Bummer today. The guy who's my best friend here was fired today. I'm pretty bummed about it and I think it was unfair. Completely unfair. It sucks because he's a good guy and really loved working here.

Very sucky.

Oh, and my shin hurts like a son of a bitch, so I don't think I'm going to the gym. I need to give it a rest.

Bye.

I receive the RealAge update every day, and today's worried me a bit:

What are you doing this weekend? If you put making new friends at the top of your list, it just might help you live a longer life.
In one study, socially isolated men had an 82% higher risk of dying from heart disease compared to men with large networks of social support. Expand your social circle this weekend by joining a volunteer or recreational group in your community, or by reconnecting with an old pal.

I think I fall into that "socially isolated men" category too damn well. Damnit! I guess I have to try and meet some people.

I have an amazingly large amount of freetime now and it's disturbing (I think I've said this before). Last night after finishing watching the commentary track on Training Day I even went for a nice, long walk. I'm trying to increase the amount of activity I'm getting in order to get through this immense plateau I've reached.

Wish me luck.

Updating in the middle of the day! Shame on me!

I just wanted to quickly post a note about the weekend. I'm proud to say I didn't do a damn thing. I slept at least eight hours every night -- which is a lot for me -- and watched some movies, read, and took care of the cats. The movies I saw were Donnie Darko and Ghost World. Donnie Darko is interesting and includes some good dialogue, but it's worth a rental and it's especially worthwhile to watch the commentary track because you get a much better idea of what the writer/director was trying to do. I never thought I'd say this, but, Patrick Swayze was great in this movie. Very funny. Ghost World was very, very good and I wish I'd seen it in the theatre. Well written, well acted, interesting and involving without being a painful collection of awkward vignettes loosely strung together to create a story. Overall it was excellent and I recommend it. I may even go and buy it -- I just wish it had a commentary track. I was disappointed by the lack of one.

Next, I watch Training Day. It's nice to have a Blockbuster nearby.

The sitecounter is at something like 955 and I'm excited to see it approaching 1000, despite the fact that it's probably only about a dozen people who stop by regularly.

Bye.

I've managed to have a fairly relaxing weekend. I slept late Saturday and Sunday, and went to the gym both days as well as going Friday night. I went late last night to take care of my friends' cats and was a little concerned that I hadn't seen one of them so I sat around and listened for a while. After a few minutes I heard some meowing and traced it down to their basement. She'd been locked in the office since they left and, wow, was she glad to see me. I took her upstairs right away and she ran for the food and water. Luckily cats are desert animals, so she was probably just hungry since she'd been down there for a couple days. I'll stop by again tonight and make sure everything's fine.

I just returned from seeing Insomnia with Pacino and Robin Williams. It was very good. I recommend it for a matinee.

Outside of that, I've been watching a coupld of DVDs. I watched HighFidelity, Crumb, Get Shorty, and now I'm watching Shanghai Noon. Good stuff. I may need to buy some new DVDs soon. I may go check out my local store.

Right now!

Hmm, I realized that I only updated on Monday this week and I wanted to get something on here before the weekend. I may be in this weekend, but I may not have much to say.

This week was good. My replacement arrived and I trained him, so now I only have one job to do, which means I have a reasonable amount of work to do and can probably start getting out of here at a reasonable time from now on. Y'know, unless I'm screwing around. It feels weird not to have so much to do that I can't see an end in sight. I'm hoping I get used to it. Maybe I can even get a social life.

Last night I went to see Panic Room at about 10:00. I walked over to the theatre, asked for the ticket and the woman behind the counter said, "You'll have the theatre all to yourself. No one else is seeing that tonight." And, sure enough, there was no one but me there. It was pretty cool. Good movie, too. I really like David Fincher's style and the pacing was excellent. I recommend it.

One of the guys at work is headed home because his mom died yesterday, so I have to take care of his cats, so I'm headed there later. First, though, it's time for a trip to the gym, then dinner.

Maybe I'll post some this weekend.

Okay, I have to recap the last couple of days.

Sunday I got up when Becca called and we made plans to go wander Pike Place Market again. I was more than happy to pick them up from the ferry and go again, so I got dressed and drove over to the ferry. Unfortunately, I didn't know exactly where it was, so I ended up searching for about 40 minutes before I finally found it over in West Seattle. Nowhere near where we were the day before. Annoying!

After I picked them up we went back to the Market and wandered around not really looking for anything in particular. Becca eventually picked up a canvas bag, I bought a lavendar beeswax candle, and we snacked on anything that looked good...and there's a lot of good-looking food. Actually, we were pretty good about eating decent food. We walked from about 11:00 A.M. 'til about 7:00 P.M., so we had a full day of exercise. We walked through the market, all the way over to the International District and then back along the pier to the back of the Market and up. We tried some "bubble tea", also called "pearl tea". It's tea mixed with milk and some flavoring that has a mass of big tapioca balls in the bottom of the cup. Very weird, but very tasty. The "bubbles" are a little off-putting, but fun.

