Monday, February 9, 2015

January 2015 Entry



This entry is late because I've been pretty dang busy.

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- Thanks to the late Christmas gifts I got last year, I had a lot to watch/rewatch. But I knew I wouldn't sit down and watch all. I finished all of the Legend of Zelda cartoon on the 1st (had it on as background noise for the most part). It had been decades since I last saw this show and I still enjoyed it even though it's bad, ha. On the 2nd, I watched the Rurouni Kenshin New Kyoto Arc. Very well done. I highly recommend that to any Kenshin fans.

- I had ordered some Running Man gear towards the end of 2014. Consider them part 3 of late Christmas presents. They arrived on the 5th. The blue hoodie is from episode 114 and the red jacket is from episode 173 if anyone needs a frame of reference. The Gary nametag (from a different seller) also came the same day. I actually now own 2 Gary nametags. I was never sent a notification to pick up the first one for almost 4 months. I contacted the seller 2 months after I ordered it because I knew it would take long, but not that long. The seller sent out another one. The first nametag actually got bundled with the jacket and hoodie when I picked them up at the post office (so it had just been sitting there for months). The second one arrived the day after, ha.



- Went to the doctor on the 6th just for a checkup. It has been a while. The funniest thing the doctor said was "your bowels are very active," ha. Everything turned out fine. I did mention I had issues hearing out of my left ear so we scheduled a cleaning. Ever since December, it became difficult to hear. Basically, something at the volume of 15 sounded like a 5. Yeah...  

My ear irrigation happened on the 16th. The right one was no problem and got cleaned out easy. My left ear...that was another story. Lots of peroxide and lots of pressurized water went into that ear. 2 hours later, we called it quits. The ear wax was too stubborn. They prescribed ear wax to soften it up and we scheduled a second irrigation for the 21st.

The second irrigation only last about half an hour. We just came to the conclusion that an ENT needed to actually do the work since a normal irrigation wasn't cutting it. Yeah, the ear wax was that stubborn. So I set up an appointment at a different hospital for the 29th.

The ENT had these Phreesia touch pads that they used for patients to fill in their information and I really liked those. I had never seen them before, but I hope other hospitals are using them. They're easy to use and make sure to get all your information properly. And you can even swipe your credit card on them.

Anyways, using the better tools that the ENT had, it took about 10 minutes to get the ear wax out. It was painful, but I had to bare with it. The ball of ear wax wasn't as big as it was 4-5 years ago, but that wasn't the issue. The doctor said that the wax was attached to the walls of my ear canal, which made it more difficult and painful to remove. That was also why a normal ear irrigation was only able to chip away at it and not remove it completely. Everything was so loud after that. I am glad to finally hear properly again.

- Some DragonBall Z items came in the mail. Those include a Funko Pop Vinyl Vegeta, a scouter, and a work shirt. I also ordered another DBZ item in February. You'll see that in next month's entry.





- A friend and I met up (01.09.15) to get a Thai massage, the one where they walk on you. It was my first time getting one of those and it felt pretty good. I found out that my right side of my body is more sensitive than the left. Not only that, I really can't bend backwards anymore. One of the stretches required the masseuse to pull my arms and my back together. I couldn't take it as it hurt too much (much like doing the Snake pose for yoga). The rest of it was great though. Then my friend and I went to eat ice cream and catch up.

- Met up with a group of friends for a board game night on the 17th. Some of them I had not seen for a while and others I met for the first time. We played Resistance and it was my first time playing that. Oddly, I was almost on the enemy side and no one trusted me throughout all our sessions, ha. It was hilarious though. We then played a 3 hour game of Munchkin. It was the first time for a lot of them, but they got into it. The person lagging behind the most throughout the game ended up winning. Well deserved. Fun night.

- There was a WWE Live Event in Houston on the 18th. It had been a while since I went to a live event (non-TV/PPV). My friend and I had a blast. It was the first time I dual-wielded title belts and the first time I brought out my NXT title belt.

Usos defeated Miz and Mizdow. Mizdow was hilarious.
Sin Cara defeated Tyson Kidd. Everyone laughed when Kidd said "ask him in Spanish."
Justin Gabriel defeated Adam Rose.
Jack Swagger defeated Curtis Axel.
Paige, Emma, and Naomi defeated Alicia Fox, Cameron, and Summer Rae. All the Divas look amazing in person. I was crushing on Paige so hard.
Roman Reigns defeated Rusev via DQ. Lana is super pretty in person. Reigns actually passed by us during his entrance so that was pretty cool.
Chris Jericho defeated Cesaro. I wish they had a longer match, but it was good.
Dean Ambrose defeated Bray Wyatt in a Street Fight. Awesome match to end the night.

