Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Love with an incurable condition
Here's a story about a woman with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer and how it changed her life.
MSNBC is re-publishing this from CondeNast, the publisher behind Wired Magazine. I admire this woman's ability to talk about how being diagnosed -- being told face to face that the clock is ticking and time is running out -- filled her with a hunger for life. And a hunger for love.
I'm going to end with this quote, because it just feels relevant to how i'm feeling these days:
MSNBC is re-publishing this from CondeNast, the publisher behind Wired Magazine. I admire this woman's ability to talk about how being diagnosed -- being told face to face that the clock is ticking and time is running out -- filled her with a hunger for life. And a hunger for love.
I'm going to end with this quote, because it just feels relevant to how i'm feeling these days:
"You can wake up pissed off or you can focus on everything you’re grateful for."Tomorrow I could die in a fiery car wreck. Or earn myself a Darwin Award (we all know how I love four wheelers and ramps). No point in stressing over System.OutOfMemory exceptions and bills that are a day late, or dinner plans undone. Sometimes just reading/hearing a quote like this, I can literally feel a mountain of stress just melt off my back, and whatever black tendrils of angst coiled around my heart relax just a little bit. So I thought I'd share.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Another Birthday Came and Went
Another Year, another birthday. Another weekend of blurry memories.
I'd like to honestly state that my reckless, feckless, and boundless partying was getting less over the top and less self-indulgent as I grew older and my ability to recuperate by Monday gets weaker. However, that's not the case. It is some measure of improvement that this was the first time I got black out drunk in six years. I had not been that close to lit up. I'd like to add that I'm dealing with circumstances where I am not driving, have no stairs to navigate, am surrounded by friends, most of our valuables are locked up, and one of the roommates is sober if there were an emergency.
All that aside, I'd like to introduce a new house party benchmark: The Wilson Index. Its the number of unintended overnight guests, plus the number of people who have memory blackouts, plus the number of people who ended up getting some form of ass that night, divided by the number of roommates present at the party. In this case, the Wilson Index was something like 3.33333. Good times.
Party aside, this feels like one of the busiest months of my life. A friend of mine is working at a venture capital corporation after leaving a failed start up. He's following the startup's CEO and CTO. He's pitching ideas and having me sneak a peak as he searches for funding. Reviewing his applications, providing decent feedback in both a business sense, and a technical sense, as well as working and classes has been exhausting.
I actually have a decent costume for halloween this year. I'm going as Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I'll post pictures of the costume later. I wore it to WVU's Halloween Swing Dance. It can get very hot swing dancing in two layers of clothing. Leaves me out of breathe.
So here were my birthday goals.
But assuming all goes well, I've got the perfect knock-knock joke to break the ice.
I'd like to honestly state that my reckless, feckless, and boundless partying was getting less over the top and less self-indulgent as I grew older and my ability to recuperate by Monday gets weaker. However, that's not the case. It is some measure of improvement that this was the first time I got black out drunk in six years. I had not been that close to lit up. I'd like to add that I'm dealing with circumstances where I am not driving, have no stairs to navigate, am surrounded by friends, most of our valuables are locked up, and one of the roommates is sober if there were an emergency.
All that aside, I'd like to introduce a new house party benchmark: The Wilson Index. Its the number of unintended overnight guests, plus the number of people who have memory blackouts, plus the number of people who ended up getting some form of ass that night, divided by the number of roommates present at the party. In this case, the Wilson Index was something like 3.33333. Good times.
Party aside, this feels like one of the busiest months of my life. A friend of mine is working at a venture capital corporation after leaving a failed start up. He's following the startup's CEO and CTO. He's pitching ideas and having me sneak a peak as he searches for funding. Reviewing his applications, providing decent feedback in both a business sense, and a technical sense, as well as working and classes has been exhausting.
I actually have a decent costume for halloween this year. I'm going as Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I'll post pictures of the costume later. I wore it to WVU's Halloween Swing Dance. It can get very hot swing dancing in two layers of clothing. Leaves me out of breathe.
So here were my birthday goals.
- Get "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" Season 3 on DVD.
- Pay off half my credit card debt.
- Ask someone to dinner.
