I had this niggling suspicion at the back of my head/neck (but also sort of in my chest) that I’d forgotten something.  I won’t get into all that’s involved with that intuition – it’s saved me quite a few times, but also made me miserable as well – but suffice to say that it was correct (as it usually is).  I packed three suits, but only one dress shirt.  So today I will be walking around the Zhongshan district of Taipei looking for a white button-down oxford shirt or two.  Maybe I’ll go to the malls in Xinyi too.  I can probably get by on a single oxford shirt for the week (especially since I quit smoking), but it’s going to be a busy week and a single spill on my shirt will be disastrous.

I’m sitting on the third floor of a little Starbucks around the corner of my hotel.  (I’m staying at the Hotel Royal Taipei this year, instead of the Ambassador.)  I’m at one end of a 10-person table, which has four girls doing homework at the other end and some lady on her laptop kitty-corner from me.  No one is sitting at the head or foot (thank goodness).  I’m having a latte (partly because I’m embarrassed by the potential irony/stereotype involved in ordering an ‘Americano’ and partly because I don’t fucking like ‘Americano’ coffee anyway) because they don’t actually serve (percolated) coffee at Starbucks here in Taiwan.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed about how Taiwanese culture differs from American culture is that the concept of fast food and ordering from the menu seem to be foreign.  People don’t like saying “I’ll have the chicken francaise” or “I’ll have a #4” here – there’s always this back-and-forth with the waiter or counter person about what’s good at this establishment and what do you recommend and can I get it with this but without that and put it all on one of those big square plates (not the round one it normally comes on).  Maybe everyone just gets forced into their cookie cutter shapes in school and at work that the restaurant is the only place where they can express a preference or opinion.  Or maybe it’s just a culture of finicky pricks who don’t understand that the whole point behind standardization of menus is so that the line moves quickly and nobody has to wait for too long.

Google Now says that the weather for this week is going to be in the mid-60s, with rain scattered here and there.  I’m hoping it’s not consistently overcast and that there are at least periods where the sun is out (it was out this morning as I lay dozing between alarms).  Adjusting to the time change is so much easier when actual sunlight is involved.  The temperature is a little chilly for a land in the tropics, so the natives are all bundled up in down jackets and hats, while I’m walking around in nylon hiking pants and a 260-weight wool hoody.  Makes me feel good because normally I’m the one who’s cold when everyone else is comfortable.

Ok, so it’s just about 11 (when the department store supposedly opens) and I’m just about done with my latte, so I’ll say goodbye for now, dear reader.  If I don’t pick this back up later today, I hope your day has been and continues to be a wonderful one.

Not very many other new movies available on the flight.  There are a couple; can’t remember their names right now.  Not sure if I want to watch something else (read: something less disappointing) or if I want to finish up the last 5% of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Bridge of Spies (Tom Hanks movie) will probably be pretty good.  I think the other guy just won the Oscar for best supporting actor.  Haven’t seen a Bill Murray movie in a while; maybe Rock the Kasbah will be worthwhile.

I like Daniel Craig as James Bond, and I’m considering watching Spectre, but I may have seen it already.  Can’t tell until I start it because unfortunately they kind of all have the same feel.  Just watched part of the trailer; guess I haven’t seen it.  Watched Skyfall last time, so maybe that one will be worthwhile.

I haven’t seen Avatar since it was just out in 3D.  Maybe a good cry when the girl hooks up to the panther-alien would be good for me.  Haven’t seen Man of Steel since it was in the theaters either – that might be a good one to see, especially as the Batman/Superman movie should be out pretty soon.  Yeah.  Maybe I’ll watch that one.

Ok I’m most of the way through Man of Steel right now.  Makes me want to do a lot of pushups and brush my teeth a bunch of times.  Anyway, if I remember from the trailer, Batman v Superman (or whatever they’re calling it) basically starts right after the end of this one:  Bruce Wayne gets all pissed off that Superman was more or less the cause of a bunch of cities/towns being destroyed and people killed.  His thought is that there needs to be some sort of check on Superman; that we can’t let people with superpowers just run around and do whatever they want.

Isn’t that the same basic premise as the upcoming Captain America: Civil War?  Stuff gets destroyed and people get killed, so the authorities start calling for superhero registration or something?  Tony Stark is all for it, but Captain America says no way, and they fight, with different superheroes taking different sides.  I think that’s how it goes.

Whatever, back to the movie for me.

Well, that was enjoyable (again).  I definitely need to do more pushups.  Time to figure out what to do with the 5 hours 21 minutes left in the flight.  The clock on my Fitbit says it’s 8:30 now, which means Valerie put Oscar to bed about an hour and a half ago, and Henry’s either been asleep for the last 30 minutes or he’s finagled a way to get mommy to let him stay up a little longer.  Sleep well, boys.  I miss you already.  Miss you too, babe.

I’m much more relaxed about the business side of these trips nowadays.  Through hard work, I’ve become an expert in my field (boring as that field might be), so I can be of help to people who can benefit from my knowledge and experience.  And if some of the people I meet don’t want to hire me and get that benefit, that’s fine with me.  Some will, some won’t; I’ll do the best I can to help the ones who do.

Huh.  The Big Short was pretty fricken fantastic.  I already had a pretty good idea what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis, but definitely picked up more details than I previously had.

Only an hour  41 left on this plane.  Then it’s a 4 hour layover in Tokyo, a 4 hour flight to Taipei, and a 40 minute cab ride to the hotel.  Flight lands in Taipei at 10pm local time, so hopefully I’ll be in bed by midnight.  My Fitbit says it’s midnight now.  I suck at time zone math.  My math tells me that that means I have about 11 hours left to go, which doesn’t seem right, though I guess it is because 4 hour layover + 4 hour flight = 8 hours.  Add the 1.5 hours left in this flight and the hour or so to get my bags and ride in the cab and that’s pretty close to 11.  So I’m really only about halfway through the trip.  Damn.

In other news, I spent some time between movies typing out some notes for my meetings this week.  Mostly just background stuff on the companies I’m meeting.  My initial thought was to email it to the people from the other firm that I’m travelling with, though I’m kind of on the fence about that.  They haven’t been very communicative with me in the past couple of weeks and frankly I don’t know if I can or should trust them.  I know that’s kind of a shitty thing to say, and it makes me feel kind of shitty to say it, but it’s the truth.  Either way, typing out the notes was good for me to do: it gave me some ideas about things discuss and other things I’d like to research a little more before I go into the meetings.

The thing with the other firm is that we’re supposed to be partners in Taiwan.  Theoretically we don’t compete with each other and our services in fact complement each other.  We have a “marketing collaboration agreement” that basically says they give me access to a bunch of their data and I kick them back three grand for every Taiwanese client I sign.  I’m constantly wondering whether it’s a good/worthwhile deal for me.  Practically speaking, they haven’t done shit for me lately.  They consider Taiwan to be a “non-core market” or some shit like that, and haven’t really put much effort into selling there.  Also practically speaking, they do in fact compete with me on some service offerings.  But all they do is sell them – they don’t really have anyone to do the actual work.  It’s frustrating for me because it makes it hard for me to sell their services to a client – I don’t want my reputation damaged for recommending someone who can’t deliver.  So I don’t know if I want to give them my notes or not.  Given that they’ve never told me who their Taiwanese clients are (and believe me, I’ve asked them directly) or referred me one single piece of business, it’s hard to trust that they’re team players.

All that said, I should probably give them the notes, if only so I don’t look like an idiot vicariously if/when they make fools of themselves in front of my clients.

No idea what I’m going to do with myself for the next few hours.  Definitely not sleep – don’t want to miss the flight to TPE.  My gate is 28G, which I’m pretty sure means I have to go downstairs and then get on line to board a bus which will then drive around to the other side of the airport so that we can board via one of those driving staircases.  At least I’ve never been stuck in the rain doing that, but I figure it’s probably just a matter of time.  One would think the Tokyo-Taipei flight would get more respect than that.  Oh well.

(I did manage to get that second Heechee book to my Kindle, btw.  Think I’ll go start reading that now.)

The main reason I’m watching movies right now is because earlier I finished Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, which is the first book in the Heechee series.  It was pretty good – maybe I’ll give it 3 or 4 stars on Goodreads.  There are like 6 books in the series, but guess which one I didn’t send to my Kindle when I was preparing for the trip?  Yup, #2.  It’s on my laptop, though, so I’ll be able to send it to my Kindle from there once I get some wifi access at NRT.  Gateway has been on my to-read list for a while; I think the reason I haven’t read it yet was because I wasn’t able to find it for free before.  It came up on my various lists of recommendations often; fingers crossed that it’s not one of those serieses where the first book is better than the rest.  I’ll let you know.  Maybe.

Drunk boy to my left finally fell asleep, I think.  He was stumbling around a bit before that, so it’s probably a good thing.  As for me, I’m a little scratchy-eyed but not all that tired.  I’ll probably fall asleep on the 4-hour trip from NRT to TPE and miss the meal like I normally do.  Still about 16 hours left in the journey:  4 and change to NRT (we’re over Russia now), 3-4 hour layover at NRT, then 4 more to TPE.  Oh wait – that’s only about 12, so not so bad.

I’m trying to figure out whether to watch Mad Max: Fury Road, Chappie, or one of the Daniel Craig Bond films.  I don’t remember which one is the last one I saw, but Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale are both available.  So is Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, which I haven’t seen either.  Decisions, decisions.

So now that I got that out of my head and onto the screen, Ant Man was pretty good.  Not as great as everyone was saying, but enjoyable.  I like Corey what’s-his-face and I like Paul Rudd.  I also feel like the actress who played Hope is probably wicked hot, but I had a hard time seeing past her haircut.  No idea why that is.  I’ve got Fantastic Four queued up next – the gritty reboot that got shitty reviews.

Besides the fact that my area of the plane smells like a distillery, my only other complaint is that I somehow bought pouches instead of long cut dip for the plane ride.  I have 10 cans of Skoal mint (which I’m sure are long cut because of the color of the can) and at least 5 cans of Skoal X-Tra mint pouches (the other 5 of that flavor might be long cut, but they’re not in my carry-on and so don’t matter to me now).  The pouches deliver the nicotine just fine, and are certainly cleaner, but they’re not as enjoyable as long cut tobacco.  Yes, yes, I know: dipping is gross.  Well, I enjoy it and at least I’m not smoking anymore.  I’ll quit dipping soon as well (and thus be entirely rid of my nicotine addiction), but that’s not part of the plan for this trip, so I’m allowed to be frustrated that my nicotine delivery system isn’t optimal at present.

The Year of the Sheep has not been a very ambitious one for me so far.  Thus, it has also been less fulfilling than it could have been.  I have so little self-motivation.  I’ve done a great job at getting done the things that are thrown at me or end up in my way, but I always revert back to sitting on my ass in my office and doing essentially nothing all day.  I’m too afraid to do the things I ‘want’ to do because of the things I think I ‘should’ be doing.  And the kicker is that the while the ‘shoulds’ seemingly outweigh the ‘wants’, neither are clear or specific.  Neither is?  Fuck.

So yeah, because I’m afraid of ‘wasting time’ on something I might want to do in the moment, I’ve been wasting time doing nothing.  Hopefully I’ll have more to say tomorrow, because at least I can check the box next to “blog post” on today’s list.

This should be an ok trip, business-wise.  I’m meeting with just about all of my current clients and a couple of prospects.  Obviously, this being a sales trip, it would be nice to have a few more prospect meetings lined up, but I didn’t send as many cold call emails as I should have to tip the numbers to that outcome.  Still, it will be acceptable if I can bring back all the clients I worked with last year.

I don’t really have any personal goals for this trip, other than to pick up some obviously-from-Taiwan presents for Henry and Oscar.  I guess my personal goals for this week would be to try to continue my current habits while abroad:  drink at least 2L of water every day, shoot for 10k steps, stay productive, and add a little bit more exercise into my routine.

We’ll see.  Part of me doesn’t want to be here – would rather be home with Valerie and the boys – but all of me is actually here on the other side of the world, so I’m going to do my best to stay in the present and do a good job at what I came here to do.  One of these days I’m actually going to sign myself up for a several-week course in Mandarin so I don’t seem like such a goddamned roundeye while I’m here.

The boys are doing well.  Henry is on antibiotics and recovering from an ear infection.  He turned the corner (fingers crossed) on Sunday – Saturday and Friday were not good days for the poor little guy.  Oscar is doing well also:  the colic seems to be abating somewhat.  He still cries like a banshee a few times a day, but I think that’s more out of habit than any particular discomfort.  Hopefully he’ll learn soon that he doesn’t have to take it all the way to the red to get our attention.

I’m on antibiotics too.  Went to the Minute Clinic on Saturday because I just couldn’t take it any more.  I’ve had a wet cough since last weekend, but I woke up on Saturday feeling like absolute shite.  Pretty sure it’s another sinus infection.  I had five rounds of antibiotics in 2014, the last of which was in December.  It’s only been a few weeks since my last sinus infection.  The doctor at the MC said that she thinks my ails are viral, not bacterial, and that antibiotics wouldn’t really do anything for me.  Still, I’m pretty sure I can tell what a sinus infection tastes like.  She was also worried about antibiotic resistance, but I felt so poorly on Saturday that I didn’t really care.  I’d just spent the prior week waiting for the illness to “run its course” when it took a turn for the worse on Saturday.  I think the antibiotics are working:  I feel quite a bit better today than I did on Saturday and my symptoms are starting to go away.

I’m not really a big fan of going to the doctor and taking medicine this much, but with two small boys at home, I’m really not getting much sleep, which I’m certain is putting my immune system a little behind the eight ball.  And on top of that, I really haven’t been getting much exercise lately – and by “lately” I mean in the past couple of years.  I’m hoping to turn that around soon.

I bought a Fitbit Surge, which arrived on Saturday.  I also ordered a new pair of trail runners, which arrived today.  While I don’t expect gear by itself to get me back in shape, the joy I get out of new toys should help a little bit.  I started tracking my water consumption with the Fitbit, and having it on my wrist is also a good reminder that I need to get my ass back in shape.  Hopefully, Valerie and I will purchase an erg soon so that I can get some exercise through the winter.  It’s mostly been cold and crappy outside, which has really put a damper on my desire to go out for a nice long walk.

Anyway, that’s it:  I’ve passed the 500 word mark and it’s ten to five, so I can hit Publish, shut down my computer, and get out of the office a little early.  If you read all the way through this post, thank you.

Again, I’m typing on my Apple bluetooth keyboard, which is paired to my phone.  My work laptop (which is currently my only working laptop) is off and sitting in my bag right now.  I’ll pull it out later on when it’s time for me to do some more intensive internet research for xmas presents and the like, but for now it’s going to stay put away.  My out-of-office reply very specifically says that I will be checking email infrequently and that my responses will be delayed.  I thought about putting “infrequently” and “will” in italics, but fuck ’em if they don’t read.  I may send a text to one or two trusted colleagues, telling them that if they really need me they can reach me on my personal mobile, but I haven’t decided on that just yet.  It may be a little passive-aggressive of me, but some of my colleagues need to learn respect for others’ time off – or maybe just *my* time off.

So I have a handful of lists of things to do over the next few days that I’m not working.  I’ve been riding an ok streak of productivity lately, and I’m hoping to continue to build momentum on that in order to get done some of the things that have been sitting on various to-do lists (and causing me anxiety) for a while now.

I’m still trying to figure the best way to keep track of my to-do items.  I read (most of) David Allen’s Getting Things Done and I think that’s a workable system for me.  I haven’t been able to put it into practice 100% yet, but I’m getting better.  One point I have *not* been adhering to very well is keeping all of my to-dos in a single place.  Although it’s somewhat outdated (not as much as 7 Habits though, imho) because the system is mainly designed to be a paper-based system, GTD should still be workable electronically.  (I’ve been working on – and succeeding at – becoming entirely paperless.) 

My notes are currently in two places:  Evernote and Google Keep.  Theoretically, Keep is for quick notes and Evernote is my main repository of to-dos and the like.  However, it hasn’t been working out that way.  I find that Keep is a much better mobile application than Evernote, and I don’t always switch my notes from the former to the latter.  I’m also having a little trouble incorporating Evernote into my to-do processing – especially for items that need to be completed on a daily basis.  Don’t get me wrong: I still use Evernote all day, every day, but I have a hard time using it for that “3,000 foot view” that’s required for GTD’s weekly/daily review.  I kind of wish Evernote had a function where I could have a single note that’s a checklist of daily to-dos, with the items being automatically deleted upon completion (checking the box) and then re-spawn the next day.

The biggest thing I need to work on is putting the GTD daily and weekly review processes into what passes for my current system.

Anyway, enough of that for now.  Perhaps I’ll talk about this in a little more detail later on, but I think I’ve fulfilled my daily word count at this point, so it’s time for me to get cracking on checking off those to-do items on my list.

I’m finding that I’m kind of an all-or-nothing person when it comes to developing new habits:  I feel like a failure for missing one day.  But that’s kind of a harsh view, no?  The point of the habits I’m working on (meditation, 500 words/day, vitamins, etc.) is to help me be a better and more productive person – which emphatically are not all-or-nothing propositions.  If I’m a little bit better or more productive today than I was yesterday, then I’ve succeeded.  While it’s good to try to hit the mark on all the new habits every day, not succeeding 100% isn’t equivalent to failure.  Rather, it’s motivation to do a little bit better tomorrow because I know I can.

I’m sitting on my exercise ball (another new habit) as I type this, btw.  Bouncing up and down pretty hard as I listen to my electronica via Pandora.  Lots of deleting and rewriting because bouncing and typing is HARD.

