Well, hunting for an apartment in Illinois actually turned out be a lot more difficult then I originally had thought. My plan for awhile before I left was to just move in with some random person before I even got to the state just so I could have somewhere to go as soon as I arrived. It eventually dawned on me how bad an idea this was, and despite this was exactly what I did for moving to Arizona, I decided to get a hotel for a few nights to search the area.

I ended up booking a hotel from Wednesday night thru Friday night, so I had 3 days to find a place to live. I actually had some contacts from an ad I posted on Craigslist prior to moving, but also posted another ad saying I was in town. I had a lot of resources from my company about living around the area, and that and craigslist were the main avenues I was using for searching. Really, finding a place to live can be very tough, as every place I every went in this country, there is certainly not a lack of apartment...

Well, I made it to Champaign, and I finally got a place to settle into. It’s a little pricier then I had hoped, but it will be well worth it. More on that in a separate blog though... this one is on my impressions of the town.

To say the least, the town is very small. It’s probably only a mile or two wide each way, and surrounding it is tons of cornfields. It’s very rural, but it sort of reminds me of home in some ways.

Probably the biggest impression I have gotten is that it is a college town. University of Illinois is located here, and when I checked online, they have some 40,000 undergraduates going here, and about 15,000 graduate students. The campus is also built split up all over town, as in medical buildings are in one area, engineering in another, and so on and so forth. That being said, there’s tons of young people walking around, and the bus line is packed. Not that it is worth saying this as none of you will probably be able to relate to...

Well, I ended up making my trip to Champaign, Illinois in one piece. As you know, my dad ended going with me from Arizona, and this was probably the worst part of the trip. Lots of interesting things were seen and what not, so here's how everything went.

I picked up my dad from the Phoenix Airport late Sunday night, and I actually sat in a no parking zone for around an hour waiting and luckily did not get told to move. We went out to eat and things were pretty uneventful. That night sort of sucked as my dad insisted in sleeping in my bed, and having no other place to sleep, I gave in.... It wasn't too bad I guess, weird for sure, but the worse part was his snoring... good lord. I barely slept.

In the morning we packed my car, and my dad was upset to see that I had much more then he had originally thought. I kept telling him packing all my stuff into my little Buick Century was going to be hell, but he was naive of the situation. Needless to say, I was right,...

Well, my relocation to Illinois is about to happen. Tomorrow I'm going to finish packing and get everything in the car, (which is going to be an epic challenge in itself) and then Monday morning I leave.

I'm totally not looking forward to the trip at all, and this is the longest road trip I ever taken. Probably the longest trip I ever took before this was maybe 10 hours, and I think I only drove for 6 hours of that. This trip is approximately 2000 miles and google maps estimated time has it marked as 30 hours... GAH...

My dad is actually coming to help me drive and what not, but honestly I wonder if this is a good or bad thing. Sure it will definitely help, but I would be willing to do many things that he wouldn't, like sleeping in parking lots overnight, or making minimum stops. Plus, he is making a side trip in Colorado to see his friend's house. It adds an extra 300 miles to the trip, but it is a free place to stay for a night so I'm not griping about...

June was a very uneventful month for me, with nothing really noteworthy happening. Mostly, this month just consisted of school, school, and more school.

Things were really in fact getting crazy with school, with countless tests, quizzes, and weekend classes to take tests or work on project. This whole entire month, I did not have a single weekend off, and pretty much went to school for about 21 days straight till finally having off a Sunday towards the end of the month. On top of all the tests and projects that I found myself doing, I myself was spending almost all of my free time at the school. Last month I was maybe going to school at night about 3 or 4 days a week, but this month I was at school at least 6 nights a week for about 4-8 hours at a time. I was really putting my dues in.

It was mostly certifications and tests. I think during this month, I took about 7 certification tests, all of which I fortunately passed the first time. Then there was just...

So my car has been leaking antifreeze externally from the gasket intake manifold for over a year. I held off getting it repaired, as while warned it could turn into a disaster quickly (antifreeze leaking into engine) I have been driving it without problems and would only have to add antifreeze about every 2 months or so.

Considering I am going to be driving to Illinois in about a week though, I decided I couldn't risk having that problem as I haven't really drove the car long distances since I had it, and also because I can imagine the leak would get worse driving for 12-16 hours a day. I had a rough idea that it was going to be an expensive job, but man, I was surprised at how these auto repair shops work..

I took my car to the first spot, and apparently they wanted $800 to replace the gaskets. Apparently all the places I went to said it was just the gaskets leaking and that I wouldn't need a whole new manifold, plus, the manifold costs a lot more anyway....

Still going crazy over the living situation. Really can't seem to find one bedroom places under 800$ after utilities, and many average around 900-1000$. I like my freedom and peace, but not at that cost.

I have pretty much decided that I want to live with someone, because I need to save the money, but really I need practice living with others, and at times in my apartment here, it really got lonely and many times I wished I had someone to share the space with, and also help out around the house.

