Delusional

Josh's gf is up for the weekend... bleh. I guess that makes me the third wheel and just another reminder of how lonely I am. The good news is she won't be up for a while after this because she'll be starting school at the end of August.

I made chili for the three of us and spent the night playing CoD4, although I'm not having any fun with it with a raincloud over me.

Last night after I went to bed my phone buzzed. I checked it and it said 'Message 1 sent.' I was confused so I checked to see what my phone decided to send on its own and it was a text I tried to send to Josh last Thursday while I was in line at the DMV, but since I didn't have reception, it stored it to try again later. It said 'Longest line everrr.' and Josh replied last night 'For??' and I just returned it with laughter at how retarded my phone was for doing that.

I think I'll take a hot bubble bath for something to do and I might be on MSN in an hour or so.

Here are 5 questionably interesting facts or thoughts:

- I'm taking the weekend off from running.
- My favorite soft drink has been root beer for quite a long time.
- It's been raining and gloomy all day... hell, half of summer.
- I bought a bottle of ginger beer and pinapple soda two nights ago and have yet to try them.
- My black and white Puma's were getting worn down and dirty so I went to the shoe store and bought the same exact pair. I honestly couldn't find a pair I liked better than them.

Sushi

The last two days after dinner Josh and I have been playing an Xbox 360 game called Warriors Orochi 2, which is a based off of the Dynasty and Samarai warrior games. You are basically a general of an ancient Chinese army and you kill waves and waves of people in battle. Josh had this passive assertive way of wanting me to play it with him (is passive assertive a term? or do they cancel out..). Instead of starting up CoD4 right away he started up that game and I could tell from my Xbox Live dashboard, so I went over to see what he was doing and he had me join him. He was playing that game with his gf when she was up. It's fun.

I've started to try to run every day now in the small fitness room in our apartment complex. I do about 20 min of jogging at 5 mph at a 2-4% grade up hill on the treadmill. Eventually I will up the numbers but since it's been forever since I've exercised, I'm going to ease into it. Last night I tried doing 6 mph at 3-6% grade and I only made it 14.5 min before I just couldn't go anymore. My goal is not to lose weight since I'm already thin - I'm trying to work on cardio I suppose so that I can just be healthy.

Josh is at his boss's house now for an after work barbeque for his 'production support team'. I just made hot dogs and am pretty grossed now that I realized I bought pork/turky/beef dogs instead of my preferred 100% beef.

I went out recently to the mall across the street and bought a ton of white ankle socks in keeping with my theme of wearing brighter clothes. If you read my first post you'll know that I only owned black ankle socks up until now. I got lucky and found some sweet white Puma ankle socks to go with my white/black Puma sneakers :p

Today for lunch we went to a sushi place. It was the first time I've eaten sushi; it was good! I had a spicy tuna roll and a snow crab roll. I was surprised at how filling they are.

The east coast: you will get wet.

When Josh was on his way home to our apartment Sunday he texted me "Tornado Warning?" and ended the text with "-Josh-", which is the second time he's done that and I think it's cute. Apparently their was a tornado warning about 30 min away from us and he heard it on the radio when he was getting close to home.

He was indeed surprised at my CoD4 rank and we played that for a little bit that night.

Today towards the end of work I saw a severe thunderstorm warning on weather.com and it immediately started to pour and storm. Josh and I ran to my car as we got drenched.

We played some more CoD4 after I made dinner - Chicken dumplings made from canned soup and biscuits. CoD4 after dinner has become part of our daily work-week routine. We get up, go to work, get home, make dinner right away, play CoD4, then pretty much chill in our separate rooms. We don't have a TV yet for the livingroom so we just kind of go our ways.

In my first post I mentioned that I wanted to do 5 fun facts/thoughts at the end of every post. Well, I'm not sure if I want to pick that up because 5 fun facts every few days adds up quick and I don't want to run out of them. What I've done when I wrote a journal on paper a few times is write "what I am currently thinking" to give an idea of not only the events that took place in my past, but the kind of personality and character I had at the time.

