Journal Entry: May 29, 2008

Yesterday was Wednesday, right?

Ah, yes. Sorry, it's been a long day at work. Anyway, last night I invited our regular Wednesday dinner guests to pick up something of their choice, and bring it to our place (rather than meeting somewhere). Seemed like a pleasant change of pace.

K-- and N-- couldn't make it, but my sister and her family came, so we still had a crowd. D-- came, too. T-- took AB to church at 7:00, but Jeff and D-- stuck around so we could play a little AoC and introduce Jeff to it. Meanwhile, my sister ran some errands.

Anyway, after that first hour that I spent picking up drinks for everyone and grabbing our dinner from Taco Bell, I spent the rest of the evening playing AoC. I did come out of the office around 9:00 and watched the end of an episode of Boston Legal with T--, and then (even though it was bed time) we watched a Lost before we knocked off for the night. In the meantime, I got my character up to level 30.

That was my night, then today has been another busy and productive one at work. I took a long lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings again, played some AoC over lunch, but apart from that my whole day has been spent crawling through old Safety Risk Management documents and trying to match up project numbers and NCP codes from dozens of different projects, to see what we have and what we haven't yet paneled, and make plans based on that.

In the end, we're doing better on all of it than any of us suspected, and I have a shiny new spreadsheet to prove it. Good for me. Now I'm going to go run for half an hour, and spend the rest of the night complaining.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Fostering Creativity

I just read an excellent article on fostering creativity, and I wanted to share it here, for my own reference and for any of you interested in the topic.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-unleash-your-creativity&print=true

FAQ

Q: You know what would be nice?

A: Averaged monthly billing on gasoline use. Someone could probably make a killing charging a $5 service charge for that.

Journal Entry: May 28, 2008

I had an incredibly productive day at work yesterday. I got a ton accomplished, and in between projects I spent some time working on our finances for the next four or five months, and found out that our prospects look a lot better than I had feared. Even with the double mortgage, we're going to be able to get by (barring any disasters, of course).

That's good news. It relieves a great burden of stress on me, which is an answered prayer in itself.

After I got home I called Dad and talked with him for half an hour or so, then T-- and I headed to the gym. We met K-- and N-- there, and after we did our strength training, K-- offered to run with me again. I did the first day of week 4 on my program (after so successfully finishing week 3 on Sunday).

Holy damn! What a monstrous leap in difficulty. In week 3, I basically did 18 minutes of running and jogging -- half and half, taking four walking breaks along the way to help me catch my breath.

In week 4, I do 16 minutes of jogging, plus another 5 1/2 minutes of walking at much rarer intervals. The last 5-minute stretch of jogging nearly killed me.

I managed though (with much encouragement from K-- and T--), and when I have to try to do the same thing again tomorrow night, I'll be able to approach it with the full knowledge that, yeah, I can do this. I've already done it once.

And, from what I've seen, what's impossible on day 1 is not really all that hard on day 3. It's been consistent that way throughout the program so far.

After we got home, T-- made quesadillas for dinner, and we watched some According to Jim for the first time in a while, and I spent most of that time playing with AB. Then she went to bed and we watched some Lost, and then it was 10:00 far too soon, and with that bedtime.

I didn't actually play any AoC last night. Instead, I spent time with my family. I'm just saying, is all. Of course, tonight I'm playing AoC pretty much all night. But that's beside the point.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

My Vices

I have mentioned here before that I have a family history that predisposes me to an addictive personality. As so many silly children do, I spent much of my early twenties partying with alcohol, and (at my parents' insistence) I was on the constant lookout for any signs of alcoholism. Lucky me, I've never seen any.

I thought it might be fun (and/or useful) to review my history with with addictive substances, for posterity as it were. So far, none of them has been my downfall, but it's an ongoing investigation.

Drugs
I have never tried any illegal drugs.

Really, I've never had the opportunity. I had a couple of friends in high school who did, but never around me and they never invited me to try. I guess I grew up in the right part of town, and hung out with the right crowd, and I've been consistent enough about that throughout my life that it just never happened.

When I was in New York, visiting D--, we spent one evening at birthday party for a friend of his, whom he had met while he was living there. The party was in a cramped little apartment (as they all are in New York City, and there were many guests, and the food did not appeal to me but I was too polite to say so, and I may have already been a little bit drunk before we ever went over there, so all told I wasn't in too good of shape.

Of course, the worst of it was the crowd of strangers. I had a pretty good anxiety attack going on just from that. Anyway, sometime late in the evening the birthday boy gets to opening presents, and one of them was a baggie of what must have been pretty good weed, because he was awfully excited to get it. And, generous fellow that he was, he rolled a joint and they passed it around.

That, really, was my opportunity. Only time in my life I've been in the same room as a joint. I was feeling sick, though, and not at all adventuresome, so I passed it right along.

So, that's drugs.

Tobacco
I've smoked some cigarettes, out of boredom more than anything else. I remember one time when I got trashed at Brad's place (which will, necessarily, be described later), Brian recommended that I smoke a couple cigarettes in the hopes that the stimulant effect would, I dunno, bring me down. I did, and it didn't, and the night did not end well (as will be shown).

Apart from that, I've smoked maybe a total of a pack of cigarettes, at various times -- all of them have been when I was hanging out with D-- at some bar (usually with a larger social group), and I bummed some cigarettes off him just for something to do while everybody else played pool and danced and joked among themselves. More than once I've had a cigarette when it was just D-- and me, sitting across the table talking, just because, y'know, if he's going to be blowing smoke in my face, I feel like I ought to get some sort of vengeance.

Some of that might sound like D--'s a heavy smoker. Not at all, really, but he tends to take a pack with him when he goes to a bar, and sometimes the mood strikes him. That's all there is there.

I've had four or five cigars in my time, too, and I'd love to have more, but I enjoy saving them for special occasions. That, and I'm not wealthy enough to buy things yet just to set them on fire. And I'm still a little too pretentious to buy cheap cigars. I'd rather not smoke at all.

So, yeah. When it comes to smoking, it's only ever been occasional, and never tempting toward addiction.

Alcohol
Oh, sweet alcohol.

Actually, this bit is long, even hitting just the highlights. Feel free to skim over it. If you know me at all, you probably know most of these stories.

We moved to Wichita when I was twelve or so, and bought a house, and apparently when we moved into the house my parents found a couple bottles of liquor left there by the previous owners. Knowing liquor doesn't really go bad, they decided to keep it, but a desperation to be good parents had kept my parents from drinking anything at all for as long as I'd been alive (at least, as far as I know of).

So they tucked the bottles away in the very back of an old buffet that stood in our living room, and probably forgot all about them.

I was looking for a deck of playing cards one day, and stumbled upon them. They fascinated me. After that I waited, always looking for an opportunity, and one evening they left me home alone and I seized my opportunity. I dug out the two bottles. One was labeled "Gin," but I opened it and it didn't really have any smell to it. I took that to mean it probably had no real flavor, so wouldn't be too exciting a thing to try. The other bottle was nearly sealed shut by the thick, long-congealed sugary syrup under the cap, and when I finally wrenched it open it smelled strongly of peppermint, and the sour smell of alcohol. This, I thought, was good liquor.

So I poured probably half a shot of peppermint schnapps into a tall glass of Dr Pepper, and drank it down. It was nasty. I probably wouldn't have liked a Gin and Dr Pepper any better, but I shudder to think that this was my first cocktail. I was probably fourteen.

When I was fifteen, I was babysitting some kid at somebody's house, and I noticed an open bottle of wine in the fridge. I waited until the kid was down sleeping for the night (and the parents weren't due home for some time), and I stole a sip of it, expecting delicious things. It was just sour and nasty. I spent some time trying to figure out how to warn them that their wine had gone bad without admitting I'd tried it, but finally gave up, realizing they'd have to figure it out for themselves.

It was a chardonnay, and I'm quite confident it was a perfectly good one. I was a kid, though. All I knew was that wine was made out of grapes, so I expected something much sweeter.

When I was sixteen, I drank for real for the first time. There was a campground just outside of town called King's Camp, when the church would sometimes have youth retreats and whatnot. It sat in some small woods near a scrawny little Kansas lake, and it only saw any real business during the summer.

My friends and I (Brad and Brian again, as well as a few others from the youth group) had found an entrance to the camp that wasn't locked up in those long months when the camp was out of use, and so we would often sneak back there for a night out in the woods. Brad and Brian ended up hunting some, when they were older, but I can't imagine what else we found to pass the time out there. Still, it was a favorite hangout. That's also where I took my girlfriend Lindsey to dump her on Valentine's Day. But that's another story.

