No other word can really describe how I feel today, but just that - rested. I slept till I couldn't sleep anymore. I looked at the alarm clock a few times and just said, to hell with it. One thing is certain is that I need to get more sleep during the week. Playing catch-up on the weekends is started to take its toll. Tuesdays and Thursdays I get home around 11, my longest days. I work till about 5 or 6, then head home where if I am lucky I'll get to take a 30 minute nap and inhale some food before I head off to class. Then I'm in class till about 9:15. Then usually off to the gym till they close around 11 and back home. I HAVE to eat something after I workout, but thankfully that *meal* is just a smoothie. This week though, Monday and Wednesday were tied up doing school work. So I didn't see an end to my 'work day' till about 10PM. Don't believe me? Ask Tasha she finally sees me online to chat during the week...haha!
Today was a productive day though. I slept - mission #1. The apartment got vacuumed, dishes washed and even a little dusting. Then it was off to the gym for a bit of cardio. After which my classmate came over and we worked for another 2 hours on homework. WHILE doing the homework I was still checking work email. Fun times yo.
Today was supposed to be the first day of my fitness boot bamp and I totally blew it! I didn't get in till about 5AM from sitting in my friend's truck talking after Denny's. On a totally different note: she drives a Ford F-150, with a manual transmission. Which I think is really bad ass! Anyone who regularly drives a stick is alright in my book.
So the boot camp was scheduled for 0930 and I didn't get to bed until 0600. Check me out frontin' using military time. haha! Yea, that was a low percentage occurence!! It got me to thinking about a paradox with regards to fitness. Strength training is supposed to build muscle. Building muscle is a means by which the body uses to burn fat. However, muscle is denser and weighs significantly more than fat. So when one weighs oneself - they can actually seem HEAVIER! WTF?! Grrr!!
People have been telling that it looks like I've lost weight. And when I go to the gym, I see more definition almost everywhere than before, save for my gut because I still my fat 1-pack covering my stomach and love handles. I swear the gyms must use muscle enhancing lamps to make us look better. Seriously, I do see a difference. However I am loathe to actually weigh myself. The last time I did, it said I had gained .5 lbs and increased 2% body fat.
Partied till 2AM. Denny's till 4AM. Talking with my friend till 5AM. Bed around 6AM. Lions and tigers and bears oh my! And me without my camera!!! Thank you JF for getting me out and taking care of me!
Ok, lemme preface what I am about to say with...the remarks are directed towards THIS particular Frenchman, my teacher. This guy is the most pessimistic, fatalisting ASS-U-MER I have ever met! He rants and raves about all that Americans do badly; eating habits, rushing, not drinking enough (go figure!!) ad naseum!!!
This section we've been working on covers ordering food. So of course we're talking about kinds of foods, eating habits and times and so forth. The textbook apperantly says Americans only ply ourselves with bacon and eggs, cereal, and the occasional fruit for breakfast. Then this little man talks about how we all eat like crap, the French diet is so much better, blah blah. My favorite part was him trying to explain the health benefits of the croissant and baguettes!! The former is nothing BUT dough and butter! The latter is nothing by WHITE bread shaped like a log!!
After class he, this 16 yr old student (the hell she doing in college, while she's still in high school?!) and myself got into it about food. He described what he ate - next to nothing. This guys is like 5'3-5'4 at BEST. He probably weighs no more than 145 lbs - if that! Seriously the day's eating he described is about a third of what I'm supposed to take in. The dude is laughable, because he's all, "Tony, I love you, you live the good life (closest English translation, but it doesn't really carry over), but you are fat. You eat badly and need to loose weight!" I look at him and go - noooo shit! I'm like dude, you have no idea how I eat, if I workout or anything. I know this because he kept yammering and wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise! So I had to shut him down and fill him in on what I'm doing. Le petite merde!
My mother used to have this quote from Goethe hanging in all of the apartments we lived in. As a kid growing up I never really appreciated what it meant. All I knew was the writing was awesome. Some of the message seeped into my brain, but comprehension never really happened. At 31 years old, it makes more and more sense. There is truth in these words:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in onefs favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
In all of the endeavors I have undertaken, when I have moved from 'planning/evaluating/thinking about xyz' to a this IS what I am doing, things have come together. Events that come to mind include:
Going to UCSB because I made up my mind before I got into UCSB that I was already a student there, they just didn't know it yet. When I almost flunked out and made up my mind to kick ass. Ditto on that decision.
Moving to the East Coast. At the time, I was DONE with California and ready for the change. When Nils and my family rallied with me around my decision it happened.
Moving back to California. This decision was made with NO idea of how I would finance it, where I would work, where I would live or even if I had a snow ball's chance in hell in making it happen. Yet, again the family along with Tasha, Asaunta and others created opportunities I had not foreseen in any of my speculating for the move. Matireal and immatireal support came from all over.
