The Plans of Mice

I have a habit of always making plans of things which, at the moment, sound like something I really should do, because they will like, totally fix my life or something.  I have tried a number of websites and apps to track tasks I need to accomplish, and nothing has stuck.  All I have are dormant accounts full of tasks I'm never going to do on several task-tracking websites.  Instead, I've just started putting fake events on my calendar that are actually a giant todo list.  Originally this was only supposed to be limited to important things like "renew license before it expires" but over time, the list has grown.  Partly because every time I go on a trip, I think of a hundred things I should do to improve my life, and partly because every month I've been pushing back tasks until the end of the month.  Now, my calendar for Feb 1 looks like this (the ... denote tasks with important details in the description):

GOAL: make working from home awesome
4 hour work week
attempt this broccoli recipe ...
business idea: (censored) starter kit ...
buy glowing belt ...
buy kangaroo desktop ...
CANCEL ...
Create (censored) advertising logo and win 8 Mosaic planning app
Create secret tethering app
create (censored) software? ...
DIET CHANGES ...
Exercise: skiing, rock climbing, DANCING
Fake kitten rescue?
fake, female world of warcraft account?
figure out a way to look awesome on facebook
FIND A CO-ED SPORT
find ghostwriters for (censored)
Go rock climbing
host couchsurfers in order to perfect social skills
imagine a perfect world and depict it in lego
install alternate blog
install XMBC somewhere
learn intents using alien legacy
learn (censored)
lego robots?
LIDAR jammer
make computer desk at home a standing desk!!!
Ping pong balls
places to go ...
POKER ...
PUSH ALL BOUNDARIES ...
put images of calvin and hobbes mosaic on dating profiles
Schedule climbing class
sell a book called "Homeopathic poetry"
sell stuff on craigslist
Settlers support cards
(censored) business idea ...
Shoes from value village
start doing things you are afraid of
start evolution game
start getting mail shipped once
Tell the story of the east india company with legos...but really just use that as an excuse to play with legos. Kids book?
to try ...
TODO ...
trunk thing ...
try FTL game
try: zumba, yoga
Watch lots of stand up comedy
wedding planning seating arrangement software
write down work computer hostname
ega trek game
EYES ...
Skiing ...



This list may be ridiculous and stupid, however, if it weren't for this list, I would have forgotten about my book of homeopathic poetry.  I so need to make that.  Sadly, "wedding planning seating arrangement software" has been sitting around since Owen got married...which was actually before I moved to Seattle.

Salsa in Seattle

http://www.lazydancer.com/?dancing-in=Seattle

Whistler!

Yeah, so traffic school, and then some other thing I was going to write about...I'll get to it eventually.

What is important right now, is we are planning a whistler trip:

Awesome Map

We are going to whistler.  You should come.

Ok and this page is where I was looking at deals.   Packaged deals -> 3 night stay let me to an option for march 29 at The Aspens with is liftside, $145 per person per day and that include lift ticket.  So that's an option.

O Capricious Universe

"The universe is indifferent."

--Donald Draper

Focusing on people is surprisingly difficult.  As an example, there is a popular british tv show about a man who time travels in a space ship disguised as a blue police box.  One of the plot devices in this show is a "perception filter" which prevents people from noticing something.  Sometimes, it feels like such a filter is on my mind.  When I try to think about other people, my mind keeps trying to focus on other things, like me, or things I could do, or places I could go, or strategies I could use and archetypes of people I could meet.  Maybe I'm just too used to solving problems, which is bad because when it comes to girls sometimes the problem solves you.

Anyway, kind of getting the hang of it.  And when I talk about people, this time, I don't mean just girls.  Its kind of cool.  There is this guy I see at work and he seems happy when I ask him how his day is going.  This surprises me, because typically when someone asks me how my day is going, my brain flags the conversation as spam, and my subconscious feeds them some crap like "good, how is yours?" while I think about pirates.  Other people though...seem to appreciate the three seconds I spend taking an interest in their life.  So...good for them.  I can do that.

Unfortunately, as I've complained about before, having a social life is preventing me from fixing my body.  I specifically quit the gym near my house, and signed up for the gym at work, even though it was three times as expensive, because I wanted to make it as easy as possible to go to the gym after work.  Now, though, I have social-ish shit going on every night after work.  And so I can't go to the gym anymore--at least not for cardio.  The main problem is that cardio makes me sweat ridiculous amounts, and according to what I've read, is most useful if you do at least 30 minutes, three times a week.  The other problem is, the gym at work closes at like 10pm, so I can't go to the gym at 2am like I had been at the old one.  My plan was to make cardio part of my lifestyle before graduating to weight lifting.  Also I wanted to get done with private salsa lessons before I started paying a personal trainer to teach me to lift.  So.  My best idea at the moment is to get this thing which I hope will allow me to at least get my heart rate up at home for 30 minutes, even if I couldn't get to the gym that week.  I've also tried doing an easier cardio workout (just run for the minimum 30 minutes instead of the 3 miles that is my usual goal) on the same night as salsa night.  That works ok, unless my work friends convince me to get sushi instead of going to the gym.  Anyway.  My next idea, is to try to do a salsa private lesson and band practice on the same night.  Its kind of logistically impossible, but I might find a way.  And then, somehow, we start the fucking weight lifting.  Some guys have been telling me that with lifting you can do twice a week.  I think I can pull that off--especially if lifting doesn't make me sweat the way running does.

