Coworker on my floor: Wow, so are you, like, dressed up for Halloween? Neat get-up.
Jason: Um, what?
Coworker: Your costume? You're supposed to be one of those Mormon missionaries, right?
Jason: Uh, no. [pause] This is how I usually dress for work.
Coworker: Oh. Well. [pause] That's nice, dear. [pats Jason on the shoulder and walks away shaking her head]
Jason: [goes back to his office to bang his head against his desk repeatedly until the day is over]
---------------------------------
Have I mentioned lately how much I love Halloween? Or can you just tell by my tone?
[Secretly, I know this is just universal karma coming back for the Halloween I went dressed as a nun. But still.]
Monday, October 31, 2005
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Drilling
First off, check my pumpkin (Ignore Roommate Frank in the picture, all takin' credit for my hard pumpkin workings). Is that not the hottest thing you have ever seen? You have no idea how hard that was to craft, using only a pushpin and a steak knife.
-------------------------
So yesterday, after literally months of machinations, I finally made it to the dentist. Seriously, short of the financial aid office at SMU, I have never had a more complicated bureaucratic hassle than trying to find a dentist that is covered by my health plan. Only to find (6 weeks later) that the bureaucracy was totally for nothing, as I have the lame plan that pays for less, but I can use in any office I want.
In any case, I finally picked out my dentist, (who I later come to find is cool, young, and not just a little flamboyantly homosexual, (which is neither here nor there in relation to this story, but is included for the sake of color and my own amusement)) and made it to his carefully hidden office with time to spare. Weirdly enough, his office is in a house, which is pretending to be an art gallery, which also happens to have a dentist's office inside. There were several layers of odd involved, but the art was very pretty. Anyways, I get all strapped in and the cute dentist does the examination of my teeth of doom.
Doom being the operative word, as I need all sorts of painful and expensive procedures, now that my small tooth problem has become a brain-meltingly critical problem over the 6 week course that it took to find a dentist. Isn't irony delicious? Had I bit the bullet and just paid the full price for one visit back in the beginning, I could have saved something like 700 dollars and several extensive mouth-invasive procedures. Believe you me, I'm laughing on the inside.
This means I'm on an aggressive drug regimen this week to combat the tooth decay that is trying to worm its insidious way into my brain and next week will have to get all drilled into at least once, but more likely it will be three times - one for drilling, one for wisdom tooth extraction, and one for capping.
Which cancels out my beautiful plan for finishing off my apartment decoration by my birthday - financially crippling furniture purchases are pushed back in the face of financially crippling teeth issues.
Eh. At least my smile will be beautiful. It will compliment my hideously deformed hand nicely.
-------------------------
So yesterday, after literally months of machinations, I finally made it to the dentist. Seriously, short of the financial aid office at SMU, I have never had a more complicated bureaucratic hassle than trying to find a dentist that is covered by my health plan. Only to find (6 weeks later) that the bureaucracy was totally for nothing, as I have the lame plan that pays for less, but I can use in any office I want.
In any case, I finally picked out my dentist, (who I later come to find is cool, young, and not just a little flamboyantly homosexual, (which is neither here nor there in relation to this story, but is included for the sake of color and my own amusement)) and made it to his carefully hidden office with time to spare. Weirdly enough, his office is in a house, which is pretending to be an art gallery, which also happens to have a dentist's office inside. There were several layers of odd involved, but the art was very pretty. Anyways, I get all strapped in and the cute dentist does the examination of my teeth of doom.
Doom being the operative word, as I need all sorts of painful and expensive procedures, now that my small tooth problem has become a brain-meltingly critical problem over the 6 week course that it took to find a dentist. Isn't irony delicious? Had I bit the bullet and just paid the full price for one visit back in the beginning, I could have saved something like 700 dollars and several extensive mouth-invasive procedures. Believe you me, I'm laughing on the inside.
This means I'm on an aggressive drug regimen this week to combat the tooth decay that is trying to worm its insidious way into my brain and next week will have to get all drilled into at least once, but more likely it will be three times - one for drilling, one for wisdom tooth extraction, and one for capping.
Which cancels out my beautiful plan for finishing off my apartment decoration by my birthday - financially crippling furniture purchases are pushed back in the face of financially crippling teeth issues.
Eh. At least my smile will be beautiful. It will compliment my hideously deformed hand nicely.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Truck of Malfunction
In addition to my exploits in painful home improvement, this weekend also saw the advent of even greater depths of malfunction for my lovely TOM.
For the longest time I've been waging war on my truck to get it shipshape enough to pass a state inspection. As it is a TOM, this will never happen, at least in Dallas, because it cannot pass the emissions test. Not that it fails the emissions test, it's really very clean burning, weirdly enough, but the sensors on the engine that monitor such things are shot to hell.
And again, as it is a TOM, there is no easy way to get them replaced that does not require me pouring bushels money directly into every available orifice of the vehicle. Thus, I had the brilliant plan of taking the TOM outside of the city limits to get the inspection done, where people don't care about such things as "emissions," or "the environment," or "clean air."
So when I went home for the weekend, I took a side trip to the mechanic's for a little inspecting fun.
The mechanic rolls the TOM into the garage, turns it on and goes "Hmmm, what is that?"
It sounds exactly like the TOM always sounds - namely two seconds from an untimely death. I am unconcerned. Dude wheels himself underneath the TOM, goes "Uh oh."
Son of a bitch TOM.
The mechanic goes ahead and puts the TOM on the lift so I can see the full glory that is the TOM's malfunction: there is a big-ass gaping chasm in the middle of my muffler/exhaust system. It defies all rational attempts at description, but invoking The Grand Canyon will get my sense of largesse across. Thing is shot to hell.
