Still Waiting

So here it is, almost the middle of August..and only 1 more nibble from the last post.
A total of 3 prospective job offers in 5 months of searching.
1 was misleading, and out of my abilities to do, and the other 2.. well, if I was married, there'd be no problem. How's that for discrimination? Hmph.

I don't even have a direction to apply to anymore.. any job that I figure I could actually do has been open-game, and it's not kept just to the city-of-dwelling.. I'm open to moving.
Catch-22 though, moving requires money. A job begets money. But what if moving begets the job?

Could be worse.
I suppose.

Waiting on whatever

So.. as life goes, it's time to GTFO and get moving again.

Unemployed, looking for work.. looking for new digs.. looking for.. anything: that will pay bills, and is tolerable, and I can physically/mentally do. Any other kind of work is only a stop-gap bandaid on a severed limb - completely useless.

People keep telling me `oh, just wait on God.. trust God, rely on God's provision`..
Empty words with the smallest of sympathy behind them.
As if I don't rely on God for most any/everything to begin with.
How do you ACTIVELY `trust God` ??.. I suppose I could wander the streets until I got some iggidy-giggidy feeling and max my credit card on an apartment or something.. but that doesn't take care of employment.. and isn't exactly being a `good and faithful` steward of what I've been given, now is it?

In the last 4 & 1/2 months of more-actively looking for work (the last 3 months of school employment seeking was enhanced, and since then, it's what I do now)..and I've gotten 2 nibbles.
One turned into.. nothing.. the second interview never happened, and my phone calls were not returned.
Another was a mass-interview (roughly 30 people) for a job I didn't apply for..and can't make a living at. The job I applied for, they are still advertising in the paper, and I wonder how many other people are going in on the company's bait&switch employment tactic.

Regardless.. here I am.. like many people.. looking for sustainable, reliable employment..
and getting more frustrated with each unproductive day that passes.

Weird. Odd. ...Funny?

I am a gambling man.
In the fun kind of way. Various friends and I place bets, usually open-ended and fairly harmless and all in good fun. Usually dealing with the outcome of some game.

And so I finally collected (after a few weeks of putting it off) on one. I have a deal with a friend of mine - I've told her (and here's where sticking to your word can bite you in the butt) that if she buys it, I'll wear it. This all started as a bit of a discussion as to why she doesn't wear dresses..and in the ensuing arguement, it was asked why I don't wear dresses. ('cause I refuse to shave my legs?) To whit, `Hey, if you buy it, I'll wear it.` Lately, this has given way to some potentially embarassing things...which, thankfully, she has not spent her hard-earned money on.

Now.. this is where I got myself into trouble : my friend isn't girly-girl at all. So for christmas, as a gag, I got her some really girly stuff. ..and she wore them. And yes, she looks absolutely amazing in it. There was retaliatory threats of clothing-orientation. ....but no follow-through. Yet.

Sometime this week, we're going shopping. Probably after a couple of pints.
Maybe I'm paranoid. But I keep expecting her to spring this evil on me at some point.
The evil of gag-oriented clothing & objects.
Things designed to make you bright red and hope to crawl into a tiny hole somewhere away from people.

We'll see what the weekend brings.

Patriotism

What with Canada Day looming near (wednesday, July 1st), I thought I'd write a lil about patriotism.

Canada, Australia, and the U.S. all have 1 thing in common - we're offshoots from people leaving (wether they wanted to or not is debatable) England.
We all speak some form of english. We all (we, the countries) welcome people from other countries with relatively open arms.

A few decades ago.. the US was considered a `melting pot`.. didn't matter where you came from.. you become an American citizen, learn the language, the ways, take pride in your new home and Be American.
Canada.. well.. wasn't quite the melting-pot, but come from where ever you came from.. and.. uh.. hey, if it ain't too much trouble.. could you, I dunno.. maybe fit in? But if you raise a ruckus, we'll leave you alone. Just.. I dunno.. love hockey, beer and pancakes smothered in maple syrup, eh?
...As for Australia.. I don't know. Never lived there.