One night, though, Brian decided it was time we all learn how to drink. Brad may or may not have been part of this evening, but I know and D-- and I showed up, as well as a guy from our youth group named Erin, and another friend of Brian's that none of us knew. That friend was our supplier, though.

We ended up with a flask of Southern Comfort, a flask of Peach Schnapps, and a gallon jug of orange juice. We made a fire out in the woods, and spent an evening talking about girls and drinking shots and swigging right out of the bottle, and just pretending like we were awfully cool guys.

Everybody drank too much (and the oldest among us was probably eighteen, and didn't have much more experience drinking than I did at that point). We eventually put out the fire and stumbled back to one of the cabins that had been left unlocked to sleep off the few hours left in the night. Brian, realizing we'd all probably have hangovers the next morning, separately encouraged both D-- and me to drive into town and pick up some aspirin, because we were the least drunk. We both remember making the drive (independently), all freaked out that we were going to get caught drunk driving and probably nowhere close to actually drunk, but neither knew the other one was doing the same thing.

I remember when I got back with the aspirin, everyone else was sound asleep. Thinking we would probably want to clear out pretty quickly in the morning to avoid getting caught, I spent some time tidying up before I went to sleep. I threw away plastic cups and other trash, put away the deck of cards, and emptied the remains of the peach schnapps into the orange juice bottle (you know, so there'd be less to carry).

Turns out, Brian's friend had taken both the orange juice and the schnapps from his parents' fridge, and when he unknowing put back the spiked OJ, he ended up getting in a lot of trouble. Hah!

Nothing bad came of that night, except for D-- getting a little scraped up trying to escort a falling-down-drunk Erin through the trees, and having to make up an excuse for the scrapes on his arms come Sunday morning....

Two weeks later, give or take, I was out to lunch with my mom, and we were talking of all manner of things, and I leveled with her about what we'd done. I've always had that sort of relationship with my mom. I think she was probably pretty worried to hear we'd been up to it, but she just said she was glad I could be honest with her, and hopefully next time I'd be a little safer about it.

After that, I didn't really drink until my Junior year in high school when I met B--, and he taught me how to drink wine. The first time he invited me over, I asked if he would pick up a bottle of Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot (or something equally crappy), because I'd seen ads and it just sounded delicious. He did, graciously enough, but he also got a bottle of actual, good Merlot.

I remember him laughing when he discovered that the Arbor Mist had a twist top. I also remember I didn't like it much, even that first time. I still kept buying such stuff for a year or two, but Bruce convinced me that the Merlot was a lot better, and it didn't take me long to learn to appreciate actual wine.

Early in my Freshman year at college, I was in Wichita visiting for the weekend and spent an evening over at Brad's place. D-- was back in OKC at the time, and he came over, too. Over the last year or two, since I had left Wichita, Brad and Brian had become pretty close. Still, everybody thought it would be fun to get together.

Brad and Brian were smokers, then, and they drank beer. That was most of the plan for the evening: poker, beer, and smoking. Ah, and Brad grilled up some venison, so I guess this was when they were hunting, too.

I was extremely pretentious back then, and I would not condescend to drink beer. D-- was okay with it, and Brad and Brian seemed to love it, but when I asked if they had any wine, I was out of luck.

Brad remembered that he'd stashed away a bottle of vodka that he'd gotten somewhere, though, and I said (knowing nothing), "Ah, vodka, that's a real drink!"

They'd spent some time ribbing me for being to effeminate to drink beer like the rest of them, so when Brad poured me a shot of vodka I slammed it back. That's something I've always been good at -- slamming shots without any visible difficulty, just a natural talent apparently. Anyway, they seemed impressed how easily I did that shot, and I felt pretty good about impressing them (and drinking the shot had been remarkably easy), so I told him to pour me another, and I knocked that one back, too.

I did seven shots before the first one caught up with me.

I remember spending the rest of the evening locked in a little half-bath down in the basement, ten feet away from the table where they were playing poker. I'd heard that drinking a lot of water was the key to not getting hungover, so I had a water glass that I kept filling from the sink, downing it as quick as I could, and then just standing with hands on both walls, bracing myself against the world's spinning, and hoping not to puke.

Periodically, I would stick my head out the door and shout, "Brian...is a bitch!"

I didn't really come down after a couple hours, and Brad hadn't intended on anybody staying the night, so Brian drove me to D--'s place (where I was supposed to be). I remember D-- laughing at me, because he'd never seen me really drunk before, and he told me that the best solution to that level of drunkenness was Pepsi and Twizzlers, and he just happened to have both. So he gave me a 24-pack of Pepsi and a 1-pound bag of Twizzlers, and sat back and watched while I gorged myself on both.

Even 7 shots in, I don't think I would have thrown up that night if not for D--'s little trick. What a bastard.

Anyway, that's the worst I've ever felt drinking. I've had nights as bad as that since then (although only a few), but that was the first, and I really wasn't sure I was going to make it through.

Then, really immediately after that, I decided I needed to learn how to drink actual liquor. I started out with Vodka, and essentially my goal was to be able, in case it ever became necessary, to face off against a tableful of Russian mobsters and match them shot for shot of Vodka without losing my cool. It seemed like a useful survival skill.

I learned a lot about Vodka in the months that followed, and we threw a big party involving several brands of flavored Vodka for T--'s 21st birthday, during that time. We rented A Knight's Tale (which she loved), and made up a drinking game for it. Every time a lance broke, we said, we'd drink a shot.

Turns out, there's a montage scene in which about fifteen lances break within ten seconds. Luckily, by that point, we were all too messed up to count, so we just gave up on it.

That's the party where D-- threw up in T--'s drawer, in the bathroom. Her scrunchies were never the same. That's the same one where...well, I can't give away too many people's secrets in one blog post. Everybody got smashed, though.

Somewhere along the way, I caught on to K--'s appreciation of Jack Daniels, and decided I'd achieved my goal for Vodka, so I switched over to Jack. I remember going through a whole bottle in a weekend, more than once. I would drink it straight, in large quantities. It was expensive, and it wasn't really that much fun, but I was proud of what I could accomplish.

Yeah, yeah. I was in college. Everyone in college is that stupid.

I remember Toby and I would go for walks around the perimeter of the OC campus, evenings, he with his Mountain Dew bottle full of very strong margarita, and me with my root beer bottle full of Jack Daniels. Those probably weren't as healthy of an activity as we thought they were.

When we moved out of the OC dorms (first K-- and N-- into their apartment at the Links, and then T-- and I when we moved to Tulsa), things changed. In spite of everything I've said, we did have a certain amount of restraint imposed by the knowledge that we could be kicked out of school (and our apartments) if we were ever caught drinking (or even possessing alcohol within the apartments).

That first year that K-- and N-- had their own apartment, we reveled in the freedom of it. When T-- and I moved to Tulsa, we would still often come to OKC to hang out with K-- and N-- and D-- over weekends, or they would come up to visit us, often once a month, and every single weekend involved at least one night of just stupid, stupid drinking (and at least one day of groaning and doing nothing following).

The biggest ones that stand out are New Years party's, and the Halloween party where my little sister hooked up with my now brother-in-law. We went all out for actual holidays, but we had crazy parties no matter what. If we were getting together, most of us were getting drunk.

T-- got tired of it before the rest of us (by at least two years), and looking back on it I feel more than a little shame. We were acting like idiot college kids, really. We've all outgrown it by now. Sure, we still drink (and one or two of us drinks too much, at least once a month), but it's nothing like the parties we used to have.

That's probably as worried as I've ever been, about my drinking. I hated my job, for most of the time I lived in Tulsa, and I hated being so removed from my friends. College had been awesome for me, more because I was constantly surrounded by friends and engaging with them, than for any other reason. Getting out into the real world, where every one of us had responsibilities and life called us away to other cities and states...it irked me. Real life got to me, and I felt like those parties were an opportunity to rebel against real life.

That's dangerously close to drinking to escape from problems. Still, I knew what I was doing (by which I mean, I was aware just how much I was drinking), and I took care to pay attention. I would spend weeks at a time without drinking at all, in between visits, and I was always asking myself, "Do I need a drink? Or does it just sound like fun?"

And, through it all, I was always pretty sure that, the fact that I was even asking myself those questions probably meant I had a problem. I had been raised to start from the assumption that it was probably a problem, really. Looking back now, I don't think it ever was. It was stupid, I'm sure, but twenty-five-year-olds are stupid. That's just how it goes.

