Job History

Fortunately, I was quickly offered a new job in Coral Gables, Florida. After having spent eight years of my life there studying, I really did not want to go back. I do not like the Miami atmosphere. I find it too superficial, dirty, congested, and annoying. However, the job was there, and I definitely needed a job. The firm had been looking for someone with three or four years experience, but they liked me and decided to give me a chance. They started me on a temporary basis - try me for thirty days, if you don't like me you can return me ... sort of deal. Within a week or two they were impressed enough to hire me.

There were some minor problems with that job. Some of the problems I was not even aware of until after I left the firm, and had a chance to learn more. However, overall, I think it was a great firm for me to learn at. The problem was that I was not really a good fit for what they needed. They needed someone they did not have to train (someone with three to four years experience) and I only really ever got along with one of the partners (in a two partner firm). The partner I did get along with was really cool, and a lot of fun, but the other partner - from what I am told - never got along with a male associate at the firm. After about eight or nine months I parted ways with the firm. They confessed that they really lacked the time to train me, and I was miserable there. The partner I liked, who I worked with most of the time did tell me I was one of the smartest people he had ever met and thought I was advanced beyond my years in the practice of law. I never knew how sincere he was in this assessment until I heard him give a reference for me over the speaker phone at my next firm - as my stomach was in knots in fear.

I remained unemployed for months. Praying I would find a way to afford my rent and find a way to eat. It was very disconcerting. See you have to understand, I finished in the top of my class in law school. I was on law review, I was a teaching assistant, I had scholarships and was awarded fellowships. I was accepted to the two top tax programs in the country, and performed quite well there as well. However, the market was just plain terrible. First there was 9/11 and then there was Enron and Worldcom. The demise of Arthur Anderson had flooded the market with experienced tax professionals. Finally, I found a job in Naples. (It was at this interview that the partner I used to work for gave me the great reference on the speaker phone as I held my breath.) Unfortunately, this firm was almost as bad as the one in Tampa. While I was there, he went through three other associates. One quit within two weeks of his arrival. It really was that bad. The attorney that ran the firm tried to do too much, and he simply was not qualified for all the areas in which he practiced. There were so many mistakes made in that firm, and he would never listen to anyone else about how to handle matters. I feel really bad for many of his clients.

My girlfriend, at the time, had taken a job promotion and was moving anyway, and I wanted to be near her, and my job in Naples was terrible, and I had been advised by the Florida Bar, yet again, to get out and get out soon. So despite my $12,000 raise and large bonus, I left for my present job, with a pay cut, in Boca Raton (again that same partner gave me an amazing reference). I was really nervous when I took this job because it was another small firm and I had been burned so many times before - ending up with absolutely terrible jobs. The last thing I wanted was to arrive here, only to experience more of the same.

Fortunately, while I lost my girlfriend, and have few friends to speak of in this city, I really did wind up at great firm.

Hodge Podge

I'm not bothered when someone messes up with the complicated grammatical rules, like the difference between "awhile", which is an adverb and "a while", which is used when "while" is an object. It's when people get the simple rules, the ones that you were taught in grade school, wrong. For example, "cannot" is one word; there are three different varieties of the word "to" - two (the number), too (indicating excess or in addition; also), and to (the preposition); and, quiet and quite are two entirely different words with two entirely different meanings.

The little things are the ones that just drive me insane, but what bothers me even more is when it is not a one time occurrence. It is not like the person misspelled it once, oops, whatever. They actually consistently get it wrong, and show no signs of ever improving. It just boggles my mind. How do these people hold a steady job? They have college degrees? What institution possibly granted them the degree and can I petition to have it revoked? Alright, so it's not that bad, but the more I see of it, the more it just bugs the bejeebers out of me. So much so that I end up ranting about it on my own blog. Sad.

Moving on to a much more ... uplifting subject, I learned something about Flickr yesterday from reading Chris' blog. Apparently, if you search through Flickr correctly you can find all sorts of exceptionally naughty pictures. Not only that, people have created Websites devoted to finding and hosting just these types of pictures! For example, "flickrbooty, chicksnbreasts, and flickrchicks. I was astounded. I had thought Flickr's only real purpose was so that I could scope out beautiful scarlet haired female bloggers, in search of those haunting eyes and adorable freckles, but no, there's an even more exciting, if slightly unnerving, use!

My weekend lacked all excitement as Dennis the Menace ruined all my plans. It was terrible. Not only that, I didn't even get any rain after Friday, except on Saturday night. So it wasn't like I could use the rain as an excuse for the lazy weekend. I did experience the most unbearable humidity in recent memory, and watched several really good movies, including "The Astronaut's Wife" (which I thought would suck), "Pleasantville", "Monster" (it was the first movie in which I didn't think Charlize was hot), and "Fantastic 4" (of course). I also played some pool at this local little spot that a friend of mine and I discovered about a month ago. Excellent atmosphere. Overall, however, my weekend left a lot to be desired.

Series of Thoughts

I wrote this post, but realized when I was re-reading it that the paragraphs do not flow together very well. They sort of stand there as individual thoughts and ideas, all sort of hovering around the themes of relationships and love. Almost a stream of consciousness, but not quite.

"You should come visit me." Another moth lured to the flame. "You live so far away though. I would want more." I sat there patiently, flickering, as she talked us into and out of potential.

The world of blog is odd. People read about you and get to know you, or a certain extent of you, and form opinions about you. Being that women often fall for my mind, it's an area fraught with uncertainty. Everything is theoretical in the world of cyberspace. The person you meet through this medium may become, and remain evermore, a person of your dreams.

I'm hoping for a date this weekend with the woman I am convinced does not exist. The Loch Nes Monster of our times, folks - beautiful, smart, funny, great conversationalist, everything one could want. I will be shocked if it happens. Somehow, these women are always somewhere I'm not. I swear, if I lived in Texas or the Midwest, they'd be in Florida. This is extremely pessimistic of me, but will likely fade into the shadow as the flame is stoked, but at the moment, the feeling resonates within me. Florida State University has one of the greatest ratios any man could want - something around 3 women to every 1 man. It is a college guy's dream. I went to Miami, where things are different. Perhaps I have always been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My lack of optimism or my weariness of the dance are nothing knew. Many have expressed this thought in much more poetic ways than I am here. Ella Fitzgerald sang, "Turn off that charm; I'm through with love for awhile; I'm through and yet, you have a fabulous smile; So if I forget; Not to find you so attractive; Remind me; That the world is full of men". Jane Monheit echoed, "I'm through with love I'll never fall again; Said adieu, to love, don't ever call again; For I must have you or no one; And so I'm through with love". Finally, Billy Joel and Ray Charles threw their gloss on it, "As for woman; They don't last with just one man; But baby grand; Will stand by me". Clearly, I am not the only person to ever just want to hang the whole thing and say to hell with it all, I will become asexual and enjoy the company of other like minded amoebas. I, obviously, would be joining truly good company.

I have been reading some classic Mark Twain, as of late. I grew up loving Mark Twain. I think I wrote a biography, or did a project of some kind on the man, every year I was in junior high and high school. Reading him reminds me that some of the greatest minds and artists of our times had some really rough days. Losing his wife and children to disease. I cannot even imagine the loss he felt. I can barely imagine finding a wife, let alone losing her and our children. It is people like him that make me feel like a wimp. Bless his heart.

My best friend in college told me one night, "Love is pain." I stared at her. It was not a fanciful vision of love or a thought of how love solves everything. It was, in her estimation, an honest analysis. She was not trying to say that pain is the only thing love is, but was being honest in her recognition of the fact that in order to love, you will likely experience pain, among other things, along the way. I really respect that type of honesty.

*Published at the request of Kiki*

Out of Context

"Are you going to come?" "That thing is huge." "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

All of the foregoing are statements that, when taken out of context or the moment, can easily be misinterpreted or misperceived. The latter comes from Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2. It is spoken by an anarchist that is discussing the necessary steps that any tyrant must take to destroy freedom. The idea Shakespeare was conveying was that so long as there were lawyers, people who knew and understood the law and recognized what the tyrant was trying to accomplish, freedom would be preserved. Hence, while the quote is often cited as a derogatory comment towards lawyers, it is actually paying homage to the profession.

I find the creation of this type of confusion is even easier with email. Michael Eisner stated at a commencement address he gave at Berkeley years ago that email was one of the largest dangers facing our future. For while it is a very efficient way to communicate, it has many hazards. For example, the angry letter that you write the night before, will likely not be able to be torn up the next morning. The mighty send button has been pressed and the bytes are floating through cyber space, landing on a hard drive somewhere.

Adding to the confusion is email's complete inability to convey emotions. I had a girlfriend that asked me to never email her anything important. She explained, "you come across as cold and mean, and I know that's not how you are. However, I can't read your emotion, inflection, and mannerisms into the text. So I end up getting hurt and angry, even though I know if we had spoken, I wouldn't feel any of those things."

