Vacation

After 15 months of working at this job, I finally decided to take some of my vacation time. For whatever reason, the past couple of weeks have just really burned me out. Whether it was the working late, the frickin freezing weather, or just the night at Duffy's, I'm not sure. I just decided I really needed some time off for once, to relax or have a little change of pace to my life.

I've decided to list some of the things I've accomplished by skipping work:

- Bought Friends Season 6 and 1 DVD sets. I told myself before that I wouldn't get in the habit of buying DVDs, but this is hopefully an exception. After borrowing seasons 1-5 from my sis, I had to get 6. And then there were these special offers, a $10 rebate from the manufacturer and a $10 discount from Best Buy if you bought more than one set. So I guess they suckered me into getting Season1 too.

- Bought an iron, ironing board, and this starchy spray stuff. I decided that since I'm 24 now, maybe it would be a good time for me to leave the days of wrinkly clothes behind. So if you see me in the coming days and notice that I suddenly look more sophisticated, it's probably because I took some time to iron my shirts and pants. And be sure to compliment me on it too. One thing though, so far I am not happy with the starchy spray stuff. It doesn't spray out evenly and sometimes it leaves little marks where too much of it landed and soaked into the fabric.

- Signed up for Yahoo Mail Plus. It costs $30/year, which doesn't sound as much when you think of it as $2.50/month. Then again, it's more than the $0/month that I've been paying. Mostly, I decided to pay for it so I could use Outlook to read my email at home or on my Pocket PC (apparently this feature used to be free on Yahoo but not anymore). A side benefit is that now I get 25 MB of storage instead of the measly 6 MB on my free account. Now I can let messages pile up in my inbox for about 4 times as long before having to delete stuff. SWEET

- Cleaned my room. Finally made the effort to fold up the pile of empty boxes spilling out of my closet and throw them out, making my room look about 26% more spacious. Also moved a lot of the scattered stuff on my desk to a "shelf" or the "garbage can", making my room look about 17% more organized. I'm very proud of myself.

- Ate some Lunchables

- Played this flash game Dan sent me: Smack the penguin. The highest score I've gotten is 593.5, a few times. I don't know if that's a good score, but if anyone beats it, let me know.

In summary, I would like to say that vacation days rule.

*****

Superbowl Prediction: Panthers 20, Patriots 19

Another Year

The past week marked the passing of the Chinese New Year, and also my so-called "golden birthday". I don't know exactly how the lunar calendar works, but it seems like Chinese New Year was especially early this time. I'm pretty sure that it usually comes after my birthday, since I was born in the year of the Goat, not Monkey like most other people my year. Oh well.

So anyways, now I'm 24. I've been saying this for a while now, but I feel old. The other night I was stopped at a light on Dundee, when a Mustang pulled up next to me and started revving his engine hard. I looked over and it was this high school or college kid (I can't even tell anymore) with his girlfriend, both giving me the "let's go biatch" look. If this were me a few years ago, I definitely would've raced these kids. But this time, I didn't even have the slightest urge to go for it, so I shook my head no like an old middle aged loser.

Another example of feeling old: Last week, I ended up working pretty late almost every night. By the time I left work on Thursday, I was feeling pretty worn out and on the drive home that night, I just wanted to listen to some relaxing music to soothe my nerves. So I tuned my radio station to the Lite 93.9 WLIT, only to find that they were playing all this upbeat stuff like Peter Frampton's "Baby I Love Your Way". I was kind of pissed about that at the time, but yeah, you know you're getting old when you think the music on the Lite is too heavy.

Also, I was thinking about how the worst birthday present to get as a kid was clothes. I hated getting clothes back then, since that meant it was taking the place of something better such as video games, action figures, or baseball cards. Well, this year, I was actually very happy to get some clothes for my birthday. I guess that's another sign that I'm not 10 years old anymore.

By the way, I definitely want to thank everyone who got me any gift, card, bought me a drink, or simply said "happy birthday". Many of you even did more than one of the above, and for that, you get double or triple thanks from me (I bet you all are going "SWEET" right now). I also felt especially honored to have a birthday haiku done for me, by my favorite haikuist.

Went to Duffy's on Saturday night, and before I forget, Happy Birthdays should go to Chras and Nicki too. It was a good time, I'll probably post some pics when I get home tonight.

One last note, I saw Along Came Polly and thought it really sucked. You know how sometimes you see previews for a movie and think, man, they probably showed all the funny parts already, so why bother watching it? Well, I didn't expect that would be the case for Along Came Polly, but it turns out that the previews pretty much did show what few entertaining scenes there were of the movie. It just wasn't a very funny movie at all and I would discourage anyone out there from seeing it. It even made me think about dropping Jennifer Aniston out of my Top 10 rankings, but I won't.


*****

Duffy's 1/24/04

Me and Olivia


Me and P


Me and Cindy


Me and Coxy


Me and Caddy


Me and the Boys


Me and Vira

Tired Tired Tired..... Tiiiiii-yeeeeerd

It's mornings like these when I wish I had married P Diddy at age 18, had a kid with him, then divorced him and lived off of monthly child support payments of $30,000 a month. Too bad I wasn't a hot model back then, and now here I am, tired and grumpy at work. All for a paycheck that's a tiny fraction of $30,000 a month, I might add.

