What's New? Roleplay Humor Music Quotes	Blog - January 2007	About... Photos E-mail Me Sign Guestbook View Guestbook
This page stores my blog entries from January 2007.  These entries are from January 1 and January 18. Back to the Blog Archive Hooray for Boise State! / Last Call for Alcohol? / Plans for New Year Monday, January 1, 2007 Days of Freedom: 20 ------- Congratulations to Boise State for competing their undefeated season with an overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. I rooted for Boise State to win it partly with the feeling that I could be seeing my own alma mater be in the same position if all goes well. ********** ********** 2 2/3 six-packs of beer. Two 750mL bottles of wine. One 1.5L bottle of wine. Parts of a bottle of wine and some sherry. The amount of alcohol and the various unique alcohol bottles on display are probably the only signs of true bachelorhood in my apartment. I thought that I might have to get something for when the gang piles over for my birthday, but saw all this and figured I wouldn't need anything. Then ... I forgot .... They are all into hard alcohol and working very hard to become alcoholics (well, at least two are). So, we may have to do some shopping anyway. ********** ********** A new year comes as another passes, and the potential for this coming year looks brighter than ever before. Many cool things happened this past year, and I'm sure I can top them this year. Pam and I had our first vacation together to Mendocino and still have some red paint left to paint a town somewhere. I joined a softball team ... and still look forward to our first win. My grandfather and I completed my first helmet case. I got to meet more of my great uncle's family down south. I attended the first game in a long time for my high school alma mater. I'm sure many other cool things happened. I never do New Year's Resolutions. I see them as being the same as going on a diet: they're seen as only a temporary condition that people will eventually give up on and go back to their old habits. I do, however, have some long-range plans: - Lose weight. Ok, everyone has this as a Resolution, but I have a plan that'll get more specific the longer I think about it. I need to limit the sweets again. I have more free time since my first Day of Freedom, so I will get home as early as I can and go walk for an hour. I found, recently, that I can eat a lot more vegetables and feel rather good. I'll see what I can do for that. - Upgrade my computer. Still running Win98 created some problems (e.g. not being able to play Oblivion or anything that is no longer developed for Win98). I had planned to go to Vista, and I probably still will. I may wait until the first Service Pack before doing so. Then, I'll have to decide whether to dual-boot to Win98 for the programs I cannot afford to replace, or if getting a low-end, cheap, yet reliable laptop to run Win98 would be a better idea. - Get rid of the Apple IIe. This is just a lump in my apartment. I haven't used it regularly in years, and I'm slowly losing interest in using it again. Know anyone who needs a couple of these for fun and nostalgia? - Finish entertainment system. This'll require speaker wire, system cables, and a DVD player of some sort. - Get a digital camera. Even if I can get the Kodak DC25 to work again, I really need something newer. Like, something with zoom. And something that has a CCD greater than 1 megapixel. Ooh! Something that accepts memory cards without needing an adapter would be cool, too. Yeah, that camera is old. Cool, but old. I have my sights on the Canon PowerShot A710 IS, but we'll see what's out when I'm ready to buy. I still haven't narrowed down what I want in a camera yet. - More vacation. I'm not sure where we'll go this year. Maybe Tahoe in May. Who knows where we'll go for our week of fun. - I have about three personal things to attend to as well. Not so bad. All items are doable, though one or two may have to spill over to next year. Back to the Top Too Many Options and Variances / Shorthand / The Memorial at Night / Full Relaxation / Better Writing / Birthday Thursday, January 18, 2007 I experienced the epitome of too much choice that people face in today's world. I went to Target to get a few things, and I looked at toilet paper. You'd think that buying toilet paper would be simple: find something made of paper in rolls that fit on that springy dowel. It really doesn't matter if it has designs on it (which I haven't seen yet) or if it's scented (like what, I wonder?). Yet the differences exist and can create quite a quandary. First, I looked for anything on sale. There were a couple of signs and a display at the end of the aisle, but I think both had packs too large for my apartment's storage. So I tried to see what might be the best buy. I looked at package sizes, but some that had the same number of rolls were unusually differently priced. Some packs had "double" rolls, "giant" rolls, "jumbo" rolls, and various other