But assuming all goes well, I've got the perfect knock-knock joke to break the ice.
Me: Knock, Knock.Anyway, I have one exam left -- really my own exam, since I quit Data Mining due to Professor Blowhard's arrogant attitude towards the value of my time vs. the fruits of my labor for him, but I don't feel prepared for it. I would like to do well on it, so as to have some breathing room for the last stretch of the class.
Them: Who's there?
Me: Socially Awkward Guy.
Them: Socially Akward Guy who?
Me: (Awkwardly Panics).
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Let's Play Clowns!
Before we leave home, our night is still
And we lay on the bed fully dressed
This is a new thing
And we both deserve this,
One night with no one.
It's rare to feel this expensive
But next to a girl like her
It's impossible not to.
In this house, in this town.
Before we leave home, we are alone
And now new thoughts come
If the car won't start, would it be better if it did?
But I know it will
And this we'll lose
A moon to look to
From inside out
Without the lights on
It's rare to feel this expensive
But next to a girl like her
It's impossible not to.
In this house, in this town.
It's still early
A bright 10:30
And we speed through the evening.
Music by: Minus the Bear.
Album: They Make Beer Commercials Like This
Year: 2004
And we lay on the bed fully dressed
This is a new thing
And we both deserve this,
One night with no one.
It's rare to feel this expensive
But next to a girl like her
It's impossible not to.
In this house, in this town.
Before we leave home, we are alone
And now new thoughts come
If the car won't start, would it be better if it did?
But I know it will
And this we'll lose
A moon to look to
From inside out
Without the lights on
It's rare to feel this expensive
But next to a girl like her
It's impossible not to.
In this house, in this town.
It's still early
A bright 10:30
And we speed through the evening.
Music by: Minus the Bear.
Album: They Make Beer Commercials Like This
Year: 2004
Labels: Minus The Bear, music, song lyrics
Thursday, October 09, 2008
This does not compute to me
Today on my way to work (after class), I got passed by a Cadillac CTS V6. Its license plate read "TREEHUGGR".
The CTS is one of the worse (in terms of polluting) V6 cars on the market. It gets a combined city and highway mileage of 19mpg. It emits, on average, 9.6 tons of CO2 per year. It is not the car you drive if you consider yourself a treehugger. Especially since, if you can afford a Cadillac, you can certain afford a hybrid from Ford, Toyota, Honda, or Lexus.
Alternate license plate suggestion from me: "NATURAPER".
The CTS is one of the worse (in terms of polluting) V6 cars on the market. It gets a combined city and highway mileage of 19mpg. It emits, on average, 9.6 tons of CO2 per year. It is not the car you drive if you consider yourself a treehugger. Especially since, if you can afford a Cadillac, you can certain afford a hybrid from Ford, Toyota, Honda, or Lexus.
Alternate license plate suggestion from me: "NATURAPER".
Labels: EPA, me trying to be funny, morgantown, ramblings
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
No Words Need Be Spoken
No words need be spoken.I shall not hate you, Rather
I respect and admire your efforts
It confirms the innate goodness
I saw in you.
Just don't ask if
I'm going to forget you.
I can't answer that
straight faced.
But I'm not the same.
I'm not the same person who stayed with you till dawn.
And you are not the same person who stayed with me.
This note has been left
intentionally unfinished.
Labels: personal
Black Wenesday; Birthdays; In Sickness and In Health; Ice Cream Socials
No, I don't have schizophrenia, at least, not yet. I just felt that in this to-be-epic update, I should jumble down a lot of topics to serve as topics to which I will textually orate on.
First and foremost, while writing this post, I just received a call, The empty bedroom in our 4 bedroom apartment is getting filled by a girl named Sierra. She should be moving in today or tomorrow. This will no doubt be interesting. We always felt that they wouldn't put a loner in with 3 people who've known each other for 2-3 years now. Let's just hope it doesn't disrupt the dynamic the three of us have going.
Speaking of home front news, my roommate Ken got a kitten. Its something like 2-3 months. Its tiny as all get up. And skittish to boot. I'll probably post some pictures of the little guy later.
