Tag Archives: me

On Health and Diet (and Moobs)

On Friday, I had yet another followup appointment with the Doctor. It went about as well as I could have hoped…but wait, let me back up a little bit first.

It’s no particular secret that my body has made the (probably accurate) determination that I am a absentee landlord/slumlord and has largely given up trying to support my hedonistic1 lifestyle, but in the past several months it has gotten to the point where I really felt like I had to do something I tend to avoid doing…I went and saw a doctor.

Now, it’s not that I specifically have a problem with doctors. I recognize that I’m not immortal and that they serve a very necessary purpose in my life, but I maintain this knowledge while at the same time having precious little real desire to go see one for trivial things like flat feet, insomnia, tendonitis, or weight gain.

So, around three weeks ago, I took my flat feet, insomnia, tendonitis, and weight gain to a local doctor that I met when taking my daughter to her office. We have a good rapport and she seems smart, trustworthy, and not liable to be entirely aghast at my shenanigans. Some orthotics were prescribed for my flat feet, some cortisone was injected into my elbow for my tendonitis, and we started what was to become multiple rounds of blood work to establish the cause of my recent rapid weight gain, my inability to lose any weight regardless the circumstances, and my inability to sleep for periods of time longer than 4 hours.

My weight became something of a concern almost two months prior to the visit, when I decided that I’d finally had enough of a break in my schedule to do something about my massive weight gain. After spending two weeks recording my food intake (and doing little else), I decided to cut my caloric intake by 1000 calories (from an average of about 3200/day to 2000-2200/day) and add walking 2 miles each of two to three times per week.

I nailed it. Over the course of about six weeks, my highest intake day was just under 2400 calories, and that was the only day that it was over 2200. Most days I was under 2000. I missed only one complete week of walking during that time, but every other week walked my 2 miles at least twice, averaging around 30-35 minutes per trip. I went in for my follow-up expecting to see a nice, gentle 2 pounds down per week (I’d have been happy with 1, but I secretly hoped to see 3). The grand total I lost after what amounted to a fairly extenuating change?

Can I get a drumroll!? (And if you don’t see where this is going, I’m awfully disapointed in you.)

I lost a grand total of -1 pounds. That’s right, I was a pound heavier than when I started. Well, technically speaking, 0.9 pounds, but you catch my drift.

The Rich Get Richer, the Fat Get Fatter

Needless to say, I was annoyed. My bloodwork showed very mildly elevated liver enzymes and NOTHING else. My cholesterol was great, my blood pressure was great, my fasting blood sugar was fine, my iron was okay—everything was peachy. So we sat down and we went over my diet. During the time we were discussing, I wasn’t excessively carb heavy, but I didn’t limit my carbs. I don’t really do sugar, so there were no sweets to speak of. The fat content of my daily intake was within the range we discussed most days (generally in the middle of the range). I’d even started eating three meals per day at more regular intervals than in the past.

“Wait right there,” she said, “explain ‘started eating three meals per day’ and ‘more regular intervals than in the past’ for me.”

So I explained. I explained about how generally I’m not hungry in the mornings, so I rarely eat breakfast. Around lunch time I’m pretty hungry, but usually busy, so if I eat, I don’t eat a ton. I explained about dinner time, and how when it rolls around I’m usually starving, so I eat a TON. I explained about how I often eat again later because I’m still hungry. Throughout the telling, she inquired about various things, and I labored to answer as fully as possible given how little attention I’ve always paid to such things. In answer to what percentages of my daily food intake I thought took place before noon, before 8 and after 8, I guessed 20%, 40%, and 40%, roughly?

She immediately interjected, “Hold on, so if you were eating 3000 calories, that means you were eating only about 600 of them in the morning, and at night, after 8pm, you were eating 1200 or more calories?”