So.  That was completely off topic.  Back to girls.

Ummm.....yeah.  So lets catch up on my complaining.  First.  Girls are a pain in the ass.  I'm specifically talking about how they show if they're interested.  There is a girl who works the coffee shop at work.  I was pretty sure she was into me, because she always acted friendly, and excited to see me, and we always talked, and she would share things that were slightly more personal than I'd expect to hear if I'm just another customer, and I didn't see her acting that way around any other guys, etc.  Well.  Turns out she has a boyfriend and was just being friendly.  This is fine.  I mean I was devastated for about 3 minutes, but finding out the hard way that girls have boyfriends...that's like a sport for me now.  Anyway.  Here is the problem.  A few weeks ago when I went salsa dancing, there were these two girls who seemed interested enough in dancing and talking to me, but I wasn't getting strong vibes from them.  I ran into them as they were leaving, and instead of asking for the one girl's number, I said something gay about hoping to see them again.  Then my friends, said, out loud, in public:  "Why didn't you number close?"  This surprised me because I did not know that Pickup Artist Nerd Talk had become mainstream enough to enter polite conversation.  Anyway all my friends yelled at me for like 5 minutes about not asking for the girls number, and telling me they were into me, but the reason I didn't ask for her number was because she only showed 1/100th of the interest that the uninterested coffee shop girl showed.  How the fuck am I supposed to figure this shit out?  Fuck girls.

Second...I don't really have a second one.  Oh wait I do.  Basically, every time I put effort into meeting girls, it doesn't seem to work.  All of this reading, and self reflection, and effort, and etc., and pretty much nothing.  But then everyone once in a while the universe just drops something in my lap, and I get something really good without doing any work. I just rolled some dice and got lucky.  Yeah.  Dice.  That's all it is.  Tonight I basically struck out at salsa...all of my male friends pussied out, and the hot girl that I met while pretending to take the intro lesson had a boyfriend, who I shamed by dancing with the hot girl, until she asked if I was gay, which she suspected because I knew how to dance.  By 10:40, again, the club was crawling with dudes and most of the female friends I brought had left and I couldn't find any more girls to dance with so I bounced.  Then I bought pizza from my favorite pizza shop on the way home and elected to eat it there because I was feeling sociable.  Then two drunk girls sat down next to me and we started talking about pizza or some bullshit, and then the cute one introduced herself, gave me her number and told me she has some great ideas for making an app, which I am excited about because for at least three years now my friends and I have been unable to think of a good idea for an app.  Yeah.  That's how it works.  I spent hundreds of dollars cleaning up my salsa technique and all this effort trying to network friends together to go out regularly, but being hungry is the reason I make a social connection.

In conclusion:  nothing makes sense.

[fiction] The Erasticating Tiger

"What's with the tiger hat?" asked Christine.

Snow looked up from his chemistry book.  "This?  This is my awesome hat."

Christine sat down.  She looked at him, waiting for more.

"Ok, so I bought this as a funny joke-"

"You mean to show off because you're an attention whore," she corrected.

"Yeah exactly a funny joke.  And then I started talking to this girl at a party, and we started--I mean we didn't make out.  We would have, awesomely, except I gave her my age test and she thought a VCR tape was a "cassette" tape, so I kicked her out of my bedroom...where we were, um..."  Snow looked down.  "Studying."

Christine rolled her eyes and opened her book.  "So, photosythensis?  6 carbon dioxide mol-"

"So therefore, since something awesome happened--I mean because I was wearing this hat something awesome was about to happen, basically I'm going to wear it all the time now."

"One good thing happened and that's enough to inspire a religious dedication?"

"Oh stop talking like the straight man in a comedy sketch," said Snow.  "I wore the hat one time, and I hooked up with a girl one time.  That means that so far, this hat works one hundred percent of the time."

Two cheerleaders walked by, stared at Snow's tiger hat, and giggled.  Snow smiled, his real smile, the one that showed teeth.

Christine, already regretting her decision to study with a clown, was trying to decide if slapping him or telling him he needed to floss would be more effective at wiping that grin of his face.  As if he could read her thoughts, the clown turned to her and said, "You shouldn't be jealous.  Really."

Christine's face looked like it was about to explode.  Her phone rang, allowing her to avert her eyes and ignore him for the moment.  It was an unrecognized number.  Her face fell, only for an instant, but Snow noticed.  She picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is Snow's Madame," said the voice on the line.

