Ending The Month With A Thud

Well, that’s wasn’t the way I would have wanted things to go. Be aware, some curse words lie ahead (and as of yesterday were in the title as well).

Today’s Personal Project
[this section was penned on Monday morning to allow myself a bit of a “cool down” period]
Get my laundry done. Realize that most shit doesn’t really matter. I guess that I’m still a bit heated.

Today’s Daily Challenge
Fill half of your plate with vegetables at one meal today.

Piling the vegetables on your plate means you’re giving your body important vitamins and minerals, fiber, and other nutrients that may help protect you from health problems such as stroke, heart disease, and some kinds of cancers. Not only that, the water and fiber in vegetables help keep you feeling fuller longer.

I should be able to accomplish this.

I Should Have Called It ‘C’tember
Overall the month of September gets a ‘C’; while it certainly had its highs it had equally-low lows bringing the overall score back to average. Camping was fun. My dinner date was fun. But, those are about the only shining moments which pop into my head at the moment.

I nearly got my 100 miles of foot mileage in, though not enough of it was in the form of running. I only managed two bike rides, but by my standards they were both outstanding.

I haven’t made a final tally but I think that I ended the month eating forty-seven or forty-eight vegetarian meals; of those four were pancake breakfasts!

Not My Kind Of Traffic; My Kind Of Ballgame
My commute from Perimeter Mall to East Atlanta on Friday afternoon took me ninety-five minutes to complete. Ninety-five minutes, as in one hour, thirty-five minutes! And this was with me using every trick in the traffic book that I know! Holy shit.

I joined friends Harold, Jill, and Karen (BWanA, SuperSuck, and Fill My Cavity, respectively) for a fantastic (imho) baseball game. It was Chipper Jones night and the place was packed with Braves fans, and to a lesser-extent Mets fans like yours truly. Beer was expensive, but tasty. The hot dog I ate was abysmal. And up until Lucas Duda’s three-run homer to put the Mets up 3-1 in the seventh inning not much was going my way. Upon hitting the home run I literally stood up and stated “Hooray, I’m for the other team!”

Below is an artist’s depiction of the scene.

The crowd was almost as entertaining as the game. In front of me sat a beautiful young lady, who upon hearing me compare Brewiversity counts with Harold turned around and said “I have my Doctorate. Every time we (referring her male companion) come down from Chattanooga for a game we stop at The Fred.” Later in the game a guy sitting to Harold’s right, and who apparently had way too much to drink started passing out. For awhile he was like those old drinking bird toys — his head would sink and then something would wake him, only to have it happen all again a few minutes later. Amazingly he also did this as he was eating a slice of pizza and never dropped it! I just hoped for everyone’s sake that he had a ride home as he was in no condition to drive come game’s end.

I Couldn’t Fill The Position
On early Saturday evening I was informed that I was not the right candidate for the position. Again, after only two interviews I was shut down. Look, I know that I am old (47), fat (204 pounds), not handsome in the eyes of those I desire (though I have been mistaken for Christopher Reeve in our heydays), but holy shit I am apparently doing something completely wrong. Since the departure of Jeannie (read “2003”) I have been on no more than two dates with any individual woman. I’m clean. I (can) dress nicely. I am courteous, generous, (humble), and believe I possess the temperament and sensibilities that modern-day single women should seek.

What the fuck is wrong with me?
No need to answer that…

I even washed and vacuumed The Jackmobile for this outing (and if not for the peeling clearcoat and damage done to it on Labor Day it looks spiffy); if that doesn’t say “I like, and I’m trying my hardest to impress you.” then nothing does! 😉 At least I wasn’t so presumptuous to have cleaned the house expecting her to return home with me. Forgive me, I’m trying to humor myself out of this funk.

On the positive side of the ledger I did spend an hour roaming the High Museum of Art and having a few glasses of wine at Tap (she picked up the bill — which I actually saw as a harbinger of bad news, even in these gender-equal times) with an incredibly attractive and Paulie-approved woman.

And the band marches on…

I should have rallied and gone out to the Little 5 Fest but I just wasn’t in the frame of mind to do so.

Number Five Is Alive
On Saturday morning I activated my iPhone 5. Things didn’t go quite as planned however. The initial plan was to do a cloud-restoration from the backup I made from my iPhone 4 on Friday night. Unfortunately numerous attempts resulted in “cannot restore from backup” errors. I was able to back up to my Mac and then use that to initialize my iPhone 5, but this process further eroded my confidence in cloud-storage and backup.

I Have Entered Full-On “Schedule Something For Every Night” Mode
Needless to say I’m feeling a bit Dante Hicks (character from “Clerks”) “I’m not supposed to be here!” today. Oh sure, this marks Sunday #450 (or so) in a row where I’ve awaken alone, but I’m still flummoxed by my station in life.

I’ve embarked on an effort to fill my near calendar with something every night until I either die of exhaustion, run out of money, or get fed up with that routine and do something completely different.

