I must warn you, young lady, I am susceptible to flattery.

Last night my one friend asked me out. The premise for getting me alone was going upstairs to meet her friends cat who is partly psychotic and bites people. I have a set of three scratches on my wrist that is probably infected but looks like it was made but a three-inch-tall version of Wolverine, so I don't mind at all. The overall trend is that I'm getting better. I'm way better than I was a few months ago. So thats good.

I took the "just friends" option, since I am uninterested in dating her. It makes me wonder, though: if I wasn't so damn picky, how many girlfriends would I have had? Kind of unfortunate...her friends are pretty cool, and they are the only non-Drexel people I know in Seattle. Idk if I'm going to see them anymore now that she knows I'm not interested. We'll see. The whole finding friends things is still a priority anyway.

This morning I finally let go of Katie. As I watched the guy roll her out of the apartment complex I felt sad and took a picture with my phone. Although I will probably never see her again either way, it feels good to know that she is not getting thrown out or chopped for parts. Bittersweet, really. I haven't fallen in love often, and most of those girls were friends that I never managed to date. They have, however, been on the back of that bike. So, moving on, I guess.

Then I had a flight lesson today. We just did a pattern flight, where we take off and stay in the traffic pattern, taking off and flying back to land and take off again. I actually did worse this time than last time. We had to abandon most of the landings. We kept coming in too high, and I was way behind most of the time. There is way too much going on in the cockpit. Aaaaand we are getting close to my solo. Yikes.

I just asked out this girl that works in the apartment office. Sort of. I mean, I asked if she wanted to see Transformers tonight, and she couldn't tonight, but we made tentative plans for tomorrow. I probably had that retarded look on my face I always get when I ask girls out. I don't know if she is interested or if she just said yes to humor me, but I do know that I can stop worrying about seeming uninterested. I still don't have her number, though. And I'm going to Portland with Luke tomorrow. Basically...I have to hope that we get back in time for me to get to the office and see what showing or whatever.

So.......I don't know whats going to happen next. But it will be interesting.

Bounteous Boring Blog Bit

I woke up today, and for reasons unknown decide to read the blog of one of the girls I was (still am) in love with back East. Not sure why I did that; I knew it would make me sad but I read it anyway. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I was secretly hoping she had broken up with her boyfriend. She hasn't. In fact, there were pictures of her and her boyfriend.

Then while in the shower I came up with a story idea about a guy (who is a blacksmith) who is in love with some girl with a terminal illness that can only be cured by an expensive serum from an exotic country. The guy goes there, and comes back months later with three vials of the serum (having sold his father's legendary and priceless, named sword to pay for them) and finds out that the girl is engaged to some soldier guy. So blacksmith guy cures her and makes plans to leave. Soldier guy comes to the blacksmith shop to ask if he can buy blacksmith guys cabin up on the mountain, but blacksmith guy had been dreaming of living with the girl there, so he says no, and also tells soldier guy "if you come near me again, I will kill you." Then blacksmith guy proclaims that no one should ever live in that cabin, or on that land, and then goes off to find a witch (I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail a few nights ago). And after shopping around for a few witches, he eventually finds one to curse the land. That part gets a little fuzzy, because I was done showering at that point. But they may have put a casket with a skeleton inside (I just watched Kill Bill last night) that comes alive if someone tries to sleep on the property. Idk. I think a good ending for this story is that blacksmith guy goes off to ride dragons: but to do that he has to hike far away, and climb the tallest mountains, shedding all fears of heights, to reach where the dragon people live, and then they might not even let him fly anyway. It is kind of ironic: I've been trying to come up with something I could use as a bed time story, and that fits perfectly except for that that it is bitter and depressing and not really much of a story. I suppose I'll keep trying. I need to learn to write stories that are not obvious allegories to my unrequitted affections....

Anyway: after my shower I had a flight lesson today. It was awesome. The clouds were too low for us to fly out to the practice area so all we could do was stay in the traffic pattern. What that means is that we flew in a little rectangle around the airport ten times. Unfortunately I'm still not too good at landing, but I'm not too bad at it either. I think if I was alone in the airplane, and there was no crosswind like there was today, I'd have a 50/50 shot of setting that bird down without breaking anything.

