Tuesday, April 17, 2007

What's up?

I have to admit, the whole blogger/google interface thing hasn't made it all the easy to be motivated to post. Okay, that's just an excuse. Kind of.

Life is good. I think I'm finally happier here in San Diego than I have been since I moved here. I still miss Texas - and always will, but things are really clicking.

Upcoming things: Repainting each room in the house - started last night. Will take pics when finished. Friends visiting in May. Family fishing trip in June with dad,bros, uncles and gramps. Speaking of Uncles - I'll be one for the first time in June. Phew! I think my mom was beginning to think she'd never get any grandkids. Texas in August? I don't know. Maybe NYC in August instead. That's still a little far out.

At any rate - I can't wait for summer! It's just about full-time beach weather and I'm ready.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

I'M ALIVE AND WELL!!!!

Hi Everyone!

Sorry I've been neglectful. I got an email from Sandra yesterday and it prompted me to look at my site for the first time in a while. I guess I've just been so busy and preoccupied that I forgot about checking back here. Don't get me wrong, I haven't forgotten about all of you - just the blog itself. I'm going to try and get back to writing more.

As for some of you, I know that many of you have moved sites and I don't know the new addresses, so if have moved - drop me a quick line and let me know where I can find you.

As for me, I'm still living it up in sunny San Diego. Working hard and starting to warm back up to the dating scene.

Hope y'all are also doing well. I'll be getting around to checking on your sites here in the next day or so.

Drop me a line!!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

SHORT UPDATE

Happy Holidays everyone!!!! It's been a busy few weeks for me and I'm sure that goes for most people.

I'm headed to Montana for the holidays on Friday and although I'm excited about the trip, not so much for the cold. But oh well.

I'll try and take some time on my vacation for some good updated posts...

Till then, hope everyone is safe and in great health!!! And that santa is good to everyone too!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

A MONTH?? SERIOUSLY??

I can't believe it's been a month already since my last post! Where did October go?

Thanks for all your great comments in the last one and the great positive encouragement.

Not much has changed, unfortunately. And to be completely honest, I've spent most of the last few weeks just trying to pull myself out of depression. Why depressed? I'd like to say that the funk has a lot to do with the girl - but in all honesty, it's the other things in my life that I'm unhappy with which make working on/toward a strong relationship a struggle. Perhaps I've focused too much on it and neglected focusing on the core problems in my life.

My dad came to visit over the weekend, which I had really been looking forward to for about a month. It was great having him here and great having the chance to discuss my life's challenges with someone who provides unconditional love, encouragement and advice without an agenda.

I feel a bit more focused now and I'm looking forward to finally feeling back to normal again. Whewww! I don't think I've felt so down about life in over a decade! Enough of that! Not fun!!

Thanks again for sticking around here everyone!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

IN A FUNK

Yeah, yeah. I know. I've been a lame ass for not posting much. Don't worry. It's not you. I've been a lame ass pretty much all the way around. That's right - I'm in a funk.

I'd like to say that this happens to me pretty much every fall and every spring. It's a seasonal disorder. But this year, I think I have some pretty legitimate things that have put me here (or I like to feel sorry for myself).

I've been reluctant to write much about the things that are bothering me lately for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because although I like to whine sometimes (mostly for comedic license) I'm really not that much of a complainer. Another reason is that I tend to be closed about my feelings and thoughts to the general population because, well, I'm a guy and that's genetically coded in most of our brains. The final major reason is because my life is fast paced in a slow motion way. Kind of like one of those flip books where the image doesn't change much over many pages but then all of the sudden changes dramatically over just a few pages. What can I say, I'm a freakin' cartoon character.

But for the sake of entertainment (at least for myself) I'll blather a little about what's up. As with most people, it really just boils down to two things. Career and love life.

I'll start with love life.

It may surprise some of you to know that I have been dating someone "off and on" for almost 4 months now. I say "off and on" because for the first month or so, it was the "We're not committed because we're taking this slow" period which, in all reality, was just our way of pretending we weren't crazy about each other while we spent almost every available hour together. Eventually, in an intimate and drunken exchange the "L" word pops out. Of both of us. Not too long after, I did what I always do and started to plot my escape from the sure doom of being emotionally attached to someone.

Before any girls reading this decide I'm scum and plot to sabotage my computer with an electronic equivalent to the herpes virus, I'll explain why I do this. 1) I'm a very loyal person. I don't make many promises because the promises I do make, I keep. I've never cheated. I never will. But I won't make a promise to be in a committed relationship with someone when my eye is wandering as well. 2) I'm very independent. When I do commit to a relationship, it's no longer an "I", it's a "We". Which isn't to say that two people in a relationship can't be independent - as far as I'm concerned that's vital to any healthy relationship - it's more that you do have to consider another person and their feelings in all choices made. Most of the time, this freaks me out a little. 3) Being in love with someone means that inevitably, certain decisions I make will be emotionally driven. That's not how I normally roll. Even though I recognize that it's the nature of the beast, I'm not comfortable with it and often make the wrong decisions.

Moving on with the story, I sabotaged things and in the process crushed her. Not cool. Not cool at all. NO,NO,NO - I didn't go out and hook up with someone else or anything like that. I just capitalized on something she did that really angered me and took the opportunity to be cold and callous and pretty much walk away without much of a discussion. I then tried for the next 4 days to get her out of my head. Where this might normally work for me, the problem was that this time it didn't. I couldn't get her out of my head, no matter how much I tried. I finally called her to meet up with me to talk. She did. But in my emotionally mixed up mind, I really didn't know what my objective for the conversation would be. To try and patch things up? Try to just explain why I ended things so abruptly? Just to see her again? I didn't know. And unfortunately, by the time we actually got deep into the conversation, I was several beers into the night and talking in circles due to lack of objective. Yes, that's me. I'm an idiot. I was leaving on vacation early the next morning and I figured it would be a good time to sit on things and collect my thoughts a little, as I'm sure she felt the same. We could talk again when I returned.