Ok, I stopped.  I’m at work, as ususal.  And waiting for someone to get back to with more details so that I can do them a favor, as usual.  I’m getting better about saying no and being less passive-aggressive in the office.  If someone tries to task me with something that’s not in my silo, I politely tell them that’s not my job.  If someone asks me to do something and I’m like “I need X, Y, and Z from you before I can get that done,” I no longer sit staring at my inbox, hating them a little more every minute that goes by that they don’t reply with what I need.  Instead, I walk over to their office and politely tell them “MOTHERFUCKER I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT.  WHEN YOU GET AN EMAIL FROM ME, READ IT AND REPLY WITH FULL ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS OR I WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP.”  I realize that it’s a little more on the aggressive side, but it’s been working so far.

379 words today.  Looks like I fail again.

Without any particular intellectual or pragmatic topic to discuss, I figured I’d go through my Kindle and talk a little bit about the books I’ve read recently.  By way of back story, I read A LOT.  I currently read everything on my Kindle (Keyboard) – haven’t read an actual paper book in probably a couple of years. 

I haven’t had quite as much time to read lately as usual (blame it on the babies and going to bed at 8:30), but that’s also because I’m not exactly flying through the book I’m currently reading.  Ben Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson is what I’m currently wading through.  Don’t get me wrong: it’s not a bad book at all; it just doesn’t pull me and keep me turning pages the way a good sci-fi or fantasy novel would.  Those I have a hard time putting down – which is just as well, because it’s much better for me to go to bed at 8:30 than to stay up reading until 12 or 1.

brb Oscar’s crying . . .

Ok, so Isaacson’s Franklin biography is pretty widely acclaimed.  I’m enjoying it.  I read Franklin’s autobiography a year or so ago, and Isaacson uses that quite a bit, which means that I already had a rough overview of Franklin’s life – Isaacson’s book just has a lot more details.  It’s interesting that the first half of the book cover’s Franklin’s life until about the Revolution (1776), when Frankin was 70.  He died in 1790, so the second half of the book covers only about 14 years.

Before the Franklin biography, I read the first four books of Roger Zelazny’s Amber series.  They were ok, but no that great, which is why I don’t feel the need to read the last four books. 

Prior to the Zelazny books, I read Reamde: A Novel by Neal Stephenson.  It was pretty good.  Definitely a good read, though Stephenson seems to like to have one foot planted in the “this could happen” style of fiction and the other planted in the “this is total fantasy” style of fiction.  Cryptonomicon was similar in this regard.  Both novels were very long (I read Cryptonomicon several years ago), which made them very enjoyable for me.

Before Reamde was another aborted series: I read Gene Wolfe’s Shadow and Claw trilogy, but skipped the subsequent Sword and Citadel trilogy.  Again, they just didn’t hold my interest.

Accelerando by Charles Stross was almost entirely excellent. 

A new up-and-coming author is Paolo Bacigalupi.  I read his The Windup Girl, The Alchemist, and started Ship Breaker.  He should probably stick with YA fiction.  I wasn’t that impressed with any of his stuff.

Ok, I’m going to stop here.  Henry needs to wake up from his nap and I should get him changed and fed before Oscar starts fussing as well.  Valerie knows I’m “just fucking around on my computer” (even though this is part of a concerted effort on my part to make some positive changes in my habits) right now, so she’ll probably start fussing soon too if she continues to hear the clickety-clack. 

Peace out, dear reader.

My plan was to get the writing out of the way early in the day, but I got sidetracked (like I do) pretty much as soon as I got to my desk.  I’ve listened to several podcasts lately where people mention that they try to get some writing out of the way early in the morning – whether it’s just journaling, writing for X amount of time without stop, or just because that’s their optimum creativity time.  For me, I need to get back in the habit of expressing myself with the written word.  [So please accept my apologies, dear reader, as I work the kinks out over these next few posts.]

Speaking of cramps in the cranium, I feel like I’ve been getting dumber over the last few months.  I can’t remember things that only happened a couple of hours, days, or weeks ago; I’m having trouble putting words into a sentence (orally); and other things of that nature.  Like not being able to write in a fluid fashion or not being able to find the word(s) I’m looking for.  Pain in the ass, I’ll tell you what.  I brought this up to the doctor yesterday (right after he prescribed me antibiotics for the fifth time this year); he said the dumbererness was most likely the result of a lack of sleep.  And I definitely have a plethora of lack of sleep these last few months, with a 14 month-old pushing out molars and a 7 week-old who eats every few hours at home.  I love them so much, but man could I use a full night’s sleep.

The other habit I’m trying to develop is daily meditation.  This one also comes from hearing productive people on podcasts attribute a great deal of their well-being and/or ability to succeed to meditation.  I swear, meditation is mentioned on almost every episode of the Tim Ferriss Show.  Here’s how I’m doing it:

1. I downloaded the Lift app and joined the meditation group.
2. Set myself a reminder for the morning to meditate.
3. Downloaded the Headspace app to use as a kind of kickstarter to help me get back in the swing (I’ve meditated in the past).
4. When I get to work in the morning, I park my car in the lot as far away from the building as possible and go through the guided meditation in Headspace.

Headspace is a freemium app:  the “10 for 10” (or some such – 10 minutes of guided meditation for 10 days) is free, but one must pay to access the other parts of the app.  I could give a rat’s ass about what’s available on the rest of the app.  I’m just going to use it for the first 10 days to get in the habit.

I may very well switch to parking somewhere besides my building’s lot for my 10 minute morning meditation:  this morning I was a little worried that someone would knock on my window and interrupt, which, though unlikely, was still distracting.

Anyway, that’s my 500 words for the day (594 to be exact), so I’ll just leave it there and get back to work.  No need to go on and on: the whole point is just to get in the habit of writing daily.

To back up a bit (then I’ll get to the new habits thing), I switched from iPhone to Android a while back.  Could be close to two years at this point, given that my AT&T contract is up for renewal in February.  At some point, I wanted to do something with my phone that required that it be rooted (basically unlocking or “jail-breaking” it), which I did.  Because there are a bunch of fun things one can do with a rooted phone besides spoof one’s GPS location (which is only really fun for a short time anyway), I decided to try some of those fun things out.  One of which was installing a custom ROM (operating system) on the phone.  I installed CyanogenMod 10.-something, which is based on Android 4.3 “Jellybean”, and had some fun with it while I was using it.  After a while, I started running into issues with the phone (fast battery drain, etc.), which I solved with duct tape and chewing gum (not literally, but I do now own 4 Galaxy Note II batteries and a stand-alone charger).

Yadda, yadda, I got fed up with the issues and decided to switch back to the stock ROM so that I could update to the latest version of Android (4.4 “KitKat”) – CyanogenMod apparently wasn’t updating the ROM I was working with and wasn’t working on a KitKat-based version for my phone.  Holy shit what a pain in the balls that turned out to be.  At first I tried to keep all the settings and whatnot from CM when I switched over to Jellybean (I couldn’t find stock KitKat available for direct download at the time, but figured I’d just go with the regular over-the-air updates AT&T provides to get from Jellybean to KitKat), but that was a nightmare.  I spent two whole days trying to get that done, with all kinds of crappy results.  I don’t even want to finish this story at this point – it’s boring even to me.  Suffice to say that I’ve been bricking my phone (“soft” bricking, thankfully) pretty damn often these past couple of weeks.

The catalyst for switching from CM back to stock Android was that I bought the Basis Peak watch, which is only compatible (and just barely, at that) with KitKat on Android.  By “catalyst” I mean “straw that broke the camel’s back”.  After pre-ordering, I received the watch last week and it worked for about 2 hours total before turning into an uncomfortable ugly $200 bracelet.  High fives to Amazon for getting the damn thing exchanged quickly.  The new one is on my wrist now and has been working well for the last two days.  Time to see if I can sell my Fitbit.  And speaking of Fitbit, what I really want is the Fitbit Surge watch (much better form factor, for which I’d be totally willing to pay another $50).

Update:  Android 4.4 is now installed on my phone (it finished as I was writing this).

So yeah, besides the fitness tracking aspects of the Basis Peak, there’s kind of a gamification of fitness:  it sets up “habits” and as you complete them, you get points, which you can then use to unlock more habits.  I think this is just what I need to start back on the road to getting back in shape.  We’ll see.

Anyway, writing 500 words per day (not sure if I’m going to include the weekends as well this point or not) is another habit I’m trying to develop, and being that this post is now 660 words long (and I’m at work), I think I’ll stop here.  You should probably be hearing more from me in the near future, but maybe not.

This is probably my third or fourth trip in as many years to Taiwan by myself.  I remember very clearly the first one – if I can remember, I’ll link to a couple of the posts from then – I was all kinds of nervous back then, a feeling I’m quite happy to say I don’t have right now.  I’m not so much confident that I’ll do a great job and/or pick up a couple of new clients, but rather I just don’t really give a shit.  Not that I’m ignoring responsibility or refusing to prepare – my ducks are in a nice neat row – it’s just that I don’t have quite so much ego involved this time.  I know what my value proposition is and if the people I’m selling to can’t see it, that’s fine with me – I won’t starve if I don’t find new clients on this trip.  I guess that’s one of the benefits of being a mere employee:  if I was on my own, I might very well starve if I didn’t find new clients.

Anyway, today is Sunday.  I flew out of the States on Friday morning and arrived Saturday night, Taiwan time.  Twelve hours’ difference between the time zones.  Jet lag is a ghost right now:  I can’t see it or feel it, and it may or may not be there or show up later.  I went to sleep around midnight last night and was up around 7 this morning.  Ate breakfast (I need to remember to get enough calories and water in me) and went for a walk.  My fitbit says about 4.5 miles so far, with 14 staircases in between (down/up to go under some of the major intersections here in Taipei).  I’m sitting at a Starbucks, typing on my Apple bluetooth keyboard, which is linked to my (rooted) Galaxy Note II, which is in airplane mode and tethered to my work iPhone.  I’m listening to Daft Punk’s album Alive 2007, which I’ve been dying to hear for a while now (it got lost in the iPhone/Android transition shuffle.  What a great fucking album.  Listening via my iPod nano and looking right at my Kindle, which I’ll pick up as soon as I’m done here.  Isn’t technology wonderful?

Hopefully I can get a few more miles under my sneaks today so that I fall asleep easily tonight.  (Melatonin will also be helpful.)   I have a dinner appointment with a contact this evening and three meetings tomorrow.  I feel pretty good overall.  For whatever reason, I’ve been doing a really good job of staying in the moment these last few weeks.  I have no idea why; it’s not something I’ve been actively working on, but it’s happening and I’m grateful for it.

I can hear Elton John’s voice in my head singing that line from “Rocket Man” over and over: “…I miss my wife.”

Miss you too, Mr. Henry Monkeypants.  I’ll try to bring back something Asian for you to chew on.

• Read a bunch of books
• Went to work a lot
• Worked from home, too
• Got my wife pregnant
• Helped name the kid (Henry)
• Didn’t fuck up the whole kid-raising thing (NB: he’s still not talking; hope that’s not my fault)
• et cetera

How was your 2013, dear reader?  Any resolutions for 2014?  I’ve been on and off the fence about resolutions.  On the one hand, I’ve always thought that changing oneself (or just habits) is something that can start any time at all – not just on the first day of the Gregorian Calendar.  On the other hand, resolutions (if made correctly) can be pretty positive things.  Back to the first hand, however, I have also read that although it’s a good idea to set goals for oneself, one should not tell anyone else what those goals are, as simply telling someone else leads one to believe that one has already made a fine start on accomplishing those goals, and that one can thus rest assured that the goals will be completed without further effort upon one’s part.

So.

I’m not going to tell you what my resolutions and/or goals are, if indeed I even have any.

Ok, that’s enough exercising of the writing muscles for today.  They’re pretty out of shape.  I’d better go get some protein.

Look!  Nuts!

I’ve been busy.  So skip to the next post or just click here to get there.

Lately I’ve been researching setting up an eCommerce site, most likely doing dropshipping (as opposed to actually buying a bunch of stuff wholesale and then dealing with the whole inventory/shipping thing).  If you have any suggestions, dear reader, I’d appreciate them.  Basic considerations:  price range is $20-150 (sold), product(s) should not be ridiculously heavy, and it should be something people buy on the internet regularly and/or can’t find at a bricks & mortar store.  Also, something sites like Amazon don’t already have a lock on.

I welcome your suggestions.  A niche market/product is probably better than “Ted’s Discount Warehouse.”  I’ve been researching electronic cigarettes as a potential product, but I’m not sure if that’s the way to go.  So far, that’s mainly for lack of other ideas that grabbed my attention.

Life is good otherwise:  wife, kid, house – life goals achieved.  Next step is to make sure I can keep those three things happy and comfortable.

It’s 3:31AM and I’m going back to bed, knowing that tomorrow will not be as cool as the dream I just had.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  Trapped in a broken body, a man tries to make contact with the world outside him and avoid going insane.

WINDOWS TO THE SOUL

“And a one, and a four, and a ching-chong potato!  Hahahaha, look at that retard,” giggled Kevin, pointing at me as the orderly wheeled him by me, his left leg sticking straight out, parallel to the floor with the Ilizarov apparatus encircling his shin.  A car accident six weeks ago left Kevin’s tibia and fibula broken in several places; well over a dozen stainless steel pins connected the circular frames at his knee and ankle to various points on those broken bones, holding his leg together as the bones knit.

Great.  Only another 14 weeks of Kevin’s genius to endure.  I remember when Kevin came in:  the painkillers he was on at first left him as much of a drooling mess as I am.  It’s been barely a week since he’s been able to feed himself.  The meds he’s taking now have his verbal diarrhea scale set at approximately that of a wasted college kid who’s one drink away from getting punched in the face or kicked out of the bar.  I’ve seen this happen before.  They’ll switch his meds again in another few weeks and he might get some social skills back, but it’s pretty obvious what kind of a guy he is, and that won’t change.

We get all kinds in this rehab.  Jimmy over there was bitten on the hand by a venomous snake and suffered nerve damage in his fingers.  He thought he was getting a baby ball python, but it turns out the pet shop made a pretty big mistake.  Jimmy’s only here on Saturdays, so that the doctors can keep tabs on his recovery and give him new exercises to do for the following week.  He’s usually nice to me; sometimes he’ll sit next to me and talk a bit about his other snakes while he does his finger-articulation exercises. His hand is recovering quickly, so I’ll probably only see him once or twice more.

I’ve met guys like Jimmy before, too.  He’ll probably stop by to say goodbye on his last day – give me a couple of words of encouragement and tell me to look him up when I get out, even though he wouldn’t have noticed any change in me over the course of spending 10 Saturdays here.  The doctors probably explained to him that they expect me to die in here, anyway.

I’m getting sharper every day.  Smarter, it seems.  I’m more attuned to the world now than I ever was when I could walk and talk and move.  I can smell Nurse Diane when she walks through the door behind me at the other end of the big common room, and I can play out a hundred games of chess to the end when I watch Darryl and Susan practice their finger agility two tables over.

By and large, the doctors think I’m a vegetable, though Dr. Kline seems to know there’s someone still alive in here:  besides the fact that he’s the only one to make eye contact with me, he actually looks into my eyes.  Every time he does, I stare back as hard as I can and focus all my will on blinking.  It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m getting closer.  The doctors say it’s physically impossible for me to be able to blink (or, for that matter, do anything) voluntarily, but I’m sure I’m close.  If I can do that, then maybe they’ll believe there’s a person inside this broken body of mine.

I’ve been here for twelve years.

My friends stopped visiting ten years ago, my family six.  Still, enough happens here that I haven’t lost my mind or started thinking about suicide (not that I could do anything about either at this point).  My only worry is that new things will stop happening:  that it’ll turn out that I’m stuck in some loop of Kevins and Jimmys and Darryls and Susans – the same people over and over again, just different faces.  The chess matches I’ve watched so far point to that realization happening just about any minute now, but I really try to avoid thinking like that.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  Will killing his murderer’s descendant bring peace and closure to a troubled ghost?

THINNING OUT

I’ve been in the saloon for a long time now.  “Steakhouse,” I mean.  They call it a steakhouse now.  No matter.  It’s still the same to me:  a place where the booze flows in and out of the people as the people flow in and out of the doors.  I suppose there are worse places to haunt.

I’ve been here for about 120 years, I think.  Depends on what year this is, I guess.  I don’t pay much attention these days:  it seems I’m getting thinner quicker, though I suppose it’s possible that the time is just passing faster and I’m thinning out at whatever the usual rate is.  No idea.  This is my first go-round as a ghost.  Shade.  Whatever.

The only reason I know anything about my current condition is because there’s a paranormalist who’s been having dinner here once a month (strip steak, baked potato with garlic salt, green beans) for the last couple of years.  He’s trying to sell his book, which is about how ghosts like me reach peace through some kind of closure regarding the circumstances of their death.  Sometimes he’s here with friends or colleagues, practicing his pitch for the publishing companies or comparing notes.  On occasion (ok, most of the time), when he goes to the bathroom, I’ll make the lights flicker and do that “ooOOOooo” sound against the tiles, just to freak him out.  That’s the extent of my ability to touch the real world:  some barely audible sound and, if I concentrate really hard, I can affect things that deal in electricity.

Anyway, from listening to the paranormalist and his cohorts, I know that being a spirit means I’m just some sort of energistic impression on the fabric of the universe that was left behind when my body was murdered here all those years ago.  I’m not actually a soul or anything, more like an emotional stain on this particular location.  The moment of my death was like a flashbulb going off, and I’m the afterimage left on the retina of this place.  Strange that I remember things from both my life and my time haunting this saloon – I mean steakhouse.

I can still see the blood – my blood – pooling on the hardwood floor as it spilled out the bullet holes in my body.  My body’s not there anymore, but the blood keeps running into that puddle.  It never gets any bigger, even though the blood continues to flow.  I’ve lost myself for weeks at a time, just watching the blood rush into that spot.  From what I gather from the paranormalist, that’s my anchor to this world:  I always come back to it and I can never get very far from it.  None of the living have ever appeared to notice it, and I haven’t met any other shades here, so I assume I’m the only one who can see my perpetually flowing puddle of blood.