Unfortunately, even this presented some very serious challenges... For one, I had initially wanted to find a hotel/motel for a week once in IL to scout places out, but that really is becoming an issue. Not only would living in a hotel for a week suck, the cheapest I have been able to find is roughly $40 a night, and I can only get that price if I book for at least 7 days (so I would need to pay at least $280) Considering I will be having quite a expensive trip in...

I will make a huge disclaimer about this blog right now. I DID NOT go to Phoenix comic con (regrettably) so if you were looking to read about my experience there, move along. As to find out my thoughts on it and why I didn’t go, as well as how the rest of my month went in May, read on.

That being said, I guess I will talk about the Phoenix Comic Con situation first. As told from the previous blogs, I didn’t originally know about it, but I had met 3 of the guys that ran in who happened to be in my bowling league. We hit it off well (geekiness ftw) and considering they were working on Comic Con stuff at bowling every week (including floor plans, events, and new brochures) they got me very interested in going. Hell, not only that, but going to a large video game convention was always something I wanted to do. Hell, it wasn’t video games, but it was certainly quite large (approx 20,000 people), geeky to the max, and there was going to actually be quite a lot of...

Well, good news first, I got the job in Illinois. I am going to be a sound designer for the company. Would love to hear from some Illinois (Champaign-Urbana area) CAGs if your out there but more about this in another blog. Moving on...

My lease for my apartment here in Arizona is up at the end of August. My job can start either the 6th or 13th of September, so I have 3 weeks to find a place to live in Illinois. Lord how many problems I'm having...

It wasn't really that bad finding a place to live in Arizona, as the school was friends with a realtor who pretty much recommended only two places for students to live. There are eons of apartment complexes in my area, so I decided to listen to this guy and narrowed it down to two places. I called them and compared, picked the one I thought was better, and bam, life turned out alright. I never got to see the place prior either but things were not bad. They weren't great, but not terrible.

Unfortunately,...

I would say I am a huge RPG fan. Even more so, a huge JRPG fan. One confession I must make though that I feel demeans my claim to RPG fandom is that I never played a single Final Fantasy game. In fact, I know nothing about the series, how it plays, or what it even looks like (as I literally never played one, even for a few minutes)

I've been wanting to play through the whole series for quite some time, and what is actually odd about the situation is that I own almost every game. I have the first four for the DS and PSP, do not have the 5th, have the 6th on SNES, I bought 7-9 on the PS store, have 10, X-2, 12 on ps2, XI on Xbox 360, and XIII on PS3. I refuse to play any of them though because I want to start with the first one. It seems like the best thing to do.

Some people have said to just skip the first few though and either start with 6 or 7, and some suggested to start with 10. I plan to embark on this quest to play them all because I really feel...

I used to dream occasionally back home in PA, but since moving to Arizona, and really more so since getting on my weird sleeping schedule where sometimes I would go to bed at 5AM or what not, my dreaming has involved into something interesting.

Basically, I will sometimes wake up very early, about 4-7 AM, and considering I didn't go to bed till about 2 or 3 AM usually, I'm still dead tired and will just lay in bed. The weird part about this is that when I'm just laying there, I start to have very vivid dreams, but the catch is that I know it's a dream and that I'm still awake. My friend said it sounds like lucid dreaming, but its not quite that as I can't control what actually happens in my dreams during this time. I can though control if I dream or not, as I know I'm dreaming and if I want it to stop, I just get out of bed.

Even furthermore, not only will my dreams be very vivid at this time, but I've been able to remember them quite well, usually remembering...

Well, it's been a rather boring weekend. Feels very odd that now school is over, and as always that also tends to bring about a parting of ways. While it have never gotten outright bad, I do tend to get sad when times like these come around and the people you've spent the last several months with are all going off to do their thing. Even for someone like me who barely goes out anyway, I still do get sad to see everyone go.

My class did end up having a party/get together type of thing the night of our last class, and despite it just being everyone smoking pot and drinking (except me and one kid) I was glad to go. Usually in the past, such as with high school and my last couple jobs I just bolted after our last day. Never really said good bye to anyone. I guess I didn't care too much in high school, as I sort of hated it, but I was really sad to say leave my last job. Weird part was that it was an awful job with a crazy boss, but my co-workers (save one or two) were...

I'll see if I can manage to keep this blog shorter then my previous ones, but I can never guarantee that. :P Regardless, last Friday was my last day of classes, and I've made it.

It went by unbelievably fast, and it seems like just the other day I was still sitting in my room in Pennsylvania meddling about, doing nothing with my life. But 9 months have gone by, and what turned out to be the best decision I've made in my life, I'm happy to say I made it through, none the less with a 4.0 GPA and many certifications to boot.

I was really worried I wouldn't be cut out for it, as I only had a more classical based music background, and I knew literally nothing about the audio industry, recording, or production, but I can fully say the school did an excellent job teaching, and I now feel prepared to enter almost any area of the industry with the foundation the school has laid for me.

If any of you are wondering what school, it's the Conservatory of Recording...

