The Need to Ramble

I wonder how successful this will be, as I'm sitting here at work with Adam next to me, and all 10 lanes are full (encompassed by 2 birthday parties and 1 after-Sunday-church group). However, I have a ton of things floating around in my head right now that I actually attribute part of my headache to those concerns putting pressure on my temple.

So classes have begun, and I really don't want to talk about school stuff because it leads to graduation related stuff which then leads into job/carrer related stuff of which I REALLY don't want to think about. I'll ramble then: reading seems to be quite excessive from what I can remember in respect to the PHIL classes I've taken before, but I suppose even that is better than doing homework/problem sets for say, an EE filters class or even working on pre-labs and prepping for those dreaded 3 hour long labs. It just seems time consuming, I average about 10 pages per hour, so I guess 1 page per 6 minutes. So with that being said, I think I have about 45 pages between 2 books (for the 2 PHIL classes) to do today - that is to put myself ahead a bit for this upcoming week. Mondays are just too busy for me, with class that runs from 9-noon, then a bit of a break as I run home to take care of Apollo and hopefully nap for a couple of hours. Back to school by 4 for pool class, then clock in immediately after for 6 hours of work (till closing at 11PM). Of course, Billiards Club will be thrown into that period of time (from 6-?). By the time I get home at 11, I'm pretty tired and just want to sit there or go to sleep, but without a doubt I'll have PHIL reading to prepare for the following day. I seem to dedicate most of my time to PHIL when in reality I still have my 407 class to attent and pay attention to. To wrap it up, I'm doing fairly well and haven't fallen behind in any of those classes yet... in fact I think I performed pretty well on both the PHIL quiz as well as the 407 quiz.

Ambassador training had finally come and gone this previous week, so that is some weight that was sitting on my shoulders and in the back of my mind that has finally left. It went really well overall, I think it was a lot better, just as informative, a lot less formal, and most people enjoyed it a lot. Not too much to worry about that aspect of my life right now, maybe tours later on and Tony & I are signed up for the 2nd meeting, so that's at the end of this month.

Work is work, enough said. Nothing new, and I'm actually getting about 20-25 hours a week, which is quite a lot but I do need the money. Speaking of which, I really don't understand why I'm in such a hole right now. I mean, I guess I can see how the Vegas trip (about $450) is starting to catch back up to me, but I thought I had worked part of that off already this summer. But when I think about it, it's a quick $700 a month coming out of my account (650 for rent, 50 for internet). I get 325 from Will, but it's all been coming out of my share of the food... thus I haven't seen too much of it yet. So basically, if I were to give myself an income of around 400-500 a month, I'm still 200 short as far as the rent goes, and I'm still consistently paying off shit from my AMX card (Vegas trip, other day-to-day living purchases) so I suppose that's why I've been digging myself into a hole. Man, I really thought I was working everything off, making around 600 a month, taking out 400 for rent and internet, so that should leave 200 for everything else (food maybe adds up to 100 a month) so that should leave another 100 on top of that. But it's all this other shit that I gotta pay for, fucking parking permit, books (not that bad this quarter but it all adds up), Apollo's stuff (leash that broke, flea collar, bottle of shampoo)... all this stuff just keeps on coming and somehow I keep ending up in the hole. You know what I think that means? I NEED to start working that cash operation again. As much as I try to not think about it and not do it (limiting myself to like $10-20 if I even do it at all) I seem to need to do it. Money pisses me off.

Aha, but thinking of money reminds me of a $100 purchase that I had to make: registration for ASI's intramurals dodgeball team. Manager's meeting is this Monday night, and I'm totally psyched and ready to play! Too bad it won't start until week 3 (so 2 more weeks) but it will be lots of fun. Greg and I have so far recruited (as far as girls go) a friend of his, a friend of mine, and another girl that we both met in my billiards class. Hopefully we'll get more, I'm going to make an announcement this week at Ambassadors meeting and maybe more girls will want to play - Lisa said that she might be able to play some weeks if her labs aren't meeting. We'll grab guys when the time comes, that shouldn't be a problem.

Others things that are still floating around on my mind I will mention (give a bullet) but I will not go into detail on them because it will just add more stress.

- EE Fee Committee
- Senior Project
- Job Fair
- Resume
- Car's Air Intake Filter
- Saving up money for Christmas and possibly Vegas
- Apollo's itchiness
- Housing issues when 2007 rolls around

So as you can see there's a lot of stuff that I really wish I could just put off and not worry about... and some of those things I really actually can, it's just that I SHOULD be starting on them right now, but I haven't snapped out of the "summer" mode yet.

- My Fantastic Week-Long Drinking Bender -
Okay so it's not exactly as it sounds, but that's just what I call it. This first week of my last year here at Cal Poly started out as just a joke (with respect to the drinking aspect) but soon turned into a semi-commitment. Here's how it broke down:

Monday: Greg and I were at work, and apparently some of his friends came in and hung out with us during Pizza Bowl. They brought him a couple Sparks, and Greg gave one to me. It was 6.7% by content, and I got a slight buzz off of it but nothing big.

Tuesday: Dan calls me up out of no where, asking if I wanted to go to dinner with him and Kristin for Chelsea's birthday. We went to Shin's for sushi, and I was basically handed beer and sake, and had to participate in the festivities. I got quite a good buzz going (as I put it to Dan, we both felt "lag" or "low fps"). This was when I came up with, as a joke in the beginning, of getting drunk (well, more like just SOME alcohol into my body) every day of the week. It sounded funny, but I wasn't committed to the idea as of yet.