In law school, my best friend and I would email while we studied. We were both sarcastic and witty people. However, we knew this about each other. If you read our emails out of context, not knowing us or the type of people we were, you might think several things about us, depending on which ones you read. You might think we were fighting; you might think we were dating; you might think we were friends that quite simply could not study without emailing. (The bombs going off in London today remind me of her, as her boyfriend works over there, and so I will be very concerned about them both until I hear from her.)

I realized that this habit I had in law school, has carried over to my professional life. Email is my form of communication, oftentimes, while I am at work. It is just easier for me to type out a message than carry on a full conversation because I can compose it as my day goes, or write a short note while I think about the document I am drafting or whatever. However, I learned last night that this can be a dangerous pasttime in some cases because the people receiving my short quips are not hearing the sarcasm, are not catching the dumb jokes, or sensing that this is simply silly banter. In short, people are getting hurt, when I was only trying to make them laugh. I have to be more careful about who I email.

Pals

I keep thinking about moving. Moving to somewhere where I could actually afford the real estate. I would like to have a house one day. Heck, my rental payments are more than my mortgage payments would likely be if I could actually afford the down payment. I love my job though. I think I work in the greatest office I have ever worked. The pay isn't great, but it makes life so much easier when you can wake up and not dread the place that you are about to enter. I am not sure even more affordable real estate would be enough to make me abandon it. Perhaps if I simply could not afford to live here anymore, which is a possibility, or if the decision involved a significant other, I would have cause to move.

One thing that bugs me is how few friends I have in the area. A lot of the friends I have here work all the time, and others are moving away. When I lived in Naples, all my friends on the east coast of Florida would taunt me and tell me how I should move back to the east coast so that we could hang out. Now I'm back here and I never see them. I think that is the part that sucks most of all. Doing the single thing isn't so hard. It's doing the friendless single thing that sucks. It really is rather humorous too to think that I have so few friends anywhere. Through college, I couldn't go anywhere that I didn't know someone. It was my extroverted personality shining through.

It's odd because my friends often snowball. For example, when I began undergrad, I really didn't have many friends. I had a ready made girlfriend inside the first week, and a few friends (about 4 or 5). By the end of my first year, I had no girlfriend but a veritable plethora of friends. I had friends for all occasions. I had friends that would never have been friends with each other. It was great. The next year, I had an entire floor of women adopt me as their older brother, which involved lots of free massages, cookies, and advice. Oh and of course the shoulder to cry on when things went bad.

Being with so few friends in my area still throws me. I feel like a fish out of water. It is so odd for me not to have an entire list of people that I could hang out with, and it is sort of getting to the point where I ask myself, have I outgrown my community? Should I look elsewhere?

All of my friends are elsewhere, or are very busy. I have friends in Tennessee, Chicago, Germany, Punta Gorda, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Boston, North Carolina, New Jersey, etc. I have no shortage of friends. I simply have a shortage of local friends, which sucks almost as much. However, I probably expect too much. Bill Murray in Meatballs said "If you make one good friend a summer, you're doing pretty well." Although I do ponder on occasion if it would not be easier for me to just go and start completely over somewhere else.

Zombie Dogs

I heard about this story a day or two ago, and it still creeps me out a bit. I think it's the name Dog Zombie that really makes it feel spooky. I've copied and pasted the story below as I wasn't sure how long a link to the story would last.

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.

However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours,

But even this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.

During the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs' body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.

Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.

Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies,giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

"The results are stunning. I think in 10 years we will be able to prevent death in a certain segment of those using this technology," said one US battlefield doctor.

My Way

Take my advice ...

Why the hell should I take your advice? What is so special about you? How is your advice any better than Joe's down the hall? These are all fair questions. I have already posted about my reluctance to give advice. However, there are still tons of people out there that are not only willing to give you advice, but are actually over eager to do so.

When people say "take my advice", they really mean, "let me live your life for you". Often times, the people offering the words are genuinely well intentioned, looking out for their friend or their loved one. Other times, they are jealous and mean spirited. For example, I knew a girl that would sabotage her friend's relationships because she was jealous. Brilliant!

What it comes down to is a belief that they know better than you, and they merely want to offer their opinion on the situation, in the guise of actually trying to assist. Sometimes they do know better, and sometimes they don't. Opinions are everywhere, and people often love to share them. It's like a talk show with full on audience participation and in the world of blog, the audience includes both friends and strangers. I seek out advice, on occasion. I don't always listen to it, of course, but I will seek it out. Generally, I turn to one person. She is the one I count on to give me the same advice I would give if I were not in the situation. I love it.

Everyone has motivations for doing what they do, but sometimes actions have unintended consequences. For example, I write on my blog to share my life with my friends, and as a way for me to keep a chronicle of my so-called-life. However, as has been seen, it has unintended consequences. Some love me, others hate me, and I'm sure still others are entirely indifferent to me, and would not care one way or another if I wrote another single word.

It is really troubling to me when the unintended consequences that occur are negative. This is something I briefly mentioned in a prior post. Advice sometimes comes with too much responsibility, especially if you know the person is absolutely going to follow it. I have had people take notes on my advice so that they would not forget it later when they had to actually follow through with it. That is stressful. Suddenly you know that you are impacting someone else's life, and that only is ever easy when the person is in a terrible relationship - with flying punches, and emotional degradation.

I am not such a big fan of advice when it is of the unsolicited variety. I do not go around trying to upset people or their lives, but at the same time I do not go around trying to be complacent in the face of another's opinion. I am my own person, with my own thoughts, urges, and vices. They are mine. I make mistakes along the way, but at least when I look back at the end of the day, I can say they were mine and not someone else's.

**This post was inspired by Sass**

Perceptions

Everyone has their perspective or their opinion.

"Your blog isn't very funny."
*blink*
"Sometimes it is, but it's much more analytical. Whereas, you are so much more laid back and funny in real life."
"Thanks(?)"

People can say the most interesting things sometimes. It is true of course. No amount of writing I could do here would ever fully express who I am in real life. How I act, my mannerisms, my cooking, my massages, all sorts of things are lost in this medium of blog. Lost in the translation, as it were. Moreover, the things that I write here are, at times, subject to interpretation. Everyone takes their own perspective from what I write here and has their own impression of the type of person I am from it. My friends have the ability to apply what they know of me to what they read, but to an outsider, it may be a much more fuzzy picture that they perceive. Even people I have dated have, at times I feel, gained a misconception of who I am.

I have found, during the course of my relationships, that I have often been mistaken for the other guy. A woman will meet me, and get to know me and like me but suddenly be nervous. I had one girl explain to me that she gets scared when a relationship is going well and will push the guy away, out of some sort of fear. Others worried that I would hurt her like the last guy. I always would try to protest, and claim that it was simply a case of mistaken identity. Most of these women would then go off with the next guy only to get hurt. I was somehow mistaken for the next guy, the wrong guy, or the next mistake.

Considering the foregoing, I feel I should straighten out a couple of things - like crooked pictures in the room:

I really do not have anything against my ex. I think she is an amazing woman. I think we, as a couple and indivisually, had some problems that needed to be worked through in order for the relationship to succeed. This did not happen. Maybe it was timing, maybe it was lack of desire, maybe we just did not fit together correctly, I have no idea. The bottom line is that she is a great person and I care about her, and would never want to hurt her. I feel like there is a misconception, based on my posts that she was this terrible person that I stayed with, and she was not.

I, actually, get along with a decent number of my ex girlfriends. It has usually taken time and effort on everyone's part, but I feel it has been worth it every time. Some of them have given me rare gifts that I caanot thank them enough for.

I think I have mentioned how important I feel communication is in a relationship. However, I think that it is really only step 1 in the stairway that is the relationship. Once, a need is communicated, both people actually need to do something about it, or cope with it in some way. People can express their frustrations and unhappiness with each other and themselves until they are blue in the face, but if nothing is being done about it, nothing will change. It's a lot like the person that says they want to lose weight, but fails to change their diet or go to a gym. If you really want something, you have to make it happen. No one said it would be easy.

Ants

Well, while some are out on a date and others are drinking, I sit here typing my next post. I did attempt to locate a decent drink tonight. Wine was going to be my weapon of choice, but we went through four bottles of spoiled wine (two of them we had just purchased) before we called it quits. I also tried my best to locate a date in Orlando (as I am here visiting friends), but it simply was not going to happen. I was too busy wasting my life away in Disney's Magic Kingdom (Wally World).

As I mentioned to someone earlier today as I was standing in the larger than large line to get on the Small World ride, I have realized that the world is not really that small after all, and it's filled with mean and annoying people. Somehow theme parks seem to attract this type of person, as they lumbar along, pushing others out of their way because they are just as miserable, in the most happy place on Earth, as everyone else. We were there for no less than five hours, and made it onto a grand total of five rides, which was not terribly bad, given the mass of people swarming.

I went to Busch Gardens once, and it was great. However, I think the reason it was great, aside from the company, was that no one was there. It was in the middle of a week in early May. It was awesome. We went on the same ride about six times in twenty minutes. Today, I had no desire to venture to The Kingdom. I thought Universal maybe. After all, I have an annual pass, but everyone else wanted me to go the way of The Mouse. So they bought me a ticket, and I went. I'm very accommodating that way. I learned that there are special things at Disney to occupy the fanatics' time. For example, there are hidden images of Mickey throughout the park. It's sort of like a Where's Waldo game only much more vast and amorphous. Armed with your knowledge, you can impress your friends by pointing out all of the places that you see a Mickey face.

