Monday, May 30, 2005

I Shouldn't Be Here

If this were a Memorial Day of years past, I would be a Mushi's parents' house having a barbeque. But this is not like previous years and I am not celebrating a day of relaxation with Mushi's family. Truth be told, it is weird. I did not think a B-List holiday like Memorial Day would affect me so much.

I have gone through the entire day feeling like I should be somewhere else with other people. I am bothered by this, what I am I going to be like at Christmas or Thanksgiving? I do not want to be all weird during those holidays but if I am in an odd mood just because I am missing a BBQ I usually go to, what will I be like on Christmas Eve or the latter part of Thanksgiving. I hope I will not freak out on those days but I just don't know. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Dog Sitting

Right now, I am sitting at my brother's computer and watching my parents' dogs. Tonight should be a pretty quiet night with a pretty early end. I have to get up at 5am tomorrow to make it to work by 6am.I getto stock tomorrow, Hooray!

I don't particularly enjoy stocking but I do like getting off early and then having the following two days off after that. Anywho, I think I am going to go watch some tv seeing that my parents have cable and I do not, this is kind of a treat. Ahh, I get to watch the History Channel and the Travel Channel. What a nice, easy, and quiet night.

Friday, May 27, 2005

The Hike

I called in sick to work today because it was nice and sunny and I felt like going for a hike. A few years ago, Demonator, my brother, and I went Geocaching. One spot we were going to hit was this abandoned mine in the foothills above Boise. We got a kind of late start and by the time we were about half way to the supposed location of this mine, we had to turn back and go home do to prior engagements.

Today, I went back to the trail we took and tried to find the place that has eluded us for a couple of years now. It is an almost all uphill climb but I figured that I am in better shape now than I was then so I set off, to go up into the foothills. The mine has eluded me again. I must have gone five or six miles and still did not come to that freaking mine. I can't complain however because the scenery along the path is very nice and it smelled so good out there. I love fresh air.

Thanks to the hike and my lack of sunscreen (yes, I am a dumbass) I got a little crispy crittered today. I figured that when I go back to work tomorrow I would just tell them that I went out for some fresh air on my deck and fell asleep out there. It is a stupid excuse but then again so was my excuse for being sick. I have allergies that are causing migraines that are making me puke. I liked it personally, I do have allergies to damned near everything and I do get migraines that cause me to yack sometimes, just not today. :) Anywho, I am going to sleep now because I have weight lifting tomorrow and I am not sure when I need to be there. Good night!

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Work Out Update

I just walked in the door from lifting weights and going for a small run. I must say, I feel really good. As Ray said, I think I am losing weight. My pants are starting to get looser again and I think I can see it a little im my face. The difference isn't dramatic but I think it is there. The cool part, I still have just about three months left of this whole experiment.

As far as the weight loss and diet stuff goes, I have stuck with it pretty well. The first couple of days that my calories were trimmed back I felt hungry but lately, I can eat a breakfast bar and a juice for breakfast and anotehr breakfast bar a few hours later and ber pretty good to go until dinner time. I have a problem eating large breakfasts because my body just doesn't like that much food that early but the breakfast bar seems to do alright. I have cheated a couple of times and gone over my coloric limit for the day but I usually make up for the loss the next day. I think one big thing I have noticed is that I am getting better at differentiating between when my mind tells my body I am hungry and when my stomach tells my body I am hungry. I have pretty good self control now over my eating and I think it is getting better everyday.

On the weight training side of things I have mixed feelings. I have definitely improved since my first session but I am not sure if I am at where I need to be at this point in the ball game. I have a hard time remembering that I have only been doing this going on three weeks and it is still pretty early to expect drastic change but I push myself. Sometimes I think I set my standards too high for my level of weight training. As long as I keep this in mind I am pretty happy with where I am at. I think my arms have firmed up a bit since I started. They feel more firm anyway. I also think that my legs are coming along nicely. I am at a higher weight level than what my trainer works out his legs at but I think that is because I am a slightly bigger guy than he is and my legs are used to carrying more weight. Chubby man means buff legs. :)

Overall, I do feel better. I am happier with my diet and I am happy to be working toward a goal of some sort. I am a very goal oriented person and to not have goals for me really bothers me. I have goals for a lot of stuff now and I think that has improved my mood tremendously.