So in the end, I still managed to pour money into the TOM, this time directly into the tailpipe as it were, as the mechanic sawed/blowtorched off all my exhaust system and muffler and God knows what else, and replaced it with nice, new, shiny stuff.
To his credit, the TOM sounds 80,000 times nicer now, and it is newly inspected, but for the love, how much more will the TOM require of me? I'm pretty sure next time it will skip all pretenses and just ask for a couple of pints of my blood.
For the longest time I've been waging war on my truck to get it shipshape enough to pass a state inspection. As it is a TOM, this will never happen, at least in Dallas, because it cannot pass the emissions test. Not that it fails the emissions test, it's really very clean burning, weirdly enough, but the sensors on the engine that monitor such things are shot to hell.
And again, as it is a TOM, there is no easy way to get them replaced that does not require me pouring bushels money directly into every available orifice of the vehicle. Thus, I had the brilliant plan of taking the TOM outside of the city limits to get the inspection done, where people don't care about such things as "emissions," or "the environment," or "clean air."
So when I went home for the weekend, I took a side trip to the mechanic's for a little inspecting fun.
The mechanic rolls the TOM into the garage, turns it on and goes "Hmmm, what is that?"
It sounds exactly like the TOM always sounds - namely two seconds from an untimely death. I am unconcerned. Dude wheels himself underneath the TOM, goes "Uh oh."
Son of a bitch TOM.
The mechanic goes ahead and puts the TOM on the lift so I can see the full glory that is the TOM's malfunction: there is a big-ass gaping chasm in the middle of my muffler/exhaust system. It defies all rational attempts at description, but invoking The Grand Canyon will get my sense of largesse across. Thing is shot to hell.
So in the end, I still managed to pour money into the TOM, this time directly into the tailpipe as it were, as the mechanic sawed/blowtorched off all my exhaust system and muffler and God knows what else, and replaced it with nice, new, shiny stuff.
To his credit, the TOM sounds 80,000 times nicer now, and it is newly inspected, but for the love, how much more will the TOM require of me? I'm pretty sure next time it will skip all pretenses and just ask for a couple of pints of my blood.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Shocking Genes
I inherited a lot of traits from my father: love of all things deep fried, a tendency to make jokes at the wrong time, and a weird appreciation for Barbara Streisand, just to name a few. But the most important thing I picked up from his side of the gene pool is my unerring tendency to injure myself.
Not just the normal clumsiness scale, actually my father is pretty adroit in general, but whenever there is something to be done, he will injure himself in the process. Sprain his shoulder carrying something, dislocate a finger fixing a car, slice open his hand during dinner preparations, whatever the event, he can hurt himself during it.
I've picked this same thing up, so when we combine forces to take on a project, it's like Wondertwin Powers, except instead of a water and animal form, it's horribly crippling injuries for everyone!
So this weekend I went home for my brother's (15th!) birthday. It was a pretty good time, there was relaxation and delicious food for 48 consecutive hours. And for his birthday, my family went in together and got him this sweet leaded-glass old-school Dr Pepper lamp to replace the light fixture in his room. Overall, it was completely awesome, but had to be manually installed, which meant that my dad and I went charging in there, tools at the ready.
You can already tell this is going to end badly, can't you?
So, we get the entire thing up and wired into the ceiling, with the only minor incident being a small electrical shock on my dad's end when the grounding wire was mislabeled. We turn it on and realize that what had looked like just a small line fracture in the glass before was actually a huge flaw that can be seen from space when the light is actually turned on.
Which means we're going to have to take the damnable thing back. I go ahead and start unscrewing the big outer metal faceplate that hides the actual mounting and wiring in the ceiling. I'm at this for maybe 45 seconds before there is something resembling an explosion. There is the huge bang and before you can say "disfiguring injury" there are gigantic Emperor-shocking-Luke blue electrical bolts shooting out of the ceiling and onto my hand. My hand, once so very beautiful, which is now suddenly resembling a blackened smoking husk. I break my cardinal rule of going home and let out a string of pirate-worthy obscenities before running from the room to get some sort of cooling agent on my now obviously withered and disfigured hand.
I'll shorthand the rest, because it's all downhill from here. Whoever the hell wired my parents' house was a complete wack-job, and somehow not only managed to mislabel all the wires in the bedroom, he also crossed all the wires and circuit breakers for that bedroom with the living room fixtures. So when we incorrectly wired the bedroom circuit, instead of flipping the breaker, the entire fixture exploded, literally ripping a hole through the metal plate covering the wires and arcing onto my hand.
The end result completely scorched the majority of the hair off the back of my left hand, put a huge angry, ridiculously painful burn covering my index finger, and left my middle, index finger, and thumb completely numb on the back side. Luckily all the blackened stuff managed to wash off, so it's just the hideous scarring to worry about, not the coloration.
So, y'know, score.
--------------------------
And on the bright side, now I have a nice and easy excuse as to why I am alone in the world - I'm Crazy Disfigured man. I knew I'd finally get my hook eventually.
Right, good times.
Not just the normal clumsiness scale, actually my father is pretty adroit in general, but whenever there is something to be done, he will injure himself in the process. Sprain his shoulder carrying something, dislocate a finger fixing a car, slice open his hand during dinner preparations, whatever the event, he can hurt himself during it.
I've picked this same thing up, so when we combine forces to take on a project, it's like Wondertwin Powers, except instead of a water and animal form, it's horribly crippling injuries for everyone!