Somehow, this concept reminds me of Easter eggs on DVD's, which I cannot stand. I understood them in computer programs, to an extent. In my experience, they were only mostly known and used by nerds, and I am speaking as a nerd now. Suddenly, these items have become trendy and must be in DVD's. Why? Why can't you just include these special little features in with the rest of the special features? Or if people really want these stupid things, why can't you sell two versions, a version for the geeks that want to waste their time either figuring out where all the damn Easter eggs are or downloading the instructions from some other geek who has already found them, and another version for regular people like me that just want to see all the content without jumping through all the hoops? Does this meaningless hunt somehow prove I am a more devoted fan? I mean, I bought the damn DVD. Clearly, I am a fan enough to spend the money on something I could have downloaded for free instead. But, I digress.

In a way, the lines were good. I got to call people, and text others, and I also got to discuss life, the universe, and everything with my friends (this, of course, included a brief discussion of me moving out of the State of Florida for somewhere with more affordable real estate). However, I still feel that this all could have been accomplished in more hospitable surroundings.

Attraction

I remarked to my friend the other day, "Some women find me attractive." She eyed me for a moment, trying to see it. "Maybe in a Nick Cage sort of way?" I responded, "Yeah, I don't know either."

I had one girl tell me that she found me attractive because I was intelligent. That's right, she wanted me for my mind. (I'm resisting the temptation to throw a blowjob pun in here.) A few women have been lured to me, like a moth to the flame, by my witty humor. I'd love to think that my amazing sense of humor could get me women galore, but c'mon, how many comics have women throwing their panties at them during a show? Some women have remarked at my attentiveness and ability to listen to them. They find this to be an amazing trait, and apparently a rarity among most men. I also have a certain degree of confidence, tempered by my constant belief that no girl will ever fall for me. (Always shocked when they do.) I have been told that I have certain skillz, in the carnal area, but no girl can tell that by looking at a guy. I have even known a couple of girls that were actually attracted to me for my looks alone, but I seem to spawn the inside out sort of love. The kind developed over conversation, and sexual inuendo - the sexual tension building.

I just do not appear to be the guy that will spawn the lust in millions of young girls' hearts with my suave looks alone. Maybe a couple thousand, but in a sea of millions, them's not good odds, especially with 95% of the population being undatable. It means that you do not end up having a lot of meaningless sex with random women, which is not necessarily a bad thing because who wants to end up with the girl having random sex? It also means that there can be a lot of downtime in-between women.

I remember at one of my offices, I specified the three traits I look for in a woman: cute, nice, and smart. They felt I was setting my standards too low, and there I was thinking I had set them too high. The more I have dated, and the more time I have spent meeting and getting to know women, the more unattainable I seem to believe finding those three traits in one woman is. It's a hunt, a game, a challenge, and an investment. An investment of time, energy, heart, soul, and, of course, money. It's high stakes poker, and I suck at poker. (Resisting the temptation to make another pun.)

The nice things about downtime are catching up on all the things you were wanting to do, reflecting upon your past relationships and what they say about you and the people you are attracted to, rethinking what you should be looking for in a relationship, and forming new plans regarding finding another "Miss Right". Like a moth to flame.

Advice

I think the two things that always struck my friends in college was my ability to give advice in a sort of "I can predict the future" kind of way, and the amount that I would think. It's a terrible past time; really quite a bad habit, and one I should certainly break. I suppose the third thing noticed by the women in my life was my ability to give great massages.

I had one friend that used to call me all the time so that I could predict what would happen in his relationships. He would always listen very nicely, never really believe me, and then call me later (even if it took a month) to tell me, "Dude, you were right." The worst part about these situations was, generally, being right. I had a friend once that explained to me that no one likes a person that is always right. She explained that one begins to develop an inferiortity complex when there is someone there that can always see what is going to happen. What happens, she went on, is you will say what is going to happen, end up being right, but then the person has to live with the fact that you were right, AGAIN. It's annoying. So I stopped giving advice. I tried to not get involved.

Dumas wrote that there are two reasons people ask for advice. The first is so that they can precisely not listen to it - in an attempt perhaps to prove the advisor wrong. The second is so that, in case they do follow it, they will have someone to blame if things go wrong. Neither reason makes it very fun to be the advisor.

I now get paid to think a lot and give advice. The two things that bug me most about it is that people always expect you to just know everything legal off of the top of your head, and none of them like to pay. Everyone thinks that you are getting rich off of them. They should really look at my bank account, my student loan bills, and my poor little car in the parking lot. However, the rules have not really changed; people still come to me for the advice, often, so that they can have someone to blame if things go wrong. It's a way to spread the liability; a way to have someone else to point the finger at if things go wrong.

As hard as it often can be to take advice, it is also a tough thing for me to give out now. Oftentimes, I find I cannot actually tell people what I know, or give advice based upon it. For example, I cannot very well tell the fiancee of my friend that he has been cheating on her. Hell, I couldn't tell my friend that his wife was cheating on him. It is just too much responsibility. Suddenly, you have completely altered lives, possibly even the lives of children, and potentially your friendship as well. Somehow the stakes became higher. What do you say to a friend when he asks you what you think of his fiancee? You cannot say you dislike her or you think she is absolutely wrong for him without potentially alienating him. In college, I was able to say things like this without any adverse affects. Maybe because the person had more input, from more people, and there were others saying the same thing I was, so I was not the lone "bad" man saying these things. Maybe we allow ourselves to be more open to contrary opinions during college.

It also becomes tougher to give out the advice because you begin to realize that the advice is probably not going to be followed anyway, or that you may get blamed in the end. A person, at the end of a day, has to make their own decisions, and live their life the best they can, as well as they are capable of, given their urges and vices. Now and again, someone can affect another, but the conditions have to be exactly right. The person has to be open to what they are about to hear, and potentially willing to make a change in their lives. The variables become amorphous, and complex.

After all these years, I have realized that the Count of Monte Cristo had it right, all we can really ever do it "wait and hope".

Back Again

It lives on. It lives on because of something Stephanie said to me. Basically, that I would get used to it and not to give a fuck what others say.

My weekend was eventful. First, I went out of town, and plans got all rearranged so I ended up seeing my mother and going to a big fish cookout at my friends' place in Punta Gorda. It was a lot of fun, and very relaxing. I got back home in the late afternoon on Sunday and took a long nap. It was great. I also contacted an ex while I was away. She's not exactly an "ex". We sort of dated ... or something for about a month before she moved away. The only part that really sucked was our friendship sort of went haywire as a result of ... extenuating circumstances, and there ya have it.

For this story, I must digress a bit. David Sedaris wrote a book called "Me Talk Pretty One Day". In it, he introduces you to his life and the lives of his family (whether they like it or not). One of the chapters in the book is called "You Can't Kill The Rooster", which basically introduces you to his brother, the black sheep of the family, who spews vulgarity as easily as he breathes. For example, "Motherfucker, I ain't seen pussy in so long, I'd throw stones at it." My ex gave me this book, with which I surprised her by reading it. In any event, after a year of not speaking, I decided an email written in the prose form of "The Rooster" would be in order. (I am often tempted to write in this form, but always fear offending whomever I am writing to, but not with her.) I wanted to write her to apologize for not being a great friend towards her at the end, and assisting in the debacle that was our friendship. I had no idea what to expect in response. I only hoped that whatever the response, it wouldn't be mean. I really wasn't up for mean. She actually wrote me back today, and it was really rather amicable. Hopefully, we can salvage a friendship out of the mess.

My hair continues to run away from me. It becomes a struggle for me to go get a hair cut as I consistently have less and less of it. It starts to become scary when they get to the top of your head and only have to make a few snips to finish. I began life with a very full and thick head of hair. This consistency now only remains on the sides and back of my head, as the remainder retreats in complete defiance of my wishes. I'm told many women find bald men attractive. Perhaps I will soon entice a whole new type of woman.

As a final note, I have thought long and hard about what to do about the comment situation, and have decided that if it does become too much, I will start deleting the negative ones, but for now, I will endeavor to just ignore them.

Choices

It started out as a simple idea - a blog. A place for me to share MY thoughts, MY ideas, and MY persepctive on things with my friends, and moreover, a way to better chronicle my life. I've tried writing in journals and it doesn't work for me. Emails worked, but their longevity was subject to hard drive crashes.

I have gotten some really cool things out of my blog, I have met some really interesting people, Kiki, her sister, Sass, Sarah, BJ, all sorts of folks. I have learned about them and sort of shared in their lives as they have encountered obstacles or have wanted to express a thought or emotions or something. It's been a really great experience. I have also gotten some really negative things from it, and somehow today, the negative is overwhelming the positive.

