Weekend Update...sort of.

The sort of coming from that this is really a Thursday-Monday update.

Thursday after work a group of us from UG went to see The Dark Knight at midnight. We actually had a tailgate party that started at 11:00pm out of the back of several of our vehicles. Hot Krispy Kreme donuts, coffee, sodas, chips, and cookies made up the snacking implements and I made sure to intake caffeine, nicotine(smoked a pipe), and a bit of sugar(had 1 donut before the movie) to help stay awake. I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I'd go into further detail, but since the media is going crazy about TDK at the moment, I'll refrain. Also, after the showing Evil Mandy and I were interviewed by our local Fox station for the 5am news. I didn't get a chance to see it, though. :(

I didn't get to bed until 4:30am Thursday night and had to get up at 7:00am the next morning, so as you can imagine it was a drowsy day fueled only by multiple energy drinks (5). After work, I met up with Evil Mandy, Leigh, Jo, Good Mandy, and John for bowling, which was a lot of fun. I was exactly in the middle of the score for both games. Afterward we ate at Denny's. I look forward to bowling again hopefully soon. I then passed out from lack of sleep around 10pm in my computer chair. At some point I moved to my bed and turned the light out.

Saturday I slept way later than I intended - from 10pm Friday until 2pm Saturday. So, I missed the Wings of War tournament I wanted to go to at The Command Post. Not a lot happened that day, other than going over to my parents for a few hours. At least I won't have to do that for a couple of months now.

Sunday was the Firefly Event over at Laura & Warrens, and I spend most of the morning preparing a Beef Korma. I also made a Moong Dal and Saffron Rice after I arrived. It turned out okay. Spent some time with a few good geeks and also two that seem to get on my nerves a lot lately. I think at least 75% of the reason for that is them, but it's probably also 25% me as well. I had a pretty good time and stayed too late.

On Monday I called in a personal day and spent the whole day moping around on the net. It was a waste of a day, but it feels like it might have recharged my batteries.

On to the rest of the week. I might get together with Linda on Thursday to see Hellboy II and Friday night is D&D with the guys.

Ideas I Don't Have Time For Pt. 1

I continually have ideas for cool things to do that I don't have time to pursue. At least, *I* think they're cool. So, I thought I'd post a few recent ones here to see if anyone is interested.

1. International Cooking Group - This one isn't too complicated, just get a group of 4-6 people together who love to cook and who also love international foods of all types. Once a month, pick a country/region and have a dinner party with each person bringing a course/dish for the meal. I'd love to do something like this and go for belgian, romanian, egyptian, and other types of cuisine I haven't tried as much and are generally not represented in our local restaurants. I had this idea after looking at a post regarding Spaetzle makers at the Post Punk Kitchen Forums.

2. Budgeting/Money Planning Group - Even though I work in accounting, I have not had a good track record in managing my personal finances. This is something I want to work on, and even though I've read a few books on the subject and know about snowball debt reduction, envelope budgeting systems, etc., as Morpheus would say, "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." So again, a group of 4-6 people who are willing to open up their financial info and be accountable to each other for their bad spending habits, look for shared ways to eliminate unnecessary spending, build savings/investments, etc would be good. I prefer the systems outlined in Your Money or Your Life, but I'm willing to go along with the Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman stuff too.

3. Start a Food Not Bombs group in Greenville. Those of you who know me well know that I have a mix of conservative and liberal political leanings, and on those political radar quizzes I am all over the place depending on the weighted questions of the quiz in question. I've scored everywhere from Communist to Libertarian to Socialist to Populist, so I guess I just have too many divergent political ideals.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of unnecessary war and I also care more about homeless issues than most charity events, so Food Not Bombs hits two ideals that are important to me. Basically the way the group operates is that they weekly pick up surplus food that would be discarded from grocers, restaurants, and other sources and make a communal vegetarian or vegan meal that is served for free to anyone who wants it.

The main ideas put forth politically by the collective is that is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance. Here are the four First Principles:

1. If governments and corporations around the world spent as much time and energy on feeding people as they do on war, no one would go hungry.
2. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, but so much of it goes to waste needlessly, as a direct result of capitalism and militarism.
3. Vegan food is both healthy and nonviolent.
4. Food Not Bombs works to call attention to poverty and homelessness in society by sharing food in public places and facilitating gatherings of poor and homeless people.
Anyone who wants to cook may cook, and anyone who wants to eat may eat. Food Not Bombs strives to include everyone.