I have continued my investigation into flying myself all the way to Philly. Here is what I know: Boeing Field (BFI) to Philly International (PHL) is 2065.5 nautical miles. That's assuming I could flying straight from one to the other without diverting around airspace and weather and mountains. According to the internet, the fastest plane with a piston engine (not a jet) is the Lancair Columbia 400, which costs about half a million dollars new. It does look sexy though. The Lancair Columbia 400 has a cruising speed of about 230 to 240 knots. At that speed it would take 13 hours to get to Philly. So even a plane I can't afford would still take a whole day to get me back home, and even with the security b.s. flying commercial is a more practical (and far more economical) option. I will probably still fly myself back at some point, but it won't be the jet setting scenario I'd hoped for. In fact, I haven't even bothered looking at jets. The amount of training it would take before I can fly one...well lets just say I probably wouldn't even be living in Seattle by then.

Oh, anyway. Then after my flight lesson some guy in a Porsche tried to race me on Airport Way. Sadly I wasn't in the mood and had to turn left anyway. I was incredibly hungry and stopped at a gas station to buy a hotdog that was not really a hotdog but some kind of sasauge with spicy stuff in it, and also I forgot to get anything to drink. So I tried to eat that on the way home. Then I went to Gwen's boyfriend's graduation party and met a bunch of new people. That was fun. I like meeting new people, and at the same time I'm shy. I'm like a shy extrovert. As if that makes sense. Or I'm just lonely because I live alone. I had a great idea the other day for meeting people. Something about...crap now I can't remember what it was. Whatever, I'll just go to happy hour more often.

Oh. OH. Lets get something clear up here: if you are drinking some kind of fruity drink, like with pineapple, and freaking cranberry, and whatever else she put in it, and you can still taste the rum + vodka + gin in it? Thats a problem. Or its gonna be. You see there is something I've noticed about fruity drinks (besides how damn delicious they are) and that is that the fruit juices and stuff are so potent that you don't actually taste the alcohol. So Friday night I went to a party at Lisa's place. She is one of the girls I play Settler's with. She seems attracted to me, and I to her roomate Rachel. Its my standard one-way-love train (really more like a "like" train, but I digress) only I'm in the middle for once. Anyway, Lisa made an enormous pitcher of something called a Fishbowl. Hmm...a pitcher. That reminds me of my birthday. I seem to have bad luck with pitchers. Anyway, she put a lot of liquor in this thing, and I didn't think anything of it because I'm used to feeling the burn in my drinks. I should have, though, especially when I announced to everyone that I totally wanted a cup cake and left and came back with "Sweet Cream" flavored ice cream from Coldstone (and it was a little chilly out, mind you). But I digress.

Two tall glasses of this fishbowl stuff and then we went inside and I did two doubleshots of vodka right in a row. I may or may not have other stuff to drink. Probably not. Anyway, thats when the warning bells started to go off. Actually they were more like warning waves. Of nausia. I spent the next few hours sipping water and nibbling on chips, trying to restore the balance of my stomach chemistry like some sort of drinking jedi. This time I didn't fail. Perhaps because I didn't have an annoying jackass following me around trying to get me to drink another beer.

The moral of the story is: if you drink a big tall glass of something fruity that tastes strongly of alcohol, that does not equal one drink. And if you are a lightweight like me, skipping dinner (except for some ice cream) and then doing a bunch of shots of vodka when you're drunk...well that is not a good idea either. I don't really know why I'm broadcasting this. Perhaps more for my own sake so I'll remember next time. Also, fishbowls don't taste that great. Malibu...something something's are better. Mai...pina...no thats not it. What was that drink? Bay Breeze!!! Yes. Malibu Bay Breezes are waaaay better. And it takes like 5 to get you buzzed, instead of 1/2. So it is a little easier to pace yourself. Betsy, as well as the open bar at Owen's wedding, made delicious Malibu Bay Breezes.

