Journal Entry - January 15, 2008

"I've seen a rich man beg
I've seen a good man sin
I've seen a tough man cry
I've seen a loser win
And a sad man grin
I heard an honest man lie
I've seen the good side of bad
And the down side of up
And everything between"
-What It's Like - Everlast

There’s a big
a big hard sun
beating on the big people
in the big hard world"
-Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder


Let's see...what happened today. Not a whole lot besides alot of snow. I was able to give somebody some good news at work today, so that was a nice switch compared to the past week or so. Honestly, I can't really thinkg of anything else "journal"ish to write. So I'll just go off on a tangent for a while..

I picked the first set of lyrics above for two reasons. A) it's what was playing on the Shoutcast station I was listening to as I worked on this post and B) It seemed like a good way to describe how life should be treated. Not so much from the pure irony standpoint the lyrics seem to take, but more from the standpoint that expectations are a tricky thing.

I picked the second set of lyrics above also for two reasons a) it's the second song that's come on since I've been working on this post and B) it kinda helps to remind me that life's unfair, and you gotta get over it.

Ok, enough with the lyrics, let's get down to the nitty gritty here. I didn't like the tone of my frustrations post the other day. I have this problem where I get caught up in this irrational idea that because I'm a supposed "good" guy and that I follow the rules and do what I'm "supposed" to do that I'm entitled to something as a result of it. I've tried to figure out where I got that idea from, but at this point I'm not really even sure if that would make much difference. Maybe it's just from being too logical of a thinker and looking at cause and effect so much throughout my life up until now. I dunno. Whatever it is, I need to find a way to counteract it. I should be able to accept what life gives me and make the best of it. and not get caught up in expectations and feeling due something. I guess that's kinda why I'm doing this again, this whole blogging thing, to try and document these times like these and try to work out in my head where I went wrong and try to find a way to make changes. I feel a little weird putting this out in the public like this, but I think it's necessary. I think I need to own up to my actions more and not just write them off. So any readers out there, feel free to call me on my shit now and then

frustrations

this post may sound whiny or bitchy, but I don't really care. Part of my resolution this year was to get myself to get stuff like this out and documented so that I can hopefully learn something from it and make myself a better person. This here is one of those such posts.

frustration is something that has a firm grasp on my life. Here's a list of the things that caused me frustration today: (Please note, I'm not justifying or rationalizing these things, I'm merely listing them)

• a good friend is getting married. someone I had a crush on for a while but never acted upon
  
• a project a former employee of mine was working on needs to be completed, and I found out that he didn't complete nearly as much of it as he had claimed
  
• a good friend who's going through some job difficulties, who I've been trying to support and be a good friend to, opened up to someone else who has more..ulterior motives behind being their for her.
  
• somebody cut me off on the way home.
  
• I spent a couple hours last night going through personal ads and not getting any replies.
  

ok, first off, most of these things shouldn't be causing me frustration. I can see that now, but when those events occurred, my first reactino was that of frustration. Either out of jealousy, or a sense of "unfairness". I shouldn't feel that I'm owed anything, but I do. Anyways, I'm going to watch some tv and chill out for a while. I'll come back later and edit this post with some more thoughts and musings.

Journal Entry - January 14, 2008

Need to play some catchup this morning:

Friday - busy day at work. After work I went over to my cousin's house to work on her and her husband's wireless network. I had set it up for them last year and for some reason it stopped working for them. I have no idea what happened to it, but the router was making a high-pitched whine that changed frequency depending on whether or not a pc was plugged into it or not. That being beyond my scope of tech support, I suggested we buy a new router. Put the new router in and they were good to go. After that I showed my cousin how to synchronize music to her new cell phone. then I tried to get their new road runner accounts setup, but stupid RR would say their password was valid on their account management site, but not on their webmail site nor through POP access. whatever. Then I showed them how to burn cds in iTunes. After that it was about 11 and I headed home.

Saturday - slept in until 11ish, got up and did some straightening up. the Doors (Scott and Garland for those that don't know them) came up and we hung out. We went to best buy, did some shopping. I picked up Geometry Wars for the DS (highly recommended for DS owners). Then we went back to my apartment and watched Shoot 'Em Up. Very fun cheesy action movie. No real deep plot, just alot of over the top action. After the Doors left, I watched Shortbus, a movie recommended by my surrogate girlfriend Jen (NOT Jennifer "glittergirl" Charlton, this is a different Jen). And by surrogate I mean, not my girlfriend, we're just good friends that talk on the phone almost everyday like a boyfriend and girlfriend would do. But we're not, and she already has a bf, and even if she didn't, things wouldn't work out between us. So yeah, that was a tangent, anyways, back to the movie. It was this odd artsy kind of movie revolving around this couples counselor/sex therapist who's never had an orgasm. It's a pretty graphic movie, but I thought it was really interesting. It explored a bunch of different people and their quests for finding themselves basically. If you're open-minded and don't get freaked out easily when it comes to sex (hetero and otherwise), I think it's worth a watch.