Anyway here are 5 not necessarily fun facts or thoughts.
- I went grocery shopping Saturday and bought enough dinner foods to last us 2 weeks.
- I bought my first yellow t-shirt Saturday.
- Today is my mother's birthday.
- I am currently doing laundry and I just jogged for 20 min straight on the treadmill.
- Josh is a full blooded Native American.

DMV Woes

Sorry I haven't been updating this week, I really didn't have much energy. Work isn't stressful (yet) so maybe it's just my mood, idk. This past week I took your advice and made blueberry jam. I only made six half-pints and planned to do more today, but the blueberries are starting to shrivel and I don't think It'd be a good idea to use them for that. We've only used about half of them, but I plan on using some more to make another pie, since I don't think the firmness of the berries will matter.

On Thursday Josh and I went to the DMV again, this time for his vehicle plates and for my driver's license. We got there after work and I stood in the slowest line of my life; I was in it for over an hour. When I finally get to the front of the line they ask me for all of my paper work including my birth certificate, my old liscense, and a form I filled out, and then they ask me for a piece of mail that can verify that I have indeed moved... which of course I didn't have with me, so I wasted all that time for nothing. I felt the kind of shock which happens when something really bad happens but your mind can't register how bad it is, so you can do nothing but walk away with a blank look on your face. Josh was waiting in the car and I just got in and laughed.

Josh had to go home for a family wedding this weekend, so I've had the apartment to myself. I haven't done much, well, I've been enthralled in Call of Duty 4, which I'm getting much better at and is passing the time rather quickly. I got about 10 levels since Thursday and I'll get a few tomorrow, so I'm waiting to see how surprised Josh will be.

Oh, I did go to the DMV this morning because I was determined to get my liscense. They opened at 8AM so I arrived at 7:50 because I thought I'd be one of the first in line, but nooo, that's apparently what everyone else thinks so there was a line from the DMV door up until the end of the parking lot, not even kidding. I still spent over two hours there, but I did get the liscense and I am really happy with my picture.

No transistion, sorry lol I'm just emptying my head. At work Friday Jim, our Web IT director and person in charge of hiring/firing people told me he wants to convert me and Josh into employees very soon, which is 4.5 months sooner than I expected. Now to explain since you are probably wondering how I'm not an employee if I am working there. My official title is 'contractor' or 'consultant' because they have a contract with a hiring agency and had to hire me through them. So technically I work for the contracting agency and I am sent to work for whoever wants my services, which is how a lot of the work gets outsourced. But in reality they did a loophole and interviewed me without going through the agency because they want to hire young people who will stay with the company and effectively lower their depedency on outsourced work. It's confusing I know and stupid, yes. I'm not even sure if I understand it fully, but I'm just happy that he wants to see if he can get me converted soon as it would eliminate any worries I have about them not wanting to convert me in 4.5 months. And as a bonus, when I do get converted my salary will go up a nice chunk, so that's another reason a conversion this soon is very good news.

I'm getting tired as I had to get up early for the DMV, so I'm about to take a bubble bath (yeah, I'm babying myself lol) and go to bed. Sorry I haven't been on MSN lately, again I've been drained of energy and I think it's me being depressed but I'm working on it.

More blueberries

Just a quick post today. At work I've actually been given an assignment and now they're keeping me busy. I'm excited because if I can do this well it'll put me on the path to getting big bucks soon, since the profession I'm doing (complex computer programming) doesn't come easy to many people.

Today for lunch Josh and a bunch of coworkers and I went to a Mediterranean place. I was being my eccentric self and ordered a dessert for lunch called Baklava I think.

I packed a bag of blueberries to snack on during the day and I actually started to get sick of them! They were giving me a tummy ache, I was sad. Nonetheless I refused to stop eating them.

So if you haven't gotten the hint that I enjoy to cook, check this out: I made steak and baked sweet potatoes for dinner. It wasn't hard actually, I just put the steak on our George Forman for 5 min and voila! Cooked steak. After, I made a blueberry pound cake with blueberry sauce and Josh made a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfasts. I took a picture of the result! I really don't know how I'm gonna eat all this, I'm making dishes faster than I can eat them.



