I'm officially a bad blogger.  I leave months between posts, fail to provide any information that is at least mildly interesting for the masses and never clean up after myself.  But at least I leave good tips.  Always 20%. 

That's another thing, my humor doesn't make much sense.  But I think it's funny, and who do think this blog is about anyway?  ME!  So there.  

Sheena (read: the best wife EVER) and I gave the cats flea baths today, that was "fun."  

Why is it that some of my friends (read: Andrea) expect me to be sarcastic and/or witty every time I speak with them (her)?  I don't think of myself as a terribly sarcastic person.  Maybe some of my friends (read: Andrea) just bring it out.  Maybe they (she) is just too innocent and needs a little... twisting.  

If that is the right word. 

I feel fat, I need to work out more effectively. 

mwah. 

Mint tea, rock climbing, phlegm, and country music

Mint tea is addicting,

especially when you have no voice and are coughing up phlegm. Mmm tasty. I'm getting over it though :)  Hopefully my voice will be normal again in a few days.  

Rock climbing is also addicting, check out my facebook for a few more pictures of me being hardcore last weekend at New Jack City by Barstow.  A friend taught us how to lead climb!  Here's me on my tallest climb ever! Thanks Lorenzo and Angela for inviting us! 

After sleeping under the stars and climbing for a while, Sheena and I went to a biker bar called Slash Ranch Cafe on the way home.  The country music was painful, the food was really bad for you and very tasty, but made the ride home a little uncomfortable.  I guess you would call it traditional American food.  

If Jillian Michaels saw me eating that triple cheeseburger with American cheese, french fries, and a beer, she'd kick my ass. 

Okay, time to get hard-core into the healthy diet and exercise regimen again.  I actually really enjoy it, but those burgers get me every time!  :p  Here we go!  All organic and real food, whole grains, lean proteins, a million servings of veggies!  Whoo hoo! 

Hello 2009.  Hey, so it's been a long time since I've posted anything.  Perhaps that's  because nothing of terrible import has been going on in my life.  Or perhaps it is because I don't fully grasp the point of blogging when I'm not across the world like Andrea, or perhaps I'm just a lazy ass.  

At any rate, I figured I would expedite this process a little bit by posting in bullet points.  It's easier for me, you don't have to read a bunch of details that you would forget an hour from now, and it saves digital paper.  

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-I went climbing in Malibu with Sheena and a couple of people from the local rock climbing gym. We have to go with others because we don't have all of the necessary equipment to climb outside.  It was a great time, especially the part where we have to traverse over a river.  Don't fall off the rock or you and your gear will get soaked!  It wasn't all that easy either.  It is volcanic rock out there, which is weird to me.  It was a lot of finger pocket climbing, not slopey or smeary at all.  Which is way different from the Pinnacles in Lake Arrowhead, the rock up there is like kitty litter. 

...wait wait wait, that's WAY too much detail.  I'll be here all day if I keep that up...I'm gonna try again.

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-I went climbing in Malibu with Sheena and a couple of people from the gym. 

-We got a bed for 40 dollars. (woot)

-I got a job as an assistant manager, thought about it a little, and turned it down.

-It only payed 11 dollars an hour.

-I want to go to graduate school so I'm studying for the GRE.

-I didn't show up to a lunch date with my grandpa.

-I'm an ass

-The wii and I have a love/hate relationship.

-Our cats had fleas so we salted the carpet and spent about 5 hours vacuuming it all up. 

That's better.  You all take care now! 

Ridiculousness and Sincerity

I think my problem when I sit down to blog is that I generally don't have any specific topics to discuss.  Perhaps that would explain the random nature of my past posts that were not dealing specifically with news or me ranting about not being able to find a job.  But this post is the exception.  This post I have a very specific topic that is not only of extreme importance but also dear to every one's heart.  Me. 

I am, needless to say, the apple of many an eye.  My face is symmetrical, my breath is always minty and clean, my feet constantly scrubbed, and my personality flawless.  I am a fresh summer day as you run towards the slip n slide with a pool of happiness awaiting you.  My sense of humor entertains the masses and my feathery hair lightly falls in the precisely planned location of my stylist (me). Needless to say, all of my friends are jealous. 

