Nothing to say

Life is really good right now. It’s funny, too, I have hardly been on the internet. It’s really been about a week, and I haven’t done much more than check my main gmail account. I haven’t caught up on your blog. I haven’t caught up on mine. I haven’t checked flickr or any of the other sites I go to. I haven’t read comics. I did got to Homestar Runner. I think B (GF’s niece) was surprised that I like it so much. It’s been nice, really. I mean, I waste a lot of time on the web, honestly. I don’t want to do that any more. I’d rather do other things. Like studying SQL.

Now is a good time to segue to the new job, but I want to talk about B. One of GF’s nieces visited for a week. She left on tuesday, the 25th (my bday). She hung out with GF a lot, the three of us hung out together a lot, and we even got to hang out just the two of us for a while. She’s a very cool young lady. Funny as heck, too. I had a lot of fun in the last week.

While she was here, I was offered a job. It was a verbal offer, so I started making preparations to leave my current job (particularly, burning my PTO before I quit and making sure my recurring reports are all fully documented and automated), but didn’t formally submit my resignation. I’m so excited for the new position, and am happy to tell you about it, now that I’ve gotten the formal written offer. I will be the Senior Data Analyst for a company that provides Medicare services in south Florida. The business is locally owned, and appeals to me for that reason alone. Better yet, I’m going to be working for a friend who used to be my coworker. He was hired by this new company several months ago, and has just been given a new department that he’ll be heading up. He specifically saught me out. Today, when I met him to turn in some paperwork, he told me something funny and flattering. See, he’s been looking out for me for a while now, and clued me in to another analyst position that had opened within the company. I interviewed for it, but never heard back. The guy had said he was looking for someone with more SQL and Crystal Reports experience, so I wasn’t really surprised. Today, my friend had actually met with this guy and told him about my coming aboard. The guy says, “You asshole” to him. Ok, it was in jest, so no big deal. Apparently, he really wanted to hire me, but the position was frozen before he could fill it. I can only imagine he was hoping to get back to me when it opened back up. Who knew I could be in such high demand? So the new position pays great, has really nice benefits, and is more than a couple steps up from where I’m at now. On top of all that, I really hate the company that bought the one I currently work for, so I’m thrilled to get out of there.

My boss was awesome enough to work with me to help me get my vacation time before I officially quit, so tomorrow will be the last day of my week off. I’m heading back in Friday to take care of things, then I’ll work through next week, and next Friday will be my last day there. The following monday, the 8th, I start the new job. It’s also the first day of classes at my college. I’m taking English and Spanish once I get the classes scheduled, and I plan to go do that tomorrow. The week off has been really cool. I got to spend a good portion of a day with B. We went to Fairchild and checked out the Chihuly exhibit. It was gorgeous. I want to go back and see it again before the thing comes down. In a way, I wish I’d taken a week off between the jobs, but if I did that, the excitement might kill me. :) I’m stoked about the work that will go into putting the new dept together, and really excited to get started on it.

I’m starting to feel a bit scattered. Weird that typing like this usually helps me sort things out. Right now, though, I just have too much energy. I want to go do something.

Being 30 is ok. For my birthday, GF took me to the Murakami Museum and Japanese Gardens. Very, very cool. Dinner was at a place called Sublime. It’s a vegetarian restaurant in Broward County. I didn’t realize it was as ritzy as it turned out to be, but the prices were surprisingly reasonable. It was an absolutely excellent meal, and they have the best Mojito I’ve ever had.

Alright, I’m out. Thanks for checking in.

You may already know that Rupert Murdoch’s megacorporation, NewsCorp, owns such wonderfully pervasive media outlets as Fox (TV and Film), The New York Times, several UK newspapers, and related ventures. What was news to me is that NewsCorp also owns MySpace.com.

Bear with me, here. I don’t know much about MySpace at all. I’ve only been to the site twice ever. I really don’t have any interest in it. The headline “The MySpace Economy” caught my eye, so I had to check it out. Forbes (via Wired) is reporting about the myriad businesses that have sprung up to cater to (and advertise to) MySpace users.

I wanted to share some of the interesting facts that I learned about the site:

• “Tens of millions” of users
• Bought by Murdoch for $580mil
• Currently raking in an estimated $13mil MONTHLY

If you don’t know much about NewsCorp, CJR has a great page that simply lists what they own.

And if you’re looking for my opinion, MySpace is still garbage, and NewsCorp is dangerously ubiquitous.