I acknowledged the accuracy of her math, and we discussed the factors that could be contributing to my weight. As she described it, if she were to explain to someone how to best gain fat as quickly and efficiently as possible, she would basically describe my lifestyle (only she would add cheesecake, an amendment I heartily endorse): limit sleep as much as possible, work a sedentary job, add a ton of stress, and load as many calories as you can as late as you can and in as few meals as you can. It’s the Jer Diet, guaranteed to boost your weight or your money back!2 My metabolism, as she put it, no longer metabolized; I had essentially made it dormant by keeping it in a sustained fight-or-flight food hoarding frenzy through stress, starvation followed by binging (alas, no purging though), and torturing my body with exhaustion. Food came in, and my body screamed out “MINE!” and resolved to let as little out as possible since I was constantly tricking it into thinking we were starving to death.

Fair enough, but what about the six weeks wherein I didn’t do that? What gives?

She opined that my metabolism, after nearly a decade of such abuse, might need a lot more to kick back into normal gear. So we developed a new plan.

The Plan

She said that I needed to pull three areas of my life together. First, I needed to start sleeping. Perhaps I wasn’t the sort of person that needed 8 hours per day, but obviously I need more than 4 or I wouldn’t survive on caffeine and sarcasm (probably just the sarcasm). She put me on an anti-depressant (whose name escapes me) that, as she put it, “is not a very good anti-depressant, but makes a pretty good sleep aid.” More importantly, she felt that with the way my sleep issues manifest and the fact that I’m a recovering drug addict, this was my best bet for some much needed sleep.

The second area: stress. She reiterated back to me the list of things to which I’ve whittled my responsibilities and pointed out that it was still a lot. Quite a lot. I agreed. My doctor and I both agreed that since I was unlikely to cut MUCH more from my plate, what I had to do was actually schedule relaxation and stress relief. She wants me to get a massage (and sure, money permitting, I’ll get right on that…I’m guessing insurance won’t cover stress relief massages), do a relaxing hobby, spend time with friends and family—all on a schedule. The premise being that if I schedule this time, it’s time into which I can’t schedule other things, so I’ll be forced to relax some. We shall see how that works, but I’m game to try.

Finally, there was my diet. I simply had to get my metabolism going. To do so, I had to schedule my meals better, consume less carbs (not a low carb diet in the Atkins or South Beach sense, but low carb in the “only one serving per meal and make it a non-white carb if possible” sense), and eat much more protein. I looked at Tim Ferris’s Slow Carb Diet (or 4 Hour Body), and while it intrigues me and is close to what my doctor prescribed, it is dissimilar enough that I want to wait until I’ve given her program a run before I diverge. In order to kick-start things metabolically and supress my appetite some, she gave me a prescription for phentermine once per day in the morning. While I’m on that, I’m not doing energy drinks so as to minimize the chances of some of the more heinous potential side effects.

So, for about the last week, that’s what I’ve been doing: trying to relax, taking my go pills in the morning, taking my stop pills shortly before sleep, and concentrating on fixing my eating. So far, I feel great (but when in the history of dieting has the first week ever not been the best week, eh?). Last night I slept an uninterrupted 7.5 hours and I feel really good today. After getting over the initial hump of taking phentermine (when taken on an empty stomach, it makes me feel unpleasant and drug-trigger-y), that is settling in. I’m still consuming 2000 calories or less per day (closer to 1800, atually), but now it’s pretty close to even across all three meals, and there’s no second dinner. I’m consuming at least 40 grams of protein within a half hour of waking up to get things moving (a big protein shake is really helping there) and am making my meals pretty carb-light and protein heavy. The upside is, I generally feel more full despite the fact that every night this week I’ve noted that I’ve fallen short of my caloric goal by around 100-200 calories.

