While my week started out with me smashing my face into the window of my car, spitting up Listerine all over myself, it’s ended pretty well. All this week, I have been scouring Craiglist and meeting some people to talk about potential roommate situations. At first, I really thought that I was just going to live somewhere where I would pay a small amount for rent, and that would be that. Wouldn’t matter where I was going to live or anything, just find a place that would work for 6 months. Well, as it turns out, I ended up looking into this development group that a co-worker suggested to me. Today, during lunch, I went over to take a look at the place and was totally blown away.
The apartment that I was looking at is a 1 Bedroom 1 Bath, and it’s only around 550 square feet. While that’s not alltogether huge, it has washer and dryer hookups, a dishwasher, garbage disposal, and various other fun things. It’s very nice and clean, and it’s only around a quarter mile from my job, so I’ll be able to go home for lunch if I wanted to, and that’ll help to save some money. In addition to the great things that the apartment has to offer, there are two pools in the gated community, lots of young people and there’s an AMAZING gym there with lots of cardio stuff and weight lifting equipment, so that’s just awesome. Not only will I not have to shell out money for a gym, but it’ll be within walking distance to me, and that’s what I’ll need to really keep myself going on my whole weight loss kick.
Tomorrow morning, I am going to get up around 9:00, make myself some chocolate chip pancakes, and then pack up some stuff and head over to the complex to sign a lease. The nice thing about signing the lease this early on, with over a month to spare, is that if I do happen to find someone to live with, I am able to easily switch the apartment over to a two bedroom, which is much larger and a much better set-up. At this point, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I know I’ll be happy either way and that’s what’s important. After I go and sign the lease and allow them to do a background check on me, I’m going to take my convertible mustang that I was given as a rental car and drive up to Athens, GA. From what I hear, there is a huge Criterion race going on up there, and the whole city comes out and drinks beer all day and has just a great time reveling in the festivities. I am going up there with Jason and his roommate Mike, so it should be a good time and I’ll get to meet a bunch of people, so that’s good.
Tonight, I went out to the Sweetwater brewery and met up with this girl, Sabrina, who I went to High school with. I hadn’t seen her in 7 years, so it was a bit awkward at first, but after a bit it turned out to be a good time. Later on this evening I am going to head out to dinner with her and her boyfriend, so I’m looking forward to that. Randomly, this guy came up to the bar, and Sabrina informed me that he had dated one of our friends from high school. After chatting with him for a bit, he gave me his number and told me to give him a call. He seemed normal enough, but who the hell knows. It just re-emphasized how small the world really is.
Anyway, it’s getting fairly late, and I think that Sabrina is going to show up in a little bit, so I am going to get going.

On Monday morning, I woke up at 3:45am to get a 6:00 flight to Atlanta from the tiny airport up in Newburgh. Normally, I wouldn’t have flown out so early in the morning, but this particular day, I didn’t feel like catching a flight to Chicago to then fly to Atlanta…just seemed kind of out of the way. Anyway, so I woke up and groggily dragged myself out of bed and got dressed. Knowing that I was going to be arriving in Atlanta even before the official work day started, I knew I could stop into my hotel and shower and shave, so those two things took a back seat to much more important matters such as slugging down a piping hot cup of coffee and chatting with my father who, as it so happens, also gets up at those ungodly hours.
After my 30 minutes of prep time, I gathered up everything that I needed for my two week jaunt down to Atlanta and hopped into my car. About 10 minutes into the trip, I realized that my mouth had that stale coffee taste in it, and it was starting to really bother me.
I reached over to my glove compartment which holds a bottle of Listerine for moments such as these, and popped off the cap and took a swig. I happily swooshed the acid-like substance around my mouth until it felt like my tongue was about to fall off, and that’s when the problems started.
My car has a very nice auto-down feature for the driver side window. One hard push and down the window goes. Well, it also has the same feature in the opposite direction. I don’t know what happened on this particular iteration of my pushing the button, but something happened.
I pushed the button hard to make the window go down, and right as the window was 1/2 way down, I prepped to spit out the now fiery Listerine into the cold morning air. Unfortunately for me, in my gusto to spit out the Listerine and not get any on my car, I really put some force into ejecting my head and spitting parts outside the window of the car. Even more unfortunately for me, right as my face hurtled towards the open window, I must have accidentally pulled the “up” button, effectively allowing me to smash my face into the glass, spitting minty Listerine all over the window, my arm and leg.
Now, as if that weren’t bad enough, I could feel my eye swelling… and I thought to myself…”How the hell are you going to explain a black eye to your co-workers? Umm , yeah, I uhhh.. smashed my face into my car window…” That would go over well.
In a positive twist of fate, or perhaps because of my lightning fast reflexes, I was able to avoid getting a black eye, and the swelling went down in a few hours.
Not a good way to start your Monday.