Thanks, guys!

I've spent the past hour or so reading the blog of a friend on UG that I've recently caught up with after nearly ten years of falling off each other's radars. This has caused me to thinking about blogging in general and my little blog in particular.

I started this blog a few years ago (my second or third attempt at blogging) and like the story always goes, start posting regularly at first but then months go by with no updates. No one really read it, so I had very little motivation for blogging other than having a timestamp for my thoughts and experiences.

These days, I have a small handful of actual friends who read little ego-journal and I wanted to say thanks for reading and especially for commenting. It is very encouraging for me to know that someone I respect and/or care about has taken time out of their day to see what's going on in my mental magic-8-ball.

THANK YOU!

Three Day Weekend Pt 2

Friday - Went out to The Command Post to give Mike from the D&D Meetup a CD-ROM with some RPGA adventures for the game day he's organizing for July 13th. I really don't want to run this, but I have a hard time saying no when someone asks me to do something. After that I went to Cherrydale Cinemas and saw Wanted(good stuff), and then went to Hollywood Video and bought 4 dvds with their buy 2 get 2 free promotion (Once, Into the Wild, The Namesake, and Stardust if you were interested).

Saturday - Watched Stardust and hung around for home for a while. Went to Vespers for the first time in three years and enjoyed being there, but I hate everyone making a big deal about me being there. I just want to get past this interregnum and back into the normal SJOTL swing of things. Of course, it's weird to want to get back into church life when I am so hopeless and am practically agnostic these days, but for better or worse it's home for me. After that, I went to Browncoat Karaoke at Guadalajara. We had a smaller crowd than usual (only 10 or so as opposed to 25-30 last time), but had a decent time. I sang "Benny and the Jets" with Evil and Patrick(not my choice) and "Tupelo Honey" on my own. I had put in "Amish Paradise" but didn't have time for that. Afterward, I went with Evil, Karly, and Good to see Wanted at Hollywood 20(yes, for the second time in two days).

Sunday - Went to SJOTL, left out early, and stopped by my old place to check the mail. I received my paycheck for jury duty a few weeks ago; a whopping $66. Woo-frickin'-hoo. Since some of the mail was for Jacob and he had the day off from work I stopped by his apartment. I invited him and Elias over to my place to watch season 2 of Dexter and to make something interesting out of the leftover chicken breasts from the picnic that needed to be used up. We ended up making a mole sauce and serving the chicken with onions and peppers along with guacamole(that we made), rice(zataran's jambalaya mix), and steamed squash and zucchini. It was excellent, and a great way to end the weekend.

I'm still pretty depressed, but I'm opening myself to the possibility that I can be somewhat happy even if I do give up on achieving any of my dreams. Maybe the fact that I can't let them go is what is making me so miserable, and I should just accept the not terribly interesting lower-middle class person that I am.

Three Day Weekend!

I'm looking forward to this break.

I decided to not make any plans and just relax around the house this weekend, which should be great. I haven't had a non-eventful weekend in months.

I need to do some straightening up around the house as well. So it should be a nice therapeutic introverted weekend. Yay!

Am I too nice?

Sometimes I think I am too nice for my own good. I don't want to be the bad guy, so I let people walk all over me, and then I get depressed over that. I think being worried that people are intimidated by my size has gimped my personality into being a teddy bear who is everyone's friend but doesn't stand up even when he thinks he should.

Of course, I'm probably just blowing off steam right now. Sorry for annoying both my readers.

Depression...smash!

So some good things are happening...I love my car I've had for almost three weeks(of course I haven't sent in a payment yet), I had a big turnout for the UG picnic I organized this past Saturday at Table Rock.

Yet, even with all of this going on, I still find myself almost continually depressed. Feeling like every avenue of possibility has closed to me and I am almost powerless to make even small changes in my life. That I’ll die alone after a meaningless life. The usual I guess, which is why I won’t bore anyone (including myself) with further detail.

Maybe the time has come for me to put up or shut up and finally see a shrink. I’ve been avoiding it for a long time; horror stories of couch-jockeys who don’t listen and just hand out scripts make me nervous, but I don’t think that analysis itself is the key anymore. Maybe I do have some kind of chemical imbalance that keeps me from enjoying life no matter how hard I try to silence the demons within. Maybe there is a pill that can make me not wish I was dead sometimes and get up with excitement. I kind of doubt it, but I guess it is possible.