"His what?"  Christine snapped her attention to Snow and fixed upon him a stare so lethal it made his heart skip.  "Please don't ever--"

"I'm a fortune teller, not a pimp, honey.  I only called you because he forgot to charge his phone again."

"What kind of fortune teller calls their clients?" asked Christine.

"Well I'd be a pretty shitty fortune teller if I waited for clients to come to me, don't you think?"

"I suppose that...sounds like it makes sense."

"Can you put Snow on?"

"That's not is real name."

"Its what he calls himself.  I'm a fortune teller, not a census clerk."

Christine looked at Snow.  "Seriously, I can study by myself," she said as he handed him the phone.

Snow shrugged and took the phone.  "Oh?  Oh your are?  How much is this going to cost me?  Ooohhh.  The state or the--oh well I guess that's still pretty good.  Hey all I'm sayin is...ok.  Yeah, uh...yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah, and she's pretty hot.  Oh come on, you can't be that psychic.  Oh yeah that's what my mom keeps telling me.  So when...ok.  Bye."  Snow hung up.  "I have a pyschic!" he said.

"I can tell," said Christine.  "And how much is she charging you?"

"Oh nothing.  She said she's doing it for free this week because she clarivointed the winning state lottery numbers two weeks from now.  I mean I guess that's not bad...anyway.  Do you want to go on an adventure?"

"What?"

"Do you want to go on an adventure?"

"No."

"Oh.  Well...that's...going to make you cranky.  Oh shit."  Snow suddenly whirled around and pointed at a girl in a blue jacket across the coffee shop.  "You!"  The girl looked at him strangely.  "Yes you!  Come here."

"What are you doing?  Can you stop goofing off now?"  asked Christine.

"My psychic told me to do this," said Snow.  He waved at the random girl again, and she reluctantly started walking towards him.  Snow turned to Christine and grinned.  "Its the hat."

"Why? did your psychic tell you to-"

At that moment the ambiance of the coffee shop was obliterated by the boom and crash of a lifted pickup truck smashing through the bay windows in the front and impaling itself into some bookshelves that held decorative encyclopedias that no one ever read any more.  The trucks left tire had smashed the chair the girl in the blue jacket had just been sitting in.

Snow fist pumped the air.  "Yessss!"

"Christine.  Christinnnnne!"  The voice came from inside the trunk.  Everyone in the coffee shop watched as the driver side door opened and a drunk fell out.  He was covered in dust and smelled like whiskey.  "Christine Miller you et gover ear is thinstant!"

Snow looked from the drunk man back to Christine, but she--and her schoolbag--were gone.

"Adventures are the best," said Snow.



[Edit]
Brainstorming:

"what  would you know about writing?"  "well i self published a homeopathic collection of poetry"

"i'm only lonely on paper"

"on a scale of one to ten, how seriously do you take yourself?"

How to Cook Ramen and only get a Fork Dirty

It is kind of sad that, as soon as you make an effort to network with people more, you're weeknights fill up immediately.  Band practice on tuesdays, private salsa lesson on wednesdays, salsa dancing at a mediocre club on thursdays.  Friday is the weekend, and money was previously the day i used for practicing the guitar but now we're just going to have band practice then too.

So.  Not much time for cooking real meals, and even less time for running dishes through the dishwasher 3 times in a vain attempt to get the machine to wash them.  The next time you rent an apartment because it has a dishwasher, learn from my mistake and make sure the dishwasher wasn't made in the 70's.

Anyway.

This is how you do it:

1.  Boil water in a pot like usual.  Maybe use the microwave trick to add heat to the water faster.

2.  Add Top Ramen, using your fork to stir.  This is the reason, sadly, that we still need a real metal fork and not a disposable one.

3.  Cook for 3 minutes.

4.  Remove from heat to add the seasoning.  Let it sit to absorb the seasoning.

5.  Slowly pull the noodles out with a fork in long strokes that pull them high into the air, so the heat escapes the noodles before you drop them into a disposable bowl.

6.  Dump out the water and let the pot sit for 1 minute (use the microwave timer)

7.  Put a paper tower on the floor of your fridge (assuming it is disgusting like mine) and then put the pot in your fridge for 1 minute.

8.  When you take it out, it is cool enough to rinse immediately without damaging the metal (I think), and you can just rinse it immediately instead of having to wash it later.

Evidence that I am Wrong?

I used to get annoyed when people used to insisted that girls wanted sex "just as much as guys" because of the abundances of experiences in my life which proved the opposite.  However, some researchers may have proven me wrong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/opinion/sunday/darwin-was-wrong-about-dating.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The general trend of their research was that using controls to remove cultural norms caused the differences in the genders to approach zero.

Unfortunately, I'm still trying to work out how this could be used to my advantage.  I can't meet girls inside the abstract world of a science experiment;  I have to meet them in real life, with all of the icky cultural norms that force me to do most of the work.