When I arrived back in SD, I returned a call from her as soon as I hit baggage claim. My hopes were high that we'd be able to get back to working on something and I think her's were too. We immediately tried to jump back into things but neither of us really anticipated how complicated this was going to be. I mean, really - I had hurt her. Bad. Which immediately makes her skiddish about letting down the wall again, even if she wants to. Pretty understandable. Pretty complex.

At the end of the day, you have two people who really care about one another, don't want to call it quits, try to be independent and still a unit, are very stubborn, are very caring, love each other but can't stand each other and both contribute to what has become a bipolar relationship.

This brings me to what's really been eating at me for several weeks now. Is it possible to pull this back into more of a healthy relationship? Do I really know how? I've chosen to not be in a relationship for a very long time and now that I've found one that I want to be in, do I really have the tools to make it work? Is this doomed because of such a rocky start?

To all of those questions, I can come to only one conclusion: I don't have the foggiest of ideas.

And I'm usually pretty great at solving problems.

Damn emotional decisions.

So that's the shape of things here. As for the career side of things, I'm a little warn out from writing this so maybe I'll tackle that one tomorrow...

Cheers!

Friday, September 22, 2006

MUST SEE TV IS BACK

I hate the end of summer. Summer is my season. Nothing is wrong when it's summer. For most of my adult life I've lived in places where it's basically perpetually summer - the Caribbean, South Florida, Texas and San Diego. Eventhough I haven't lived north of I-10 in over 12 years, and seasons don't change much you can't escape that time moves on and seasons are less weather related and steered more by social timing (holidays, school year, travel times, etc.).

I have to find ways to cope.

One of the things that helps me is the fall return of all my favorite shows. Thursday evenings being the jewel. If I'm going to hang out on Thursday nights - it comes after my shows are finished. My brief thoughts on the shows I watched last night:

MY NAME IS EARL- Not the funniest episode to date, but decent. Earl is a staple - you know what to expect and you'll always get some good laughs. Hopefully the writing will be better as the season gets going.

THE OFFICE - This was the funniest Office episode yet!! This show is so uncomfortably funny and I think the cast makes it. Whomever it was that cast the show deserves an emmy.

GREY'S ANATOMY - Everything I expected from the first show of the season. This show's success can be heavily attributed to it's music. Having said that, the acting and writing are both great as well. However, ER once had great writing and acting, but not the music. ER was never as good. I thought they did a good job at addressing everything that was left hanging from last season. That doesn't always happen.

SIX DEGREES - This was a pilot for a new series where everyone's lives mesh together eventhough they may not know each other (hence the name referencing the six degrees of separation theory). All I can say is, "eh". It was OK. Not great. Acting was good, but it just didn't seem to go anywhere or keep my attention. Ironically, one of the secondary characters is a girl I went to high school with (Sarah Vowell)- so that was interesting.

Monday, September 11, 2006

MELANCHOLY

I'm still not ready to talk about the Texas loss to Ohio State on Saturday. So don't even ask.

I do, however, feel it appropriate to maybe write a little something about 9/11. I figured I'd post about that day 5 years ago today.

I was driving to work in Houston, listening to NPR when they interrupted Morning Edition to report that a small plane had crashed into the WTC. The initial report indicated that it appeared to be a single engine, but possibly a dual engine prop plane. "Wow!" I thought to myself, "Had to be a suicide thing." They resumed Morning Edition and I arrived at work.

A few people mentioned hearing about it and we clucked about the possible causes for a few minutes before starting the day of work. The day of work was interrupted 30 minutes or so later when my assistant came running into my office screaming, "We're under attack!! We're under attack!!!"

She was so hysterical that I didn't even bother trying to get details out of her. Instead, I turned on the radio in my office and listened to the drama unfold. When the radio announcer, who was reporting from Manhattan, started screaming that the first tower was collapsing, I didn't believe it. I thought to myself, "Maybe just a couple of floors on the top. Surely this is just a case of another reporter sensationalizing the situation - as they do."

Then I saw the pictures.

Then I saw the footage.

As I watched, the tears streamed down my face. I thought about the confusion. I thought about the desperation. I thought about the way that this incident would forever change our country and way of life.

I was a part-time firefighter at the time, running a small department in suburban Houston. This all hit too close to home. In the footage of the collapse, I was seeing and hearing sounds that perhaps most people missed if they'd never worked as a firefighter on a working scene. Distress alarms and panicked radio traffic. These sounds send the hair on the back of your neck standing straight up and induce flushing cold sweats. Helpless. Hopeless.

It's been 5 years - which apparently is the end of the "Grace Period" where entertainment executives feel it's appropriate that they can start capitalizing on the entertainment value. I'm not ready to indulge them. I also won't indulge the conspiracy theorists and political activists who like to stir the pot and point fingers. Especially when they like to use phrases like, "This is all 'Fact'. You make your own decisions." Yeah asshole, anyone can present 'Fact' and still spin it to make the point they're trying to make. I learned that in 8th grade debate class. Fuck you. It was a tragedy. That's all that matters.

Where were you?