In other news, Barry, the jerk off that I have to tolerate working with almost everyday may finally be on his way to quitting or moving away. WOOHOO!! My co-workers and I are estatic and cannot wait to have a party after he is gone. Some of them are in disbelief and think someting will happen at the last minute that will keep him from going. I on the other hand, am optomistic. If he goes, my work situation will be a ton better than what is now. It would be like if God booted Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and the pure and good animals were left to frolic in their absence. I being one of the pure and good animals....yeah. Just roll with it.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Slumming: From Past to Present

I am currently reading a book about different scandals and events that took place in New York City from 1893 to 1903 and it has quite a few interesting stories in it. The one I read today was about the then popular craze of "slumming".

Basically, slumming was when rich people decided they wanted to live dangerously and see how the poor and degenerate of New York lived. They would usually get a group together, meet at the police station, meet their slumming guide, and go to some of the seedy areas of the town to see what the working class poor did in their free time. Think of it as an urban safari. There were actually tour guides that would take the well-off on these little adventures, some actually made a pretty good living at it too.

The rich people got off on this because it made them appreciate their own lives a little more and it reaffirmed the fact that they were indeed rich. It was a very shallow, degrading, and voyeuristic pasttime. The key to the whole thing though was that the poor were not allowed to talk to the rich. This would shatter the fragile world that the rich had constructed to justify the poor. Most of the tour stops involved gawking at people that were sleeping or passed out, this made it easier to ignore the fact that they were people and made it seem more like an art viewing.

At Christmastime, ghetto children would be allowed into the department store toy departments to stare at all of the wonderful toys that Santa would not be bringing them. The was an acceptable practice and it was tolerated by store owners so long as none of the children touched any of the merchandise. The odd part is why the store owners tolerated the street urchin; the children gave the rich adults something to look at. While their poor little imaginations dreamt of playing with the toys, the adults that were shopping would stop and watch them. The kids created a sort of "slumming" spectacle without the adults having to pay for a tour. The kids watched the toys, the adults watched the kids, and the circle of starring was complete.

The whole thing kind of depressed me. I don't think we have come very far in the hundred or so years since slumming was commonplace. The only big difference is now, we can do it from the privacy of our own homes while watching television. All talk shows, reality shows, and the like really are is a nicely packaged slumming tour delivered directly into our living rooms. I for one am guilty of watching Montel and Ricki Lake for the sole purpose of seeing what kind of freaky people get dragged on stage with each new episode. Jerry Springer is another prime example, he provided a spectacle and we tuned in. Slumming is alive and well today, we just have to endure the commercials that come with it now.

Messing With Burger King

Yesterday, I was hungry and decided to get a reasonable meal from Burger King. I pulled up to the drive-thru and ordered a small Sourdough Bacon Cheeseburger meal. All was going well until they asked me what drink I wanted and I said water. This threw them through a loop. It was almost like it was unheard of that someone would dare drink anything other than pop with their already high calorie meal. So I told them I wanted water and the first thing they said was, "Oh ok, you want a bottled water with that." I replied that I did not want a bottled water, simply a cup of water. The response I got was, "Uhh....we are going to have to charge you for a soft drink." Ok, no big deal. I can understand that, when you buy a pop from fast food places you are not paying for the substance itself, merely the cup. Then the lady said to me, "Uhh...we don't even have a button to add a cup of water to a meal. I am going to have to ring you up for a Coke and then I will just give you water instead." By this point, I could give a rat's ass what they had to do so long as I got my cup of ice water. I also found it amusing that there was not a water button for her to push to add the drink to my meal. I did not think that such a mundane request would mess with them so much.

Either way, I finally got the food ordered and get to the window to pay for it. I handed her a twenty dollar bill and she handed me the bag with my food in it. When it came time for her to give me my drink, she first tried to give me a Sprite, then she remembered that I did not have Sprite and tried to give me a Coke because that is what the receipt said. From inside the building, I could hear someone then say to her that I had water instead of Coke and chuckled about the fact that I ordered water. What the hell? Why is it such a big deal that I ordered water?