So here’s what happened:  I walked into this saloon one night back in 1897, needing a drink very badly.  I’d just been in a pretty big fight with my best friend and business partner at our office down the street.  Just as the barman was pouring my whisky, my best friend stormed in the front door and shouted my name.  I turned around from my place at the bar to see him walking quickly toward me with his hand raised.  A six-shooter was in his hand and he emptied it into me.

We’d been arguing because he’d knocked up my baby sister and didn’t plan on marrying her or even helping her take care of the kid when it came.  Just before I left the office, I told him he’d better reconsider and have the answer I wanted to hear in the morning or I’d kill him.  I threatened to murder my best friend, but he got to me first.  He skipped town and my sister died during childbirth.

About five years ago, a man walked into this steakhouse who was the spitting image of my best friend and all the feelings I’d had at the moment of my death came upon me at once.  I’d never seen this man before, but I knew instinctively it was him, my best friend and murderer.  I reached through the security guard blazer he wore and poured everything I had into the taser gun clipped to his belt.  The shock bounced him off his bar stool and onto one of the steak-carving carts.  The inside of his forearm was cut pretty bad by the big knife on the carving block and I watched him bleed out onto the floorboards.  In the same spot where I’d bled out all those years ago.  I couldn’t tell whether it was my blood or his in the ever-flowing pool that is my anchor to this place.

He died there.  The papers carried the story a couple of days later:  turns out he was the great-grandson of my best friend and sister.  He was also the last of his lineage.  My lineage, as it turns out.

According to that paranormalist, wiping my murderer’s line from the earth is exactly the sort of closure that should bring a ghost like me peace.  But I can tell you right now, I sure as hell don’t feel any peace.  And I’m still here.  Maybe that’s why I screw with the paranormalist whenever he comes in.

Still, it seems I’m getting thinner – fading away – a little more every day.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  In the real world, the survival rate for virtual reality addiction is 99%.  In the Vurt, the survival rate for glyph (the Vurt’s version of virtual reality) addiction is 1.61% – which would you choose?

FRICKED

Om.  That’s what I’m supposed to say.  Over and over again.  ‘Om.’  It’s supposed to make me relax or something.  Stop thinking about the itchy-scratchy parts that are like all over me.  All over.  Everywhere.  Every.  Where.  Itchy.  Scratchy.  Snakes and spiders.  That’s what they are when my eyes are closed:  snakes slithering up my legs, molting along the way; spiders in my hair, bursting from their egg sacs and scrittering down around my ears and into them and over my eyes, getting caught in my eyelashes like they’re spiderwebs and the world is simply made of irony, the ass-end of which is always pointed at me.

I can’t keep my eyes closed because whenever they are, the snakes and spiders come back.  When they’re open, I’m just itchy and I can sorta handle that, though I tend to get kinda finger-twitchy and foot-fidgety and my brain starts flowing heavily in the direction of WHEN THE FRICK IS MY NEXT BOOST?  Not an ideal situation either, I can assure you.

But this is a group thing and every time someone opens their eyes or says something besides ‘Om’ we have to start all over again.  Three ‘Oms,’ that’s all he’s looking for.  Him being the instructor or counselor or whatever.  Three ‘Oms’ together.  As a group.  So I keep my eyes closed, try to ignore the snakes and spiders and keep saying ‘Om.’

Eventually we all get three in a row.  “Good,” he says softly and smoothly into the microphone at the podium we’re all facing in our hard plastic chairs.  “Remember, this is a guided meditation, so just let everything go and hitch a ride on my voice.  Let me be your guide.”  Easy enough, I suppose.  The snakes and spiders don’t seem quite as insistent when I actually let go and pay attention to what he’s saying.

“Now just relax and concentrate on your breathing:  clean, energy-filled air enters your lungs with each inhalation and tension leaves your body with each exhalation.”

“Good.  Goooood.  Feel yourself getting cleaner with each breath.”

“Now, gently relax the muscles in your neck and begin to tilt your head back.  Slowly, very slowly.  Relax into it.  A-aaaand, as your head falls back, you slowly open your eyes and look up and around you . . .”

“YOU’RE IN A FRICKEN REHAB!” he yells into the microphone, making us all jump in our seats.

“WHERE DID YOU THINK YOU WERE GOING?  THE BLOODY FRICKEN CLOUD CITY RESORTS OF PHELINAS-6?  Sometime in the not-too-distant past, you got yourself hooked on hopi, trag, glyph, spoon or some other perception-altering drug, were picked up by the constabulary, and ended up here for the next six months.  This is not going to be a pleasant ride.  Withdrawal hurts and death is a real possibility, especially for you nutjob glyphers.  One in sixty-two – those are your chances.  My opinion?  You should’ve either spent your money right and boosted long enough to peacefully expire in that virtual glyph-world like everyone else does, or just jumped the consties when they caught you trying to get your fix – they’d’ve gladly given you a quick end.”

I rip the WIG (Worldwide Interfacing Galvanograph) off my hairless head and look down at my sweating, trembling, atrophied limbs.  The waste receptacles attached to my body have long since filled to bursting; I have no idea how long I’ve been lying in my own filth.

I don’t know what’s worse:  the addiction to the glyph I managed to develop in the Vurt or the addiction to the virtual reality itself.  I mean, I knew I had it bad for the Vurt.  Wasn’t too hard:  life’s just better in the Vurt.  I can be who I want, do what I want – as opposed to the Real, where I no longer have anything remotely resembling a life.  I’d spent the last of my credits on the expensive “Captain of Industry” model WIG for my last go-round.  One last hurrah:  I knew I wasn’t coming back this time.  Dying in the Real while living out my fantasy in the Vurt as a rich playboy of unlimited means should’ve been easy.  All I had to do was enjoy myself in the Vurt until my body in the real just kicked off.  How did I get hooked on glyph and bottom out so fast and so hard?  Did I really think the Vurt’s version of the Vurt would somehow give me more than I already had?  Why would I have carried my discontent into my fantasy?

One in sixty-two or a long, pretty horrible death in the Vurt of glyph withdrawal.  I look at the receptors on the inside of my WIG – the ones that form an overlaying neural lace and provide the stimulus that locks my brain into the Vurt – and contemplate my chances.  Good chance I’ll die ugly in the Vurt – which adds up to death in the Real.  Even if I manage to be the one of sixty-two, I’ll still die in the Real:  I doubt this malnourished, quivering puddle of jelly that is my body in the Real will survive six more months in the Vurt.

If I can manage to get to the door of this crappy little bolt-hole apartment I’m in, I’m sure I can flag down one of the omnipresent cops for a ride to the hospital.  The survival rate for Vurt addiction here in the Real is like 99%.

Frick.  Going back to the Vurt means guaranteed death in the Real, with only the snakes and spiders to keep me company.  Getting to the apartment door is going to be tough all by itself, and there’s no way life in the Real afterward is going to be anything but worse than it was before I boosted in for this last ride.

My head hurts.

Putting the WIG back on, I think to myself, “I need to give this some more thought.”

“. . . Ok everybody, let’s break into small groups.”

Aw, fuck.  Now I’m all wrapped up in the concept of “tribute site” when all I really wanted to do was pass this little ditty on to you:

Thanks a lot, internet, for getting my hopes up. I really appreciate it, internet. Oh you stupid internet. BITCHFACE INTERNET. Why do I keep forgetting that you are run by people who look to Lord of the Rings for political philosophy. (“Even the smallest hobbit can make a difference!!!!!”) Oh I am done with you, internet. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again next week when my “that sassy Alice waitress nude” google search turns up hot nothing — I am DONE.

OK yesterday I’m reminded that to be an American is to be both arrogant andincompetent (you’d think one would cancel out the other! so weird!), and the problem is then I come in to work at an ad agency. And if you’re already thinking “our country is fuckola’d,” the last place you want to walk into is an ad agency. The last thing you want to have to do is sit in a meeting and talk about how to coerce people into buying more processed cheese, because then it’s really hard to dodge the fact that you are The Problem. Yes I’m using second-person to distance myself from the horrible truth — it’s the magic of writing.

So I looked around for a new job, as I do every evening while unwinding with a paper sack and some floor tile adhesive, and I see Victoria’s Secret is looking for a copywriter, and all of a sudden I love our country again. There is hope, there is a way to improve your life and the lives of your fellow citizens. The dream is still alive.

–the house of wigs #55

So yeah, would the “tribute site” work kind of like a tribute band, and if so, how the frig would that work.  I mean, a tribute band is a bunch of cats or kittens who do their best to . . . wait, let me just scrape some more from somewhere else (here) on the interwebz:  A TRIBUTE band captures the true essence of the experience one might have if they were to attend a concert by said band in the here and now.  …the fan walks away feeling as if they had just seen their favorite band live…almost. Aaaaand blah, blah, blah:  I didn’t read the rest of the forum posts in the thread because I can say in my own words that a cover band just plays someone else’s songs – whether they’re trying to get as close as possible to the radio version or putting their own twist on the music (which, parenthetically, kind of pisses me off about the word “tribute” in the Metallica cover CDs I own:  they’re just a bunch of different bands doing a “tribute” to Metallica by covering Metallica’s songs in their own flavor).

So could a “tribute site” simply be as easy as scraping my favorite stuff by Josh Allen and posting it thereon?  You’d read my site and sure as hell walk away feeling as though you’d just read your favorite internet author’s words directly from his fingertips.  Which would, of course be true – but what if, instead of simply highlighting, Ctrl+C-ing and Ctrl+V-ing, I actually re-typed each of his posts? Then it would truly be just like a tribute band:  you’d get my own typos, lazy non-linkings and general fuckups and whatnot, so it would be wicked close to Josh Allen’s stuff, but you’d get that “…almost” feeling too.

I’m totally onto something.

However.

I have no intention of doing any of the above right now.

But.

I’ll give you a bunch of links to Josh’s stuff.  He’s funny as shit smeared on a baby (when they think it’s chocolate and it’s somebody else’s kid) and has been my favorite internet writer for quite some time now.  We’re also facebook friends, but not the kind that post on each other’s wall and send messages and stuff.  I secretly think I’m just one of those “trophy friends” for Josh – which I’m totally ok with because I feel the same way about him, except that I do in fact hope to meet him irl at some point before one of us dies a gruesome death at the hands of Big Brother’s Machine.

Anyway, here you go, a bunch of links to Josh’s stuff:

Fireland Twitter Feed

Fireland (on tumblr)

Ten Sexy Ladies (on tumblr)

Chokeville

Fireland (the site)

house of wigs

And that’s all I’m going to give you right now because it’s all I can come up with off the top of my head.  I think there’s some other stuff out there, but mostly places where he’s a contributing author.  If you think I missed something particularly cool, please let me know.  I fucking love this guy.

Ok, you’re over it.

Quixotic Jedi mind trick.

Seriously.

I’m at work right now and relatively bored.  Well, not bored exactly, just kind of doing that same old deer-in-the-headlights thing with the stuff I need to do.  Lots of little things that won’t necessarily bring me any particularly flavorful instant gratification.  Just the dull, got-that-done kind.

The Taiwan pr0xy season has basically drawn to a close:  I have two meetings left:  Wednesday and Friday.  Went from balls-to-the-wall to holding my dick, wondering what just happened.  Well, sort of.  I know exactly what just happened, but that’s kind of how it feels.

So I’m not currently crushed at work, but I do have to get back to studying for the NJ bar exam.  I didn’t pass the February exam, so I’m taking it again in July.  Hopefully, “fourth time’s the charm.”  So I now have about 5 weeks in which to study and hopefully learn the stuff I needed to learn in the first, second and third places.  My scaled score was a 130 – I needed a 133 to pass.  That’s like 1/2 a point on one of the essays:  maybe two more (correct) sentences written.

Busy couple of weeks, all told.  Went to the Yankee game last Wednesday; sat in some damned fine seats about 6 rows behind home plate.  John McEnroe and Paul Simon were within spitting distance, though I neither spat on them nor said hello.  Like them, I wasn’t much in the mood to be signing autographs:  I just wanted to watch the game and hang out with my friends.

This past weekend was MINIs on Top:  200-something MINI Coopers gather for weirdo activities and a drive up to the summit of Mount Washington (highest peak in the northeast).  Got to hang out with Brandy and Don, whom I haven’t seen since last year’s MOT.  Val and I drove up to their place in Bristol RI on Thursday night, crashed there, and we all caravanned up to MOT on Friday (we also shared a hotel room and basically spent the entire weekend together).  Pretty awesome.  Brandy and Don are really good peeps.

Anyway, even though I’m lacking in motivation today, the day’s almost over and I have a couple of reports that need to go out before I leave.  I think I’m getting out of here at 5PM so that I can pick Val up at the Secaucus train station, so that we can run home and get the laundry started before it gets too late.  Maybe I’ll clean off my desk and put together a nice to-do list tomorrow.

So what’s been up?  No idea where to start on the updating process.  AND it’s midnight now.

So yeah, lots of hiking, and even more planned for the upcoming 3-season.  I’m at 171/420 on the grid and have a shit ton of mountains to climb; I’d also like to get up to the Adirondacks and finish off that 46rs list (I’m at 16/46 on that one) – hopefully I can make a dent in it if we get up there once a month or so.

Katie’s got 17 or 18 out of her Catskill 39 and is right on schedule to finish this year – her plan, not mine.

Scott finished his winter 35 this year and Valerie just finished her regular 39.  Debbie finished her 39 back in January or February – I’m crappy with dates.  So Deb and Val will pick up their certificates at the 3500 Club dinner this weekend and I’ll probably grab Scott’s for him because he and Katie will be at the Yes concert in Atlantic City this weekend.

Oh, I activated the Groupon for the Gravity Vault (indoor rock gym) that Katie gave me back in December.  It’s basically a free one-month membership.  I did my belay certification course last Wednesday (where they teach you how to tie the knots and hold the rope to make sure whoever your climbing partner is doesn’t fall and die).  Val took the train out on Thursday night and we climbed together, which was wicked cool.  We’re going to visit her rock gym in Brooklyn on Sunday and I’ll get to meet her rock climbing peeps and hopefully not make an ass out of myself on the wall.  I’m psyched.  Hopefully I’ll get to climb this Tuesday and Thursday.  It’s a nice thing to fit into my schedule.

Work is going pretty well.  No real complaints (worth voicing) on that end.  The bar exam is done and the Taiwan trip has passed, so no more major points of stress upcoming.  I find out whether I passed the bar or not mid-May.  I’m totally 50/50 on that:  if I pass, I won’t be all that surprised; if I don’t I won’t be all that surprised either.

No biggie.  I’m currently reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and am chomping at the bit to get to The Crippled God by Steven Erikson (the next installment of my favorite fantasy series EVAR).  I’ll probably bring that to work with me tomorrow.  I was hoping to start it tonight, but didn’t get to because I was busy barely making a dent in cleaning up the clusterfucked mass of clutter that is my apartment.

So that’s it for now.  I’m bringing my tax stuff with me to work tomorrow, so I can hopefully get started on that.  It’s time to re-evaluate my finances (again) – seems like I just did that, but whatever.

Off to bed.  Peace out, dear reader.  Don’t be a stranger.

So yeah, I don’t really have much to say right now:  nothing’s all that pressing that I’m dying to write about.  Life is good.  I’m a bit nervous for this trip, but only when I project into the future.  I’m pretty sure I’ll do fine, but I’m totally walking the tightrope without a net on this one.  The President of my firm is on the trip with me, but he’s not all that familiar with what we’ll be presenting – oh, he’s worked in Asia before in the same industry, but the specialized nature of my experience makes me the only one who really knows the services we’re selling.

I’m currently in direct competition with my old employer.  Shortly after I left the old firm, a few other guys left as well and the owner closed that branch of the business.  A couple of other departments at that firm ended up dissolving, and the owner sold what was left to another firm; he brought the portion of the business I was responsible for with him, so I’ll be back out in Taiwan selling my new firm (and my services) to the clients I used to service at the old firm (and I’ll be trying to pick up new clients).  The owner of the old firm will be in Taiwan in a couple of weeks, pitching to some of the same companies.  I don’t plan on badmouthing him or his firm, and I hope he doesn’t badmouth me, but this is business, so I almost expect it.  Matter of fact, I’m kind of nervous about talking about this stuff at all because one or two people from my old firm know about this blog (almost none of my co-workers know about this blog or are friends with me on facebook – or any other social media site, for that matter – my work and cyber egos are separate).  So hi Tom and Jen if you’re reading this.  I trust our friendship outweighs your loyalty to Ken and his business and that everybody in the industry isn’t reading this right now.

But if you are in my industry and you’re reading this, welcome, I guess.  It’s always nice to have new readers.  Say hello in the comments or shoot me an email if you like:  maybe we can network and help each other out.

So yeah:  tightrope without a net:

At the old place, I did all the work for these clients, but the owner of the company was the one who made the trips to Taiwan and did all the selling.  Now it’s all me.  I’ll be selling and servicing.  I have no doubts about my ability to service my clients well, and I’m probably the most qualified person in the industry (boutique though it might be) to provide the services we do.  Which is kind of a scary thought.  Not that I don’t know what I’m doing, but rather because I’m just used to there being someone else around who knows at least a little more than I do.  While there are certainly many many people who know more than I do about different aspects of things, I don’t think there’s anyone out there with the kind of comprehensive knowledge I have – thankfully, there are people I can learn from, but that learning means acquiring bits of others’ knowledge about aspects of the process which relate to what I do.  I know I’m being vague:  that’s partly because I don’t want any of the keywords to pop up in a Google search, but also partly because if I started throwing around esoteric concepts and phrases, I’d lose you right away.  Anyway, this stuff’s all me right now:  there’s nobody I can really turn to when I don’t have the answer.  Which is fine:  I don’t have any issues with saying “I don’t know”, and I’m pretty good about finding out the answer.  I mean shit, my title is Director of Research:  finding answers is what I do.

