My girlfriend and I live together in a house that we bought last year. We've been together for about 5 years (on and off). One thing about her is she loves animals. Now, I love animals too, as do many other people. But she loves animals almost as much as she loves my sorry ass.

Because we live together, and she is insane about animals, you can imagine the myriad of animals that run around our home. We have cats, dogs, tree frogs, guinea pigs, you name it. We have 2 dogs, a male and a female, and their names are Naveah (or "Vay", as I like to call her) and Brutus, respectively. Both are very sweet. We recently found another female dog, a black lab. For some reason, Vay does not like this new dog at all. So she has attacked this new dog several times. Now, we have to keep the 2 dogs toTally separated until we find the new dog a place to live. I take dog fights very seriously, so when I've broken up the fights I have been very careful. The dogs only weigh about 40 lbs. apiece, but still.

On Wednesday, February 1, I got a frantic call at my work from my girlfriend, who was home alone. The dogs had "somehow" gotten into another fight. Of course, my girlfriend tried to break it up. Upon doing so, she got the tip of her left ring finger bitten off - completely - just below the fingernail of her left ring finger. The cut was so clean, it was as if someone chopped it off with a sharp object. She told me that she didn't even know that it had gotten bitten off until she saw it fall on the floor.

She was smart enough to immediately pick up the severed finger and put it on ice. For those of you who don't know, if you ever sever a limb (whether it's a finger, arm, whatever), if you want any chance of re-attaching it, you better put it on ice. I rushed home from work and got her to the hospital. Unfortunately, they were not able to re-attach the finger tip.

I have to say that she never complained about the pain. She was more concerned about her "ugly finger" lol. But she's gonna be ok. She'll be able to everything that she normally did in the past.

During the dog fight, the dogs actually broke the corner of my pool table. How the hell that happened, I don't know.

Now needless to say, I was having a bad day. My girlfriend lost the tip of her finger and my pool table had a crack in the corner (but at least it's still playable). As if all THAT wasn't bad enough, when I got home from the hospital I got a phone call that my aunt had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

What a horrible day.

Happy New Year, everyone.

It took me a full 8 months to do a perfect thumb fan. That's right, 8 goddamn months, when there have been people who have learned thumb fans in 8 minutes. Granted, I wasn't practicing the thumb fan the entire time, but still, I had major trouble with card fans in general. It was so frustrating because I learned some very difficult flourishes very quickly. But yet one of the easiest flourishes was toTally kicking my ass. Fans are easy to learn, but difficult to perform perfectly.

So now that I can finally do a decent thumb fan and giant thumb fan, I decided to mess around a bit with different fans. And after only a couple days, I have learned 5 new fans - and pretty damn difficult fans at that. 8 months to learn one basic fan, 2 days to learn 5 difficult fans. WTF? And the fans actually look good. So it's not like I stumbled upon 5 fans that look like hell.

Palm back fan circle - fan circle that ends up on the back of the hand. I saw this performed by Ciappi from HL. The only difference is my fan is kinda small, but it still looks cool. And it looks more like a spiral than a fan. Kinda hard to explain. Maybe a more appropriate name would be: micro palm back fan circle/spiral?

Giant palm back fan circle - same thing as a palm back fan circle, except this is the giant fan circle, obviously. (Haven't seen this performed, but I obviously got the idea from Ciappi's palm back fan).

As far as the 3 other fans, I've never seen them performed, so I'm assuming that nobody has invented them. I'll put them in my next video. I haven't made names for these fans yet - still trying to come up with some names. They're kinda hard to describe, so I won't bother.

Thanks for reading.

Hello, everyone. This is just a brief summary of my progress after 7 months of card flourishing. Some of you might find some useful information here. Feel free to holler at me if you have any questions.

Here’s some (not all) of the flourishes I can perform comfortably:

One-Handed Shuffle

This is the first flourish I learned. I can now perform this with both hands, simultaneously, behind my back. Frustrating to learn at first, but well worth it.

