[lyrics] One is a Genius

I let it fall, my heart
and as it fell, he rose to crush it
it was dark, and all raining
I could see his eyes, in the darkness

his head, it was huge
way to big, for a mouse
his friend, had ADD
I don't know, how they met

but there's a side, to them,
that I never knew, never knew
all the tests, they performed
made them ever strong, ever strong
and the mazes, they ran
made them way to smart, way to smart!



But they are pinky-y and the brain!
one is a genius and the...other's insane
well they burned that lab
one more sacrifice, all for fame...for fame



they're a team, that pair
they make plans, every night
watch them wor-r-r-rk
together
brain and pinky is there anyone better?

cause there's a side, to them
that we never knew, never knew
all the games, they played, they were all a ruse, all a ruse
but the plans, they make
some how they always fail, always failllllllll



But they are pinky-y and the brain!
one is a genius and the...other's insane
well they burned that lab
one more sacrifice, all for fame...for fame


But they are pinky-y and the brain!
one is a genius and the...other's insane
to take over the world
cause that's all they ever do, ever do


But they are pinky-y and the brain!
one is a genius and the...other's insane
well they burned that lab
one more sacrifice, all for fame...for fame

A Quarter Mile at a Time

5.5 hours of riding left until I install a second seat and give girls rides.

Cradle Theft to the Rescue

I'm seeing this girl.  She is like five years younger than me and fairly immature.  It is the best thing ever.  She's not bitchy, and she laughs at my jokes, and we are basically on the same maturity level, and we've dated for weeks without the word "exclusive" coming up in conversation, and...well she shows up.  And I have evidence that I have not been locked in the friend zone.  Also she's hot.  No baggage.  Past experience has taught to never get too into something like this, because you never know when the rug will be pulled out from under your feet, but for now, it is pretty awesome.  I'm enjoying the sun while it lasts.

Also, her favorite movie is Casablanca, which is a timeless classic, and roughly the opposite of Twilight.

At work, someone sent some slides from a presentation by a guy I've never heard of, one Joshua Bloch.  He's some kind of big deal to some people.  What matters, though, is that after reading his slides and then subsequently watching the video and this buying the book, I have discovered:  this man preaches the truth.  Any time you are going to use a statically typed language like Java there are certain ...ways of doing things that are intuitively better than most other options, and these things are obvious.  At least to me.  After getting in lots of arguments with people and reading so many dumb opinions on the internet, it is vindicating to suddenly discover an expert out there who is telling people the exact same things that I have been.  Sometimes I will be reading a paragraph about the downsides of a particular approach (such as how the dumbass java-bean style of creating objects is lame) and I think of a mitigation (such as manually freezing the object), and I read about that strategy in the very next paragraph.  This is amazing!  This man is like a heavenly oracle because he agrees with me on everything!  And since this Josh dude is famous, I'm pretty sure this basically gives me free license to go around being a dick with my opinions on how code should be written, similarly to the way I use Strunk & White to start fights with grammar nerds (side note:  turns out Strunk & White is not the only widely accepted authority on professional English, so beware people who know what they're talking about).  This guy probably indents code with spaces, which makes him a tool (just like the other 99% of programmers), but not everyone can be like me.

Admittedly, I indent my code with  spaces, because the alternative is to get in a verbal argument with pretty much every other human being in the building, and also the only files in our code base that aren't indented by spaces are the few files that I wrote completely from scratch.  White space can be tolerable, or even enjoyable, actually, if you set the indent width to 2 spaces instead of 4 or 8.  This has the bonus benefit of letting you fit more code on one line, so you have to do fewer of those retarded multi-line statements that code style nazis get off on*.

In other news...if you couldn't tell I had nothing to write about.  I'm waiting for my code to compile.  Oh its done.  Gotta go.

Seriously though, there is key on our keyboards people and its just for indenting.  I'm pressing the indent key in order to indent.  You can't get anymore simple than that.  And the tab character is ASCII #9.  Its not like I'm putting some chinese dialect of unicode into these files.  The space bar is great for making spaces.  I'll give it that.  You press it; it makes a space.  But the indent, or tab key...well it just indents thing.


*this is correct grammar.  Don't believe me?  Read Strunk & White

My First Sobriety Test

Cop:  "...any other medical conditions?"

Me:  "I have an undiagnosed heart condition."

Cop:  "Do you know what it is?"

