I need to eat better and exercise more.

In the commmon lingo, I need to lose weight. In the common lingo, I need to loose a lot of weight. Approximately 100 pounds.

I doubt that I will do that through laughter alone, but in the process of looking through the diet section of the local manifestation of the corporate mega-bookstore, I just about fell over laughing... Again.

There I was, walking back and forth before the 10 yards long by 10 shelves high expanse of aggressively perky bookcovers. In the same vein as Eats, Shoots and Leaves, someone didn't think about the title of their book. As I scanned across yard 6 of shelf 4th, what I saw was this:

Susan Somers is Fast & Easy

Well, duh! ... Wait, that can't be right. Oh, I get it. "Susan Somers' Fast & Easy" - a cookbook. Okay.

I think I have something on my mind besides dieting. I need to get home to my wife.

So what do you do if your mother-in-law truly is an impossible person to get along with? The type of person who is always a victim. If she was caught stooping over a corpse with a bloody knife in her hand, she would still be the victim.

She...well I don't know how to describe her, except that one cannot talk with her on any but a superficial level w/out either feeling demeaned or pissing her off. Ever heard of the "Six Types of Personalities to Watch Out For"? The six types are: The Blamer, The Complainer, The Drainer, The Shamer, The Discounter, and The Gossip. She is the first 5.

I say all of the above not to put her down, as that goes nowhere, and not to vent, as that's why I use private journals (and certain public ones). I wanted to demonstrate the side of herself that she has shown me (for the past 2 years). I really do want to have a positive relationship with her, and I've tried everything I could think of (yes, including listening to her and asking her what she wants, what she suggests, etc).

You see, the majority of our conversations fit into one of three categories. The few that have turned out well coincidentally occured when she was in a really good mood.

The conversation is superficial, like talking about putting in a garden, the weather, etc. (more specifically, not personal, or important). I feel that superficial conversations certainly have their place in a relationship. But they should be supplemental to, rather than make up the majority of, a family sort of relationship.

Other conversations really piss us both off. Or she claims that I verbally attacked her (while witnesses agree I addressed the issue in a calm, gentle manner). Or one of us (usually the mil) storms out of the room, or whatever. Either way, we both end up ready to strangle someone, and absolutely nothing is accomplished.

The third type of conversation ends up with me stifling my true opinion (I make a habit of not giving my opinion unless it's asked for) after it has been asked for, and feeling manipulated and demeaned. In this situation, she usually feels like her actions were supported (usually she was asking me if she did the right thing, and I felt like in fact she acted like a weasel).

So, what do I do? I will not tolerate this unnecessary stress any longer. I am not going to sacrifice a productive, healthy life so I can "get along" with her. So obviously our conversations cannot continue with the above consequences. My latest plan of action has been to avoid when possible, and act polite, but cold when not possible.

As a side note, I do feel that the majority of my issues with her are because of how she treats others, more specifically me. I don't like blaming people, and I would never think that I'm blameless, but that is the only logical conclusion I can substantiate, as she has major issues with all other members of her family (brothers/sisters included).

Hi everybody! – I hope you’re doing good. I'm going to write about the hike real soon. I had a great time. Thank you everybody!

Tomorrow is my last day of school. Next year I’ll be in the 4th grade. I’m really looking forward to it. It should be fun. My mom and me are going to Tennessee next week to visit my uncle. That should be fun too….

I saw the moon out the other night and I wrote a poem about it. I hope you like it. I called it Moonlight.

Moonlight

Is the moon real
or is it magic?
Does it shine when you can’t see it?
Does it leave someone in the dark
only to find the light?

What story does the moon try and tell us
or is it a myth?
Does it give us hope?
Does it give us faith?
Does it teach us love?
Does it teach us kindness?

Is the moon friendly, or
is it harsh?
Or am I just imagining it?

I hope you all have a nice summer!!! – Bye!

(assorted links by borgo, words by borgette)

I just had the wierdest thing happen...

I work in a college as an Administrator at the moment (temping). I only started about a month ago, it's pretty boring, but it pays for my Gap Year fun.

Mood: Today I am in a blurry daze due to lack of sleep and having to to census checks on registers.

