When Did I Become Cool? O_o

Seriously, it’s a bit disturbing to me. In the 90′s, I was that socially awkward boy that loved fantasy RPGs, computer games, Star Trek and Star Wars, played Magic (which is apparently a nerd rite of passage). Not only that, I was a well-read, French speaking violinist who made a habit of spending his downtime in PE reading the latest works of Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore. The actually shocking thing was that I was also very athletic. I had one PE teacher ask why I wasn’t playing football (hint: I’m smart enough to not be a lineman at a 5A school), and let’s face it, I was a soccer player too (still am). But those moments of contemporary coolness were quickly overshadowed by my preferred company.

This has apparently changed on me. The stuff I did in between classes and on occasional weekends is now becoming de rigeur. I’ve got little kids (5-10 year olds) thinking I’m cool and wondering how can they be like me.

My first suggestion is they learn how to juggle with their feet.

I give it enough introspection and I realize, I’m not cool to people my age. I’m still the socially awkward panda at the office that people go to with esoteric questions and spout out random trivia answers to incorrect statements.

It’s that the kids two generations younger than me like that I can run and kick with them and then go and play video games with them and talk to them like they’re a peer and not a pier. I’m an interesting jungle gym that sings and dances.

Edit: What follows is a conversation with my wife:

“You became cool when you met me!”

“Heh, well that’s modesty for you. You certainly thought this guy is almost cool. If I date him, he’ll become ICE COLD!”

“Hahahahha that’s EXACTLY what I thought! “

You Know You’re Right

Kinda been putting off blogging. Not much to talk about, which was one thing I was afraid of running into, and then I decided to just start typing and see what it took me.

2010 is mostly over. Sure there’s about 3 weeks and a day left of it, but overall, 49 of 52 weeks have passed. It was a pretty good year. Some very excellent things happened, some sad things, but the good far outweighed the bad in a personal sense. This year, I met my girlfriend, at the beginning of the year which did kind of help it move along at a much greater pace. Internet dating works, kids. Especially for painfully shy people like me who can’t bring themselves to talk to awesome people remotely interested in them. If you’re wondering “can it work for me” my only reply is “it did for me!”

This year, I’ve seen over twenty movies in the theater. Averaging about two per month. I imagine it’ll go up at some point, since the Christmas viewing season quickly approaches. I discovered the Mass Effect and Left 4 Dead franchises. I also rediscovered how much I suck at multiplayer first person shooters. I just don’t have the reactions to deal with the 15-20 year old crowd any more. That said, I’m more devious than they are, just not so good at jump twist shooting. Bad Company 2 was a lot of fun, and of course I’ve been having fun with World of Warcraft. I haven’t played it as much this year as I did last year. I finally found something in real life that would pull me away from the game (yay!). Also a new Rock Band came out. Needless to say where the last one brought me the Silversun Pickups and allowed me to remember how much I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the new one introduced me to the Flaming Lips and might teach me how to play a real guitar. That’s not due for a little bit, and might even be later than that since I imagine a real guitar controller for a game? That’s gonna sell well even at $300.

I started the year weighing about 330 pounds. I went up and down for awhile and after getting it to 320, April came (with Edward) and I spiked back up to my starting weight. At that point, I got fed up with myself and started kicking my own butt for the next seven months. Through that (and a better attention to what I was eating), I’ve gotten my weight to under 290. Total weight loss from the start of last year is a little over 60 pounds. My current short term goal is to lose weight over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, even just a little because that would be a feat in and of itself. For the record, my weight the week before Thanksgiving was 292, I’m a little under that at around 289.

Other big things: I’m going to start playing soccer again in January. Hopefully I have enough muscle memory to keep up with it. I think I may actually be lighter than the time I stopped playing, so that can’t hurt. I started hanging out with Stacy S in a not “Let’s go play Rock Band” kind of way. Always fun. She’s a hoot when she tries, and I found a bar I can tolerate in the Bulldog. I got promoted at work. A decent pay raise went with the promotion, so happy there too. I’ve become more comfortable with social media. This might be a bad thing, since I can feel my brain eroding as I watch all of my typos being broadcast for the small self centered universe to see. I’ve got a Twitter account, I actually pay attention to Facebook (don’t always update it though), and I started a blog (which if you can see this, then you’ve probably guessed that fact). I started being a Dungeon Master for a D&D Campaign. I’ve improved. The start is by being less verbally critical of myself during the game. The guys don’t need to know I screwed up. Also small lessons…like read ahead a few pages so that you aren’t caught by surprise when reading the text. Sadly sometimes the text trips me up because it doesn’t read the way I like to (flows differently, so it gets confusing that kind of thing.