Sunday - Got up early for some reason. Ok, so it was 9, but for me that's early on a weekend. I got motivated and did dishes, washed my cpap mask, started laundry, tore down some cardboard boxes and took a whole car load of cardboard up to the recycle dropoff. Got a call from Todd and Kathy inviting me out to go shopping with them. We went up to Value City. I picked up 3 pairs of jeans, a couple sweatshirts, and a pair of shoes. Came home, and just kinda shut down for the rest of the evening.

So there's my weekend wrapup.

"Are you ticklish?"

boredboredboredboredbored

I'm at work, and I'm bored out of my mind. I'm burned out from this week. All the stress from the bad news, plus I've been extra busy lately trying to pick up some of the programming slack. And right now, I'm just spent. I'm trying to think of a way to cruise through the last hour and 9 minutes of the day. so here I am blogging about nothing. Nope, nothing at all. kinda like seinfeld. "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" wonder how many different ways I can come up with to indicate nothing..

nothing
nada
zip
zero
zilch
nein
negatory
non
empty
void
transparent
blank
...

I'm stumped, that's about all I can come up with. well that wasted about 3 minutes.

Out of body experiences

There are nights when im turning off the lights in the apartment, and starting my routine preparations for bed when im struck by a thought. All of a sudden its like im finally slowing down enough to the point that reality catches up to me. All of a sudden the realization hits that im living on my own, something that hasn't been the case for 31+ years of my life. And the realization also strikes me that my father is still gone and will never come back. And those realizations act like a chill down my spine and I suddenly feel like a child who's lost and alone. After a few seconds the feeling goes away. Some nights it leaves a lingering sadness behind. I just had one tonight, and the sadness is hanging on. I think because its coming up on the 2nd anniversary of dad passing that they're lingering. Only tonights different because a new thought has struck me. I wonder if mom has moments like these and if they're any worse than mine. Sorry for the depressing post, just needed to get it off my chest.

For any single women...

or friends of single women...or people who know single women...

Girl Guide to Geeks


Sure alot of it's stereotypical, but there may be some gems of truth in there too

Journal Entry - January 10th, 2008 (now with 100% more pictures!)

Wednesday - I got the desk finished, and got the chair put together. Boy I thought the desk was tricky, but the chair was a royal pain in the ass. But the desk is in place, the computer is setup on it, and no longer setup on a rubbermaid container, and the office is looking like an office, and less like a room full of boxes. I can now do "office" type stuff in there like paying bills, filing paperwork, updating my financial software.

Thursday - This has been a really long week. There's more work developments looming in the near future. I'm just trying to make it to the weekend so I can unwind a little. Took some pictures of the new office additions,also a new picture of the amaryllis project. My time-lapse movie project was a failure, literally. Had a power outage which turned off my pc the webcam was connected to, and subsequently wiped out the frames that the software had already captured up until then. It was a nice idea, but I think I'll have more fun just enjoying the plant as it is.

Hang Ten

C'monnn...just gotta ride this crashing wave a little bit further so I can make it shore....

Journal Entry - January 8th, 2008

The desk and accompanying office chair have been completed. The chair was a real bitch, so I'll get pictures in the morning (if I remember). Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day. This weather is pretty crazy, even for Ohio. 10 degrees last week, 60 degrees today and yesterday, supposed to be in the 30s and snowing again next week. It was a very nice break in winter though. I think if we had more of these warm streaks like this, maybe we'd all be better off emotionally without so much of the "winter blahs" Once every couple of weeks having a day that you can roll the windows down on the way to and from work sounds like a good idea to me.

Journal entry - January 7th, 2008

Monday Monday, can't trust that day,
Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
Oh Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be
Oh Monday Monday, how yould cou leave and not take me.

-The Mamas And The Papas


Today was a stressful monday. The bad news that I mentioned in a previous journal entry was delivered today. It wasn't my decision overall, but I was put in the position of deciding who got the bad news. Thankfully I wasn't alone when I gave them the news. That would've been very difficult for me to do. Even though I didn't have much choice in the matter, it still bothers me that I had to negatively impact someone's life in that way. Hopefully the person in question will end up ok in the long run.