Multiculturalism killed Rome, Greece, Babylon.. all the ancient great civilizations. They started like the 1950's U.S./Canada and ended up like 2009 U.S./Canada before basically imploding on themselves.
Where does patriotism belong in a multicultural society?..from what I can tell, it doesn't.
Patriotism is a fierce pride in one's home country, wether that's the country of their birth or chosen home.
The U.S. is considered `arrogant, stupid and rude` by the masses.. and yet, people still flock there, year after year, for a `better life` and a chance for `the American Dream`.
And what about Canada? People come here for.. well.. we're supposed to be friendly, and a safe country to be in... sure. We're supposed to be. But what is Canadian? What to be proud of?
Celine Dion? Shania Twain? Jim Carrey? John Candy, Rick Moranis, RUSH, Mike Meyers or Dan Aykroyd?...
sure, why not...

But no.. I'm proud to live in a country that flipflops over in-country citizens flaunting aggressive-violent reiligions as a defense of being `racially targetted` and crying that their `human rights` were violated by being allowed to live in this country and be subject to its laws.
I am proud to live in a country with a horribly underfunded and yet still above-par military that, while mocked and ridiculed by its own, is saluted and honoured across the world.
I am proud to live in a country that tries to ensure everyone within its borders can have access to some kind of health care.

More so.. I am proud to live in a country that while having very few `national identity` identifiers, has people from all over the world that come to it, and try to fit in..and are thankful, unlike so many of us.. to live in a country where they are free to persue financial gain, religious freedom, and a life of peace and contentment.

The owner of The Mandarin restaurants is giving a free buffet meal to the people who can prove their citizenship... and to me, that is one of the highest accolades a businessman can offer their country of residence - a thankfulness, a celebration of the nation's day, that they aren't seeking to make a profit, but to share their joy in being in that country with their fellow citizens.

Patriotism... putting aside personal wants and gains to share with others in the joy of belonging to a country you have made as your own... that country's flag planted firmly in your heart.

Head west, young man!

I don't recall when I initially heard that phrase.. but it's been tossed around lately, and the last couple of years, by anyone I know(well, almost anyone), whenever talk turns to `what am I gonna do when I grow up?`...or plans for the future, natch - the lack thereof.

Head west.. used for pioneers and such ...in western times.. gold rush, and all that jazz.
Basically.. search yourself, look hard into and through your soul.. find what you want to do, run hard after it and see what you can do with it.

So why is it.. that more and more.. I'm meeting people who've put 30 years into a business..or had a medical practice for a few decades..and then turn around, and find more joy and enjoyment doing plumbing, or just getting down to the dirt and working on farms?

I don't get it.
But what I -do- get is.. I'm done school.(been done for a lil while now).. I graduated in something I didn't initially go for..and certainly don't want to be doing all my life - not because I don't like it or can't do it, I don't mind it and can certainly do it with relative ease.. but it's just not `me`..
And yet those things that I figure would be `me` ??... I've no idea how to properly parlay them into viable income.

Eventually.. if you keep heading west, you'll hit the horizon and get burned on the sun that's setting.

Time flies by

So here I sit.. a few days after I was going to post something.. WOW time flies by when you're paying attention.. even quicker when you're not!

Sunburned - badly enough I don't want to go to sleep..or sit here and type, for that matter,
tired, sore, and ...wondering if I'm hungry or thirsty.. so I'll drink and see what that does.
(water, never you mind)

Friend of mine took me golfing today.. didn't keep score(for me) on the front 9..did ont he back 9.. played best-ball the whole way through. .. Learned why golfers wear gloves - I ripped (literally ripped) my finger open at the cuticle.. I noticed it was chafed and sore.. took one more drive and SONUVA%#!#^% (not a female dog, but an `unclean woman`.. read a dictionary, people!).. started bleeding pretty good there.
Lemme tell ya.. it's interesting to swing a golf club with any kind of decent-ability with a rag tied around your hand, encompassing a finger.
All in all, for a guy who doesn't play golf, tends to kinda hate the game(but it's beautiful scenery, and okay-exercise).. Shooting 22 over par for the back 9 on a best-ball round ain't too shabby. I figure that if we were playing strict-rules, I'd probably have shot about 140-150 for the entire round.
Go ahead, laugh it up.. but you gotta admit, that ain't bad for a guy who doesn't play the game, and swings more like Happy Gilmore than Arnold Palmer.