I might have forgotten a match or two, but that was the bulk of it. It was a fun night.

- Some friends and I went to Empire Turkish Cafe on the 23rd. I had not seen them for months. It was good to see them and to catch up some. After eating there, we went to Sweet Paris to talk more. It ranged from work talk, movies, serious stuff, and more. But it was good to reconnect with them on that level again.  

- On the 30th, those of us that met on the 17th gathered again for more board games along with a couple others. We played Cards Against Humanity (my first time), Resistance (hilarious and I was mostly the enemy again, ha), and then we split into 2 groups with one playing Settlers of Catan and one playing Dominion (my first time). Dominion was interesting, but there are just a lot of cards to learn and remember. I ended up getting second place in points since I ended up buying them a lot throughout. After we finished Dominion, we joined the others playing Catan until they finished around 1AM. Very fun night.

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- I didn't buy a new game this month. Since I had been busy, my gaming time has been cut down. I was able to play more of the Phoenix Wright Trilogy (last stopped somewhere in case 5 of the first game). And I bought more DLC for Curtain Call.




- I needed to reserve Majora's Mask for the 3DS. I went to GameStop, but they could only help order any limited edition copies to be mailed. Apparently that's the way they're going for all/most limited editions of games from now on. So I did that on the 7th. Got the Ultimate Limited Edition version with the game, Skull Kid figure, and the strategy guide.

And then after the awesome Nintendo Direct on the 14th, I went to GameStop again to reserve the Majora's Mask version of the New 3DSXL. So I'm ready for those when they come in the mail on the 13th of February.

Also I got a tons of favorites and retweets since I tweeted to iJustine about the Nintendo Direct. Always a cool feeling when someone you follow gets excited about what you tweet at them and retweets it for everyone.



- Bowser was the next amiibo I wanted. Unfortunately, release dates had been a bit wonky and the preorder window is minimal or nonexistent. On the 30th, I went to my local GameStop in hopes they would have one since their site said they had low stock. Lucky for me, I got the last one. I wanted to reserve Ness, but they weren't taking any preorders. Ness is the next amiibo on my wish list (although I will collect more along the way).



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Lots of stuff happened at the Houston Escape Room. I'll touch on a few of those things.

- On the 3rd, there was this group of older women having a girls' night out. They were already cracking jokes in the lobby while we were waiting for the other half of their team (a group of strangers) to join. One lady asked if there were any hot firemen, ha. Then one fixed the anagram on our desk to say something something "hot cop." Well, the other group was going to be late so we decided to let the ladies in first. They came up with the name "Hot Flashes" for their team. And while introducing all the agents, instead of my usual one, I said they could call me "Hot Cop" much to their delight. Then I (unintentionally) said "thank you for coming" to which they went crazy for again and then I said "you're welcome." And thus, Hot Cop was born. One of the Hot Flashes left us a great review and even mentioned a certain cop in the review, ha.


- We had our second company outing to Austin on the 12th. We were going to the same place again, but we were attempting their new "bigger" room. This was also the first trip the new hires were going to be a part of so it was a good bonding experience. We went to get donuts (same place Natalie Tran went to when she was in Austin), went up a small mountain, went to Dragon's Den again, went to the Panic Room, beat it with 1 second to spare, at a Korean restaurant (I forget the name, but I had been there previously with other friends), and drove back home. During the drive back home, we played a word game (last letter of the first word was to be the first letter of the next word) with the categories of movies, video games (my suggestion), and TV. Then we played another word game (next word starts with the next sequential alphabet letter), but with Pokemon for the topic. That lasted the rest of the way as we named so many. My proudest moment of that was when I was next for V and out of nowhere I pulled out Vanillish much to everyone's surprise as I was mainly naming generation one Pokemon.

The only downside to that trip was that I got a little ill (early in the trip) and I lost my voice after the Panic Room. It was odd trying to reserve the New 3DSXL with no voice as well as trying to work with no voice considering we do have to talk. Luckily others were there for that while I handled all the other tasks.


- The owner was in town for a couple weeks as a lot of stuff was happening. A friend of his was also in town and he was going to help us redesign our lobby and corporate conference room. Not only that, but he was going to help us by setting up team meetings so that we could all get together to come up with ideas to improve the area and flow of our processes.