Switching gears:

I met a girl.

I mean, we’ve met before plenty of times, but our relationship has taken a romantic turn.  One that is pretty much indescribably wonderful.  I want to tell you all about it, but I really don’t know that I have the words to do so.  And fuck me, my vocabulary’s big.  I just don’t know that I can do it justice with mere words on a screen.  Plus, I almost want to keep it to myself – lolz, I’m still worried about jinxing it, even though that’s doubtfully even a remote possibility.  Still, I’d kind of rather not say too much.

Her name is Valerie and I’ve spoken of her before.  We met in the woods – well, we “met” on the Upper West Side of NYC when Scott and I picked her and Debbie up to go hiking back in October, but that was mostly a “hi howya doin’”; we didn’t really talk until we were on the trail (and probably 6 miles into the hike, at that).  She’s a fucken wood nymph.  More of a backpacker than a peakbagger, though she’d identify herself as simply a hiker.  She moves like a dancer through the forest and it’s a joy to watch.

After hiking together (in a group) a few times, we had a good date back in November (the Friday before I left for Taiwan the last time), and she sent me the “just friends” email that Saturday.  I headed off to Taiwan with my chin on my chest, wondering what went wrong and spent the next couple of weeks in relative discomfort, self-esteem-wise.  (That’s the opposite of hyperbole, btw.)  We both continued to flirt with each other on the trail and date other people, playing Scrabble on our iPhones with one another during the week.  She stayed over my house a couple of times before a hike and I cursed myself for a coward each time I didn’t make a move.

I finally did and it’s been goddamned fireworks ever since.  Truly.  We’ve spent the last three weekends together, Friday evening through Monday morning, and it’s been just fucking joyous.  Hiking during the days with our regular crew and some really nice Friday night dates, just the two of us.  I can’t wait to see her when I get back.  What a flip from my last trip to Taiwan.

So that’s 1,260 words for now and my ears aren’t nearly as tender as they were a few minutes ago.  I’m going to hit play on the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie and zonk out for another couple of hours.  Maybe next time I choose my seats on a flight I’ll keep my neighbors in mind and book myself an aisle seat:  I’ve had to hop over the poor bastard sitting next to me three or four times now in order to go pee.  Too much coffee and water.  Well, not too much, but enough to make me a pain in this guy’s ass, I’m sure.

***

Ok:  two hours left till Tokyo.  It’s now 11:16 ET (the time my body is still on) and I haven’t slept yet.  I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to stay up for this whole trip, though that would be ideal.  So it’ll be about 1:15AM when we get to Narita; add another 4 hours for the layover and it’s 5AM tomorrow, plus the couple/three hours from Tokyo to Taipei.  Yeah, I’m not gonna make it.  I keep looking over at the galley, expecting them to come around with more food and maybe coffee, but no dice.  Damn, but a cup of coffee and a cigarette would be nice right now.

On the up side, Narita has a very nice smoking lounge – and I’m pretty sure there’ll be a Starbucks in the terminal.  Or at least a Mr. Brown’s – their coffee’s good as well.  Another couple of hours and I’ll get my fix, lol.

Watched the Wolverine movie, plus Due Date (Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galiflanakis) – which I thought would be MUCH better (some funny parts, but overall pretty meh.  Seriously.  I really expected it to be much better than that.  Galiflanakis had a real chance to shine and kind of didn’t – oh, he was funny, but I almost think his character should have been more of caricature than it was.  Downey did ok, but I think pretty much anybody could have played the asshole that the script set his character out to be.  He’s a good actor, but I’d rather see him ACT – not just play a run-of-the-mill character – I’m almost tempted to queue up Tropic Thunder just so I can watch him play a black dude for a little while.  That’s acting.  Oh, and I watched Surrogates after that (Bruce Willis flick – not sure if it ever made it to the theaters; not great, but it passed the time (90 mins)).

All I really have to do is the best I can.  That’s it.  I don’t have to get everything done:  I just need to do what I can.  I don’t have to do everything perfectly:  I just need to do do as best I can.  None of these things that are threatening to overwhelm me – studying for the bar exam next week, preparing for the Taiwan trip the week after, the regular-day tasks at work that keep flooding in – are things I have to do at all:  they’re things I GET to do.

When I spend my time worrying on what’s coming up and whether I’ll be prepared for it, I’m not in the moment and I won’t be prepared.  Staying in the moment is a joyful thing, because what I’m doing in this moment is *exactly* what I want to be doing.  My life is so incredibly charmed.

Nothing matters but this moment right now.  Because without this one, there can be no others.  If I’m not present here and now, I’m certainly not present there and then.

So yeah, enough of the abstract:  I’m taking care of what I can take care of at work today, a little bit of the short-term project stuff and a little bit of the longer-term project stuff.  Reports are being written, emails sent, numbers crunched, research performed, etc.  I’ve been studying in the cracks in my schedule and have a bar review lecture playing in the background now.  That’s really all I can do.  I’ll either pass the bar or I won’t – but if I spend my time between now and then simply freaking out instead of studying when I can, as much as I can, that’s me fucking up.  My trip to Taiwan will be successful or it won’t – but if I spend my time between now and then freaking out instead of doing as much as I can to prepare, that’s me fucking up.  I’m not fucking up by doing the best I can, because that’s really all I can do.

My life is indescribably wonderful right now, dear reader.  I’m going to just go right ahead and enjoy every moment of it, rather than wonder if I’m living up to it.

Begging last 2 legs – PLEASE consider!!! Even if you can just take a portion of a leg it would help! We are offering fuel reimbursement on these legs. Brandy is in SC and headed to her foster home in NH. Sandy will join transport on Sunday morning and is headed to her foster home in NH, very close to where Brandy is going. All legs are flexible.

Please provide the following with all offers of transport: Sunday drivers must crate at least 1 Malinois.
Preferred email address:
Cell #:
Vehicle color/description:
Any preferred meet sites:

Contact Transport Coordinator Lin Karrels at linkarrels@wildblue.net

CROSS POSTING ENCOURAGED AND APPRECIATED.

Saturday, February 12, 2011
***********************
Leg #2 – NEEDED!
Santee SC to Florence SC
71 miles – 1 hour
Depart Santee 9:10 a.m.
Arrive Florence 10:10 a.m.

Leg #6 – NEEDED!
Emporia VA to Ashland VA
87 miles – 1 hour 15 minutes
Depart Emporia 2:20 p.m.
Arrive Ashland 3:35 p.m.

I’m sitting in class right now.  The lecture is NJ Civil Procedure.  I couldn’t find any material in my bar review outline book, so I figured they’d be distributing something at the class.  They didn’t.  Turns out there is an outline in my book, but I just missed it.  The pages of my review book have all been ripped out and put into separate folders by subject, so my NJ Civ Pro outline is in one of my folders – I just don’t know which one.  It’s not one of the folders I have with me tonight, so that’s no help.  And on top of this, the professor is lecturing directly from the review outline – he’s basically reading it to us and commenting as he goes through.  So I’m doubly screwed.  He’s going too fast for me to be able to even keep up and take notes.

So I’ll talk to you for a bit, dear reader.  I might bounce in a little while.  Listening to the lecture can’t be anything but good for me, so hopefully I’ll stay for the full 3.5 hours.  Maybe I’ll end up convincing myself that I’d be better off at home, watching the lecture on my laptop and taking my notes into the outline.  Jeez, I hope not.  I also hope I can manage to keep this short.

So.  To the whining:

Three major things happening in my life right now:  studying for the bar (exam is in two weeks), working a full-time job (at which I have large long- and short-term projects coming due, plus daily tasks), and winter peakbagging (what I’d rather be thinking about and doing).  The bar prep class I’m taking is designed for someone who’s not working and has all day, every day to study.  I don’t.  It’s a lot of stuff to study.  I got 90/200 right on the practice test.  Very Scary.  It looks like I’m going to have to go to Taiwan again for work during the first week of March.  That’s immediately after the bar exam.  I will be sitting on panels and in (sales-y) meetings and basically have to remember everything about the nuances of s0liciting pr0xies in the T*iwan market by then.  I have to put together marketing materials and detailed descriptions of our service offerings.  Nobody else at my company does this or would even have a clue where to begin.  We’re doing a deal with another company for a partnership in Taiwan and I have to have those details hammered out like tomorrow.  I’m travelling to DC for lunch with the other company on Friday with the President of my company – he wants to finish negotiating at the lunch, the other company wants the details worked out in advance.  I’m in the middle and frankly kind of scared that someone else is going to fuck up and bring the whole house of cards crashing down (or just start our business relationship out on the wrong foot).  I’d rather be hiking.  Planning hikes.  The logistics of which mountains we’re climbing and who’s in what car and staying at whose house which night.  I’d rather be hiking.

I feel much better today, but I’ve been feeling pretty goddamned overwhelmed all week – persecuted, even.  Not that persecuted is necessarily the right word, but it’s close.  Kind of a mix of persecuted and oppressed, but without the necessary sentient being actually doing the persecution-cum-oppression.  But not like the world is out to get me.  Just overwhelmed.  Too much on my plate.  To the point where I’m like a raw nerve:  anything else added on top of all the (admittedly self-induced/initiated) stress seems HUGE.  The teeniest thing seems like the end of the world:  a simple question at work, an incoming phone call, remembering that it’s time to change the cat’s litter.  Anything.

What’s really happening is that I’m persecuting and oppressing myself.  I’ve taken on a lot and I expect myself to be perfect in all of these endeavors.  I’m mentally and emotionally kicking my own ass on a minute-by-minute basis for not being farther along than I am.  I am not loving myself.  There, I said it.  It’s all me.  There’s no other entity causing me to feel persecuted:  it’s ME.  I’m the oppressive, overbearing father screaming at his inner child “WHY AREN’T YOU PREPARED?  WHY HAVEN’T YOU STARTED?  WHY HAVEN’T YOU FINISHED?  WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?  YOU’RE NOT MY SON.”

Ok, this has nothing to do with my Oedipus Complex – I’ll tell you all about that another time.  This is just me setting the bar too high – and I’ll tell ya, dear reader, I don’t even want to publish that word ‘too’ because it feels like I’m admitting I can’t do something.  My expectations for myself are out of control.  AND, I’m adding the (real and perceived) expectations of others on top of my own, thereby making them heavier.  I told one of the girls at work that I was nervous about passing the bar and she said “but you’re like the smartest person in the world!  of course you’re going to pass.”  She also asked me if I was worried because the whole office – especially the President, it seemed to her – is pulling for me to pass the exam.  Jokes abound in the office about how much stuff I can handle – that of course they can give Ted one more thing to do:  if anybody can handle it, he can.

Holy fuck, dear reader I really don’t want to say I can’t handle it, because that would be an admission of weakness and I really don’t do things like that.  So please do me a favor and just read between the lines.

Any one of the aforementioned three things would be enough to fill my life by themselves.  And I think I can do them all at once.  AND, make them all look easy while I’m doing them.  Yeah, I’ll talk about my pride and ego another time.

I quit drinking coffee three weeks ago and only drink tea and water now.  I don’t feel ridiculously better, but neither do I feel as though I need coffee in order to get my day started.  Nor am I constantly battling dehydration.  I’d really like a cup of coffee, but for whatever reason, I’ve committed myself to this no-coffee-for-30-days thing.  I’m drinking apple cider vinegar and taking my vitamins and drinking kefir and trying to be as healthy as possible with what I put in my body.  But I’m full of knots and aches in strange places and all kinds of other manifestations of what I can only conclude must be stress trying to get out.

Anyway, that’s enough whining.  I’m happy with my decisions.  These are things I WANT to do and things I GET to do.  It’s just an awful lot right now.

Here’s what I need to do:

• Meditate more.
• Drink more water.
• Be proud of myself.
• Not beat myself up (regularly).
• Pick one thing and do it – don’t keep looking at the rest of the list.
• Laugh more.

There are probably more things I should add to the list, but right now I just want to publish this and go pee.

Things are excellent, dear reader.  Extremely, wickedly busy, but excellent.  Adding the bar prep class on top of my regular work-day is kinda-sorta kicking my ass time-wise, but that’s ok.  I suppose it’s arguable that it’s keeping me out of trouble.  Maybe.  Still hiking both weekend days, which has been glorious, as usual/to be expected.  There have also been some interesting developments of a romantic nature – which I’m quite certain I’m jinxing just by mentioning it aloud, but whatever – which I’m not going to tell you about, dearest, dearest reader, because it would be inappropriate to do so.

I fired my acupuncturist.  Sent him an email on Monday morning stating that I wouldn’t be able to make it to my appointment that afternoon – that I’d had some things come up at work – but that I’d see him on Thursday and have been following all of his suggestions.  He responded with some stuff about his 24-hour cancellation policy and whatnot (people usually offer to pay for the session anyway) and I told him to cancel Thursday’s appointment as well – maybe we can re-connect when I can give his schedule a higher priority rating.  Maybe I’ll post the email exchange tomorrow.

I’m still following his suggestions:  drinking a pro-biotic, drinking apple cider vinegar and no coffee.  It’s been over a week since my last cup of coffee.  I passed the coffee section in Whole Foods this evening and took a big whiff – bad move.  It smelled SO good.  Maybe in a month I’ll start drinking coffee again.  I hope so:  I love coffee.  But for now, it’s tea.  Black tea.  In a similar fashion to my coffee requests, people look at me like I’m a weirdo when I say that I don’t want anything (milk, sugar) in my tea.  Strange.

Last week I had a hard time getting my brain to settle down:  it was like the wheels were spinning incredibly fast and not catching on anything – not linking up with the gears.  It was going a million miles a minute, but I couldn’t grab ahold of one thing and run with it.  Thoughts were whirling in and out, but they were fleeting and not staying put long enough for me to examine or do anything with them.  This week has been a little better:  I’ve been able to get the gears to catch and have had some really productive days at work.  I’ve at least made a start on a couple of the tasks that were sitting undone on my to-do list.

I ordered a Franklin Covey planner for my dad today and had it shipped to his office.  He loves Stephen Covey and a buddy of mine was regaling me about the productivity-adding aspects of the planning system (which, apparently, was developed by Ben Franklin).  So I figure I’ll photocopy a couple of the pages to get a feel for how the system works and incorporate some of it into my own life.  My dad can try the whole program.

I bought new snowshoes this week.  My old ones have probably 400 or so miles on them and I was really hoping they’d make it through the season, but I discovered a rip in the deck last week (which I was able to semi-repair) and they’ve been making funny noises, so I figured it would be safer to just get a new pair and have the old ones as a beater pair.

Speaking of beaters, I’m also looking for a beater car/SUV with four doors and decent clearance that I can use to shuttle people to and from the Catskills.  I’ve been doing a lot more hiking with other people lately and my two-seater just doesn’t cut it – I feel bad that we’ve been taking Scott’s Toyota Yaris (lol, “the big car”) up to the Cats every weekend.  Plus, having the truly bigger vehicle would satisfy my control issues.  And some safety issues:  Scott’s car ain’t exactly made for the snow.  I’ve been checking eBay; maybe I’ll explore other options as well.

So that’s about it.  I’m off to bed.  Maybe I’m wound down enough from the day and maybe I’m not.  It doesn’t really matter because I’ll be asleep five minutes after my head hits the pillow.  I remember a time when I had trouble falling asleep.  Hell, I still remember a time when I didn’t fall asleep, I just passed out; I never woke up, I just came to.  I do not remember that time fondly.

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  I love you, I want you, I need you – and three out of four ain’t bad, as the bard says.

*** *** ***

Alternate Scooby Doo Ending

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  Rye ruv roo, rye ront roo, rye reed roo – and three out of three is a perfect fucken score, so gimme those scooby-snacks or I’ll do more than just hump Velma’s leg while you and Freddie cry in the corner, knowing you’re next.

*** *** ***

Alternate Nondualist Ending

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  I love you, I want you, I need you because I am you.

*** *** ***

Alternate Fight Club Ending

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  I love you, I want you, I need you because I am you, and as soon as we get done fucking Helena Bonham Carter’s brains out, we’re gonna blow some shit up – especially if said shit happens to be cornflower blue.  Because we’re simply itching to destroy something beautiful.

Life is good, dear reader.  Busy, but very very good.

So here’s the skinny for the past couple of weeks or so:

I’ve been hiking (duh).  On the weekends.  Both days.  Lots of miles, lots of mountains.  Fifteen mountains and about 87 miles since the winter started.  My snowshoes *might* make it through this season.  I mean, they’ll make it, but I’m seriously considering getting a new pair.  I’ve already been at them with a file to re-work the grip on the outside, but even the new notches are quickly getting worn away.  I’m 150/420 for the Grid and have 11 mountains left to climb in the month of January.  I won’t get to all of them this January, but that’s cool:  9 for January of 2012 is totally doable.  I fucken love hiking . . . er, peakbagging.  Speaking of, check out this trip report from my friend Kevin – it’s a pretty nuts story (and very well written).

Work is going pretty well as well.  My nominal boss called me last Thursday while I was working from home, just to go over some ideas about “how to make Ted some crazy money.”  How cool is that?  Hopefully, we’ll be able to work something out in the very near future that will start netting me even bigger bucks than I’m already making.  I’m sure I’ve already mentioned it, but work is also paying for me to take a bar prep class so that I can take the NJ bar exam at the end of February.  Class is in Newark from 6-10PM, Monday through Friday.  It started a couple of weeks ago and continues through most of February.  It’s a real pain in the ass, but whatever:  I’d never find the time to study on my own and I’m learning a lot.