It waned, too. We all got older, and I think we probably stopped having those parties more because we lost the youthful energy to recover from them than because we matured out of it, but maturity came along close enough behind, and we could look back and chuckle at our own antics.

Not...not that we're all that mature now. I don't have any trouble remembering back to the last time one of was too drunk to remember it. I don't ever really have to worry that I might be an alcoholic these days, though. I have alcohol in the house all the time, and I go days and weeks without pouring a glass. Then I might go a week or two in a row averaging a glass a day (and much of that bunched up in three or four nights), and it's still not particularly responsible, but it's not dependency, either.

I guess I always sort of assumed I would end up an alcoholic, and I certainly didn't try too hard to avoid it, but I've managed so far to dodge that bullet. I've got an awful lot of stories where alcohol is concerned, but it's not the vice that's going to bring me down.

Video Games
Well, I've already covered all the substances. I could go into detail on "Food," but frankly, it would be boring. I've got health issues and diet is a part of it, but it's not the biggest part and never has been.

I recently read a book, though, that discussed the addictive nature of video games, and pointed that modern games, MMOs especially, implement a reward and dependency system that impacts the brain in exactly the same manner as dopamine-based drugs.

I'm not surprised. In fact, I've knowingly turned to video games in precisely the ways I would never allow myself to turn to alcohol, when my problems became too much for me to handle. The MMOs I've played have included Asheron's Call for most of college, Star Wars Galaxies while I lived in Tulsa, and World of Warcraft for longer than any of the others. Now I'm playing Age of Conan, of course, but I could just as easily lapse back into WoW any day.

The thing is, I obsess. I do have an obsessive personality, and if I don't have something benign to focus that on, I focus it on my real life problems. I can build myself into a full anxiety attack over finances, home repair, relationships, frustrations at work, whatever. Finances are the easiest, and I find myself constantly worrying over them, no matter what else is going on.

When I'm actively involved in an MMO, though, I worry about that instead. I'll spend hours just sitting, idly considering what I need to do to improve a character or make progress in some dungeon I'm trying to conquer.

It's stupid, it's inconsequential, and I know that. That doesn't bother me at all. It's something that doesn't matter, but it fully captures my attention -- it lets my brain work overtime on a problem without actually building up any real anxiety, because I know that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

I can't do that with my writing. I wish I could just aim my addiction in that direction and churn out pages and pages. I wrote a post two years ago about how that doesn't work for me, though. I write from calmness and security, not from chaos. It's just who I am.

I use games to vent, though. To escape. It's not harmless. I spend too much of the little free time I have on it, especially when I don't bother to limit myself. Without careful attention, I can let myself come home from work every day and sink into my game until late at night -- while away whole weekends with my only social interaction occurring when friends or family log into the game with me.

It is an addiction, and if I don't wrestle with it, it takes a toll on all of my relationships. Still, it's the most benign of the addictions I think I could have fallen prey to. It works in my life, if I can just maintain a little balance. But, yeah, it does work for me. It helps me handle something that needs handling. I use video games to cope with the stress of real life.

I guess...I guess that makes video games my anti-drug? Ugh. I've become one of them.

Anyway, yeah, I'm counting down the minutes until I can get off work and go play Conan. Don't judge me. It's just who I am.

Journal Entry: Memorial Day Weekend

I just finished a four-day weekend, and I definitely made the most of it.

Thursday night T-- and I met N-- at the gym, and I worked myself sick. Afterward, T-- made us all Tilapia for dinner (an experiment for us, since T-- and I don't, generally, like fish). It was really good. We plan to try more in the future.

Anyway, N-- hung around and we watched TV until 9-ish, then she headed home, T-- decided to read, so I headed to the office to play some AoC. I think I got to bed around 2:00.

Friday was my RDO, so I was able to sleep in. After I got up, I just had time to do the dishes before heading to Mazzio's to meet T-- and my sister (with all three kids, between the two of them), and D-- for lunch.

After that, I went home with the goal of catching up to D--'s character in AoC. I got close, and when he showed up around 3:30 he helped me out some. We played until 6-ish, then he went home because the laptop just couldn't handle the environments he was fighting in. I put the game aside, too, and went to watch Lost with T--.

Saturday, we got up early to head to the gym, but once I got there I started feeling sick, so I decided to put off my workout until Sunday. Instead, I went and picked up K--'s birthday present while T-- worked out.

Then we had a quick lunch, and headed downtown to watch the new Indiana Jones flick in celebration of K--'s birthday. It was...pretty good. I've never been a huge fan of the series (I've seen each movie once), but this one didn't seem as much a departure from the old ones as some people are saying. I think it's just an adventure for kids, and all the kids who loved the old ones are grown-ups now, and turning up their noses at the new movie.

After the movie, T-- and I ran home to pick up AB (because we couldn't find a babysitter for all day Saturday), and then met K-- and N-- and D-- at Olive Garden for dinner. Afterward, we all went back to our place and started our summer 80's review with Mannequin, which was not good. It was a really fun time watching, but the movie was not good.

As far as the 80's review goes, I'll go into more detail on that some other time.

Sunday morning we went to church (and I got some writing done on my SK storyline for the first time in a while), and then we went to a Mexican place called Ole with K-- and N--. It was pretty good. It's nice to have another place to toss in the mix, even if it didn't particularly stand out.

T-- didn't have a very good time, though, because AB was in a real fuss. She hadn't had a morning nap, and she did not want to sit still. That was no fun.

We went home and put her down for a nap, then I ran up to the gym for my workout. I did my strength training, then went for a jog on the treadmill. I talked K-- into trying it with me, and he had no problem jumping right in at the end of week 3. I made it through, too, so I'll start on week 4 tonight.

Turns out there's 9 weeks (I thought there were only 6), but I should be doing a lot more jogging than walking by the end of this week. By week 7 or so it should be closer to a 20-minute run.

Then, Sunday evening we went over to the Huddlestons' for dinner -- old family friends of D--'s, who have fallen in love with AB. We got some free barbecue out of that, so we're not complaining. When we got home, I played AoC on the laptop while we watched an episode of Lost, and then we went to bed relatively early.

Monday morning, Memorial Day, I had to make a quick run to Wal-Mart because B-- and E-- had requested that I bring salsa to lunch, and I was only too happy to oblige. I was up late enough that, after hitting Wal-Mart and then mixing up the salsa, it was time to head over there.

Lunch at B-- and E--'s was something of a last minute development, but they invited D-- and K-- and N-- and us over sometime late Saturday. They grilled burgers and chicken for us, and we brought sangria and salsa and (among the others who came) several delicious sides and desserts.

The sangria was a new recipe T-- stumbled upon in one of her cooking magazines, and it was a hit. We'd brought the same thing to the Huddlestons', too. It's essentially just lime juice, sugar, water, and Pinot Noir. I thought the recipe sounded foul, but the end product is actually really good.

Anyway, we had lunch and talked much. We also tried out B-- and E--'s Wii Fit, which was a huge success, and introduced B-- and E-- to MarioKart, which was roundly denounced. Whatever.

The girls (by which, at first, I meant AB and Maddy, but it ended up applying to all of them) went out in the back yard where E-- had set up an inflatable wading pool, but I know not the details of that adventure, because I shun the outdoors and didn't even glance their way. AB ended up sitting on Maddy's head, though, and that brought an end to their fun.

It was a great afternoon, though. We were there until 4:30, and I spent most of the rest of the evening playing AoC. Overall, that was probably the most relaxing holiday weekend I've had in years.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

The Magic Architect

Okay, I keep reminding myself that the whole point of my blog migration was for my own personal archives, and that it's not an excuse to make you guys reread all my old posts, because how boring would that be?

But, for anyone who wasn't reading my blog back in 2006, I do recommend that you read my short parable "The Magic Architect." I'm not saying it's the best thing you'll ever read, but it did get a pretty strong reaction from those who were reading at the time.

As I go through all the posts, cleaning them up, I'm rereading them all. It amazed me how much I still seriously believe the things I wrote back then, even though some of it already struck me as college-age idealism at the time.

It also continues to astonish me how substantial my blog was, back before I turned it into a diary. That makes me a little sad. But, then, it also makes me glad to have these old writings saved somewhere -- that, at least for a time, I was writing these sorts of things. So at least there's that.

Journal Entry

Okay, I have good news and I have bad news.