Moving Forward

Will this work? Who knows. The only real diet that I’ve ever been on in the past was when I was lifting and trying to get more muscle definition. At the time, it worked great. At the time, however, my principle caloric load was beer and protein—heavier on the beer than the protein. That said, I was a super lean 185 and very, very drunk. I forsee a very different result here. Ideally, I would like to end up having dropped 80-90 pounds. When I was under 200, I looked emaciated. I think 200 to 220 is a good weight for my frame, but I have a fairly long 75 to 95 pounds shed on the way there. What I won’t be doing is daily updates on my social media feeds. I hate seeing it, and while I know that it is supposedly meant to breed accountability, the fact is that I don’t feel particularly accountable to you guys and gals, no offense. I have one friend that does it ‘right’ by my reckoning: she has lost something like 100 pounds and periodically she’d just point out that she was up or down X pounds. It was like a normal status update; like it should be. That’s what you can expect, normal Jer-like lamentations about how I want to make sweet love to a Double Whopper while eating a (different) Double Whopper or how I’ve gained 2 pounds and am going to go slice off a moob3. Perhaps, if we’re all lucky, you’ll get notices about how I’m losing weight like crazy, looking all buff, and sending pictures of my weiner to interns…but now with SHIRT OFF! You know, business as usual…

[Updated 11 Sep 2011]: If you’re interested in how it’s turning out, there is a follow up here.

1 For a loosely-defined version of “hedonism” that basically consists of swearing, petulance, energy drinks, and leering.
2 Not a diet. There is no guarantee. You’ll get no money back. You probably won’t even survive it. Do at your own risk. Unless I hate you…then, fire away!
3 Moob: Man Boob. If I shaved them, I could probably get off to pictures of them.

Happy Anniversary, Baby

A warning for most of my readers: this particular post is a note to my wife. You’re welcome to read on, but I imagine it will be boring if you are not Ger.

Ger, the background music for this post can be found (at least for now) right here (opens in a new tab).

Now, back to the letter…

Happy anniversary baby,

Two years ago, you did what is generally considered to be the stupidest thing a young lady can do and married me. It could not have been a better move on my part.

I love you more than you could possibly imagine. The understanding I’ve had of what it means to be married was so woefully shy of what marriage could actually be like; it is amazing. I have a partner in life that is in every possible way my complement. You take care of my considerably whiny ass when I’m sick. You remind me that I’m a bit demanding when I’m out of control. You keep my ego in check, but not too in check. You allow your one special weekend per year—this anniversary of our marriage—to be a weekend consumed by planning efforts for the convention at which we met. I can think of no stronger expression of your love and understanding of all that is me than that. You are a strong, intelligent, beautiful, and wonderful woman, and I can no longer imagine my life without you in it.

Thank you for sharing your life with me, for standing beside me when I’m exhausted, overworked, unhealthy and showing no signs of correcting it, and for accepting me when I’m not doing a particularly great job of showing you how important you are to me. You remain the most amazing person in my life, and I love you. You truly would somersault in sand with me.

Here’s to another year…and next year, an anniversary without a convention.

How Not To Contact Me

Ahh, technology. There are about a thousand ways to get in contact with people anymore, and all have their quirks and idiosyncrasies. Add to that the fact that most of the time we all find our own ways to use (and abuse) that communication tech, so what works for one person might not work at all for another, and you have quite the recipe for confusion. I often lament about the myriad ways that various people fail entirely to live up to my unspoken, secret, and quirky code of contact; so today it occurred to me, perhaps I could elucidate (and more importantly, spawn some conversation to boot).

There are countless different methods of categorization of modes of communication (which I will refer to as “com-modes” here [wait, commode means something different, doesn’t it?]) so I will address four major methods that I find important: transience, reliability, professionalism, and usefulness. I will evaluate these by relating them to the primary modes of communication by which folks try to interact with me: social media (which includes mostly Facebook and Twitter), SMS, telephone, IM, and email; then I will attempt to give my assessment of each by the aforementioned standards. Afterwards, I will outline my personal communication standards (so that you can then continue to ignore, causing me untold grief).