Tonight I just popped my sobriety test cherry.  I was out in Ballard having a few (actually it was technically a couple) drinks with nice girl and her friends, one of which who is crazy.  We made out for a few seconds and then I was in my car.  Checked the time against the number of drinks that I had, and I was good to go.  No need to go hang out in the cupcake store for an hour like last time.

On my way home I got a sweet ass opportunity to take a right-on-red (using the sliding Philly stop) and then really punch it going up the ramp to a bridge that was designed by people trying to kill you.  Tailed a bus for a while, because it was taking up both of the fucking lanes, then it got out of the way and I punched it again.  Then there were flashy lights.  Before I've written about feeling nothing when getting pulled over.  I might have been lying then, because this time I really felt nothing.  And I was kind of expecting it.  I think once you stop and think about it, and you tell yourself "yeah, I'd rather not hate my life, and get lots of tickets, than actually drive that fucking slow" you basically just accept that you'll be pulled over a lot, and it becomes a thing you expect, like catching cold in the winter or using up all the toothpaste.  Sure, you can do your best to play cat and mouse games with the cops, but lots of cop cars don't have rack lights, and I suspect they often don't use any real mechanism to track your speed beyond eyeballing it, and I still have not invented the night-visioned rear-facing cam attachment to scan for cop cars.

Anyway, this time the guy asked for my license and insurance and did not ask for my registration.  I don't know what the fuck is up with the cops here;  they never ask for all three.  I don't even remember how fast he said I was going.  I heard him say the speed limit was 40, which, honestly, that speed is only suitable for parking lots--and then I kind of silently ignored the rest.

Then he came back and made me step out of the car and I got to take a fun sobriety test.  I've watched videos online about what to do in this situation, and they make a big deal out of locking the door when you get out.  I learned two things:  1. it kind of doesn't matter when the damn window is open and you know the cop will freak out if you turn the car on to roll the window up.  Also 2. the cop did not care that I locked my car.  No reaction.  It was completely unlike the video.  I'm pretty sure, now, that half of the things I've been training to do in the event of a traffic stop are only applicable to people that have weed in their car.

I almost refused the sobriety test, however, I don't have the number for my traffic lawyer in my phone, and she's not "my lawyer" in the sense that I can call her at midnight on a Saturday, and I was pretty sure telling him to cut the foreplay and give me the breathalyzer would have involved a trip to the police station, and my driver's side window was rolled all the way down.  So I just did it.  Possibly not the best move legally...consult with your lawyer.

It was quite chilly.  We did the alphabet.  Oh, we also did a fun list of medications.  I told him I took acetaminophen -- not even trying to be a dick.  It was clear from the way he wrote it on the pad, though, that he was unfamiliar with the technical name for tylenol.  Anyway.  Alphabet.  Some gay walking thing.  There was a nose touching thing with your eyes closed.  I kind of forget the rest.  The scariest part was when he told me to stand with my feet together, and said I'd have to be like that the rest of the test.  I immediately became concerned since I have a history of passing out after standing in that position for too long but...it was fine.  What else.  Oh yeah.  Close your eyes and try to estimate 30 seconds, and then open your eyes and explain how you arrived at your estimate.  That one was actually fun;  it was like an interview question.  Except that I was pissed that he could even think I was drunk after probably witnessing my awesome entrance onto the highway.  Seriously.  I'm kind of amazing.  He should have seen that and been like "wow there's no way this guy could be drunk; he executed that curve so beautifully.  I should phone my kids about his amazing driving."

So, whatevs.  He gave me a warning.  Never gotten one of those.  They write stuff on the piece of paper and give it to you as if it was a ticket.  I looked, and did not find a speed, or a method of ascertaining speed, so this traffic stop didn't really offer much useful information.  Either he paced me, or it was radar.  I'm hesitant to get a radar detector;  I believe they give you a false sense of security.  I am grateful though that it was only a warning because I am currently in the process of fighting a ticket already.  I would like to fight one at a time.  I calculated it out, and at the rate I get tickets, saving $25 will mostly nullify the lawyers fees.

Oh, and just in case it wasn't perfectly clear:  I was completely sober when I drove.  That's actually standard operating procedure for me, especially when I am in the vicinity of Cupcake Royale.

Then he ruined my night by going in the same direction as me for half of the way home.  Tonight I learned that cruise control actually does work at 38 mph.  No one should ever be going 38 mph, unless they are on their way to 90.  Or they are driving a tank.