So this weekend I went home for my brother's (15th!) birthday. It was a pretty good time, there was relaxation and delicious food for 48 consecutive hours. And for his birthday, my family went in together and got him this sweet leaded-glass old-school Dr Pepper lamp to replace the light fixture in his room. Overall, it was completely awesome, but had to be manually installed, which meant that my dad and I went charging in there, tools at the ready.
You can already tell this is going to end badly, can't you?
So, we get the entire thing up and wired into the ceiling, with the only minor incident being a small electrical shock on my dad's end when the grounding wire was mislabeled. We turn it on and realize that what had looked like just a small line fracture in the glass before was actually a huge flaw that can be seen from space when the light is actually turned on.
Which means we're going to have to take the damnable thing back. I go ahead and start unscrewing the big outer metal faceplate that hides the actual mounting and wiring in the ceiling. I'm at this for maybe 45 seconds before there is something resembling an explosion. There is the huge bang and before you can say "disfiguring injury" there are gigantic Emperor-shocking-Luke blue electrical bolts shooting out of the ceiling and onto my hand. My hand, once so very beautiful, which is now suddenly resembling a blackened smoking husk. I break my cardinal rule of going home and let out a string of pirate-worthy obscenities before running from the room to get some sort of cooling agent on my now obviously withered and disfigured hand.
I'll shorthand the rest, because it's all downhill from here. Whoever the hell wired my parents' house was a complete wack-job, and somehow not only managed to mislabel all the wires in the bedroom, he also crossed all the wires and circuit breakers for that bedroom with the living room fixtures. So when we incorrectly wired the bedroom circuit, instead of flipping the breaker, the entire fixture exploded, literally ripping a hole through the metal plate covering the wires and arcing onto my hand.
The end result completely scorched the majority of the hair off the back of my left hand, put a huge angry, ridiculously painful burn covering my index finger, and left my middle, index finger, and thumb completely numb on the back side. Luckily all the blackened stuff managed to wash off, so it's just the hideous scarring to worry about, not the coloration.
So, y'know, score.
--------------------------
And on the bright side, now I have a nice and easy excuse as to why I am alone in the world - I'm Crazy Disfigured man. I knew I'd finally get my hook eventually.
Right, good times.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Literacy
Screw it, y'all.
Each time I write an entry about books, I always promise that it's the last one. I'm no longer promising that, 1) because I'm about to do a new one, and 2) I just finally got around to getting my Dallas library card, so now my house is flooded with books.
I forgot how much fun random reading can be. Usually, whenever I get a new book, I have to be very into either the story or the author, since I'm actually buying it. A book is like a long-term investment to me. This could be sort of mitigated by going to Half Price Books, since the investment was remarkably smaller, but there was still always the thought "do you really need this book for the rest of your life?" And thus, my book collection was severely limited.
With my library card, there's no risk (everything is free) and the selection is much cleaner than the Half Price Books, which always give off the vibe that they're carrying some sort of book-transmitting plague-like disease. Throw in the fact that my new couches are absolutely perfect for curling up and reading on, and I'm right back in old bookworm mode.
Just to give a quick taste of the flavor of my life now - I've had the card since Saturday. Number of books read since then: Four. Doing the complicated math, that's basically a book a day, if you count Saturday as a full day. Madness.
Anyways, I get to blather on about them because it is my birthright:
Bag of Bones, Stephen King - This one sort of doesn't count, because I was already half way through it when the counting started, and already owned it. I've actually read it a couple of times (read: 4) because it's a very satisfying and weird read. It's nice and pretty creepy in the right places. I always enjoy me some Stephen King and this is my favorite one to pick up if I need to pass some time with an inconsequential book. It's not too scary (like, say It, which continues to haunt me) and it moves pretty fast for an 8 billion page book. Plus the ending is pretty harsh and still sort of moving on repeated readings.
Brimstone, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The ultimate example of popular thriller popcorn books, these two guys have written something like 8 different books in this series about an unstoppable FBI agent and his various plucky sidekicks. The first one, Relic, was actually really well done and pretty unique. Over the series they sort of wandered out into complete randomness and varying degrees of badness. But I've still stuck with them because overall they're just great, gory, pulp books. Which, y'know, I dig.
They finally hit a nice high point again with Cabinet of Curiosities, a book that actually disturbed me greatly (but in a good way). In hindsight I probably should not have read it while out working in a summer camp with limited amounts of electricity and long walks in darkened woods. In true form, though, they followed it up with my least favorite book in the series, Still Life With Crows, which was concentrated suck and completely put me off the whole set, enough so that I didn't even pick up Brimstone when it came out.
But now that I've got this no risk library card, I grabbed it off the shelf figuring that there wasn't any harm in it. And it turned out to be pretty good, at least much better than I expected, if a little off-the-wall. It advanced the overall plot pretty well too (there is a sort of long term story arch about the FBI agent's family that hides in the background) and has piqued my interest enough to go ahead and get the latest one that came out back in June.
Geography Club & The Order of the Poison Oak, Brent Hartinger - As I've stated previously, I am a sucker for cheesy gay lit. All of it, I devour it whole. It speaks to a place not-so-deep inside me, that is still a dorky gay high school boy. These two books are actually a step or two above cheesy, so of course I am all about these books. They're written in the traditional YA Fiction style, set in a sophomore year of high school, and they just make me smile. RoommateFrank makes fun of me, because I really dig the style of the author - very directly conversational, narrating jokes and talking to the reader, even if sometimes it comes off as trying a little too hard.