Indeed, "boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
I slept. And boy did I sleep today. I don't think that I have slept this much in a single day in a loooooong time. Perhaps it was my body's way of kicking me upside the head. My couch and I got on very close terms.
And it is HOT. I dunno, may be 70 something or 80 something. - in OCTOBER!!! We had rain for like 4 hours, and then bam back to the heat. Nothing like it was back in July, but dude it's been hot as Hades!
So I skipped salsa, skipped working on homewor, skipped finish cleaning my apartment. Bleh.
Does it make me a bad person that when I come home during the week, I leave my clothes whereever I take them off? That I can go days without washing my dishes? Hey - as long as I have clean dishes to eat off of, no problem right? haha! I got a bug up my butt today though. The laundry room is visible from my apartment and I was eyeing it to check out activity. It looked like no one had come or gone all day. So I loaded up the my laundry card and took over 5 washers and dryers. It's time to do laundry when I HAVE because I've broken into the emergency stash of drawers I don't like wearing...haha!
This is where I realize that I could not live with or marry someone who can't work with my unclean ways...hahaha! Hey man, I cook, take out the trash, do my own laundry and have been known to do other's laundry and am sort of handy around the house. If dishes have to be done daily - yea, um, sorry. If I have to hang my clothes up EVERYday after use - err, um, sorry. Hahaha!! Not talking about you Suz! Believe it or not, I know someone who is a bigger neat freak!
The mind works in mysterious ways. My mind works in very very warped ways. Especially in the ways I remember things and people. Quickly I generally associate people with their scents for example. The perfume/cologne they wear, deordorant, shampoo, etc. Some people apperantly love to bathe in their cologne/perfume so it's not that hard to figure out...haha!
Another way I associate people and times are by songs. This is significant because I am normally HORRIBLE at remembering band names and lyrics! In no particular order, here are some songs and people they go with...and err...vice versa:
Tasha - I See You Baby Shaking That Ass
Asaunta - 311's Long Song
The Helmuths - Margaritaville
Max - Blue
Sandra - One In a Million
Brenda - Remember the Time
Zuba - UB40's Kingston Town
Chelsea - Jack and Jane
Suz - dammit, it came out this year and I forgot
Yes, odd, I know.
What do you do, when you're sitting at work with 2 oranges that have been sitting on your desk for too long? Why, I give myself a fruit boob job! Damn those suckers were cold!
I hate Cox. May be it's because I used to be, ahem, affiliated with them. Cox sucks cock. Where is Comcast?! There is only 1 cable provider in my area. Previously Adelphia, but now Time Warner. The cable issue never came up when I signed my lease. I always assumed we could get hidef. NOT! The bastards in my complex neglected to mention our area isn't serviceable for hidef. They also neglected to mention I would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get a dish on the roof. So after 2 tries I got DirecTV service. Tonight the technician comes out to install my HD DVR. And talk about a difference in customer service.
The first technician took his time in setting stuff up, hiding the wiring and neatly running the wires under the carpet. This yahoo who showed up...showed up LATE. Had the nerve to ask me if the Call Center called ME. No, moron, I called THEM to find out where you were. I was sitting at home for 4 hours waiting for his ass. And he showed up late and did a piss poor job of the install. I flat out told him, where and how he ran the wires would not work for me. He would need to drill and run the wires like the first set. His response? "The battery in my drill is dead." Who cares. I asked him, so when will you be back to fix this? Normally I wouldn't care...no...I wouldn't have known the difference if that first guy didn't do such a good job. So yea, he's sure as hell coming back to fix things.
Upside: DVR is back in da house!!
One of my first friends in San Diego relocated for a new job in Florida. Her name is Sarah and she was really cool to hang with. She was literally one of my first 5 friends here in SD. She even helped me unpack my stuff when the movers brought it, and also brought us Chinese food. My first *real* meal in my apartment...haha! Now that was a night of fine dining. Sitting on floor cushions, legs falling asleep, and trying not spill...haha!
Way back in the day I vowed never to take my friends or family for granted. Being that close to be being gone would do that to a person. But I think I did take Sarah's time for granted. She was helpful, available and listened readily. Adjusting to this move has not been easy. Truth be told, I am STILL adjusting. New job, new apartment, new responsibilities - new just about everything. Sarah was definitely there to help out.
This whole stream of thought came about because I was literally thinking..."damn I wonder if Sarah would like to go see a movie?" Ooops. She's not here anymore.
And I still owe her a dance...
So Akilah brought over this strange movie I had never heard of starring Christian Bale and Taye Diggs called Equilibrium. Go figure. The premise of the movie was intriguing. Mankind in an effort to avert a 4th World War, mandated everyone - men, women, and children take a drug to inhibit their emotions. All emotions. Although I spotted a few areas where people DID express emotion. To enforce the no emotion policies, these "clerics" were trained in close quarters dual pistol combat derived from some statistical model to ensure maximum lethality. Those are cool ass scenes!