If I had to be perfectly honest, there may have been some slight jerking when my turbo kicked in.  I still don't have that down perfect when I floor it in a turn.  Probably never will at the rate I'm practicing.  Seriously though I think my car is a cop magnet.

Also, to be more perfectly* honest, sometimes I see a cop and feel a small, very small, twinge of disappointment when he doesn't pull out after me.  I don't want to speak to hastily about what we'll probably do for my mid-life crisis, but expect to see me on the news.



So, here are some tips on dealing with cops:

1.  Always drive sober.  That way, you have an ace in your sleeve because you know if they give you a breathalyzer, you win.  Except don't accept road breathalyzers, or something.  I forget what I read about that.  However, remember that being innocent does not magically protect you from getting in trouble with the law.

2.  When they ask where you are coming from, name the town, not the specific venue.

3.  If they ask how much you had to drink, say "I'm not answering that question."

4.  If they try to trick you  into incriminated yourself, such as saying "when that guy pulled out in front of you, you moved to the left lane and just took off.  Why'd you do that?"  you can actually just not respond.  Its super awkward, but effective (this one is actually not from tonight).

5.  Possibly don't roll your window down all the way?  This has no practical value to people like me but I might try this next time, mostly because it is extremely unsatisfying to lock your car when someone can reach in and unlock it.


[Edit]
possible next mosaic:   Krauterbuchs (SWEET name)

See also:  Yorck Project


*if that phrase is good enough for the constitution, its good enough for this blog

Unsolved Monopoly Game

This was actually supposed to be a "page" but blogger is breaking on me right now. So...disregard this post.





The main question:  who would eventually win this game?

Secondary question (posed by player M):  can this happen without a purchase below market price?  (or, would this ever happen without L being a douce and selling all his shit to D for like no money?)

Rules:

Houses: 1/2 (WTF does this mean?)

Unmortgage: %10

Using 2 6-sided dice.



Player D:  $3417

Owned:

All railroads

All utilities

vermont

oriental

virginia

states ave

pennsylvania

pacific ave

ALL RED - ALL HOTELS

ALL YELOW - ALL HOTELS

park place

current location:  tennesee ave (middle orange)

shape: hat

Player M:  $2761


 Owned:

ALL ORANGE - ALL HOTELS

boardwalk

north carolina

connecticut ave

st charles place

ALL PURPLE/BROWN - ALL HOTELS

(mediterranean, baltic)

current location:  pennsylvania railroad (2nd railroad)

shape:  wheelbarrow

Player L:  $0



Ended on luxury tax



Game State:

It is player M's turn.

Free parking: $850

Next Chance Cards:

-advance to go

-go to reading railroad

-go to st charles

-get $50

-go to jail

-go to nearest railroad (pay owner twice)

Chance Cards in Discard Pile:

-pay each player $50

-pay $15

-goto go $200

-goto Illinois Ave

-get $150

-nearest railroad (pay owner twice)

-repairs:  $25 per house, $100 per hotel

-get out of jail free

-go back three spaces

-advance to boardwalk

-nearest utility (throw dice again, pay 10x)

Next Community Chest Cards:

-get $200

-goto jail

-repairs: $40 per house, $115 per hotel

-pay $100

-get $100

-get out of jail free

-pay $50

-get $20

-get $100

Community Chest Cards in Discard Pile

-get $25

-get $10

-pay $50

-get $50

-get $100

-get $10

Not sure what this means:

$30 x 100

30 x 500

30 x 50

30 x 20

Juice made from Fruit

Fruit Juice is a commonly available supermarket product that, regardless of which kind of fruit is claims to be made from, is largely composed of high fructose corn syrup, white grape juice, water, and preservatives.  Typically, it tastes too sugary and leaves that corn syrupy aftertaste in your mouth but without the deliciousness or the caffeine hit of a nice cold Mountain Dew.  I have recently become aware of another, similarly named substance.  I am calling this substance Juice from Fruit.  When spoken, its pronounced "juice from actual fruit."  After watching some documentary and spending hundreds of dollars on a ridiculously expensive juicer and some organic fruit that didn't have to be organic but was because kale is only available in that kind of store...guess what.  I don't regret this one at all.  First, I did 3 carrots, 1apple, 2 celery and 5 leaves of kale.  It was ok.  Then I did 8 carrots and 2 oranges.  Remember, carrots are that vegetable that I regularly choke down because I know that given the rest of my diet, I desperately need the vitamins, minerals, fiber, and, hell, whatever else you don't get from bacon and ice cream.  So I don't really like carrots at all.  I'm telling you this so that when I say that 8 carrots and 2 oranges was fucking delicious, you'll understand how suprised I was.  I don't get it at all.  Carrots suck, and oranges are moderately tasty--I typically ignore them because they are a pain in the ass to eat.  Don't be something where I have to both peel you and get my hands sticky;  I'm not going to bother.  But, by their powers combined...these two foods make a juice that is inexplicably good.  Also, I basically ingested 8 full carrots in one shot, instead of the 4 or 5 baby carrots I usually force myself to eat.  Actually it was 16, because I immediately made another one of those.