When she finally gave me my water, she started to give me my change when she paused and asked me if I gave her a twenty dollar bill. After I said yes, she continued to count out my change and handed it to me. Instantly, I knew she had given me way too much in her state of disconbobulation but I was not going to say anything. After leaving the drive-thru, I counted the money and realized that she gave me nineteen dollars and some odd cents back to me. My five dollar meal cost me eighty cents. All because I ordered water.

To put icing on the cake, I scratched off my little Star Wars contest piece and won a free cheeseburger, essentially making my meal free. People that work in fast food places are too used to having everything already figured out for them and automated so when it comes time to actually think, they fall way short of the mark. And to think these people breed.

I think I am going to make it a habit to order water at all fast food places I go to and see how they respond. All I know is that Burger King did not pass the water test.

On another note, Demonator and I went to see Star Wars on Thursday morning and I think both of us were generally pleased with it. Aside from the horrible dialogue between Anakin and Padame, the movie was definitely the best of the three newer films. George Lucas cannot write good dialogue to save his life.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Star Wars Is Out!

Right now, Revenge of the Sith is playing in a theater near me and I am not watching it. Demonator and I will be going to see it tomorrow morning I think so I am ok with it. All of the reviews I have seen so far have been generally positive so I am hopeful that this episode will be able to salvage the rest of the prequels.

In other Star Wars news, I bought the original trilogy on DVD tonight so I will have to watch those soon. I borrowed them once from a guy that Mushi works with but I never got around to seeing them. Costco had them for $46 after taxes and my manager is giving me ten bucks to burn him copies of them so really, I am only paying $36. I am okay with that, it makes each movie $12 and I get the bonus disc for free. I just wish Lucas would not have cut the Ewok song from the end of Return of the Jedi. I liked that song. This is the sole reason that I wish there was a DVD set of the original original trilogy, you know, the one that came out before Lucas got the green fever and decided money was the key to life. That and extremely good visuals with poor acting and dialogue. :) But I do like my Star Wars movies.

Working out is still going well, I am very sore right now, especially in my legs but I am sure that will pass with time. All of the discomfort will be worth it in the end. I will be much more fit than I was in the beginning.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

I Cheated

For the first time since I started training with Ray, I cheated on my diet. I went downtown last night and had some very good chicken katsu and drank a little bit. I know I went over my caloric intake but I figured a rare slip up will not hinder me too much. Also, with the exception of the beer, the stuff I ate last night was generally pretty good for me, sushi, and chicken. I feel kind of bad about it and am still debating as to whether or not I will tell Ray about my cheating.

In other news, Mushi graduated yesterday. Congratulations Mushi! Now you can go be the world's best nurse! YAY!

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Meeting Ray

I went to Gold's Gym this morning and met Ray for the first time. He seems like a pretty cool guy; he is also going through a divorce, must be that time of year. Either way. I think he will be able to help me. One cool thing he did not do was try to push all of the supplements, shakes, and gym crap down my throat. He actually told me to go to a grocery store and pick up Nutri-Grain bars instead of the bar that the gym was selling for twice as much. I like honesty.

Today's session was just going over dietary stuff and how to get my eating habits under control. I liked his logic behind all he had to say and I think I will be able to stick with our gameplan. I am kind of excited about all of this. We also did weights and mearsurements today. I weigh about 240lbs. with my gym outfit on and shoes. The part that sucked was when we did my body fat calculations and found that out of my 240lbs, 71lbs of it is fat. That is almost a 1/3 of my total weight. Beh. Oh well, that is going to change. If I meet the goal that we set for me, I will have dropped 20lbs by mid-August and added 5lbs of muscle.

The only thing that I was not a fan of was the fact that he is already, very mildly, pushing me to get more sessions with him. This is not a problem if he actually gets me results but I thought it was a little early to even bring it up. Oh well, they are trained to push this stuff so I guess it is his job. Besides, if he is doing good, then I may consider it, but we shall wait and see.