I've been considering my options for weeks now. Blogger doesn't allow me to lock down my blog - password protect it. So I could shut it down, and move it over to LiveJournal. I already have an account there, and I can lock down all of my posts so that only other members who were also listed as my friends (selected by me) could read it. However, that sucks because you have to pay (I think it's $1.00) to be a member and read what I write. I could revert back to emails. This comes with its own pitfalls and I would miss the thoughts and comments of the cool people that read what I write. I could ignore the negative comments. I think Stephanie has become an expert at this tactic. I'm amazed she can keep it up with the comments she gets. Finally, I could delete the comments with no response or explanation.

I am not sure what I will do, but a solution has to be found because I am really tired of mean (and anonymous) people commenting on my blog, telling me that what I think is wrong, telling me the way I view things is wrong, and overall, telling me I'm a terrible person for thinking or acting in a manner of which they don't approve. I'm tired of people incapable of simply not reading a thing that they feel is written by terrible person.

Zones

I can't dance. No I am not about to breakout into song about it or anything like that. I merely stating a fact. The funny part is I can spontaneously improve, and not simply through the consumption of alcohol either. My ex-girlfriend could dance. She had danced almost her entire life, and was, as you may have guessed, really good at it. She, on occassion, would work on teaching me. The lessons were never very consistent, but she noticed that I would just suddenly improve. There really was no reason for the sudden improvement. It just sort of happened. I'm like that with many things though, including basketball. I get into zones where I'm just on fire, but I have no idea how or why. Suddenly, it's all so simple and clear and easy.

My friends are going through some tough romantic times. One of my friends fell for a guy in another state - actually in another geographic reagion of the U.S. When you live in Florida, it's hard to date a guy that doesn't live in the same state, unless you are on the border or something. Florida is nothing if not large. When I was growing up, I used to think driving a couple of hours to Boston was a long drive. In Florida, many people will drive that just to get to work everyday, and the weekends? Forget about it. In any event, I'm not sure it's a good idea to fall for someone that doesn't live in the same state as you, unless you own a private jet, or she is Salma Hayek. It's terrible to watch. She just doesn't seem to have luck with guys. It's weird too because she's gorgeous, smart, funny, and all the rest, but she always seems to fall for these emotionally unavailable men. Terrible.

Another friend of mine just found out her husband has been having an affair. Good times. My ex-girlfriend has a cousin who is married. One night all four of us were out, and I got caught checking out the half naked waitress. I felt terrible about it. It was always a weird feeling for me to check out another girl while I was dating one. I always felt terribly guilty about it, mostly because I would worry if I didn't care about my girlfriend enough if I was checking out another one, and because she was super jealous and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. In any evemt, I got caught, and the cousin told me her husband would never do that as he thought she was the prettiest girl in the world. I started laughing so hard. It was hard not to, knowing that he had cheated on her a few times, at least.

I have friends that are engaged or are getting married and I know at least on of the partners has, unbeknownst to the other, cheated. It's a terrible situation. Then they offer me advice on my romantic life. Good times.

I feel like everyone has their comfort zones, and they get used to doing certain things and often find it too difficult to change. Some people date men who live far away. I have one friend who has been dating the same guy since undergrad. They've been together for about 10 years now, but they have rarely lived near each other. Her boyfriend currently lives in an entirely different country. Some people date - hopping from one romance to another. Some people don't date, or at least rarely do so. I think we hit comfort zones, and don't always know what to do outside of those zones, nor why we enjoy the zones so much, or what keeps them in these zones.

We are often complete contradictions, wanting family, money, career, and lots of time to do everything else. We want a dichotomy of things from our lives and others. Wanting "a lady in the street, but a freak in the bedroom" or a woman "with good looks, who cooks and cleans". Some people want the smoldering eyes, unattainable man or woman to suddenly change and convert for them, or as Stephanie would say, they want to convert funnel cake into celery.

I don't think enough people take the time to really think about the zones they are in, or to take any steps to figure out why they are there.

Accomplishments

For months I have had stupid things that I have wanted to accomlish. I have wanted to finally finish a book. It didn't matter which book really, but I definitely wanted to finish one of the 5 I had started. I also wanted to watch some of my DVDs. See I buy DVDs and then never watch them. Sometimes I don't watch them because I've already seen the movie and still remember it too well to want to watch it, but if a friend hasn't seen it I'll watch it with them. Othertimes, I buy them and simply never find the time to watch them.

Over the past week, I finished "Fast Food Nation" and I watched two of the DVDs I had recently bought, "Intolerable Cruelty", which I thought was dumb, and "Garden State", which I found amusing, in a melancholy sort of way, on certain levels. I also saw "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", which rocked.

"Fast Food Nation" has left me with a lot of thoughts. One being that if a terrorist group really ever wanted to mess up our country, they could just sneak some terrorists into all the migrant workers we have preparing our meats for us. Another is something I remember learning in my food law class, and that is that our country really doesn't care that much about us. It all gets confused by the time all the lobbiests and the other money holders have had their say. I learned that the whole story about fast food companies not being able to make better quality food or pay their workers more is all krap because In-N-Out (which I loved before reading this book) has been doing it for years, and their food is still cheap. Their managers make about $80,000.00 per year. I also learned that some of the biggest safety and health related reforms in the food industry, as of late, have occurred not due to government intervention, but because of protests and lawsuits, and McDonalds wanting to avoid these things and change its image.

I cooked this weekend. I created some really great dishes, and layered a ton of flavors. Cooking is really a lot easier than everyone thinks it is. The two hardest things about cooking are having the currect tools and all the preparation (cutting, chopping, marinating, etc.). I really love to cook. I think I could watch the Food Network and Comedy Central all day and never get bored. There's always something good to watch.

I went on a date last week. I tried the online thing, but I don't think online is for me. I'm not exactly certain how I'll meet my next girlfriend or my next date for that matter, but I really think there has to be a better way than the Internet or a bar or something like that, or maybe it's just time for me to be single and imporve upon myself without anyone else being around. My psychologist doesn't like the whole idea of online dating. She feels I should try and meet people with similar interests. Hence, my idea of joining clubs and such where I may meet people with similar interests has some validity. I still haven't done a very good job at finding those clubs. I've been thinking about getting a dog. I'm not really a cat person. I've only ever really liked my best friend's cat. I had dogs all through growing up until I was about 16, and I love them, but I'm allergic to them. So I think I may need to go see an allergist and get tested for everything and maybe we can find a solution.

Small accomplishments I suppose, but they are all mine.

Standards

I'm superficial. It's very sad, I'm sure, but I simply cannot get over certain things with women. I don't like fat women; a little heavy, I have no issue, or if they can compensate with a great face, no problem, but if all they've got is a lot of extra cheeseburgers, I just can't get into them. I'm sorry. I wish I could. Believe me, it would make my life a whole lot easier if I could, but I can't. I can't help sitting there thinking, gosh, is it so hard to get to a gym? Maybe if I was fat or didn't go to the gym consistently, I would over look this more, but I'm not and I do.

Dumb women, I can't stand them either. I don't think I'm exceptionally smart. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people out there much smarter than I, but I hate communicating with a woman when all I can think of is how poorly they speak, write, or communicate. I'll be sitting there wanting to runaway and escape as quickly as possible. Praying that they are really smart on the inside, and that they are just nervous. A woman can be absolutely gorgeous, and then they open their mouth and you spend the rest of the night together wishing that they hadn't. Again, maybe if I were more dumb or something this would be easier to overlook.

Women that smoke. Ick. If I liked the taste of cigarettes, I'd smoke them myself. Who the hell wants a chick with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth? It smells like ass, and kills you. Great. As soon as I see an exceptionally hot chick light up, I say to myself, "see ya". I know that I probably didn't have a chance with her to begin with, but it makes me feel better about it, knowing that I wouldn't want to anyway.

I hate women that can't stand up for themselves. My best friend is engaged to a woman that is like that. You'll start getting into some sort of witty back and forth banter, and she'll look at him and say, "are you going to let him say that?". I mean, are you kidding? You can't joke? You don't have the intellect to come up with anything better than getting your boyfriend to tell me to stop?

I hate women that expect a relationship to just sort of happen without any effort or time commitment. The ones that are actually too busy for a relationship, but want one anyway. They sit there with their calendars booked, and constantly on the run with no time to date, but somehow feel that if they wish for it hard enough you will both date and get to know each other better. They don't want to sacrifice any of the other things they do to actually make time for this, they just sort of expect it to happen. Reality is foreign to them.

I think I may be too picky. I'm often reminded of the Seinfeld line, "70% of the population is undatable." I agree. I think it may be even worse than that. I have a friend, who now tells the women he dates up-front that he is simply waiting for them to go crazy. He tells them, "I know you're a woman, and so you're bound to go crazy, and so I'm just waiting for it to happen, but until it does, we can hang out and have fun." He's gotten his tired slashed twice within the last month by ex'es. Good times.

