so our football team is falling apart, so what. that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of things to be happy about. besides, it’s a young team. wait til next year.
lots of things are good though. i’m done with my month of daily movie-watching, with lots of posts on under culture, and it was a pretty easy task. i saw a lot of good movies and quite a few that were just okay, and i’m pretty sure all the treadmill was pretty effective.
unfortunately, i just wanted to spend more time with books and games and whatnot and put the brakes on netflix for the past week, which coincided with getting a cold, so i haven’t done either in about a week. ah well. i’ll get back on the workout horse soon and try to keep my weekly movie average at least up to 3 or 4.
and though the game itself was a bust, it was exciting that for homecoming this year mike and dan actually did come home to participate. we had a fun weekend of bowling, burritos, hanging around my apartment, trying to sneak an ID-less dan into a club and settling for a birthday party as a consolation prize, and all manner of hijinks.
lastly, my moustache is coming along as well as can be expected, but i need to take more photos before making a new update worthwhile, so look forward to that soon, or just donate now for encouragement.
i made a commitment and i’m sticking to it. not only am i growing this moustache; it’s my duty to keep my supporters informed as to its progress.
still haven’t donated? not only is there plenty of time left, but after seeing these pictures, my courage will surely inspire you to give generously. or puke.
either way, just visit my movember page and give whatever amount you can afford. even as little as a dollar, five dollars, will help build my total donation toward prostate cancer research. in fact, if every person i emailed gives only 2 dollars, that would be an undisclosed amount of people, multiplied by two! that’s a lot of money!
and to those of you who already donated, i wish i had a better ‘stache for you to be proud of, but take heart. it’s early yet, and your support has really meant a lot to me and my blossoming lip curtain.
take a look at this first timeline to see the initial growth spurt (click for full size):
day two was just the beginning of the non-shaving journey, and as you can see, is almost unnoticeable. that gives you an idea of the total lack of raw facial hair talent i’m working with here.
day five, i haven’t shaved at all just to see with i’m working with. like any great artist, it all begins with a good canvas. only my canvas is a pitiful bunch of chin whiskers and my art is a nasty ‘stache-terpiece.
day nine, i have now shaved twice and am trying my best not to be ashamed of my progress so far. though what i currently have can technically be called a moustache in that it is hair, and it is covering my upper lip (but not the full chin, making it a goatee, and therefore ineligible), it’s more like training wheels for what might someday be a mo’ to be proud of.
a few further learnings:
this photo was taken right before shaving the first time, a full week in. see those areas in red? those are the evidence that if this were beard-tober instead of movember, i would have to just give up and start raising money for little girl charities.
even after a full 7 days without shaving, you could literally count the individual hairs between the goatee region and the place where sideburns should be. gone are any dreams of gnarly mutton chops. full chin straps: out of the question. even a five o’ clock shadow, no matter the time of day or week, remains a fantasy.
but all is not lost. i remain dedicated to doing what i can and continuing to fight for men’s health despite my own shortcomings. so take one last look at this photo. it’s the beginning of something beautiful.
a majestic mo’ it may never be. i may have weird bald spots that keep my lip hair from connecting to my chin hair, making even a simple handlebar an uphill battle. i may never win any moustache-related contests other than ‘best effort by a guy who could still pass as a teenager’. but these tiny hairs have a big heart, and that’s what counts.
well, that, and raising money for men’s health. so please consider donating if you haven’t already! and if you’re curious about how much good it does, take a look at the video below from REAL DOCTORS, who may not have moustaches themselves yet (assuming this was recorded pre-movember), but have huge brains to make up the difference.
if you know me at all, you probably know that i’ve never had facial hair. not once, in my entire life. i think the longest i’ve ever gone without shaving is 3 days, tops, and then only in extreme circumstances like camping or music festivals.
well this year, it’s time to put an end to that, and do it with purpose. see, i’ve signed up to participate in movember! i’m growing a moustache this month for charity. it’s like a walk-a-thon for any other charity, only this one’s specifically for men’s health (the prostate cancer foundation), and all i have to do is grow a mo’.
i’m going to document my progress with photos and lots of moustache jokes (keep an eye on the twitter updates for those), and will get to that soon. of course, since it’s only now day three, my progress is only beginning, so i don’t have much to show yet. but by this time next week: look out!
if you’d like to donate to my stache and help fund prostate cancer reasearch, please, visit my mospace page, and check back here soon for more updates.
the days have been full lately. not only have i been working hard on a big project, but i’ve started a little experiment for myself.
see, i hadn’t been to the gym in ages, just returned from a particularly indulgent weekend in san francisco, and to boot, jessica has been spending a lot of her time, especially on weeknights, hitting the books.