Transience

For me, transience really boils down to two essential parts: the duration of time the message remains available and the duration of time it can be usefully maintained. Social media, for example, has moderate transience by the former scale—messages sent last for a reasonably long time—but a damnably low rating by the latter—it is nigh impossible to find the right message when needed. Email has excellent transience in both categories. Telephone calls have virtually none. IM, as I use it, has fairly high, albeit unreliable, transience (I log almost all messages that hit my laptop, but none that hit my mobile phone), whereas SMS has falls fairly in the middle. Were I to organize the communication modes from highest to least transience, it would be:

Transience
Highest Email
IM
SMS
Social media
Lowest Telephone

Reliability

The reliability of a mode of communication should focus both on whether or not the messages arrive reliably and on if there is a way to establish whether or not communication has been made. By these measures, a phone call is clearly the winner; either you have made connection and had a communication (which is profoundly reliable in this age of mobile phone technology) or you have not; very little room for ambiguity. IM does an excellent job of providing reliability only when used synchronously—when used asynchronously, there is literally NO way of knowing if a message has even landed, and the reliability of message logging is severely suspect. I often have the following situation occur: I leave my computer on, it collects tons of IMs, I suspend my laptop without having read them, then when Ubuntu decides it doesn’t like waking up from suspend I never see those messages at all. Messy. SMS has far too high a failure rate to be considered even slightly reliable, and social media has such a high level of noise in the signal (in volume alone, even if one ignores spam) that it is easy for messages to be missed (“What’s that, you tried to contact me? I’m sorry, my friend Jen decided she needed nails for her WhoreFarm or whatever”). Add to that the fact that most social media is treated as a toy, often social media messages are the first ones ignored when things get busy. Organizing by reliability, then, would look like this:

Transience Reliability
Highest Email Telephone
IM Email
SMS IM
Social media Social media
Lowest Telephone SMS

Professionalism

Ignoring, for the moment, the simple appearance of professionalism, I would prefer to focus on the accoutrements of professionalism: does it allow for one to get the job done? By that measure, SMS and social media fall woefully short—SMS due to character lengths and difficulties in collaboration and social media due to the platform specific nature and quirks like character limitations, difficulties collaborating, etc. Various IMs suffer the same problem as do social media methods—you have to hope the person you need uses that platform and they use it regularly enough for it to be reliable. At this point, though, everyone has a phone and virtually everyone has an email—and those are cross-platform, so individuals on Verizon’s service can speak to those on TMobile; folks who use GMail can speak to those on Hotmail. Email and telephony are the hands-down winners in this respect.

If you then factor back in the appearance of professionalism, there’s no question that communications via Facebook or Twitter (or even SMS) suffer from the suggestion of trivialness. Indeed, Facebook and Twitter are often outright banned by many employers.

Transience Reliability Professionalism
Highest Email Telephone Telephone
IM Email Email
SMS IM IM
Social media Social media Social media
Lowest Telephone SMS SMS

Usefulness

This is the most vague category, but possibly the most important. Usefulness, as I’m defining it here, means how effective is it in helping communication happen. Asynchronous modes of communication are, necessarily, the most useful in my experience, as they allow the recipient of the communication the power to decide under what circumstances things are continued. Text-based asynchronous communications are better still, if one wants to maximize the possible opportunities by which communication can continue. When I’m sitting in a meeting or lying in bed next to my sleeping wife, I am unlikely to answer a phone call or listen to a voice mail. I can, however, glance at an email, text, tweet, or IM and determine what the degree of urgency is. I can even give complete or partial responses in such cases—something as simple as “call you back in 20 minutes, in a meeting” can be of inestimable value. There is a certain sacrifice that is made by losing tone and vocal cadence, just as on the phone body language cues are lost; but that is a small price to pay for such a large degree of convenience and usefulness (and, as often happens, conversations can be moved into verbal modes as a result of successfully making contact via a more useful method.)