I bought Age of Conan last night. Also, it's awesome.

So there you go. That probably qualifies as a full journal entry not only for last night, but for at least the next month or two.

Ooh, we did do our Wednesday night dinner, and this time my little sister got to join us. We had almost as many children as adults (depending how you count D--), but N-- helped out a lot.

We went to Johnny's, and I had the theta cheeseburger (always delicious). Afterward, the girls went to church, and D-- and I went Best Buy hopping in the hopes of finding a copy of the game. Wal-Mart's not carrying it because it's labeled M for Mature, and both of the Best Buys we tried were sold out. There's a Circuit City nearby, though, and we reasoned that, since no one shops at Circuit City, they had to have a copy still.

They had one.

Anyway, that was good enough. I spent the rest of my night on that. I'm playing a Herald of Xotli, which means I charge blindly into battle, then breathe fire on my enemies, and then live or die depending how much damage I can dump before I get torn to shreds.

It's perfect for my playstyle. I feel bad for any groups I end up in, but I'm having a blast.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Okay, it's done. They're here. My blog is now 232 posts more content-rich.

I've got at least a week's work ahead of me, double-checking them all and adding tags, but it will be fun work. I always enjoy reading through my old material, even when it's just diary stuff.

So...hmm. Let me start with this. Whenever T-- goes over to someone's house for the first time (and more so back when she was just out of college), and they know she's an interior designer, the first thing they say is along the lines of, "Oh, god, you must think this place looks terrible."

Not because T-- puts on superior airs or anything. It's just a common response to specialists. Anyway, that's always been kind of a sore spot for T--, because she doesn't walk into a house and just immediately start judging it. She can look with a critical eye when she's working (or someone asks her advice), but she's not in that mode all the time.

I'm exactly the same way with reading. I don't read through every book I pick up looking for the mistakes, unless I'm specifically working on editing that book. Sometimes bad story elements will jump out at me, but they should for anyone who regularly reads (or watches) stories.

So, lately I've been reading The Cat Who books, as I think I've mentioned, but I'd put that on hold to do the markup of Dad's novel. Now, obviously, while doing the markup I was in editor mode, and since I finished that and picked up the next Cat Who book, I've noticed it hasn't gone away. I read every sentence in the book and think how I would rearrange or rewrite it to make the verb stronger.

It's rather distracting. The book isn't awful (although the writing is kind of weak), but I've gotten in the habit of giving advice and now it's kind of got me in its grip. I'm just glad I'm not reading one of my favorite authors at the moment, because that could be depressing.

Anyway, yeah, yesterday I read a couple chapters of The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern over lunch, picked up AB from E--'s after work (because T-- had spent the day working in Tulsa), and then completely decided to skip the gym. I'd done my running on Monday, and I just didn't feel like going.

Instead, I hit the mall and picked up some new running shoes (that I've been meaning to get for a couple months now), then had dinner with T-- and watched an old episode of Lost, and then headed over to D--'s place to check out Age of Conan, the new MMO. It's pretty dang sweet.

I got home late, and got up late this morning because of it. Still, way worth it.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Okay, anyone who has subscribed to this blog as an RSS feed is about to get inundated.

I spent some time during the day yesterday working (with Kris's help via email) on my blog migration script. It's running right now and, with any luck, will keep right on plugging away for the next three to six hours, and move all my old Xanga posts over here, probably date- and time-stamped so that they appear in historical context.

I'm doing that for my records. Don't feel like I suddenly expect you to reread three-year-old philosophy posts. You're welcome to, though.

Anyway, after work yesterday T-- and I went to the gym, and I decided to go ahead and try jogging after my strength training. I usually do the elliptical, instead, because it's a hell of a lot easier. I'm starting to think of switching back to a three-days-a-week habit, though, and if I were to do that, I'd probably just leave out the elliptical altogether.

Jogging went better than I really expected it to. I went ahead and started week 3 of my training program, and the three-minute stretches of jogging were tough, but not too bad.

After that I grabbed us all some dinner while T-- went home with N-- to start work on the Bible class they're leading on Wednesday night. I spent the hour or so watching AB (mostly climbing up and down the stairs to K--'s loft), and then by the time we got home it was already 9.

T-- watched Bones and then turned on the new How I Met Your Mother while I worked on the blog migration script which is running even now.

It saves me a ton of work, but I'll still need to review every post, partly because Xanga didn't institute post titles until about a year ago, and Blogger relies on them heavily. Also, I like the idea of tags as used by Blogger, so I need to tag them all.

That will be a gradual process, though, as there's 235 new posts I'll have to crawl through. Eventually, it will be done.

Also...rereading them, I'm sorely tempted to start posting essays again. I don't know how long the feeling will last, but don't be surprised if one or two start popping up.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Friday after work I decided to mow the lawn for T--, so she wouldn't have to worry about it when she came home. I didn't want to feel all woozy and drugged out during my workout, though, so I didn't take a Benadryl. Instead, I had an allergy attack during my workout.

I went ahead and did the full hour, though. As I do on Cardio days, I started with my jog, then went to the elliptical for the second half-hour. I was supposed to be on the third (and final) day of week two from my jogging program, but you'll recall that I skipped the second day of it to try out the spinning class.

Turns out, that wasn't really a problem. The first day of week two felt impossible, and I remember thinking, "These guys are crazy, if they think someone can progress in that big of steps." But, then, on Friday I was thinking, "Wow, this is almost easy." So that was pretty cool.

I start week 3 on Tuesday. Would've been yesterday, but I was driving back from Wichita.

Anyway, after I finished at the gym, I met up with K-- and N-- and D--, and we headed to Louie's on the Lake for dinner, but the place was packed. We checked every table, and there wasn't one free. So, after some discussion, we decided to head down to Joe's Crab Shack. I had steak.

Afterward, we went back to K-- and N--'s place to watch some stand-up on Comedy Central. We were all exhausted, so around 10 when N-- decided she was ready for bed, we were all ready to agree. Except maybe for D--, but he didn't put up much argument. He headed home, and I crashed at their place, for a couple reasons.

First, it's much closer to the gym. I woke up Saturday morning at 7 and ran up to the gym for my regular workout, and then went back to the house for a quick shower, and got on the road to Wichita. Their place is almost half an hour closer to Wichita, too.

The drive isn't too bad, and I spent the whole trip listening to Eddie Izzard's stand-up, so that was fun. I got to T--'s parents' place in time for lunch (tacos), and then grabbed a half-hour nap on the couch before we were sent out on errands to help with wedding preparation.

We got some food and stuff at Wal-Mart, then dropped it off at the reception hall and helped set up tables and whatnot. Then around 4 we ran home, got dressed in our finest, and went back up to the wedding.

The ceremony was outdoors, and it was just a perfect day for it. It was a quick wedding, too, and the reception was held right there at the site. Much less hassle than most weddings.

The reception only last a little over an hour, too. Afterward we helped clean up, and then went back home to watch some TV and generally veg out.

Sunday morning, I slept in. T--'s parents have an exercise bike, but I was not about to try to use that thing. I woke up late, snacked on some fruits and veggies leftover from the wedding, and played with AB while we all waited for lunchtime to roll around.

John grilled up some chicken and burgers, and they had about half the wedding party over for lunch (a typical Charboneau Sunday, that). Lunch was delicious, and then afterward we gathered to watch the bride and groom open all their gifts, and right after that T-- was ready to head home.

We got in around 4:15, unpacked the cars, watched last week's Lost, and then ended up grabbing some Taco Bell for dinner and watching a bunch of season 2 Lost, and that was the whole evening.

It was fun. The weekend just flew by, but it was a pretty pleasant one. I can't say I'm ready to be back at work, though. Alas.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

I just realized, for the first time, that the Alphabet Game is a total scam. It's a good one, though. I'll definitely use it on AB.

Even though I don't socialize much when I'm at the gym, it still feels pretty lonely when I go and nobody else I know is there. I suppose not having my mp3 player has compounded that a little bit. I got the new one in the mail last night, just before I headed to the gym, but it needed three hours of charging, so I wasn't able to take it with me.

Anyway, yeah, I went to the gym after work, did my strength and cardio for an hour, and then headed home. D-- had offered to pick up some Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, so I invited K-- and N-- to come join us after the gym, but they skipped both so they could go to the church picnic last night.

I called B--, too, and offered to bring the chicken to their place (I know D-- wouldn't have minded), but they were busy with plans of their owns. Speaking of which, congratulations, E--! You'll make a fantastic American. (I mean that as a compliment. Really.)