And what's remaining of our bottomless pit of blueberries:



Well I've gotta get up real early tomorrow since Josh has an early meeting and we carpool, so goodnight! That wasn't as quick a post as I thought it would be.

Blueberries

On Friday Josh's girlfriend flew over to visit for the weekend. She is a very lucky girl. I didn't do much until today when we all went blueberry picking at a local farm. We ended up picking 20 lbs of blueberries, LMAO! When we got back I made a blueberry pie and I got some ingredients to make other blueberry recipes such as blueberry cake and Josh wants blueberry muffins. In the morning I think I'll make a blueberry breakfast smoothie. I don't think It'll be hard to use them all up, I think I must have eaten a pound or two already HAHA.

Josh came back from dropping his gf off at the airport and we played CoD4 for awhile and now I'm doing a load of laundry at the moment.

I was looking at Josh's myspace a minute ago and I came across his brother's memorial page again. His older brother by one year died the year before Josh went to college. Seeing that site and thinking of the pain Josh must have went through made me very sad again. I say again because sometimes I can get very emotional and often in a bad way, i.e. I get filled with grief. Lately I've been trying to avoid this by just being happy, even just by trying to wear bright colors. When I went shopping Thursday I bought a yellow polo and I realized then that it was the only piece of yellow clothing I owned and now I want to get some more. Just wearing that yellow polo made me feel happier and more confident; I was projecting instead of absorbing, literally. Sorry for the ramble, but I want to write this down for the sake of this being a journal.

Goodnight

Dinner and a movie

Let's see... Tuesday night Josh and I played CoD4 all night. Yesterday was the big opening night of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I must say that film was beautifully done, I would absolutely see it again. and again. Although I think they over did it on the teen romance theme. Josh of course is left in the dark now since he didn't read the books, so he's got the classic theory that Dumbledore might have a Horcrux. I told him he should read the 7th book and he said he just might, but we'll see.

Today we had dinner with a group of our younger co-workers at a Thai place. I had this luxurious pineapple shrimp dish with pineapple sauce served in literally the half shell of a pineapple. It was good but probably a bit too much for the price. After I went to the mall across the street and got my hair cut and bought some nice clothes. It's nice not having a family or girlfriend :) A boyfriend on the other hand...

There's a massive thunderstorm out now and it's raining buckets. I got soaked just running from my car to the apartment.

Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking.

Our friend didn't call back Sat night, but this morning at work he apologized that he had lost his phone charger. I wasn't disappointed 'cause Josh and I continued to play Armored Core the rest of the night.

Sunday we ordered Chinese for the first time (also my first time getting Chinese delivered). It was good, but I ordered much more than I could eat.

A little later we watched the 5th Harry Potter. I liked it, but I realized it wasn't as good as the last two, probably because nothing much actually happens in the book 'til the end. Now the 6th one is coming up on Wednesday and I've heard good things so I'll continue to keep my hopes up. I read today that the 7th movie is in production and is being split into two movies! It makes sense though, that book is packed with important events that can't be cut out.

Not much happened today. At work I did absolutely nothing but just surf the web. My 'supervisor' is on vacation this week and left me to two other senior employees, but they didn't give me any work. I would have actually rather had some work so I would have felt like I was doing something, but I'm not about to complain about it, it's their loss. Did laundry when I came home, Josh made chicken for dinner, sorry, not much happened :)

Oh, and Josh's girlfriend is coming up this weekend. I'm not looking forward to it for obvious reasons, but I'm going to see if they want to go blueberry picking. I want to be eating handfulls of blueberries every day for the rest of the summer!

Health and Armored Suits

At work on Friday I was looking at news headlines and came across this one. I have had the intuition that the less calories our bodies process, the less of a toll our bodies would take over time, and now here there is research that is showing impressive results. It really makes me consider the food that I am eating.

