Thursday July 30

I've had about 3 days off now. Time off like this is nice in some respects, but all-in-all, I don't think this much free time is good for me. I believe 100% in that old addage about idle minds being the devil's playground and I have often wondered how many of societies ills are simply by bored teenagers. Boggles the mind really.

The big thing I tend to do when I'm bored is eat too much. I don't know why, but that seems to be where I go when I'm any emotion other than happy. When I'm bored I eat. When I'm tired I eat. When I'm stressed I eat. When I'm depressed I eat. I don't know why I do this. I really need a different hobby.

The last few weeks I've kind of had the perfect storm: bored, depressed and a little angry. So naturally, I ate. Then I got frustrated when my weight went up despite all the working out I do and, of course, I ate.

Story of my life

Tuesday July 28

At work the other day I ran into an old teacher. I actually do that a lot, sometimes they recognize me, sometimes they don't. This one clearly didn't. I've seen her in the store before but never said anything, but for some reason, this time I did. It's been a number of years and even knowing my name, I wouldn't have been surprised at all if she still didn't remember me. To my surprise, though, she did and she remembered something I did in her class that I had totally forgotten about.

Back in jr. high, before home football games, we would give our road jerseys to a teach to wear in class that day. I guess it was sort of a school pride thing, but she reminded me that I would frequently give her my jersey to wear. I had totally forgotten that I did this, but she remembered and said that it meant a lot to her, especially as a new teacher (which she was at the time) and that she was sad when the school got rid of the practice.

The point of this seemingly important story is this: it can be strange what people remember and what people forget. A singular even that might be totally insignificant to one person (me, in this case, as I totally forgot about it) might be very important to somebody else.

Strange place the mind is sometimes.

Sunday July 26

I was up at 5am today and my mind was racing. Millions of different things going on inside. One thing I've discovered recently, however, is that I have a lot of anger inside of me. I don't know where it comes from, but it has been coming out more and more recently. I even got snippy with a customer the other day.

I've kept everything bottled up for too long. Hopefully I don't have an explosion one day. Doesn't seem likely, but you never know.

Wednesday July 22

Me handing a customer a video I went to considerable trouble to find: Here we are, the Christmas Cottage

Angry, mean old customer speaking with all seriousness: Why does it cost so much?!?

Yes, that's a problem I can definitely fix...

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Today was one of those days, one of those days where it all just feels so pointless. I work hard to get ahead, but can never manage to do it. I go out of my way to make certain people happy, but they are always ungrateful. What's the point? Blah

Tuesday July 21

I was in an extremely foul mood on Sunday. I get that way sometimes when I usually do nothing but lie around the house all day, but this one was strange because I both worked AND went to the gym. Odd, odd day. In this mood I did something extremely impulsive. I won't say what it was, but the next day I was shocked that I did it because it was so out of character. Oddly enough, however, I don't think I regret it. Things will probably be different, I doubt they will be worse, and they might even be better. I was tempted to even take it a few steps further but glad I didn't because then I probably would have regretted it.

But here's the bottom line: I'm ultimately alone. People can hear me out, sympathize, pretend, but there just aren't a lot of people who get it or me. That's why cancer (and the aftermath) at such a young age is a total bitch... there just aren't a lot of other people out there with the same problem.

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TV DVD's are such a great thing, hard to imagine how a show could have had any long lasting appeal without them. They saved Family Guy, and make it possible for a whole new group of fans to develop for a show even after it isn't on the air anymore.

I started watching Dexter on DVD the other day. Yeah, the show is still on the air, but I never would have started watching it if there wasn't the DVD's. Great great show. He is such a wonderful character and he is played perfectly. Before I started watching, I always got the impression that Dexter was some sort of happy guy serial killer, but he's really not. Yeah, he kills bad guys, but he is also a dark and troubled person, who has some very real flaws. Psychological trauma as a child will do that to you. I'm not sure how the series is going to end, but I find it interesting.

The problem I have, however, is with the sister. I just don't think her character is well written. Some of her lines are kind of. well. dumb. I guess you can't expect perfection, but yesh, give her some good lines!

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The Emmy nominations that came out the other day both infuriated and delighted me. 30 Rock! Lord, explain the appeal of this stupid ass show to me?!? I think the reason it is so popular with the Emmy academy of somesort type people, is that it is basically about them, the t.v. industry. Pure, 100% vanity. Disgusting

On the upside, however, I was glad to see Aaron Paul get a nomination for Breaking Bad. I was confused as to how he didn't get one last year, but this year, his character is a million times better. I feel a special sense of pride in this because it was I who created the Aaron Paul wikipedia page. It has been developed some, but largely still as I left it. I'm so proud.

Saturday July 18

Ugh.... one of THOSE days. I had to close last night, got out around midnight, then I had to open this morning at about 9. That sort of thing always puts me in a crabby mood as it is, but on top of it, I had a royal douche bag as a customer.

Started out innocently enough, she and her boyfriend had a few things and a box of Milk Duds. I scan the Milk Duds twice on accident, which meant that the second bar code got entered in as the price, 700 dollar Milk Duds... crazy eh? It's not unusual, the candy has a real sensitive bar code and most people just laugh it off and give me, literally, 30 seconds to fix it. It's an obvious error. No candy costs 700 bucks.

Instead of the usual joke about how that better be damn good candy for 700 bucks, this one got all huffy and puffy about how they weren't going to pay that much for candy. Obviously. I told them basically to chill out and give me a second to fix the error. I guess they had a problem with my tone because they went and talked to the manager about how I had an attitude problem. Of course the manager is a friend of mine and we kinda laughed it off, but I was aggravated about this for a while as this was my first complaint about my attitude in the year plus a few months that I've been there.

I guess she also had a problem with my gum chewing. Some people.

Those angry with the world fat chicks, you have to watch out for them. They bite.

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I figured that I should mention this: it's the first anniversary of my diagnosis. July 18 2008, the day my life changed forever. Already a year has passed... hard to believe.

Wednesday July 15

Looking back at some of my past entries I've come to realize that this blog is very schizophrenic. So many different subjects covered, and even the way I title my entries is different! That's ok, I guess, I think it's an accurate representation of my thinking, all over the place and lacking in any real consistency. That's fine. I can live with that. But, at least the blog does have some sort of larger purpose, post-cancer life, that has allowed me to maintain it for longer than I have many other blogs.

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I was up at 6am this morning. WAAAAAY too early, I say, yet, I couldn't go back to sleep. This sort of thing is especially hard on days where I have to work until late at night, which makes the day that much longer. I could probably solve this problem by simply going to bed later, but by 11:30 I'm usually falling asleep, regardless if I actually want to or not.

The day always seems to go much faster and smoother when I wake up later. There's only so many things you can do during the course of a day, and the earlier you wake up, the more time you have to exhaust all those things, which leads to boredom. See where I'm going with this?

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I went and saw Bruno yesterday. I was not at all impressed. It wasn't half as funny as Borat and the characters weren't nearly as likable. It was certainly more daring, I'll give it that, but one can only take so many gay jokes in the span of an 90 minute movie. Judging by the laughter in the theater, nobody else was too impressed with it either.

Borat was a nice but grossly ignorant guy, Bruno was just a jerk.

Monday July 13

Parking lots make me damn near homicidal. Cars are flying backwards and forwards, pedestrians are strolling around and nobody is paying any fucking attention to what they are doing, and if they are, they are simply being douche bags who like to cut people off and go around them when they are already backing out. There are certain lots where I feel like I am constantly taking my life into my hands. At Wal-Mart, for example, people don't seem to understand that pushing a shopping cart does not give you the right to dart out in front of two lanes of traffic!

But what really gets me are those that stop right in the middle of the lot to wait for a space that is 10 feet closer than one that is open. Really, in the time it takes you to wait for some old lady to load her groceries into the trunk you could have walked the extra distance and been in the store already. Odds are these people who wait are fat and could use the extra walking anyway so why are they holding up traffic?!?

Bah!

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I had one of THOSE customers yesterday. She comes to the customer service desk, tells me she rented the wrong movie, and wanted to know if she could get a rain check (i.e. free rental). This happens sometimes and it always confuses me as to how. Yes, sometimes the movies are out of place, your fellow customers are often not courteous enough to put them back correctly, but the movies are clearly marked and know what you are getting by simply looking at the disk. But we couldn't spend a whole second on that now could we?

We aren't supposed to do this, but we could just tell that she was going to be one of those that hollers, screams and annoys until she gets what she wants, so we just gave her the rain check to avoid the trouble. She comes back, two minutes later, and asks me if I had any Unborn Child up at the desk (checked in, but not put out yet). I was confused... I had NEVER heard of this movie before. After a few minutes of confused conversation, turns out she just wanted a copy of The Unborn, of which we had plenty out on the floor. So not only did she get the wrong movie because she didn't look at the disk she got, she didn't even really know what movie she wanted in the first place.

Moron

Saturday July 11

A day in the life of a Hastings employee:

Angry Maybe Customer Maybe Not on Phone: Is Rhonda there?

Me (AKA confused and busy Hastings employee): Like, somebody who works here named Rhonda?

AMCMNP: Uh, yeah?

Me: Um..... hold on

Me, to person next to me: There isn't a Rhonda that works here is there?

PNM: Uh.... no?

Me, to AMCMNP: Uh, there's no Rhonda that works here

AMCMNP: You are Hastings, right, the one by Clancy's (local bar)?

Me: Uh yeah, that's the one, but Rhonda doesn't work here

AMCMNP: Sure?

Me: Yes

AMCMNP (angry that Rhonda doesn't work here): HMMMPH!

I'm sorry that Rhonda doesn't work here and has never worked here?

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I noticed a bizarre sign in the locker room at the gym today saying, basically, that this is a family zone and show all necessary precaution because of the kids around changing to use the pool. I thought that this was a wonderfully subtle way to tell all the old (often fat) guys who like to walk around naked in the locker room to cover up. At one of my previous gyms, the Royal Spa, this sort of thing got so out of hand it was almost uncomfortable to go in there at all!

Thursday July 9

One of the hardest days of my life was when I finally decided to tell somebody about swollen, and still growing, testicle. What provoked me finally admitting it, I don't really remember, but it had been something I stalled on for a long time. We were in the car, ironically, going to Las Cruces to look at apartments for the coming fall semester.

It just came out.

The tumor (as it turned out) had been growing all summer. I have my theories on when it all started (a later blog), but I had told myself that if the swelling didn't go down by the end of May, I'd tell somebody. May came and went, I still didn't say anything. So did June, July and most of August.

I was never one of those guys who was afraid of going to the doctor and I couldn't really tell you what made me so afraid this time. I think part of it was the fact that I had so convinced myself that it was nothing serious, that I didn't really see the need. Big mistake, obviously. My tumor was 9cm when they removed it and I still get crap about it to this day.

Right up until the moment I saw the urologist, I believed that it was either a hydrocele or a hernia. Both suck, but not nearly as bad as cancer. Believe it or not, for the longest time, cancer never even crossed my mind. Perhaps it should have. The evidence was as clear as day.

With cancer, of course, waiting is the absolute worst thing you could do. If I had said something in May, like I had originally planned, I might have even been able to avoid the whole chemo thing! But even not knowing it was cancer, nothing good comes out of letting a medical problem fester. Nothing.

Tuesday July 7

Just finished reading I Survived Cancer But Never Won the Tour de France by Jim Chastain. I'm not sure how I found this book, exactly. I have this morbid fascination with looking at the cancer section of my local bookstore, perhaps it just caught my eye. In any event, I'm glad I did because it was a pretty good read. His case was a lot more severe than mine, he even lost an arm, but in a sense, all cancer stories have similarities, a lot of pity from those around you, a certain loss of dignity by being put constantly into embarrassing situations, the contemplation of mortality and, of course, the throwing up.

I agree with him on nearly every point he made about life with cancer, especially the diminishing returns of the "cancer card." One area, however, I think he is dead wrong. He essentially argues that the hot nurse is a media created myth that has no basis in reality. I think this is a lie wrapped around layers of wrongness. At the cancer center where I got treated, there was essentially nothing but hot nurses, especially the blonde skinny type, which I like.

In such a situation, I'm not sure if a hot nurse is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, on a strictly shallow and superficial level, they are nice to see when you are in a poor physical state. On the other hand, however, they see you at your absolute worst. You always want to try and play it sly and cool when around attractive people, but this is impossible to do when you are on chemo. They also tend to pity you, which is probably the last thing you want from a person you are physically attracted to.

All in all, I guess it's a wash. I just wanted to point out that hot nurses do exist.

The News: Sarah Palin

I've never been a particularly huge fan of Sarah Palin. I think she was about as good a choice as John McCain could have made, but frankly, I find her to be a bit of a dim bulb. She does, however, have natural political talents and has the potential to go down as one of America's great polititians. The math works:

Charisma + Populist appeal + Lack of any real intelligence = POLITICS GOLD

That said, I was completely miffed by her decision to resign office last week and I'm not sure what to make of it. A few thoughts:

1) This is some grand, master scheme to organize a kick ass 2012 run: From this perspective, it especially makes no sense. Why risk having your name taken out of the news for such a long period of time when it is going to matter most? Granted, governor of Alaska isn't the most glamorous position, but to make a strong run against what I'm sure will be a very strong incumbent, wouldn't it make sense to still be in the game so to speak?

2) She wanted to shield her family from the constant attacks: This has been the favorite reason for those in the right-wing media (and with my family), but I'm not too sure if it passes the politician smell test. It seems almost.... I don't know... too sincere? The families are always dragged through the mud. That's how the game works and I'm sure she knew exactly what she was getting into by saying "yes" to the national spotlight. If anything, she could use it more to her advantage when trying to appeal to the common folk.

but the most interesting one:

3) A major scandal in the works: My gut tells me this isn't true. But then again, I never would have guessed the whole Sanford-Argentina thing either. Considering some of the crazy stuff that she has come forward with, if there is a scandal, I can assure you it will be a doozy. This is the only one that makes obvious sense here, but Palin has been watched so closely for so long, I can't imagine a major scandal going on without somebody knowing about it. Just doesn't seem likely.

Bottom line: I have no freaking clue what she's thinking.

Sunday July 5

Back from the family reunion in good old Roswell, NM. It's kind of stupid that we always pick the 4th of July to go there, that's when all the alien stuff is going on, but such is life, I guess.

As I told my brother, these trips aren't about having fun, they are about survival. Several things tend to trip me up:

1) the food: It's very different from what I eat at home. A lot of it just stinks, for one. There are NO GOOD RESTAURANTS in that town and the ones people like to go to, are just awful. The stuff we eat at the fam's house is different too, a lot of milk is used. Not good for my lactose intolerant ways.

2) the allergies: The wind and the dust are in more ample quantities down there than they are here. There's also the dogs... oye the dogs... Now, I'm a dog guy. I love dogs. My allergies can even handle one dog, two dogs, maybe even 3, but when they let 6 or 7 dogs run around the house, my allergies tend to go wild. A few years ago, one of the worst allergies attacks I've ever had in my life was because of the dogs.

3) usual family uncomfortableness: Those wonderful family moments that everybody has.

This time around, the trip was about as good as could be expected. My stomach wasn't as aggravated, the dogs were kept outside and the family strangeness was kept to a minimum.

So all-in-all, not too bad a trip.

Wednesday July 1

I had a realization yesterday, not quite to the level of an epiphany, but still something I should have discovered before.

Not that it makes any difference now, of course, but I was discussing going to college with a friend yesterday and I realized.... I just wasn't ready for it. A lot of people I know go to (or went to) the community college here before going off to a university (if they do at all), but not me, I moved off right away. Looking back, I think that was a mistake. I don't think I was ready for it psychologically. I should have stayed here longer.

For as mature as I seemed to be at the time, and as much as I told myself I was ready to move away, fact was, I just wasn't. Every bad habit I ever had in my life came back and several new habits developed. Some of which, like the binge eating, I'm still dealing with. I became isolated and depressed and couldn't deal with life on my own. Perhaps a few more years of semi-autonomy in jr. college would have done be much better.

Like I said, though, there isn't really anything I can do about it now other than just deal with the aftermath.