So, rejections firmly established, I got home around 7:30 and D-- and I spent the evening watching NBC sitcoms and eating chicken wings. A couple hours later, just as I was about to kick him out and go to bed at a reasonable hour (for the first time all week), he suggested we go grab a beer at The Dugout.

When we got there, though, we discovered they had live music all night, so we kept driving. Ended up at The Fox and Hound for a little over an hour, talking mostly politics and predictions for the world's future. I think we decided to start learning to be hackers.

Then I got up early this morning, and had to leave work after an hour to make a dentist appointment. I'm not sure yet what this evening will hold.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

After work yesterday, I spent a while on the phone with my dad, discussing his book. He's deeply embroiled in trying to find an agent, and I'll probably do a couple posts in the near future talking about that.

Anyway, as part of his quest, he also asked me to do a thorough critical and editorial review of his NaNoWriMo book, Chop, Grind, or Puree. I'm about two thirds done with that, and we spent nearly an hour discussing the issues with it.

Overall...it's good. It's way too good, actually, for a first novel written in such a short timeframe. Completely unreasonable. He's trying to do a little too much with it, I think, and needs some narrative focus, and there's some minor but persistent problems that are just there because he didn't spend four years getting a writing degree. But, for the most part, it's excellent.

I got off the phone around 5:45 and found D-- and N-- waiting in my living room. We went out to Freddy's for dinner, and then K-- and N-- went to church and D-- and I went back to my place to finish up some software installation on my computer. That took less than half an hour, though.

Afterward, we watched a couple episodes of New Amsterdam, but it was disappointing. We swapped it out for The Best of Steve Martin from Saturday Night Live, and it was a major improvement. That's a long collection, too.

While we watched TV, I was working on my blog migration project -- writing a script to cleanly move all my old Xanga posts over here. Parts of it turned out to be much easier than I'd expected. Other parts are proving truly stubborn (particularly logging into Blogger via script). K-- showed up just when I was getting supremely frustrated with Xanga, and showed me how to fix it. I just sent him an email about my current supreme frustration with Blogger, and I have no doubt he'll make fixing that look easy, too.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Ugh. I went to the gym to do an hour's cardio last night, and when I showed up K-- and N-- invited me to join them for a spinning class.

I'd never done one, but I'd heard they were tough. And that's certainly true. Within minutes it had my heart pounding and my legs exhausted, just like jogging did when I first started (and, really, even the elliptical back in January).

The problem for me, though, was that I haven't ridden a bicycle since I was seven years old. And, frankly, I don't have much in the way of an ass. Now I just have a big triangle-shaped bruise where my ass should be. The sort of extraordinarily painful bruise that hurts even when nothing is touching it, never mind when (just for instance) several hundred pounds are resting on top of it. What I'm getting at is that sitting down hurts, and sitting down is basically what I do. I can't even remember the last time I stood up....

So, yeah, my world is pain. Whatcha gonna do?

After the gym, K-- and N-- were nice enough to invite me over to their place for dinner, so I hung out with them for a couple hours while we watched TV and talked. That was fun. Afterward, I decided I didn't have the patience to wait until tomorrow (today) to rebuild my computer, so I met D-- at my place (it was already almost 10), and we worked on that until after midnight.

The good news is, I got it done, and my computer works much better now. I also got a couple glasses of good scotch out of the arrangement, because D-- was in a drinkin' mood. The bad news is, I slept way late and had to burn a couple hours of leave this morning.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Okay, here's the deal with Lost. About a year ago, the writers and producers worked out a deal which gave the series three more seasons (4, 5, and 6, and we're currently late in season 4), of 16 episodes each.

Because of the writer's strike, season 4 is only going to be 14 episodes long, missing 2 of the promised 16. Yesterday it was announced that seasons 5 and 6 will both be extended by one episode, bringing the total of all three seasons back in line with initial expectations.

As for the end of season 4, I've heard that the writers were granted an extra hour for the season finale (making it 2 hours instead of 1, naturally). I don't know if that extra hour counts as one of the fourteen episodes in season 4, or if it's like getting an extra hour. Finding that out would take some minor research, and I'm not going to do that.

Now, as far as journaling goes, yesterday I got home from work, went to the gym, and then came home and spent most of the evening burning DVDs and getting my computer ready for an OS rebuild. Nothing very interesting.

I did nearly weep in frustration when I was at the gym. K-- and N--, if you're reading this, you can probably just skip the rest of the post. Everybody else, too. I'm going to whine about my weight loss problems.

Here's the story. Several years ago (summer of 2003, I think it was), I got severely sick late in July -- lots of nausea, for weeks at a time -- and I lost ten or fifteen pounds from not eating at all. Even when I got better, I basically starved myself for a couple months. I was in a depressive funk, and not taking care of myself. It had nothing to do with trying to lose weight, but I dropped twenty or thirty pounds over that time.

Then, noticing that, I decided to start taking some metabolism pills daily, and that really got things going. I walked a lot of mornings, working on my writing projects, but I wasn't too consistent and I never walked at anything above a stroll. Still, before the end of the year, I was down to 190 pounds -- the lowest I'd been since early in high school. At my build, 180 pounds is just about perfect (assuming a little bit of muscle tone).

Anyway, obviously, I didn't keep that up. I put all the pounds back on gradually, and by 2005 I was my same old self -- hovering around 240.

Last year, starting late in June, I decided to get in shape again. Remembering how much success I'd had in 2003 (and wrongly attributing it to the very light exercise), I decided to start walking. I didn't really change my diet at all, but I went walking most evenings (which is well chronicled on my old Xanga blog), and in three weeks I dropped twelve pounds (from 248 to 236). After that, I pretty much stopped losing weight. I didn't do anything to improve my regimen, and bounced around between 235 and 240 until the holidays, when I slid back up to 244 and stayed right there.

Okay, so this year I decided to do things right. In January, I joined a gym that had shown some amazing results for K-- and N--. I got two free trainer sessions with a year's membership, and K-- had gone through two years of regular (almost monthly) trainer sessions, so he was in a position to help me out with lots of information.

I started out going three days a week, focusing on strength training (because dense muscle mass greatly boosts resting metabolism) and cardio in equal parts. My first few weeks, I'd get on the elliptical machine for a thirty minute workout and have to stop seven minutes in, lungs aching, heart pounding, and generally feeling like I was about to die.

I learned how to push through that, and kept at it, and within about four weeks I was able to go a full thirty minutes on the elliptical. That, essentially, is the only real progress I've seen. I can lift a little more weight than I could in January, but I started at such pathetically small amounts that I'm not ready to brag about it.

Anyway, I've since moved to five and then six days a week working out, because I wasn't seeing the weight loss I expected. I still stick with only three days a week of weight training, with at least a day of rest in between, but I generally spend an hour of intensive cardio on those off days, running on the treadmill and then sprinting on the elliptical, hitting about 5-6 miles in an hour (according to the machines' calculations).

I weigh myself on the gym's scale every time I show up. I've heard to only weigh weekly, and keep averages, but the numbers are so consistent and even tracking just one of those measurements a week would yield the same results.

It's this: the lowest I've weighed (and I only hit that weight once) was a week and a half ago on Saturday, when I weighed in at 232. In January, when I started, I was consistently weighing 244. That's a twelve pound loss over the course of five months -- the same thing I managed last year with some leisurely walking around the neighborhood, and then it only took me three weeks.

Actually, it's worse than that, because I've never weighed in at 232 since then. My average for the last 10 days is about 237.

Now, as I said, this is the same gym K-- and N-- go to, and they've seen just how hard I've been working at it. Every time I complain to them at my lack of results (because it's damned unmotivating), they both have the same answer (and it makes sense from their perspectives). They say, "Look, it's obviously not a problem with the number of calories you're burning, so it can only be one thing. It has to be your diet."

I understand exactly why they feel that way, because they can see one aspect of my work and not the other, but I've changed my diet at least as much as I've changed my level of activity.

Before January, I typically ate somewhere around 2,400 calories a day. That's not absurdly high, but it's higher than recommended (1,800-2,000). The big problem was that about a third of that 2,400 calories was essentially sugar -- sweet desserts, mainly -- that had almost no nutritive value and converted easily to fats. I did a lot of snacking during the day at work (sweets and junk food), and I liked to have some kind of dessert after every lunch or dinner. I was also awful about having something to eat (usually something sweet) late in the evening, about an hour before bed.