Friday night, GF and I went to the movie theater on Lincoln Road (South Beach) to see the film Thank You for Smoking. The film was absolutely great. Very funny, very poignant, and incredibly well done. We really enjoyed it. We tried to catch this during the Miami International Film Festival, but it was ENTIRELY sold out, so we had to wait for the regular release. It’s too bad we missed it the first time around, because it would’ve been even better in the, uh, atmosphere (?) of the festival, but the film was no less brilliant. And only once did I laugh at an apparently inappropriate moment. The rest of the times, pretty much everyone was laughing as well. So good.

After the film, we meandered back to the car. There was actually a line to get out of the parking lot, so we had to wait. People were being cool with the merging so it was all good. Oh, except for one person, I guess. She was determined to not let anyone in front of her, but had a nicer car than me (which is usually cause to be slightly less aggressive.) Anyhow, I won, she honked, I got pissy and honked back (and flipped her off), some huge guy got out of her car (6′4+, 250+), and things went from bad to worse to hilarious. By the time it was over, we both ended up out of my car, four of the five (!) people were out of the other car (except for the driver, who was apparently white-knuckling the wheel in a state of severe fear and shock), security got involved, one girl was thrown against my car (HARD) and lost one flip-flop and her clutch, pretty much everyone had a chance to yell and blow off some steam, GF got some titty-grabbin’ action (because drunk bitch was after her, but too drunk, dumb, and slow to actually warrant getting hit), and we still left the lot in front of them. The whole exchange was just hilarious. No one (but for the screaming drunk bitch in the other car) was hurt at all. Nothing was broken or lost (except for the drunk bitch’s flip-flop, which was hideously ugly and in need of replacing anyhow). (I patronizingly alerted her to the dropped clutch, which fortunately presented her with the splendid and apparently much-needed opportunity to scream at me some more.) We were just cracking up over it. At the first light, we were reliving the action, and the guy in the car next to us overheard and informed us (in his fabulous french accent) that he had seen the whole thing. I asked if he had enjoyed the show, to which he gave an enthusiastically affirmative response. Some punk kid was messing with us earlier in the evening, and we think had tried to steal GF’s purse. We weren’t dumb enough to fall for it, but had a bit of pent up aggression, so all in all it was a great release and a hilarious story besides.

The next night, we were given much great opportunity to retell the story, as we had to attend two parties of social obligation. The first was a sort of wedding reception thing for a couple I had met only once before. The second was a birthday party for one of GF’s lab-mates. Both parties ended up being FAR better than I had anticipated, and made for a great night.

The third party mentioned was an impromptu get-together that took place between the two others. It came as a direct result of really awful planning. We actually went to the wrong place for the second (surprise) party, missed the surprise entirely, and hung out for nearly 2 hours with 3 of GF’s other lab-mates. It was a lovely rooftop soirée, and pictures were taken to preserve the occasion. These pictures ultimately provided necessary evidence that we had, in fact, gone to the wrong location and made the conscious decision to remain there for nearly two hours, despite realizing quite some time beforehand that it was, in fact the wrong location. We just had a really good time there.

Sunday was spent doing not much at all, actually. Breakfast, shopping, lunch, shopping, dinner, home, and playing on the computer for a little bit. I setup Picasa 2.0 and played with that a bit. It turns out I have over 66,000 pictures in my combined directories of collected porn, modeling, and celebrity shots. I’m sure there’s a lot of duplication in there, and whatever, so the number’s artificially inflated (pun!), but that’s still fairly ridiculous.
And now would be a really good time for me to get back to work.

Not physically, but spiritually.  There was a time, when I lived in Columbus, OH, that I did things differently.  I think back to that time a lot.  I mention that time a lot.  It’s time for me to recreate the essential elements of it in the present, so that I can stop longing for them in the past.

Given all that thinking I’ve been doing, I think I already have a pretty good idea what those essential elements are.  There are ridiculously few, and they are ridiculously basic.  I need simply a consistent schedule and more activity in my day.  I don’t even need to eat better.  I don’t really need to change ANYTHING else.  I just need to be more active and more consistent.