Then when I find a woman that may fit all of my qualifications, I get nervous. It's so rare that I see one, I think that I possibly panic. Sort of like if I saw a unicorn, or some other mythical creature. I have no idea what to say, and I never think they will like me. The girl I dated before my last girlfriend actually had to attack me halfway through the night because she got tired of waiting. She had the funniest line when I asked her about it: "Well there's only so much one can talk." Yes, she ended up being a little crazy, but she was very cool, and fun. She could never understand how I didn't think she would like me. She told me I was super smart, so of course she would like me.

I love women, and their ability to fall for a guy for all sorts of reasons, looks, money, brains, sense of humor, whatever. So many of them don't seem to be very picky. I wonder if they are forced to that - if there are just so few guys out there with the "whole package" that they are forced to accept what they can get.

As I read this post over, I notice that the things I have listed that I don't like in women are things that I wouldn't like in myself either. If I were fat and didn't work out, smoked like a chimney, and was dumb, maybe my standards would change. It seems I'm looking for a woman that has similar abilities, traits, and values as myself.

Tough Weekend

I am a blogging slacker. I simply do not blog as much as many other people. I'm lucky if I add an update 3 or 4 times per week, but I have friends that update 1 or 2 times per day. A total slacker am I. Very sad.

This weekend I got my car its routine checkup and maintenance, had breakfast with my ex, and saw Star Wars. Breakfast with the ex did not go as well as I had hoped. It was so weird - seeing her again for the first in weeks. I really didn't know what to say or how to act. I also didn't expect to still have feelings for her. It was so weird. We tried talking some more later that day, and that sort of seemed to go a little better, but Sunday was bad too.

I remember when I was in undergrad one of my friends broke up with his girlfriend. They were such a fun couple. I liked them both and I liked hanging out with them both, which made it suck all the more when they broke up because I didn't get to hang out with her anymore. Lines were drawn and such. The thing was that they still really cared about each other and tried hanging out and being friends right after. At the time, I was dating one of his friends (isn't it cool to have friends with hot friends that like you?), and she and I spoke about the situation and we both agreed that this was a terrible mistake on their part. We felt that they would probably be able to be friends again one day, but not right away, and they both needed space and time to get over each other and the hurt and all of that in order to ever really be able to be friends in the future. But how do you tell your friend that? You don't. You sit, wait, and hope that you are wrong. It didn't really work out terribly well for them as I recall. I really understand his dilemma though now that I am in it.

Despite my misgivings and my preconceived notions, I liked Star Wars. I heard a lot of bad things about it, but I really thought it did everything that it needed to do to bridge the gap. Sure, I thought there were aspects that could have been better, but this was a substantial improvement, in my opinion from Episodes I & II.

I heard on the news today that they used computers to shrink Lindsay Lohan's breasts for the new Herbie movie that is coming out because the size of them offended some parents. You have got to be kidding me. (I thought they looked a little small in the previews.) I still cannot believe that the studio did it. It makes me not want to see the movie now.

Car Insurance

Presently, this post does not relate to my personal life, but it could, and I think that's what bugs me most of all.

I'm going to start off by saying that I know next to nothing about car insurance. Car insurance and I have a love hate relationship, it loves my money and I hate paying for it. I hate paying for something that I hope I will never have to use. I feel like I should only have to pay for 10 or 20 years and if nothing has happened at that point, they should give it to me for free until something does. What I hate more is that if something does happen, the company I have paid for years to protect me now wants me to pay more because something actually happened. I understand the company's reasoning and logic, but I also think it sucks, especially if I was not at fault for whatever happened.

Insurance in general fascinates me with its various forms and packages. However, automotive insurance simply mystifies me. I barely know what I am covered for, but they tell me it's what I need to have and I blindly believe them. I believe there is coverage for if you hit someone, and then there is coverage if you hit an object, and not a person. Then there are a lot of additional types you can acquire. You could probably spend as much as the car is worth on insurance quite easily, especially where I live.

I do know that a car in Florida is considered a dangerous instrumentality so if you have a lot of money, you better carry a hefty insurance policy to cover your liability, and not own it jointly with anyone, especially your spouse. I wouldn't pick the insurance policy though, I'd call an insurance broker for that.

In Flroida, as in most other states probably, we have no fault car insurance. So that even if it is totally not your fault that you are in an accident, yeah it still is. I mean I know they call it "no fault" but really they just mean it's always your fault, or "everyone's fault". I think the worst thing is that no matter who is at fault, your insurance rates go up as a result. So someone cuts me off, slams on their brakes, and I rear end them, and I'm at fault. (I think even before no fault insurance you were presumed to be at fault in this type of a situation anyway.) I just think it sucks.

Old Friends

My mom and my best friend from high school came to town to visit me for a couple of hours last night. My best friend now lives in Germany, which I think he enjoys much more than the U.S. It was really good to hang out with him again. We caught up on old times and he met some of my new friends (friends from law school). It was cool.

One of my other friends found out recently that her husband is cheating on her. Good times. She works a lot, and she never really liked sex with him very much anyway so I guess it was to be expected, but it really does suck for her. I think you should probably leave a person rather than cheat on them. Cheating on them seems like just some sort of passive way to make the other person want to leave you because you are unhappy and don't have the nads to step up and say, I'm not happy. Either that or a total sign of disrespect.

I put a post up here yesterday for about an hour. It was regarding my hatred for car insurance. I think I still have it saved somewhere. But I took it down because I didn't want to offend anyone who might sell car insurance or really have a love for car insurance, or something like that. After all, I thought, I really don't know anything about car insurance. Maybe it really is the best thing since sliced bread and I'm just being overly hostile towards it. I'm still toying with the idea of reposting it, but I just can't decide.

I hope you all have fantastic weekends.

My Memorial Day in Review

I ended up in Orlando. Orlando the city of theme parks, and some of my closest friends. It was a lot of fun. We went to Universal. We had barbecue. We figured out how to make Starbuck's Passion Lemonade. It was cool.

I had never been to Universal so I got to ride The Hulk, and Spider Man and everything else for the first time, and I am now the proud holder of a season pass, so I'll definitely be returning. I also spoke to my ex-girlfriend on Saturday, which may have been one of the best parts of my trip even though it was a little weird. We actually seemed to have a really productive conversation and it was really cool to be able to talk again. There were definitely some communication problems between us towards the end of our relationship, and it was nice to kind of talk about what happened and what each other had been thinking and feeling, in reflection. We had a few "ah ha" moments, and I think we both understood at least a little better. I think we may be able to at least remain friends out of the whole twisted mess.

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly relaxing and hanging out. We kept wanting to do things like sing karaoke or go to the movies, but then would run out motivation, and would end up just talking, joking, and laughing instead. Overall, a very nice (and a little expensive) weekend.

Interesting News

I have seen more photos and videos of naked ex-girlfriends online from jilted men than I ever though imaginable. Today a woman filed suit against Yahoo for hosting naked pictures of her that her ex-boyfriend posted. Evidently, he created a profile for her, complete with the pictures and also impersonated her, communicating with men that contacted her. Random men would show up at he office expecting a sexual liaison. She, apparently, had asked Yahoo to remove the profile multiple times, but they had refused.

I still cannot believe women let men photograph them and video tape them in sexual positions and then lose track of the pictures or tape before a breakup. In the days before Internet, this probably wouldn't be such a big deal, but in the digital age, one has to be a little more cautious. Ex lovers can just be so sweet sometimes.

Speaking of sweet, recent studies have also concluded that Americans drink the bulk of their caloric intake. Yes, that's right, at one time it was from white bread, but now it's from soda. Drink up, kids. Did you know that there's a statistical probability that you will get a partially dissolved rat in your soda can? I learned this from a food law attorney. Apparently, settling the lawsuits over these occurrences is built into the soda manufacturers' operating budget for the year. Mmmmm, tasty.

I am currently in the section of the book Fast Food Nation where the author discusses slaughter house practices and such. He doesn't really focus on any potential animal cruelty or anything like that - or if he does I'm not there yet. His focus, presently, is more on how the meat processing plants try to get everything done as quickly and cheaply as possible, which causes much higher rates of contamination and injury to the workers. I guess most of the workers are uneducated immigrants - you know the type of people you would probably not trust to take care of your child, are helping to prepare his/her food. In any event, it takes a certain amount of time and skill to get the cleaning of the animal down so that the intestines and such don't get serrated and contaminate the meat or the carving instrument. Unfortunately, there is such a high turnover in the plants and the speed is so demanding that few carvers ever get it consistently right. Reading it makes it difficult for me to consume meat only because I now know the potential contamination rates, and that the industry polices itself and is known to lie. Good times. I can't give up meat, man. I love it too damn much.

I have no idea where I will be this weekend. Hopefully, it will not involve me sitting at home on my couch. I hope everyone else has a splendid weekend.

Business

Before this blog was a blog it was a weekly email to my friends. I did this for two reasons: one, my friends were important to me and I valued their opinions and thoughts, and two, I didn't want to have to contend with what some bloggers have to contend with everyday, mean people posting comments. Just look at the comments to this recent post and you'll see what I mean. After much convincing, I started a blog, but one of the main reasons I started it was because the emails became a sort of journal for me, and every time my hard drive crashed, I lost two or more years of my life. I am not sure a blog will be any more permanent, but it's worth a shot.

