It's the Weekend

This week was ridiculously long despite not having work on Monday. It kicked off with me trying to go biking with a guy from work on Monday and getting taken to three different addresses by my GPS so by the time I got there, we only biked 6 miles and most of it was in the dark. And that pretty much set the tone for the week. Each day I got up at 0500 and left work at 6, 7 o'clock. The first time I saw the sun this week was yesterday when I stepped outside to get to a machinery shop and was blown away at how bright it was outside despite the sun being behind clouds. Yesterday my boss started bashing his noggin against the bulkhead which made me think, "This guy is a helluva lot smarter than I am. If he's at the point of trying to do himself in, maybe I'm at the point where I'm absolutely crazy and no longer capable of rational thought."
But I survived. I'm looking forward to warmer weather when I can get out and start logging two hour rides a day and longer ones on the weekend. But that's with the expectation that either things will calm down at work or I'll start getting people to work more efficiently. Either way, I need to start setting aside an hour each day for lifting weights and running or biking which means I'll be getting home later than usual. As it stands right now, I've been pretty good this week about weightlifting, but I haven't felt up for biking since I'm tired by the time I get home. I use my Scattante inside on an Ascent fluid trainer, but it's not the same as being out on the road.
Sometimes I wish people would just do their job. But I suppose my job is to make sure that people are doing their jobs.

New Year's Resolutions

This is a new year and I'm working on creating a new me. My new year's resolutions so far are:

1. Learn to fly. I tried to teach myself this morning by running across my room and flapping my arms like crazy. I fell down and hurt my back. Perhaps my arms didn't have the right angle of attack. But this just leads me to my next new year's resolution.
2. Failure. I will not accept failure of any kind. Especially the non-advantageous type of failure.
3. Scale Mount Everest. I will Scale Mount Everest while singing all the hits of Mel Torme. Without oxygen.
4. Lectures. I'm seriously concerned about the lack of education in this country. So I'll stand on the street corners and recite free lectures for all the passersby about everything I know. They'll probably be really short.
5. Art. I'll try to explore the subleties in the textures of concrete and debut in an art gallery somewhere.
6. Performance Art. I'll scream at the top of my lungs for an hour while people pay me to do it. And they say there's no money in art!
7. Advocate for Human Rights. But secretly I'll be spying on them for the Human Lefts.
8. Brawling. I'll attempt to fight my way out of a wet paper bag this year.
9. Pi. I'll learn all the digits of Pi out to a thousand places so I can recite it when I go to parties. I also plan on going home alone and crying into my pillow.
10. Music. I plan on writing a symphony for a 300 piece orchestra. The only musical instruments will be pots, pans, forks, spoons, and blenders.

And there you have it. Look out world, here's the new me coming through!

Supper

Tonight for supper I successfully made something that smells like kimchi and looks like brown snot.

Mustache-a-palooza!

Upon my return from vacation, all my fellow coworkers and I will attempt in the most manliest contest known to mainly manly men. Say that three times fast. The contest? To grow the best (and worst) mustache within regs known to mankind. The rewards for undertaking such a task? Immeasurable. I'm secretly hoping that I'll grow a mustache so manly that when I shake other people's hands, they'll collapse to the deck and yell, "Sir! Your mustache is so manly that it makes me cower in shame!" The reason for undertaking such a task? I'll have to turn to a quote by Sir Edmund Hillary (who had a decidedly bushy mustache), "It is not the [mustache] we conquer but ourselves."

New Apartment

I got a new apartment in the Norfolk area since living on the ship is cramped and freezing. I stopped by one day with a friend who also lived there, and signed the lease papers the same day. The only thing that concerned my parents was my lack of furniture. "Oh, I'll be alright mother and father," I said. And indeed, I was. I camped out there in my sleeping bag and pillow and had the best night of sleep since several months. The only problem was getting my stupid power turned on. I had it scheduled for the end of the month, and the date came and went. My power was on, and I figured everything was gravy. That is until I got back late one night from work, tried to turn the lights on, and then attempted to flip the breakers on and off only to discover that the realtor had paid the power company through the end of the month, and that my power never got turned on. After several phone calls, lots of emails, sending in a copy of the lease, and finally filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, my power got turned on. 3 weeks late.
Their main justification for not turning the power on? "We were having billing problems with the previous tenant." That's just peachy keen. My lease that I faxed in proved that I was not the previous tenant and I have no trouble paying my bills on time. Right now I'm kind of tempted to send in a voided check with the billed amount on it to the power company with "Trouble billing with previous power company" written in the Notes section. But I think that'd give them more justification to turn my power off again for a few months this time.
On another note, I'm wondering about my pu'er tea in the really dry environment. The relative humidity in my apartment is about 25-30% which makes me wonder if my tea is going to dry out completely. I think I'm going to have to store it in a chest or a humidor or something for the time being. As for my violin, it might have to stay at home for the time being since I don't feel comfortable taking it to such a dry environment.

It's All on the Internet

I mentioned yesterday that it feels like some little man with a pitchfork poked me in my legs all night because they hurt like the dickens. Well, it's an unwritten rule that whatever thought you may have, no matter how outlandish it may seem, someone else has had the exact same thought and made it public through the internet. My google search of little man poking me in the legs yielded a moving spiritual that soothes my soul when I sing it to my aching quadriceps.

New Portholes

My grandfather called me today and we had our typical wordy conversation that went something like this: "Hello?" "Hello" "Hello?!" HELLO!" "HELLOOO?! HELLO?!" "GRANDDADDY?" "IS THIS MY GRANDSON? HELLO?" "HELLO!" "OK!" "WHAT?!" *click*

And with that out of the way I went to go get new glasses. I needed them because my old ones are on their last legs. And by last legs, I mean I expect that when I pick them up and put them on my face, they'll crumple into dust and I'll be forced to walk around with squinty eyes and hands held out at arms length while moaning "OOOO! My glasses!"
But the eyecenter I went to had lots of different frames with pictures of models modelling them and stuff. And that was ridiculous in itself. One of the models was wearing some Columbia frames while scaling a cliff face as if to say, "These glasses allow me to see which crevices and holds I should use to prevent my untimely death since I'm not wearing a safety harness," and another was wearing some ridiculous Dave Brubeck type hornrim glasses with a scarf tied around his neck and his collar popped which told me, "I know how to show a girl a good time. First we'd get manicures together, then get our hair styled at the spa, and have conversations over drinks with umbrellas in them."
I settled on some plain ol' frames that didn't have a crosspiece on them but looked like they'd withstand being dropped a couple dozen times and didn't need to be taped in the middle. And as the saleswoman explained to me, "You get a 20% discount since you're in the military. Normally it'd cost this amount, but you save X dollars."
"I thought as much," I sagely murmured, while the look on my face said, "Eyeglass lady sure talk pretty."
Hopefully when I get them on Monday they'll look better on me than my OCS glasses. Now those were a pair of eyeglasses!