At least, he looked like Toby Flenderson. I was driving on 27, and some dude I guess wanted to merge into my lane, but he wasn't signaling his intent to merge, so I didn't feel obligated to let him in in front of me when there was plenty of room behind me. So, he flipped me the bird. And I was delighted when I passed him and saw that the guy who was overly upset with me for littel to no reason was, as Daryl put it, "the guy with the sad eyes". Totally made my day.
Also, my day was even more made when I was watching Life, a good show I;m upset that I'm getting into as it has already been canceled, and one of the ads was this.
I haven't forgotten the blog. For multiple days at a time, it slips my mind, and there are times when I feel like writing something, and it just doesn't happen. There have been plenty of blog worthy things, such as my new brothers of the Hawaiian shirt wearing clan at Baker Park on the fourth. There have been plenty of things going on with Ben and Justin.
Problem is, all of these things are tainted. It's been a long time since I've felt bad about how I handled something. guilt is not a feeling I like, a feeling I took great lengths to avoid. I'd like to say this thing brings out the worst in me, but maybe it just reveals who I really am. I take a malicious pleasure in being a jerk. I feel I take more pleasure in the pride of not being an ass, but one is easier than the other sometimes.
Point being, this last project I've been working on, I love it. Thing about it is, it's real. It's not something born in my head. I've, with Justin and Ben's help, documented it, and embellished it, but I've made almost nothing up. And while I like that my life is for once interesting enough to to merit something like this, in this case, a screenplay, it's all very real, and I'm having doubts as to whether I'm the protagonist of this story, or the antagonist. The wanderlust I've been feeling lately isn't because I'm a gypsy at heart. It's because once again, I'm finding myself unhappy with who I'm becoming, and I'm too afraid to fix it.
I don't really know. It's an ugly situation, one that has no easy solution, only the promise that the situation will go away at the end of the summer, at least temporarily, so I have the option to ignore it until it goes away, which is not what I want to go away.
I've been drawing though. I'm not very good, but considering how good the women in my family are, I have to at least have some talent. I don't have anything I consider good enough to put on the blog yet, but I'm trying. I've just got some stories that I envision more as graphic novels than books. Some things are said better with pictures than words, and while I doubt I'll ever be good enough to do these as a solo endeavor, I've got some characters that I want to actually see somewhere other than in my head. Some of my more recent stories have started with a simple image, my latest was what I believed to be a character from another story, whom I thought had died much younger than I saw him there, oddly, on metro. I don't know if it means anything, other than that my imagination has totally stepped out of my control, not mention my understanding.
But it's what I should be doing. Making stuff up. It's not a guilt free place, and there is still question over who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, but at least I'm still rational enough to know that while it matters to me, it only matters to me. I can maintain my self image as a decent human being. What I'm working on now, the real stuff, I'd like to leave it alone for a year or too, come back to it, and see what's changed. Once I can separate it from reality, then maybe I can finish it, guilt free. Once the people in it are characters, and not people I know.
Still, I wanted to try my hand at drawing, and I've been reading some web comics lately, paying almost as much attention to the artwork, or more importantly, the changes and improvement of the artwork, as the stories themselves. I think if I keep at it, I might produce something decent. I'll never do anything that compares to my sisters, but if I can do the cover art for at least one book, I'll be extremely happy. It's probably just another excuse to do something besides actually write these stories. I think my skill at procrastination would let me put off my own death. That is the dream, anyways.
Not that I need it, but it's nice to know that they make a supplement now.
It was pretty awesome, walking into Wal-Mart, looking for protein powder, to see this. Not going to lie to you. It just about made the trip to Frederick worthwhile, seeing as Ben and I tried to go clothes shopping, but were unaware of the lack of Old Navy in Frederick. I don't know if the fact that we are too hopeless to shop for clothes makes us slightly better, considering it seems our friendship has reached the level of Bromance where we go clothes shopping together. In our defense, Ben apparently had some sweet deal, but a deal that necessitated spending more money than he wanted to. It wasn't gay at all. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
But jeeze, protein supplements! So confusing. I had bought some stuff that is just god awful, but for 25g of protein, it wasn't worth choking down, especially since according to the fancy graphs on the container, working out while using a placebo protein source, you will attain negative muscle growth. I'm just curious if that only applies if you think you're getting protein, but aren't, or if you just aren't getting enough, because that means that pretty much all the exercise I've done my entire life has been depleting my muscles.