I did not start a blog to meet people. I did not start a blog to please people. If I am around people that I constantly have to please or worry about offending, then I won't be around them for very long. My happiness is not determined by how much I can please others. In my opinion, no one's should be. "Do unto others as you would have done unto you."? Bullshit. Try hanging out with a masochist and see how far that rule gets you. "Do unto others as they would like to have done unto them."? More krap. Hang out with the abusive bastard and see where that rule lands you. The only possible rule out there is live your life to be happy. Yes, there will be consequences to your actions, both positive and negative, but you cannot live your life in a vain attempt to please everyone because you can't please all the people all the time.

If you don't like my blog; if you don't like what I say or how I say it, then go read someone else's. There is no shortage of blogs. Hell, start your own. Clearly, based on some of your more recent comments, some of you would like to have your own blogs to discuss such things as cliches, and their profound import.

I was asked a, presumably, honest question by Anonymous in his comment to my last post, and I gave a very honest answer. I explained why I said what I said. If this does not meet your expectations of how you want me to act like or how you think I should behave, then too bad. I am not writing here to please you or anyone else. I don't even know you.

If you had clicked on the link that I supplied in my previous post, you would have seen that one of Kiki's most recent posts was about relationships and her having been in them for about as long as she can remember. This inspired me to write my last post. That is how it was inspired. Kiki's comment was a cliche, but it was supportive and it was after we had already talked about what happened much earlier. Finally, Kiki has a boyfriend, who she is extremely happy with. The mere fact that we get along should not bug anyone. Obviously, my "meanness" has not kept me from making a friend or two.

So there it is. I ain't changing to please you. My blog is what it is. It is mine, and only mine. You comments are mine to dispose of as I see fit. If you don't like it, look elsewhere, or start your own.

The Game

I remember once my friend compared this girl to a video game. Something about guys having to keep putting quarters in her to see how far they can get. Somehow this amused her tremendously. I repeated the comment to a girl and it went really badly. I told me friend what had happened and her cried, "You did what!? You can't just go around doing that to just any girl." That's when I realized, I was really in trouble.

Through most of college, I was single. However, given the dating pool, I felt I was better off for it anyway. When my friend and roommate finally moved away from Miami, Florida, he told me it was a shame we had not gone somewhere else for school because we had wasted some of our best years on some of the most materialistic and mean women ever. I thought he was probably right, but when I went to a different university for my advanced degree, I knew he was right. It was ok. I had so many friends to keep me occupied that it really never bothered me. When I did have a girlfriend she would get jealous of my female friends and think I was sleeping with them. Suddenly I lost my autonomy and my freedom. Besides, I was still figuring myself out. There was no real necessity to have a girlfriend.

After I finished school, I suddenly had about a tenth of the friends to hang out with. They were scattered throughout the country, and in some cases the world. The friends I did have worked terrible hours or had significant others and so I didn't see them as much. I decided that I now needed a girlfriend, and that I was ready to have one. I had finished my degrees, I had a solid career ahead of me, things were looking up and I was tired of just hanging out with myself at the end of the day. However, I wanted a cool girlfriend. I wanted one that was fun to hangout with, someone that I would hangout with even if I wasn't sleeping with her. I had this theory - beauty fades, but personality is forever. So I had to genuinely like the person that I was with for more than their body. Don't get me wrong, there had to be some sort of physical attractiveness, but it was not high on my list. She only had to be "cute".

The problem was that I don't like hanging out with that many people consistently, and the ones that I did like hanging out with were already my friends, and I was not going to try and convert a friend into a girlfriend. That was just not an option, which may or may not be wise. Well there was always that one girl that became my friend after I tried to date her for two years, I would have totally converted that one, but she was too busy sending me mixed messages. For example, one day after I listed my requirements for a girlfriend, she asked me, "so which one of those qualities don't I have?" What an unfair question. The other problem was that I didn't meet women my own age through work or something like that. I am about half the age of most people I work with so it's hard to have office romances or be introduced to young friends of co-workers when their young friends are 40.

As I reflect upon all of this, I wonder how it will all shake out in the end. I am not really sure, but I think I definitely need to find some extracurricular social activities to meet new friends and such. Unfortunately, I really have no idea where I will find the time, nor which ones I should join. A lot of the clubs I look into joining are also filled with old people. Where did all the young people go? I think they must all be chained to desks slaving away, and not joining clubs.

This post was partially inspired by Kiki.

My Minor Weekend

Wow. I didn't expect the amount of comments I received from my last post. I suppose one just never knows. Interestingly, other people posted sad break-up posts on their blogs this weekend, without receiving anywhere near the number of comments, and one of my friends broke up with her boyfriend. It was a big relationship weekend.

I went out of town for most of the weekend. However, due to the magic of technology, no one really knew that. On Sunday, I ended up on a very large sail boat. The owner has had it for a long time. He sailed it from California to Florida when he moved here, and has taken it to Cuba, Mexico, and New York. He's a very successful businessman, which is probably obvious given that he owns a huge sailboat. He told me he had to learn to relax. He said he realized over the course of his life that at the end of one's days, one does not think about the huge deals that they have closed, but instead remembers the fun times they had with friends and loved ones while they were relaxing, and enjoying their life. I know, easy for someone that already has a lot of money to say, but that doesn't make it wrong.

I saw some of my friends, and my best friend took it upon herself to set me up on a blind date, which I didn't find out about until I was on the way to the restaurant. Evidently, the woman is a real estate broker that models in her spare time, and is the sister of one of my other friends. It was very casual though with some other people there, thank God because I could not have handled a real date yet. She thought I was cute, and spent seven hours hanging out with us, when she had only planned to spend fifteen minutes.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was on Saturday morning at around 8:00 AM when my best friend and I got into a debate about the tax consequences of a transaction she had recently encountered. Neither one of us had real legal support for our positions, but we were arguing based on tax policy. I was absolutely convinced she was wrong and explained to her what I thought should be the consequences. She had to call her grandmother, and so I did some research, and found the magic Internal Revenue Code section that vindicated me. I felt very triumphant. Yeah, I know, we're nerds.

I was invited out again for next weekend when the three day Memorial Day bash occurs. Basically, this guy throws this three day open bar, free food party on this 90 acre piece of property. I am not sure I'll attend it, but it is a whole lot of fun.

Not a very eventful weekend to report on really, but I figured I should post something new now that the dust has settled.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I don't care how many times you hear it, it always seems easier until you do it. No matter how many you go through, they all suck. Suddenly, this person that you cared about and shared everything with is not a part of your life. All the whispers of love and forever and the like evaporate in the wink of an eye and you are left sitting there feeling as though you have just been kicked in the crotch saying "What the hell just happened?".

Is it really so terrible that I wanted to spend more time with her?

She says she loves me still and thinks about me often, but she just has too much going on in her life right now to work on our relationship. How does that happen? When did the relationship that is supposed to last the rest of your life become an after thought? The after dinner mint. Something to occupy yourself in-between working, sleeping, and eating.

I suppose it is all priorities, and some have different priorities than others, but I just don't see how the person that is supposed to be so important to you occupies such a low spot on your list. I also don't see how you love someone and care about them and miss seeing them, but don't put forth the effort of keeping them in your life. Maybe I am not supposed to understand it, but just accept it.

No matter how it all happens or the reasons for it, all you are really left with is the empty spot that is quickly filled with the rush of regrets. Eventually, from this you will take the memories and the experience.

Ramble On ...

I have been very bad at updating about my life on my blog. So many entries, as of late, have been just general pontificating. My roommate and friend during law school had a girlfriend named Sharon that I met once, and hung out with for a weekend. We became fast friends. She was a gifted actress and I was a talkative bastard. She was cool. As a thank you to me for taking her all over Miami while my roommate was at work she bought me a CD. She also called my endless ramblings, that I am prone to undertake, pontificating. That's such a nice word.

My weekend was interesting. I had a friend fly in from D.C. and I hung out with him and a bunch of other people that I haven't seen in about three years. I learned that one of them dropped out of medical school and is now a teacher, and that another one just received his Ph.D. (but he was in California still, not here). We started out by going bowling, an activity that I generally avoid. My only memories of bowling, prior to this weekend, involved going with my father after my parents separated. Those were always fun weekends. Hanging out with some guy that I never liked and who I barely knew so that we could have "quality time" and he could bitch about my mother, and check out women of ALL ages - including my 13 year old friend. I don't know why "quality time" with me became so important once they separated. I ended up having to get a restraining order on the guy. Fun times.

I also played poker this weekend, with chips, for the first time. I never had to know how to handle "blinds" or any of that stuff. Most of the people there were teachers though so it was an early night because we all wanted to get to sleep by midnight. Alas, the days of clubs 'til 4 in the morning may indeed be past me.

The rest of my weekend was extremely mundane - shopping, cleaning, eating, reading, and playing video games. I did beat Halo 2, which considering how long I have owned the game, it's really sad that it took me this long to beat it. I watched Unleashed, a decent flick, and I spoke with a lot of my friends to catch them up on recent events. They all had interesting thoughts ideas.