Tonight was another night I didn't get to bed before 3AM. I am going to be hurtin'!!
L&T at work have a bomb ass house. The views are incredible and the decor on the inside is off da chain. I bailed on their party a few weeks back early and to make up for it promised to make them mojitos...L's favorite drink. And well mine too. 2 pitchers of mojitos later, we were all happy campers. Ok, this is my secret to a good mojito: sugar cane. If you can't find full on sugar cane juice, find somewhere that has dehydrated sugar cane crystals and from that make your syrup.
Afterwards we went to Belo again. Sigh. Thankfully, it wasn't all packed like the last time. However, the cover charge no doubt deterred people from showing up. Needless to say, I didn't buy drinks there. Too damned expensive. But the crew was hella fun! I let the flirt loose a little bit that night. The cool thing was we danced almost the entire time i was there.
I seriously was NOT feeling being in class tonight. We were talking about ordering food in restaurants and conversations and blah blah. Seriously, I would much rather be learning the grammar of French. Apperantly vocabulary in any language is easy for me. Putting those words together to form cogent non-idiotic sentences is a challenge all by itself. Sigh.
So I left class early to meet up with a couple of new *friends* at a dive bar. The stats were a couple of fun females...both tall! Woohaa!! And a couple of guys, one of which who spent 3 weeks in SEALs BUDs training. As in Navy SEALs. BUDs stands for Basic Underwater Demolitions. The SEALS take folks from any branch of the military...however the atrition rate is well...actrocious.
Anyway, long story short...I was out too late, and drank way too much. I DD at least 5 or 6 people. Sigh. I am such a DD whore at times. Mwhaha!
Dammit Sunday showed up in a hurry this weekend. And we don't get Monday off. It's all good. I am saving my vacation time for stuff that matters. Tomorrow is Columbus Day. Woohoo. Whatever. We celebrate a man for doing what's in our nature: go the wrong way, don't ask for directions, and play it off when we get to where we're going like we meant to go there. Good work Chris.
I almost didn't make my salsa lesson today. I was supposed to be up around 9:45AM to leave by 11:20AM to get to PB in time. Well I killed the snooze button. Ended up inhaling breakfast, taking the fastest shower in life and flying down to PB. This class was really small, so we were able to get a lot of attention. Dare I say I'm getting better at salsa? My main issue right now is when the hell I'm supposed to do the turns. The count in hip hop is also different than the count in salsa, but I'm on it! Mark my words, I'll be ripping up salsa clubs soon! Then I'm heading to Miami baby! Suz, see what you started?!
After salsa it was off the gym. Damn I love this workout schedule. After warming up, ab work, hitting the heavy bag (literally) and then the interval workout...I was in and out in 1 hour 15 minutes. The scale is pissing me off. When I weighed in first thing in the morning it said I had gained .5 lbs. Grrr. Then when I walked off and back again the water % and fat % changed. This is just the beginning so I'm buckling down. The amount of weight I want to loose is going to take a long ass time.
Now I'm ending my night with SportsCenter. Good times!!
Audrey has a theory that some how a full moon physiolgically effects humans in profound and discernable ways. Since she works with premie babies, she sees a lot of deliveries. And according to her a lot of those births occur on the full moon. And when she has to head down to the ER to help out, all manner of strangeness is waiting for them down there too.
Tonight I had an odd night. The day started out normal enough. I had to go to work. A guide that I was creating was becoming a HUGE pain in the my ass. One of the developers who swears he's a prima was up to his old tricks. Fine, whatever. I had my tasks to knock out, so I could leave early and head home to study. I had a test at 7PM that I HAD to be ready for. The last one I took, I pulled out an 89. God, truly, only knows how. There was also a paper (in French) that I had to redo, and a buttload of homework to be done. So I got to class at 7:06PM. 6 minutes late. Sun Tzu would've been pissed at me. We do the perfunctory Q&A session. By 7:39 I was done. I was like, wtf is this? I looked at all 4 pages of the exam checking for grammar (damned the fucking French with all their tenses and conjugations!!), punctuation, subject agreements et al. The essay at the end got a good look too. I didn't do any fancy writings at all. My statements were short, to the point, and used the bits the instructions wanted. Like Cheech said in Tin Cup, "sometimes par is good enough to win"
I was the first to finish. I walked to my car feeling incredibly disoriented. Could the test have been that easy? What did I miss? Could I have used me *flair* in my essay? Did I miss a lot of accents? Even after replaying the entire test in my head...I am confident I aced it. If I messed up at all, it would be in grammar and accents. My spelling and vocab were 98% on point. I called Asaunta and vented for a bit because it was just TOO weird. The I looked up and gazed at that full moon. Ah shit.