It sounds ridiculously conceited, but the writing reminds me a lot of something I would write (if infinitely better), especially the pacing on the jokes and the in-text digressions about metaphors and what have you. Sometimes the obvious themes are a little heavy-handed (burn victims are just like victims of homophobia, y'all) but on the whole, they're just great quick reads that make me generally happy. Also, they made me laugh out loud several times, which RoommateFrank will not abide and he now mocks me incessantly. Whatever, I respond to books, especially good ones. If I didn't think it would scare off every reader I ever had, I would go into a lengthy examination of these books, because I'm a dork like that, but I'll just stop and say: very good.
------------------
Now I still have a Chuck Palahnuik to get through (God, so creepy, but so good) and the new (okay, 7 month old) Chris Rice gay-thriller-written-in-the-style-of-the-old-south novel, something I always hold near and dear to my heart, because come on, talk about hitting a target demographic.
Each time I write an entry about books, I always promise that it's the last one. I'm no longer promising that, 1) because I'm about to do a new one, and 2) I just finally got around to getting my Dallas library card, so now my house is flooded with books.
I forgot how much fun random reading can be. Usually, whenever I get a new book, I have to be very into either the story or the author, since I'm actually buying it. A book is like a long-term investment to me. This could be sort of mitigated by going to Half Price Books, since the investment was remarkably smaller, but there was still always the thought "do you really need this book for the rest of your life?" And thus, my book collection was severely limited.
With my library card, there's no risk (everything is free) and the selection is much cleaner than the Half Price Books, which always give off the vibe that they're carrying some sort of book-transmitting plague-like disease. Throw in the fact that my new couches are absolutely perfect for curling up and reading on, and I'm right back in old bookworm mode.
Just to give a quick taste of the flavor of my life now - I've had the card since Saturday. Number of books read since then: Four. Doing the complicated math, that's basically a book a day, if you count Saturday as a full day. Madness.
Anyways, I get to blather on about them because it is my birthright:
Bag of Bones, Stephen King - This one sort of doesn't count, because I was already half way through it when the counting started, and already owned it. I've actually read it a couple of times (read: 4) because it's a very satisfying and weird read. It's nice and pretty creepy in the right places. I always enjoy me some Stephen King and this is my favorite one to pick up if I need to pass some time with an inconsequential book. It's not too scary (like, say It, which continues to haunt me) and it moves pretty fast for an 8 billion page book. Plus the ending is pretty harsh and still sort of moving on repeated readings.
Brimstone, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The ultimate example of popular thriller popcorn books, these two guys have written something like 8 different books in this series about an unstoppable FBI agent and his various plucky sidekicks. The first one, Relic, was actually really well done and pretty unique. Over the series they sort of wandered out into complete randomness and varying degrees of badness. But I've still stuck with them because overall they're just great, gory, pulp books. Which, y'know, I dig.
They finally hit a nice high point again with Cabinet of Curiosities, a book that actually disturbed me greatly (but in a good way). In hindsight I probably should not have read it while out working in a summer camp with limited amounts of electricity and long walks in darkened woods. In true form, though, they followed it up with my least favorite book in the series, Still Life With Crows, which was concentrated suck and completely put me off the whole set, enough so that I didn't even pick up Brimstone when it came out.
But now that I've got this no risk library card, I grabbed it off the shelf figuring that there wasn't any harm in it. And it turned out to be pretty good, at least much better than I expected, if a little off-the-wall. It advanced the overall plot pretty well too (there is a sort of long term story arch about the FBI agent's family that hides in the background) and has piqued my interest enough to go ahead and get the latest one that came out back in June.
Geography Club & The Order of the Poison Oak, Brent Hartinger - As I've stated previously, I am a sucker for cheesy gay lit. All of it, I devour it whole. It speaks to a place not-so-deep inside me, that is still a dorky gay high school boy. These two books are actually a step or two above cheesy, so of course I am all about these books. They're written in the traditional YA Fiction style, set in a sophomore year of high school, and they just make me smile. RoommateFrank makes fun of me, because I really dig the style of the author - very directly conversational, narrating jokes and talking to the reader, even if sometimes it comes off as trying a little too hard.
It sounds ridiculously conceited, but the writing reminds me a lot of something I would write (if infinitely better), especially the pacing on the jokes and the in-text digressions about metaphors and what have you. Sometimes the obvious themes are a little heavy-handed (burn victims are just like victims of homophobia, y'all) but on the whole, they're just great quick reads that make me generally happy. Also, they made me laugh out loud several times, which RoommateFrank will not abide and he now mocks me incessantly. Whatever, I respond to books, especially good ones. If I didn't think it would scare off every reader I ever had, I would go into a lengthy examination of these books, because I'm a dork like that, but I'll just stop and say: very good.
------------------
Now I still have a Chuck Palahnuik to get through (God, so creepy, but so good) and the new (okay, 7 month old) Chris Rice gay-thriller-written-in-the-style-of-the-old-south novel, something I always hold near and dear to my heart, because come on, talk about hitting a target demographic.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Circles
In my continuing sporadic efforts to gain (regain? maybe.) some fitness of body, I've taken up a daily running routine. Considering that it's been a full 8 days that I've managed to chain together, this may actually be something I keep up with.
Only, I am crap at running. Utterly. It's like my body rejects any full body movement. I get this really unhealthy flush about my head, and the odds are pretty good that I'll throw up immediately following, assuming I don't grievously injure myself during the process. As such, I am very paranoid about all forms of running.
Once upon a time, I was in high school. And in that time, my friend Brint and I thought it would be a lark to try out for the track team our senior year. Would shake things up, plus we were thin and fast - should be easy, no?