Anyway.

Next up was 2 apples, 1/2 a cucumber and 1" of ginger.  Except it was my first time with ginger, and I thought it would be no big deal if I just eyeballed it and basically put 3.5" of ginger in there.  That was a poor choice.  Ginger is not to be used lightly.  Cleared my sinuses out though.  Anyway, the last one was 2 apples, 2 oranges and 2 cups of strawberries.  That was also delicious, but given the ingredients, I mean, thats a no brainer.  Anyway.  There are some people out there with this plan that involves not eating for a week or month and only drinking juice made from actual fruit (and veggies).  I'm not doing that.  I am going to make a ton more of this shit.  Its not just delicious enough to rival Mountain Dew....I'm craving it.  Like, actually craving it.  The way I crave soda after not having caffeine for 16 hours.  I've heard that pregnant women get cravings and its because their subconcious knows they need the nutrients from whatever food it is.  I also heard that vampire legends may have gotten started because some people were low on iron and craved blood.  By extrapolating these two facts of questionable origin, I can assume that maybe I am craving juice made from fruit so much because I am in such desperate need of actual food.  Or it could just be that delicious.  Seriously, I might actually choose 8 carrots + 2 oranges over a bottle of mountain dew.  Would I choose it over an aluminum can of mountain dew?  Maybe not, but it would be close.  I like this shit so much I don't even mind cleaning the juicer, and let me tell you, cleaning that thing is a bitch.  It basically comes apart into like 5 different pieces, and you have to clean all of them.  My strategy moving forward is basically to buy $50 worth of fruit, convert all of that into juice in one sitting, and then clean the damn thing once.  If you turn the juicer on and just pour water down in there, it kind of cleans it out enough to switch recipes.  Also, in case you are unaware, a juicer is completely different from a blender, and costs about 3 times as much.

I'm going to call this activity juicing.  I ran out of it tonight, and I want to juice so bad...but its after 1 am and the damn juicer has a decible level similar to a chainsaw, so I have to wait until tomorrow.  Oh, and another thing:  I have been way more alert, and did not fall asleep at work.  And I don't get all tired after standing for like 5 minutes.  Seriously this stuff is the best.

Also, and I proabably should have mentioned this first, it was previously impractical for me to buy fruits and vegetables.  Fruit went bad too fast (or in the case of strawberries, was both not ripe yet and rotting) and vegetables were both gross and required cooking.  When you are converting this stuff into juice, none of that really matters.  The fruit can be not quite ripe, or a little too ripe, and the bruises don't matter, and you don't have to cook it, and you can just put the juice in a little container in the fridge, and you don't have to reheat it because you drink it cold anyway!  I poured my gross ass ginger-heavy concoction into a wine glass and just sipped it like that tonight.  Then I ate half a pound of ham.


150 KPH is the speed I was going at on my sportbike going over the bridge.  I don't know how to read...oh hello google.  Oh 93.  Ok.  That's not bad.  Anyway.  Warming up.  I've given up on the ski season, again.  We are switching to bike mode, and tonight I rode for the first time in possibly six months.  Still taking it easy.   My bike is performing like a champ.  Ten hours of riding and I will feel confident enough to take a passenger.


But Tonight We Dance is the song that I stole a chord progression from in order to improv with the group of friends that I am going to start calling "my band" even though we are not a band, simply because it is easier to say than "this group of guys that I play with."  We are getting good.  We need another singer.