Anyway, I had to go down to main reception to pick up a folder. The receptionist, after giving me the folder, asks me, "What have you got?" This was kind of confusing, because I'm not supposed to have brought anything... "What have you got?"

"What?"
"The amount of people who have asked me if you're single or not, male and female, is just silly. So, What have you got?"

This was particularly confusing, I stumbled out some reply or other and walked back up to my office. I couldn't help cracking out in an involuntary smile, that little question really made my day. *GRIN*

The other day, I wrote a node about one of my neighbors. He ain’t doin’ so good….

Last night was pretty much like any other night that I have my kid. Her mom dropped her off from piano lessons shortly after I had undertaken one of my favorite chores, cutting the grass. No big deal there, I already had the coals for the barbecue getting hot, the baked potatoes were drizzled in olive oil and duly wrapped up in aluminum foil, the steaks marinating away in a combination of barbecue sauce and Italian salad dressing. The fridge was stocked with beer me and assorted fruit juices and snacks for the little. The plan was to finish the mowing, eat our dinner and top off the evening with a couple of homemade banana splits.

Everything went according to plan, the only interruption came when one of the neighbors pulled up and disgorged their kids out of the car. We still had a couple of hours or so of daylight left so we decided we could toss the football around for a spell. Pretty soon, games were improvised and a good time was being had by all.

As the evening turned darker, it was getting harder and harder to see the ball so after awhile we decided to call it quits. I told my kid to go upstairs, take a shower and get ready for bed. Naturally, there was a little resistance but I somehow managed to prevail.

After the bedtime ritual was complete, I decided to wander out back to my porch and just enjoy the silence and the cool evening air. It wasn’t long before a car pulled up and a couple of older people got out and approached my neighbors house.

I thought to myself, good for him, he finally has somebody to keep him company and to help him pass away what little time it appears he has left. Something seemed amiss though.

The lights were on in the house but nobody was coming to the door. The visitors tried the back door, the side door and were starting to look through the windows. They even tried opening some but they were having no luck. Soon, they began calling out my neighbors name, hoping he might answer.

They took notice of me and asked if I had seen him anytime over the past couple of days. I hadn’t. Even though I took the time to try and tell his story, I hadn’t taken the time to pay him a visit. I felt a little ashamed and awkward. They then related that they had been trying to call him for the past couple of days but were getting nothing but a busy signal. They tried calling the ever helpful phone company but all they were told was that there was no conversation going on. They decided to drive the twenty miles or so from their house to see what was going on. You can tell by the look on their faces, they were expecting the worst. I think I was too.

We had all just about given up on ideas. The next option seemed to be calling the police to somehow gain entry to the house. The pounding on my neighbors door increased in its intensity as did the shouts of his name.

A sigh of relief…

One the visitors caught a glimpse of my neighbor inching his way down the stairs. Apparently, he had been in a deep sleep and just now heard people calling out to him. He opened his door, looking like the usual hell that he seems to endure so silently. He was hit with a bunch of rapid fire questions about how he was doing and all the usual good intentions.

As it turns out, his phone wasn't broken or off the hook. It had been shut off. Seems my neighbor couldn’t make the payments and the phone company wasn’t taking any excuses. You could tell my neighbor was a little embarrassed about the attention being shown his way and the whole phone episode. You could tell he wasn’t used to it.

I meandered back home and resumed my perch on the porch. I’ll get to what was going through my mind in a little bit. The visitors dropped by and we exchanged phone numbers. They’re taking my neighbor out to lunch today. They asked that we all please try and keep an eye on things. Assurances were made, other details exchanged and it was time for them to go.

I got to thinking ‘bout myself. I’ve had a couple of heart attacks already in my short time on the planet and I wondered if something was to befall me, how long would it be before anybody would notice?

Would my friends or neighbors take the time to investigate if they haven’t heard from me in a couple of days?

Would work even notice? I’m sure they’d try and call my house but upon receiving no answer, how much further would they go?

How long would the mail pile up and the grass grow before anybody got suspicious?

Would all my friends here at E2 just figure that I’d had enough and became yet another fled user?