One thing that happened on the day of our first meeting, the facilitators were surprised with a trip to our competitors a few blocks down, the one with the zombie. It was an interesting experience. It was definitely different from what we offer, but I was more pissed off than anything. My main task halfway through the game was to distract the zombie while everyone else worked. This also had me jumping off and onto a lot of the furniture to evade the zombie (got touched twice). I had no problem with that, but I was yelling at my teammates when they weren't distracting the zombie when I needed help doing something. But in the end, I gave props to the zombie actress and joked around with her. We all got a lot of props from the work crew there, but I feel like they rattled off a lot for me (could be wrong). PS: my nickname for that session was Hot Cop.

And that day in particular wasn't over yet as I had received a phone call from a friend's boyfriend about the possibility of setting up a surprise birthday for her at HER. I called up the owner and asked if it were okay and it was. So my friend and her friends got to beta test the second room. They didn't make it out unfortunately, ha. But that wasn't the last time we would see her that week.

- HER had done an event with Bite Macaron in the past before I started working with them. They wanted to keep that working relationship alive and I was the connection since my friend is the owner/head chef. We were emailing back and forth about offering their team a chance to try out the original room at the new location. We finally settled on a day (the 25th, which was originally my day off to watch the Royal Rumble, but I came in for that last session just for them). It was great seeing familiar faces go through the room. They made it out too. Afterwards, we spent a lot of time talking. My friend and I broke off to just speak one-on-one. We're both of the same mind that after 14-15 years of friendship, it's crazy that we're now collaborating. All future collaborations will fall under the hashtag #BiteHER.


- Construction of the new conference room and lobby did change things for our normal operations. We now lock our front door since that's where construction is happening and reroute our customers through another door. I'm glad that has been working out and no customers have said it was an inconvenience. While I was skeptical of all the changes, I'm excited to see the finished product because it can't be worse than what we started with.

- I say this almost every time it happens, but it's great to see friends come through the room whether they knew I worked there or not. It's always interesting watching them go through it and to talk to them about it afterwards. Unfortunately, all customers can't be great. We have our share of crappy customers and there was one group that really got to me. Some of them didn't seem like they wanted to be there (their boss made them go), some wanted to go back to happy hour afterwards, some made too many jokes (I never liked "that's what she said" jokes), and some flat out said this is stupid. It was unprofessional of me, but I didn't even give them the full debriefing. I through in the comment that "it seems like most of you want to hurry along to happy hour" or something to that degree and just quickly got them their belongings back before ushering them out. My coworkers easily noticed my unhappiness and it was tough for me to hold it back. That day in particular just wasn't a good day and that group topped it off. Anyways, part of the territory.

- There has been more that happened in January that carried into February. As of typing this, a news story was broadcast on KHOU 11. I'll link the video here, but will talk about that experience in the next entry.

http://www.khou.com/story/entertainment/2015/02/09/escape-room-comes-to-houston/23126763/

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- Infinity Challenge is a Korean variety show I don't watch all the time (sometimes just clips), but their Saturday Singers special was incredible. Bringing back singers from the 90s to perform some of their greatest hits was so good. Heck, I'm rewatching it for maybe the 5th time while typing this (02.09.15). I wasn't a fan of all the performers featured, but I knew almost all the songs. I sang and cheered along to almost everyone of them. The standouts for me were SES, Jinusean, Lee Jung Hyun (wow, she doesn't age), Uhm Jung Hwa, and Kim Gun Mo. I literally shed tears of happiness after SES performed. Everything about this special was great from the artists, the songs, the outfits, the old school camera movements and graphics (the little things), and so much more. I really hope they do something like this again with other past artists because there are so many from that era that I was fond of.

 

- One unfortunate thing about this year is that I've to have background noise on for me to sleep. It's nothing new that my brain just keeps thinking and it prevents me from sleeping, but I've had to do this every night this year so far. There was only one day that I was able to sleep for 3 hours without any, but I had to turn something on to sleep the rest of the night. And yes, this has continued onto February although it has felt a little easier falling asleep so far. I'll be trying on and off to see how it works. Hopefully it won't be like this for that much longer.  

- HER is a big part of my life. I didn't mention everything that had been going on earlier, but there has been a lot. And all of us are investing a lot of time into the company because not only do we need to, we want to. It's so fun meeting new people all the time and just helping them have a fun memorable experience. I want everyone I know to come through. When catching up with others, I proudly talk about my job and that I'm actually happy with what I do where I work. So if you wonder why I'm so busy lately, why I haven't been watching wrestling live a lot lately, why I'm not playing games as much lately, or why this entry is late, it's because I'm at the Houston Escape Room.

- And that should do it for January 2015. February has been busy also so you'll be reading about that next month.

Thanks for reading. Be healthy, be safe, be thankful, and be loved.


Take care. DFTBA. 

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