After work Josh and I went to Gamestop and we each bought a copy of Armored Core: For Answer for the 360, a game that revolves around building and customizing a type of "mech" or armored suit and fighting with it. We had a lot of fun plowing our way through the difficult missions and we should be at a point where we can battle each other soon.

I also went to the Eastern Mountain Store and picked up a stainless steel water bottle by "klean kanteen". Gotta avoid harmful plastic chemicals!

I went to bed well after 4 AM and my biological clock got me up at 9:30 AM this morning :/ So I got up, got a shower, and went to Walmart to buy a desk and chair for my computer (yes, I've been sitting on the floor with my desktop haha). I also bought a plastic tree for my room, making it more cozy. I eventually want to have stringed lantern type lights going around the entire ceiling edge of my room and get more plants, etc. (real ones too).

A friend from work wants Josh and me to hang out with him tonight, so we are probly going to play cards and drink at his house.

-Love

Death Row

Yesterday after work Josh and I played CoD4 most of the night. Afterwards i went to check on my Final Fantasy account and couldn't log in; I got a message saying LM-17 YOU ARE BANNED!!! So I called Square Enix today and they tell me I was banned for real money trading, which isn't true. They filed a complaint for me and now all I can do is wait to see if I get the ban lifted. I can't believe how dimwitted their "Special Task Force" (what they call their RMT hunters) are for this atrocious display of customer service. I've been playing for 3 years now and put in countless hours and I get wrongfully committed. Kind of like getting put on death row and being innocent. Well, not that harsh, but i'm sure you can see the similarities. I guess this is a good point to quit, since I've been thinking about it; I just didn't want to go out like this.

Today after work I took Josh to the DMV to get his CT drivers license. I would have but I couldn't find my identification. It was so busy we had to wait 2 and a half hours, which almost shot the night.

We came back and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in my room. God that movie is good. The end makes my eyes water every time. Josh liked it a lot and now we'll have to watch the 5th one this weekend. I purchased reserved seats for the 6th movie already for next week. Surprisingly a lot of the seats were already taken a week in advance, so I'm glad I got good ones while I could. It'll be my first time in the director's hall, which from what I've heard is very nice.

My call of duty.

My TV in my room :P

Not too much happens during the work week because well, I'm at work most of the day. Yesterday went out and bought Call of Duty 4 for the Xbox 360. It's the first game i've bought since the midnight release of Halo 3, haha. I've just been playing Final Fantasy XI so much that I didn't have time for other games, and now that FFXIV has been announced, I've pretty much lost any interest I had in FFXI. It'll be hard to get used to playing a FPS with a controller since I'm used to playing Battlefield 2 for the PC, but I'll get used to it. One of the reasons I bought it was because Josh also has it for his XBox and the past 2 nights we've been playing together and he's been teaching me the basics. I'll be very happy when Battlefield 3 comes out, but that wont be for quite some time.

On another note, I mentioned a pride bracelet a few posts back. I bought a silk friendship bracelet with the 6 colors of the flag and it is really sweet looking. It's nice because since it's silk, its very thin for a six color bracelet plus it's woven nicely.


The reason why I brought it up is because I want to start wearing it, maybe with one or two other non-pride bracelets. I won't do it at work, at least not for awhile, but I'm just afraid that I might get weird looks in public or worse. I suppose weird looks I can deal with, but I don't want to get beaten up when I turn into a back alley or something :p Oh the dilemma.

edit: Quick thank you to AgentK for posting, that meant a lot!
edit2: Thank you everyone else. I'm happy to become a part of the 'blogoshpere' :p

Azkaban

Spent the 4th with Josh's family since they are here. We attempted to go look at the many shops around, but ironically they closed early for the holiday. We did get to see a pretty nice fireworks show though. Later that night I had a good time playing Lord of the Rings Conquest with Josh and his brother well until after 3 a.m.

This morning his family headed back home. I did some grocery shopping and started browsing slip covers for the couches we just got. The ones I found cost more than the couches did themselves, lol, so I'm going to look on ebay or something when I get around to it.