After a brief dinner of appetizers at the Pike Pub & Brewery, I dropped them back at the ferry and drove in to work to write some more on the articles for the next issue of the magazine. It's funny and problematic, because I've been writing copy for so long that I have a hard time switching back to prose -- especially when I don't know exactly what I have to say. I'm used to being able to expound on anything, but now I really have to know exactly where I'm headed to write at all. Argh. I'll keep plugging away.

Today I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on and did a pretty good job of getting things done. At 5:00 I picked up Doug and Becca, we grabbed some dinner and I dropped them at their hotel -- they leave early tomorrow, so they wanted to be near SeaTac. Now I'm chatting with Kevin R-R and updating.

Now! To work!

You guessed it! It's midnight Saturday and I'm at work! Woohoo! Actually, I'm here doing some writing for the magazine, but my eyes were hurting from looking at the computer so I did some work for my job to give my eyes a rest. They still hurt, but they're not watering anymore. That's good.

Becca and Doug are in town. We had a good time on Friday...once I managed to find their damn hotel! We went stright down to Pike Place Market and walked around. I'd never been there and now that I have been I can say that I'll definitely be going back. It's a very, very cool place. Lots of crap, but even more of it is very neat. It's like a high-class flea market/mall with the feel of a farmer's market. Like I said, very cool. We hit a number of the stores -- hit as in 'shopped', not hit as in 'robbed' -- then went to dinner at the Athenian restaurant (see it in Sleepless in Seattle!). After lunch Becca wanted to get gelato from a place she went to all the time when she lived here, so we found that. Yum, good stuff.

Our curiousity sated, we hopped in the car and went to work to pick up tickets for Star Wars and went to that. It was good, not great, but certainly better than Episode 1. Still not as good as any of the first three, but still enjoyable. The thing that bothered me about it was that it was easy to tell which parts of the movie they're planning on turning into computer games. The most glaring was the chase through the city. It played on-screen like a computer game. I dunno, it just annoyed me. And, can I say, wow, is Natalie Portman a cutie? I thought her Captain Kirk impersonation* at the end was a bit lame, though.

We had a quick dinner, blech, and then they went on the ferry to Vashon Island to spend the night and Saturday with Becca's aunt and uncle. Today I went to the gym and did some writing. Not nearly enough, but hey, what are you gonna do? I've managed to get some good stuff done, just not enough.

Tomorrow I'll head to the gym and I think meet up with Doug and Becca for another fun day of exploring the city. She'd like to get back to the city center and check more of her old stomping grounds out.

I'll let you know what happens.

* I'm referring to when the cat-creature rips her shirt and in the next cut she has her midrif showing. Goofy.

Honestly I tried to log in a couple times in the last few days, but Blogger was very slow to respond or wouldn't respond at all. This is the first time I've had a little free time to play, so, here I am.

Here's the most interesting Google Search that's hit Nothing Good in a while. What an odd choice.

I've been watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season One DVD set that a friend lent me. I've only ever seen one or two of the shows before and I've really been enjoying the episodes. I've watched all twelve from the first season and now I'm checking out the commentary and interviews.

Four of us at work are trying to start a dinner night, but we're having a hard time finding a night that will work for everyone on a bi-weekly basis. I'm not going to let it die, though, so I'll keep you updated on how everything works out.

I'm in Seattle and one of the popular food dishes around here it teriyaki, whether it be chicken, pork, beef, whatever. And I haven't been overly impressed by any that I've had, but I found a place in Redmond that has amazing spicy chicken teriyaki. I think it may rival Bahn Thai in terms of taste, but it has a nice simplicity that Bhan Thai's food doesn't. I just had it for dinner, so it's on my mind...and in my stomach.

I've been frustrated by working out because I haven't really lost weight in a while and, in fact, I've gained a bit of weight in the past couple of months. I decided it was time to buckle down and really get serious again. I've lost about 70 pounds in the last two years and have as much to go before I'll be as in shape as I'd like. I wasn't getting anywhere, so I did some research online and picked up a book to collect as much infor as I could. Luckily, I found some good stuff, so I've been sticking to what I should be eating completely faithfully (seriously, no snacking at all) and I found out I have to up the intensity of my workouts. Last night I was at the gym for two-and-a-half hours and I'm pretty damn happy about it. If I keep this up I should be back on track and dropping some weight again soon. I'm very pleased...and I hope it works.

Becca and Doug arrive tomorrow for the weekend, so I think I have to go and get a good night's sleep. I'll update you on the cool things we do over the weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, I found this in A Soldier of the Great War and I wanted to post it.

The spark of life is not gain
Nor is it luxury.
The spark of life is movement.
Color.
Love.
And furthermore...
If you really want to enjoy life, you must work quietly and humbly to realize your delusions of granduer.

I like that.

Another one of these goofy things.


Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

You are Optimus Prime!

Vast, red and ready to turn into a lorry at the slightest provocation, you are a robot to be reckoned with. Although sickeningly noble, you just can't resist a good interplanetary war, especially when Orson Welles is involved. You have friends who can shoot tapes from their chests. Tapes that turn into panthers. And other friends who are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs who jump out of planes. Will you have my children?

Like I said, goofy.