The usefulness can further be ascertained by additional features, such as enhanced formatting, ability to include links and/or attachments, ability to collaborate, etc. Clearly, methods with more features would be more useful, so long as those features don’t IMPEDE conversation. If all of this is to be assumed accurate (and why wouldn’t I assume myself correct) then the hierarchy would favor asynchronous communication modes in a fairly arbitrary way:

Transience Reliability Professionalism Usefulness
Highest Email Telephone Telephone Email
IM Email Email Social media
SMS IM IM IM
Social media Social media Social media SMS
Lowest Telephone SMS SMS Telephone

Results

Assigning not-entirely-but-awfully-close-to-arbitrary values to these rankings allows me to mathematically estimate the overall “worthiness” of a form of communication for general, professional purposes…for doing work, that is. Treating the top two boxes as generally comparable and therefore both worth 3 points, the next box as worth 2 point, the next as worth 1, and the bottom ranking as worth 0, we end up with the following scoring:

Transience Reliability Professionalism Usefulness Overall
3 Email Telephone Telephone Email Email (12)
3 IM Email Email Social media IM (9)
2 SMS IM IM IM Telephone (6)
1 Social media Social media Social media SMS Social Media (5)
0 Telephone SMS SMS Telephone SMS (3)

The results I find relatively unsurprising as I strongly prefer email and I’m confident that my approach and the measures I chose to include heavily weight things in my preferred form’s favor. The questions I have for the reader, then, include: What measures are important to you? Should I have weighted these differently? Should I have included other measures? Recognizing the statistical instability of this ludicrously unscientific model, should I not have used a top-two box? Comment below and let me know!

Communicating with Me

Regardless of the above, the realities of contacting me are pretty straightforward. Email is beyond a doubt the best way to contact me. I sometimes go weeks without checking up on my social media (and in fact pretty much never check the private messages I get through them), and I avoid answering the phone entirely. Often I get a voicemail, think “Oh, I’ll answer him or her later today” then remember that I had a call to return a week later. For anything important, send email. Also important, send email to the right place: if you send email about official Penguicon business, for example, to my private email address, I will delete it if it suits me or respond if I feel like it. This is true even if you also included a penguicon email address as well. I don’t reinforce bad behavior; if you want a response, stop cluttering up my personal email.

For “fun” communication (meaning non-professional, or non-business), SMS or social media is fine. SMS is more likely to get a response, and infinitely more likely to get a prompt one. Private messages should all go through SMS, though—I pretty much never check or respond to private Twitter/Facebook messages.

IMing is also fine, but don’t use it as a messaging service. If I don’t respond to your IM, there’s a high percentage chance I’ll never even see it. If you have a question, comment, or link to leave me…find a more permanent method.

Take a Bow

Let me begin by thanking Scott, Lucy, Randy, and Sheryl for their help yesterday. Without them, the party that followed my graduation ceremony could not have gone anywhere nearly as smoothly and a relatively hectic and busy day would have been infinitely more chaotic and stressful. Of course, that is pretty much the theme of the achievement that I’m celebrating—to paraphrase the Beatles, I got by with a little help from my friends.

I know it is the standard cliche…“blah blah couldn’t have done it without my friends and family blah blah,” but nothing could be more literally true than that. Each and every one of you—all family by varying definitions—played an integral part in the creation of this achievement, and you should all be proud. Everyone suffered; my poor, beleaguered children bore the brunt of five years of me being tired, distracted, stressed, and busy, and they did it while finding countless ways to ease our collective burden for example. My wife walked into this relationship IN THE MIDDLE of all of the stress, looked around, and said, “Yeah, why not, I’m in.” Next time you are mistakenly thinking your significant other is the best, remember that Ger not only tolerates all that goes into the hot mess that is me, not only does she tolerate that all at my absolute ball-of-stress worst, but she does it without ever having seen me at my now-we-can-relax best1.

All of you have been amazing though. Each one of you that has, for years, gone out of your way to make your schedules fit my lunacy. All of you who have braved my calendar’s oppressive, colorful, and packed pages in order to set up dinner plans or a meeting for an event. Those among you who have dealt with cranky Jer, tired Jer, not-entirely-coherent Jer, and finding-his-stress-relief-at-the-expense-of-strangers-in-social-situations Jer because, in theory, there’s a fun to be around Jer somewhere in the mix too—despite the growing infrequency of his appearances.