Let’s break it down.  The activity was obvious.  I walked and took the bus to go to work, because I didn’t have a car.  Also as a result of not having a car, all my shopping, travel, etc was done on bike.  I biked to the grocery.  I biked to the park.  I biked to the library.  And I forced myself out of the house for a certain number of hours each week.  Given that the weather here is so idyllic, I doubt that last part will be necessary.  The difficult lies in the traffic.  It’s honestly just too life-threateningly scary to bike around here.  Biking to the library wouldn’t really be that far, but there are so many VERY busy intersections between here and there, each polluted with MIAMI drivers.  Let me confess that I’m not altogether eager to put my life into their hands!  So what are my options, then?  I honestly don’t know.  Let me get back to the action stage after addressing the schedule.

Another significant change that I had made in my life back in those days was a schedule.  It wasn’t really a very religious one, even.  I just basically tried to eat at about the same time every day, and I got up and went to sleep at about the same time.  Even on the weekends.  I would go to bed at midnight and get up at 6am.  On the weekends, I’d allow myself another hour or 3 of sleep, depending on how badly I wanted it, and I could stay up another hour later, maybe.  I tried not to vary that schedule by much, though, and 6 hours was honestly enough 5 or 6 nights out of the week.  Then I’d get 8 solid hours and be great for another week of 6 hours a night.

Meals were pretty simple most of the time.  Breakfast and lunch were both at work on the weekdays.  I’d have a couple packets of instant oatmeal or something similarly small for breakfast every day as well as 4 to 6 cups of coffee.  No, I’m not kidding.  It would last me until lunch.  For lunch, I almost ALWAYS ate out.  Fast food and cafeteria food were the norm.  Sometimes I would have leftovers from the previous night.  Sometimes I’d have a can of soup.  I couldn’t really afford to eat out 2x a day, so I tried to make dinner at home as much as I could.  They were always really simple dinners.  I’m talking things that I would NEVER dream of trying to serve someone else.  Ramen noodles were a staple.  I’d dump in half a bag of frozen veggies for balance.  Spaghetti was pretty common, and everything was from a box or jar.  Premade pasta sauce, even.  And a few sprinkles from the oregano and basil.  One of my favorites was cut up chicken breast sort of stir-fried in barbecue sauce, with cheese melted over the top at the end.  Maybe I’d have it with some mega-salt rice mix or on a tortilla, but oftentimes just a bowl of that.  Nevermind the bread&cereals group.

Of course I’d never dream of eating half those things nowadays.  The chicken mess, sure.  Ramen noodles are just too salty.  I can hardly even stand the taste now that I’m no longer conditioned to all the sodium.  I don’t eat canned soup that often, and when I do, it’s probably organic.  My oatmeal comes in cylinders or from the bulk bin now, and gets mixed with a whole fruit preserve for flavor.  No more pre-sweetened crap.  This is all good, but my eating schedule is just horrendous.  I don’t have one.  I’ll eat breakfast anywhere from 8am (in the car, rarely) to around 11:30, when I realize I haven’t eaten all morning.  Lunch will come between 11 (when I just can’t wait) and 4 (when I need to eat somehting to avoid falling asleep on the drive home).  Dinner happens anywhere between 6 and 11.  THIS, my friends, is NOT healthy.

And so I begin my initiative to eat better.  Hopefully, this will be easier to achieve now that I’ve made a solid commitment to do it.  Most days, my best excuse for putting off breakfast and lunch are that I was too busy goofing around on the computer.  That’s hardly a valid excuse.  For dinner, GF doesn’t come home some nights until 8 or 10, but she would be totally understanding if I ate earlier to maintain a schedule.  It’s time for me to start this and adhere to it.  It begins tomorrow.  Breakfast at 8:30.  Lunch at noon.  Dinner at or as close to 7pm as I can manage.

Now what can I do about the activity thing?  I’m not going to bike to work.  Seriously.  It scares the hell out of me.  I’m going to have to make time after dinner then, I guess.  Or jog in the morning (which I’ll have time for if I start getting up at 6.)  Alright, that’s fair.  Wake at 6.  Jog from 6:15 to 6:30.  Get ready and leave.  After a week or 2 of that, I’ll probably be able to jog for more than 15 mins, and by then, I’ll know how capable I am of doing such a crazy thing.  I’ll know how much time I need to get ready and get to work on time.  Too bad I can’t drive to work at 6:15, jog THERE, shower afterwards (le sigh) and then be at my desk on time.  I’d have way more time, because at that hour, the drive would be SO much faster.  Ah well.  And then I can do an evening jog, or some weights or something.

I’m also going to be jogging a half marathon in January, so there’s no time like the present to start training for that.

