle with me, not charging me for it any more. I looked to other places to learn new tricks at that point, like IJA tapes. I ended up reading "The Complete Juggler" cover to cover dozens of times. I juggled fairly consistently until my senior year of high school, when because of applying to colleges and working part time I just couldn't fit it into my schedule. Luckily, I decided to go to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY.

Technology is entertaining me

Today I got a twitter account and started this blog. I updated my status on facebook from my phone via twitter. I am really nerding out to the max right now and loving it.

Why all of this all of a sudden? It's because pretty soon I'll be hitting the road with Lazer Vaudeville and I want to be able to tell people what is going on while I'm on the road, to document it for myself and stay connected with all my friends and family.

Okay, time for dinner and Top Gun. I don't know why, but for quite a few months now, I have had a NEED to watch Top Gun. I think its mostly because I love the song "Danger Zone" and have heard it a number of times recently (thank you roflcopter).

One more day

Its Thursday afternoon and tomorrow is my last day in lab. I've had a pretty slow day here today (all I had to do was start some overnight cultures), and thus I've had a lot of time to think. I'm beginning my career as a professional juggler and it is exciting and nerve-wracking. I am going for a run in a few minutes, so I can't take the time now, but I'm going to write about how I got here and a bit about who I am in a post very soon. Until then...find another way to procrastinate! :)