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.
