Yet another life update

June 7th, 2006

So, yesterday started off with a comment in my inbox from Terri and a reciprocate post of hers in her own LJ that totally started the day off right. The side effect of this is that I now feel like I should post more… though I really don’t know what to post about. I mean… apparently I “relieve creative urges”. Seems almost like I’m a rather drastic medieval solution to relieve biliouos humor or something like that, kept on the shelf in the supermarket right next to the discount thumb screws and the Heinz Brand Boiling Oil (“Now with guaranteed flaying!”).

Anyway, this morning I got an earfull of Pink Martini, followed by a mandate to move a project to PHP. Yeah, life is damn spankin’ good right now, and my mood is through the bloody roof.

Blather about Blading

I’m feeling a bit chunky at the moment. Haven’t gone out blading in a while, but that’s because one of my bearings started to grind (left front left bearing). I took it home and cleaned it, and the ball’s not shattered, so I think it’s still good and will last me another hundred miles or so. My wheels, however, are… well, I’ve rotated them once, and they’re starting to look like they need to be rotated. Which usually means that they’re done. Now, I have never actually bladed enough to wear down the wheels. I feel… somehow proud of that. The only problem is that it appears that there no longer is a shop in pittsburgh that carries Inline supplies. Dick’s stopped carrying them because people got injured and returned their equipment. Target and WalMart don’t sell wheels and bearings, only full skates. The First Avenue shop is closed and up for sale. Which leaves me… well, online, to be honest. But it appears that Inline Skating’s turning into a niche sport, which means I get to be all elitist about it! WOOT! Oh well, my new wheels are in the mail, I should have them by the time I come back, which should trip the light fantastic. 80mm, Slightly harder than my previous wheels (so they last a bit longer, even though my legs will feel like jello after cobbles), and they just happen to have had a deal on APEC 9 bearings at the same time. Now, I was eyeing the $130 creamics, but… well, I’m not a racer. And though I’d really like to be able to add a good 10% to my top velocity, I’ll stick with going below breakneck speeds, thanks

I actually wandered over to the Three Rivers’ art fair monday, yesterday, and today during lunch. Being a pedestrian gives me a new appreciation of exactly how fast I go when I’m on blades. When I go up to speed I do what I refer to as the PNC Park Loop in about 15 minutes. Some of those times are slow, but when I’m coming off the 6th street bridge with a quarter mile of downhill acceleration, I absolutely rip past the field and the pedestrians there. If I didn’t know how to do step-over turns I’d be a very flat krotscheck… or there’d be a long black mark on the sidewalk as I desperately brake. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I get to go out blading today again, which makes me happy, and my body’s already ready to kick me with an endorphin rush.

Blather about Hair

The nice thing about having had long hair is that you never really have to bother cutting it much. Going to a stylist on a regular basis is just so… annoying for someone with my schedule. And since there’s nothing uglier than a balding man with long hair, I’m going to opt to get myself a clipper set and see if there’s a setting I can get away with using on myself. The way I figure, if I fuck up I can always go bald…. right? Right?…. hoo boy. Maybe I should make a doctor’s appointment first- see, I have this silly bleeding scalp issue that’s been going on for a while now. Originally I got a prescription for nizoral, which seemed to help, but given that it keeps coming back I suspect it’s a pretty well rooted ringworm infection (It’s a fungus, fuckers! Not a Worm!… though that’d be pretty funny. Well, for everyone else. Fungus is still funny. Wait three months, and you can harvest mushrooms on my head!).

Blather about Music

I have 1263 songs in my music library, all of which is legal at this point, sucking up 11 Gigs. It took me 3 days to re-rip it onto my new iMac (mostly because I wasn’t at home 24-7 doing that). I still have to download the album art for close to 120 CD’s though. I’m getting another 2 CD’s today, another 6 tomorrow-ish (Willie Nelson, B.B. King, Pink Martini, Muddy Waters, Peggy Lee, etc.), and I have to wonder… …is that a lot? I mean, I know some of my friends who easily top that, though perhaps not legally. Admittedly, there are things in that library I’m not exactly proud of (New Kids’ Hangin’ Tough for instance), But it’s a nice broad spectrum of music. The only thing I don’t have is really recent stuff (past 6 years or so). I have some Maroon 5, and am exposing myself to iTunes’ song of the month which has already snagged me a couple of disks. Also, Pink Martini’s new, but… well, not exactly indicative of current trends. Anyway, in a nutshell I like the fact that I’ve got a nice, broad selection of musical styles, slightly biased towards dance music. Slightly.

Blather about Weight

I still think I’m fat. Some people look at me and go: You’re on crack. My response is that you can’t see my real belly, because I have mad abs with the strength to suck in my gut all day long. I am, however, not doing anything about my weight. Or rather, I’m no longer “dieting” as it were. Adjusting my lifestyle one iota at a time, yes, try to get myself down to something approaching 180 by the end of the summer.

Blather about School

I’m done in December. Registration for my last semester is next week. Somehow this feels… strange, because I know for a fact that my schedule’s not going to open up as much as I thought it might. Yes, no more homework, no more assignments nor obligations… but I already know how I need to manage the change. As much as I want to fill more of my time with dance and gaming (and will, on the nights that I’m free), I’m going to start working more. Regardless, knowing I’m almost in my last semester makes me… feel strange. I know I’ve learned something. I know I learned a LOT. But I don’t know how much of it is directly applicable to my present job, and I also don’t know where I’m going from here anyway. There’s some interesting stuff going on at my company, stuff I won’t talk about because it’s shiny and I don’t wanna share.

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