20 First Song of the Day Now & 18-Year Dance Game Anniversary Tomorrow!

20 first song of the day now! Well, an easy marathon 20, anyway. The difficulty is probably like 20.0, it starts at 200 bpm, and it's 19 mins 50 secs long. Still, maintaining 200 like that with no prior warm up is good for me, and that ending was flippin rough. It almost did me in! The rest of the chart wasn't too bad, but 220+ is no joke like 600+ measures in. Ugh Anyway, I actually only wound up passing 3 songs today as this first one kinda burned me out. 😅 I can't complain about the new difficulty so soon after ticking off that last one the other day though, and I've gotta give it to these Stamina Nation daily quests; they sure as hell light a fire under my ass! 🤣

Also, shoutouts to my friend David Sjöstrand/Urza for knocking this song out earlier today and letting me know what to expect. Due to the bpm increase throughout it, I never would've even attempted it first song if not for him doing it twice already now with 87.xx% and 93.xx% scores and telling me it was an easy 20 I could definitely do. I just kept that in mind while fighting with that GD ending. Haha

My 18-year dance game anniversary is tomorrow. I'll be out of town and away from ITG for at least 4 days but will probably mess around on the Max 2 machine where I'm going. Either way, not a bad way to pay early tribute to 18 years here!

ITG 19 First Song of the Day

19 first song of the day yesterday! 🥳 Granted, it was 191 bpm and was ~14.5 minutes long, so it wasn't the worst 19 to warm up during. Not a huge milestone here or anything, but nice to know there are charts rated that high that I can jump straight into if I'm short on time. I wouldn't have even tried normally, but the SRPG daily quest was calling my name, and I was in a hurry. 😂

I wasn't actually planning on playing yesterday. I'd run 3.5 miles at the gym in the morning and gone to bed at 2:30pm. (Hardcore night owl here.) I got woken up at 9pm to deal with a quick family emergency though and figured, since I was up, I might as well see if there was a snowball's chance in hell of doing the daily quest. I had yet to do ANY daily quest, and today's was right up my alley: three songs with 500+ measures of 16th stream (Stamina Nation faction, obviously). I only had like 1.5 hours left til the midnight cut off by this point, however, and I didn't have many practical song choices that fit the criteria that I hadn't played yet, so this wound up being my 3-song set:

[19][191] HAUNT Sampler FP: 14 mins 24 secs, 94.45% stream (613/629 measures)

[19][190] Spacetime FP: 11 mins 22 secs, 100% stream (528/528 measures)

[17][165] Gargoyle Infinite (Meme) FB: 19 mins 45 secs, 100% stream (802/802 measures)

Annnnd that's how my first ever daily quest got done! Check my sweet Fantastic counts too. 😏 (Timing was ummm..challenging today.) Pics from this set + bonus stamina stuff bc 🤷‍♀️

David Frausto/DJFX Came to Vegas. 2 Weeks Later, It's His Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my old friend David Frausto/DJFX!!!

I've known this guy since I was 15 or so. He was probably around 13 when we met at the Oh Wow! Nickel Arcade in Merced, CA — pretty much our second home during those big, important years. He came to Vegas early this month and stopped by our house to visit June 6th. Anyone who knows David will know that it's needless to say we had a hell of a night! See, David is one of those rare people who makes me — perhaps not you, but definitely me — feel at home, not only because of our Merced upbringing but because he's the type of person who knows and doesn't so much as flinch at the 100% unfiltered version of me and gives me that crass, potty-mouthed, mind-in-the-gutter version of him right back! 😂 I can't overstate how refreshing that can be and how much I love him for it. Growing up, David and I had fun, drama, lows, and highs, but it was nothing but love when he visited. That's friendship! The best type of friendship I know, in fact. The greatest part now is getting to share that love and joy and energy by hanging with him and Sean and even Danny for a moment at the same time. In particular, watching David and Sean get to know each other, sharing old memories with each of them, A LOT of talking (we had so freakin much to catch up on and I hadn't spoken to almost anyone in person in ages!!), messing around on dance games together like old times and playing our most nostalgic songs, getting maybe just a little bit tipsy,...David's visit made for hands down one of the most special nights I've had in a long time. I absolutely can't wait til next time. Til then, I just hope this fucker is having the best possible birthday and doing all the most jaw-dropping things that I don't dare mention here to celebrate!! 😛🥂

❤ you, David!!! And Sean sends his love in a British accent too!! 🤣

Avery's Housewarming Party 6/4/21

June 4th was Avery Baumann, Morgan Baumann, Naomi Cheng, and Jeff Sith's housewarming party and the first real night out for many of us in ages! Sean and had I run into our friends Jenn Losito and JJ at AMPM a day prior to this. (They were on their way to Utah for a race JJ was running.) Otherwise, I can't even remember the last time we were around friends — maybe when my sister Liz and and her boyfriend Cody visited 8 or so months ago? In any case, it was a somewhat exhilarating feeling seeing so many familiar faces again after so long!

Sean and I arrived around 7pm and saw Carlos and Evan Montoya, Erwin Nicolas, Cesar Lara, Jason Tran, Jason Yoddumnern, Brandon Connors, the hosts, and LOTS of other faces — some familiar, lots new to us — there throughout the night. From a handful of closer friends we hadn't seen in far too long to quite a few arcade acquaintances and even more of their friends who we had the pleasure of getting to know throughout the party, it was most certainly not a quiet night. Oh, and we had animal company two: Naomi's new snake and their 3 doggies! Almost just as exciting as all the new and old human and animal friends there, however, were all the foods and festive beverages everyone contributed potluck style! There was a big jug of AMF, Jell-O shots, more alcohol than the lot of us could drink in a month without dying, boba, lumpia, spaghetti, cream puffs, salmon, brussel sprouts, beef, sausages, a BBQ going on outside, tons more food, tons of snacks... And being the nerds that all of us are, there were plenty of various rhythm and other games, card games, beer pong, an SMX pad set up with StepMania, Jackbox,... It was pretty epic!

Some additional highlights of the night for me: nerding out over Stamina RPG stuff with the Montoya brothers and quite a few other friends, more dance game talk with various people, really getting to relax and catch up with Cesar properly for the first time in almost a decade now (seriously, so therapeutic), Sean and Cesar playing beer pong together :3, getting to play beer pong with some ridiculously fantastic people myself, petting the dogs SO MUCH, those damn cream puffs omg 🤤, Sean's various shenanigans, and so many more things than I can even attempt to list all of here!

Eventually, we wound up with some harder partiers and/or tired people starting to pass out on the ground in the backyard. A bunch of the rest of us went out to keep them company and cuddle in the "fresh" air (on the astroturf where the dogs pee 🤣) for awhile before things slowly started to wind down and we finally headed home around 3am. ❤