I have to work tonight but I think when I get off, I am going to go swimming again. The pool is open 24/7 so I don't see why I cannot make nightly visits to it. I find that the hot tub relaxes me like very few things in this world and I tend to take advantage of it.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

A Day of Zen

Have you ever had a day where stuff just kind of came together? Today was that kind of day for me. Yesterday, I went to Mushi's and looked over our divorce papers and quite frankly, that ruined my day. But Mushi and I talked and like always, Mushi made some very valid observations into my life. I started thinking about some of the stuff she had said and I have to say I agree with some of it. So today was a new day.

I woke up and went to the historical society to finish proofing a transcription of an oral history interview. That was fun. I then decided to go to Gold's Gym. This was something I had been contemplating doing for a couple of weeks and today I did it. I joined Gold's today and hired a personal trainer for twelve sessions. His name is Ray and he is going to figure out a diet that will work with my and a weight training plan as well. I figured my summer was pretty free and I have been wasting away my time for the past three months. It was time for a change. By the end of summer I will be a Greek god. Or at least closer to being a Greek god. :) I think this will be a positive change in my life and I am looking forward to finally, earnestly working toward that goal.

After Gold's I went to BSU. I have enrolled in a summer school class there so that I may get anoeher teaching endorsement. Right now, I can only teach history classes. That is fine, but it limits me and does not make me the most hireable person in the market. By taking one more class, I am taking a Political Science class, I will get my general social studies endorsement. This means I will be able to teach economics, goverment, social studies, geography, and I think law classes on top of my history classes. This makes me more hireable and flexible. I have decided that I do want to teach or at least do something with history. When I was looking at going into computers, I was running away from my true calling because I was scared and afraid of being rejected by it. I am supposed to teach. I know this now. There is no spoon.

After I stopped at BSU, I came home and ate lunch and then took a nap. I awoke from the nap and proceeded to go swimming at Gold's. After swimming a few laps, I went into the hot tub and did not emerge from it for an hour. While in the hot tub, I had a conversation with a couple about Chinese mysticism, she was reading the Ii Ching. I had another conversation about video games with a man in his fifties, and to top it off, I talked to a kid that was graduating from BSU in three semester with a business degree and was going to be a father in four months. I also met his wife. They seemed nice. I like hot tubs for this reason, they afford me the chance to have random conversations with random people about random things. They usually are not long conversations but they spice things up and while away the time quite nicely. I like single serving friends. I really like hot tubs and swimming pools as well.

Now, I am going to eat my McDonald's. It will probably be the last fast food I have for a while and I am going to enjoy it. I am also having a Coke. I have not had a lot of those lately but one sounded good tonight so I went for it. Tonight was a very zen night. I am relaxed but I am headed in a positive direction for once. It has been a while but it feels good to be pointed in any direction at this point in time. I am sick of doing nothing and I am ready to break the mold. My only regret, I feel that if I did this earlier Mushi and I may still be married but things happened this way for a reason and maybe this is how they needed to be for both of us to make the most in our lives. This is my life and it is time to take it back and make the most of it. Now, I am going to go watch either the Matrix or Fight Club and eat my McDonald's. I hope every one has a good night or day or whatever. This is the first truely good day I have had in a while.

Monday, May 09, 2005

The Beginning of A New Week

On Friday of last week, Spyder, Jake, and I returned from Portland and the Portland Organic Wrestling thing. That was stupid. That was about six hours of my life that I won't be able to get back. It was like the short bus pulled up at a bar and let all of its occupants out to play dress-up and wrestle on the stage of a dive bar. All of the skits seemed improvised on the fly and the only real reason I could see for any of them being there was to get beer thrown at them from the crowd, which happened often. It was a complete waste of time and I hope that if I hit middle age and start doing the stuff that the Portland Organic Wrestlers tried to do, that someone would have the decency to put a gun to my head and end it all right there. I cannot emphasize how stupid and utterly devoid of purpose that the Portland Organic Wrestling scene is. Ugh.

Yesterday, was Mother's Day and so my brother and I took my parents out to eat. We went to the Texas Roadhouse and it was pretty good. I like their fries and the steak was okay. All in all, it was a good dinner. I think my mom had a nice time so that is really all that matters.