Ok most of that was incoherent...lets just go ahead and pretend that is a writing style. You know, the obscuration of the juxtaposition of ideas as a metaphor for conciousness while being intoxicated. I'm an awesome writer like that. I can't promise, though, that I will have much to write about in the future. The next few months of my life will be dominated by flying lessons, and in the spare time between trying to meet enough people so that I don't go crazy from loneliness and boredom. I will endeavour to seek out adventure when I can, to recount raucous parties where I wake up pantless in someone's path tub, or harrowing adventures aloft with wings and glory, or random shennanigas in the heart of the Emerald City with people both creepy and interesting, or tales of nearly bringing down the entire ordering system at work, of wining and dining the hottest ladies around and dancing all night. However for the next few weeks, I'm just trying to get out of bed at the same time every morning.

In Ur Citee, Dringkin Ur Rum

Being away from Philly only made me like it more. I only had a week there, and spent most of it running between different groups of friends and family. I hope to visit again, as soon as I save enough vacation time.

I finally posted my ninja on a for sale mailing list at work. The first reply came roughly ten seconds later, followed by others. Sounds like Katie is going to a good home. In fact, there is kind of an informal waiting list for her. Makes me happy. I like the idea that she is going off to someone (who happens to have a Ninja 250 engine lying around for some reason) much more than getting chopped up for parts. This fact is somehow making it easier to let her go.

I should be on to my next bike already, but flight lessons and car payments and other projects are getting in the way. Like for work I am researching how graphics can best represent large sets of data. Which really means I am just reading The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and making a slideshow based solely on that book and stuff I make up. I also wanted to learn Texas Hold'em and go to Vegas and play. And, as with the flying (where the goal is to fly a tiny plane from Seattle to Philly, making stops in cities as necessary to possibly grab lunch with female facebook friends), I came up with a ridiculous poker goal: being able to pay for the hotel and everything in Vegas from your poker winnings. I don't know how long it will take to get that skillful. Probably a while.

The amount of people that know my name at various restaurants is getting out of hand. The people at the sandwich stop know my name somehow. I don't even know how. Most of the time I just order a sandwich (or soup!) from the internet, and then go pick up my food without really interacting with them. However, when I go and order in person my name is on the little sandwich ticket without them asking. So thats scary. Some of the girls at Starbucks are cute. And I'm still after that girl that works for my apartment building. I really can't tell if she's interested or not. You see I always seems to be wrong about whether or not a girl is interested. Either I think she is, and she's not, or I think she wants to be friends, and she's in love with me...wait, here, I diagrammed it:


Thats about right. I was going to write more here, but it took too long to make that graph.

The Fast and the Furiously-interested-in-learning-how-to-shift-right

There's an attractive girl that works for the apartment complex's office here. She likes listening to techno, and has a thing for fast cars and motorcycles. She told me a dodge charger could beat my STI. I said I'd doubt it. Then she challenged me to a race. Not with her, no. Because she doesnt own a charger. No, she dared me to race her state trooper friend, whose squad car is apparently a dodge charger. So...I'd be racing a cop. I've imagined scenarios like this. I've seen a few on tv. Usually, in my fantasies, though, my car has smoke bombs and rear-facing floodlights and, well, a lot of other gadgets I probably won't ever put on a car in real life. Probably.

She assured me that it will be fine--I inferred that he would be arresting me. So now I'm looking up dodge chargers, trying to figure out if they are faster than STIs. And I'm a little worried. Police usually get upgrades, or something. Everything I have is stock. And, lets face it, I don't really know anything about racing cars. I know that formula ones are pretty much faster than everything. I know that nascar is really boring. I know that people really like Subaru's.

I've having a little trouble imagining something faster than my car though. And it might be a chance to see Heather someone other than the office when she's handing my package from the mail. Kinda scary though. Days after I bought my STI, Luke crashed his. And I still remember the fear I felt driving head on into a mini van a few years ago. And I still feel a pain in my chest, occasionally reminding me that I'm not invulnerable. So racing could be a really bad idea. However, I have this rule where I do things are afraid of. Since most of the things I've been afraid of so far include talking to girls, and climbing on some rocks, I've actually been pretty safe.

