While I was in one of my university’s buildings today, I noticed a phone sitting on a desk near the elevator. Curious, I walked towards it.

I saw that the phone was unplugged, and that there was a sign posted on the wall right behind the phone.

In case you can’t see it in the image, the sign said, “Emergency complaint line to the governor’s office. The governor cares about your opinion!”

The governor’s office cares enough to put a phone here, but not quite enough to plug it in…

My winter break has come to an end, and I am now back in Madison in my apartment on my university campus.

Like usual, classes don’t start for me until a week later, but I came here early to begin working. Also, like usual, my working hours are extremely flexible, so I’ll be able to stream a lot more than I did over break – which brings me to my next point.

A lot of people have been wondering why I haven’t been streaming much over break. Those who have known me for a while probably know the reason for this, but the newcomers probably don’t. The issue I have is that, back in my home town at my parents’ house, where I go over breaks, the Internet is about as slow as modern-day Internet can get without still using a dial-up connection. I already have trouble watching high-definition video, so I’m pretty sure that you can already conclude that it’ll be near impossible to stream high-definition video, or any video that’s watchable.

Occasionally over break, I might still stream – this is when I’m either at one of my friends’ homes who has better Internet, or I’m streaming something low-quality (like Pokémon) that doesn’t require high-definition.

If you’re not familiar with my stream, you can check it out at Twitch.TV/Parkzer. If you’re interested, you can follow me to be notified whenever I go live (which will be very frequently within the next week or so) and watch me play some League of Legends.

I’ve been asked how my new year has been going so far.

Unfortunately, the answer to that is “not so great.”

Since the night before January 1, I’ve been feeling pretty sick. My illness spiked during the day of January 1 and 2, where I was so sick that I was literally lying in bed all day drinking orange juice and watching YouTube videos and Twitch streams. I slowly started getting better on the 3rd, and today I was finally okay enough to get out of the house for the first time in the new year.

This was probably the most sick I’ve ever been in about 5-6 years of my life. The only time I can remember being this sick is during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school when I was taking driver’s education.

Summer driver’s ed has a stipulation where, because it’s so short and the days are so long, you can only have one absence, or else you fail the course. Of course, they’re obviously not going to fail someone for actually being really sick for more than a day, but they set that as a rule so people wouldn’t be lazy and miss class when they’re only a little sick.

During a day of driver’s ed, I was so dizzy in the morning that I wasn’t able to balance, and I ended up missing a day. Apparently, the empty threat of failing driver’s ed if I was sick for any longer helped me recover in a single day.

On my first day out on the new year, I went to Chick-fil-A with Ed Lam for the first time. We were planning on going to Buffalo Wild Wings today with Ben Chow (as I mentioned a few days ago), but he ended up rescheduling because he had “family responsibilities” to which he needed to tend.

Ed and I went into Chick-fil-A and ended up getting take-out because there were so many people eating in, and we pretty much didn’t even have space to eat inside the restaurant.

After getting back to his house, we played a bit of League of Legends, then I left and went to visit my martial arts academy, which I hadn’t been able to do for the past two days because of my illness.

Again, I got a bunch of footage from today that will be in a compilation video coming out in the near future.

I was supposed to go to Buffalo Wild Wings with a few friends yesterday, one of whom is Ben Chow. You might remember Ben Chow from a few of my videos; he’s the really shy Chinese person who gets trolled a lot and has no idea how to play Tetris.

Unfortunately, I’ve been sick and I wasn’t able to go yesterday, so I texted Ben Chow letting him know. Upon his response, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to troll him again.

Parkzer: Buffalo Wild Wings trip rescheduled to Thursday, I’m deathly sick and probably won’t be better by tomorrow afternoon
Ben Chow: Okay sounds good.
Parkzer: It sounds good that I’m deathly sick? Ben Chow, my heart is broken.
Ben Chow: Lol what no’

In related news, a video from our trip will be posted sometime after I get better and we actually are able to make it to Buffalo Wild Wings.

To protect the identity of the star of this story, I am going to refer to him as the generic male name, “Bob.”

Earlier today, I found out that Bob made a bet with a few of his supervisors at work. He bet $100 that the world was going to end on December 21, 2012.

That’s actually all that needs to be said about the story – think about the possible outcomes, and laugh at Bob, realizing the reason I had to rename him to Bob was to protect him from eternal humility.

If you don’t quite get it, then I’m here to enlighten you.

If Bob loses the bet (which is most likely), he will have to pay $100.

If Bob wins the bet, the world will have ended and everyone would be dead.

Yes, Bob made a bet where it is literally impossible for him to actually win anything.

-__-

Back on December 1, I tweeted, “Men, it is no longer November. Time to shave those rugs off your faces.”

That, of course, was a reference to no-shave November, where a bunch of strange people decide it would be a great idea to forgo an important part of personal hygiene for a duration of 30 days.

Seeing as the time period for this “event” was over, I went ahead and reminded these people to go ahead and go back to their daily routine of keeping themselves presentable to the public.

Then, all of a sudden, Ben Chow (who you might remember as being one of my buddies since high school) comes along on Twitter (for the first time in like two years, I think) and tweets at me at 3 AM, saying this:

That was probably one of the most random things that had happened to be in a long time (and it doesn’t surprise me that Ben Chow was the one who said it), so I decided to post it on my website.

Apparently, if you grow a bear, you become a man. Better use high-quality potting soil and water it well so it grows to be very big.

(Yes, I know he meant to say “beard,” but I like making fun of Ben Chow.)