In a few minutes, I am going to go to Mushi's and proof-read our divorce papers. Joy to the world. I suppose if we are going to go through with this, it may as well get done sooner or later. I am getting to the point where I have to make an effort to even talk to Mushi. It is not that I utterly despise her, I just don't have anything particularly important to talk to her about. In ways, I am kind of jealous of her and that does not help things either. I try not to be jealous and I try not to be mad at her but it is really freaking hard. I hope I will ge over this because I am dissapointed in myself for having these negative emotions and if she and I are to remain on speaking terms I will need to get over all of this stuff. I dunno. I just think that my life would be much better if we were still together but then, I guess her life would suck still and I don't want that. Besides, after all of this crap that we have gone through over the past couple of months, I don't know if I could ever trust her enough to have any kind of meaningful relationship with her. I am having a hard enough time having a friendship with her, let alone anything else. I am kind of mad at myself about that too. I am trying to forgive and forget but I really can't forget stuff and I am having a damned hard time forgiving too. Hopefully, that is because all of this is still relatively new to me and over time my spiteful feelings will diminish. I am having a hard time dealing with the fact that I invested so much time and emotion into our relationship to have it turn out the way it has. Basically, a fifth of my life is down the drain with nothing to show for it except for some material things and a set of divorce papers. I think I have changed for the better over the past few years but at the same time, this is a crappy price to pay. But I guess that is life. I do hope she is happier now. I know she is happier now.

Anywho, this post really has run longer than I expected and I suppose I should be heading out to inspect the papers. I will post more later.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

No Sleep Til Portland!

It is almost 7am and Spyder should be dropping by to get me in a little bit so that we may start our journey to Portland, Oregon. I haven't slept since yesterday, I do not like getting up early and find it easier just to stay up all night. I can always sleep in the van. Spyder will at least have our buddy Jake to keep him company and maybe Jake's brother Angus.

I usually sleep better than average in cars, so I am expecting a nap that toddlers would be jealous of. By the end of today, I will have been to Portland, seen Spyder do his wrestling thing, and probably go to sleep once again in the van. The short road trip should be entertaining if nothing else. I will post more tomorrow, when I return.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

This Morning's Field Trip

This morning I did not go to the Oral History Center to do my volunteer work. Instead, I went out to the actual Idaho Archives. The archives are kept up by volunteers and archivists from the Idaho State Historical Society.

I think I have found my calling within the realm of history stuff; the archives rocked. Idaho's achives are getting a new building within the year and so there is much work to be done. There are aisles upon aisles of boxes of stuff just waiting to be sorted and indexed. The guy who took me on a tour of the place considers everyday that he comes to work Christmas, in the sense that with each new box of stuff he goes through, he finds new things. I felt the same way while I was there.

The archives were split into a few different sections. The coolest was the manuscript section. Manuscripts in the historical sense are not just the prepublished writings of authors, they are any piece of material that comes from private citizens. This includes photo albums, diaries, scrap books, you name it.

There was also a room that when the door closed, the oxygen would be siphoned out in an effort to preserve the records in it and to prevent fires. All in all, the Idaho archives were very cool....at least if you are a history nerd like me. I am thinking that I may start volunteering there as well. I think archival work is something I would greatly enjoy and I think I would be good at it to. It would basically be like sorting my mp3s only with papers instead of music.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Going to Portland This Week

On Thursday and Friday, I will be going to Portland. What's in Portland, you ask? POW. That is, Portland Organic Wrestling. Spyder has decided that he wants to try his hand at amateur wrestling....yeah. I was hesitant to go at first but then I saw what Spyder's tag team partner will be, Foldy, the folding chair. Spyder spent something like four hours painting and dressing up this chair that he will ultimately get bludgeoned with. To top it off, I guess he and this guy will also be fighting on a stage covered in thumb tacks. Yeah, I really need to see this.

Portland Organic Wrestling has been going on for a while now according to the research I have done on it. I am not a huge wrestling fan, but this harkens more to a more glitzy version of Fight Club. It takes place in some bar and from what I gather, draws a pretty good sized crowd. It should at least be an interesting time.

I will be going with Spyder, our buddy Jake, and his brother. It will be a short roadtrip but it should be a fun one. I will post more and maybe some pics of it when we return from the trip.