Today my fitness walking class met for the last time this semester, which is great news. You would expect that fitness walking as a PE class in college would be pretty easy, almost a joke. Well, that’s what I thought, and unfortunately I was completely wrong. This class is actually tough, power walking is much more painful that just running. See, when you run you get to bend your legs a lot, so it keeps you nice and loose as you go, but power walking is different. When you are walking fast, you really don’t get to bend your legs a whole lot, so after the first ¼ of a mile all the muscles on your legs, and your ankles and shins and everything starts to get tight and you can’t really loosen up unless you stop and stretch or something. Either way, today we had to race-walk 2 miles, which, 1- took forever, and 2- was really painful. By the time I finished my shins were on fire, and I could barely pick my feet up once I stopped. I almost tripped because my feet were flopping around like I was wearing scuba fins. So maybe I’m a wuss, whatever. My other choices were step aerobics, water aerobics, or run conditioning. I still think I made the right choice with walking! Now that it’s over, though, I can focus on more enjoyable forms of physical fitness, like crowd surfing, stage diving, throwing guitars, jumping off speaker stacks, and of course exuberant praise dancing! Have a good one!

Oh, and if you forgot to play an April fools joke on any of your friends, go ahead and do it tomorrow, who cares if it’s a little late. I’m suuuure they will understand.

-Josh

So I was watching some TV One Life the other day and saw the episode with “Fright Factor” which is sort of spoofing “Fear Factor”. Initially we had the idea to do “Jesus Factor” and see how adding Jesus into people’s lives would affect them, but decided it would be a difficult segment to shoot-you know, with the whole “people sinning or not sinning part”. So we decided to make it closer to the real show, and make the contestants eat disgusting food. I’m not sure who exactly was in charge of the menu, but I know I wouldn’t have gone near any of that stuff. I could almost taste it just from watching the show. Either way, I thought the spoof was really funny.

Something that is not funny, however, is the 4 week break that LOST is on right now. My roommates and I really enjoy the show (and have consequently gotten all of our other friends hooked also). We waited for almost a full year for this season to finally begin, and now it’s on break so they can catch up after all the writer’s strikes. However, don’t feel sorry for us! We are finding ways to stay sharp, even without new episodes. Mainly we have just completed the 4th and final LOST puzzle. I was never a big fan of puzzles (I don’t have the patience), but these are different somehow. It’s such a challenge to see partial images of tiny faces, or sets from the show, and try to guess exactly where they belong. A typical LOST puzzle session conversation could go something like this, “Hey I’ve got what looks like the top half of Jack’s dad’s left ear while he was sitting in the Italian restaurant in Sydney. Does anybody need that?” “No, but I have part of Sawyer’s flannel shirt that he was wearing in the beginning of season 2 when he met Jack’s dad. Maybe it’s the same scene?” Needless to say, putting together these four puzzles has certainly sharpened my recognition skills surrounding LOST characters. Now if only I can sharpen my recognition skills in my English class…

-Josh

So this weekend I went with some people to watch ‘I Am Legend’ the movie with Will Smith, and supposedly he’s the last living person left in the entire world. Well, if you have not seen the movie yet, and you plan on it, BE WARNED…you might want to wear a diaper or something, haha. I did not realize that there were a bunch of creepy zombie-people running around and stuff, so I felt the need to give everyone else a heads-up.

Anyway, on a more cheerful note, today I got my graduation photos taken, and I’m now officially counting the days until graduation (which I’m very excited about!). Getting to wear the cap and gown got me thinking about how soon I will really be done with college. It took me an extra year to finish, but I’m glad I did it that way. Some of you may know, I switched majors in the middle of my junior year. Initially it was kind of scary making a major change when I was already 2 ½ years into college. I realized that I wasn’t doing what God wanted me to do, and I wasn’t about to spend my entire life doing something different, just so I could graduate on time! So, I switched what I was doing, and started working towards my new degree. To be completely honest, it was one of the best decisions I have made. Once I was on a path that lined up with God’s plan for my life, things started to go more smoothly, and I started to really enjoy school again. I was never really miserable, but it wasn’t until I switched that I realized how much more God had for me. It’s a great feeling of peace and excitement knowing that I’m working towards the things God designed me for. So with that a new chapter will be starting soon after I graduate. Until then, I suppose I should try and go to at least some of my classes and try and finish strong. I guess we’ll see.

-Josh

Sorry everybody…no history today. This is my second blog, and I guess that makes me a professional by now, or at least a semi-pro. The closest I got to making history today was watching an episode of Rob and Big, and watching Rob break like 21 skateboarding records from the Guinness Book of World Records. Which actually inspired me, and I want to find an obscure record to try and break. So if you have any suggestions of a fun world record that you think I could break (or you think would be funny to watch me try and break…please let me know!!!!). Oh, if it’s the record for the longest jump while riding a tiger bare-backed…forget it.

I’ve been watching some of TV OneLife on a few different networks here and there when I’m not at school, or at work…or playing disc golf. (just in case you were wondering…which I know you weren’t, but that’s okay…I finally shot an entire round at even par on our local disc golf course!!). Something I’ve noticed while watching the show is that our producers are very nice. It’s fun to watch the final cuts of these shows and I just have to smile at all the dumb things I did that didn’t make the show. All the times when I said something stupid, or ran into something, or tripped and fell, or looked dumb, or forgot what I was even doing…that never made it to the final show…well, THANKS! I know I don’t give them much to work with, but I’m glad they at least attempt to make us look decent, and find the few things that I said well.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the episode with our goat herding adventure yet, if you haven’t…you need to keep an eye out for it. I just watched that segment, and could not stop laughing. I think about the day we were on location to shoot that challenge. We had to get up waaaaayyy too early to drive to the middle of nowhere onto this farm, so I was really tired, which means I was really grumpy. But then we finally got let loose in the field with all the goats, and it was so much fun running around with them. I know in the episode it looks like we got the goats corralled in like 5 minutes, but it probably took closer to half an hour to get all the goats and chickens in. By the time we finished we were all hot and sweaty and tired, and probably smelled like goats (by probably…I mean absolutely) but I was in such a great mood. It’s amazing what a little exercise can do to lift your spirits (oh, and running around with some really goofy goats too). What’s the moral of the story? Go get your friends together and chase your neighbor’s goats!?! Just kidding! No, but if it’s a nice day…get up and go do something…it’ll be worth it!

(try disc golf…)

-Josh

Well guys, you are all a part of history. You are reading the very first “blog” entry ever written by yours truly. I have lots of friends, no names here, who have made quite the hobby out of blogging…I guess I’m a little bit late. But hey, that’s what this year has been all about…trying new things.

I know it’s probably hard to tell, but I have…well…never worked in a TV show before. Honestly, this was a lot different than I ever expected. Working to create TV OneLife was certainly challenging, and pushed me in a number of different ways. I’d say one of the hardest parts is just trying to be real on camera. Whenever the cameras are turned on and rolling, all of a sudden I feel all this pressure, to ‘be myself’ that everything becomes very awkward.

A lot of our shoots for various episodes put me in uncomfortable positions, doing things that I didn’t want to do, and asking people questions that I didn’t really want to ask. Putting myself in a position where I was really pushed out of my comfort zone helped show me a lot about myself. When I get pushed, and stressed, that’s when my true emotions come out. On several occasions, the result was disappointing. However, it has helped me a lot to observe myself and the way I act from another perspective (through a camera, or from a producer’s comments). It’s given me a chance to evaluate my attitude, and work to improve the way I interact with people, and handle difficult situations. Overall, I think I’m a lot better off because of it!

-Josh