Single again for a little while now.. and, maybe it's my perception.. but it seems like certain folks are snubbing me. Heh, go figure. The best part is.. some of these people aren't even really `friends` of my newly-ex or myself.. at best, they're barely-comfortable-acquaintances.

One of my best friends is hoping on a child. As we drove after he told me.. we sat there for about 5 minutes of silence. 5 minutes is a LONG time to go with just road-noise. In my head, I'm thinking `You asshole! You should be happy for your friend, excited.. or something positive!`.. when, really.. I'm kind of sad. Another (potential) kid in this worthless world.
Jobs are becoming scarcer and harder to get, the population keeps expanding, buildings keep going up wiping out animal habitat and viable farmland - inevitably leading to animal attacks in city-areas and rising food prices due to a global lack of food(no farmland, no farms. No farms, no produce, or livestock.. steak don't grow on trees, and while apples do, no room for trees, means no apples)
So I gave him the whole `congratulations` thing.. and told him I should be excited for him, but I'm not. I don't think anyone should be havin kids. And people having children inside the last decade ought to be horse-whipped in a public square.. Why don't people THINK about what the future portends before going all shaggadonkey on each other?..right, because people are inherently dumb and fearful critters. Anyhow.

Out of school.. all that good.. had a job interview, went well.. asked to come back for a 2nd. ...Went back... no one was there. No secretary.. no nothing.
Not a good sign. No returns to my phonecalls.. nothing. REALLY not a good sign.

Interesting sermon in church today. It's all about the heart..
and I've caught myself wondering this at times.. Am I doing this so I can get something out of it, or am I doing this because, hey, it's the right thing to do (and hence, I'm a decent guy) or am I doing this because it's the right thing to do because my King would be pleased with it?
Yes, yes, yes and yes.. all answers, at different times for different things.
Obviously the last one is the important one.

Sometimes.. it seems like doing `the right thing` is such a waste of time.. especially if you're the only one who knows it's the right thing to do.. and it typically takes longer to do than a shortcut, or even doing the same basic thing, only quicker and not as meticulously thorough .. and it's inconvenient.
You pass up the golf balls you spot buried in the sand trap, the gorse, or the waste bunker.
You give the 20$ you find in the street to a charity or use it to buy a homeless person a meal(and let them keep the change).
You go over your grocery bill and notify the cashier you didn't get charged for something...

Inconvenient!
But it's the right thing to do.
So when's the last time you chose something inconvenient for you?

Close to the door

Well well well...

I've got 2 days left of classes, and then, I go from being in-debt and in-class, to simply being in-debt. Not much in the way of good-looking prospects as far as the area of study I've been in.. with specialized knowledge, a secretary doing less than half of the same job is being paid more than what, according to statistics, I should be looking at.

yay?
But that's according to what I see in the market.. and when the economy goes south, people(employers) tend to blame the people in charge of their books.
Bookkeeping isn't hard.. making it balance and making it make-sense and doing the financials.. that's something else. Doing it skillfully, accurately, and modifying it when neccessary(i.e., late submissions of claims or expenses), while keeping an even-keel.. is something to itself again.

It seems like more and more, employers demand more skills and abilities from their employees, while refusing to pay them for said skills, and offering a pittance for the work they do.

Is it any wonder people feel undervalued, taken advantage of, and like they're treated poorly?

Lucky for me, I tend to find places of employment where you're valued, or at least appreciated by fellow coworkers, if not customers.
And as close to being out of school as I am, there's got to be more than pittance-pay, living expenses and repaying this debt demand it more than pride and sense of self-worth.