so i came up with a plan to make better use of solo time and hopefully help out with a few things i’d been slacking on: exercise and netflix. so starting 8 days ago, i’ve committed to getting on the treadmill every day and watching a movie every night. so far, it’s going really well. i don’t really dread either, i’ve seen some great movies, and i think the activity is helping my fitness in whatever small way you can notice after only a week. i called it the ‘mile and a movie’ project, even though i’m running a little more than that. it just had a nice ring to it.
i wrote up some more detailed thoughts, mostly about the movies, in twoposts over at under culture if you’d like some netflix recommendations, though the list also includes two great current movies too, zombieland and paranormal activity.
the only problem so far is finding time to watch these movies as well as write about them, not to mention trying to stay on top of my reading list all the while, but i suppose you can’t have it all. if it takes me slightly longer to finish a book but i’m super sexy a month from now from all the running, i think i could handle that.
mini-vacations seem like the way to go. it’s hard to carve out a 7-10 day chunk and organize travel to some far-off destination. it’s expensive and stressful to visit foreign shores, as rewarding and mind-expanding as that may be. but taking a few extra bonus weekend days and driving up to san francisco to hang out with college buddies i don’t see often enough — that’s easy, affordable, and wonderful.
possibly to our discredit, we didn’t even do much on this trip, but even so it was still great. we did go to a respectable birthday dinner for mike on thursday night at least, at beretta, which i would say is delicious but maybe not the best choice for very large parties.
friday was almost gloriously low-key though. we got lunch, we came home to play ping pong and beer pong (oh man, hungarian rules… a full contact form where you can run after your own missed balls that was goddamn fun if draining and at times dangerous, and which oddly i can find no reference to on the internet, at least under that name.) burgermeister for dinner, chilling with some kegbot in the evening.
saturday was just plain great though. lazy afternoon resting up for the night of SC football game and then huge dance party. mike, ted and kyla had reserved the basement of the li po, which they then preceded to destroy with their killer music. i drank quite a bit, i’ll admit, but that meant i had a great time dancing the night away before some less fortunate repercussions kicked in, or the eventual passing out with my clothes on back at mike’s.
the drive home was a bit unfortunate, and monday was not my friend, but overall, lovely times. i think my mission, since i can never seem to effectively use the vacation time allowed because of time or budgetary restraints, should be to take more long weekends for pure relaxation and enjoyment.
the economy sucks and i still have a job, so i feel bad ever complaining about money. but hey, i could sure use more.
mainly because i’ve been at a weird state of equilibrium for a couple years where i have all my bills paid and some money to have fun with, but also lots of debt. and it seems like i don’t have quite enough to do what i really should be doing — like paying down that debt or, say, saving more for that wedding we’ll probably want to have at some point — unless i seriously cut out on the having fun part.
or even when i’m good and don’t spend too much, right when it looks like i’m making some headway, boom, it’s time for an expensive car repair, or doctor trip, or other necessity. or i’m faced with being financially ‘responsible’ or skipping things like vacations or holiday trips which is like robbing myself of a real life, which doesn’t make sense either. who wants to be a debt-free 30-year-old with no fun memories from their 20’s? at the end of the day, certainly not me, which is why i’m always on the border of broke. oops!
anyway, if anyone has a bag of 10 thousand dollars they don’t need, it would sure make a big difference. though either way, i’m going to san fran this weekend to see the buddies for some birthdays, music, football, dj sets, and other assorted fun and excuses to drink. i’m sure it’ll be expensive but undoubtedly worth it; i’ll gladly spend the money while there, come back and feel guilty about it, and then move on exactly as before.
new podcast is out, that’s cool. good episode this time i’d say.
some good shows comin’ up this weekend. frightened rabbit sunday (anyone really want to come? still got an extra ticket…), david cross monday.
probably going to pick me up some beatles: rock band tonight and rock out all weekend like i was actually part of the magical 60’s. that should be fun.
i’m reading pride and prejudice right now and kind of enjoying it. does that make me a sissy or just very classy?
work is going fine too. i think when i invest time and energy in rewarding personal pursuits (like recording editing and publishing a podcast), it improves my state of mind and performance at work. i bet there are studies that prove this is true but i haven’t read them and so i’ll continue believing i am special in this regard.
also: i get to go to boston for work next week. unfortunately gabe just moved away from there. do i know anyone else cool that still lives there? is there anything cool to do in boston by yourself?
two weekends in a row of the glorious routine of saturdays with the guys drinking and eating delicious, terrible food and watching our college football team play well but not as well as we would like. it’s back and it’s wonderful. too bad jessica’s been busy with school and missing out, but really i don’t think she cares much. she doesn’t love football or afternoon drinking as much as i do.
actually this weekend has been a hilarious portrait of our disparity this fall. i spent most of my weekend hanging out with the guys with a beer in my hand, or otherwise at home playing a batman video game. she spent a lot of her time memorizing elements, formulas, human anatomy, etc. i willfully erode my intelligence all weekend, she diligently builds hers up. aren’t we precious.