Because of our other geeky obligations (Hello Mock Trial!) our first track practice had to be late on a Monday night, rather than immediately following school like everyone else. (This turns out to be very lucky in just a second here) The first exercise after the stretching was 10 quick 100 yard sprints. Just something to warm up before the actual practice began.
Maybe 30 yards into the very first sprint, running as fast as possible down the track, I manage to trip, fall, and skid another 10 yards before coming to a bloody halt and ending my track and field career at exactly 27 strides taken. The end result was that a good 10th of the entire surface of my skin was removed - mostly from my left side, arm, and leg. I still have a visible scar on my hip from the worst portion of it (where there was practically no skin left) and the emotional scars remain with me to this day.
In terms of clumsy accidents I've had, this was probably the most damaging one, by blood loss counts at least, that I ever had, and as such, I have taken many precautions never to let it happen again. Now whenever I have need to run, it is always at a nice leisurely pace and never a crazy dash. Plus, y'know, I try not to run.
Which sort of flies in the face of this whole running program I've got going on now.
Anyways, it's been going okay, so far I've only thrown up on one occasion after the running which is a remarkably low number, all things considered.
On Sunday, midway through the run I got a cramp in my side and somehow during the near-fall-and-body-mangling managed to rip my iPod off my body and lob it backwards a good 10 feet into the bushes. BUT I did not fall down. Which, yeah, is a little disconcerting, over all. 8 days of running without serious or even mild injury?
I hardly know who I am anymore.
Only, I am crap at running. Utterly. It's like my body rejects any full body movement. I get this really unhealthy flush about my head, and the odds are pretty good that I'll throw up immediately following, assuming I don't grievously injure myself during the process. As such, I am very paranoid about all forms of running.
Once upon a time, I was in high school. And in that time, my friend Brint and I thought it would be a lark to try out for the track team our senior year. Would shake things up, plus we were thin and fast - should be easy, no?
Because of our other geeky obligations (Hello Mock Trial!) our first track practice had to be late on a Monday night, rather than immediately following school like everyone else. (This turns out to be very lucky in just a second here) The first exercise after the stretching was 10 quick 100 yard sprints. Just something to warm up before the actual practice began.
Maybe 30 yards into the very first sprint, running as fast as possible down the track, I manage to trip, fall, and skid another 10 yards before coming to a bloody halt and ending my track and field career at exactly 27 strides taken. The end result was that a good 10th of the entire surface of my skin was removed - mostly from my left side, arm, and leg. I still have a visible scar on my hip from the worst portion of it (where there was practically no skin left) and the emotional scars remain with me to this day.
In terms of clumsy accidents I've had, this was probably the most damaging one, by blood loss counts at least, that I ever had, and as such, I have taken many precautions never to let it happen again. Now whenever I have need to run, it is always at a nice leisurely pace and never a crazy dash. Plus, y'know, I try not to run.
Which sort of flies in the face of this whole running program I've got going on now.
Anyways, it's been going okay, so far I've only thrown up on one occasion after the running which is a remarkably low number, all things considered.
On Sunday, midway through the run I got a cramp in my side and somehow during the near-fall-and-body-mangling managed to rip my iPod off my body and lob it backwards a good 10 feet into the bushes. BUT I did not fall down. Which, yeah, is a little disconcerting, over all. 8 days of running without serious or even mild injury?
I hardly know who I am anymore.
Friday, October 14, 2005
My Most Unfortunate, Yet True, Statement of the Day
"Why on Earth would I stop doing something just because it made me throw up? Do you know how many regular activities I would have to cancel?"
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Sprawled
I love my office at work. I actually have two of them, one is a professional office with a desk and a big chair and everything, and one is a workroom office with the copier and supplies and what have you. I don't spend a lot of time over in the real office, because so much of my time is devoted to working with the files, it just makes sense to base myself out of the workroom.
As such, I've got a pretty nice set up in there, with two computers, the copier, two phone lines, and the mail machine all within arms length, or at least within rolling distance on my office chair. Because I do tend to maximize the rolling functionality of my chair, we have set up several of those carpet protector mats all over the floor in the office, so's I don't destroy anything or leave unsightly marks all about. These mats are carefully placed to allow maximum coverage where I roll, while still looking tasteful. I mean to say, I have given excessive thought to their placement.
Over the long weekend, the cleaning crew at the office (who are awesome, in general) decided to be extra thorough and they did a full vacuum/shampoo of the whole floor, or at least our wing. Which apparently included pulling up all my mats and later replacing them. I was unaware of this when I came in on Tuesday - to give you an indication of how good they are, I couldn't even tell their mat placement from my own.
That is, until about 1:15 when I made a big move to roll across my office to answer the secondary phone. Because they did not replace the third mat where it usually was. Instead, there was a big overlap at one point, and no mat at all at another point. Which would never be a problem, unless you are lazy like me and tried to roll across the length of the office.
I hit the overlap first, which caused me to spin halfway around in the chair. At the time, I was holding a huge file folder in one hand and a stack of papers in the other, so I couldn't properly reach out to steady myself. Following the half spin, the chair hit the absence of mat and promptly sent the chair and myself flying, backwards mind you, in a brilliant somersault that left the upper half of me lying outside the door to my office, and the bottom half smashed into the copier, with the stack of papers in disarray around me.
Have you ever heard the sound that someone makes when they fall out of a moving chair with their hands full and slam knees first into a copier? Because it is earth-shatteringly loud. I work basically by myself, I have no co-workers in my office, just other people at the far end of the hall who work in a different business but on the same floor. The noise of my fall sent all of them running down to my office, certain that some sort of mail bomb had gone off. Instead, they found me on the ground, covered in paper, holding my knee, next to an overturned rolling chair.