I told Josh I'd make him come with me to see Harry Potter 6 when it comes out. He had only seen the first 2 movies, so now I am catching him up with 3, 4, and 5. I'm happy that he is willing to watch them with me even though I'm not sure if he wanted to at first. We watched The Prizoner of Azkaban tonight, one of my favs. (Ok, they all are, lol). He followed along very well and was making astute observations of foreshadowing. The sixth movie is going to be awesome, it's just the story is so sad... I really do like the story, I've read all 7 of the books. I don't even consider it a kids story anymore, the way the books get so dark in the end.

Thinking of trying to go to bed early so I can get up early and maybe do some running. That'll get the blood flowing so maybe I'll be a bit more alive during the day at work.

nite

Public Enemies

This afternoon we all went to the theater to see Public Enemies, a film with Johnnie Depp and Christian Bale about the life of a bank robber. I think it's a true story. I liked the film very much, the way it was shot was kind of unique. It was almost like it was filmed on home camera, yet without the crappy quality of a home camera.

We got back and I made dinner since I wanted to show off to Josh's mom. I made baked chicken, rice, and stir-fried fresh snow peas. I always take offense when people joke that since we are two guys, we must only know how to make simple easy-to-make foods, so that's why I wanted to make a decent home-cooked meal. That and it tastes good :p

It's getting late and I'm just hanging out on FFXI killing time. I'll probly get to bed soon. Later.

thunderstorm

There was a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night last night, woke me up. It was probably the biggest one I've heard in quite a long time. I commented about it to Josh on the way to work today and he said he didn't even know there was one! Haha, I don't know how he slept right through it. It also rained so much, I was afraid there was gonna be a flood.

Got out of work real early because of the long 4th of July weekend. Too bad I don't get paid holidays yet :( Went to the DMV to get a CT liscence but they closed early too...

I saw an ad a resident put up in the laundry room for a couch and a matching love seat last night. The add said ~$150 for both but when we showed up to look at them he offered to give them to us for $75! What a steal, and now we have furniture for the apartment! Although carrying the couches a quarter mile to our apartment was a bitch, lol. I couldn't pick up a pillow when we were done, no joke.

Josh's mom and brother are here for the holiday weekend. We ordered pizza for the first time since we moved in and now they're playing Ghostbusters on the Wii in his room while I'm playing Final Fantasy XI on my Xbox in my room. Doing BCNM's at the moment.

The real world

How do I begin? I'm not going to give all of the details of my life in the first post, so maybe I'll try to incorporate them in future posts. I'll start by telling you about the past month. I intend not to reveal my true identity, so that I may tell even my darkest secrets, although those will have to wait.

On June 1st I started my first job. I just graduated in May and if you are familiar with the U.S. economy, I am very fortunate to have it. I'll be doing web programming and database queries and more. I'm still learning about my job and it'll be a long time before I actually will know what I need to know.

I lived in PA all my life and now with this new job I am living in CT. Essentially I left my friends and family to live in CT with one of my fraternity brothers, who also landed a job at the same company as me. We currently share an apartment, although I fear one day, maybe after the year is up, that he will want to move out and live with his girlfriend who will be out of college then. My bigger fear is that he is trying to find another job so that he can live closer to his girlfriend instead of her coming out here. That would mean the closest person I am to in CT would be gone, and I would be lonely.

This past weekend I got the cartilage of my left ear pierced. I had gotten my earlobes pierced 2 almost 3 years ago, but they closed within the first year I had them. Honestly, I'm not sure why I got it. It wasn't spontaneous; I've been thinking about it for well over a year. It does look cool though, and I think it reveals a part of my personality that I can make decisions without fear.

Let me finish off each post with 5 fun facts or thoughts.
1. I have a younger brother and a younger sister.
2. Two days ago I paid $200 for a pair of Ray Ban's (they're sooo nice).
3. Other than dress socks, I only own black socks that come up to below my ankle. (I have many many pairs).
4. I love The Smashing Pumpkins, 30 Seconds to Mars, and many other bands.

~S