I’m going to go write up my schedule and post it somewhere obvious.  It’ll help me remember tomorrow, when I’m ENTIRELY not in the mood.  I haven’t really been good tonight, so I’m NOT getting up at 6 tomorrow.  I’ll start that crap on Friday or better yet, next week.

I couple days ago, GF met me for lunch at work.  She brought picnic-ins of the sandwich and salad variety.  There were also surprise cookies.  One of the cookies was a “German Chocolate cookie”.  I remember having german chocolate cake when I was younger.  Coconut goodness.  But I got to thinking…

I live in a sub-tropical climate that’s perfect for growing coconuts.  You can find them on the side of the road here, seriously.  They’re on the beach.  They’re everywhere.  Cheap as free, and more abundant than any wild fruit I’ve seen back home in the midwest.  Unless acorns count, but they don’t.  Coconuts like heat and humidity.  Both in good measure.  So what in the hell is German about coconuts?!  If you don’t know what I’m getting at, you should know that German Chocolate has 2 main ingredients: chocolate and coconut.  So what gives with the coconut?!

First thing I did was looked up coconut to see if it has any special German connection.  It doesn’t.  So I looked up German Chocolate to see where it comes from.  What I found was a great wikipedia entry on German Chocolate Cake.  The original recipe called for German’s Sweet Chocolate, which was produced by the Baker’s brand.  German isn’t the country of origin.  It’s the last name of the guy who created it.  He was in fact an Englishman.  German chocolate cake was first created in Texas.  Germany has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Of course, as with the origins of most things, this cake’s invention is disputed.  That’s not relevant to this inquiry, though, as I was only trying to figure out where the Germans came into the picture.  Regardless of the true origin of German chocolate, their lack of involvement in it is pretty obvious.

So now I can get back to life.  Whew.

It was a wonderful thing: Girlfriend and I went shopping today.

I of course woke up about an hour and a half after her. Not much later, we went to The Original Pancake House for breakfast. I’ve been craving what they call an “Apple Baby.” It’s insanity, but pretty good. Breakfasted and happy, we headed for the mall.

We got a bunch of things today. I’ve been wanting some better black shoes for dressing up, and we finally found a pair. They’re really flashy, and something I NEVER would have gotten even a few months ago. I really like them, though! I got GF a hand-woven handbag in the shape of a fish. We’ve decided it’s a Koi. You know, because. It was cheaper than we expected, too. Cool!

Then, at Bombay, which was acutally a bombay warehouse or something, they had one of the nice canopies for your bed - the kind that hangs from your ceiling and looks like mosquito net. It’s a neat goldish greenish color that I can’t remember very well at this point. It also rang up cheaper than we expected. Awesome!

The rest of the shopping was pretty much devoted to buying pretty things for GF. And we did. I had a lot of fun helping her pick things how, having salespeople give things to her while she was already in the dressing room, etc. A very good day.

For dinner, we went to Los Tapatios, a good local place for tacos and burritos and things. The place was busier than we’ve EVER seen, and they tried to serve us at the table, but that went disasterously and we ended up ordering at the counter like usual. Weird. The food had changed a little, too, I guess, but it was still really good. It just took for-stinkin-ever. It was worth the wait.

Also, you should know that wordpress makes it REALLY easy to insert pictures into your post. Wow.

And now I think I’ll go to bed. Right after I tell you that I’m STILL not on board with this daylight savings time thing. I think it’s just a bad idea all around. I really think it should be abolished.

Good night, friends. I hope your weekend was lovely.

It really desperately needed it. It’s the first time I’ve washed a vehicle since I lived in Bowling Green, OH. Isn’t that crazy?? I moved to FL in Sept 2004, and was in NY since, well, NYE 2003, so it’s been well over 2 years. Living in apartments is restrictive that way. Now that we’re renting a small house, though, I can do anything I want. Well, no, but I can at least wash my car. I scrubbed the heck out of it. The difference is amazing. I let that go for way too long.

After the lengthy car washing, GF and I strolled across the street to the Winn Dixie shopping plaza where there’s an apothecary store. The lady that runs it used to live in the place we are now, and when we went over there and introduced ourselves to her, she informed us that our property owners were actually at her house at the time. Pretty funny. The place is really nice. It’s the first time we’ve stopped by that they’ve actually been open. We had a smoothie, and then some tea. She made herself a pizza and offered me a couple slices (no charge. Too nice.) We got a small soap, some tea, and a small bag of pumpkin seeds. Mmmm. The place is really cool, and we will certainly be returning.

That’s all I got for now. Night.