I know exactly what you're thinking, and yes it was completely awesome, thanks for asking.
As such, I've got a pretty nice set up in there, with two computers, the copier, two phone lines, and the mail machine all within arms length, or at least within rolling distance on my office chair. Because I do tend to maximize the rolling functionality of my chair, we have set up several of those carpet protector mats all over the floor in the office, so's I don't destroy anything or leave unsightly marks all about. These mats are carefully placed to allow maximum coverage where I roll, while still looking tasteful. I mean to say, I have given excessive thought to their placement.
Over the long weekend, the cleaning crew at the office (who are awesome, in general) decided to be extra thorough and they did a full vacuum/shampoo of the whole floor, or at least our wing. Which apparently included pulling up all my mats and later replacing them. I was unaware of this when I came in on Tuesday - to give you an indication of how good they are, I couldn't even tell their mat placement from my own.
That is, until about 1:15 when I made a big move to roll across my office to answer the secondary phone. Because they did not replace the third mat where it usually was. Instead, there was a big overlap at one point, and no mat at all at another point. Which would never be a problem, unless you are lazy like me and tried to roll across the length of the office.
I hit the overlap first, which caused me to spin halfway around in the chair. At the time, I was holding a huge file folder in one hand and a stack of papers in the other, so I couldn't properly reach out to steady myself. Following the half spin, the chair hit the absence of mat and promptly sent the chair and myself flying, backwards mind you, in a brilliant somersault that left the upper half of me lying outside the door to my office, and the bottom half smashed into the copier, with the stack of papers in disarray around me.
Have you ever heard the sound that someone makes when they fall out of a moving chair with their hands full and slam knees first into a copier? Because it is earth-shatteringly loud. I work basically by myself, I have no co-workers in my office, just other people at the far end of the hall who work in a different business but on the same floor. The noise of my fall sent all of them running down to my office, certain that some sort of mail bomb had gone off. Instead, they found me on the ground, covered in paper, holding my knee, next to an overturned rolling chair.
I know exactly what you're thinking, and yes it was completely awesome, thanks for asking.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Housekeeping
Little things that I want to write about, but don't warrant their own post because they are boring:
- New all-consuming video game: Castlevania - Dawn of Sorrow. I don't know why I am compelled to buy every new iteration of Castlevania, they're all the exact damn thing, just in a new cartridge. That said, it's always a good time-waster and brings out the nostalgic in me. And I enjoy the new soul system so much more than the card thing from a couple of games ago. The DS touch additions annoy the crap out of me, though. If you only use the stylus for 1/1000th of the game, why make it during the only hard 1/1000th?
- New all-consuming DVD set: Firefly - The Complete Series. (Can you tell I just went to Best Buy over the weekend?) I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I missed this series for so long. It has everything in the world that I love - science fiction, Joss Whedon, cowboys, fun dialogue, cute boys, and homoerotic undercurrents all in a neat package about questionable morals and shooting people. But it had its run on Friday nights during my drunken college years and thus was marginalized by alcohol. To the ruin of everyone. Saw Serenity last weekend (in a word: Awesome) and it was enough to get me to put down the big money for the box set. Entirely worth it. I'm in full-on fandom mode, just in time for the spectacular final flare-out, as the movie might barely be lucky enough to gross $30 mil. domestic. But yay for something new to fuel my fanfiction fires. It has been so long.
- Weekend was awesome - 1) Firefly, pizza, and Corona on Friday night, 2) Football, old high school friends, and absolute drunken antics in downtown Dallas Saturday, 3) Food shopping, video game night, and Animated Pig Movie with college friends Sunday, and 4) A No Pants Monday of rest. I love long weekends.
- I finally cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription, ending the 10 month thrall it held over me. I realized over the weekend that I had logged only 2 hours of gameplay in two full weeks and a long weekend. No longer is worth the investment. Don't know how I got over it, but it is nice to be out. I feel like I should be going in to rehab to make sure I don't have a relapse. I think it's a testament to my inability to stick to anything - my character list at time of cancellation: Level 49 Orc Hunter, Level 36 Human Mage, Level 35 Tauren Shaman, Level 24 Troll Priest, Level 24 Human Paladin, Level 23 Undead Warrior, Level 18 Gnome Warlock. 209 Combined levels and not a one even into the 50's. LAME.
- Today the second season of Arrested Development drops on DVD. I hope to forestall any additional purchases by picking it up at Target, rather than making the pilgrimage to Best Buy. I am very weak willed. Especially when Veronica Mars falls on the same day. I am not made of stone, people.
- I got the NaNoWriMo email and went ahead and reactivated my account even though I doubt I'll do it. As spectacular as flaring out at 10,000 words was last time, I'm not sure I want to even pretend to try this year. Failure is just depressing. But I love the concept in theory, and my life lacks structure, so we will see. Plus, I already have a story picked out, which makes me worried that I might actually be considering it again. I am a glutton for punishment and lofty ideals. Someone needs to talk some sense into me.
- Started up an exercise regimen. Already, I am sore in every place and my knee is swollen up to the size of a grapefruit. I hobble everywhere now. Why do I keep imagining that it's okay to try to run? I am the least athletic person in the world. Also, we are working out of the gym at our apartment complex, because we are both cheap and lazy, and it is the tiniest gym that ever was. It's like working out in a broom closet, only without the reassuring smells of cleaning agents. But I am shallow, and I want to look better, so to the broom closet I go.
