Weekend (Mostly) At Home? Yes, That’s What It Was For Me.

Talk about being irresponsible. After returning home from physical therapy on Friday morning the Jackmobile never only left the confines of the ITP-Estate’s carport to go play team trivia with my friends ITP-Reader Stacy and Bill. Slacker much? Well, not really, I did manage to code my ass off and do things around the house such as mow the lawn.

I just couldn’t help myself. On Friday I had intentions of making it to Summerville, but then I hadn’t packed and the weather radar looked ominous. I started responding to emails at work (on my day off?!?) and before I knew it I was entrenched. Any trip to Summerville was going to have to wait until Saturday.

I can’t recall exactly what I did Friday night that kept me up very late (safe money is on coding while listening/watching podcasts — who you calling a nerd?) but whatever it was I was in no mood to get up super-early to drive to Summerville. Opening the window and seeing gray skies didn’t help my motivation either, so I decided to bag the trip completely. [My apologies to ITP-Reader Martha who ran the race with her boyfriend Jerry, but at least they weren’t planning on camping and Jerry was able to claim my number without me being there and he set a new course PR for me! (2:18)]. With my newfound free day I started coding, and sporadically cleaning the house. I even managed to create a rather unimpressive chicken dinner. I had considered, and then completely forgot about going to the Dick Lane Velodrome for the bike races on Saturday night, only to remember about them late into the evening. Dangen!

Sunday wound up being a (rather pleasantly cool) day of doing chores around the house, driving up to Sandy Springs to play in a trivia tournament (we didn’t fare well), followed by a movie night on the big screen. I watched the rather interesting, yet somewhat implausible, movie released last year called Cemetery Junction, whose movie poster seems weird as the man pictured front-and-center is not really the central character of the movie.

In hindsight I should have changed plans to join ITP-Readers Lisa and Randy at LEAF once I realized that I’d be able to walk again post-accident, but as they say, hindsight is 20-20.

Look Who Went Half-Caff
One of the greatest things about randomly taking a Friday off is the feeling of joy waking up on Saturday morning and realizing that it’s not yet Sunday.

One of the greatest letdowns is wanting to make a pot of coffee and realizing that you may not have enough on hand (especially when you are too lazy to get out the spice grinder you bought specifically to grind coffee and use the beans you have in your cabinet) as happened to me on Saturday morning.

Foraging through my stash of food goods I came across a bag of ground Starbucks decaf (WTH? For whom did I buy that?!) and decided this weekend was the weekend I would try making half-caff coffee. Dylan goes electric, Americans buy Japanese cars, Paulie drinks half-caff. What the hell has come of this world?

Honestly, my half-caff wasn’t half-bad. I’ll probably keep making it at home until I run out of the decaf or the woman of my dreams enters my life and corrects my errant behavior.

ITP Flickr Pic
This is one of Stacy’s pens.

It made me laugh and gave me an idea for today’s Website of the Day.

Hey Mr Postman, Where The Hell Were You?
On Saturday morning I realized that I’d yet to fill out my prospective juror’s questionnaire, so I did so, remembered with joy that it was indeed Saturday, and placed the completed questionnaire into my mailbox, raising its flag. This was about 8:30am when I did all of this, and the mailbox’s flag remained all day, at least until 5pm when I gave up on the postman and extracted the questionnaire from the mailbox.

Sad.
First-World problem.
But still sad.

Look Who Bought Music This Weekend
I have tickets to three concerts in May — Flaming Lips (this Thursday night), Manchester Orchestra, Okkervil River — and I plan to go see each (unless I get picked for a jury and sequestered the day of the Manchester Orchestra show).

While Flaming Lips are coming to play an old album (The Soft Bulletin, front to back), Manchester Orchestra and Okkervil River are out supporting the albums they released last week, “Simple Math” and “I Am Very Far” respectively. I’ve not been buying music lately, in fact since I’ve been head’s-down coding the past six weeks I’ve been buying little of anything which is great since I’m trying to reduce the amount of shit that I own, but decided to get the two new releases in order to have some semblance of recognition of the new tunes prior to the shows. Both albums are really good, but I’m shaking my head that I paid $9.99 for a digital copy of Manchester Orchestra’s “disc.” I’m sure that Manchester Orchestra put a lot of work into making this latest release, but the $9.99 price for the download (the same price as ordering a physical disc I might add) may signal the end of my music purchasing. If Apple will ever get around to creating an all-you-can-eat streaming service that’ll be the way I go.

At Least I Amuse Myself
I have always had a snarky wit. I blame sites like The Onion for fostering my snarkiness, though I could only dream of being able to crank out humor on their level.

Even knowing that it’s a sad story I couldn’t help but laugh when I read this online-snippet headline on AJC.com — “Boy critical after falling into pool” — and I imagined a young child falling into a pool, getting out sopping wet, and saying critical things like “What the fuck? Haven’t you ever thought about putting a fence around this thing?” and “Christ on a cracker your tiles are slippery! You should fix those damn things immediately!” It’s even funnier to me knowing how much I hated learning grammar and such when I was a child.

Of course I hope the injured child recovers swiftly and completely, but man I crack my ass up sometimes.

I know, I’m not “right.” You are not telling me anything any woman in whom I had interest hasn’t told me already.

RealiTV Update: The Amazing Race — You Are Missed
Sunday night seemed empty without The Amazing Race.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – okay; I could be a lot better however
Current Music – silence at the moment
Website Of The Day – While I am not a bourbon drinker, I stick to beer and wine, but I’m not against helping those who are — Just Add Bourbon.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – didn’t bother to check

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0.0 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Pushups – 0
Situps – 0
Stairs – 0 flights

Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 0 (0)

Vegetarian Days – 0
Carnivorous Days – 15

Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0

May Goals
– “Completely” recover from the bike crash
– Not to get sick for the entire month
– Not get fired from my job
– Run at least once
– Eat vegetarian no fewer than five days
– Lose three pounds
– Go out on a date with someone else
– Read an entire book, specifically The Laws Of Simplicity

2011 Goals [will be a little more fluid than in past years]
– Reduce my weight by 25 pounds based on the my weight as measured on February 1st
– Completely read the book Daily Negations which I received as a Christmas gift.
– Run Sharpened Stone as a real business — one which does not get penalized.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
– Enter no fewer than three photographic competitions / gallery showings
– Ride in no fewer than five 50 mile or 50K bike rides
– Run in no fewer than two one half-marathon
– Submit at least one application under the name “Sharpened Stone” to Apple’s iOS store

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in Objective-C
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]