I get home kind of late and am missing out hardcore on the stuff I normally do in the evenings, but that’s cool – it’s only for a few more weeks.  I’m still working every day, but not nearly as much.  Same amount of work to do, but less time in which to do it.  Again, the people at work have been great about working with my schedule:  I’m usually in around 9/9:30 and out by 5.  The stuff that used to take me a day or so is now taking a couple of days and things are kinda sorta starting to pile up, but I don’t give a rat’s ass – which is (mentally) a really cool place for me to be.

As I mentioned, I took last Thursday off from work – I just had too many things of a non-work nature that needed to get done and I sure as hell wasn’t going to get them done in the office.  I took care of my laundry, house cleaning, and various other errands, and made appointments with the regular doctor for a check-up (“the works” is what I asked for), as well as an appointment with an acupuncturist.

That appointment was yesterday.  It was pretty interesting.  We sat down for a few minutes and discussed my lifestyle and general health-related habits.  I told the acupuncturist that I think I’m running at about 85-95% capacity/efficiency and that what I’m looking for is a tune-up:  I want to get to 95-98% capacity/efficiency.  I think he picked up what I was putting down, but we’ll see next week:  I have two more appointments (Monday and Thursday).  I’ll know better after Monday’s appointment if the acupuncture is working and whether I want to continue to see the guy.  White guy.  Irish guy.  Studied in China and a couple of other places in Asia.  He’s young, but I think he knows what he’s doing.  Again, we’ll see.  I’m reserving judgment at the moment.

After discussing my health/eating habits and whatnot, he told me to undress to my underwear and get on the table.  I was like “um, do you have a towel or anything, ’cause I’m one of those commando guys and I’m not really sure you want the whole show on the first date.”  So I ended up just stripping down to my suit pants and rolling up the legs.  It worked out fine.  He stuck a bunch of needles in my legs to start and attached wires to them to increase the flow of ions between the points.  Then he did this thing where he put these little silly putty cones (some kind of -wort) on my feet, lit them on fire, and pulled them off one at a time as they started to burn my feet.  Pretty cool.  I experimented with when I told him I could feel them and found that there was a second or two of lag time between when I felt them burn and when they actually did.  Which is to say that I’d say “ok” (meaning I could feel the burn), he’d pull the thingie off, and a second or two later I’d *really* feel the burn.  Pretty cool.  Er, hot.

After that, he stuck more needles in my legs and some in my arms and attached wires among them.  He said “it’s like conducting a symphony.”

Supposedly, I was to feel better/different when I walked out than when I walked in.  I can’t say that I really did, but again, I’m reserving judgment.  I figure if I were way out of shape or all kinds of fucked up (in a different way, I mean) that I’d’ve felt much different, but I’m in pretty good shape and wasn’t there for any kind of major overhaul:  just a tune-up.  Some fine-tuning of my meat suit.  I felt kind of the way I do when I get out of a particularly intense/meditative yoga class.  No great “heightened awareness” per se, but a little more open.

Following his advice, I picked up some apple cider vinegar, some kind of yogurty pro-biotic drink, herring and something else that I can’t remember, so that I can start getting some better molecule stuff into me.  We talked a bit about whether I was ready to quit smoking (he said he can help with that) and I said not really.  We also talked about quitting drinking coffee for about 30 days, after which I can have a cup once a month or once a week or something (I don’t remember).

So I didn’t have any coffee today.  Weird.  I really only drink two things:  coffee and water.  I’ve been drinking Gatorade more often after hiking to replenish my electrolytes and adding Nuun capsules to my water while I’m hiking for the same reason.  But normally, it’s just coffee and water.  Well, now it’s just tea and water.  I’m kind of surprised that I made the decision to follow his advice and quit drinking coffee so easily – I’d’ve thought it would have been more of a struggle for me.  I fucken love coffee.  I fucken love coffee.  So nice I had to say it twice.  Weird.  Again:  weird.  It’s pretty cool to know that I have that kind of willingness to change (ostensibly for the better).

I have an appointment with the regular doctor on Thursday.  Complete physical:  blood work and everything.  I hope “the works” doesn’t involve the finger-in-the-ass thing, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.  My doctor’s name is Cynthia (Cindy, I think) and she’s a nurse practitioner.  I haven’t seen her in a year or two, but from what I remember, she was kinda cute.  Maybe I can finagle her into buying me dinner before she sticks her finger up my butt.  =/  I’ll let you know.

I’m going to cross-reference both the regular meat suit doctor and the acupuncturist with one another:  tell them about each other and see what I can learn from both of them.  They might have suggestions for each other.  No threesomes, though, I think:  unless Cindy knows a cute GIRL acupuncturist, in which case it’ll totally be game on.  We can take the tuned-up meat suit out for a spin – burn some rubbers and all that.

Yeah, I think I’m going to dream about hot chick NPs in fishnets, stilettos and black latex sticking needles into me tonight.

Peace out, dear reader; if I were you, I’d be wishing I were me right about now.

I feel pretty good.  Took the day off yesterday because I had too many things to do to get ready for this trip; it would have been a nightmare to try to squeeze everything in between a full day’s work and bedtime.  Plus, I only had about 11 hours of sleep over the weekend (5.5 Friday night and 5.5 Saturday night).  I hiked about 24 miles between the two days, so calling out sick/WFH was a good way to catch up on the sleep I missed.  I’m not sick, but if I’d gone to work (on time) yesterday after 6 hours of sleep, I’d have been well on my way to being sick.  I got all my errands done yesterday, though I ended up squeezing a lot in at the end of the day and went to bed later than I wanted.

No matter:  I was up on time and am on the plane now, so I didn’t miss my flight.  Everything after that is gravy.  Make eye contact, look serious, look smart.  Speak with conviction, don’t let the voice waver, and remember:  if anyone gets in your face, there’s a real good chance you’ll kick their ass and anyway, you’re WAY cooler than a bunch of weenies getting together to talk about corporate governance hot topics.

The plane ride is 3.5/4 hours long.  I have no idea how long we’ve been in the air, but I’m certain that I’m in the window seat and have had to pee since before we boarded the plane.  We just made it.  The idiot sales guy who booked my seat (and who happens to be sitting in first class), booked me under “Ted Wallace” instead of Edward, apparently didn’t use my Continental OnePass number (yes, I know how snooty that sounds), and didn’t send me any of the flight confirmation details, so it took a few minutes to get me checked in while all this shite got sorted.  I’m about five rows up from the back of the plane, stuffed in like cattle, and if I pee in my suit it’ll probably soak the seat too, and I have to sit in both for the next couple of hours – and I’m only guessing at how long we’ve been in the air.  So I think I’ll hold it for now.  Shouldn’t have let them take my cup.  =/

On the upside, the commercials make the new Harry Potter movie (HP & the G of F) look pretty good – and there are only three commercials playing in a loop, so I get to see it again every couple of minutes or so.

I wonder if there’s like a club I can join that will give me a patch or a pin or something for the length of time I’ve gone without having sex.  SOMEone’s got to be impressed by it.  They have churches and Planned Parenthoods in Denver, right?  One of those places will know.

Yes, yes, dear reader, I know:  they probably also have massage parlors in Denver too.  But that’s not what I’m looking for.  The physical act, yes – definitely – but I want more (yes, yes, I know “beggars can’t be choosers”), I want fucking communion:  an emotional and physical experience.  Hookers aren’t really all that emotional.  I mean, so I’ve heard and not in the movies.  A spiritual sexual experience would also be nice, but I don’t want to get too picky.  Don’t get me wrong:  neither would I turn it down.

Why TF do I always end up blogging about my desire for sex on these plane rides?  Weird.

I kind of like travelling.  I ate the little packet of green olives that came with my $7 in-flight snack pack (the “Select Snack Box”), and I hate olives.  Food ceases to be a matter of taste for me and becomes entirely about the caloric intake.  And my awareness is usually heightened when I’m travelling (by which I mean I’m more “on my toes”, not that I’m more psychic or spiritually fit than usual), so I’m pretty sure the physical effect is energy expenditure and thus the need for more fuel.  So yeah, I’ll eat whatever’s put in front of me, and I’ll eat it ALL.  The guy next to me was eyeing the bag of mini pretzels on my lap and I had to lean over and tell him I’d cut his bitch ass to ribbons before he could say stewardess if he didn’t stop eye-fucking my goddamn pretzels.  He’s now gently weeping next to me and pretending to be asleep.  If one more sob escapes his throat, I’m going to have another little chat with him about how my hearing is an extension of my personal space.  I’m also eating his Azar Fruit & Nut Mix, which tastes all the sweeter because it came with his soul.

MotherFUCK there’re a lot of hotties on this plane.  I need to have a word with the dipshit sales guy as to why I’m not sitting next to any of them.  I’d much prefer to be blogging about the woman next to me:  the loveliness of the curve of the side of her breast and how it feels when it touches my arm as she leans over to look out the window, “Excuse me, Ted, I’m sorry to keep bumping you.  It’s been ever so nice to meet you and for the last time: no, I don’t want to trade seats with you, I’m fine with looking past your cheek and smelling your man musk.  Would it be ok if I just caressed your ear and neck with my tongue for another minute?  I promise I won’t bother you again for the rest of the flight.  *giggle*”

Yeah, I’m moving to fucking Denver.

And yeah, fuck the sales guy who booked me this shitty seat next two old men whose mixed scent of cowardice and arrogance make me want to eat them last.  Seriously, buddy?  Corona Light?

The clocks on my computer and my iPhone (in airplane mode) both say it’s about 1:30PM right now, so I figure we’re about halfway there.  We’re supposed to land in Denver at 1PM local time, which would be 3PM normal people time, aka “ET” or “EST” or “East Coast”.

If I get laid in Denver, does that mean I’m in the mile-high club, or is being in an airplane a requirement for that?

Understanding oneself happens through a process of relationships and not through isolation.

While I see some truth in that, I think I also need a balance of relationships and isolation.  Solitude is really what I mean:  I need times of solitude.  I never got why Superman needed a Fortress of Solitude, but something really clicked for me this morning:  remember the part in the most recent “gritty reboot” movie, where Superman takes Lois way up into the stratosphere and they can hear all the voices of the world crying for help and whatnot?  All of a sudden, the whole Fortress of Solitude thing really made sense:  it’s a place he can go where he can enjoy the silence – regroup, consolidate, become one with himself again.  Then he’s able to go back out and face the help-crying voices again.

I had a busy day yesterday, and some of that busy-ness overlapped the times during the day I routinely have to myself.  I met a mentor for lunch; normally I sit by myself in the cafeteria and read while I eat.  I had to run home to let Christine and the cat into my apartment because the door I had left open for the PSE&G guy was closed by said guy; I had just sat down to eat dinner and read at Whole Foods.  So I had to take my dinner to my next appointment and wolf it down there.  While I was eating, a friend of mine was leaning over into my face/food space, wondering what I was eating.  She got too close and I snapped at her like a starved dog, “get the fuck away from my food, woman.”  Whoa.  I apologized quickly, but the damage was done.

As I’m sure you know all too well, dear reader, I’ve been alone for quite some time now.  I know that I’ve come to enjoy it, but I what I did not realize (at least not so overtly) until last night was that I’ve come to depend upon solitude.  I need it.  If I don’t have at least short periods of being alone with myself, time to collect and regroup, I may as well be carrying kryptonite around in my pocket. 

I think it may be time for some sort of retreat for me.  Solo hiking or getting engrossed in a novel for a few hours are usually my preferred means of solitude:  maybe I’ll take a day off work next week and burn some miles and climb some mountains by myself.  This weekend is already booked with group hikes.

So yeah: 

Dear Bruce Lee,

Don’t go forgetting about balance.  It’s the yin that defines the yang – the solitude that defines the isolation. 

See also melissa’s Tao Te Ching reference in her comment to yesterday’s post.

Sincerely,

Ted

Cleaned a bunch of stuff off my kitchen table – put it away or threw it away – and re-packed my winter pack so that I’m a bit more efficient in getting ready this weekend.  Sunday is still up in the air – probably something in the bushwack range; Saturday will be Fir and Big Indian with Scott and Debbie and her AMC backpacking group, then on to Eagle with Scott and out McKinley Hollow.  About 10 miles, so we should sleep well on Saturday night.

I cleaned a bunch of stuff off my desk the other night, so my horizontal surfaces are starting to look a bit clearer – I’m getting closer to my feng shui goal for the winter.

And that’s about it.  My laundry needs to be done, but I still have a clean undershirt for tomorrow, so it can wait.  I haven’t done shit at work in the last couple of days – hopefully tomorrow will be different.  We’ll see.  I need to stop effing with my peakbagging spreadsheet while I’m at work.  I’ve got a bunch of long-term projects that I really need to get moving on, and a couple of loose ends to take care of for my bar application.  Yeah, hopefully I’ll be more on my game tomorrow.

I’ve had the beginning of this quote in my head today:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.  Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.  And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers.  And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.

Here’s the clip, in case you don’t remember it:

The only part that’s been running on a loop in my head is the very first part, “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides…”

By all kinds of shit.  Not just the stuff in (the fictional) Ezekiel 25:17.

I wonder if I’m a righteous man.  I wonder if the karma I’m accumulating in this life is good or not.

Righteousness is a good thing, I believe.  Self-righteousness isn’t.  When I’m looking at myself and wondering whether this adjective applies to me, I can’t tell if it’s righteousness or self-righteousness.  The definitions and etymology of the word suggest that in order to be righteous, one must be God-backed.  Either on a mission from god, or acting on his/her behalf.  So it kind of stands to reason that one can’t apply this adjective to oneself – only god can do it

I don’t really go in for all the god-stuff:  I’m agnostic.  But I still have misgivings about applying this word to me.  It implies being on the right side of judgment, and I really don’t go in for judgment either.  I’m a perspectivist:  things aren’t inherently valuable or valuable in an absolute sense; they’re only valuable from one or more specific points of view.  “One man’s trash…”

All that aside, I still wonder if I’m a righteous man.  Not because I want god’s backing – probably just because I desire validation of my thoughts and actions.  Weird, huh?

THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE VALIDATION OF THOUGHTS OR ACTIONS.  Kind of scary and disheartening to think about, no?

And busy.  Hoo-boy, is it busy.  What a great weekend.  I climbed North Dome and Sherrill on Friday with Heather, Tom, Debbie, Doug (whom I sort of know from the forum but hadn’t actually met in person) and some dude named Ed.  After dinner and dropping Debbie off, I swung over to my aunt and uncle’s house to catch the tail-end of their NYE party.  Saturday was spent (barely) sleeping in, running a few errands and heading over to my friend Wendy’s house for a NYD get-together.  After that, I picked up Valerie at her sister’s place in Rutherford, met up with Scott for dinner and got up not-too early on Sunday to go hiking with Heather, Tom, Scott, Katie, Val and Mike (another guy I know from the forum but hadn’t met irl).  We climbed Roundtop and Kaaterskill High Peak.  It was a good day.

I’ve sort of cleaned off my desk at home –  I need to adjust my feng shui for the rest of the winter, which is apparently already planned out.  Anything not related to winter peakbagging or the bar exam has got to go.  Those are really the only two things I’ll be doing between now and the end of March.

The bar is at the end of February and my review class starts next week.  It’ll be in Newark from 6-10PM, M-F.  Weekends will be spent snowshoeing in the Catskills.  Anything that doesn’t involve bar review or gear repair/prep simply won’t qualify as important for the next three months.

Except for sex.  I’ll make room in my schedule for that.  Match.com has not been particularly kind to me thusfar, but that’s no biggie – it’s an internet dating site and I have a love/hate relationship with those f*ckers anyway.  I’m open-minded but cynical and jaded, which is really the perfect combination for attracting a girl online, right?  We’ll see.

I had a couple of dates with this Russian chick who was pretty cool, but I haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks.  I dropped the ball, but I did so on purpose.  Sadly, the test came out negative:  it seems that she’s not particularly interested.  And by “test” I mean I left the ball in her court to be the next one to initiate contact.  And she hasn’t.  Win some, lose more.  No big deal; I’m not in it for the chase right now anyway.  I’m looking for the weak/disoriented one so I can separate her from the pack and pounce.

Not really, but sort of.  I think I’m attracted to girls that need “saving”.  I want to be the knight in shining armor, riding to the rescue.  Thing is, the chicks that need “saving” aren’t really what I’m looking for in a woman.  I’m looking for someone who’s got her shit together and is going somewhere – anywhere, I don’t care.  I don’t need unbridled ambition or blind monomaniacal-ness, just not someone who’s maintaining a semi-acceptable status quo.  If I don’t like something about me or my life, I change it.  Character building can really suck, but it offers great rewards.  So yeah, I’m looking for a chick with character.

Fuck me, the looking blows, though.  Needle in a haystack and I’m not even sure if I’m looking in the right stack.

Again, no biggie:  you’ll get no whining from me tonight, dear reader.  Life is good and I wouldn’t have it any other way because it’s NOT any other way.  It is the way it is and I’m cool with that.  For the purposes of this sentence, I’m trying to figure out what part of my life I’d trade for a girl right now, and I’m not coming up with anything.  So yeah, we’ll see what happens.  I’ll keep you posted.

Again, I’m not really in it for the chase right now.  I’m not going to pursue and attempt to make something out of nothing.  The Russian chick was pretty cool, but I need it to go both ways – communication and desire and whatnot, that is.

Anyway, today was a day of exhaustion for me.  I could tell you why, but it’s probably NSFW and you already know enough tidbits about my inner workings.  Possibly that I didn’t have an opportunity to use my light box for most of this weekend.  I doubt it’s dehydration or malnutrition.  And probably not lack of human contact, though I could use some more of the full-frontal-skin-touching-with-a-girl thing.  *sigh* hold me.

lol fag.  It might be time to watch 300 or Gladiator again and/or read some Hemingway.  Right.  ‘Cause there’s nothing gay in that sentence.  “Do you like gladiator movies, Timmy?”  “Ever been in a Turkish prison?”  Man-up, Ted, and stop being so damned sensitive.