Little site notes: If you scroll down all the way to the bottom, you'll see a new Google search bar where you can try to look up things on the site. It is woefully inaccurate, as the site is never trawled, but it sometimes works. Updated Elsewhere links, also. If I'm missing anyone, let me know.
Better actual entry coming, maybe later.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Solidarity
I know that I am not the only person who does this.
Okay, so you know that moment when you can suddenly tell you're about to sneeze? You get that half tickle in your sinuses, your eyes sort of water and you make that really weird and unattractive 'about to sneeze' face. This is de rigueur for every person who has ever lived, right?
Anyways, that's not what this is about.
So, sometimes when I'm about to sneeze, I sort of get stuck in the 'about to sneeze' mode, and can't get out. It's a very frustrating and unsatisfying state. Your body was wanting to sneeze for a reason; that it didn't leaves you unbalanced. Not to mention you're stuck with this really creepy look on your face.
When it is me, in these occasions I just turn and look into the nearest light source. Because I am incredibly sensitive to bright lights, looking into one is almost always enough to push me over the edge into the sneeze. (As I've said before, I think this is a trait that is drawn from my computer science degree - as soon as you are certified in computers, your body begins the process of rejecting all natural light.) It's just how I'm trained at this point - can't sneeze, look at a light.
Okay, so that makes sense, right? I mean, other people have to do this too, it's not that weird. Yeah, go with that.
Today at work I was standing in the lobby talking to a client when the urge to sneeze overwhelms. I hold up a finger in the universal sign of "hold up, I'm about to sneeze" and turn away. The sneeze doesn't come, and I am stuck in unattractive mode, so I turn more and angle my face to where it's under the nearest wall sconce lamp shade. This allows me to look at the bulb, which in turn allows me a very satisfying sneeze.
I turn back to the client, and am met with a horde of astonished stares. Not only is the client looking at me funny, so is the receptionist, the UPS guy, two randoms who are just in the lobby, and the floor manager (who already thinks I'm insane based on previous experiences).
Now, okay, maybe it looked a little odd, how I turned away to find a light to look into. And yes, it might have been compounded by the fact that I had to take a couple of steps to find a light I could reach. And yeah, I might have been in mid-sentence, so the holding up of a finger may have been interpreted as "hold on for a second, I need to go stare into a naked light bulb."
But.
BUT!
I really needed to sneeze! And I told them to hold on for a second! With my finger!
Whatever! It's not weird!
No one understands my pain.
Okay, so you know that moment when you can suddenly tell you're about to sneeze? You get that half tickle in your sinuses, your eyes sort of water and you make that really weird and unattractive 'about to sneeze' face. This is de rigueur for every person who has ever lived, right?
Anyways, that's not what this is about.
So, sometimes when I'm about to sneeze, I sort of get stuck in the 'about to sneeze' mode, and can't get out. It's a very frustrating and unsatisfying state. Your body was wanting to sneeze for a reason; that it didn't leaves you unbalanced. Not to mention you're stuck with this really creepy look on your face.
When it is me, in these occasions I just turn and look into the nearest light source. Because I am incredibly sensitive to bright lights, looking into one is almost always enough to push me over the edge into the sneeze. (As I've said before, I think this is a trait that is drawn from my computer science degree - as soon as you are certified in computers, your body begins the process of rejecting all natural light.) It's just how I'm trained at this point - can't sneeze, look at a light.
Okay, so that makes sense, right? I mean, other people have to do this too, it's not that weird. Yeah, go with that.
Today at work I was standing in the lobby talking to a client when the urge to sneeze overwhelms. I hold up a finger in the universal sign of "hold up, I'm about to sneeze" and turn away. The sneeze doesn't come, and I am stuck in unattractive mode, so I turn more and angle my face to where it's under the nearest wall sconce lamp shade. This allows me to look at the bulb, which in turn allows me a very satisfying sneeze.
I turn back to the client, and am met with a horde of astonished stares. Not only is the client looking at me funny, so is the receptionist, the UPS guy, two randoms who are just in the lobby, and the floor manager (who already thinks I'm insane based on previous experiences).
Now, okay, maybe it looked a little odd, how I turned away to find a light to look into. And yes, it might have been compounded by the fact that I had to take a couple of steps to find a light I could reach. And yeah, I might have been in mid-sentence, so the holding up of a finger may have been interpreted as "hold on for a second, I need to go stare into a naked light bulb."
But.
BUT!
I really needed to sneeze! And I told them to hold on for a second! With my finger!
Whatever! It's not weird!
No one understands my pain.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Maturity
I'm almost, to the day, one month outside of turning 24 years old. On the edge of a quarter century old. And I've just had the worst acne break-out that I've had since I could still call myself a teenager.
It's so bad that words don't really do it justice. It feels like it needs its own extended metaphor, something involving pizza or rough road. But maybe not, since everyone knows how a really bad break-out feels, right? When you can actually feel, in your bones, where the next blemish is going to appear, like some sort of human dousing rod of disfigurement? The general throbbing unpleasantness that comes with it and the complete knowledge that the cool kids are mocking you? It's all right there, like I never left high school. Although now there are fewer cool kids around, but the ones who are left are vicious.
Suddenly I'm 16 all over again. And just like then, nothing helps. I've got my two different kinds of face wash - exfoliating and oil removing, which I use religiously (naturally - I am a conceited gay man after all) but my face is indifferent to my ministrations. Angry red spot that defy the natural order of both size and frequency all over my once not-unpretty face. Probably stress related, which was the order of the day back in high school too, but I wouldn't put it past the approximate 14 pounds of sugar I ingest daily to have played some small part.