Let me not ignore the fact that many of you have at times shown support in tangible ways too! Some of you have helped bridge financial gaps, been a sounding board when I wanted to pull heads off others, or have just been a set of helping hands when the number of balls I have kept in the air2 proved to be a few too many for even me.

So I mean it when I say that you should all pat yourself on the back, because all I did was the homework3, you guys made a college graduate. Congratulations. Now…about these student loans…

 

1 We are making several assumptions here, of course: I am capable of relaxing, relaxed me is actually better, and of course that relaxation is in my plans.
2 <Jer> tag.
3 And make no mistake, I did a LOT of homework. And tests. And notes. And studying. Well, maybe not the last one.

I’m Gonna Make a Change, For Once in My Life…

Gonna make a change
For once in my life
It’s gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right
–Michael Jackson, “Man in the Mirror”

The problem is, I bought into my own myth.

Whining and Self-Aggrandizing

I have been slugging along accomplishing—DOING—for so long that I began to believe the tales of my own legendary productivity. Apparently, somewhere, there was a campfire around which people sat and spun yarns in hushed tones of Jer Lance, indefatigable doer of things and achiever of objectives. Far and wide, these stories spread, so when things needed doing, I would get an email in my inbox or a mention at a party…just this little thing that needs doing. “Email it to me and I’ll look into it,” I would say; and I would. All of them. Every single one.

Now, it just so happens that I am fairly well connected. I am not sure how it happened, but after a few short years around Michigan fandom, I hang out with or communicate with the people who make so many of the local (and to a lesser degree, non-local) conventions and events happen that I tend to have a pretty good informal relationship with them. As a result, I have a pretty effective track record of finding a solution to those ‘little things that need doing’ that get brought to me, so the legend grows.

And it is entirely my fault, because—as I started this out by stating—I bought into my own myth. I came to genuinely believe that I could survive endlessly on 4 hours of sleep and no actual breaks. I have been under the illusion that using my relaxation time as time to pretend to relax while secretly working would actually fool my body and my mind into thinking that I’ve really been socializing when I have been doing anything but. I legitimately convinced myself that running an audio broadcast at a party was the same thing as socially hanging out at a party. In the universe of people who have hugely sold themselves a bill of goods, I am a hall of famer, and it has exhausted me. I am now just fundamentally incapable of being that guy. I have finally hit that wall, a wall that I have been warned about time and again but never truly believed I could hit—I am a fucking legend, remember? My response time is getting slower. Things are slipping by. I am taking on less and less, but still not able to accomplish it. My legendary 4 hours of sleep has stretched to 6, and I’m still left waking each morning feeling entirely unawake. My relentless productivity is flagging and my mythical 16-hour, full-court-press attacks on mounds of work have softened to 2 hour micro-bursts interrupted by thirty minutes of staring like a zombie into space trying to muster a combination of will-power and coherent thought.

I am failing. I am failing you guys and I am failing me. Worse, I am failing and beating myself up about it considerably; nobody has been as hard on me about this as I have been. I am working harder than ever and getting far less done. I am genuinely upset with my body for needing so much sleep. I get so frustrated I want to cry when I can only find the creativity and ability to write so rarely that I am almost never at a keyboard when it happens; so much is left unwritten. I want to punch things when my mind doesn’t have the acumen to make the sharp, decisive leaps that it was capable of a year ago. I am so unbelievably angry with myself for not having enough will power to just FORCE MYSELF to work my way through my to-do list. This is who I am, why can I not be that person now? Last night, while trying to get some of the massive pile of work I had before me completed, I was forced by my body to lie down on a couch at a friend’s house in the middle of a crowd of people and take a brief (oh, oh so very brief it felt) nap. I woke, and still was so wiped that I could get nothing done. I was near tears for the hour I spent dropping my son off at his mother’s place because of the frustration, the tiredness, the soreness, and the hopelessness of not being able to do what it is that I do.