Good to know there's One who has more than everything else, and He's out for my good.
Yay!

Morbidity of Mortality

Nobody really likes to think about dying. One of the questions for testing to see if you're depressed is all about how often you think about death or dying.

Someone I know recently underwent a triple coronary bypass, open-heart surgery. They're fine now, more or less, recovering nicely, from what I'm told.
In discussing some of this, where one winds up after death, and so forth, some people got rather irate.
And I figure it has more to do with having to deal with the fact that they themselves aren't as young as they once were, and will inevitably die.. and most likely not at a time of their choosing, to boot.

So what is it about dying that gets people all down?
I mean.. seriously.. if you know where you're going, why get all funked-out about it?
As one man I know has said many times.. he wants his funeral to be a party, and the quote on his tombstone to read `What a ride!`
He knows where he's going, some folks I know -know- where they're going.. I know where I'm going.

Do you know where you're going?
..Better yet.. can you know beyond a doubt that that's where you're going?

Black sheep, or bleached wool?

Ever feel like you stick out like a sore thumb? Alone in a crowd? As if the people who are around you, though having the same very-basic things in common.. are either beneath you or above you?
How about ostracized, black-balled or purposely left-out?
Anything about just simply not fitting in with the people who make up the general populace of where you are?

I feel like that, a fair bit recently. I know I'm a `black sheep`.. I tell myself it's because I speak my mind..and don't tend to care about how you feel about what I say. (granted, I'm attemting more thought-induced responses instead of knee-jerk) There are a few things I cannot stand, and refuse to tolerate.. one of which is lies. Most everyone hates.. HATES to be lied to. Well, there are more ways to like to someone than by speaking.
And I find a lot of folks seem to put on their smiley face.. bleach their blackened wool to a faux-white and bleat their conversations out like good little sheeps.

Do you know what bleach does? Sure, it kills bacteria.. but it doesn't clean dirty things. It just burns the colour out of it. And eventually, it eats away at the cloth beneath, and will destroy the garment.
And as such.. when people put on the smiley face, and act like everything is okay, when it's not... that irritates me. To no end. Have we as a society become so self-focused and selfishly that people are afraid to openly admit their pain when it's plain to others. Especially amongst a group of people that are supposed to be more like a loving family than a dysfunctional psych-ward ?

So excuse me while I bleat under my breath and nibble my grass away from the rest of the flock of you fellow sheeps, but I can't stand the hypocrisy. If there's something bugging me, it's usually fairly evident. ...Now, I understand the need for privacy, and that some things you only share with certain specific individuals.. but come on.. if you're asked how you're doing, and it's miserable.. don't lie and say `fine`.. be honest, and let the person know you'd rather not discuss it.

How hard is that?

The importance of credentials

So.. apparently, having alphabet-soup after your name, or some specific-gibberish is supposed to make you more important, or at least, knowledgable in some respect. Usually somehow related to the alphabet-soup or gibberish after one's name.

Well, it seems I want to partake of this silly-fun. I'm going to wind up taking some certification tests for various programs that I've already taken, and will need to study up on to refresh my ailing memory. As it stands, I've already got a few credentials after my name.. little did I know. They haven't shown up in paper-form yet.. but I've earned them, and should proudly display them. And someday.. I will.

Suppose you suddenly have a sharp stabbing pain in your leg..and can't stand on that leg. Or put any weight on it, and it hurts like the dickens to move it. JoeSchmoe off the street tells you that you've broken your shin and need to get it set and splinted and put in a cast..
Okay.. sounds possible.. nice. Take it under advisement.
You go see JoeSchmoe, M.D. ...and suddenly.. whatever he tells you, must be right. He's got the alphabet soup after his name.. and uses bizarre terms like `fracture` and `hairline` and `owie` that, of course, only alphabet-soup people would understand.