Here’s my week ahead:
Monday: Laundry and dinner (okay, not a stellar way to begin this routine, but I’ve run out of clean clothes)
Tuesday: [OPEN], at least as of this blog’s writing
Wednesday: George’s? Perhaps, rabbit. Perhaps.
Thursday: Going to Aida Mollenkamp‘s cookbook signing at Lenox Mall. Probably will go out for a nice dinner somewhere after that.
Friday: Thinking of hitting Taste of Atlanta for the first time. Also thinking of dropping the big bucks to do it VIP-style on Saturday and trying to get Jenna from Eat, Live, Run to sign her cookbook for me. Was thinking of going to the Braves game that night, but only shitty tickets remain.
Saturday: Dan Deacon at Terminal West. My first visit to this new(ish) music venue on the westside of town.

Oh, I also plan to be working a lot in order to get this project of mine out the door.

Should you, the ITP-Reader, be worried? Fuck no, just think of the blogging material I am going to have!

I Was Wrong About So Many Things This Weekend
When I heard that the Gators “next” game was against LSU I didn’t realize that they had a bye-week before it. I’ve always been under the impression that they Gators bye-week occurred later in the season, therefore yesterday (remember, this was written on Sunday) they would have hosted LSU. Well, at least the Gators weren’t losers this weekend…

I thought that the New York Jets might have a fighting chance at home against the San Francisco 49ers this week; they were shut out 34-0. I understand getting shut out all too well…

As We Enter The Final Quarter Of 2012
They say that the only certain things in life are death, taxes, and the inevitability that the women I like will eventually shed themselves of me. Too much? Yeah, you’re right.

Regardless, October 1st brings with it the moniker of “We’re in the final stretch, y’all.” (or in my homeland, “Hey yous guys, the year is coming to a fucking end…”). What do I intend to accomplish in the final three months? Well, that’s a great question. As I’ve done since early in this here blog I’ve laid out some monthly goals (which look eerily like September’s goals).

But this quarter brings with it more opportunity:

• We’ll elect a president in November.
• I’ll be rooting for TIVO to hit my sales price of $10.50/share so I can finally divest from that stock. The scant profit derived from the sales of my TIVO stock will go into a new “Fix The ITP-Estate Fund.”
• I plan to run more in an effort to be able to actually run that Hot Chocolate 15k held on January 13th, 2013 for which I’ve already registered. In conjunction with that I also plan to start breaking in Brooks Ghost 5 #2 in preparation for the added mileage.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – Sunday = bummed;
Current Music – Listening to some house music. This is serious shit, y’all! I can’t remember where I got this DJ mix but it’s pretty fucking jamming.
Website Of The Day – If I had a pound of bacon and an oven that wasn’t an inefficient gas-oven from the mid-1950s I would have employed the Bacon Method this (Sunday) morning.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – Friday = walking, ~5.7 miles
Morning Weigh-In – 203 pounds

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0.0 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Pushups – 0
Situps – 0
Stairs – 0 flights

Days Of Bed-Making – 1

Vegetarian Meals – 0
Carnivorous Meals – 0
Pancakes Eaten – 0

Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0

October Goals
– Limit my potty-mouth (starts October 2nd)
– Wear “nice” clothes to work at least twice a week, if for no other reason than to have people wonder why I am dressing up. New!
– Eat no fewer than forty-five vegetarian meals
– Take at least one load of stuff from my house to Goodwill
– Take unused electronics to recycling center
– Post at least ten new photos during the month
– Lose at least two pounds (net weight loss)
– Finish two books (audio or otherwise, comic books do not qualify)
– Not to get sick for the entire month
– Exercise for thirty minutes no fewer than twenty days
– Ride no fewer than 100 miles
– Walk (or run) no fewer than 100 miles
– Do no fewer than 750 sit-ups
– Do no fewer than 300 push-ups
– Read a non-techincal book
– Find someone else to go out on a date with

2012 Goals [will be a little less fluid than last year]
– Get my weight under 200 pounds, or at least whittle myself back down to where wearing a 36″ pant size is comfortable
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Run Sharpened Stone as a real business
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
– Ride in no fewer than five 50 mile or 50K bike rides
– Run in no fewer than one one 10K
– Submit at least one application under the name “Sharpened Stone” to Apple’s iOS store
– Restore the ITP Estate to a condition where it can be put up for sale at any time
– Buy a new iPhone (iPhone 5?), a new iPad (iPad 3?), and MacBook Air [look, not all goals have to be altruistic]

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient and profitable programmer in Objective-C
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)
– See more live concerts than I did in 2011
– Eat more pancakes
– Drive/Fly somewhere for a real vacation

Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2012

1. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me — Mindy Kahling
2. Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science — Curtis Ebbesmeyer
3. God, No! — Penn Jillette
4. The Elephant to Hollywood — Michael Caine
5. Here Comes Trouble — Michael Moore
6. How We Decide — Jonah Lehrer
7. Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
8. Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays) — Arthur Miller
9. Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]