My priorities are more or less straight (by which I mean figured out).  I’m off to bed now; hopefully to wake up refreshed and to have a productive day tomorrow.

I don’t know – have a listen and you tell me, dear reader.  I think I’ve posted that one before.  It always makes me think of love lost and things left unsaid.  Or un-done.

But I’m not too much in the mood to get into all that weepy shite right now.  Things are pretty good on my end, dear reader.  How about you?

Work is slow this week and I’ve been able to catch up on a handful of things that needed doing.  I finally paid my $1200 in back taxes and took care of my car’s registration renewal.  I need to get down to Annapolis to pay a traffic fine and get copies of the court records of it and then swing over to DC to show them proof that my fines are paid so they can un-suspend my DC driver’s license, so that I can get a copy of my DC driver’s abstract – all for my NJ Bar application.  My NJ license abstract should be in the mail.

I posted a trip report for this weekend’s hikes over at the forum today – I should probably dump that in before this post so I don’t lose that piece of writing.  Not that it’s necessarily worth the read, but because this site is basically my pile of writings, whatever the nature.  Except for work stuff.  I’ve written some damned good emails for work, but I doubt you’d be interested in reading those; nor do I particularly want to save them outside of my Outlook at work.  =/

I need to get back to writing fiction.  I mentioned a few posts ago that I have an idea for a novel – though it’s not necessarily a novel idea – well, I’ve got about six of those iPhone voice memos with ideas for the story, just sitting there waiting to be written.  We’ll see if I ever get to it.

I’m currently reading Matter by Iain M. Banks.  It’s ok.  I’m able to put it down and I’m not dying to pick it back up right now, which means it’s barely ok.  There are only a couple of hundred pages left and I’m not exactly sure where he’s going with it or how it will end – which would be a good thing if it were a bit more exciting a book.  I prefer fiction I can’t put down, but hey, that’s just me.

Has anybody out there read any David Foster Wallace?  Infinite Jest has been recommended to me a couple of times that I can remember – once more and it will be three and then I’ll have to read it.  And no, if you mention it in the comments, that won’t count as #3 – it needs to be random and unexpected.

So yeah, kinda boring, I know.  I’m just not feeling all that excited about anything in particular right now.  I have a handful of things running through my head, several of which are nunya and a couple of which aren’t worth the pixels.

Goodness the Catskills are boring! Or maybe it’s just the TR section of the forum.  Did anybody besides elkhiker hike this weekend?

I’ll keep this short because I know you don’t care (not that I care if you care or not, even if you did).  Saturday’s hike was Bearpen & Vly from Heisinger Road with debmonster (aka Baby Carrots), ValleyGirlHikes (aka Poison Ivy, Valtron), FatVegan and Vladimir (aka I have no idea but this guy’s a f*cken animal).  Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.

After picking the girls up in NYC, we drove up to meet Vladimir at the Halcott PA on 42 and stuck him in the back of FV’s Toyota Yaris:

which is just about the size of that picture. Between the two of us, it’s “the big car.”

Then we drove over to Heisinger Road, parked, peed and headed up Bearpen. We hit the trail around 10:30 or so (fellow forum members on this hike, please correct me if I’m wrong).  A couple of hours later, we were at the summit of Bearpen, despite my initial boo-boo of taking us up the tongue on the left-hand (eastern) side of the brook, which actually turns out to be correct because it avoids the private land.  Mikie’s post (linq) would have been useful research, but I only do research for money.  Yes, I do other things for money too, but that’s not important in the context of this TR, so stop what you’re thinking right now, mister.  Pervert.

No, seriously:  stop it.

There were about 8 inches of fluffy snow on the ground (probably washed away at this point by the nor’easter), and though one or two of us mentioned that snowshoes would have been nice here and there, microspikes did the trick just fine.  When they didn’t fall off our feet because we can’t bear to part with old-friend microspikes and get new ones.  Debbie.  Finding the ro-ads depicted in de pictures in Mikie’s post were a special kind of joy.  I particularly enjoyed the steep parts and the fact that I was totally overdressed in long johns.  Sweating through them at different points during the day was simply delicious.

The summit was a winter wonderland, untouched by human feet.  We saw some bear tracks on the way up, but they were from a boy bear, so I didn’t follow them this time.  Once on the summit, we followed the snowmobile trails down and around an in and out and somehow ended at the hunter’s cabin, despite the best efforts of the snowmobile trails to get us lost and confused (which was too bad, because I was really kind of hoping to go all Lord of the Flies on FatVegan and Vladimir and keep the women for myself).  The NY/NJ TC maps have some of these trails on them and that was helpful as well.

We ate some lunch in the saddle, looking fondly at the smoke rising from the hunter’s cabin (and the ceiling fan on the inside).  FatVegan wanted to burn it down and eat the hunters (apparently, cannibalism is acceptable within veganism – not that it matters to me:  I’ll eat anything), but I said no.

Then we went up to the top of Vly, signed in at the canister and headed back down to the saddle and north on “Route 3” – we chose to exercise our bail-out option because we only had a couple of extra hours of daylight left and we didn’t want to be ‘wacking in the cold dark snow over South Vly, Sleeping Lion and Hawkit.  That makes us smart hikers, you effin lurker no0bs.

Dinner and more belly-laughing at Brio’s, followed by a relatively uneventful (not) ride home.

We parked at the end of Heisinger Road, near the DEC signs, but still got a nasty note fingered into the scum on the back of FatVegan’s car from Mr. Heisinger stating “private property, [unprintable]”.  Just kidding, it was printable, but I don’t remember what it said.  Anybody know anything about any other issues parking at the end of this road?  We weren’t blocking any of the gates.  Maybe it was our route – it looks like Mikie made a left right out of the gate, while we went straight up and did in fact  step on some private land.  Good intentions/road to hell.

Debbie is now 37/39, with only Halcott and Blackhead-in-the-winter to go.  Vladimir has Graham, DT, BI, Fir and maybe one more to go, and ValleyGirlHikes has no idea how many she has left to go “but I’m sure it’s only a few.”  Right.

On Sunday I cliimbed WHP in the nor’easter with my sister Katie.  This was 5/39 for her and while I’m sure I’m not as good a guide/teacher with her as Woolybear is/was with his brother Karol, I’m pretty sure Katie’s better looking than Karol, so there.

Not much to say on that one.  We did it the “regular” route from Peck Road in Maplecrest.  Where there was snow and ice on the way up, there was mud, flowing water and ice on the way down.  And wind all around.  It was a great day to be out and though we both got a little wet here and there, we were both well outfitted with the proper gear and fairly floated up the mountain in a cloud of waterproof and goretex goodness.  Note the ‘and’: goretex is NOT waterproof AND breathable.

Katie led the way up and down the mountain and we did the 6 miles in just about 3 hours – 2 mph is not too bad, especially for her fourth time out hiking in the Cats.  She’s improving every hike and I’m blessed to be able to be there for it.  She’s 30, btw, and will shank you quicker than a lifer in prison, so don’t get any ideas fellas.  Seriously: they call her ‘icepick’ in Astoria.  Oh yeah, she’ll cut a b*tch.

Anyway, like I was saying: having the opportunity to watch my sister learn how to walk on- and off-trail up and down mountains in the woods has been a wonderful experience so far.  It’s been very good for our relationship overall.

I’d start with the most attractive profiles, but that would only cover about 3-5% of all of them, and soon I’d be out of chicks to email.  Then I’d go from “damn!  I’d effin marry her” to “maybe she’s more interesting in person – you never know” to “this one probably doesn’t get as many emails as the others – maybe she’ll email me back” to “she’s brand-new and probably hasn’t gotten that many emails yet” and finally to “fuckit, her self-esteem is probably low enough to go out with me”.  No shit.  I’d look at the same profiles over and over and over.  It was quite hypnotizing and frustrating.

And discouraging.

And a helluva waste of time.

Then one day I decided I spent way too much time on an obviously unproductive errand and deleted those sites from my home pages.  Having to actually type the URL in was an excellent deterrant to getting caught trolling the internet for chicks for hours at a time every night.

I’m halfway back to my old tricks.  The nice thing about this time is that I have a relatively been-there-done-that kind of feeling, so I don’t anticipate that I’ll be wiling away the rest of my winter staring at internet dating sites.  Not that I didn’t just spend an hour sending (to my mind) clever little emails out.

I think the key this time around is not to put my head on the pillow and say “please god, if *that* one will just email me back, I won’t ask for anything else ever again.”

Pfft.  Good luck with that, dickhead.

Suppose I tell you about the Grid, dear reader?  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before.  The Grid is 420 mountain-climbs.  Mine is in Excel, so that’s kind of the way I think of it overall.  The row labels are the 35 highest peaks in the Catskills; the column labels are the months of the year.  35 x 12 = 420.  Each of the 35 mountains climbed in each of the months of the year.  I don’t know of anybody who’s done it in a year (climbed all 35 mountains in each of 12 consecutive months); it’ll probably take me another year – starting in August 2011 – to complete (ending in August 2012).

I’m currently at 123 of 420; I’ve climbed 11 of the 35 in December.  I doubt I’ll climb the other 24 mountains this December.  I have 4 left to go in November and 10 left to go in October.  I’m not sure about September:  I started keeping track probably back in June or so, but really only started making a concerted effort on this gargantuan list in September or October, I believe.  July and August have traditionally been light hiking months – in the Catskills, at least – for me.

The nice thing about having this particular list to work on is that I can use it as a means of narrowing down hike possibilities for the weekends.  For the last I’m-not-sure-how-long – hell, maybe the last couple of months – I’ve been hiking (or, to be more specific, peakbagging) both days of the weekend.  I wouldn’t say I’m in phenomenal shape right now, but I’m in pretty good shape.  If the Ted of early December 2009 were to hike with the Ted who’s writing this to you right now, dear reader, the former Ted would say that the latter Ted (this one, that is) is in phenomenal shape – there’s no way he’d be able to keep up with me right now.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been hiking one day of the weekend (generally Sundays) with other people, and the other day (generally Saturdays) solo.  I’ve been blowing my doors off on Saturdays and still doing decent-length/strain-level hikes on Sundays.  This weekend is the first in which I don’t have any particularly strenuous hike planned for Saturday.  Sunday I’ll be hiking with Katie, Scott and Debbie – we’ll be climbing Rusk Mountain (and possibly Hunter and SW Hunter, though I kind of doubt it).  I have no idea what to hike tomorrow (which will be today – Saturday, that is – in about 5 minutes); though that’s not entirely true:  I’m currently considering hiking the Burroughs Range (Slide, Cornell, the Wittenberg) tomorrow.

After last weekend (trip report below), my Achilles tendon was a bit sore.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I don’t remember which foot was bothering me now, because it seems to have gone away.  I’m tempted to take the day off tomorrow – er, today – to allow it a bit more time to heal, but the thought of bagging down my December Grid by three peaks is very tempting.  Plus, I enjoy the solo time in the woods.

I’ve been wondering of late if I’m hiking too much.  While I could certainly use the day off tomorrow – I have plenty of errands to run and housekeeping tasks to take care of that just don’t seem to get done during the week – I’m fairly certain that I can take the short route for those three peaks and be done relatively early.  I’m pretty fast right now, dear reader:  especially on a trail.  Besides, if I took the day off, all I’d really do would be sleep until 11 or 1 and then futz around, wondering which task I should get started on, and wishing I’d woken up earlier.  And that’s a fact – there is no “just wake up early and get started on the errands” on a day off.  Not for me.  Days off are for sleeping in.  And I haven’t had one of those in a LONG time.

So yeah, I think I’m going to hit the sack now and wake up tomorrow to hike the Burroughs Range.  I hope my Achilles doesn’t fuck with me – I’d rather not have the soreness continue into Sunday and the rest of the week.

Oh, and I think I’ve got an idea for a novel.  I’ll need to start typing out an outline and such pretty soon, before the motivation leaves me.

Pleasant dreams, dear reader.  I look forward to seeing you soon irl.

by Ted Wallace
Age 34

Step #1:  Do it in two days.  The Devil’s Path in a single day is for . . . well, I’m not going to tell you who it’s for right now.  Maybe when I’m a little older.

Step #2:  Don’t start from Prediger Road, start from the Long Path TH at the end of 16.  You can shave at least a couple of flat boring miles off.

Step #3:  Don’t sleep outside in late November.  Sleep somewhere warm and dry that offers hot showers.  And eat like royalty when you’re not on the trail (do so when ON the trail for an even more advanced move).

Step #4:  When planning the route, be as flexible as possible.  Euthanize, castrate or tranquilize any alpha route-planners in the party well in advance of the trip itself.

Step #5:  Do it with really cool people – you’ll never notice the miles go by.

Last Saturday (11/27) we did the eastern section of the DP.  ‘We’ being yours ever truly, SSMonte288 (or whatever effin number I can’t remember; hereinafter referred to as “Bill”), Halia (of H&F; hereinafter “Heather” or “Heather The Famous Author”), debmonster (hereinafter “Debbie” or “the monster”), and Valerie (hereinafter “Valerie” or “Valtron”).

We slept at Bill’s house (well, it wasn’t really HIS house, but I’m not going to get into the whole story of how that worked – suffice to say that we all had warm beds and hot showers) on Friday and Saturday nights.  SAT question-worthy car spotting problems were solved and cars were spotted, un-spotted and re-spotted on Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday at some point but I don’t remember because Sunday was a long day.

Mudhook’s TR describing the trail conditions of the eastern section of the DP on Sunday were relatively close to what we experienced on Saturday: some ice (microspikes were used), not much mud (but it was there), and a general chill in the air.  Snow fell lightly and sparsely but steadily throughout the day on Saturday.  I lost my sunglasses while bushwacking up the first ledge on Indian Head, so if you find them, please return them.  Do not attempt to invoke the I Look Better in Them Than You rule because that’s frankly impossible.  As a matter of fact, please send your girlfriend to me with the sunglasses as well.

Sunday was much nicer because the sun was out.  Heather was on the KHP hike, so, being that she hasn’t yet figured out how to be in two places at once (amateur), she wasn’t on the western section of the DP with us on Sunday as well. Seriously, that’s like negative mom-cred, Heather. 

I don’t remember what time we started out from the Notch Lake PA on Sunday, but our timing was perfect, because by the time we got to the lookout on West Kill (Buck Ridge?), FatVegan (hereinafter “Scott” or “that a$hole” or “my f*cken hetero lifemate”) and my sister Katie (hereinafter “my sister Katie” or just “Katie”) had just arrived as well.  They hiked in from the western TH terminus of the DP on Spruceton Road (or, as daLunartik would say “Sprucetown Road”).  Then we all hiked out together (Bill, Katie, Scott, Debbie, Ted, Valerie).  <– Ted sandwiches are recommended.  I ran off and bagged Hunter and Leavitt while Bill, Debbie and Valerie walked a little slower to give me room to catch up.  Peakbagging might be a disease, but I can stop whenever I want.  Scott and I bagged St. Anne’s Peak on the way down as well.  What?! It’s on a list.

After finishing up at the DP SR TH (nobody wanted to bag North Dome & Sherrill and I’d already done them in November), we drove all over creation to pick up our respective cars and then headed to that restaurant called Hickory on 28 near the Thruway, where we all gorged ourselves on BBQ.  FatVegan had a salad and the owner came out and led the whole restaurant in a good round of pointing and laughing, which is always good for the soul.

I’m not going to tell you any more about the hike itself because it was a porn hike and I don’t feel like giving you no0bie lurkers an opportunity to fap-fap-fap away at your computer when we did all the work.  I’m not saying we did anything dirty in the woods (nor am I saying we didn’t), but were I to attempt to relate the reasons for our laughter that were involved over the 20-something miles of the DP last weekend, your head would probably explode.  Seriously:  it’s for your own good, nOob. The secret to ripped abs is lots and lots of laughing.

Here are the tracklogs on my EveryTrail page:

11/27/2010 DP East

11/28/2010 DP West

I’m sure I’m forgetting things.  Scott, Katie, Heather, Debbie, Bill (forum members): please add whatever you think might be relevant.  As I said probably a hundred times, it was wonderful to hike with you.

That’s what I’m doing right now, dear reader.  Not necessarily making art, but flow-pecking away at my keyboard, putting thought and feeling into the words, the meanings behind them, and the actual striking of the keys.  Some strikes are soft and smooth and liquid; some are the cracks of my finger-hammers, adding emphasis to what I’m saying. 

So my friend Heather was once described as someone who was walking around with her hands out, palms up in offering.   In her hands she held her love and she went from person to person, offering it to them.  Offering them her love.  But nobody was accepting it from her, let alone exchanging it for theirs.  And Heather then flipped that analogy (metaphor?) around to describe me.  And she was right.  And that was a joyous occasion for me, to have such  wonderful description applied to me – because it fit so well and felt so fitting.  And it was a shitty feeling to have my feelings/vibes/emotions pinned down like that, a butterfly on the lepidopterist’s board. 

Because who really wants to be walking around, trying to give away their love to anyone who will take it, hoping that whoever does take it is worthy of it and will have a ≥ love to exchange for it?  That’s a crappy spot to be in.  Especially if one plays a lot of chess.  It’s like throwing capital pieces away in exchange for pawns that might actually be queens in disguise (which, as someone who plays a lot of chess can tell you, dear reader, doesn’t happen) or in exchange for better board position.  For what?  The pawns (years?  days?) that are getting slowly picked off with no capital pieces left to protect them?

Yay morbidity.  Cry me a river, you fucking emo punk.  It’s not emo if you’re not crying – Right.  Now.