Wednesday: Work once again, except this time I had a small break between pool class and work, and I was extremely bored. I said to myself, what the heck... and so I went to 7/11 and got another alcoholic/energy drink. Drank that, felt a slight buzz, and considered that good enough to continue.

Thursday: Talks of originally heading to Cliff's for happy hour with taco bar completely fell through, when Dan was speaking out his 2nd asshole and had everyone's schedule figured out wrong. So Andrew and I were disappointed, but we eventually decided (later that night) to drink and see where it takes us. I went to Chris' where Andrew was and picked up a 22 oz of MGD on the way. After hanging out for about an hour we decided to go downtown, and we drank at Downtown Brew's. I got pretty faded, and spent the night on Chris' couch using Mike's comforter.

Friday: After the Ambassador retreat, of which I was disappointed that I wasn't able to go to Ryan's house where a good number of ambassadors and friends would be there, but at the same time I was excited because this was the night Greg and I had planned for a while. I went to this house from the retreat and dropped off my car, and we went to the store to pick up Sparks and a 12 pack of MGDs. I got pretty drunk at work, Greg was driving so he didn't as much, and we had to go pick up his girl at this house party. After that Greg dropped me off back at his house, and I passed out on his couch.

Saturday: I was pretty tired after a whole day of Ambassador related things, but I had yet to see James, Darien, and Melissa who were apparently in town. I finally got up and met them at Downtown Brew, where a bunch of people had actually came back to town to visit. Chris was in town with his g/f Grace, Huy drove back from Arizona, Phung was there, Darien had come down from Cisco, James had come down from up north, and Melissa was obviously in town but I haven't seen her since June. It was cool, and I had a couple beers but I was the driver and drove Andrew back to Mike's where we hung out for a while and then I drove him home before I walked into my door at home at about 3:30AM.

Sunday: 6 hours of work yet again, I feel like I never have fucking weekends anymore because of work. But I fucking need $$$. It's the last day of this week long adventure, but I won't even be home till 5. I'll have a beer or 2 to help me pass out tonight when I attempt to go to bed, thus completing this alcoholic quest.

Fat Fat Fatty

The first time I was told I was gaining some weight was probably the summer before last, when I was back home in Vacaville and next door at Anthony's house. His dad said something to the extent of "you've gained some weight there" at the time. I hadn't thought much of it and really, up until then I've had the image cross my mind of myself getting out of shape and fat.

To summarize it, basically it all started probably as soon as I got to college. No more track, no more PE classes - no more "regulated" or "forced" exercise. Not to mention no one else to play DDR with me (and I had lost some interest). Best case scenario I was stagnant due to the walking back and forth on campus up the hills but counter-balanced by all the junk that I was eating at school (and no Mom there to force me to eat the veggies that gets replaced by more junk food otherwise).

But then I think I took a positive step the first 2 summers in which I returned to Vacaville to work at the pool supply store. Especially the 2nd (last summer ever) that I worked there, because I remember working hard, long, 8+ hour days where I would spend my lunch break sleeping in the office or munching on Gordettos to ease my appitite. I'm pretty sure that summer I lost a good 5-10 pounds due to work.

However, once I moved into the Johnson house is where I think things started to take a turn for the worst. First, I turned 21 so the bars now added a good amount of extra alcohol to my diet. I suppose I just continued to eat junk and not balance my diet, coupled with more and more lack of exercise. It continued for about 2 years up to now, where I ate whenever I wanted to and the summe time I worked at a place that bored me to hell and didn't keep me busy (or on my feet). This summer especially, I've just eaten when I wanted to and whatever I wanted, late at night before going to bed as well. I've noticed that I've had trouble squeezing into some pants and my shirts are becoming tighter. Just as importantly, I'm completely out of shape physically and strength wise. I can't keep up at all on DDR, and just looking at myself in the mirror I look like a wreck. I can't lift weight as well as I used to, and I can't even do 20 push-ups without struggling.

I don't know how much I weigh, but I'll know tomorrow after I buy a bathroom scale. The plan is this (and I've started already):

1.) DIET: has be changed completely. I can and will only eat between the hours of 5PM and 12AM. I will try to make my own discretion at what I'm allowed to eat and what I'm not allowed. Water will be the beverage of choice, not sodas or even Gatorade. The main emphasis of this diet is to kill my appetite and cravings to eat/snack - with cutting how much is going into my body only a side note.

2.) TRAINING: the parts of my upper body that I will focus on first will be my chest and arms. Push-ups daily (as long as they're not worn out from the previous day) to build up to a regime of about 40 push-ups without getting too tired. I will also work out my biceps until I am able to lift the dumb-bell set that I have here with all the weights on it at 20 reps per set, 3 sets a day. I really want to phase in my abs into the routine but I don't know what I want to do with that... it's so disgusting to look at myself (and in the past these excercises have never produced quick results) but I need to at least get myself back into shape so that I can do sit-ups with ease and not stress myself.

3.) EXERCISE: I have always hated cardio, and will continue to hate it for the rest of my life, but I will have to do it to help lose weight and to get back into shape. I'm trying to figure out ways around it, mainly DDR (hopefully) and even jumping rope. I wonder how treadmills will feel and what kind of results, but I don't want to drag my ass to the gym.

We'll see how long I am able to keep all this up... my goal will be all the way until I go back home for Thanksgiving at least, and hopefully all the way through to Christmas.