It is taking a toll on my health, too. I am eating healthier than ever, but my body is falling apart. I am getting random nose bleeds. I have gotten even fatter despite a healthier diet and cutting out most fast food. The persistent headache that has gone on almost entirely uninterrupted for a couple of years now has now become stronger and added to its repetoire the combination of occasional spots in my vision and waves of nausea. I am cranky. I am frustrated when I have to explain what I need from people more than once. My low-grade level of dickishness has turned into full-on assholery when dealing with the people that frustrate me. My tolerance for ineptitude has waned to near non-existant levels.

I am not even me, anymore…I am some critically exhausted, pathetic simulacrum of me. And when I say exhausted, I am not talking about the standard ‘I am in need of a night of uninterrupted sleep or a weekend off’ I keep talking about. No, I am ‘I need to make functional life changes before I collapse in on myself like an imploding star, with all of the requisite fireworks that coincide with such an event.’ So I need to make some kind of change. Last night, Ger and I discussed exactly what that change is going to have to be.

Solving the Problem

I need to stop taking on the little shit. As I evaluated where my time goes, that was the big thing that stuck out…none of the hats that I wear are specifically time consuming. Work, School, Penguicon 2010, Penguicon 2011, ConFusion 2011, and AASFA are all relatively time-light. They each have their moments, but those moments rarely flare up all at once. No, what beats me down is the steady flow of ‘little things that need doing’, both externally and internally. So I need to divide all of my tasks into things that will remain, things that I am quashing or delaying indefinitely, things I will add, and things that I haven’t really decided about yet. To that end:

Things that stay:

  • School. Duh.
  • Work. Equally duh. :)
  • Convention jobs I have already taken on. If I have agreed to it, I will do it. This includes what I have agreed to for Penguicons 2010 and 2011 and ConFusion 2011
  • AASFA. I will continue to do what I have taken on, and I will definitely run if nominated (and will likely nominate myself if not nominated.) The time spent is minimal, and it is really important to me.
 Things I am delaying indefinitely (but certainly until the summer) include:

  • SMOScasts—both recording and editing. I might finish off one of the two shows I have in the can, but that is only if I *feel like it* not because I will have to. I am not committing to getting it done at all.
  • Draft 2 of the (heretofore unnamed) book
  • Any ‘Writing’ not related to the above list of jobs (blogging/micro-blogging will happen, but I won’t go out of my way to whip together big posts or real writing)
  • Freelance work. I’ll just have to commit to being poor and not taking classes this summer…it’s an extra semester, I’ll live.
  • Odd jobs for the conventions. If it isn’t in the list of jobs I have already committed to, I’m not doing it.
  • Nothing else extra, period.
Things that I am adding:

  • Going to parties to socialize.
  • Taking at least 2 days every 2 weeks as days of no work.
  • Blocking one hour each day to relax. I relax a bit now, but always while feeling guilty. This is scheduled, so, no guilt, eh?
 Things I am unsure about right now:

  • The Sexual Harassment project. I want this to happen, it needs to be done, but it will have to be post-Penguicon if I am to do it. So torn, so torn.
  • My idea for a charity drive at Penguicon. This might just have to happen next year.

So there we are. Hopefully, this will help…I know sharing it has helped lift a load from my chest that I’ve been carrying for quite a while now in relative silence (or, at least, as much silence as I have ever been capable of), so by that measure, it is already a success. Thankfully, my wife has agreed to be my gatekeeper on new tasks, by which I basically mean that when I think about taking on a new task, she has undertaken the job of saying “No!” or to forward me a link back to this so that I can avoid being stupid. This is going to be a good thing. It is going to make me happier, more productive, and hopefully healthier…

…but I still want to be super-me again. :(

Seven Years Out of the Trenches

1 Comment

Today marks seven consecutive years free from drugs and alcohol. Eighty-four months. Three-hundred, sixty-four weeks. Two-thousand, five-hundred, fifty-seven days. Over sixty thousand hours. Over three and one-half million minutes.

