here’s your basket of kisses

3 days till I’ll be in New York.

Not permanently, mind you. A short trip. It’s a 2 day thing. Have to be back because one of my buddy’s wives wants him home early.

Can’t talk his way out of it.

I can’t imagine that right now.

I sometimes feel like there’s nothing I need more in this world than a serious relationship. But then there’s times when… i just don’t.

I went to the eye doctor today. He was a new guy. I’m never going back. He was slow, rude, and seemed to lick his chops at the thought of having me come back for an unnecessary followup next week. Fuck. That.

I’ll be following up. With a real eye doctor.

I realize I’m late (like 3 years late) getting on this bandwagon, but I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men lately. All I know is that I need to buy more suits. And drink more cocktails. And live in a city. That show is great, seriously. Oh and despite what I said earlier, Christina Hendricks needs to marry me right now.

christina-hendricks

On a completely unrelated note, if this doesn’t make you laugh, then you need to drink more cocktails.

what a fucking week

this week has been mostly awful. i’ll write something cryptic about it on a piece of paper and post it here some time. stuff just kept hitting me one after another. i mostly just crawled into a little hole to get away. the let downs continued even today. suffice to say, i did not go to philadelphia.

i thought this was totally cheesy and cute. secondhand serenade is one of my favorite singers. the guy made this video in Microsoft Paint.

Cable

The last couple weeks I’ve felt very busy, but I’m feeling finally that I’m somewhat involved with things at school again. Rather than sitting around doing nothing most evenings I’ve been doing karate. It’s good for me. I come home hurting, I am exhausted at times, but for a few hours, a couple nights a week my mind is focused, I’m able to shut off the outside world and focus on just this. I feel stronger physically. And there are some nice people in the club. I’m glad to do it. I still some nights just crave to come home and do nothing. But I’ve been trying my hardest to stick with it every class.

I went to the football game last weekend and it was fun. I’m glad it’s football season again, fall is the best time of year for a sports fan. I signed up for cable again, cuz it’s always frustrating when I have to miss Penn State games because I don’t have ESPN or something. I had canceled my cable maybe 9 months ago cuz I hadn’t been watching anything really, but I was time to change that.

So today the cable guy came. He hooked up the box and all, got it working… then when he left i undid all this connections and hooked it up how I wanted. haha.

I’ve been poking around on my new hundreds of tv stations for a while now. But there were two things I watched tonight that really sort of epitomized the two sides of me. For like 2 hours I watched UFC. Ultimate Fighting. Blood soaked fighters beating on each other. Perhaps it’s my recent resumption of karate training that let me enjoy MMA again, but I had a blast watching it.

But what did I find myself watching after that? Oxygen. The Notebook was on… It’s a good movie! 😛 It’s all about second chances. Who doesn’t wish for those now and again?

If there is an opposite to MMA I think the Notebook might be it.

Karate and a Cool Breeze

I totally was going to hit up the Tae Kwon Do class on campus today. And I totally had the wrong room. I show up a half hour before class and a Ballroom Dancing class is in full session in the room I thought I had to go to, with 100+ couples dancing salsa.

I always wanted to take that class. It’s actually the single most popular gen ed class on the Penn State campus. But I never had the combination of being an upper classman (to be able to schedule such a popular class) and having a girlfriend who attended Penn State at the same time. Sad, I know.

But Tae Kwon Do meets as a club and it’s open to staff like me. I’m not certain if I will do TKD or Tang Soo Do, my old school (which I’m hoping to hit up tomorrow night). But today I was all ready and willing to go do some front kicks in the dojang. And I got confused on the room. Gah!

But despite it all, today had a amazing freak autumn coolness to it. It almost smelled like fall, with the cool breeze on your skin and a comforting chill that I always associate to one autumn, many years ago… the most vivid, important and beautiful time of my life. Certain cool autumn winds take me there.

For a moment.

Back from the Vay Kay

It’s Monday and I’m back from a week off, which was spent driving to visit people and sleeping an incredibly large amount of time.

I have been spending some time trying to refresh my memory of a language I studied in college (german) for very little good reason other than I felt it was unfortunate to have absolutely no recollection of something I spent 3 semesters learning.

I got some sun, although much of the week was cold and/or rainy where I was.

I watched a hell of a lot of soccer in the past few weeks.  The UEFA Cup, the Champions League final, and the last week of the Premier League, with all the drama of relegation has really rekindled my love for the sport.  I thought it was remarkable that within the span of about 45 minutes, a week or so ago, I encountered three different people walking around campus with three different football kits on: Chelsea, Arsenal and Man U, plus I overheard a guy in line at Best Buy on the phone going on and on about how great a game FIFA 09 was (I didn’t find it quite that much fun, but soccer games never really did click with me).  I suppose it’s not just me who felt some football fever lately.

I picked up Fallout 3 on that trip to Best Buy, which I had not really read too much about, but I had heard it was a good game.  Within a couple minutes I realized this game was exactly Oblivion with a facelift.  Oblivion is a great game, which I spent countless hours and days playing when I first got my 360, so Fallout has a lot going for it already.  However it lost some of the charm of Oblivion.  Gone are the many various landscapes you find in the lands of Oblivion, replaced with a barren wasteland that stays barren.  The combat has the same frustrating and slow melee that was found in Oblivion (which Matt seemed to love, but I found aggravating), but adds to it with the interesting VATS slow motion combat system, and loads of guns and explosives.  I haven’t gone that far in the main story yet, but so far it’s at least had a much more varied vocal cast.  (Oblivion had like 4 people speaking for the hundreds of characters… it was distracting.)

But it’s back to the grind now, back to work and waking up early and going to bed at a reasonable time and all that.  It’s not so bad though, I can only stand doing nothing for so long.

Self Imposed Exile

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I am not going to be able to move next year. Well, “able” may not technically be the correct word.. surprisingly the appropriate term may be “willing”. For one thing I just can’t justify the costs of living in town compared to my current situation. It’s a dramatic difference. I crunched some numbers, and estimated I could make a round trip to Europe for the difference in rent. Every month. It seems just silly to blow that money on something other than amazing trips.

(Ok so I’m reading On the Road so I’m becoming inclined to think in these terms.)

I’m trying to make the most of it though. Last weekend I began a massive Monk style cleaning campaign in my place. I through out a closet’s worth of junk, with a lot more to come. (Speaking of which, I’ve got a weight bench I’m looking to get rid of. It’s in fine shape, and I like having it around, but it just takes up too much room in my little place. If you want it, let me know.) Then hopefully will come some redecorating. In the end, I’m just trying to make this current place less annoying to me.

Tonight, in yet another attempt to escape the black hole of Bellefonte, I’m heading out to Indigo with some work friends tonight. And meeting up with another friend for dinner before that at the Corner Room. Anything to get me out of my apartment.

Apology Accepted, Captain Needa

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. People who don’t apologize enough, people who apologize too much, and people who have found the right balance in between. I think I might be in the too much camp. Which must be better than the not enough camp. It must be a desire to avoid confrontations, or alleviate tensions, or maybe a guilty conscious, but I definitely can be quick to pour out apologies for things that sometimes I really had no control over. Is there really a problem with too many apologies?

Like anything, if you say it too much it loses meaning. And when you really do fuck things up, it’s good to know that the person receiving your apology will truly believe you, and not simply think you are just repeating the same old lines.

But you aren’t any better to hold back apologies. I think apologies show compassion for the other person. Refusing to apologize for something that offends is only fueling the fires.

So I guess the best thing to do is save your apologies for the times you need them, but always do it genuinely.

“Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth.” -Benjamin Disraeli