Afterwards I worked out, got some relatively healthy fast food and came home. I am sore as hell as I type this.
This is my favorite time of year, no matter which coast I am on...East or West. Right about on 495 around the Beltway, the leaves are starting to turn colour. Hues of light greens, oranges and reds line the freeways creating an urban Monet painting. Around sunset clouds, shapeless in form, boundless in beauty cover the sky in a billowy sheet. The setting sun's blood orange glow seeping into clouds, spilling out even more colour. Then there is the night. Cool air replacing summer's hot, but winter's frigid still absent. I want to go down to the water's edge with my friend one night again and smoke cigars, talk, not talk, think, reminisce and just take it in. Every now and then I get to leave work, just at the right time, take the 8 heading west at the right moment...and get that sunset. I love my warm summers, but Fall's demeanor is a welcome contrast.
I've come to realize there are 2 main reasons why I haven't updated my blog. First when I come home after whatever adventures and/or lying around in my vegitative state...I don't really feel like recounting it. Let that big sleeping dog lie. The other reason is I don't want people wondering just what the hell I am doing with myself in San Diego. Bad Tony on both counts. Spank me. The point of this thing is for me to keep track of my history. The other part is for people who care to check up on me, like family and friends, they have the ability to do so. Which I think is totally awesome that people get on my case for not writing.
My days for the most part are pretty routine. I go to work, sometimes arriving a bit late and get chewed out by my supervisor. I leave work and either do one of the following during the week: workout, go to school, and/or veg off my ass. I haven't found that regular happy hour crowd yet. To hell with it, I just need to go somewhere and hang out. On the weekends it's a bit more of the same, except I am now doing salsa lessons which are incredibly fun!
Then I play house. Apperantly I live in a ghetto ass part of town, hence why I am able to afford a 2BR 2BA, when other people are making do with a 1BR or studio for the same price. This is where things get amusing. I, Tony, male of 31 years old am responsible for keeping 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms clean. I am also responsible for laundry that accumulates as well. This includes my own laundry and when people visit. As i write this, there is an archipelgo of clothing lying next to me on the bed. Some of which will HAVE to go to the cleaners because the creases are damned near soldered into the clothes by now for sitting this long unfolded. I also have to make sure I keep lists of things that run out; food, soap, cleaning stuff, TOILET PAPER and nice stuff like that. Which I am not terribly good at to be totally honest. Then there is managing the finances. Something I feel almost entirely ill equipped to do. Bills are being paid, rent is being paid, food is being purchased, etc. but why the hell do I feel BROKE most of the damned time?! I've been told because starting up a new household is expensive. Which may explain why the only thing in my bedroom is, well, my bed.
Other than that playing house can be terribly fun. Every now and then friends will stop by for cocktails or we'll watch a movie. I get to cook too. Admittedly, I probably eat a whole lot better than the average bachelor due to my cooking skills. When we sat about as kids talking about how great life would be on our own...someone should've mentioned all this other stuff too!
Sundays are now salsa days. I drive down to PB and take lessons for about an hour at this cool studio. I haven't seen a latin person in sight, but they sure can teach some latin dances! Today I didn't get paired with any anal retentive advanced students, looking for newbie fodder to practice their own skills on. Thank God. Last time I got stuck with this older chick who had the moves of 4 straws stuck into a cube of jell-o. This class was much smaller, the teacher was very cool, and all the fellow students were very accomodating. And there was this instructor who was incredibly beautiful. I totally had a movie moment, where I was staring through the glass like a complete dork looking at her. Ok, now I think I catching the salsa bug that Suz caught. Sigh. Looks like we'll have something to do in the old folks home afterall.
After the salsa session I made myself workout. Earlier that day I weighed myself - one of the most self-loathing excercises one human being can do to themselves. I am heavy. My fat percentage wasn't terribly surprising, but I am also toting around a BUNCH of water. The scale I have gives me weight, body fat, and water percentage. So it's on.
I needed a few things at the store, so I knew I'd be making a stop there. When I left the gym and got into my car, my cell showed a missed call from T. When I called back, home girl was literally across the street filling up her car. One good thing about living in the ghetto is the cheaper gas. Anyway, she asked if I wanted to do pool and a beer. Fine by me, but I was gross and in dire need of some soap-time. Long story short, her, myself and Leo went to the bar around the corner from my place...played pool and drank beer. Light beer for me though. By the way, if you like Heiniken...do NOT drink that light shit!!! Heiniken Lite tastes like the folks in Holland just dropped a few drops of real beer into a vat of water. Miller Lite tastes better. I shit thee not!
It was a full day and I hadn't even started studying yet!!!