Would my kids mom just figure that I had finally done what she might’ve been hoping for these past couple of years and just given up on the whole single parent gig and that I’d pulled a vanishing act?

If it was close enough to the end of the month, it would probably be my landlord that would discover my fate when she busted down the door looking for the rent.

The world is full of so many nice people and I’ve certainly met my fair share of them. I need to meet some more.

I was objectified last night. Objectified for my looks. And I was surprised at how shocked and horrified I was.

I am, you see, a guy. A big, fat, bearded, 35-year-old guy. I tend to be the one doing the objectifying. While I don't go out and obnoxiously mack on pretty girls, I am certainly not above surreptitiously scoping out any eye candy that comes my way.

But now I've been objectified. Objectified by another guy who really didn't care how his behavior made me feel.

I am, you see, playing this new massively multiplayer online roleplaying game called "City of Heroes." It's a superhero game, and it lets you create just about any character you can imagine, then run around Paragon City, busting bad guys and protecting the innocent. So far, I've created six different characters for the game: three males and three females. I don't even feel that strange playing female characters -- I've been writing my own comic book script for the past several years that is jam-packed with female superheroes. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't more female characters in comic books, just because I, as an immature heterosexual male, find them so damn interesting.

So I created my latest character a few nights ago, starting originally from the idea that glowing green eyes on a solid black face (not African, but completely black in color) would look really, really cool. I tried it first on the male character models the game provides, and I just couldn't get it to look right, but when I used the female character model, it looked infinitely cooler than I had imagined. I added long white hair and a skimpy costume, and it looked even better. Necrovora ended up being what looks to me like the best character I've designed. She looks like a cross between comic characters like Spawn, Lady Death, Witchblade, and the Angelus -- all dark characters, and perfect for the character concept I'd had in mind. In other words, I didn't make the character up out of any desire to curry favor with horny teenaged game-players.

And she really does look good. The game doesn't really give you much opportunity to sex your characters' appearances up. You can't give 'em thongs or exaggerated cleavage. But aside from the bizarre black skin and glowing green eyes, Necrovora would certainly be a head-turner if you saw her outside of cyberspace. But frankly, I hadn't yet seen any real opportunity to ogle female characters in the game. Usually, the best I could manage would be thinking "That's an interesting costume!" as my character ran past someone else.

Fool that I am, right?

So, last night, Necrovora had just finished beating the stuffing out of a trio of gangsters when I noticed some guy calling himself "Gen0cYde" watching me. Big deal. Folks watch other players kick ass all the time. I head to one of the safe areas of the city so I can check how much XP I got from socking the gangstas around, and Gen0cYde follows me. Getting creepier. So he sends me a message: "Hey." I don't reply. I have more important things to do -- I have to go look for more thugs to beat up, or I'll never make it up to Security Level 3. So I leave the safe area and head for another section of the city where I know the crooks congregate.

Gen0cYde sends me another message: "Not feeling very talky?" Sure ain't, kid. But wait: this message didn't come through the local chat channel or a private message; he added me to his Friends list and sent it through his Friends chat channel! I've never even spoken to him and he's adding me to his Friends list? He's really climbing up the Creep-o-Meter fast now.

I still refuse to say anything to him, but a few minutes later, he sends me another message: "Aren't you going to talk to me?" Well, if it's not obvious by the fact that I'm still not talking to you: NO. I'M NOT GOING TO TALK TO YOU.

And after I finally logged off for the night, I found myself pondering my own reactions to the whole incident. Aside from ignoring Gen0cYde religiously, what else did I do? Well, I got paranoid that he was going to follow me around. I got a bit frightened and angry the more he sent me messages. I went out of my way to avoid him -- I'd gone to a neighborhood where all the thugs were too weak to net me much experience, just so I could stay away from him. And I found myself thinking, "How dare that guy act like that just because of my looks! Can't he see that I'm more than just a pretty package? I've got these dark hellish fighting powers, and I'm taking on gangs of five thugs at a time! What's with guys who can't bring themselves to respect a woman for something other than the size of her tits?!"

And then, I had strange urges to go watch something on Lifetime...