I have been perhaps the worst blogger that still considers himself a blogger.
I’ve now been living at my parents house for two and a half months, and things are going well. There have been very few disputes, and those only came when I was on the bench for a three week period. For some reason, my job couldn’t find me any project to work on.
Last week was my first week back in Atlanta, as I have been put back on a similar company to the one that I was working for on my previous trip to Atlanta. This project is lasting until July 31st, so I know for sure that I’ll be down there in Atlanta for the next few months. On June 1st, I am planning on moving down there, so the hunt is on for an apartment. Thus far I’ve not had much luck, and am in a little personal debate as to what kind of apartment I am looking for. Orignially, I was thinking that I would really like to find something with roommates so that I wouldn’t be lonely, but on the other hand, I am now leaning more towards a 1BR where I can live on my own, preserve my privacy, live in a decent area and set it up the way that I want. I haven’t really lived on my own in years, so it would be a nice change. In the end, it’s going to come down to the overall costs and if I can justify it to myself.
Last week, on my flight back from Atlanta, I was on a flight with a bunch of girls that went to St.Rose college in Albany. I just wanted to share a story that I overheard. This rather attractive blonde girl is sitting across the aisle from her friend and turns to her and says: “I brought Jeff back to my room two nights ago..”
“Oh yeah? How’d that go?”
“Well, when we got back, I went into the bathroom and I was like Oh My GOD…my makeup was like totally caked on., so I fixed it up and went back out to Jeff. I asked him why he didn’t say anything, and can you believe this? His reply was “Why would I care what you look like? I just wanted to fuck you.”
The girl proceeded to explain how she didn’t like that, and she sent him packing, but I still have my doubts. She didn’t exactly look like she had the greatest moral fiber. Who knows.
This past weekend, I went out to visit Brett and go to the International Beer Festival. Maybe I’m just a huge beer snob (Yes, I realize that I am) or maybe the festival really lacked qualities breweries, but it wasn’t all that great. Not that I had a bad time, because it was still all you could drink beer, but I think it was a combination of having to sort through all the macro breweries and being surrounded by drunken college kids. We got back from the festival around 6:30, and pretty much everyone was passed out around 10:00pm.
This morning, I was supposed to wake up at 4:15 so that I could shower and get ready for my weekly commute to Atlanta. Well, I got up, and turned off my alarm, not realizing it, and then crawled back into bed. We have been getting battered by a Noreaster this weekend, but luckily, it’s only dumping rain. So in addition to being 30 minutes late, there were crazy rainstorms and puddles blocking my path up to the airport. It was less than fun. Once I actually got to the airport, it was 5:50, and my flight was scheduled to depart at 6:20. I ran out of my car, through the downpour carrying all my bags. This week is the first week I’ll be checking into my long term hotel, so I had my HUGE bag with me. Needless to say, I BARELY made my flight, and I was literally still dripping wet when I got on the flight. I was the last person to make it on, but at least I did. I would have been screwed if I hadn’t, but let’s not think about that since it all worked out.
Hopefully the remaining portion of my day goes better than the first part, but I have faith that it will.