The first week or so of April was pretty much the same as March in some ways as I was still pretty depressed, but was getting over it at this time. I felt better by the second week of April, and started doing much stuff again. Due to my failings with the online dating scene, and being rejected the second time by that Mexican chick who said she was waiting for me to ask her out and now didn’t want to go out with me anymore since I waited too long, I pretty much threw in the towel on the online dating thing. I was also becoming more busy with school, and considering I was halfway through the program at this point, for some reason I felt that pursuing any further relationships at this point would be useless. I figured what was the point of starting a relationship now when I’m going to be moving in about 3 or 4 months. Looking back, it was a pretty stupid conclusion, but in the end it allowed me to focus more so on my work and education.

Speaking of school, we continued...

Well, I've been pretty busy the last week. I got thrown a sound design project to do at the last minute by one of my contacts trying to get me a job. He wanted me to do it so I could bolster my demo reel up, so despite numerous other things going on like recording sessions, tests, and certifications, I managed to get that done. The storm has calmed though and I'm hoping to get some more writing in this weekend.

Today's blog is going to be about a very peculiar topic. It is going to be about my high school prom. Strange I'm writing about it since it happened more then 4 years ago now, but we were talking about our prom's at school last week, and it spurred strong memories of mine. I was surprised to find many of my classmate's never even went to their prom's at all, (which was something I was considering as well) and they were very amused with my story. I remember at the time I wanted to blog about it, but this was way before I was here, and I had just started blogging...

At first when I was trying to think back on what I did in March, I couldn’t really think of anything in particular that actually stood out. After further thought, I soon realized March was probably my most important month here. It was the month were many transitions were occurring, including those that involved me becoming more at peace with myself, and it also the month I really began to find my niche within my school and my living. Not only that, but thinking harder, there were also some noteworthy events that did happen.

First off, we had our last rain in late February, and as of writing this, we haven’t had rain at all since then. Just a handful of cloudy days, but the desert weather was starting to come. It was really beautiful everyday. Clear skies, and temperatures around the 70s and 80s that just felt perfect. There was no humidity as well so that made it even more comfortable. I was totally loving it.

Bowling was also going very well and some...

February was a rather bland month for me. I was getting into the scheme of school more, but falling out of working out and had pretty much completely stopped hanging out. That included hanging out with the one kid whom I said was out there, as it was just getting to be too much for me to bother me, plus it seriously was a hassle to go out anywhere with him. I recall one instance where we kept trying new asian food places each week, as we both were into the asian culture. Anyway, first time we went, at the end, he offered to pay the whole check. I said no, let’s split it, but he insisted, so I let him pay. Then came the next time we went out and at the end, he said, “ok, its your turn to pay” I was like...... WHAT?.... Hell no i said. I never wanted him to pay the first time. We talked about it, and he said he doesn’t like splitting bills because it doesn’t look good. I was like... yea.... similar and even more awkward situations like this eventually had me cut the ties. ...

January was here. I would be starting school, and I was once again getting antsy about the whole thing now that it was closer then ever. As you all recall, I’ve tended to always feel you had to have some innate knowledge in some field in order to be good at it. Many have told me how stupid this was, and that that was what school was for and that you could do anything you set your mind and time too. Looking back, they were always right, but I’m upset it took me so long to realize that.

After my New Year alcohol and drug romp, I found myself starting to question my actions. It was true that one of my goals was to become more social, and oh trust me, I was. I was going out almost every night, and doing more and more stuff I have never done before. Still in the end, I really began to felt it wasn’t worth my time, and that it was just so stupid. It was interesting for a few nights, but my taste of that extroverted lifestyle was really taking it’s toll on me. It’s common...

I've had many life changing moments from my time here in Arizona, but one I did not mention in my last blog was this view on work. Many people may be saying, "here he goes again, negative nancy" but hear me out. It has been a tremendously more positive thing for me then a bad thing, and I think many might relate to my prior views.

I always had the idea that work should be something you enjoyed. I mean enjoy to the point where you just loved going in everyday, but it also was allowing you to live a great life outside of work. This meant this "enjoyable" job would make you enough money, have you living in a comfortable place, give you time to enjoy other things, let you find friends and maybe even girlfriends, and so on and so forth. Looking back, totally ridiculous I know. But still in some ways, I think many others are hoping for the same.

I've lost night's sleeps to thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, and searching for...

Going to be moving in just a few weeks, and it’s hard to believe I spent the last 8 months in Arizona. Time has just gone by so fast and it almost feels like yesterday I was still sitting in my room in Pennsylvania not doing anything with my life. Lots of lessons have been learned, and my time in Arizona has been of the most life changing times for me ever. I’ve grown and matured as an individual, and learned some important things about myself. This series of blogs will just be to look back on the time I spent here, and the memories I’ve made. I will also make a blog at the end summing up my likes and dislikes of my living here. Enjoy.

I got to Arizona in mid December. I remember being extremely nervous as this was the first time I was moving out on my own, plus the furthest I have ever been away from home. My plane flight had gotten delayed back about 6 hours as well, so we didn’t get in the Phoenix airport until about 10PM. I remember coming in on the plane that...