Waaaaaait a minute. Screw this. I was going to go on about...something. Something about...oh who cares what I was talking about: that was dumb. Subaru's are made for traction. At least, according to some random website. So if I want to beat that charger, all I have to do is find some sand, snow, or ice. And learn how to corner in it. Probably in mountains...well that sounds suicidal actually. Oh dammit Chargers have all-wheel-drive too. Stupid police.

Well, now I don't know what I'm going to do. I can race a cop in some car that probably got all upgraded so its way faster than mine even if I could shift--did I mention I'm a bit slow at shifting?--or I could just do something else with my time. We'll see.

The post that's almost as dumb as an episode of Gray's Anatomy

This week I am serving as my team's contact for all problems that our services cause. The week began with my pager not working, something my boss had a problem with because he gets pages 15 minutes after I ignore mine. Then the week got worse. I can't say much about how and why it sucked, but I was definitely regretting taking the job and moving out here and everything, adventure be damned. I oscillated between lamenting my situation, trapped here because it is waaay to early to quit, and trying to solve problems.

It seems, however, that things have a way or working out if you just keep at it. The people that handle the pagers never got back to me about mine being broken, but that didn't matter because I fixed it on my own. Some of my teammates stopped by and were incredibly helpful and all this pain has been a catalyst for learning certain things well. Even better, I am more than half-way done. Unless something happens over the weekend. Which is why I've kept my schedule clear.

The flight training is doing better. I think my flight instructor and I are getting used to each other. That, or I'm getting used to him. I have some kind of innate need to please people; it's really annoying.

My girl situation remains depressing. In fact, one of my friends from the East Coast still wants to be my wingman. From the 3000 miles away. This means that when I visit in a week or two, I can't complain about being lonely around him without getting a lecture about whatever he thinks I'm doing wrong trying to meet girls. I think I have this one: I'm not [trying]. Most days when I get home I have about enough energy to turn on the TV and watch House, or project my hatred at NCIS for being on in its place. If I am feeling particularly energetic, I cook myself some pasta. If not, well...you don't want to know: my fridge remains pretty empty. No where, in all of that, is there energy to go out and meet new people. I did deliberately smile at some girl today (usually the smile is unintentional) but it was mostly because she was right in front of me and I had nothing better to do. And there are some girls at starbucks. I'm afraid of asking them out though, because the one that I'm interested in is not the one that hits on me, and I worry that if I screw up I will create some kind of awkward situation that will threaten my Grande Vanilla Latte source.

Wow I don't even know why I'm writing here. Nothing interesting happened--nothing worth reading. Yet I remember standing in line at McDonalds thinking "that would be an interesting post." I think there is an xkcd about that. Wait, no, actually. That comic is about doing something really interesting and ironically thinking about writing about it. What I did was do something that's not interesting, and then write about it. Ah, this reference is more suitable. In summary, I've just wasted your time. Seriously. I normally pour over my entries, trying to fix spelling and grammer errors, but this one is just so boring I can't get two sentences in.

"Cessna 63634, you're still transmitting on the tower frequency"

I made a landing today. It was my first landing, and exciting, yes, but the downside is now my instructor is going to make me do more of them. They are not easy. In fact, immediately after landing I forgot to change my radio frequency before getting my taxi clearance. It wasn't a big deal (this time) but I still felt like a dumbass.

My instructor says I am about 1/3 of the way to going solo. Going solo is 1/3 of the way to getting your license. So I'm a ninth of the way towards getting my license. More importantly, I don't have much time before they expect me to get in the airplane by myself and go fly it around. I've considered it in the abstract, yes. I've imagined me in a plane, flying, sort of from a third person view. I never really thought much about me actually flying alone, about all the sensations of sitting in the left seat and dealing with the controls and the tower and the fifty million things I have to remember all at once...alone. Thats going to be interesting. I've heard that In Real Life when you screw up you can't just hit a button and restart back at the beginning of the runway.

Tomorrow, starting at 9:30am, I will be the primary on call for my team at work. What that means is suddenly I will be responsible for troubleshooting and fixing a complex software system that I don't even know how to turn on. Between flying and being on call for a while, I'm going to have my hands full for a few weeks. Hopefully, though, I'll have some time after that for meeting new people.

Fortunately, for now I do have my friends that come over every week and play Settlers. I bought an expansion for it called "Traders and Barbarians." Amazon sells it for $35. I paid $50 for it at some stupid toy store that only had one wall for Legos, all because I didn't want to wait a day or two for shipping. The add on sounded promising because it lets you play with two people (cause, you know, a romantic evening of wine and dancing, then home to get comfortable and play a board game. Thats not weird at all) and there were a bunch of other cool sounding variations, including the ability to play games that are all connected into a single campaign. I imagined it would be something like one of the Dawn of War games I played. We haven't played with it yet, as the normal rules for Settlers are enough for most people to keep straight at once. This game is so complicated it made me wonder: am I now traversing a slippery slope? Am I going to get bored with just Settlers and start buying all of the extension games? Am I going to become some kind of board game nerd? I can already feel the lure of deeper rules and more discrete game states. Gameplay complexity lures me like a siren's call. If I give into this, I'm going to end up with bookshelves full of complicated board games and about zero friends willing to sit still long enough to play them with me. I already know that something is wrong because of the slight twang of disappointment when I win: I feel a strong to desire to continue playing, just so I can continue placing little wood pieces on the game board to expand my kingdom. One of these days, I will be found in my apartment, sleep-deprived and unshaven, playing Settlers all by myself. But I digress.

Nevertheless, I have mostly positive feelings about this add on I bought. You can pick and choose, and even combine (oh boy!!!) the different variations. There is one that replaces the robber with some fish--I'm excited about that. There is also one that lets you get victory points for having the most harbors, in the same way that you points by having the most roads, or the most knights. So maybe I'll convince my friends to try those.

Or maybe I should move onto other games....

Well, That Was Easy

Did you know that you can take some frozen broccoli, throw it in a skillet, cook it for about three minutes, and then dumb some salt and soy sauce on it, and it will taste delicious? WTF? In my last apartment, due to an odd set of circumstances that always took ten minutes to explain, I couldn't really cook anything. I used to buy these microwave meals that took like ten minutes to cook and almost always tasted like crap. And the veggies would be all mushy, and they were expensive. I don't get it. I thought cooking was usually more work. After I found out how ridiculously healthy broccoli is, I put it on my list of things to figure out how to cook. I thought it would be some ardurous quest, where I try lots of stir fry recipes. Apparently, not. It only takes three minutes to cook. I can made that as a snack. Well, the problem is the saucepan is dirty afterwards. And I feel a little weird running the dishwasher. I think the solution here, is to just own like five skillets. Then I will always have a fresh one on hand, and I'll run the dishwasher on the whole batch when they get dirty. I have a feeling, somehow, that this solution is not at all what a normal person would do. I think its a good solution though. I could wash the dishes by hand on occasion. I think I'd rather have 5 skillets.

I am still getting used to my new car. After seeing Wolverine with Luke on Friday, I decided to see just how fast Jessica--thats what I might name her--could accelerate. I figured my only shot at doing this without a ticket would be to gun it right as I'm merging on to the highway. That would be my fun for the night: accelerating to the pace of traffic. So I get onto the on ramp, and practically coast all the way down to the highway. There were some cars ahead of me; I was going about the same speed as them. Finally I am down in the merge lane, going incredibly slow, probably in third or fourth gear, and think, this is it. I glance down at my speedometer to see how much room I have to accelerate before I hit the speed limit and realize...I'm already at the limit.

My fun for the night would be a zero-second power burst in my amazing and expensive rice burner. I began to wonder if I really made the right purchasing decision. If I can't even use the turbo maybe I should have gotten a much, much cheaper and slower car. In fact, my jeep used to start wobbling right about that speed. That was always exciting...kept me busy holding the jeep in the lane. I hung out in the right lane with a frowny face for most of the ride home. I let loose in the tunnels, but had to slow down almost immediately so I'd be at the speed limit when the tunnel exists came into sight: you never know if some jackass cop is sitting there pointing his laser at the entrance. Hopefully I'll eventually get a feel for how the cops work the area. Or maybe I just need to find a road that is abandoned enough.