This morning was an early one. I woke up at 3:30, sleeping in Joe’s bed… Thankfully, I hadn’t been drinking the night before, because I’ve had about all that I can take (once) of waking up in the same bed as my male friends. Nope, this time, it was intentional. Joe had a flight to catch in the morning, and I had volunteered to drive him there. So off we went at 4:00am all the way down to Newark. I dropped him off around 5:30, and then headed into the city. Why? I don’t have a clue. I figured that since I was already down there, I would head on in.
I came into Brooklyn, and parked my car, started to walk around, snapping a few pictures, and then realized… it’s fucking cold out. Yes, it’s April and it was snowing this morning, how that happened, I don’t know, but either way, it was too cold to justify staying out there. I decided that once again, I would pass some time sleeping in my car. Yes, I know that’s strange, and I realize that normal people don’t always sleep in their cars, especially while parked on random streets in NYC. Anyway… after I slept for an hour or so, waiting for the city to wake up, I figured that I should start to make some calls, and see if any of my friends wanted to go and grab breakfast. As it turns out, I was able ot get ahold of Beth, a friend from college, so I ended up going over to her place and making chocolate chip pancakes for her and her brother, who happened to be sleeping on her futon. We ended up, after breakfast, bringing him back to school at St.Johns, and then picking up Beth’s GF at her job in Williamsburg. We went back to her place and hung out for a little bit, I got scratched by her cat, and decided that I would head into the city with my camera.
In a little bit, I’m going to head back out to Williamsburg and hang out with Ryan, who’s done with work. I don’t know if he’s going to be up for going out tonight, and frankly, since I was up at 3:30, I don’t know if I am either. I probably will end up just heading out of the city after Ryan and I hang out for a bit. Who knows. I’m just keeping my options open.
Anyway, my coffee is about done, and I can’t stand sitting here anymore.

Yes… I’ve gone and done it again. Dropped off another lb. of body weight. Down to a whopping 227.5. Aren’t you so proud? I am.
Anyway, just thought that I would share the news.
The other day my father and I went mountain biking with a bunch of guys from Dark Horse Cycles. It was a good time. The first time that I went with them, a few months ago, I was one of the last guys in the pack, and obviously hurting quite badly. Well, now that I’ve been running and working out, I was doing considerably better. Granted, these guys could have smoked me if they wanted to, but I totally held my own and did a great job. Not to mention that I didn’t fall.
My father got a new bike and the guy that sold it was the one leading the ride, so he asked my father how he was liking the bike and how it was feeling.
“Oh, the bike feels pretty good, but the motor is really lagging.”
“So Mike, how do you feel about that?”
“Ehh… it’s an old motor.”

The other night, Joe, his Uncle, a couple other guys and I went out to a bar in Poughkeepsie. The whole idea of the night was to go out with a bunch of guys and just have a good time. The night on the whole was a pleasant experience, but I quickly came to a realization about myself. For the past three years, I’ve look at bars as places to drink good beer, and have great conversation with friends. Now that I’m single again, bar’s are supposed to have transformed into a kind of sexual hunting ground. Well, to be honest, I am not really fond of that whole thing. Maybe it’s because I don’t really like talking or approaching random people, or maybe I’m just not even that good at it, but whatever it is, I was severely disillusioned with the whole concept of it. Joe assured me that as I wore into my whole being single thing, I would feel more comfortable, but I just don’t see it happening.
I was recently just re-assigned to the same company that I worked for in Atlanta, and this time, it’s a slightly different project. I’m going to be working as support for a reporting tool that is already available to the end users, aiding in upgrades and updates to the tool. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long term type of assignment, so that’s not such a bad thing, as it will allow me to set down some roots in Atlanta before I move down there. My target date is the weekend of June 1st. The way that I figure it, I’ll get all settled in, and finally be ready to go out and party around the following weekend, which just happens to be my birthday. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some people to go out with that weekend or it’s going to be a rather boring time I would think.
My friend Allison, who lives with her parents in Millville, just told me that she turned down a position that was offered to her. Granted, people often turn down positions, but in this case, I just don’t feel like it was the smartest move. The position was in Baltimore, and was with a reputable advertising company. They made her two counter offers because she complained about the lowball salary offer that she was originally given. In all, had she taken the job, she would have had an increase of around 27% of her salary after a bonus, and they were going to pay moving expenses. I think the thing that really bothers me about the whole situation was that she sought out this position, went through the whole negotiating process, got the offer she was looking for, or at least very close to it, and then turned it down. Meanwhile she told me “don’t let anyone talk me out of this”… I just don’t get it. She lives with her parents in a tiny little hick town. I guess she just likes that. I dunno. I’ve really only felt this way once before in my life, and that’s when I finally came to the conclusion that my friend Brad wasn’t going to go to college, and that talking about it anymore was just wasting my breath.
Hopefully both Allison and Brad will eventually find what they want and what’ll make them happy, because if they were to follow my advice, they certainly wouldn’t find it.
Anyway, I just needed to vent.