So yeah, match.com is just another internet dating site, lol.  Nothing to report yet on that front, dear reader, though I hope for at least a funny story or two in the next six months for my hundred-twenty dollars.

Work is going pretty well.  I’ve got some kind of weird business pheromones going on right now:  all kinds of people want to meet with me.  Maybe to sell me things, maybe to just network.  They’re kind of coming out of the woodwork.  People are listening to my opinions and asking me if they can Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V some of the shit from my emails into their articles (and if it’s ok to give me a “thanks” in the article).  More niceguyted is slipping into my emails than I’m used to.  It feels weird – like I’m doing something wrong.  But people who know what the fuck they’re talking about because they’ve been in this business for fucking ever are nodding their heads when I’m expressing an opinion about how things are or should be or what’s coming down the pike.  I keep waiting to get the “what the fuck do you think you were doing when you said that??” email.  But it hasn’t come yet, and I’m getting just too busy to run every email by someone else to see if what I’m saying qualifies as a good line for the company to take.  Things come across my desk at the end of the day on the other side of the country that need an answer NOW, and everybody else has gone home to have their glass of wine while eating dinner with the wife and kids.

I have a lunch meeting tomorrow with an IR guy from the midwest I know from twitter, and will be training in this executive compensation modeling software on Thursday and Friday.  I’m looking forward to that:  I know what most of the words mean, but it’ll help to learn how to string them together into sentences and paragraphs.  By which I mean actually know what the fuck I’m talking about instead of kind of halfway faking it. 

My bar application is just about finished.  I’m going to mail it in tomorrow, so that I’m well ahead of the 12/15 due date.  There are a couple of things I need to get to complete the application, but that will require making a trip down to Annapolis and DC to straighten out some fines and get license abstracts and stuff.  I’ll take a day off next week and do that.  Meanwhile, I’m sending emails, editing documents, frigging around with spreadsheets, downloading stuff and all kinds of other things at work, while listening to bar prep lectures on constitutional law and criminal law and real property in the background.  I have no idea how much of that I’ll actually retain, but I figure it’s better than nothing.

So yeah, I’ve had enough AyePhone interruptions here at the Starbucks on 17 south that my finger-peck/flow groove is kind of gone.  Sort of.  I think I’ve just run out of things to say.  Mark your calendar, dear reader:  that’s a first.

So.  The last two weeks.  Here’s a quick run-down of what I’ve been up to, then I’m off to read my book (The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks):

Got back from Taiwan and haven’t stopped moving.  Barely had time to do the laundry or a more than a cursory apartment cleaning.  That said, I don’t live in filth:  I have a place for (pretty much) everything, and (pretty much) everything is in its place.

Work is paying for me to take the NJ bar exam (and the $3k prep class), so that I can be the company’s General Counsel.  With the exception of (approximately) three things, I finished the application yesterday.  It needs to be in by 12/15.  I’ll have to send it in semi-incomplete:  driving records and the like will take some time to get (NJ and DC licenses, plus a 5-year old ticket in MD to pay for).  Pain in the ass, but it’s kind of forcing me to tie off a bunch of loose ends that have been hanging out for a while now.

I bought a bunch of new hiking gear and have been bagging peaks like a madman – 8 this past weekend alone.  The hikes on Saturday and Sunday were both awesome.  Katie’s also been coming hiking on Sundays, which has been particularly wonderful.  Everybody says she’s a natural, and I agree.

I joined Match.com tonight.  Not really sure why, except that it’s been a long time coming.  I’ll be happy to cross this one off of the sites I’ve tried.  Six month subscription – I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes.  Hopefully I’ll have some fun internet dating stories for y’all.  Obviously, falling in love would be the bestest, but I’ll be happy with a relatively intelligent and achingly beautiful make-out artist.  Shit, that’ll probably qualify as ‘love’ for me – I’m pretty shallow, you know.

Work is on/off crazy busy, but it’s all good stuff:  things I want to do.  I have an office with a window and a door and everything, which makes it MUCH easier to stay late.  Which I’ve been doing quite a bit.

I have three regular scrabble opponents on my iPhone app (all of whom I know) and three regular chess opponents on a separate iPhone app (none of whom I know).  And I’ve been devouring sci-fi novels like it’s Thanksgiving at the homeless shelter.  So, like it or not, I’m getting smarter and sharper every day.  Don’t be scared, I’m too busy (and slightly content) to become a tower-shooter just yet.

Slightly content.  Mostly content.  The winds of change are a-blowin’ – I felt that tonight as I was driving from somewhere to anotherwhere.  Not while I was signing up for Match – I’m pretty much just going through the motions on that one, not holding out for any kind of success.  I’m a shitty internet dater; I just don’t come off all that well in pixels.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Happy Thanksgiving, if’n I don’t talk to you, dear reader.

Where did 2010 go?

BLM to McKinley Hollow: 5 Peak “Backpack” 11/20/2010

I’m a peakbagger, not a backpacker: there’s a difference.  On Saturday I combined the two – and made a bunch of mistakes.

The first one was not calling ahead to say that I’d be climbing Graham and Doubletop – which are on private land. Total n_o_O_b move.  I didn’t even remember it until I was halfway along Beaver Kill Road, and by then my cell phone had no service.

The second mistake (overall weekend planning-wise) was parking at the TH right next to Balsam Lake.  Sure, it made for an easy ascent to the lean-to on Friday night, but it also gave FatVegan and Katie an extra hour and a half in the car with my stinky ass on the way to get my car after climbing the Blackheads on Sunday.

In any case, the walk in was chilly – I wish I’d brought more than just Smartwool glove liners with me (and wish, and wish again the rest of the weekend), but I had decently warm gear for the rest of me besides my hands.  My 850-fill down codpiece is simplydivine.  I got to the LT around 11PM or so and set up my 15-degree bag.  The wind blew all night long and I can totally see how primitive man thought the gods might be angry with them.  Maybe for not calling ahead.  Watching me hang a bear bag for the first time ever was the eppy-tome of comedy, and a mouse named Smiley ate my midnight Clif bar snack while I was sleeping.  Caught the little focker, too, but he just snarled at me that he’d get his buddies if I didn’t roll back over and shut the ef up.  So I went with the whole better-part-of-valour thing, figuring I still had a nice weekend of hiking in front of me and how little fun that would be with broken legs.  Whatever, Smiley, I’ll be back with RedCloud and Molly and then you’ll be the one crying himself to sleep.

Saturday morning was cold, cold, cold and everything – I mean everything – was slate grey.  I had about a liter of water left in my bladder (the one in my pack, that is), so I decided to get my blood flowing and not pump from the spring beside the LT – I woke up at 9AM, so I was running later than expected anyway.  Mistakes #3 and 4, if you’re keeping count.  The mouse thing doesn’t count.

Summitted BLM pretty quickly, tapped the fire tower with one of my poles and smiled at the cabin on my way down the hill.  I passed two dudes on their way up the mountain who informed me that today (Saturday, that is) is (was?) the first day of shotgun season.  Blimey.  Then I took the easy way up Graham.

After Graham, I swung on down and up to Doubletop (Dear Graham/Doubletop col, I <3 you.  Sincerely, Ted), whereupon I considered eating lunch.  While at the can and looking hungrily at my map, in an effort to decide whether I was going to follow my original plan and head down Doubletop and ‘wack up Eagle from closer to Seager (mistake #5 – not the best route-planning: “it seemed like a good idea during the week” = famous last words) or take the land-bridge over to Big Indian, a hunter came upon me.  Luckily for me, he was hunting the summit at that point in the day, not NGTs.  The hunter’s name is Red and he was pretty much my angel for the day.  He’s also a 3500 Club member with a number in like the 300s.  Red confirmed that ‘wacking over to Big Indian would be quicker, told me that there’s a decent trail along the state line, and that I could feel free to backtrack him to the southern summit.  Thanks Red.

So, armed with this knowledge, I backtracked Red’s monster boot soles to the southern summit of Doubletop, took a bead on Big Indian, and headed downhill.  Passed by the plane wreckage.  Meh.  At least I know where it is now.  On the way down Doubletop, my inner wuss whispered tales of lonely death in my ear, but I ignored him because he’s stupid and hasn’t been right yet.

I hit the Pine Hill/West Branch Trail just east of the highway I mean herd path to the summit can.  I gave some serious thought to signing in at the can and officially bagging six peaks for the day – I mean seriously, what peakbagger gets that close to a summit and doesn’t stand on top of it? – but there was only a little light left in the day (it was around 4/4:30PM) and I climbed BI in November back in like aught-eight.  Peakbagging triage – gotta love it.

I pretty much hit my stride on the PH/WB bushwack I mean trail – “a mile eating lope”, if you will.  Up and over Eagle (it was dark at this point), Haynes (which doesn’t count for a single damned list), and down to the junction at the top of McKinley Hollow.  I dropped my pack there and jogged up to the top of Balsam (which I’d already done at night as well), sent a couple of texts, and swung on down to the LT in McKinley Hollow, wherein I set up my tent BECAUSE I WAS COLD AND DIDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS FOR THE RULES AT THAT POINT, and went to bed.  That was around 8 or 9PM – nobody else was in the LT and I was way in the corner anyway.  Mistake #6? Maybe, maybe not – I still slept cold, but not as cold as Friday night.  Just before I hit the LT, I pumped four liters of water and guzzled most of it while making dinner.  One liter of water is not enough for that hike.  My pee is still coming out like toothpaste.  Read a bit before bed.

Woke up on time and made it down to the TH at 8:30AM to meet FatVegan and Katie for our Sunday hike with Halia and Flammeus (and Iske, Lily & RedCloud).

Thank you, Monte Bell down jacket and pants: your downy goodness was perfectly glorious.  And thank you, Newports:  I smoked a pack of you and was truly alive with pleasure all day.  Most of the day was spent, btw, alternately humming Bach violin and cello concertos and singing Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” – Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was in there as well (though I really only repeated two lines over and over again), because of the jingle-jangle of my microspikes against my pack when I wasn’t wearing them.  When not immersed in one of the foregoing, my thoughts often turned to scenarios in which I say to mudhook (irl) “yeah, but I make this look good“.  Thank you, FatVegan, for the birthday present of microspikes (I wore them almost all day long) and a new headlamp (I no longer have beam envy).

So, I’m not a backpacker, but I did this all with my “big” pack on – which isn’t quite as big as it used to be.  I’m going to guess it’s around 20/25 lbs (down from something like 40).  That’s a nice sense of accomplishment – getting the pack weight down, but also hiking strongly at around 11 or 12 miles with the heavy(ish) pack on and most of the steps behind me having been ‘wacked.   5 more for the grid on Saturday, plus 3 on Sunday puts me at 24/35 for November and only 304 to go. 

Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.  The missing parts are where I teleported because I was bored and have a Garmin 60CSx, which allows for teleportation when one inputs the Konami Code.

Rocky, Lone, Table, Peekamoose 11/13/2010

Ok, just so nobody thinks I’ve stopped hiking, I climbed those four mountains last Saturday with debmonster and Vladimir (a monster in his own right).  Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.  Note the circuituous route between Rocky and Lone: we really didn’t have to deal with too much pine push-through (I know someone else was bemoaning the density of that particular section earlier this week on the forum).

The Denning PA wasn’t plowed, which was ok because there wasn’t any snow, and the Fisherman’s Path is much more evident than it was a couple of weeks ago after the flood.

We decided to get the boringness of the Fisherman’s Path out of the way first (rather than making it the way home), and I’m glad we did.  I think we only crossed tributaries of the Neversink while on the FP – we basically stayed to the right (southish) the whole time, which involved a little sidehilling and whatnot, but was probably better than six different crossings.

Just like in the title: up Rocky, over to Lone, then to Table, and a quick out & back to Peek before we headed back to Denning.  Found a BSA hiking stick by the can at Lone (and replaced the calling card of mine that mudhook stole from the next ex-Mrs. Wallace – the one that was in the canister).  As soon as life slows down, I’ll mail the hiking pole to the guy (sorry bro, I forgot your name).  We caught up on Monday on the 3500 Club Yahoo group.  Thanks, btw, for leaving the staff at the can: the laughter the three of us got on the way home that touched on (pun, and a good example of the forthcoming) all different scenarios involving “the boy scout’s pole” was priceless.

PS:  Molly, I know that DFH really means Dog From Heaven.  Can’t wait to meet you in the flesh, sweetheart.

“But Perelandra is an ocean world,” you say, “though there be fruits of flavour divine in that place, there are no shores.”

And I would say that you speak true, but that I still come from the shores, for the shores are where the seas end and I am not welcome there on Perelandra.  For there are but two who dwell in that place:  a King and a Queen and they are innocence personified.  They know neither clothing nor pain, wisdom nor shame; they are the untouched.  Vice does not exist on Perelandra, except that which dwelt within me; nor is virtue known in that place.

So come, sit:   your hearth is warm enough tonight to hold back the cold, the candles’ golden glow is enough to hold back the darkness – for a little while longer – and I’ve the time and inclination to spin for you a yarn. 

******   ******   ******

“Melt your fucken face, man, I’ll tell you what!”

“Huh?”

“This fucken squeeze, man, what’s it fucken called again?”

“What?”

“The drug, man, the drug we’ve been doing all night.  What’s it called??”

“No idea.”

“Well I’ll tell ya, it’s fucken good.  What were we talking about again?”

“Huh?”

“Dude, you were telling me about banging that chick – the one from Venus or wherever.  The dream you had.  She was hot.  A queen or something, and you were like totally raping her in front of her boyfriend.”

“The King?”

“Yeah, yeah, the king.  You were like fucking this queenie chick against her will in front of her king-man boyfriend and she was all like ‘ooh ooh, give it to me.’  Goddamn this is good shit.  What did you call it again?”

******   ******   ******

When I was a boy and just out of seminary school, I went to a Doors concert and heard Jim Morrison sing his song ‘Soft Parade’ – it changed my life.  I was raised to be a good Christian man and enrolled to become a priest just as I was hitting puberty.  I was uneasy with the thoughts and feelings I was having.  Maybe ‘uneasy’ isn’t a strong enough term.  The feelings, I just knew they were evil and I didn’t know what to do about them.  I prayed and prayed, but it just didn’t seem to be working.  I would kneel at the foot of my bed for hours, head bent and hands folded, my knees bruising on the hard wood beneath them, and pray as I had been taught.  I begged the Holy Father to remove the evilness growing inside and outside of me and try not to think about the gap between my mattress and box spring.  It was hard, I mean really hard to go to sleep some nights with the evilness that seemed to be raging everywhere.  I could barely sit through class and I can’t tell you how many pencils broke in my balled fist as I attempted to keep my eyes on my book or on the blackboard, instead of askance at my classmates.  After I had been studying for the priesthood for about three years, I left.  I told them that I was going to take a sabbatical, but the truth was that I was succumbing to the evil.  It never left me, even as I poured my tainted heart and soul into my studies, begging the Lord take it from me or to help me understand why the evil plagued me so.  But those answers never came, and I am but a man, full of weakness.  I wandered about for a while, eventually stopping at a gathering in Gold Creek Park, where I heard Morrison’s voice and words, forever changing me.  That was July 25, 1969:  the Seattle Pop Festival in Woodinville WA.  I took my first drink that night and did my first drug during that Doors show.  Shortly after I lost my virginity in front of more people than I can remember, Led Zeppelin took the stage and the rest of my life is but a footnote to that night. 

I’ve cleaned my apartment a bit, smoked a bunch of cigarettes, and put my work paperwork in some semblance of order for tomorrow.  My plan is to go in wicked early and hopefully leave early.  I didn’t sleep on the flight back from Taiwan, which made for a 20-something hour day on Sunday, followed by around 18 hours of sleep (give or take – DST has me kind of messed up, too), so I’m not really sure where I am in terms of sleep schedule or how to get back to normal.  I really don’t want to have anything to do with those hard-wakeups – the ones where I really don’t want to get out of bed, even though it’s time to do so.  But I suppose they’re inevitable.

I hadn’t really planned anything work- or life-wise past this Taiwan trip.  Work-wise, I need to spend some time at my desk, sending well-written follow-up emails to the contacts I made.  I also need to put my expense report together – that’s going to be a doozie:  about $2k just for the hotel and conference.  It’ll be a nice chunk of change coming back to me, and by the goddess, if anybody second-guesses anything on that report, I’m going to shit on their keyboard and rub it in with their face.  I was surely not extravagant in my expenditures.

I also have a handful of emails sitting in my inbox that need responses and a couple of small projects to complete that I was working on while in Taiwan.  Email is kind of fucked up – they moved from one server to another on Saturday, so I need to figure out what’s going on with that.  The only emails in my inbox on my work iPhone are the ones I’ve received since Saturday, and none of my folders are present.  The Outlook on my computer won’t sync with the server, and, from some of the emails in my iPhone inbox, it would seem as though my rules and alerts have been disabled.  I can’t get onto the webmail function either, so I don’t know which emails are on the server and which aren’t.  I’ll be pretty pissed if all the emails between 10/29 and 11/6 have been lost.  Email is pretty important at my gig.

So beyond getting to the office, figuring out what the fuck is up with the email system, sending out my nice-to-meet-yous, putting my expense report together and finding out why the fuck I haven’t been given a key to the office yet, I really don’t know what to do with myself.  If I had a key to the office, I’d have gone in tonight and sent out the n-t-m-ys and put my expense report together, but fuck me, I’m not driving all the way to Bloomfield in the hope that the side door is unlocked.

Plus, I think some of the guys in the office are expecting some sort of report for me on how things went.  I’m actually kind of anxious about that and feeling a bit like I should be able to get right back to work, jetlag issues aside.  Well fuck that.  I’m going to go into the office in a couple of hours, coffee and taylor ham egg and cheese on an everything bagel salt pepper ketchup in hand, do as many of the things I can before I’m too tired to do any more, and go the fuck home.  The jetlag will work itself out, I’m sure, but I’m sure as hell not going to bend over backwards any farther than I already have.  Those motherfuckers barely gave me any time to prepare for this trip, so they can damn well hang out until I’m good and ready to give them my report – whatever the fuck that’s supposed to look like.