But anyways, I'm nearing the end, and the other night, talking with Mike, Keely's fiance, he said he had some stuff that was 50g, double what I was rocking. Needing to investigate, Ben and I went to Wal-Mart, to shop around for protein. We found ones of course that were 50g, but in the fine print, you saw that it was for two scoops! Every single one had a different measurement and definition of a serving size. Some were one, some two, one was even four scoops. They all ended up being roughly the same, but it took us about ten minutes to figure it out. I dind't even end up getting anything, as I still need to finish my awful vanilla cream whey protein, that tastes quite a bit more like cake batter, and doesn't mix with anything, so there are just chunks of gooey protein floating in whatever you're trying to consume with it. It's awful.
I haven't forgotten the blog. There have been several times when I meant to post, but then something comes up. Like the other day, I totally had a post, and pictures for it. I was going to take my pictures off of my camera, but since I got a new camera, one that uses an SD card, and not the useless XD card that my old Olympus used, I hadn't bought a new card, and instead was using an old SD card I had. When I put it in my computer, I noticed there were other things on it.
Even more exciting than finding a bunch of old word files I thought I had lost, was the discovery of stuff I had written that I didn't remember at all.So rather than post, I've been reading some of my old stuff for the past several days, one of which was a story that was almost 90 pages, one that I was certain I had lost.
My only regret is not doing a better job of dating this stuff. I was telling Justin about this, and he compared me to an archaeologist, going back into my life, and trying to carbon date stuff. It's pretty true. Most of my stories, I can place their conception, roughly.
The Monkey House, it was in either my Spanish four or AP Spanish class, when we were trying to talk about fears in Spanish. I'm pretty sure it was four, because the next semester, I considered trying to write it for my graduation project, but the story wasn't old enough, but I did write a lot, and found probably all of it the other day.
My story about demi-gods that govern human life and death, I remember that was the summer after senior year, and it came about while I was running on route 27 every night, and my sense were over-tuned, and I was jumping at every shadow. I found a lot of the original ideas for that.
And a lot of stuff from Eryk Valen's story. Stuff so old I still spelled his name Eric. He's the one, the important one, the one who I have no idea how long I've known about him. I can date him back to at least seventh grade, just from certain things, but I'm sure it was before then. How much has he changed in that time. That had to be before he even had a name, let alone a proper spelling.
So, with all that old stuff, then I of course was thinking about the name, and how he got, and it has been a long time since I've learned anything new about him. I replay his story over and over, and a few things get changed, added, and omitted, but there is very rarely anything new. But for the first time in probably a year, I have something new. And also, I have dated it, and backed it up for sure. Man it annoys me that I have no idea when any of that stuff was written.
Anyways, pictures. I have some. Apart from my typical three day a week workouts with Ben and Justin, I realized I wasn't running as much, so I started running to my old neighborhood, taking a few laps back and forth across the lake, and then running back home. It's only four miles, but the swim in the middle wears me out. I was talking to my old neighbor, Valerie, today, and she said that you couldn't pay her to get in that lake. I can't really argue there. It's beautiful, but it is pretty gross. It gets worse as the summer goes on. I remember as kids, when we'd all go swimming in it, we'd all have rashes from the "ching chings" as Keely (who just got engaged, congrats Keely and Mike) dubbed them. But right now, the algae and seaweed or whatever that grows in there is almost nonexistent, at least in the small part I swim in, and it's manageable. Also, people like to keep reminding me of the snapping turtle situation in that lake, a fact that I'm aware of but don't like to be reminded of. They generally chill on the bottom, waiting for prey, so I figure if my feet don't touch the ground, I'm alright.
The lake. The pictures don't do it justice, at least not to how disgusting it is. With all the rain lately though, it's quite full, meaning it's cleaner than usual, and colder than usual, both huge pluses.
Just a picture of Jo chillaxin' on the deck, under my chaise.
This was pretty sweet storm, came on pretty suddenly. Also, left my car windows open that day. It rains, like almost everyday, and seems I would learn to roll them up, even if I plan on leaving shortly and it doesn't look like rain.
I think this pretty much sums up our day. I got a new camera today, but I was at Ben's with him and Justin, a fellow member of the blog quadratic and old friend from high school home for the summer, so I didn't have a memory card with me, so I was limited to three pictures. I felt these did an accurate job of describing our day, as the three of us sat around at Ben's house. We were actually quite productive. On what, I won't say just yet, but here is just a small preview of what is to come.
That is our other friend Colin, also a memeber of the blog quadratic:
