Thursday August 20

Some people just never learn from their mistakes and by some people, I mean Congressional Democrats. Rich Lowry said it on Fox yesterday and I totally agree, they are making the same mistake with health care that they made several years ago with Clinton's plan, ramming too much too quickly down the throats of Americans. Different tactically yes, but the same basic problem.

What is this fascination some people have with trying to change the world over night? One of America's finest qualities, I think, is that it doesn't respond well to rapid change. Slow, steady change is the way to go, and make it much more likely to stick long-term . What they should have done, and what I mistakenly thought they were going to do, is do a health care overhaul piece by piece and before people realize, bang, socialized medicine. But I think I give those morons in Congress too much credit. I used to think that it took some sort of special intelligence to be a high ranking official with our government, but now I realize that the truly smart people stay out of that business completely.

Like they say, politics is Hollywood for ugly people.

But enough of that, more practically, I start school here in a few hours. I only have class on Tuesday and Thursday, 4 classes each day, and I'm starting to think that it might be a mistake to try and cram so much into one day. Not that I had that much choice, mind you, but I probably could have found a way around it.

A nice thing about it, though, is that it gives me a good, solid, block of time for my new job, which I got the run down on yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be doing, but it's in the policy analysis center, so I assume I'm going to be doing..... uh...... policy analysis? I met my boss (although I use the term loosely, he looks to be about 26 haha) and set my schedule and now everything seems to be rolling.

I think part of the reason I was in such a pissy mood the other night was the uncertainty of the new semester. See what a little bit of anxiety does to me? But now that things are a bit more clear, I feel pumped, primed and ready to take on the world.

Tuesday August 18 part II

Fall 2009.... The List

1) Clean up this fucking disgrace of an apartment

2) Get my fat ass to lose some weight... a goal of sub-200 by the end of the semester

3) A new wardrobe... I fucking hate everything I own

4) Cut soda consumption in half.... my teeth are stained and eventhough it's mostly diet, I don't think that much can be good for me

5) Read two books a month

6) Send fewer bitchy emo texts to people about how pathetic I am

Tuesday August 18

Been longer than I thought since I've written in here. I should stop trying to force it and just do it whenever I feel like, but I always feel the need to have some sort of consistent schedule when writing in the blog.

Anyway, a busy few days:

The big news, first of all, is that I'm back in Las Cruces to start the new semester. I had a fairly easy trip down and stopped in Albuquerque for a few hours and saw an old friend of mine from UNM that I haven't seen in years. Our relationship was almost becoming a joke in that we text each other almost every day, yet, never saw each other, even when we lived in the same town. Such is the nature of 21st century friendship, I guess.

My last few days in Farmington were fairly eventful, seeing people and whatnot. We had a minor crisis on Sunday morning when we realized the basement had some water damage. This is probably the 4th or 5th flood we've had down there and having to haul some water damaged stuff out to the dump was not quite how I wanted to spend my last day in Farmington, but I guess it's better than being a lazy bum.... which I did on Saturday. My mom took the whole thing less than heroically, but that is her nature. The flood combined with one of my brothers leaving for the first time caused nearly a full-scale nervous breakdown, although the rest of us suspect that my brother leaving played a much larger part. She'll be ok though.... I hope anyway.

Friday August 14

Had a pretty fun day yesterday. Hastings was chosen (right word?) to work the concession stand for the local bigtimeevent baseball game last night and I was volunteered by the store manager to work in it. I've worked in a concession stand before. No big deal there. It was kind of fun to work with my co-workers in a different setting. I could have, however, done without the snootiness of the regular workers who mocked my inability to know the price of frito pies off the top of my head. I'm sure they couldn't tell you the price of a movie (with tax) off our best renter wall either.

We got out about 9:45 and I was tempted to just go home, but I was badgered into going to the bowling ally to hang out with a few people afterward. I had a drink, which was strange, because a lot of these people had never seen me drink before. I also bowled, which was fun, and I'm glad to know that I STILL suck at bowling. All-in-all, I'm glad I went.

For some strange reason yesterday, in my idle moments, I was reading my mom's Time magazine and read two interesting articles. The first was the review of Amy Adam's new movie Julie and Julia. A somewhat uninteresting review as a whole, but had this little nugget:

There are the memoirists like Child who write about what made them famous, or infamous. There are unremarkable people who write about a remarkable thing that happened to them. And there is the 21st century memoirist who makes him or herself interesting in order to write about it.

So, so true. This is sort of the peril of the Internet age. On one hand, anybody willing to do something stupid can become famous. On the other hand, ANYBODY WILLING TO DO SOMETHING STUPID CAN BECOME FAMOUS. Oh, what a world.

The second article was the cover story "The Myth About Exercise". What they basically did here was cram 3 paragraphs worth of story into about 5 pages. The basic idea is that heavy exercise may be counter productive to weight loss because it causes us to eat more afterwards. Like oh so many popular magazine stories, this one seems to get the facts right, but misses the point entirely. Not once during this whole article was the word metabolism used. It even used that old canard about how if you eat ____ (in this case, a muffin) you would need to do ____ minutes of ____ exercise. That may be true as far as it goes, but without bringing metabolism into account, which is increased by physical activity, you are totally missing a huge part of the equation. People who work out a lot burn more calories in the course of everything they do, not just the work out itself.

Thursday August 13

I keep telling myself to do this in the morning or else I will run out of steam and not do it at all. That's what Success Magazine told me, anyway. Get the creative juices flowing early. It does seem that I think of a lot more crazy shit when I write in the blog in the morning as opposed to the afternoon, but I was so groggy when I woke up this morning, who the hec knows what I would have written.

I'm feeling old. I'm tired, my body aches and worst of all, I really have nothing to show for it. If I was busting my ass in the gym, like I am, and having it take a toll on my body, but I still looked great, it would be worth it. I don't though. My weight hasn't dropped a pound. Maybe I'm a little leaner, I don't know, but certainly not enough for it to be worth it. My eating habits have been the problem. Always have been, especially when I'm at home and don't usually do my own cooking. That's the one thing I'm almost kinda sorta looking forward too when I get back to Cruces on Monday, having an easier time modifying my eating habits.

190, that's my goal. My arms are looking pretty lean, and that's good, but I still have a flabby stomach. I guess pizza, Chinese food and Taco Bell will do that to you.

I watched two movies yesterday, I Love You, Man and Fragments (aka Winged Creatures). The first one was pretty funny, the second I'm not sure I understand. Fragments had two Oscar winners and another nominee yet it was kind of an uninteresting movie. Forest Whitaker has made some strange post-Oscar choices, but he's trying, and thankfully hasn't yet gone down the Cuba Gooding Jr. road to oblivion.

Wednesday August 12

Didn't write a blog entry yesterday. I didn't have much to say, but the real reason was that I just didn't want to. Been working too hard lately, tired and grumpy. Work hasn't been too bad though, less stressful. I think it's because I'm squarely in the "I'm leaving soon, I don't give a fuck" mood. Strange place to be. I've quit jobs before, but I don't think I've ever felt that way at any of the other ones. Perhaps that's a good sign that my days at Hastings are done for good this time.

Oh well. Onward and upward, right?

You know what would be cool? To own a deli. I was watching this show on the Travel channel last night, which was a big mistake, btw, it just made me really hungry, and if you have a good one, you can make tons of money. But what do I know about sandwiches, right? Pipe dream Brian pipe dream.

Had a discussion at Starbucks yesterday about the futility of thinking too hard about the future. If I had to guess, I would say that roughly 10% of our lives are under our direct control. Things happen to us and we have to operate around or within that structure of the universe. What's the point of worrying so much about the future when it will, by and large, take care of itself?

Monday August 10

A close then open the next day is always kind of a bitch. Everything always starts out good, but around 12 or 1, the fatigue sinks in and I start to get grumpy. Yesterday, though, while tired, everything went pretty smoothly. I did have this group, whom I call the moron brigade, come in and sell us more videos. They all look straight out of Gangland and act like a bunch of damned idiots while in our store. One, the guy who seems to be the leader, openly admitted he was out on parole. Another said he went to (alternative school for bad kids) High School. I'm not sure what the 3rd ones story is, but I'm sure he's done something. The brigade curses in our store (loudly), is boorish and, what annoys me the most, deliberately sets off our alarms over and over again. Ugh.

Later that evening I went and was G.I. Joe. I knew it was going to be bad, and it was, really, really bad. So bad, in fact, that it was almost entertaining. Almost. People in the audience were certainly laughing, but NOT because it was funny. The plot was stupid, the premise more so, the characters were horribly undeveloped and the dialogue was terrible. So naturally, it will make millions of dollars and have 2 or 3 sequels.