The first thing I did was cut that late-night snack. For a New Year's Resolution, I decided not to have anything with any significant amount of calories after eight o'clock. No desserts, no snacks (even healthier ones), and no drinks. That was even before I started at the gym. It just seemed like a good idea. And, with the exception of a few nights out drinking with D--, I've completely maintained that resolution. Actually, with far greater success than I ever expected. The first couple weeks were hard, but it became habit really quickly.

Then, a couple weeks into my gym membership when I hadn't seen any progress on the scales, I was discussing things with K--, and he recommended switching to a five-meals-a-day diet -- smaller meals spread throughout the day, to keep the metabolism going. Specifically, I picked up some protein shakes to fill in as snacks between meals. I have one with breakfast, one for a mid-morning snack, and one mid-afternoon. The protein is supposed to help with my strength training, the shake is surprisingly filling, and the calorie count is extremely low.

And it worked. Really, from the very start, it worked. I cut all snacks from my diet, except for the shakes as I described above. Sometimes, on strength training days, I'll have one extra small meal in the afternoon (because I have a very early lunch, and a late dinner), but even that is scheduled. I'm not grabbing junk food just for something to munch on. I know exactly how much I'm eating every day.

Since I started on the shakes, I not only cut snacks, but I mostly stopped eating sides with my meals. I am satisfied with much smaller portions and -- whether from feeling fuller or just general self-control developed through all of this -- it's gotten a lot easier for me to stop eating at "satisfied" instead of going on to "stuffed."

Basically, within a few weeks of starting at the gym, I went from an average 2,400 calorie day to about a 1,900 calorie day. T-- and I hit up the website of all our favorite restaurants (fast food included), and got the nutrition facts for pretty much everything I eat. Now that I've limited how many impulsive snacks I eat, it's relatively easy to keep track of everything I have in a day, and 1,900 calories wasn't too hard to manage.

But, even with the elimination of evening snacks, desserts were still making way too high a percentage of those calories empty sugar calories. And I still wasn't losing weight, so sometime in March (I think), I got really frustrated and decided to cut sugar altogether. For three weeks, I didn't eat anything sweet. Again, it was tough at first, but got a lot easier.

Still, I didn't jump-start any big weight loss. By the end of that time (and the three months of workout leading up to it), I was looking at a total of about 7 pounds lost (the same thing I have now). When the three weeks expired without seeing any major changes, I decided to let myself have a little bit more reasonable restriction, and limited myself to two treats a week. To make up for the lost sugar calories, I've been working on incorporating a few healthier sides in with my meals. It hasn't been too tough.

So, now, I'm consistently at around 1,800-2,000 calories a day (the recommended amount). Days that I'm really bad (going out drinking, or having a frozen custard for dessert), I still tend to come in under 2,200, and those are relatively rare.

In the last five months, I've radically altered both my diet and my level of activity -- I'm living a healthier lifestyle than I ever have, at any point in my twenty-eight years -- and, basically, I haven't seen any more change in my body than I would expect on any given summer, with just a little light walking.

It's been pointed out far too often that muscle weighs more than fat, but if I'd been burning fat at a rate reasonable for the work I've been doing (say, 1-2 pounds a week), and just maintaining weight through strength training, I'd be looking at about 30 pounds of new muscle now (and 30 pounds of lost fat). When I started, I was about 60 pounds overweight, so at this point half of my superfluous weight should be replaced with strong, toned muscles.

It's just not there. I've been told I look a little better, from all the work, but it's about what you'd expect if, say, I dropped seven pounds. I've got plenty of pictures from late last year, and it's easy enough to compare. There's just no way that's the answer to the issue.

Honestly, I don't know what to do now. I could try a severely restrictive diet, in the expectation that all the sacrifice will be worth it once I get in shape, but (as I've shown) I've already massively changed the way I lived -- on a truly dramatic scale -- and seen virtually no results from it. It's terribly hard to find the motivation to invest the time and money into eating healthy (and accept all the sacrifices that go with it) when, at this point, I have seen no real reason to expect any change whatsoever.

Then again, I've invested so much already, I can't just give up. As much as I hate sinking more time and money into something that's about as effective as going for an evening stroll...what if I am on the verge of "really ramping up my metabolism"? I've dropped about $420 in gym membership so far (and I'm on the hook for another six months no matter what I decide), and about $120 in gas just for trips to the gym, and easily 160 hours over about 20 weeks, and I've got seven pounds of weight loss to show for it.

It drives me mad. It really does. No matter what else is going on in my life, as soon as I start thinking about this, it just makes me angry and disappointed and frustrated.... And then at the end of the day I have to find the energy to go put in another two hours, somehow, in spite of a scale that reads the same thing.

You know, I believed in the simplicity of the system. Work more, eat less. That should be all there is to it. I don't have any good reasons to believe that I have gland problems or anything of that sort, but this is just ridiculous. I've worked more in the last five months than I ever have in my life. I've eaten more healthfully than I ever have in my life. I just don't understand the results I'm seeing.

Anyway, I wanted to put it all down in one place -- a snapshot of the whole story, in terms of what I've seen in the past, everything I've tried and everything I've been doing, and a thorough description of what the last five months have shown me. I'm not going to repeat this rant every time I see 237 on that scale. I just wanted to get it all down.

So, there you go. That's how it's been.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

It was a long weekend and busy, so there is much to report on. I promise there won't be much complaining this time, though. It was a thoroughly pleasant weekend.

Well, okay, not Friday, but I won't complain too much. Ask me sometime if you want the long version of the story (apparently it takes about thirty minutes -- I learned that at the gym on Saturday), but for now I'll just say that Friday was my RDO, and I spent the entire day (until, say, 5:00 or so) doing three projects.

I installed new faucet handles on the troublesome bathtub faucet (that seven-minute job took up the bulk of the day), I replaced the door handles on our garage side door and the creepy little room on the back of the house (with nice, new, functioning and lockable knobs), and I replaced the much-damaged blade on our lawnmower. I also spent some time cleaning out the underside of the mower while I was down there, but that still amounts to one job.

Anyway, it was all stuff that needed doing, and I got a day's worth of projects done for under thirty bucks, so I feel pretty good about it, now. I also managed to work in a trip to the gym, in that same timeframe.

Before that, on Thursday night, D-- brought over some chicken from Buffalo Wild Wings, and we all watched TV and ate wings. We also played some MarioKart, and at some point in the mix, T-- decided she wanted to throw a party Saturday night. Seemed like a good plan to me, so she sent out some invitations.

Then, Friday night, we went out to Freddy's for dinner and then headed home to watch whatever Thursday night shows had been preempted by MarioKart. Overall, after the long day's work, Friday night was relatively quiet.

Saturday morning, T-- got up early and took AB to the gym, because they were offering an aerobics class she was interested in. Unfortunately, when she got there (and our gym is over twenty minutes away), she learned that the babysitter was sick, and the computers were down so they hadn't been able to contact a substitute. So T-- turned around and came home. She wasn't as upset about it as I would have been.

I didn't go with her, though, because I needed to help D-- with his car. He dropped it off at the dealership, and I gave him a ride home. We had some pizza from Mazzio's, and played some more MarioKart until he got a call from the dealership and it was time for me to drive him back.

That was the first time I went out driving immediately after playing MarioKart. I kept trying to hop and drift on long turns. It was an utterly bizarre experience.

After that, he watched AB for us while T-- did some shopping for the party. I ran up to Byron's to get the liquor (tequila and triple sec), and then I hit the gym since I hadn't made it in in the morning.

When six o'clock rolled around, K-- and N-- and Toby and Gwyn all showed up, and they came bearing food. T-- had decided she wanted it to be a Diez de Mayo Fiesta (since, if you'll recall, I ended up sleeping through Cinco de Mayo so we didn't do anything to celebrate). She made enchiladas, I made salsa, and we had some excellent margaritas.

I got to show Toby my game for the first time, and we all played some MarioKart, and later in the evening I threw in Hogfather -- a movie version of a Pratchett novel -- and it was far better than I expected it to be. Not that I have anything against the novel (far from it), but I've never before had reason to be impressed with BBC production values....

The movie is pretty much a scene-for-scene rendition of the book, though, and every character and every scene is pretty much spot on to how they're described (and shown, when illustrations are present). I was rather amazed by that.

Anyway, as I said, it's scene-for-scene, so it clocks in at over three hours. We only watched about half of it Saturday night.