Not much else happened today. After the drama of the morning, I laid low for the most part.

I started working on the desk last night, got the bulk of the structure put together, still have to put the drawers together. Oh! Imagine my joy when I barely make it past step two out of 20-odd steps when I see I'm missing a "hidden cam." I wasn't happy. thankfully I was able to find a spot that it wouldn't have much structural effect. Hopefully in the next couple of days when I'm not so wiped out I can get the desk put together and finally make my office into an actual office rather than a room with boxes and a computer setup on a rubbermaid container ;-)

Journal Entry - January 6th, 2008

I've already screwed up my resolution this year, and it's only the 6th of january. Oh well :) Anyways, I've decided to stop numbering the journal entries and just put the date on them. So, onto to a weekend recap journal entry..

Friday...what happened friday...Not a whole heck of a lot.

Saturday...Slept in until noon. Guess I was tired. Got together with Todd and Kathy in the evening. We went to the new BW3's in Aurora for dinner. Good food, nice place. Then we did some shopping in the area. I went to Target and got myself a Rubik's Revolution (see prior journal entries). Went to Circuit City and picked up season 2 of Stargate Atlantis. I've been hooked on watching the first season. The circuit city in aurora has really lacking inventory. It's the nearest electronics store to the apartment. Maybe I'll luck out and they'll open a new best buy in aurora/twinsburg/solon ;-) Went to Dick's trying to find an OSU shirt to wear to work on Monday and to wear monday night while I watch the big game, they didn't have anything that looked big enough. Todd got some surround sound speakers. Then I came home and watched more Stargate Atlantis. Started to notice my ear was ringing, not sure if it was from checking out the speakers with Todd or if it's a remnant of the cold/flu bug.

Sunday...got up around nine, called mom and got setup with her. I went home and got her xmas lights and extension cords wrapped up and put away, helped her bring the rest of thexmas decorations down from upstairs, got them stashed away in the basement, and helped her pick up sticks in the front yard and loaded them onto the trailer while she drove the tractor. After that I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a computer desk and computer chair finally, along with Shoot Em Up on dvd and Stargate Atlantis season 3. Had a heck of a time getting the chair and desk into my car, but I was able to get things jammed in, and had the trunk lid held down by the cargo netting, since it wouldn't close. Got back to the apartment and got the desk and chair unloaded, then went back out to giant eagle to pick up some things and prescriptions. Got back to the apartment, got the car unloaded again, and now I'm sitting down watching football. Got some pizza hut ordered online, since I'm exhausted.

so there ya go, now I'm back up to date with my journaling :-P

Journal Entry #3 - January 3rd, 2008

Today didn't start off too well. I had trouble sleeping, woke up at 5, and for the life of me couldn't get back to sleep. And my acid reflux seemed to be riled up too. I was just laying awake waiting for 7:30 to come so I could have an excuse to be awake. After I got showered and dressed, I remembered I forgot to take my morning pills. So I go to the pillbox and notice my pills are still there from last night. *proverbial smack on the forehead* Well that explains all that. I took both the evening and morning meds this morning and made my way into the office. Of course I had to dig out the car first. I've only had to dig out twice so far this winter, but I'm really tired of winter already.
Made it to work, and was really feeling out of whack physically, probably from the meds. Proceeded to take down the xmas lights around the office, since it was my first day back since the holidays. Everybody else followed suit and we got the area back to normal.
Then the fun began. Got some bad news from the boss. I'm gonna try to avoid going into any details on work-related things like that, just to avoid any potential problems. Let's just say it was bad news. After that I spent the majority of the day working on a rush report request, had to take a late lunch. So, late lunch, work stress, and med funkiness left me a bit of a wreck for the rest of the afternoon. But I tried to keep my cool about it all, and realize I was just having a shitty day and could only do so much about it. I've kinda stumbled upon a new mantra i'm trying to employ. "Find the/your peace" or "Find the/your calm" It's still a mantra-in-progress. My weakness is getting caught up in the moment and letting things snowball on me. I'm hoping the new mantra will help me find a way to defuse those stressful times a bit. Gotta find something until my free therapist can squeeze me in again, since her schedule's gotten a bit busy lately :) (KIDDING!)
I came home, thought about breaking out the leftover irish creme mom made for new year's, but decided against it. I've been drinking when stressed a little too much lately. Instead I plopped down in the recliner, turned on the heat and massage and just chilled, watching Law and Order Criminal Intent, and a little bit of SVU, but then switched over to the bowl game.
I have to do rollout tonight. Hopefully it goes smoothly and tomorrow will be more of a quieter day. I'm thankful it's friday tomorrow, but it kinda stinks that i'm already wishing it was here, after only being back to work for a day :-P