Naturally, we assume doctors, lawyers and such `professionals` know what they're talking about. But what about those other alphabet-soup add-ons that we're not so certain of?
What if suddenly, you run into JoeSchmoe, Sr.V.P. of K.P. & J.D. ??.. Do we know what that means? ..Well, I do, because I made it up. This JoeSchmoe is the Crew-chief of a Clean-up crew.. the Senior Vice President of Kitchen Patrol & Janitorial Duties.
Wat about Joe Schmoe, B.Sc. Eng. N.Ph. & T.Dy's ?

Alphabet soup also seems to command a better dollar-amount per hour give up in exchange for labour. But is that the reason one should have it after their name?... Nooooooo... of course not.

So... until my paperwork comes through, and I take these other cert. tests.. I'll just use some Alpha-bits cereal on my resume`... and maybe some cheerios when negotiating a salary.

The get you coming, they get you going!

Okay.. I must be old.

Because I recall a time when, you paid for something.. you owned it. And there was no major pressure for a warranty, no fear that it would crap out after a year's use, and that more or less (depending on what you bought)..once you finished paying for it, it was done, no more paying for it. ..except for houses or cars, which require upkeep. But how much do you keep paying for a CD, or a pair of pants, or ..uhh.. a bag of apples??

And so.. Game companies have erred from the path of staying true to their audience, in my opinion. Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft were the big guns that blew through the walls and showed the western-world this demon. Plenty of them existed over in EurAsia for a long time now. The difference? You pay your 50$ or more for the game, install it.. and then pay to be able to log-in/on and play the blasted thing. Whereas for most of the ones in EurAsia.. it's a micro-charge (they call it).. where, the game is free.. but for items, or multiple characters, or whatever, it costs you a nominal fee. One-time fee, but these things(items) typically have a limited-time use to them.. let's say, for sake of an arguement, 7-days use before it's removed from your inventory.

The key thing here is.. you pay for the game system or computer. You pay for the internet connection.. you pay for the game. ..and now you must pay to enjoy the thing you've paid for already.
That's like having to throw a wedding every month just to stay married to your spouse.
Or renting your house.. or your car.. and never being able to the thing outright.

To me, this is legal-thievery at it's most money-grubbing-greediest.

The only way I've found to fight back is.. by not playing these games. Not buying them, or using them. ... And I'm not alone.. my friends are now starting to see the idiocy of this. ...and, go figure.. in general, our desire to play games dwindles. Time for a new hobby.. maybe something healthier. I've picked up the bass.. and am slowly getting back into comics and reading. Not sure what my friends are doing. But one thing is certain : It's not wasting our money on these wallet-pigs who whore-out our interest in games.

Time for another update

Yep, yup. Time to do this again.
Forgot to do it friday after the girlfriend's birthday thing.
Which turned out to be a good thing (forgetting to do it)

Thursday: Her Birthday. ... nothing went as planned. ... okay.. ONE thing went as planned.. we happened to be in the same place in the evening.. other than that, nada.
Saturday : Out to dinner with some family(my side) and a relatively enjoyable evening.
Sunday : Spent some of the afternoon with her family.

It's weird.. I can see myself enjoying the rest of my life with her... but then there are some things in the back of my head that nag and scream and hit me with sticks.

So.. all in all.. yeh, seems like things went well.

Guitarists might kill me. Willie, for sure.

Okay.. so, I'm trying to learn guitar in 3 days. Today is one of them. Fingertips on left hand oughta be bleeding, but they refuse. Must to succeed!!

The song I'm trying to learn can be heard HERE . So.. while I play bass.. I can't hit the same levels on bass as can on guitar.. and it's essential I do this on guitar for me to pull this thing off.

If anyone's got tips or tricks ..let me know. I nabbed this image from somewhere online for chords to use.

Restart

Finally.