Jess is the name of a girl back home that just wants to be friends.  I want to be anything but.  Yes, I stole that line from House.  She was my date to my sister's wedding.  It took roughly 2 seconds of seeing her walking in, looking incredibly beautiful, for me to realize I should date her, and then the rest of the night for me to stop feeling guilting that it only took 2 seconds to be all into her again.  Unfortunately she's not interested.  I thought about asking why (Libby?  Friend zone timer?  Something else?), but that's pretty gay, so I have no idea why, and she is officially the one that got away.  And I don't like to dwell in the past, so I'm going to say this once:  if I had a DeLorean with a flux capacitor, I would go back to high school and kick myself in the balls.  And now that chapter of my life is closed.  Now there is officially nothing standing between me and an audition tape for some TV show called "The Bachelor" except for...

My girlfriend is the girl that almost none of you knew about, and whom I'm about to break up with, because I just realized I'm never going to love her and I shouldn't lead her on.  Fun fact:  I've actually never had to unilaterally end anything before.  Every other time, it was mutual, or she dumped me because I didn't like her dog enough, or I did something (or a series of things) that made her dislike me so much she never wanted to see me again.  This thing where I'm the one ending it, and we are also far enough in that I can't just stop calling her...this is new.  If my life was a tv show, this would be the episode where J.D. mopes around the hospital whining to everyone that he doesn't know how to break up with someone.  Except even J.D. isn't that pathetic.  Also, remind me to tell you about the...just remind me to tell you about March the next time we are in person.

My idiot teammate is the new name for...my idiot co-worker friend at work.  You may know him as the guy who interupted me so many times that I left the office and bought a couch.  Today, since we are in the process of moving to another part of the building, all but two of the people on my team decided to move this afternoon.  I elected not to move, because I had a lot of stuff going on, and I was in the middle of getting a lot of work done.  I needed to be especially productive, because I had given myself more work in the past few days in an attempt to accomplish something really cool.  Then my idiot coworker came by and asked if it would be a big deal if he fucked up my internet connection while attempting to disconnect all his shit from the desk next to me.  I flipped out, moderately, and he very carefully unplugged whatever it was without screwing up my work.  Relieved, I continued to work as he left to make another trip to our new team area.    ...then he came back and unplugged the power to all three of my computers at once, with no warning, while I was using them.  I had about a hundred Firefox tabs and two or three screen sessions open, editing close to 50 files across 4 or 5 projects.  All gone.

I began cursing, and left the room to avoid cursing more.  Fortunately, I was in a sort of state of shock that prevented me from immediately feeling the full wave of frustrating anger.  After about 10 minutes of walking around the office in an area where I was unlikely to encounter my idiot coworker friend, I had calmed down and realized that since all my work was fucked up, I might as well begin moving my stuff right then, since my computers were already off.

Unfortunately, I had long ago decided that the next time I move to a new space at work, I want to try that thing where you have a really tall desk and stand all day.  Apparently there are a bunch of health problems caused by sitting all day.  The only one I'm sure of is this gut that I am developing.  I no longer look incredible naked.  So we're trying the tall desk thing.  Unfortunately, requesting a tall desk takes forever, because I guess these guys come to you and do an "ergonomic study" or some bullshit.  I'm not waiting for that.  This shit needs to be setup by tomorrow so I can start working again.  So...I drove to home depot, bought some 4x4s and $60 worth of metal brackets, some word screws, and a Japenese Piece Lilly.  Then I drove to another store for a super tall stool/chair thing.  The piece lilly is just for decoration.  I began raising my desk tonight, but my cordless power drill ran out of power.  As is turns out, recharging your drill for only a few minutes after every time you use it for a year tends to completely run the battery down.  So I will be disturbing everyone in earshot tomorrow with my power drill.  This will be fun.


My Penny-Arcade Lego Mosaic is finally done.  The total cost is probably very well near $500 thanks to the trip to home depot that was required.  This piece was...sort of a disaster.  It looks good now, but damn I made a lot of stupid decisions.  And I actually don't know if the one hook I attached it enough to hold it up.  The thing weighs like 10 pounds.  Anyway, here are some pics:

I was planning to contact PA and license their characters so I could sell these.  I will still probably attempt to do that, however my hopes of mass producing these are done.  The availability of the Lego plates I need is too hit and miss, and after the two part Home Depot adventure that included nearly setting my apartment on fire because I'd never used a dremel to cut metal before...making more of these will still be more of an art than a science.

For my next project I am thinking of attempting to do portraits of Castle Crashers.  More content I'd have to license, and I haven't found any good source images, but they would be pretty cool.  If you have any ideas, or even better, know someone who has too much money and not enough artwork constructed out of tiny plastic toys, let me know.