There ya have it, my moderately eventful weekend in review.

Oh, and I added my photo to my blog today. Not sure if I want to keep it up, but I figured I'd try it out.

Common Sense

I read an article recently that explained how many cities are converting their streets from one-way to two-way. There is a push by many business owners to have the streets converted to increase the flow of traffic by their businesses. The public also supports the conversion because they believe it is more convenient.

I lived in Tampa, Florida for a brief period. Many of the streets there are one way, which can be confusing at first, but which I found to be incredibly efficient at getting me home. One of the greatest benefits for my purposes was that the city could synchronize the traffic lights. Once I had gotten one green light, I often caught all the rest of the green lights on a given street. As such, there was much less stop and go traffic. From reading the article, I learned that one-way streets are also safer, and having them actually increases the flow of traffic by local area businesses.

It is ironic to me that people are pushing for reform out of a belief that the new system will be more efficient without realizing that they will actually be sacrificing efficiency and safety if they achieve the reform they desire. I think it is easy to gravitate to what we are used to, and to believe basic common sense is always right. Most cities have two-way streets. We are used to driving on them. It also seems to make good sense that if you have two-way streets you'll get twice the amount of business or cars flowing by, which evidently, is a false assumption.

I was reminded of "A Beautiful Mind", and the scene in the bar, where three women enter, and all the guys at the table want to ask out the most attractive one. John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, points out that the best approach for the men to take is to ask out the less attractive women first. This approach seems counter intuitive and backwards, but, he explains, will produce the most favorable outcome.

Things fascinate me that way. Oftentimes, common sense is just wrong. If I knew nothing about science, common sense would have me believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. It is not terribly hard to see how one may think this. However, through science and experiment, this belief has been proven wrong.

(This post was tremendously shortened through either a copy and past mishap, or more likely, a Blogger accident.)

Life Happens

I was very indirectly reminded of something through a response to my previous post that life can get in the way of a relationship. Suddenly, someone gets a new job and is more busy, family members and friends get sick, injuries and illnesses occur, financial difficulties, job loss, other people, etc.

This always made me question the love of Romeo and Juliet, or movies of that vein because the infatuation or love depicted did not have to last. It did not have to survive the bachelor parties, the long hours, the financial hardships, the insecurities, the past baggage, and the day to day worries and concerns that is life - well perhaps not the life of Paris Hilton, and the like, but the life of most of the people that I know. Basically, Romeo and Juliet got off light. I know, it's romantic, and it's star-crossed, and it's love, and they were soul mates, and blah blah blah. However, would Juliet have stayed with Romeo for all of the bad times? How long would it have lasted? Could you imagine their Thanksgiving Dinner?

People are constantly in search of this perfect person. This person that "completes them", and the simple fact seems to be that a lot of people do not seem to be finding this person. All the Internet dating service sites, find love books, and other miscellaneous paraphernalia, clearly indicate that love is illusive for most. The "soul mates" are few and far between. People grow and change and life happens and suddenly the "soul mate" is long gone. People want such contradictions in others and expect such odd things to just magically happen at times.

I went out on dates with several women that simply believed wanting a relationship would make it happen. They were really busy and very goal oriented. They had next to no time to date and get to know a guy, but refused to accept this. These were the women that were simply too busy for relationships and could not understand it when they either couldn't find a guy or the guy they were with suddenly wasn't there anymore. Women can be contrary with their desires, wanting a man who is very goal oriented and successful, but who doesn't work "too much". I'd imagine men do the same thing. We are victims of fairy tales and lies that attempt to convince us of this utopian life that does not exist. When we fail to achieve it we feel stupid and weak. We feel as though we have failed, and become depressed.

We are often not shown that love involves work. We hear about it, but we rarely see it. I mean what is "work" to people in the on-demand age? The movies are all about the meeting and the falling in love. It is compartmentalized and all of the horrors of romance are resolved in a 2 hour period. It is shocking to some that find that reality moves slower than a movie, and that they cannot simply order their significant other with mushrooms and pepperoni, and have them delivered to their door? We are not taught that lots of perfectly decent people end up alone. We are not very well educated in reality because we want the fairy tale. I mean who wouldn't want the fairy tale and the happily ever after ending. It's simple. It's perfect. It's easy. However, life is rarely any of those things.

Reactions

"It's a second marriage," she whispered to me. As if I was supposed to understand that this made it less important or a silly little trifle. It was as though she was confessing a sin, and cleansing herself of the situation; as if to say, yeah I'm driving a Kia now, but my other car is a Mercedes.

Somehow relationships take on different elements as you get older. The ones you have in college are often not like the ones you had in high school and the ones you have after college are often not like your previous ones. There's even something to be said of the statistics relating to the marriages of people who marry for the first time after the age of 25, and the comparison of those to first marriages of younger partners and second marriages for the same age group. Perspectives seem to change ... maybe.

It seems men and women get jaded with relationships over time. They start out believing the fairy tales. The man on a white horse riding to their rescue. Rescuing the princess. Finding that perfect someone. That person that just instantly gets you and it's like magic. The glass slipper. Happily ever after, and the whole deal. Then they get some false starts. People cheat on them, or hurt them, or they see the relationship going in the wrong direction somehow, and poof. Suddenly, this relationship that was supposed to last forever is done, but forever hasn't come yet.

So now these injured lovers spend time looking over their shoulders, always wondering when the next hit is going to come and trying to bob and weave out of it. Fast on their feet. Ready to run at a moment's notice. "I won't get hit again," they think. They begin expecting less, or they demand more, or a little of both. They don't want to get stuck in another relationship like the last one. Never again. They are more cautious. They ask more questions. They analyze every person they meet, trying to see if this one is like the other one. Every misstep scares them, like a gunshot to a deer. Fast. Must get away. Don't want to be trapped. Don't want to be hurt. Don't want to be ... safe?

Safe?

Well the theory runs, it is possible for one that has been hurt before to be too scared of ever being in another relationship. That they will either sabotage them or run away from them because even though the relationship they are in is safe and exactly what the person is looking for, they cannot deal with it. It scares them, or they do not feel they deserve it or something. It's all rather individual.

It's like we are all chemicals in a big experiment and some of us interact well together, some do not, and some just should not be mixed with anything. Some chemicals need catalysts to react, some take forever, some only react well at certain temperatures, some remain suspended for excessive periods of time, and some reactions occur amazingly fast and are quickly done.

So what's the point you ask? The point? I need a point? Well ... ok. How about this one: We are luckier than chemicals because we all have the ability to figure out why we react the way we do and change it.

A Couple of Items

I know I haven't updated in awhile. Things have been intense, and not in a good way. So I haven't been feeling in a very post friendly mood. I've been commenting though. It's easier to comment on other people's thoughts, ideas, and posts than to come up with my own in these times of confusion, or at least to come up with my own that I wish to share in the public forum that is my blog.

It has been amusing to leave the same post up for so long. I received six comments on it. Count them, 6! If I had only left the post up for a few days, I'm not sure the commentators would have scrolled down to read it, let alone post a comment regarding it. So maybe it's a good thing to be stagnant sometimes. It's also been interesting to learn where people reading my Webpage are from and how they end up on my page; statistics intrigue me. I am even listed as a link on a random person's Website. Go me.

Growing up, and even currently, I have been friends with a lot of girls/women (their classification changes as I age). They taught me an awful lot about themselves. One thing that I often heard them complain about was men just audaciously walking up to them and trying to pick them up. They hated that and used to complain about it a lot. This has always been a tough thing for me to know because as a result, I never want to approach a group of women when they are out because I never want to be that guy that spoils their night by trying to pick them up, who they complain about the next day to their friends or on their blog. The other problem is I never know if I want the woman I am dating to be a chick I picked-up one night at a bar or a club. Then again, women also complain that the guy's they like don't ask them out or "make a move". So I was always stuck with a vicious conundrum when at a club or bar or anything where there were hot girls I wanted to get to know better but didn't want to offend or annoy. As a solution, I ignored the situation and decided to stop caring. This sometimes led to random women making a "Justin sandwich" to get my attention or some other random happening, but often ended up with me just being amused at the sites and sounds, and going home as alone as I was to start the evening, which is not always a bad thing. This also, at times, led women who liked me to think that I was not interested. Women - dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.

It strikes me that there really is no other way for men to proceed than to hit on lots of girls and let them be annoyed or frustrated. Women are afraid to appear "too interested" so they give "subtle hints" that men don't pick up on. Sometimes when a guy asks her out she thinks it's because of the "hints", but it often is because he's hitting on lots of women. Unless the woman has been particularly obvious in her "hints", which I have seen occur. Amusing. There really should be a rule book.

Turning to another national issue of great importance, the new Real ID Act passed. A lot of people were upset about this item and wanted people to write their senators and such to stop it from passing, but it passed anyway, and will be signed into effect by the President later this month. What does that mean to you? Basically that it's going to be ridiculously hard to get a damn driver's license from now on, and lines are just going to suck. Not to mention a ton of your personal data is supposed to be kept on these electronically readable cards, but there's no real clear way to keep the information secure. So the guy that swipes the card at 7-11 could be selling your info to someone else, or using it for his own twisted ends. I am not sure that enough thought was put into this system. In fact, a lot of states say they don't have the resources (funds) to carry out the requirements of this measure - under which all of their licensing systems have to link with the Fed's systems.