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That being said, who could have the audacity to keep me and my beautiful wife awake playing ridiculously loud music until 12AM, then watching a ridiculously loud DVD (I believe it was Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke) until 2AM, then passing out from drunkenness and letting the DVD options menu play over and over and over again until 4AM when the police finally arrive?  My lovely neighbor in room 108.  

And the options menu for the DVD wasn't just music or anything, it was dialog.  The same 30 seconds of annoying dialog over and over again for two hours straight.  It was so loud, the dialog alone vibrated the floor.  We could hear it as if it were blasting on our own personal mega-sound system on our own T.V.  

It is unbelievably frustrating having to call the police just to get some sleep.  

But anyway, lets continue with the post. 

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Sheena and I now have a monthly parking spot about two blocks from our apartment.  Glory.

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Why do restaurants find it necessary to have three weeks of training for a server position?  If you don't get it after the first week, maybe you weren't meant for the job.  It's not that complicated people!

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I'd just like to point out that if it weren't for spell check, I would be doomed.

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I have officially decided to start working on music again on a regular basis.  I am telling you because the more people I tell, the more motivated I will be to actually do it. 

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Does anyone know why my trumpet turned a dirty bronze color after being out of it's case for about a month on a stand in my apartment?  It polished off with some elbow grease, but it's never happened when it was out of my case a lot before.  I should give my trumpet more baths. 

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I think I'm going to start reading a book called Spunk and Bite. It is about contemporary, witty writing style.  I think it will help my lyric writing which has always been a bit drab. 

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I took some pictures of my immediate neighborhood and the area where Sheena works the other day.  Some of them are good, but the rest range from terrible to slightly below average.  I will be posting select good-ish ones sometime soon, so you have something to look forward to!  You lucky dogs! 

Take care everyone.  

So I got a job.

Yes, indeed it's true.  I finally got a job! 

 It's at a place called LA Food Show, which, interestingly enough, is not a show at all, but a restaurant.  It's a confusing, and only slightly interesting concept that hasn't gone over particularly well in Manhattan Beach, where they opened their first store.  

The makers of California Pizza Kitchen decided to make another restaurant, but this time, the theme will be L.A.  That's right, not a French restaurant, not a pizza place, not mexican food...an L.A. food joint.  It 'explores the sensory universe' that is Los Angeles.  And since L.A. has so many different types of food, L.A. Food Show has a bit of everything. 

Hopefully the Beverly Hills location that opens in October will do better than the Manhattan Beach branch, as I will be working there! 

So I'm happy.  Even though I didn't want to serve anymore, and I'll likely have conflicting work hours with Sheena, I am excited to start working.  We will work the scheduling out, and we will not have to worry about whether or not we can afford groceries.  Plus, the restaurant is in Beverly Hills a block from Rodeo drive (at this that is what they have said), with a lot of foot traffic across the street from a large hotel.  Hopefully there will be a lot of business.  

Maybe now Sheena and I will be able to rent out a place to park somewhere and stop having to deal with street parking. 

On Life in L.A.

I am a large pick-up truck.  Not one of those overbearing, humongous, compensating-for-something types; just a big, worn around the edges Chevy pick up.  I've got a couple miles under my belt, I'm sturdy, but I just can't seem to find parking.  I'm in a giant parking lot, with so many spaces I hardly know where to start looking.  

Oh! There's an open spot! 

My engine sounds off as I accelerate towards the blessed piece of dirty pavement.  Sure, it's a little farther away from where I had originally planned on staying for a while, but that's okay, I'm not too...Dang! Compact spot.  I'm too big.  

"Well," I figure, "there's a lot more pavement where that came from!"  So I go trucking along to find another space.  

Doo do doo do doo.... Wow, for such a big lot, there are not very many spaces!  Oh well, gonna keep on.

Oh hey!  A parking attendant!  He's pointing me in the right direction.  Thank goodness.  I follow his point and take a left, somewhere even farther from where I had wanted to be, but that's okay, a spot's a spot, and I'll take it!  Actually, there's a few trees over there. A nice bit of shade would be nice.  These spots are lookin' great!  Now excited, I head over to the well manicured parking area.  

"Um, excuse me?" I hear from above as I pull in.  "Can't you read?"  I look up, and a not so pleasant RESERVED PARKING sign looks down at me with an erkiness usually reserved for those annoying idiots that are lost and stop in the middle of the street searching for... whatever it is those types search for.  I wouldn't know. 

I head back to the parking attendant to see where I went wrong, but he was gone.

Thus my adventure continued. 

There's a spot! ...nope, a Mini Cooper that had pulled far forward.

There's another!  Motorcycles only.

aaaHA! ...Darn, I'm not fancy enough for the limo valet...

Just too wide for this one...

Too long for that one...

Okay, now this is getting ridiculous!  I'm gonna blow a gasket!  I'm gonna run out of gas before I find a place to park! 

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Sheena and I are thinking about taking a trip (sometime in our L.A. lives) to Albuquerque.  Yeah, random, I know.  But we are like-to-move-around types, and Sheena has been doing some research online about ABQ for her work.  Looks like a great place to be!  And cheap to visit relative to most tourist destinations.  If it's good, in a couple years, we might even move there!  (If we don't move to Maui, Japan, Seattle, Denver...)  

That's kind of how life is right now.  Don't really know what I'm doing, don't really know where I'm going.  I'm willing to bet that this is a common side effect of moving out to be on your own for the first time.  College doesn't count, I was never really on my own.   

In a way, I hate being on my own.  Feeling anxious about finding work, having actual responsibilities...

But then, I love being on my own.  Being self reliant, living with the woman of my dreams, making my own decisions... 

I know I'm preaching to the choir.  Pretty much everyone that would read this is on their own, have probably already gone through what I'm attempting to monologue about while not going into detail, because details are boring  to blog readers.  

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I have also been searching for the meaning in my life that has seemingly disappeared.  Purpose is hard to come by in the midst of moving, searching for jobs, worrying about money...you know, all that crap that comes along with adulthood. 

Once I heard someone say that purpose is something that comes from selflessness, from giving yourself away. 

For that reason, I find this quote from page 106 in Anne Lammot's Traveling Mercies quite comforting. 

"...the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes.  You sit with people... you bring them juice and graham crackers." 

But of course, just being selfless is not enough.  There has to be a driving force behind your selflessness, a greater love.  Which, for Christians, is obviously Christ and His Kingdom.  

While I know that this concept is elementary, I find it helpful to remember that the driving force isn't only driving the selflessness, but also driving how that selflessness is enacted in the world.  Purpose isn't something we can create for ourselves by handing out juice and graham crackers, but something that is created for us when we say 'yes Father' before handing out juice and graham crackers. 

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What you want to be

*You want* ^so bad^ly to be marble.  But cheap and plastic, you hang, surrounded by *light*.  Why desire to be what (((you are not))) when everyone already believes you are what you want to be? 

You want so badly to be deep.  *But* young and ^shallow^, you live, surrounded by plastic.  Why desire to be what you are not when everyone already believes you are what you want to be?

You want so badly to be passionate.  But cold and loveless, you sit, surrounded by youth.  Why desire to be what *you are* not when everyone already believes you are what you want to be? 

You want so badly to be rich.  But poor and ^and^ *bored*, you stay, surrounded by the ^cold^.  Why desire to be what #you are not# when everyone #already# believes that you are #what you# want to be?

You want so badly to be selfless.  ^But^ old and ordinary, you look, surround by the poor.  Why desire to be what you #can# never #be, no matter what others think#*?* 

a      higher         call                             ing. 

^You^ want 

so badly 

to be (((a)))  poet.                             But 

un original and confused, 

you write, surrounded by ------->the ordinary.  

W

h

o

^

a

r

e

^

you ^trying^ to (((fool)))?