This is what I think I'll do tonight. I'll go look for Gen0cYde somewhere. (There's no player-killing in the game, so that's not an option) Once I find him, I'll say something like, "Hey, lets U & me go somwhere public so foks can watch." Once we get to the public square where most folks hang out, I'll say, in the public channel so everyone can hear, "come close so every1 can see ok baby?" Then "Everybody look look at us!"

And then, "I'M A BIG, FAT, BEARDED MAN, YOU TINY-WINKIED MORON!"

Then I'll add Gen0cYde to my "/ignore" list and log Necrovora off for the evening.

And after that, it'll be time to log in as Slugger, my baseball-themed superhero, who'll walk up to Gen0 and say, "Hey, baby. You look pretty hot in those jeans. Wanna see my bat?"

So they say there is no such thing as a free lunch. Really? Well then what the hell is this sitting on my desk today? Hm? It looks like lunch. And guess what? I didn't pay one red cent for it!!

Yes, this is what you would call trade-out, bay-bee! Yeah, see, this hotel, we do their website, and they've got this little restaurant inside of it. Actually, it's the fourth restaurant they've had down in there (they keep going out of business). Anyway, we get free lunches from them all the time. We'd better take as much advantage of it as we can, though, because they say they hardly get any other customers besides us. I noticed they chinced on the fries today. Yeah, this one's going down, too.

So is there still any doubt that this lunch is not free? Come, I've got an overdone bacon blue cheese burger here and some decent fries and a pickle. I'm not going to eat the pickle. I hate pickles. But you do see my point, right? I got it for absolutely NOTHING! You cannot spin this at all in any way shape or form to say I paid something for it. I didn't order it. I didn't go get it (and use any gas which has been way too goddamn expensive lately). So there!

Hey, this burger tastes kinda funny. Ew. Oh well, it's FREE! *MUNCH!*

I met her outside the underground station. Saw her rather than met her. Somehow cute. Blond, small. My girlfriend always blames me for checking up small brunettes, but it seems I'm switching to blondes now (she's blond too). I came out of the station and she was walking from the left to the pedestrian crossing on the right, where I also had to go to. I had to go to the completely opposite side of the cross-way, and one of the traffic lights was green. But she waited for the other light that was still red, and so I stayed with her, standing about one meter behind her. Her beautiful blond hair was beautifully tied up behind her head, she wore a dark green (a beautiful color) rain suit, blue jeans and Adidas sneakers or something like that. She was about one head shorter than I was. She looked to the left, saw the other traffic light and aimed for the other side of the road. I felt stupid at first wanting to cross the street, then waiting, and now crossing it again. I'm not sure if she recognized me, I doubt it. We crossed the second road, she moved exactly like I would have done it. I felt this special kind of relatedness. I had problems dodging other people and their umbrellas, so she was about 10 meters ahead of me. A 12A, not my bus, was stopping, but another 13A (my bus) was already heading for the bus stop. It stopped, I lost sight of her, thought about jumping into the bus, but I wanted to buy popcorn and pistachios first. If I had seen her being in the bus I probably would have turned down my purchase, but then I saw her going into the supermarket and rushed on eased. She was still in the first corridor, looking for spaghetti, when I passed her. I turned right, grabbed the popcorn, pistachios and jellybabies, went to the next corridor to look whether I had the appetite for something else, but caught a glimpse of her in the corner of my eye and followed her again. At the desk I was again standing right behind her, lucky bastard. She had bought one package spaghetti (I didn't look up which type of Barillas. Idiot.) and a can of potato goulash.

About two weeks ago I dug out my cook book from primary school and I have cooked potato goulash twice since then. Damn we would be a good match.

2.88 euro, she paid with a 10-euro-banknote. Again this parallel. I was about to pay 3.something with 10 euro too. It took her long to pack in her goods, so I could have had the chance to look at her face from the front, if she wouldn't have looked down all the time. She probably didn't even realize that I was there. I followed her closely out of the supermarket, she turned left to walk on by foot, I turned right, rushed into the bus, made myself comfortable in the last row and tried to catch a final glimpse of her through the rear window more or less successfully when the bus pulled out.

I'm not able to describe what she looked like, so I only wrote down what I did. Sorry.

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