If I Told You Once I Told You A Thousand Times…

Welcome to ITP blog post #1000! When I started this blog nearly four years ago I never would have expected it to be such a large part of my life. I was just a guy who wanted an outlet to vent after having his life upended by getting carjacked.

It is not completely coincidental that post #1000 also occurs on my 43rd birthday! Weeks ago I tried to figure out when post #1000 would occur and it mapped out to yesterday. Then I realized that if I conveniently skip posting on July 4th, then post #1000 would land on my birthday.

Two years ago I got to celebrate Pine Lake #1000 on my birthday and today I am headed out to Marietta (yikes!) to work a career fair. Truth be told I’d much rather be hashing. From the career fair I will be headed safely back ITP so that I can have dinner with some great friends at the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club and then attend the Old 97’s concert at Variety Playhouse.

In my absence make fun of me in the comments and enjoy any cake that is leftover… wherever you may be.

Read Along With Me
Today’s passage from Notes To Myself.

You say you just want to be my friend. I know you mean you want to relate to my mind but not to my body. I can understand that, and will not ask you to relate to me in a way you don’t want to. But likewise I refuse to castrate myself for you by pretending. If you want to have me as your friend you will have to accept my penis along with me.

(Okay, this one cracked me up!)

To all who have helped me — Thanks.

Who Would Have Thunk It?
My first job as a programmer was with Intergraph in Huntsville, Alabama in 1992. At Intergraph I worked in the Public Safety division on an application to help Emergency 911 dispatchers. For testing purposes I jokingly created a police unit called N0722 (get it?) and created numerous emergencies on Poole Drive, because it was the closest street name to “Paul” in our testing database.

Last night I received a birthday wish from one of the people who has had the greatest impact on my life. My friend Doug, who I met at Intergraph and now lives with a wife and three kids in Australia, was the person who convinced a 245-pound version of me to start working out. Doug humored me by playing half-court basketball, until I realized that we were doing more sitting than playing and then started lifting weights and doing step aerobics instead.

The email shocked me because Doug and I don’t keep in touch all that much these days. However, I laughed heartily when Doug confessed that he remembered that it was my birthday because of my N0722 police unit. I then laughed again when I wondered why Doug would send me the email a day early, until I realized that it was already July 22nd in Australia.

ITP Flickr Pic
Because the house was so bloody hot (at least until the rain arrived) last night I had to live in the basement and fight the heat. Last night I knew that I needed photos for today and planned to take some tasteful self-portraits. However, I was driven mad from the heat and wound up with very different results.
Me at nearly 43.

Dammit! I was going to post a photo of me on my 38th birthday celebrating with the person I thought I would marry but I apparently have never uploaded the photo to Flickr! Now-the-same-age, ITP-reader, and on-her-way-to-Iowa Barb has told me that she has married, had a child, and rumored to be getting divorced. Funny how divergent lives can be…

Since I don’t have that photo, I’ll embarrass myself a bit by posting a couple of photos of a Young Master Paulie (long before the Inside The Perimeter days)

Proving that once a Jets fan, always a Jets fan.

In 1972 my family did the classic New York to California car trip. At that time I’d venture to guess that gas was about 38-cents per gallon. As you can see from this photo the colorization of the Grand Canyon had yet to be completed.

(I’m the one on the left, standing there with my father)

A Break In The Streak
Today I didn’t make my bed. No, it’s not because it’s my birthday, but rather because I threw everything into the washing machine before heading to work. Technically I could have replaced the linens with another set, and since I did not I’ve broken the streak at 110 days. I’ll be starting a new streak tomorrow.

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – fine
Current Music – watching the Tour de France and wishing I could watch all morning instead of working
Website Of The Day – Thanks to Maigh I have today’s special Website Of The Day Cake Wrecks — a blog dedicated to cakes gone wrong.
Exercise (b)Log – nothing, too much heat, too much smog
Monthly Foot Mileage – 34 miles
Monthly Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Mode Of Transportation To Work – My car
Monthly Marta Rides – 0
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 0 (110)
Books To Read To Earn Kindle – 4

July Goals
1) Run/Walk no fewer than 75 miles
2) Ride no fewer than 150 road miles
3) Ride Marta no fewer than twenty times (ten round-trips)
4) Read at least two books
5) Make my bed every day
6) Relaunch www.JalapenoBeach.com
7) Keep track of how many days I use stairs over elevators

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]