also, a footnote to the ‘bomb threat’ drama you may have seen in my twitter updates…
[quick recap if you missed it: there was a supposed bomb in our apartment’s garage thursday evening, so i got stuck without access to our place for three and a half hours and sat at a bar patio across the street waiting it out, watching cops close down the street. there was a bomb robot, a guy in a bomb-protecting suit, etc.]
well, though it seemed real enough at the time, what with the big disturbance it caused, we got a letter from our building management that in the end the item in question was in fact only a replica of a bomb, not a real one. some sort of prop, perhaps, that had been discarded carelessly. it’s good to know, i guess, in that there’s no lunatic in our building (perhaps only a replica of one), but part of me is kind of disappointed that all that business was over nothing. either that, or the building management just wants us to THINK it was… conspiracy theories aren’t really my thing though.
what else? oh, i guess it could be about time to change the song over yonder on the left… what’s been great lately? hmm, well, i’m certainly loving this neko case album middle cyclone. it came out way back in march but i only just picked it up and can’t quit listening. such an un-brian album too, very soft and vocalist-centric, but that voice just destroys any resistance. check out ‘the pharoahs‘ and argue she doesn’t have serious power.
oh, and also i’ve been on a strong reading streak so scroll down there to the right if you’re interested in some thoughts on the latest. child 44 ended up being a hell of a read, if you’re in the mood for a good thriller.
life is different now! that doesn’t happen very often so it’s worth noting. and sadly for me perhaps, it’s not really my life that’s different. or rather, mine is, but only by proxy.
see, jessica started school this week. she works and has class, which means she’s simply home less, and when home, now has more stuff to do. it’s already kinda weird. only last week, we had a nice routine of come home, maybe work out, have dinner, hang out, watch tv, whatever. now she doesn’t even get home until late some nights. tuesday i came home to an empty house and no food, so i had to go grocery shopping by myself for the first time in two years. (no, not like i haven’t been to the grocery store, but as in i got a whole cart full of food for both of us without her being there.) that was odd. then, there’s the actually being home alone at night, which is quiet and strange. or, doing things on my own while she has homework (homework! remember that? ha!).
it may sound like i’m a big wimp, or that i’m complaining, but neither is true. i’m impressed she’s doing this. i’m proud of her for going for it. i’m a little jealous she’s starting something new and interesting while i’m at the same job i’ve been at for almost seven years (SEVEN!? i’m in danger of going stale…). however, we’ve been living together for two years and had a pretty steady routine going, and now it’s gone in an instant. life is exciting! or rather, hers is, and i now have more time alone to play video games, watch movies, and read books, then write nerdy blog articles about said games, movies and books.
i’m sure this will be a growth period for both of us.
we have these things called summer days at work, where in the independence-to-labor day span, we get some bonus vacation days to take if things are slow and we can squeeze in some extra time to enjoy the summer. since i took a long real vacation in july, i’d been saving these extra days, and this weekend i cashed in two of them for a nice four day break. during that time, i squeezed in a lot of fun.
thursday night i made the slightly heinous after-work drive out to rancho cucamonga to record a podcast with spencer, which is up now if you haven’t got it yet. we talked about some cool movies (like in the loop, go see it!), interesting books (i maintain netherland is great, he disagreed, but world war z is outright good, i promise), along with flaming lips, some video game stuff, etc.
friday we hit up a new bar called darkroom on melrose for jen’s birthday, which i really liked. it got pretty crowded as the night went on (we arrived around 9:30), but the crowd was young and hip and the prices were decent and the decor was low key, dark, and leathery. worth a visit.
saturday was just fantastic. after some afternoon battlefield (if you’re still not playing this yet, get on your xbox and get it, it’s the best thing ever), we went to a super-delicious and fairly expensive/fancy dinner at the bazaar on la cienega at the SLS hotel for spencer and john’s birthdays. one of those super-gourmet places that use a bunch of interesting processes and interesting ingredients to make creative dishes. we ate foie gras wrapped in cotton candy. the most tender little lamb cutlets i’ve ever had. a crazy little mini-philly cheesesteak that blew our minds, which i’m not even sure how they pulled off. guacamole dumplings. caprese salad where the mozzarella came in little spheres of liquid that dissolve in your mouth… it was pretty spectacular. if you ever feeling like dropping a sizable chunk on an LA dinner, i’d put this on the short list. delicious fun. i even rallied in time to drive down to playa afterward for mike and haley’s birthdays. man, i’m a party animal.
sunday, afternoon baseball game with justin and a few others, at which i got to rub in jessica’s face a cubs victory, with bonus post-game pizza at masa bakery, another good spot. it’s been a sweet weekend of new LA eat-and-drink-eries, apparently. i love living in a city of endless delights.
then monday… basically nothing. i’d already spent a fortune and eaten a boatload, so i mostly sat around reading other than a much-needed gym trip. man, with all the goodness we crammed in, i am only more convinced that my life would be at least 20% better with permanent four-day work weeks. let’s do it, america!