Journal Entry #2 - January 2nd, 2008

Today was a very quiet day. I'd already taken the day off as part of my extended New Year's Eve vacation, but had I not had it off already I would've taken it as a sick day. I spent most of the day in bed trying to kick this flu/cold/whatever I've had since Saturday. Didn't really do a whole lot. I've learned over this 6 day "weekend" that weekday morning television is an absolutely wasteland. There's a predominance of "Judge" shows. There was even one I saw today called Jury Duty. The concept is there's three "celebrities" that have to deliberate the usual small claims crap that the "judge" shows deal with. The "hook" (seriously, can I use quotation marks anymore in this post? Let's find out!) is that the "jurors" (HA! I knew it! more quotes!) get to ask questions. as in during the normal proceedings, the "jury" (they can't be stopped!) asks questions. Then they show them deliberating (I almost used the quotes there, but they're getting old). I dunno, but if I had to stay home during the day and try to find something to watch, I'd probably read more. Wait, that'd be a good thing.
Anyways, back to my "journal" entry for the day (look, I'm actually getting close to making the air quote sign in the air whenever I type these) I got the second half of Garland's xmas gift in the mail today. Went out this evening and shoveled my sidewalk so I wouldn't have to do it tomorrow morning before I head to work. Got about 6-7 inches worth of snow I think. This is the second time this winter that on the day after a bad snow I haven't had to go to work. This is both positive and negative. Positive because I don't have to worry about trudging through the snow. Negative because the snow crew here at the complex plow around my car and I have to dig it out.
I called home to check on mom, her back's still bothering her. She's waiting to call the doctor until she's supposed to go back to see him for some followup...in about a month. It bothers me that she's in pain, but I can't force her to do what she doesn't want to do, so I'll just keep asking her if she's called yet. Maybe it'll get to the point that she can't put up with it. At least the massage pad that Caryn and Joe got her for xmas is helping her relax in the evenings. I told her I'd try to get back home again this weekend to finish taking care of the xmas lights and the rest of her decorations.
I think that's about it. Gee, for such a quiet day I typed quite a novel.

Journal Entry #1 - January 1st, 2008

Well here's my first Journal entry of 2008. Got up around 9, went down to Mom's. I spent a couple hours getting her water filter replaced, replacing her garage door opener, and taking her christmas lights down. It was very windy, cold, and snowy by that point. I was trying to get them wound up and all put away but ran out of time, so I'll have to go back down again and finish that part of the job. I drove Mom over to Caryn and Joe's. We had appetizers to start. Then I started playing a new game I got them for christmas called Polarity. Basically the game is all about magnetism. I'll let you read the site rather than try to explain it. It's a really fun, unique game. After that we started playing with their new Rubik's Revolution It looks like a Rubik's cube, but it's not, it's 6 different electronic games that revolve around pushing lighted buttons inside the centers of each of the 6 sides of the cube. I'll probably be picking both of those up someday. After that I laid down on the couch and passed out for a few hours, not sure how long. this flu/cold's really kicking my butt, and I don't think I did it any good going out and taking down the lights today, but they needed to get done. We had dinner (pork, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, corn) and I got Mom home. Driving home from Ravenna at about 5:30, the snow was horrible, there weren't any lanes on the road, I think I made a top speed of 30 mph. Finally got home, trudged my way through the foot of snow blown against my apartment door, dropped my bags, got into my pjs and just sat down and started to decompress. Mom sent me home some irish cream, so I may partake of that here in a few. I'm thankful I've got the day off tomorrow, because I really don't feel like going back to work yet. I need another day of nothing to recharge the batteries.

my new year's resolution

  Hadn't really thought about a new year's resolution until today,
   when it hit me that I should try journaling again.  So, the first
   attempt is going to using the blog as my journal.  My goal is to
   write something about my day every night.  No length requirements,
   just something every day.  I'm hoping that it'll help me work out
   personality trends, help me with my memory, etc.

my recipe

The Recipe For copaX

3 parts Attractiveness 2 parts Passion 1 part Vigor Splash of Seductiveness Sip slowly on the beach

What's the Recipe for Your Personality?

my new album

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal/blog because it's more amusing that way.

Amaryllis project day 1

Amaryllis project day 1
Originally uploaded by chrisohio0122

Got an amaryllis from my sister for christmas. As long as I keep remembering ill take a picture of it and document its progress

motivation

motivation
Originally uploaded by chrisohio0122

Steve haz it