descriptors that meant different things. Some packs had eight or twelve rolls. I thought I could help myself by seeing how many sheets were on each roll, but that made it worse. Some had 400 sheets per roll, but they were single ply. The ones that had 352 sheets per roll were double ply. But the 400-sheet single-ply rolls were "jumbo", while the 352-sheet double-ply rolls weren't. Aaaaaauuuuuuggggghh! I'm thinking too much. That's all I could think at that point. But with all those variables and different packaging, how in the world could I really try to figure out what the best buy was? Was there really any way? Eventually, I stood back, and selected something. I remember buying that brand before, even though I rarely have to buy any and generally don't remember what I had bought before. One should scrutinize their purchases like this on much more important items. Not that toilet paper isn't important, but it's not something that should involve one in too much thinking like this on a regular basis. ********** ********** One of my coworkers belongs to one of the last generations to have used shorthand in an occupation. I learned very little shorthand back in 7th Grade, and I could only remember one symbol (the symbol for "of the", which looks a bit like a ladle). So, for kicks, I looked it up. The version she knew and I remembered was Gregg's. I never used it or even looked back on it, but I still remember one symbol. This version of shorthand uses certain strokes for sounds in English, and you'd spell out words with their phonetic spelling. So, for the word "elite", you'd use the shorthand characters that spell "elet". "Elet" is how "elite" would sound, so you'd use only four characters. It's not that simple for other words, since some have special characters for them. ********** ********** When I was in high school, and friend and I would walk around midtown and parts of downtown. The Memorial, at that time, had been caged off and been closed for many years. He theorized that a coven of vampires roosted in the abandoned auditorium. Seeing the semi-gothic architecture in the middle of the night added to the atmosphere that led to such a jocular feeling. At the time, it was fun to think that and believe that something like that could be true. Now, the Memorial has hosted many events, from concerts to graduation ceremonies. I've attended many concerts there and a multi-cultural dance exhibition. The interior looks wonderful, though the halls going along the sides and upstairs all look like they came from a '60s high school. With those images wafting through my brain while passing by the structure at night, I get that odd feeling that maybe we really did unleash creatures of the night.... ********** ********** I sat back in my recliner. 20-13 Patriots. As I relax, I start to get that feeling. You know that feeling. That feeling of high school. Not necessarily being in high school. Not necessarily being of high school age. It's more of the feeling of freedom and a lack of responsibility. A feeling of excitement, wonder, and immense happiness. As an adult, I rarely get this wonderful feeling. So, when it came over me, I embraced it like a long lost friend. I stretched myself out and covered myself with a thin blanket. I fell into a semi-conscious state reminiscent of a cat nap. No sense of time. No worries, needs, duties, or anything clouded my mind. A warm, comfortable feeling enveloped me as Chad Pennington let the Jets towards the goal line. I regained full consciousness. Like a demon-clearing meditation, I felt refreshed and renewed. Score's still 20-13, so I didn't miss anything. ********** ********** Writing anything of quality takes time to research your subject matter, an overall sense of where you're going with what you're writing, and the energy to write it. I've always done well with these points except the actual writing. Like pulling teeth, my writing sessions dragged on for hours and days. I'd sit there, think a bit, and try writing something. If I had something I liked and could use, I'd get excited and walk around a bit. I couldn't focus on the paper and just get it done. I'd write a bit, wander around a little, play some small games on my computer, and go back to the paper. Recently, I've been getting a lot better with the focusing thing. Granted, I'm writing for fun rather than for a class and for a grade. However, I'd distract myself with various other things even when writing entries for my site. For the last couple of entries, I've been staying a lot more focused than ever before. I have that inclination to play solitaire or check out something on some web site. But, for the most part, I've resisted that and stuck with the writing. Pretty much this whole entry for this day was written without bouncing to too many other things. Hooray! ********** ********** I'm right in the middle of celebrating a landmark birthday. Part one completed. Part 2 comes this weekend. Part 3 has yet to be scheduled. Back to the top