B12 Flat

Cause the walls start shaking
The earth was quaking
My mind was aching
And we were making it and you

First of all, I didn't proofread this.  So good luck figuring out what I meant to say.

March held a series of disappointments...of the somewhat serious variety.  I actually can't write about them here.  I can tell you that my usual response to these kinds of situations is to do things like make an enormous list of all the things I suddenly need to do, or get a pilots license, or write a song.  Can't do that this time.  Partly because I can't publicly share half of March's stories;  I was supposed to have invented my own super-awesome access-controlled mega blog that is based on a version of mediawiki that has every plugin known to man, including LaTeX, svg, lilypond, and, who knows, lets throw in a plugin for interpreting ancient Egyptian heiroglyphs.  However, nothing in March went to plan.  Like seriously nothing.  Also I have been sick since Sunday.

I started reading some book called "The 7 Habits of..."  shit.  Highly effective people, or something.  Anyway, I was hoping it would help me start being highly effective at getting all 20 things done that I was trying to do at once.  Instead, it started putting me to sleep (literally!  and every time!) by talking about values...stuff like honesty, a trait that I've unsuccessfully been trying to pry out of my personality ever since I heard in a TED Talk that extroverts lie way more than introverts.  Wow.  Maybe this is why I have so few friends here.  I should like...write down everything I plan to say when I'm about to talk to people, just in case there's anything really dumb in there.  Anyway.  So I sped through the boring stuff on "values" in an effort to be effective and get a jump on the next chapter.  Unfortunately, the next chapter was worse.  It instructs the reader to visualize something about their funeral or whatever they wanted their life to be like.  And that is where I stopped.  Because that this point I don't know.  Next I'm going to read Hunger Games, because, just as Harry Potter was the first fantasy book that girls read, Hunger Games is the first science fiction book that girls are reading.  And as a bitter and jaded enthusiast of far, far too many hobbies that girls don't like, I have an extreme interest any time there is a blip that catches their interest.  Sure, Ender's Game may be more important, but if I am chilling in some sports bar, I have a better chance of hearing "Hunger" instead of "Ender" come out of some hot girl's mouth.  So...there's that.  Shit.  I still have not gotten into watching other people play sports.  I need to get that done.  How come no one goes to bars to drink and watch other people write computer code?  It's all the same to me, and I am roughly as interested in watching the one as I am the other.  But, in all of the conversations of my life, any time someone is describing their friend and telling me how he's not a nerd, watching sports is the most common anti-nerd trait that they cite.  That's pretty gay, but I didn't make this world;  I just live in it.  It can't be any sport, though.  Can't be curling.  Or dodgeball.  Or bowling.  It has to be one of the popular boring ones, like football or baseball.  I'm actually a huge fan of women's beach volleyball, but I couldn't name a single player, so we are going to move on to soccer.  So...one of these days, when I'm not busy, I'm going to become a soccer fan.  Oh, actually...I could watch hockey.  I was at a hockey game recently and it was seriously a lot of fun.  I'm not sure Seattle has a hockey team though.  Maybe I should move to Canada.

The good news:  I played in a band.  Not a real band.  Just a couple of guys from work who played instruments like guitar and drums.  It was TEH BEST THING EVAR.  I was unfortunately late to the studio because I had spent all morning learning the songs we had agreed to play that I should have spent all week learning, and then I stopped at McDonalds for 3 cheeseburgers which I scarfed down really fast (and which exited even faster--possibly being the cause of my week-long illness).  However.  Once I arrived and walked inside the hole in the wall and headed back for studio 2, I knew it was awesome.  Everything I know about the world of modern music I've learned from movies, and so far everything was exactly as I suspected, all the way down to hearing the muted drum and bass through the walls.  Then we started playing.  Turns out I had forgotten almost everything I needed, like, you know, a pick, but eventually we did start.  I was playing and singing The Gambler by Kenny Rogers with another guitar on my right and a guy on drums behind me and, briefly, it took all I had to not freak out because I was so excited.  I almost lost it in the middle of the song because the experience was so incredible.

When I first started playing the guitar, I was very conscious about the fact that when I practiced alone I was only playing a fraction of the song; basically one of multiple guitars, no bass, no drums, often not the right vocals either.  As time passed, I didn't feel good enough to play with others.  More time passed, and I couldn't find anyone to play with.  Getting people who wanted to jam with me in Seattle was as difficult as finding Skiing buddies in Philly used to be.  There was a brief blip with the chick I called Hot Lego Girl, but she only wanted to sing gay songs by people like John Mayor and all she did was vocals, so we still lacked most of the band.

This time though...feeling the drums come in behing me...holy shit, people.  Holy shit.  This was the thing I've been missing for a very long time.  I knew immediately that I didn't care who or how:  I had to have more of this.  Then I started forgetting lyrics and concentrated on the song again.  We weren't amazing.  I was the weakest link, but I've been practicing (as much as I can despite being ridiculously sick).  I wish I had discovered this earlier.

Anyway, I've just spent 4 days watching 2 seasons of Tru Blood (long story), way too much Family Guy, and a tad bit of scrubs and a documentary called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead was mostly stuff I already knew.  The one incredibly and amazingly super-vital information was when someone asked someone else if a puree of fruit/veggie mix left someone feeling full, and that person said yes.  I did not know that liquid food could satiate hunger.  I did know that chugging that gross ass protein shake shit I bought just before running on the treadmill made it really hard not to vomit.  I did not know that anything like that could satiate an appetite.  I have a problem with appetite.

I've been wondering how long I can get away with my current diet, and when its going to affect me, and I've just realized that being tired all the time and getting sick frequently is my diet affecting me.  Not to mention being hungry constantly.  I mean hungry.  Ever since I started going to the gym, I've had dinners like this:  2 waffles, still hungy, a baby carrot, 2 packets of ramen noodles, still hungry...another baby carrot, bowl of oatmeal flavored instant-sugar, and then two more waffles, and then I go to bed hungry.  I'm not even fucking kidding.  I'll watch a documentary or a TED talk about starving kids in Africa, and then reach down and feel my stomach rumble, and then wonder where I went wrong.

What if making liquid fruit/veggie cocktails is the answer?  It seems kind of perfect.  First, I don't have to sort through asshole recipes that claim to be crockpot recipes but then expect you to use a skillet in addition to a crockpot (WTF people?).  Second, I don't have to come home from the supermarket and realize that there is a difference between whole tomatoes and tomato sauce, and that I can't just grab the first red can I see that has the right volume on it.  No.  Everything I need is one section of the supermarket.  How cool is that?  Thirdly, I can make it anythime I want.  Fourhtly, being a liquid that one drinks, it is super easy to deal with leftovers.  It is also easy to transport.  I already have a fridge at work.

Admittedly, fruits and veggies do go bad far too quickly.  In fact, their staying power is piss-poor compared to my benchmark of pop tarts.  However, They do keep for about a week, and if I grind them into a juice, I no longer have to manage the individual expirations ("what am I going to do with these onions?") but instead I only care how long the juice potion will last.  Will this save me money?  Actually, probably not.  But I'd rather have the energy to get one of my side income projects off the ground than keep subsisting on cereal bars, ramen noodles and mexican food.  And waffles and PB&J.  And pasta.  Anyway.

The people in the movie did some kind of all-liquied fast/diet thing.  I'm not doing that.  Here's my plan:

1.  Eat WAYYYYY more carrots.  Only at night though, and when I am home alone*.

1b.  Apples.  Not because I like them, but because they are convenient.  Tomatoes are actually way better, but its kind of a bitch to eat them before they all go bad.  Oh to hell with it.

Starting over:

1.  For dinner, eat carrots, apples, tomatoes.

2.  Start drinking orange juice again.  Seriously I forget why I stopped.  I have no idea.  Experiment with making it fizzy.

3.  Buy a shit ton of Graham Crackers.  This is completely unrelated to the veggie documentary.  I just think it will help stave off the hunger.  Also it has protein and carbs or whatever.  And they keep pretty well...I can probably buy a months worth, and store them at work instead of those breakfast cereal bars that I just made myself sick of.

4.  Buy some fruits and veggies, and a juicer, and choke down one of those disgusting purees.  And then just see where we are.

[Edit]
Parent Conversation Backlog
(how have I never thought of this before???)
1. republican delegate thing
2. sick
3. juicing

[Edit]
Better Lazy Eye tab -- sucks so much less I might actually be able to play the song.

*if you are wondering why I added this condition, go to the store and buy a bag of baby carrots.  Eat the entire bad yourself, and then curl up on the couch with a loved one--preferabbly your wife--for a movie or two.  Even better, right before you go to bed.  Don't ask why.  Don't search the internet.  Just do it.  Be like Wolverine, and leap without thinking.