Also, I picked up trying to cook things I’ve never done before. The reasoning for this is three fold: Eric & Rochelle, Andrew, Stefan, & Nicole, and Stacy. Eric & Rochelle always have tasty things when I went to visit and it encouraged me to step out and try to make something new. Andrew, Stefan and Nicole got into the actual cooking side of Good Eats and not just the awesome science-y portions and started cooking in earnest. Finally, Stacy (probably the biggest influence) has specific things she likes, pad thai, shrimp scampi, things like that. Really stretched my cooking abilities, but I’ve been pleased so far with how I’ve done. Only missed on one thing with her in the Welsh Rarebit Macaroni, but my family loved it, so it did make me feel better after they devoured it. William actually took the rest home so he could have it. I was quite pleased.

I also started writing a bit of fiction here in this part. I’ve not expanded on it yet, but I figure I’ll start doing that soon enough. My usual problem is that I’ve got a good beginning in mind, but I don’t really have an end. Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do. Write a book that has no end. That’ll solve my problem. The more pragmatic approach would be to have the opening scene and closing scene written and then connect the dots. Hm…I’ll try that approach.

So, I’m off to work on that little epiphany and see how it goes from there.

I’m Adventurously* Trying New Things

So, about two Sundays a month for the last four months, I go out and try to cook something I’ve never tried before. I don’t always stick to even that lax schedule, but I’m expanding my horizons. Sometimes, I simply bake bacon to see how that goes (works out well, much cleaner than pan frying), other times I try to make shrimp scampi (total disaster the first time, rescued the main ingredients (shrimp) for a second that same day, made it work), or I go way far outside of my comfort zone and make pad thai (cooks really damn fast, I was caught by surprise…it came out too sweet, but I really thought I did okay.)

This Sunday was quite clearly my biggest stumble. One of Stacy’s favorite quick things to do is mac and cheese with sliced up hot dogs in it. She loves it, and it’s very easy to make so we have it about twice a month. I figured, why not try to make something a little more jazzed up. So, I got some smoked sausage, and a recipe for welsh rarebit pasta (it’s mac and cheese-ish but not a straight take off) and tried it out. Like most first times through cooking, I almost completely botched it. Left out a major ingredient, and forgot to preheat the oven (turns out I didn’t need the oven so…meh). Halfway through I tasted the sauce, and I almost cursed very loudly. One of the main ingredients to welsh rarebit is porter. It’s a chocolaty/coffee hinted dark beer. But like most dark beers, it has a bitter back end, and there it was, plain as day in the cheese sauce. I liked the taste and though the back end added a little something special, but I knew Stacy would not like it.

So, I soldiered on, finished the recipe and served her about two bites of it. I got the reaction I expected. I appreciate her trying it since I knew she wasn’t going to like it, and I did rather well on some of the other recipes, so I shouldn’t be too upset about how this turned out. I’m a bit down because I know I can do better.

So, like any athlete or MMO raider I like to sit back and figure out what went wrong, what can I do better, and what should I do to change this?

1) Get an actual mac and cheese recipe. Welsh rarebit is too out there for Stacy.

2) Change the sausage. She didn’t like the one I used either.

So, that’s about where I stand. Fortunately, I’ve learned from all of my cooking. I made shrimp scampi again earlier this week. I wasn’t caught by surprise, and I made a very tasty version. A bit too much lemon juice, but I used a much larger lemon this time around. Live and learn there too.

*Admittedly, I’m not trying anything I’ve never had before, mostly just learning new things. To paraphrase Leonard from Big Bang Theory “Way to think outside but press all the way up against the box, Chris.”