So there are a couple interesting items on which you may comment. Because, as you know, I am a comment whore.

We're all mad here

... or so the grinning Cheshire Cat said. My friend Chad said, "All women are crazy, it's just a degree of how much." Over time I have gotten mixed reactions from women regarding this statement. I have yet to find a man to disagree with this topic, unless or until, a woman that he wants to hookup with is present. Then suddenly, women are the second coming and you are a dick for ever having said such a heartless thing. How dare you? I know, I'm terrible.

I believe women think men are just as crazy though. They totally do not understand us. Even the ones that think they do, don't. However, they have their girlfriends, cats, and dogs to complain to about us. That is, after all, a wonderful past time, with a long a glorious tradition. Some women even read magazines and books to figure us out, and what we like. Not only that, but they also read men's magazines (Maxim and Stuff and the like) to "really understand us". I have yet to find the man to resort to women's magazine's to "really understand them". We understand that we don't get them and, as such, they are crazy.

Some women will confess to me that they are crazy. Generally, those women are very open, and just don't care. Very fun. I listened to this one woman on the radio yesterday who wanted to get this guy but she didn't really care about him and she felt she was too hot to go after a guy but she wanted to know how she could go after him but still have him come after her instead but he had said he didn't want to go out with her but he must like her but he has a girlfriend. Huh? No really, it made sense to her. Good times. Then there are the women that stay with the guy that hasn't changed in 10 years, but she really thinks if she just stays with him a little while longer....

Women I think are so much smarter than men and that may be the problem. Women listen to their inner emotions. They are very emotion driven, in my opinion. They analyze everything, and anything can have some hidden extra meaning. Why did she say this or why did he do this or that? Everything is very significant. We don't really seem to think like that at all. I've heard women talk about a first date with a guy for hours. Hours! Amazing.

I think my favorite argument for women being way more complicated than men, and hence, "crazy" is that a woman can go to another guy with her "guy issue" and give him the facts and circumstances and the other guy can figure out what her guy is thinking. If a guy goes to another woman with his "girl issue" the other girl will often say, well it's hard to know because it could be this this this or this. Men are so simplistic that it must confuse women sometimes. They're like is this really all they do? And they spend so much time trying to find the other buttons or knobs and such, but ... nothing. Imagine a fully loaded, high test (performs better after warming up) engine, luxury car. That would be a woman. The old clunker in the junk yard, with no options and various fluids leaking out and some pieces coming off - that's the guy. The woman looks for our power windows (or whatever) and just cannot believe that there are none to be had and so continues to look for them for as long as possible.

I think the one problem with being emotionally driven is that emotions are inherently irrational. For example, a human being (man or woman) will stay in an abusive relationship, oftentimes, because they are used to it or they are afraid to leave it or some other emotion. Their emotions will even impact their rationalization of the situation. The rational answer, of course, is to get the fuck out. Get out now and run, run fast, and "tell someone you can trust". Not only that but emotions can be inherently contrary. Another person can both repulse and strangely attract you at the same time. Rationally, you may want someone completely different, but emotionally, you are drawn to this other person for completely illogical and irrational reasons (or so they seem). Hence, anyone driven by emotions can often behave in a completely illogical manner or "crazy".

Men act crazy too. We beat each other up, often over women. It's usually irrational. I doubt you are going to "knock sense" into anyone, but we do it. How about guys at football games in the freezing cold with their shirts off and oversized bellies painted. Totally irrational - "crazy" even. That's often how it turns out - acting on emotions or acting in a way that the people outside looking in cannot understand will often be seen as "crazy". Is it?

Minor Observations

When I read Brave New World and 1984 in high school they freaked me out. I suppose that was the point of them of course. The authors wanted to show their respective audiences where we could be heading. I don't remember anyone in high school not being freaked out by these stories. Yet now it appears there's a sizable segment of our population that really sees no problem with a lot of the items in those books becoming reality. I remember after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about "what do we do now?", which included the idea of placing cameras on street corners and the like, and I remember listening to people endorsing this as a necessary measure. Where were these people in high school? They clearly were not raising their hands saying well this seems like a good direction for our society. It really fascinates me how people's view points and opinions change over the years. I think one of the most dramatic for me was college.

At my college, there was a lot of discussion and debate and thought on all sorts of issues. We were by far not a very politically active campus, but in our dorms and during various impromptu events, we discussed everything. We were all rather open to listening to different viewpoints and ideas. Now when I speak to a lot of people from college they seem to have mastered the meaning of life and the answers to everything, and they no longer have room for a difference of opinion. It astounds me. Perhaps it has to do with less interaction after college. In college I was bombarded with different views and ideas and people. After college, I had a much smaller pool of people with which to socialize. Maybe if you stop encountering several different viewpoints on a daily basis, your own become more entrenched. Maybe life experience makes us think that our views are the correct views. I have no idea why it happens, but I am definitely encountering more of it.

I received 922 junk emails yesterday, and, so far, another 143 today. Wow. Do those things really work? Do people ever really respond to junk emails?? That was always my question with junk mail too. Who responded to that stuff? I imagine a decent amount of money is spent sending all of it out, and I guess it must generate a profit at the end of the day or the companies wouldn't do it. But who the hell is responding to these damn things? Ridiculous.

Birthdays

It's my Birthday and I'll ... well I'm not going to cry over it. :-)

Thanks to everyone that remembered my birthday. I am truly impressed, given that I really don't remember anyone's birthday.

Getting older can be annoying - more things to deal with, health issues, physical stuff, and all of that, but really, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. I feel like I'm ready to get older, not at heart, but in status. I have had lots of life experiences. I've worked really hard, and maybe with all of that comes a certain acceptance to get older.

Overall, of course, aging is really not the hardest thing in the world. Billions and billions of people do it every day, and are doing it even longer than days of old. However, I'm still impressed that I have made it as far as I have, and I feel like my age is a little bit of a testament to how much I have done. That is not always the case. There are many people that grow to 40 and still haven't done so many things, and there are people that are 14 that have likely experienced things I never will. However, I feel that I've done enough and am ready to get this aging show on the road. :-)

Thanks again, everyone. I'll do my best to stay young at heart.

A girl in NY City called the "Human Trampoline"

I realized something recently. The thing that intrigues me about a lot of writing that I see is the author's use of "showing words". In my high school English class, my teacher tried to drive through the concept of using such words to make our writing more interesting and entertaining. This task was often about as successful as driving a toothpick through concrete. The idea is to express things with more imagery. For example, instead of saying her lips were "red", one might say "her lips were like luscious strawberries that I longed to devour." Instead of calling someone is "old" or "wrinkly", one might say that "his body's skin stretched with his every move, occasionally giving indication that it may in fact crack from its years of wear."

I happened to naturally use showing words and was very good at being descriptive and fun. Somewhere in the middle of law school, I think this must have ended. It also may have resulted from all of the history papers (over 50) I wrote through undergrad. I now look at my writing and am disheartened. Where did all my flash and pizazz go? I'm so much more succinct, and to the point now ... well I'm not sure anyone has ever really accused me of getting to any point too quickly.

My weekend was again full of exciting adventure - and plenty of sun. We went to a little even called Sun Fest here. I had really wanted to go Sunday because 3 Doors Down was going to be playing, but people's Sunday plans being what they are, we had to go Saturday. It was probably the better choice though because the sun was out and the breeze was blowing and it was really just a beautiful day. Sunday was much darker.

Sunday I made a dinner inspired by Stacey. She had recommended that I use this whole wheat penne pasta I still had kicking around my apartment in a stir fry. I had been unable to obtain baby sea scallops yesterday so instead I was left with only chicken breast. However, I persevered with a wonderful marinade selected by my girlfriend, some added spicy sauce she acquired in South America to kick it up a notch, and some lime juice. Then stir fry it with the pasta in a garlic olive oil sauce. Top it all off with roasted vegetables. Good times. It did involve having three items cooking at once and a little bit of timing on all of it, but I really think the prep work on it was harder than cooking it. Cooking it is just high paced, but the prep work is ... annoying.

We attempted to find a new brunch place closer to where we live. This first attempt was, decidedly, an utter failure. I didn't even eat the food I paid for. Tragic. I did get to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which only reaffirmed my belief that Disney should never be allowed to do sci fi. New Lucas (Episodes I and II) is bad enough, but Disney is just tragic. Overall, it wasn't a bad flick, but I think it's a little hard to translate Douglas Adams' English written humor to the big screen, and given this, the task certainly should not have been left to Disney. Give it to those Monty Python boys, but Disney??

I did hear one interesting item to report. A new study performed by some American university has shown that email and such is not only addictive, but that it makes you twice as dumb as smoking marijuana. Apparently, it is so distracting that it actually reduces the ability of your brain to function more than dope. Party on.

I hope everyone had a good weekend.