Another birthday approaches. In 9 days I'm going to officially be one year older. Pushing 30 much? This "late twenties" phase feels like a "twilight" of the early to mid 20s. Not much has changed. People haven't changed. The world isn't getting any brighter or kinder. More and more people just seem to want to retreat to the comfort of their bubble.
I guess I just feel adrift. I'm wondering what I'm supposed to learn about myself next in order to become the person I'm supposed to be.
Worse than being set adrift, is the abysmal plummet that is the stock market. Its a sad tale about how we got into this mess, and its going to be an even sadder one before we get out. I think we need to adopt the kind of regulation that Scott Adams' has purposed in the past: If you can't explain how you're making money to a six year and make him understand, what you're doing is probably illegal. That pretty much covers the financial sector. I'm tempted to track down my ex-girlfriend from my sophomore year of college and see how she's doing now that Wall St. is in complete meltdown.
Considering international banks around the world cut interests rates today in order to stave off an international bank panic that could've led to a global financial collapse, today might be the day where you order the fiddle you're going to play while the rest of the world burns.
God Bless the dip-shit short sightedness, reckless optimism, and compulsive greed of Reaganomics, right? *Cues the team america theme song.*
These past few weeks of September, having dropped a course that taught me that slave-labor for professors isn't at all enjoyable, I've actually had enough time to work out. I've started swimming 1 kilometer 3 days a week, lifting weights, and playing raquetball. I easily lost 5 lbs.
Then I got sick. My head is stuffed up like nobody's business. A sore throat like you wouldn't believe. So I've been sitting on my ass, watching HBO, drinking Gatorade and eating chicken soup, and probably gaining 5 lbs. It sucks. I was really getting back into the swing of things.
The fact that I totally pigged out on an ice cream social at work today didn't help either.
Ah well. Enough for now. More later.
First and foremost, while writing this post, I just received a call, The empty bedroom in our 4 bedroom apartment is getting filled by a girl named Sierra. She should be moving in today or tomorrow. This will no doubt be interesting. We always felt that they wouldn't put a loner in with 3 people who've known each other for 2-3 years now. Let's just hope it doesn't disrupt the dynamic the three of us have going.
Speaking of home front news, my roommate Ken got a kitten. Its something like 2-3 months. Its tiny as all get up. And skittish to boot. I'll probably post some pictures of the little guy later.
Another birthday approaches. In 9 days I'm going to officially be one year older. Pushing 30 much? This "late twenties" phase feels like a "twilight" of the early to mid 20s. Not much has changed. People haven't changed. The world isn't getting any brighter or kinder. More and more people just seem to want to retreat to the comfort of their bubble.
I guess I just feel adrift. I'm wondering what I'm supposed to learn about myself next in order to become the person I'm supposed to be.
Worse than being set adrift, is the abysmal plummet that is the stock market. Its a sad tale about how we got into this mess, and its going to be an even sadder one before we get out. I think we need to adopt the kind of regulation that Scott Adams' has purposed in the past: If you can't explain how you're making money to a six year and make him understand, what you're doing is probably illegal. That pretty much covers the financial sector. I'm tempted to track down my ex-girlfriend from my sophomore year of college and see how she's doing now that Wall St. is in complete meltdown.
Considering international banks around the world cut interests rates today in order to stave off an international bank panic that could've led to a global financial collapse, today might be the day where you order the fiddle you're going to play while the rest of the world burns.
God Bless the dip-shit short sightedness, reckless optimism, and compulsive greed of Reaganomics, right? *Cues the team america theme song.*
These past few weeks of September, having dropped a course that taught me that slave-labor for professors isn't at all enjoyable, I've actually had enough time to work out. I've started swimming 1 kilometer 3 days a week, lifting weights, and playing raquetball. I easily lost 5 lbs.
Then I got sick. My head is stuffed up like nobody's business. A sore throat like you wouldn't believe. So I've been sitting on my ass, watching HBO, drinking Gatorade and eating chicken soup, and probably gaining 5 lbs. It sucks. I was really getting back into the swing of things.
The fact that I totally pigged out on an ice cream social at work today didn't help either.
Ah well. Enough for now. More later.