It's quite the blow to one's self esteem, especially when, like me, you place a lot of stock in appearances. Why, oh why couldn't I have learned to value what is inside a person rather than the asthetics? I knew it would eventually come back to haunt me. And for that matter, why can't my moral lessons ever be presented in cool ways - prophetic dreams like in A Christmas Carol, or with hilarious antics followed by a nugget of wisdom like on The Simpsons, or even with sappy overwrought dialogue delievered by Bob Saget to one of the Olsen twins like on Full House? No, instead? Red spots, all over my face. God does not like to give me the easy options.
Although, I suppose I could have been more horribly disfigured than a bout of acne. But where's the fun in whining about pimples if you can't blow everything ridiculously out of proportion? I think it's one of those teenager things.
Don't look at me! I'm hideous!
There, I feel better.
It's so bad that words don't really do it justice. It feels like it needs its own extended metaphor, something involving pizza or rough road. But maybe not, since everyone knows how a really bad break-out feels, right? When you can actually feel, in your bones, where the next blemish is going to appear, like some sort of human dousing rod of disfigurement? The general throbbing unpleasantness that comes with it and the complete knowledge that the cool kids are mocking you? It's all right there, like I never left high school. Although now there are fewer cool kids around, but the ones who are left are vicious.
Suddenly I'm 16 all over again. And just like then, nothing helps. I've got my two different kinds of face wash - exfoliating and oil removing, which I use religiously (naturally - I am a conceited gay man after all) but my face is indifferent to my ministrations. Angry red spot that defy the natural order of both size and frequency all over my once not-unpretty face. Probably stress related, which was the order of the day back in high school too, but I wouldn't put it past the approximate 14 pounds of sugar I ingest daily to have played some small part.
It's quite the blow to one's self esteem, especially when, like me, you place a lot of stock in appearances. Why, oh why couldn't I have learned to value what is inside a person rather than the asthetics? I knew it would eventually come back to haunt me. And for that matter, why can't my moral lessons ever be presented in cool ways - prophetic dreams like in A Christmas Carol, or with hilarious antics followed by a nugget of wisdom like on The Simpsons, or even with sappy overwrought dialogue delievered by Bob Saget to one of the Olsen twins like on Full House? No, instead? Red spots, all over my face. God does not like to give me the easy options.
Although, I suppose I could have been more horribly disfigured than a bout of acne. But where's the fun in whining about pimples if you can't blow everything ridiculously out of proportion? I think it's one of those teenager things.
Don't look at me! I'm hideous!
There, I feel better.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Multimedia, Bitches!
Because I won't stop yammering on about it, I feel like I should give a more visual representation of all the new stuff in the apartment, so you know exactly where I'm coming from these days. Mad props to Frnak, who's camera I have stolen in order to document my apartment living.
This is my apartment door. It is very dusty. And dented. We come under siege often. Repells the natives beautifully. (I swear, I don't live in that much of a warzone, it just totally looks like it.)
This is the new couch. Notice, the hot pillows, the very adult Art on the wall (a Monet print, in a frame), and that kick ass lamp. Ignore the fact that the lampshade is as ugly as sin. And that the couch is the size of a medium sized sedan. As a bonus, you can see the built-in shelves, full of my books, DVDs, and multitude of stuffed beavers. It's like a window into my psyche.
This is the "chair" that goes along with the couch. It is the size of my bed and could probably seat 4. But it is a chair. The woman who sold it to me told me so. Other things include: more Art, the companion lamp, and the tiniest door that ever was, which houses the wrapping paper and vacuum cleaner.
Here we see: The prelit fake tree, my huge-ass TV (I love Medium) and my fedora that I still have left, now that Paul has absconded with the other (Damn you Paul!!!). Notice the overwhelming number of entertainment devices - DVD player, VCR, Gamecube. I need my accessories.
Sadly, that's pretty much the whole new tour. I would show you my bedroom, but we hardly know each other. And the kitchen is just scary. Documenting the Black Plague that will eventually result from it just seems like bad form. Perhaps some day later we will venture further into the depths of the apartment and confirm the existence of the legendary "roommate," which supposedly walks the halls and watches a lot of reality TV.
I'm very much the photo-documentarianist, which is totally a word.
Bye Everybody!
This is my apartment door. It is very dusty. And dented. We come under siege often. Repells the natives beautifully. (I swear, I don't live in that much of a warzone, it just totally looks like it.)
This is the new couch. Notice, the hot pillows, the very adult Art on the wall (a Monet print, in a frame), and that kick ass lamp. Ignore the fact that the lampshade is as ugly as sin. And that the couch is the size of a medium sized sedan. As a bonus, you can see the built-in shelves, full of my books, DVDs, and multitude of stuffed beavers. It's like a window into my psyche.
This is the "chair" that goes along with the couch. It is the size of my bed and could probably seat 4. But it is a chair. The woman who sold it to me told me so. Other things include: more Art, the companion lamp, and the tiniest door that ever was, which houses the wrapping paper and vacuum cleaner.
Here we see: The prelit fake tree, my huge-ass TV (I love Medium) and my fedora that I still have left, now that Paul has absconded with the other (Damn you Paul!!!). Notice the overwhelming number of entertainment devices - DVD player, VCR, Gamecube. I need my accessories.Sadly, that's pretty much the whole new tour. I would show you my bedroom, but we hardly know each other. And the kitchen is just scary. Documenting the Black Plague that will eventually result from it just seems like bad form. Perhaps some day later we will venture further into the depths of the apartment and confirm the existence of the legendary "roommate," which supposedly walks the halls and watches a lot of reality TV.
I'm very much the photo-documentarianist, which is totally a word.
Bye Everybody!
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