Sunday morning, of course, was Mother's Day. We went to church, and then had lunch at Jason's Deli (T--'s choice), and invited along one of the ladies from church who often looks after AB, and whose children all live too far away to come into town for the holiday.

Then we went back to the house, and I watched the second half of the movie while T-- fell asleep on the couch. Just as the credits rolled, she woke up and asked me to rewind it, so I started the second half over for her. About that time, K-- called asking if I could bring him some tools, so I let her watch the rest of the movie while I ran that little errand.

I'd also offered to take her to see an exhibit at the Museum of Art downtown, but between her nap and my errand, there wasn't really time. She said she wasn't too disappointed -- I'd just have to take her another time. I said that wouldn't be a problem, and presented her Mother's Day gift: a family membership to the Museum of Art.

I'd gotten her a membership to the Philbrook when we lived in Tulsa, but she was working full time then, and didn't really have anyone to go with her. Now, she has a lot more liberty during the hours the museum is open, and a lot more friends around who can go with her. I think she'll really be able to enjoy it.

So, yeah, that gift was a hit. After I got back from K--'s, we went grocery shopping for some stuff for the week, and then grabbed Taco Bell on the way home. We had D-- meet us with the rest of season two of Lost, and watched some of that and then SNL: The Best of Alec Baldwin. It was a pretty fun evening. All told, it was a pretty fun weekend.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff

Journal Entry

Wednesday night is really my night off (apart from making the arrangements to work out dinner). Now that I'm trying to do six days a week at the gym, Wednesday is my day off, so that alone is a pleasant break. I also get a nice dinner out with friends (as discussed previously), and then T-- takes the baby to church, and I spend an evening hanging out with D--, or just working on some project of my own at home. By the time AB gets home, she's ready for bed and T-- and I usually watch a show or two before bed (if I didn't go somewhere with D--). It's a break, and it helps me make it to the weekend as often as not.

Last night, a few minutes after I got home (and with dinner plans already in place), I glanced up from where I was reading on the couch, and said, "Is that the tornado sirens?" It was only a faint wail, but given the weather, it seemed worth checking out. We turned on the news and called AB away from the windows, and saw angry red and orange radar patterns growling along directly above our house, with lots of talk of rotations and a tornado spotted on the ground about a mile and a half to the south.

So, we turned the volume up really loud and went to hide in our hallway, using the babygate to lock AB in with us, and waited. Really, by the time we had the babygate set up, the storm was past (it was really moving), but we waited and listened for ten minutes or so, until it had gotten out to I-35 way east of us, and then we took down the gate and got on with our evening.

There were limbs down and a couple power flickers, but apart from that nothing really exciting. The storms passed right between our place and K-- and N--'s, though, and by the time it was clear for them to head that way, it was too late for them to make it to Freddy's for dinner and still have time for church, so we switched to Arby's instead. Not even close, in terms of deliciousness, but it was much faster, and we all managed to get together.

After that, the churchers went a-churching, and D-- and I went home to play some MarioKart Wii. We're working on unlocking all the unlockable content, which means playing Single Player mode, and it also means, at times, spending a lot of time frustrated trying to get past really challenging races. I finally finished one that had been plaguing us ever since he picked up the game (Flower Cup on 100cc, bikes only), but it took about two hours of doing. Not so much fun.

Still, it was a good night, and when I finally completed the race, I completed it with the highest rank possible, so we'll never have to do it again (on that difficulty setting, or on bikes). So there's that. Definitely a sense of accomplishment, anyway.

Then in the middle of that T-- brought home ice cream from Braum's, and after I beat the level we watched an old episode of Lost, and then, inexplicably, I stayed up an extra hour and a half to finish off the novel I was reading, before finally heading to bed around midnight.

It was a good night.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Yesterday I got home from work and learned AB had just gone down for a nap, so I needed to kill an hour before we went to the gym. I spent most of it talking to T--'s mom and then my dad, but I also wrote B-- an email that I may come to regret. I dunno.

After our workout, we stopped by my sister's place on the way home, because she had a present to give me. It was a silly little something -- the toddler toy out of a Taco Bell kid's meal -- but it was a special little bit of nostalgia, too. It was a kid's book with some silly little song that Shannon and I had both learned at Foyil Elementary School, and now I'll be able to teach it to AB. How fun.

After we got home, I spent most of the evening working on my game and watching TV with T--. I keep finding opportunities to fix things that have been irritating me, but that aren't on my To Do list. So my list of accomplishments gets longer and longer, but the completion of the project stays just as distant. I suppose that's normal in construction-style projects (as opposed to creative projects, where you start at the beginning and head straight for the end). Programming is tricky that way, blending the two styles in unexpected ways.

I got to bed early enough, and had a good night's sleep for the first time in a while.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

I didn't mention it in my weekend summary, hoping it would quickly pass and be not worth remembering, but I got...sick, I guess, while I was in Tulsa. Sometime in the afternoon, I started feeling an awful pain in my belly, like someone had just punched me.

It didn't really feel food-related, if you follow me, but I couldn't guess what might be going on. It hurt, though. It would come and go, but every ten to fifteen minutes, I would just ache. That went on throughout the afternoon and evening, in spite of all the things I tried to fix it.

I was really hopeful that I'd wake up Monday morning and it would be gone. No such luck. I was in enough pain during the day yesterday that I left work early, got home around 4:00, and then slept until 7:30. When I woke up, it was still there, but not nearly as bad.

Same thing again this morning. Now it's just enough to keep me worried, but not enough to distract me from other projects. I probably should see a doctor about it, but I hate going to doctors. So I probably won't, dumb as that might be.

Anyway, I didn't make it to the gym last night, obviously. I really wanted to -- end of last week, I was finally seeing some progress -- but there was no way. When I woke up, I had a sandwich and watched last Thursday's NBC sitcoms with T--. That was pretty much my whole night. By the time we were done with that, I took care of the dishes, made up some protein shakes to drink at work today, and then went to bed.

But, like I said, I mostly feel better now. We'll see how the day goes.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Another weekend come and gone.

Friday evening, we'd talked about going to see Iron Man, all as a group, but it didn't seem to be in the cards. We were going to see it at the new Warren Theatre, but we'd have needed a babysitter and T-- already had her lined up to cover the crop on Saturday, so getting her for Friday, too, seemed highly unlikely.

We ended up grabbing some dinner with K-- and N-- after I finished at the gym, and then K-- and I took the baby back to his place while the girls did some shopping. We tried to work on my game some, but he spent most of the time trying to figure out process issues with his computer, and I spent most of my time trying to keep AB from falling down the stairs.

D-- showed up, and the girls a few minutes behind him, and we sat and talked for a while. Then T-- took the baby home, and N-- said she was heading to bed, so K-- and D-- and I ended up going to see Iron Man after all.

Fantastic movie, by the way. Much like Transformers in the structure and feel of it, but better in every respect (except hot-chickness). I highly recommend it. If you know comic books, it's worth staying after the credits for a 4-second final scene. If you don't know comic books, it's probably a long wait for a big reveal you'll barely get.

Saturday morning, T-- and N-- went to the art festival in Edmond. I stayed home. When T-- got back we had some sandwiches for lunch, did a little shopping (and got her a new phone), and then I went up to the gym to meet K--. After that, D-- and I dropped by B--'s place for a minute's chat, and then met K-- again for dinner (some delicious barbecue), and a lot of awful movies. We watched Blade II and Blade Trinity, which last we'd heard was good, but K-- and I could never make it through the awfulness of Blade II, so neither of us had seen it.

The plan was to watch Blade II while working on something else -- allowing distraction to shield us from the worst of the movie's effects -- but K-- "just doesn't watch movies that way," so he took the full brunt of it. I worked on my game, and got my quests stubbed in. In the end, Blade Trinity wasn't awesome, but it beat the pants off of the second one.

When I got home, around 11:30, I found that T-- had invited her friend Rebecca over after the crop, to introduce her to the joys of couponning, and I figured that leaving them alone would make a good opportunity for me to actually get to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour. Just as I was coming to that conclusion, though, T-- said she was wanting to show Rebecca one of her favorite stand-up comics, and asked if I would put it on. We ended up watching the Sklar Brothers (the one she'd initially asked about), as well as Demetri Martin and Brian Regan (which last was my recommendation, and the one that got the most laughs).

So, yeah, I can't resist the call of stand-up comedy that I've already seen dozens of times, so I didn't end up going to bed until 2:30, or something ridiculous like that.