The days fly by and I fail to update my blog as a matter of course. I'm very disappointed in myself. Although, really, not much is happening here. I went for a long walk on Thursday with one of the women from work and my shins hurt like hell for the first two-thirds of the walk, but then the endorphines kicked in and I was feeling fine. And, luckily, they weren't sore the next day either. Friday I went out with some people from work and one of our international distributors -- from Chile -- it was fun, but not what I wanted to be doing. Saturday was full of going to the gym, running errands with some people, and then going to a party at a friend of a friend's place. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed some good conversation with people. I didn't get to bed until four A.M. so I slept late, hit the gym, and now I'm at work. Pretty damn exciting, eh?

I was a good son/grandson/brother and sent my mom, grandma, and sisters some flowers for Mother's Day. They liked them, so that makes me happy. I knew I wasn't going to be able to see them, so I wanted to do something nice.

This is going to seem like a pathetic thing to say, but; sometimes I forget how lonely I am. I really thrive on having a group of friends and family. It's been hard to be "alone" for so long. And now, when I'm starting to develop some friends I feel like I'm being very...needy, clingy...and I'm afraid I may scare them off. Ah, well, perservere. And, no, I'm not depressed, just sussing some things out using the blog as a place to get my thoughts out.

More soon.

So, I went to pick up some RCA cables today at the Circuit City across the street from work and all I could find were fairly expensive ones. The helpful salesperson was there to give me a hand and as soon as I'd picked some out he took them to ring them up. Before he could do that I asked where the portable CD players were and he directed me over to the right area. I checked them out and decided not to get one, but he was busy with someone else. No problem, I killed time checking out the new mini stereo systems (the nice ones, not those boombox-type things). As I was looking around I noticed some other RCA cable for about one-third the price.

I was really annoyed and then found a much cheaper version of the video cable I was looking for. So, I left the first cables behind and found someone else to ring me out, so he didn't get any commission from me. Bastard. I ended up spending $20 instead of $45, but he didn't see a penny of it. I complained to the person that rung me out, too, and she was very apologetic.

Changing gears; another friend of mine is getting divorced. Bummer. That seems to be going around lately. He seems okay, but he's still very stressed about the whole thing. I hope I get to see him in the next couple of months.

I've been really happy with how working out has been going lately and I've even made a little headway on losing weight, but I really have to be careful about what I eat. That's okay though, because I've been very incautious lately and I've been paying for it. I'm off to the gym tonight to try to make my chest and triceps as sore as possible. I'm pretty proud of the fact that the last couple of workouts I've had have made me sore. That means they're working.

Tomorrow I get to see Spider-Man, only this time it's paid for by work -- and I get to take time off of work to go. It doesn't get any better than that!

Pop culture update: Because I've finished all of my DVDs I've had to rent some. This week I've seen Zoolander, The Buena Vista Social Club, and I still have another disk to watch, but I can't remember what it is. Maybe Heist?

That's all for now.

Too much fun not to post this right away: Movie Science!

I dedicate this link to the new Spider-Man movie. Don't follow it if you can't handle spiders. And big ones!

Things are going well. I received an email from Andrew. He's well. He's been at White Wolf for about a month now and he's trying to whip S&S into shape. He's also flipping out over the new Marvel game. It's fun to see people get into what you make. Luckily I now have a connection at WW again, so I can get some free stuff. Now I have to figure out what I want.

Oh, I didn't find any shoes last night, but I did find a picture frame that I've stuck some photos in and hung on the wall already. This weekend I'm going to make room in my storage unit and store some more boxes. I'm tired of having them clutter my living space. Besides I have to get my bike in there and right now there's no room.

I'm officially watching the last of my DVDs. I'm most of the way through Strange Days, and over the last week I finished off the new Romeo + Juliet and The Usual Suspects DVDs. So now I'm going to rent some things to see if I like them -- besides, I have a Blockbuster(?) gift certificate to use from Christmas. I've been keeping a list of movies I've wanted to see, but never have. Maybe some of the Thin Man movies, or other Orson Welles flicks, or recent things I've missed (Heist being high on that list). Feel free to send me some movie suggestions through the "contact" button above.

I need some new clothes, too. Maybe I'll look this weekend. See ya!

The grass is always greener.

I can go home. But I'm bummed because I have nothing to do. You'd think I'd be happy to have some time away from work, but instead I'm upset. I don't have anything to do and no one to go do something with. It sucks. This is supposed to be fun time.

Maybe I'll go buy some shoes and have dinner.

Here's a couple things you might enjoy.

I'm outie.

Man, I'm such a slacker. I haven't posted for days. Sorry about everyone who's looking for updates on my exciting life.

As usual, I've been working a lot and, unfortunately, not getting to the gym enough -- although I have been very good with food lately.

I went out for dinner last night with one of the people from work. It was great. I got to relax and not think about work. I really needed it.

Work has been a big stressor for me lately because I'm trying to do two jobs and I haven't been taking time off to recover, so I've been tired. Drained, really. Speaking of work, we launched the Marvel HeroClix game today so there's more stuff on our site to check out. And here's a cool article about the game.

And finally, as requested by Kim.

I swear I'll try to post more often now that I've finished much of my work.