One thing I noticed about sleep is, I always feel much more refreshed if I wake up an hour later than usual, than if I go to sleep an hour before usual the night before. I don't know why that is, when you're gaining the same amount of sleep time. Maybe it's just my imagination.

These days, something I find to be insulting is waking up in the morning, checking my email, and finding messages sent from my mom or dad. Of all people, my mom and dad are up later than me and sending me emails when I'm already in bed. I know I'm getting old, but still... it's my mom and dad!

What happened to the days when I went to sleep later than everyone else and still woke up for class/working out in the morning? I never used to wake up to any emails those days. Oh, I know what happened. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that's what happened. Sheeeeee...........

Clayness

If you know me, you know that I'm not a person who is ever ashamed of listening to any sort of music. No matter how flamish it makes me look, I don't care. I've proudly supported Britney Spears throughout the years, for one. I've also never been afraid to admit my love for a lot of the other "questionable" stuff either, such as Backstreet Boys, N Sync, Korean/Chinese pop music, Disney songs, Spice Girls, Christmas songs, Carpenters, and more. Either I have a thick skin, I'm oblivious and ignorant to the rest of the world, or I'm just that secure in my manhood and a trendsetter to boot.

Well, I think finally, I might have met my limits. For the first time, there is a song and artist that I find myself liking, but am afraid of people knowing. Nevertheless, I will share with my favorite people in the world (readers of my blog) that the song I like is "Invincible" by Clay Aiken.

I never really followed any of American Idol, in either season, so I can't really say that I'm a fan of Clay at this point, or know anything about him at all. I do know that he is very effeminate and as Olivia would call him, kind of "crusty". Anyways, the first time I heard his song was on TRL last week (I don't watch TRL these days either, I just tuned in to see if Britney's new video was #1). It turned out that Britney finished second that day, and so of course I had to watch the video that beat her, which was, as you might have guessed by now, Clay's song.

Normally, I would have been really pissed that Britney lost to some fruitcake on a countdown show that she has consistently dominated ever since coming on to the scene 5 years ago. I mean, she practically made TRL what it is today, and vice versa. But I guess I'm getting older these days, I've become a kindler and gentler man, so I didn't let my emotions get in the way of enjoying "Invincible" for the first time.

And yes, I did enjoy the song. After hearing it, it was stuck in my head for the next 3 days straight. In fact, I'm hearing it in my head right now as I type this entry at work. Now, I will say that I haven't made the effort yet to get the mp3 on my computer, but I think this is mostly a matter of self denial and fear of fully admitting that I like the girly man's music. It's probably only a matter of time, but for now, this just means that I get that much more excited when his song comes on the radio.

There, I said it. Please don't judge me.

How About Them Apples

About a month ago, I started bringing an apple every day to work because I figured it might make me healthier. Not that I know much about nutrition, but hey, my momma always told me to eat more fruit, and I don't know too many people who would say fruit is bad for you, so might as well eat some fruit right?

Now originally, I wanted to bring my favorite fruit (oranges/tangerines/clementines), but after further thought, I decided that they rot too easily. Since I don't like to go to Jewel or Dominicks more than I have to, I eventually settled on a more versatile product, the apple. It lasts a long time, so I can buy it in bulk, and the taste/texture isn't too shabby either, but I think the clincher was that it has it's own snazzy little saying ("An apple a day keeps the doctor away"). You know a fruit is good when it has its own saying. How can it not be?

Well, I wish I knew someone who was more of an apple expert than me, because I'm full of questions with no answers. First of all, what kind of apple should I get? When I went to buy some apples for the first time, I was confounded by the number of options. I forget most of the names, but there were little ones, big ones, red ones, green ones, reddish green ones, and more. I just picked the ones that looked closest to my personal image of what apples should look like, which turned out to be "Royal Gala".

Also, I didn't really know whether it would be better to just get one of those preselected bags/baskets, or choose them myself. I have no idea how to choose fruit, basically, I just try to find the ones that are least dented and don't look diseased. For some reason, though, I get the feeling that there's some secret out there to choosing fruit that everyone knows except for me.

Anyways, the Royal Gala apples turned out to be pretty good, but in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but wonder if there's something more, something better out there for me. Today, I decided to try a "Red Delicious", which Olivia told me was pretty standard. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that "delicious" either. I'd describe it more as "somewhat tasty", but I guess realistically, nobody's gonna buy an apple that's called "Red Somewhat Tasty", even if that makes the name more truthful. I think eventually, I might also delve into Fujis and Washingtons, which I've at least heard of before. Other than that, I guess I really don't know what's out there in the wide world of apples.

The other thing is, I haven't yet figured out whether or not I should be eating the skin. My mom always told me to spit out the skin, or peel the apple before eating it, because they put wax and other chemicals on it to protect from insects and stuff. However, I've also heard that the skin has a lot of valuable vitamins, and that it's perfectly okay to eat the wax as long as you wash the apple first. Again, this would be a great question to ask the apple expert friend I don't have.