Then Sunday morning I had to wake up early to be ready in time for Toby to pick me up. He needed help moving and a last-minute cancellation by his brother gave me the opportunity to spend some time hanging out with him. It also meant a 14-hour day spent moving him from Tulsa to Norman.

He picked me up a little after 8. We grabbed some breakfast, then headed to Tulsa. I found out he was moving back from Tulsa several weeks ago, and we'd exchanged emails and a couple phone calls since then, but this was the first time I'd really gotten to talk to him much. Norman isn't right next door (it's about twice the already-annoying distance away that K-- and N--'s place is), but it's a lot better than Tulsa. It also gives them some family who can take care of the kids sometimes, so I'm hoping we'll be able to do a lot more with them.

Anyway, the drive up was fun. We talked a lot, mostly about my game. Then we got in, picked up the UHaul, and then (since his Tulsa friends weren't showing up to help pack until after church), we took his lawnmower over to my place so I could put the yard back in showing condition.

Unfortunately, the yard was more than I'd bargained for. The back yard is a jungle. I managed to get the front yard chopped down to a reasonable level, and Toby recommended a good lawn service that I'll probably hire to keep it in order, until we get the place sold.

So, once we gave up on that, we grabbed a quick lunch and then met his movers. They're leaving the house mostly furnished to improve its sellability, so we didn't have a lot to do. We got enough furniture for them to get by with for a couple months -- two beds, a rocking chair, a dresser and an entertainment center -- and then a lot of boxes. Oh, and the washer and dryer. That's pretty much it. Loading took a few hours, though, between arranging stuff in the truck and dismantling both of the beds to fit them through doorways. We cleaned up afterward, too, to make sure everything looked nice for show, and then headed home around four.

In Norman, we had a crowd ready to help unpack. K-- and N-- and B-- and E-- with their baby (whom the Nances had never met), and T-- brought AB down, and among us we basically got the truck unpacked in half an hour. That's less time than it took most of them to drive there. But we had pizza after and there was a lot of reconnecting to do, and I think everyone had a good time. It was a fun little party.

By 8:30, everyone but T-- and I had melted away, and T-- was ready to follow after so she could get AB to bed. We were on our way out the door when someone pointed out that Toby would need somebody to drive him home from dropping off the UHaul. I'd thought of that earlier in the evening, but it had slipped my mind before I said it out loud. Anyway, I volunteered, and when we found that the nearest UHaul place was seven miles away, in the wrong direction, T-- went ahead and took the baby home.

It took us a while, but Toby and I finally found the UHaul place his GPS device was recommending, and it turned out to be an old abandoned lot. He made a call, got some directions, and we headed a couple miles away to the nearest actual UHaul place, and then he took me home. I got in a little after 10, so it must have been almost 11 before he got home.

So, yeah, it was a long day. It was mostly fun, though. I was glad of the opportunity. Still, I was exhausted when I got in. So I spent a few minutes getting some stuff ready for work this morning, and then I headed right to bed.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

I found myself in a pretty bad mood yesterday, driving home from the gym.

Here's what I was thinking about. Most weekdays, I have to wake up at 5:45 to be at work on time. If I sleep fewer than seven hours, I really can't get out of bed at all, so that means I'm going to bed by 10:30 at the latest, and desperately hoping to fall asleep quickly. It's much safer to go to bed by 9:30, but I never really manage that.

5:00 is the earliest I get home, in spite of my early start to the day, and then going to the gym (which I'm now trying to do six days a week), means the earlier I really get home is 7:00. 7:30 is a lot more common.

That leaves me two hours to have dinner and relax (or, under more normal circumstances, try to get something important accomplished at home), and I usually take at least three hours to do that, so I'm tired all the time.

I get weekends, when I'm not in Tulsa or Wichita or Little Rock (or hosting family from Little Rock or Wichita). I do get a regular day off, every other Friday, but it's usually spent taking in large part taking care of all the responsibilities of life outside work that I don't have time for on any of those incredibly short evenings.

I complained about all of this to K-- recently, and he shrugged and said, "That's life." And I get that. It just sucks. What a miserable life that is. I get two hours a day of it, plus occasional weekends. In a week where I get all my evenings free (after the gym), and have no responsibilities incumbent on me for the weekend, I get to look forward to about 49 hours of time at liberty, doing as I will, in a week. That comes to about 30% of my life that I get to lead.

I've got a good job. I get that. I understand that going to the gym and getting in shape will add years onto my life (and increase my quality of life in the meantime). But it chafes, having so little free will. Driving home from the gym last night, I got myself into a pretty bad mood over it.

Then the storm certainly didn't help any. Most of our sitcoms for the week come on Thursday nights, and every single one of them was preempted for storm coverage that didn't impact us. We watched an old Lost instead, and then a new one (that, at least, they chose to show), and then two more old ones before I was ready to go to bed, and by that time it was already 11:00 and I had no chance of being anything but exhausted today.

The wind and the thunder kept me awake until after midnight, anyway, and I was late getting in to work this morning. Fridays are pretty laid back around here, so I'll get away with it, but I hate being late at all.

Then on the drive to lunch today (D-- had to cancel on plans for Bennigan's, so I went to Mazzio's on my own), I passed a little dentist's office with a duck pond out front the more frequently sports geese, and out right by the edge of the road was a big mama goose resting in the sun and half a dozen little baby geese running around, their fur-like down all fluffed out, just adorably cute. That made me smile.

Then, at the light, I waited patiently for the long passage of a funeral procession. That was sad. Then I finished Watership Down while I was there, and, let me tell you, it's just about the best book I've ever read. It's an amazingly-crafted story, and I think pretty much everybody should read it.

So, that's good. I definitely like the book. I don't think we've got a lot scheduled for the weekend, so I'm going to take a valiant stab at getting my game finished before I pick up another novel sometime Sunday afternoon. I'm not making any promises, but it would be fun to put finished to it.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

My freshman year in college (so, 10 years ago, now), I started a tradition because of my deep, life-long love of cheap Mexican food.

Specifically, it was Enchilada Night at El Chico's. They used to offer a Wednesday night special enchilada platter for $2.99. These days, I'm pretty sure it's running $4.99, but any time I've been to El Chico recently, it's been the tamales for me.

Anyway, every single Wednesday night I went to El Chico's for the enchiladas, and as I gradually invited others to join me, it became something of a Thing. I'm not saying that I set a trend, but my whole group of friends knew that Wednesday night was Enchilada Night.

Yeah, no big deal, college is about stupid stuff like that. But, since then (and even since El Chico fell from its place of honor), Wednesday night has remained an opportunity to share dinner with friends. If I have the opportunity, I pursue it.

Obviously, anyone reading this blog knows that I manage to spend a lot of time doing stuff with friends, but Wednesday night is the only real scheduled weekday get-together. Now that I'm going to the gym regularly, I see K-- and N-- on Mondays and Thursdays fairly often, and the rare week that D-- doesn't stop by for at least one full evening is a lonely one, and from time to time we'll devote a whole season to getting together to watch each new episode of Lost or Stargate, but those come and go, drifting on the whims of various conflicting schedules. Wednesday night dinner, I think, everybody knows about, and knows to plan for. It's not that everybody always makes it (actually, that's pretty rare), but everybody knows, and there's always somebody to share the evening with.

Yesterday, we found ourselves with a buck fifty in the bank, and going out just wasn't in the cards. I called D-- after work to let him know things weren't going to work out, and he said, "Pshaw," and went and got dinner for us. He's a hell of a guy.

After dinner, T-- took AB to church, and D-- and I spent the evening playing the new MarioKart. It was fun. We unlocked all the race circuits on 50cc (easy mode), and unlocked two new characters. Also: the new Rainbow Road is ass. But what do you expect?

We also got tickets yesterday for K-- and N-- and Toby and Gwyn (say that out loud) and T-- and I to go see Jim Gaffigan when he comes to town in July. That is going to be awesome.

I found out about the appearance at work several days ago when I heard a coworker mention it to another coworker over the cubicle wall. Rather than joining in the conversation (right, because I'm me), I went to jimgaffigan.com and looked up details, then emailed everyone I thought might want to go.

That day, on the drive home, I heard a commercial advertising it. They opened with, "Jim Gaffigan one his new tour brings all new, never-before-heard material to OKC...." Then they played about a minute of clips, all of which I've heard dozens of times over the last ten years. I laughed anyway. I really can't wait.

Word has it B-- is having an even worse week than usual. Keep him in your prayers. If you hear of an opportunity for me to go hang out with him, let me know.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.