Humility, Ted:  humility.  A “worker among workers” and all that. 

Yeah, right.  I’m trying.  I’m a much better worker when I’m not hanging out waiting for someone to unlock the door or fix the email system.

No idea what I’m doing this weekend.  Friday is my birthday and that’s the last I’ll say on that.  I don’t do birthday celebrations.  Luckily, I was sick unto death on by birthday last year (and for the sandwiching days as well).  I’ll probably do dinner with my family on Friday night because my sister wants to (it’ll be a good excuse to bring my mother flowers), but that’s about it. 

Hiking.  Definitely hiking on Saturday and/or Sunday.  I have a whole bunch of mountains to climb for my November grid, so there’s that.  I’m considering going on this winter camping deathmarch in the first couple of days of December and I’ll need to get out and do some wicked long hard hikes if I want to get in shape for that.

I’m currently feeling a kind of violent and restless loneliness that comes over me from time to time.  The one where I don’t return phone calls or emails because they all seem to be just one more straw on this camel’s already burdened back.  It’s not an entirely unwelcome feeling; I just wish I had a direction in which to point myself.

I’ll sigh here, if you don’t mind, dear reader.

*sigh*

We’re over the Aleutian Islands right now, 2827 miles into the trip back to the States (4158 miles to go).  Time is so weird.  Check this out:

I left the hotel this morning at 7:30, got to Taipei Tao Yuan Airport about 40 minutes later, and checked in for my 10:30 flight to Tokyo Narita Airport.  I guess the flight must have been close to four hours, though it sure didn’t seem like it.  I really want to say we were only in the air for a couple of hours.  The plane definitely didn’t take off until 10:30, and I think it was about 2:30 by the time I was off the plane in Tokyo.  I had about three hours to kill at NRT (I’d basically been reading during the time not spent doing getting-on-or-off-a-plane stuff) before we took off at 5:30.

The flight from NRT to EWR is about 11 hours long.  We’re landing in Newark at about 3:30PM (daylight savings time – fall back an hour).

As far as Sunday, November 7, 2010 goes, I will technically spend only 8 hours traveling (7:30AM to 3:30PM), even though I will have spent 21 hours in transit.  Weird, huh?

The clock on my computer says 8:44AM.  Whatever the fuck that means.  I think that’s the time on the east coast, which means my body thinks it’s almost 9PM.  Whatever the fuck THAT means.  I’m not sure if that’s bedtime or what, but I think it’s close.  I’d basically just started sleeping through the night, too.

No biggie.  I’m kind of looking forward to seeing my stuff again – sleeping in my own bed and stuff like that.  Which is not to say that I’ve been itching to get home or anything – I’m pretty sure I’d have no problem getting used to living out of a suitcase, but the fact of the matter is that I DON’T currently live out of a suitcase, so it’ll be nice to get home and hear some Bach from my stereo with the dodgy speaker.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m neither excited to get home, nor am I sad that my trip is over – or any extreme emotion in between.  The trip’s over, and that’s that.  I’m going back to routine (after a week or so of jetlag), and that’s that.

Before I started District 9, I finished House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.  Great book.  Except for the end.  Very disappointing.  The bastard really shat the bed on this one.  I’m talking excellent idea, but horrible, horrible follow-through.  It’s an undisputable axiom of writing that “if you show the audience a gun in the first act, it HAS to go off in the third”.  Yes, there are certainly writers who break this rule, but you and I aren’t one of them, dear reader.  Well, I might be, but you’re certainly not.  Seriously:  best way to fuck up a book:  loose ends.  Plot threads that never get tied off.  Maybe it’s just a Mensa thing, but an author that leaves me wondering what happened to a character at the end of a story is rarely an author I will speak positively about.  Again, there are exceptions to this rule, but they only serve to prove them.  And Alastair Reynolds, you incredible genius of a fuckhead, YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THE EXCEPTIONS.

Dear Alastair’s editor/publisher/whatever:  you suck the big dirty dongus.  I’m talking moose cock.  Huge.  Gobble gobble, you fucking homo (I’m assuming you’re a dude – I don’t have the appropriate vocabulary words or metaphors if you’re a woman).  Get on the ball and make your boy write a fucking ending.  Are you even reading these books?  This guy could be one of the greats.  His concepts are completely original.  His ability to manipulate perspectives is something I’ve never come across before.  Ever.  And I’ve read a lot of books.  Apparently more than you, you fucking shit eater.

Seriously, dear reader:  the perspective manipulation thing is really awesome.  Nobody does it, and Reynolds does it so well. I think the only of Reynolds’ books I’ve left to read is Diamond Dogs, Turquiose Days, which I believe consists of two novellas.  I think most of his other books take place in the same basic universe, but this one (House of Suns) consists of completely different concepts.  It’s masterfully done, but THE ENDING FUCKING SUCKS.  I think there must have been another chapter that just didn’t get published.  Probably a handful of them that ended up in bin, but fuck, man, you could have picked one of them.  Ending the book on the note you did was like pissing in the meringue.  Or something.  What takes a long time to make and involves a lot of steps that have to be done just right in order for it to come out ok at all?  Not meringue, though that’s a nice image.  Your unborn child’s placenta?

By the way, dear reader, I have no idea how I’m going to find my car when I get to Newark.  I know I’m parked in one of the long-term lots – I think they’re 6 and 7 (I’m probably in 6 because it sounds closer), but I’m not entirely sure.  I left my ticket in the car, so as not to have to worry about losing it while I was away or trying to find it when I got back (smart thinking, no?), but I never wrote down (or even looked at) the lot/area identifiers where I parked.  I know generally where the car is in relation to one of the shuttle stops, but not much else.  I was wondering why I had that déjà vu/I’m forgetting something type of feeling when I got on the shuttle bus last week.  Oh well, at least it’ll be light outside when I get back and drive around in the shuttle bus for a while.

4517 miles in now; 2461 miles to go.  We’re technically over the Northwest Territories of Canada – just near the borders of British Columbia and Alberta.  I just watched the Bond flick Quantum of Solace.  It was ok; nothing special.  The chick with the Spanish accent was hot.  The clock on my computer says 11:28AM; it’s 1:28AM back in Asia, according to the trip info screen.  No idea how that works.  I suppose I could fall asleep right now, though I don’t really feel like doing so.  I don’t feel much like reading right now, either.  I have that book of Phil Dick’s short stories, but I think I’m going to just watch another movie.  4h 6mins to EWR.

Only a couple of hours left now.  1:52 to be exact.  5951 miles traveled; 1025 to go.  Yay for traveling halfway around the world.  Twice.  In a week.  I think.  I just watched Star Trek (the new one).  I saw it in the theaters when it came out – whenever that was.  Long enough ago that it was worth watching again (sort of), but not so long ago that I didn’t remember most of it.  I still don’t feel  like reading, so I suppose I’ll just go right ahead and watch Hero – or at least the beginning of it.  Jet Li rules.  There’s probably not enough time left in the trip to get all the way through it, so nobody should see me balling my eyes out at the end.

So that’s it.  I watched Hero and fell asleep for the last half-hour or so before the plane landed.  Back in NJ now.

So here I am, sitting at a Starbucks with my tall black coffee, ogling Asian chicks and smelling the smells of Taipei.  I’ve been telling myself that I wouldn’t just get coffee at Starbucks (this is the third I’ve been to so far) and try some of the other coffee shops, but I figured Starbucks would have wi-fi.  This one doesn’t, which is why I’m typing these words to you in Word, dear reader.  So I lost out on both accounts.  Although not really, because I’m still typing to you while drinking my delicious and familiar tall black coffee.  There’s a little poodle-dog in a stroller with a blue and white striped t-shirt and red overalls on, looking expectantly at me right now, as though I’m going to get up and get his mommy.  His haircut makes him look like a monkey.  I “what do you want, little monkey-dog?” in one of those baby-only voices, but I don’t think he spoke enough English to take offense.

Taipei isn’t much different from any other city.  Or maybe I should say “not much different from the Chinatown section” of any other city.  Except it’s all Chinatown here, Taipei being located in the Republic of China and all.  Not everything smells like Chinese food, but that’s really only on the main streets.  If I wander off into the side-street areas, everything smells like Chinese food.  Which is not a bad smell, but it’s certainly not going to be the determining factor in my decision to never leave Taiwan.

Did I mention how fucking gorgeous I find Asian women to be?  THAT might be a determining factor in my decision to never leave Taiwan.  Not ALL Asian women, of course – there are less-than-beautiful (on the outside) ones, just like in any other country.  But I really have to say that even the so-so looking Asian chicks (on an Asian-only scale) are fucking beautiful to me.  It’s like my bar has been lowered, though that simile is too much a negative one to be properly descriptive.  Anyway, there’s lots of eye-candy for this skinny honky here in Taipei.

November is National Novel Writing Month and although I’m signed up for NaNoWriMo, I haven’t written a single word of my novel – nor have I spent any time on the NaNoWriMo site.  As much as admitting it feels like weakness to me, I’m dealing with a bit of sensory overload right now.  I’m not sure how badly jetlagged I am, but I’ve only been getting a few hours of sleep at a time in the past few days.  Last night I went to bed around 11, woke up at 2, then again at 4:30, 6:30 and finally 7:30 to start the day.  There were probably a handful of other wakeups in among those, but they’re the ones I can remember.

So, as a result, I really don’t want to do much but hang out and read my book.  Getting to Eslite was an accomplishment; there are two temples I’d like to visit (and say some prayers): one for a warrior and one for a doctor (the temples, not the prayers – those will be for me).  I’m for whirled peas and blowjobs, but I really only pray for the latter.  And by blowjobs, I mean love in its purest sense. 

That’s not really true; I just like the way it sounds.  My prayers mostly take the form of requests for the ability to be virtuous (humility, etc.) and that the Universe continue on as it’s supposed to be – I guess there’s a hope/prayer in that latter one that an underlying characteristic of the Universe is that things work out for the best for all involved (in a relative sense, obviously).  Not sure if that makes much sense, and I don’t really know that I’m optimistic enough to believe that the Universe is inherently good, but I’m trying to be (hence the prayers).

But yeah, there are certainly a lot of things I’d like to do while I’m here in Taiwan, but I’m not sure that I feel like running around like a tourist right now.  I‘m enjoying just sitting here and soaking up the atmosphere.  Which is wicked sticky right now:  it’s been threatening to rain all day and it’s probably 75 degrees out.  Add that to the smog and you’ve got a great recipe for a sticky Ted.

Tuesday night (the night before the conference started) I went to the pre-conference dinner, which was in the Yakuza-feeling restaurant on the top (86^th) floor of Taipei 101 (a wicked tall building – the world’s tallest building from 2004 to 2010; surpassed by Burj Khalifa).  On the limobus ride there, we passed a Mountain Hardware store and another outdoorsy-type store in the same block.  I dropped a pin on the map of my (work) iPhone so that I could find them later.  Fortuitously, the pin is not far from where I am right now.  I’m going to head over that way in a few minutes to check the stores out – maybe someone there can give me a suggestion as to which mountains are nearby and climb-able.  That’s my plan for Saturday.

That’s it for now:  my coffee’s almost done and I should probably start looking for a place to pee.

It’s been a good day; I’ve learned a lot.  I’m kind of shy, so it’s tough for me to walk up to people and introduce myself.  Which I’m not really doing a whole lot.  A few people have started conversations with me and I’ve been successful at keeping them going – I think I’ve made good impressions on that front.  I’m not going to beat myself up too bad for not tapping everyone on the shoulder and introducing myself – I’ve done that a few times in the past, often with less-than-favorable results.  The key to doing that (in my opinion) is to not only have conversation-starters, but conversation-continuers.  Even so, some people simply don’t want to be approached.

I’m pretty self-sufficient, though, so standing alone isn’t all that hard.  I don’t get any kind of crazy anxiety (like I once used to) that I should be talking to every single person there and making all kinds of new friends.  Call it a cop out or an excuse, but I’m going with the “quality not quantity” approach.  I’d really like to meet more potential clients, but there simply are not that many here.  The guidebooks I’ve read about doing business in Taiwan suggest that the best way to find new clients is through a third party introduction.  I’m doing ok on that end – the people whose cards I’ve thusfar acquired will be in a position to introduce me to potential clients later on down the road.  The plan right now is to lay groundwork for future interactions and sales efforts.  I can’t expect to do it all this week (i.e. go back to the States with new clients and contracts).  Business isn’t done that way in Taiwan anyway – it’s a long process.

So yeah, I’m almost done for the day.  I’ve got to head back over to the other hotel now for the gala dinner from 7 to 9PM.  Should be interesting.  And, at the very least, the food here is superb.  More coffee, please.

I don’t really know what to say, dear reader.  It’s 7:01PM, according to my netbook and body clocks.  I’m in business/first class and the seats are pretty nice.  I’ve got the window seat and the woman in the aisle seat next to me seems pretty selfish.  That’s just a vibe, though.  She just ran to the bathroom and is taking some pills now, so I figure I’d better go take a leak soon, in case those are sleeping pills she’s taking.

[REDACTED]

My Polyanna gut says the door opened and closed so quickly because someone’s watching out for me – there’s something better in the works, and that any kind of relationship now would be me taking my eye off the ball.  And the total pessimist part of me says that THIS is the story of my life; THIS is what the psychic in Sedona didn’t want to tell me about – and why she was so sad for me:  that I’m going to spend my life looking for and being open to love and never find it.  Fuck me, if I’m the one who picked this fucking karma, I want to go back in time to that place wherever I was before I returned to the wheel and kick my own ass.  This fucking blows.  Can a honky get some love??  Just a little?  Not fucking hope “which springs eternal” – that shit’s for sissies and idiots who don’t know the difference.  For fuckers who’ll drink the sand.

And I’ll tell ya, dear reader, this morning in the shower I was begging out loud for an opportunity to drink the sand.  Hope.  Bah.  Bunch of care bear bullshit, if you ask me – and even if you didn’t:  I don’t care.  Hope is for pussies.  And I’m dying for it.  Me.

Sure, I know what I want.  But right now it feels like I’m in the middle of the desert a million years ago, talking to some bushman who doesn’t speak English, telling him that all I want in the world is a cherry red convertible 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz:  not only does the guy have no fucking clue what the words are that are coming out of my mouth, there’s really no way I’m going to find that particular Caddy in this particular desert at this particular time.  Like, it doesn’t exist, man.

Fuck, I’ll take a single-speed messenger bike, if it’ll love me back.

Those are probably shitty analogies.  I guess the way I feel (vis-à-vis finding love) right now is more akin to being in a shitty little local used car lot, looking for a particular make and model that’s only manufactured and distributed overseas.  “Yeah, Citröen – with an umlaut.  Over the ‘o’.  Yeah, an umlaut – like two little dots over top of the ‘o’.  Know what I’m talking about?  Do you have one?  In the back?  Yeah, cool, let’s go check it out. . . No. . . no, that’s a dog.  I’m looking for a car.  A Citröen.  Yeah the one with the dots.  Never mind.”  Even the short walk around to the back of the lot was enough to get my blood pumping in anticipation; the thought that maybe I’d found what I’ve been looking for, or at least might be getting closer.

6363 miles left to go.  To Hong Kong, that is.

About halfway there now.  It’s 10:34 in the AM in Hong Kong.  We’re over the arctic, it seems.  3534 miles into the flight.  Yeah, the little plane on the screen is totally enveloped in white – we’ve passed Alaska and the Bering Strait.  Another 8 hours and 37 minutes to go.  I can’t wait to have a cigarette in Hong Kong.

So yeah, if something went wrong at this point, even if we didn’t all die in the crash, we’d sure as hell freeze our asses off in about 5 minutes out there in the presence of Mother Nature.

I just finished reading William Gibson’s Virtual Light.  It was ok.  Nothing special.  It’s been forever since I read Neuromancer, but I remember really digging it.  Possibly because it was really the first cyberpunk book I’d ever picked up.  I finished Count Zero last night, which I thought was pretty good as well.  Much better than Virtual Light.  Gibson seems to be a bit hit-or-miss.  Not much to Virtual Light, in my opinion.  Gibson’s style cuts both ways – in this case, the choppy, disorienting way he writes didn’t serve to plant seeds of thought that there’s a deeper meaning behind each of his words:  I mean, that vibe was there, but for this book, after a while I just didn’t care what those deeper meanings might have  been.  That style really only works when the author actually explains some of the definitions of the terms of art he/she is using.  Maybe one out of five or ten would work; one out of three background stories hinted at.

We’re over Russia now.  It’s 1:30AM ET, 1:30PM HK time.  We’re supposed to land in Hong Kong at 7:12PM local time.  3144 miles left to go.  I started to watch The Last Airbender, but it was horrible.  Way too much of a kids movie for me.  The A-Team was ok.  A couple of parts where I had to stifle a lol.

I’m torn between staying up for another 6 hours – basically pulling an all-nighter – and trying to get a few hours of sleep.

[REDACTED]

597 miles to go.  6:05PM; still on schedule to arrive at HKG 7:15AM.  Breakfast was pretty good.  7710 miles traveled so far.  I’m on the right-hand side of the plane, and we’re basically coming South into Hong Kong right now, so I’m watching the sun set out of my window.  It looks like a sunrise.  The land below is in darkness – every once in a while, I see small clusters of lights, but my first impression was that we were flying over water, even though we’re well inland.  The cloud formations are beautiful and diverse.  There are a couple of fireworks shows going on below – I wonder why.  Heck, there’s a whole bunch of ‘em.

I think it’s about time I shut this thing down and pack my stuff up.  We’ll be landing in just about an hour.