One-Handed Overhand Shuffle

I don’t see this flourish too much. This was easy to learn, but took a long time to perform smoothly with good speed.

Turning One-Handed Shuffle

Most people use the standard one-handed shuffle to divide the deck in half. The turning one-handed shuffle is a good flourish to know, though. I like to use this once in awhile. It’s not that difficult to learn if you already know the standard one-handed shuffle.

Perfect Faro Shuffle

Breaking the deck exactly in half isn’t difficult for me. I can cut 26 cards almost 100% of the time. The thing that I had to practice was the weave. I couldn’t get the cards to weave together at all. But after watching various people, I was able to learn this eventually.

Armspreads

I was able to learn most armspreads very quickly – within a matter of minutes. When I started using fanning powder, it made the armspreads even easier to perform. Double armspreads are very difficult, and are rarely seen in videos. Needless to say they require more practice time than basic armspreads.

I prefer to use double-backed Bicycle cards when practicing (meaning the cards have the back design on both sides of all the cards). That way, if I ever drop cards, I don’t have to worry about the orientation of the cards when I’m picking them up. I can just scoop them up off the floor, square them up, and then start again.

Some people find armspreads very boring, whereas others find them fascinating. I feel that if armspreads are performed smoothly and quickly, combined with some armspreads that have high degrees of difficulty, they can be very entertaining to watch.

Arm-Roll

Many people think this is a difficult flourish, when in actuality it’s very easy. I think I nailed this on my first or second try. A “worn” deck is helpful, but not necessary. If you’re having trouble with this flourish, a good way to practice would be to use a deck of cards that are still in the box. Then move on to the cards out of the box when you feel you’re ready.

Arm-Roll Cut

Much more advanced than the basic arm-roll. Luckily, this was another flourish I picked up quickly. This looks very difficult to most people, and usually gets me compliments whenever I perform them. I now prefer running arm-roll cuts, which consists of 5 or 6 (or even more) cuts at a decent speed.

Viereck

This is a 4 packet self-standing sculpture (shaped like a box). This was probably the hardest flourish that I’ve learned. It was extremely difficult to perform consistently. I would have to say it took me a good 3 full weeks before I got this move down cold.

You’ll see some people perform this in videos, but most people will form the sculpture and their are fingers still touching the sides of the sculpture. This is the cheap way, if you ask me. The only person – besides me – who I’ve seen perform this the right way is De’vo.

Card Spinning

The first time I saw this flourish, I was amazed. Now that I can perform it with both hands at the same time, it’s not really a big deal to me. Not that hard to learn if you have a good tutorial to learn from.

Fans

It’s been about 7 months, and I’m just now am able to do a perfect thumb fan, and a giant thumb fan. Fans are something that I’m struggling with, even though fans are considered easy flourishes.

Snap Shot

Anyone who watches my videos knows I always include a snapshot routine. The basic snap shot, whether it’s one card or two, I can do in my sleep. If you search around 21ace, you can find a tutorial I made.

I recently made a video of a 3-card snap shot, and my goal is a 4-card snap shot.

Hot Shot Cut

It took me one or 2 hours to learn this move consistently. I have recently learned this move in my other hand. This usually gets the biggest reaction from my family and friends. They love this move.

Flourishes I’m currently working on:

Faro Shuffle With Spring Finish

This is hard to explain. Imagine perfectly weaving two packets of cards together, and instead of squaring the deck together, perform a cardspring with the 2 woven packets. My biggest distance is now at 3½ feet. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else do this, and this flourish will definitely be in my next video.

Card Twirl (not to be confused with a deck twirl)

This involves one single card. Looks easy, but it’s actually a real pain in the ass! Much more difficult to learn than I had originally thought. Speed and smoothness will be tough to achieve with this move.

Behind-The-Back Cardspring

For some reason, nobody ever seems impressed with behind-the-back moves. Oh well, I’m still working on the behind-the-back cardspring anyway. Of course, the distance won’t be huge because of the limited range of motion my arms can get behind my back. But we’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading! More to come…