After a couple of failed attempts.. and advice from Those-Who-Know-More-Than-Me that didn't work ... I've formated my harddrives, removed all the partitions except for the neccessary one(recovery info, etc).. and now it's on to the job of reinstalling things (for the third freakin time).
Windows Vista has a nice function that essentially saves all your crap and throws it into an folder marked ` windows.old`.. so you don't really lose anything if you just install a new OS.
I mistook this for a good thing.

So when I formatted drives (forgetting my days of DOS, and cardinal rule #1- backup to portable storage) I lost all the things that the initial OS install had kept.

So now I get to spend time trying to remember where I found all the nicknacks and items that helped me personalize this hunk of technology.

Ah well. It's nice.. like a clean-slate.. I get to start with a fresh pallete, a blank canvas and can start painting again, as it were.

I did this over the Easter Weekend. Now.. this is a rant for another day.. but man! If you're not a Christian, you shouldn't get the day off. I'm not muslim or hindu or any of that stuff, and I don't get their religious holidays off.. okay..better stop before this post goes into the wrong tangent..
SO.. I did this over the Easter weekend, and it got me thinking about how.. the Messiah went through all that stuff... so we could have a clean slate.. and we want that clean slate.. let Him reformat our brains and habits and patterns.. defrag our souls..to become new blank canvas'.. that He can paint on.

Just for Lar..and others like him

Okay.. so, barring my mental capacity to think of ways around things, I'm just going to get uber-lazy (yes, over-lazy is an option.. cats choose it all the time) and just flaunt this here, and see what happens.

So.. THIS image is a small compilation from school (mashed together from various screenshots of critters I've created through the tools provided in NC Soft's City of Heroes/City of Villains)..

The project was to create an advertisement for a video game. Now.. a 60 is a passing grade, and my teacher(who is no longer a teacher there) slipped it by at a 76 after much harassment from the WoW-fanatic who sat next to me. (hers was much better than mine, and only got something like an 80.. lesson learned: never let a hobby-programmer grade your artwork, even if it's general layout.) This was done with Photoshop, CS3 version.

And THIS (which I scored a 98 on) was done on Illustrator, CS3.. object was to design a website layout. ...You won't be able to see the sticky-notes for the web-head programmers who would(in theory) have looked at it all and turned it into a viable website.

Your comments, opinions, and critiques are welcome. (Especially because I slaughed both projects off in less time than a person enjoys a -really- good cup of coffee)

And no.. don't ask me why I went with `cheese`.. I think it may have been some mental trailing thought about how cheesey the course was turning out to be.....this is all before I swapped from that and hopped on the Accounting/Payroll bus. ^_^

Another thing in the Big List of Stuff I Don't Understand

Okay.. so.. what the heck.
I'm near-indestrucitble sometimes. I've been hit by cars, a boat, a truck, bicycles, soccer players(football to you non-northamericans), walls, fish, pellets(from guns)..hammers..drywall.. my own stupidity.. I've been hit by a lot of things.

Theory says any head-trauma a person suffers should lower their IQ a few points.. I should be as smart as a brick.. maybe a houseplant.. but instead.. here I am.. slacker lazybum I am, I barely study.. and more or less gloss over my books.. take a few notes on things I figure I'll forget..and I still pass my courses with good marks. (88% is good, right?)

I've got a body that.. put me in the middle-ages, I could be ~right at home on a battlefield, swinging an axe into somebody's face~ ..to quote a movie... I really don't take care of myself... and yet, I'm rarely sick.. in decent physical shape.. and smarter than your average bear..

I don't get it.. God makes me one way..and I live a completely different way.. and I'm still here and kicking. And then some.

I don't get it.

Stupid human tricks

Okay.. I don't get it.

People are SO honking dumb! Especially when they talk to little kids/babies or animals. Why do they do that? They talk in that annoying baby-talk with the high-voices and their voices always go up at the end of whatever they're saying like in old-school french class.
What.. do they think the kid/animal's going to understand them better? Like how people raise their voice(volume) and talk s-l-o-w-e-r to folks who don't speak whatever language they're speaking.

I don't get it.
Annoys me.
Just talk to them like they're people(little kids).. geez. No need to pander down to them.. they'll understand. Body language.. tone.. the whole thing.. kids are smarter than we give them credit for..but are also a lot dumber than want to believe they are.

So.. the next time you come across people going stupid over little kids or puppies or whatever.. help them stop making asses of themselves.

Tidbit

Okay.. so tonight was interesting. Nice lil rendition of things tonight.. and the jamming at the end was just.. it was great, in my opinion. Sure, I buggered up a fair bit.. but that's to be expected when you're learning.
What I -want- to learn is how to just play-by-ear.. but that requires more skill than I currently have.
I firmly believe that to play by ear, all you really need is a good knowledge of where the notes on your instrument are.. and what they sound like.. so you can reach them, accompany them, compliment the ones being played.

On another note, yesterday was 3 months with the girlfriend. Didn't get to talk to her, call her, nothing. So I sent her an email. Real romantic, I know. She wasn't there tonight.. turns out she's sick. That sucks (that she's sick). Sometimes I wonder if we're the right people for each other...among other things. I wish there was a simple forumla for knowing if someone is the right person for you..would make life so much simpler. But.. then I guess it'd take a lot of something I'm not understanding out of it, too.

Meh.. so that's it for my thursday.. more or less enjoyable. Off to see the 'morrow.

Occupado

Wow.
Facebook, Twitter, Neopets, Xianz, The Weather Network, MySpace, Various Email Accounts
A random sampling of the places people I know spend their online time.. sort of wasting time..really.
And it IS wasting time.. depending on what's put out/on there.

Steve Brethour once said he refused to get a facebook(heretofore referred as crackbook) account because it was "simpy one more thing I'd have to look after, and I don't want to spend my time on that." Smart man.

Things we waste or invest time on. Time is the only real thing we can never get back. We can mend relationships sometimes.. we can fix/patch/rebuild something like a car or a house.. we can replace things that get broken, like a tv or window.. ...maybe this is why money becomes so important to some people.. because deep in their souls they know they're trading the one thing they can never get more of - time - for a dollar amount.

I ponder about selling my laptop and just spending more time investing in decent things.. working out more.. more cardio.. really really getting into my bass.. and blending it with my harmonica .. reigniting my fires for art and refining what is probably gone rusty in my art-skills. Mental pursuits as well as physically-bettering ones (like the above mentioned cardio).

Discipline.. it'll take discipline.. and the fact that I enjoy videogames and online socializing (is it really socializing??).. I have to admit they've got a hold on me. Found a new game, free, nice blend of a few pay-to-play games I used to waste money on..and I can see it taking root in me. ...better cut that off fast! ... it's one thing to enjoy something.. it's another to keep my lazy ways and ignore what I know is better for me.

And it's all just stuff to keep me occupied.. blinded from what I know I need to do.. get off this laptop.. away from the games, away from a tv, and do something.. healthy. My excuse is that I have no one to do anything with, really. I don't rollerblade well, and I don't like to go places alone.. but I enjoy working out by myself.. so at least there's that. But `working out` is weights.. not cardio, to me. Have a goal.. get to it.. repeat. Like.. don't ask me to go for a walk.. because my response is `where to?`. If you say `hey, let's go for a walk down by the pier`.. Okay.. it's a destination..and away we go.

And there's my harmonica staring at me from the edge of the desk. ... tomorrow is slated as `music refinement day`.. so.. it'll keep until then. And until then.. I'm going to go do something else.. providing I've the willpower to go do it.

Smearin O' th'green

YAR!! wait.. that's not too irish, now is it? Meh.
Anyhow.. it's St.Patrick's Day.. a day for green-dyed beer and clovers and green... wait.. what?? How does a man's name become associated with this stuff? (probably the same way Easter got associated with chocolate rabbits and eggs)

Either way... It's the day.. it's almost over.. if you've got some green on.. good for you ..though I'm not sure why `good for you`.. but anyhow.
And if not.. party-pooper! Ah well.

Slainte` !