That is, as a friend said to me, a long time without a beer.

Last night, in search of something to play as background noise while I tried to fall asleep, I turned on the most trite and easily ignored thing I could find; I put on Confessions of a Shopaholic. I ended up staying awake throughout the entire thing, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t until Isla Fisher made a statement near the end that I could figure it out; it was because the movie’s treatment of addiction really had some resonant moments amidst the goofy action and lame plot points.

The statement in question was (and forgive me, as I’m quoting this from memory here)

When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it’s not, and I need to do it again.

Simple, but ridiculously accurate to boot. When I was using, I used to make the world that I saw better. When I began, better merely meant more fun or more exciting, and that is an easy mark to hit. Hell, when you are teen, anything makes the world more exciting. So I drank, smoked pot, dropped acid, ate shrooms, smoked banana peels and various kitchen spices, and generally did whatever I could not to have to face the day without chemical help. It made the world better in my eyes. Then I’d sober up and have to start again.

This is the part where the narrative degenerates into the story of progression; where I needed more and more just to feel good. I won’t bore you with the details, but recognize that it is a cliche for a reason. Things do progress. In my life they progressed to a point where I was getting loaded just to make life tolerable—and by all measures, my life should already have been tolerable. Hell, my life was better than tolerable; I was making a considerable amount of money, I had a nice place to live in a nice neighborhood, two great kids, the physical trappings of suburban life, friends, hobbies, a senior level office job at which I had earned the respect of my co-workers…yet nearly every night I got trashed to make the world better.

So the movie was uncomfortable to watch, because while it showed all of those addict moments in a humorous light, it still showed them. I share pretty liberally from my life as a dope-fiend; but I tend to share the stories that are humorous (at least in hindsight) and not the stories of desperation and shame. It isn’t that I am embarrassed by them so much as they do not make for great party stories, but those stories are readily accessible in my mind. You don’t forget stuff like that. You can’t forget it, even if you try (and believe me, there are times that the using is simply to help you forget this stuff, and that doesn’t work either), so it remains there for you to deal with.

It is so hard to forget because it isn’t some external stuff that happens to you, it is a pervasive, aggressive feeling of helplessness. I could never impart to you the phobic feeling that comes with addiction; like love, you have to feel it to understand it. You have to know that you should not take the next hit—know it to the very core of your being—then you have to rationalize taking it anyway. You have to convince yourself to do it all the same; using trickery, manipulation, and lies on yourself. And make no mistake, you know that you have just lied. You have to come to an agreement with yourself that you are going to overlook that lie, that you are going to believe your own pathetic rationalization, because it is the only way not to hate yourself for what you are about to do. Then you take that hit, and you go ahead and hate yourself anyway; because the agreement that you made doesn’t make you stupid—you know that your excuses were bullshit. So you live with that, too. You live with the knowledge that you are too pathetic, worthless, and weak to stop using, and you hold onto that until you feel worthless and weak enough to do it all again.

You have to know the feeling of sitting in front of a drink trying to come up with some rationale that will allow you to consume it despite the fact that you have promised everyone you love that you are done and that you have it under control. You see, as an addict, there was never a doubt that I would take the drink, but I had to find some reason that would allow me to do it without being obliterated by the guilt. I DESERVE this drink for putting up with my wife’s shit (amusingly enough, her shit was usually about my drinking, go figure…). I am OWED this drink by a world that puts too much pressure on me. Why shouldn’t I have it, I mean, I’m an adult, right? Then once you have selected your excuse, and once you have agreed to ignore how trite it is as far as excuses go, you can go ahead and take the plunge. The upside is, the more drinks you have, the easier it is to convince yourself of the legitimacy of your excuse; of course, sometime you will sober up, but that is a problem for future you.

The simple fact is, as I ultimately learned, you can never drug yourself up enough, have enough sex, buy enough stuff, or eat enough to make the your perception of the world better. At a certain point though, you recognize that fact, but the world is so intolerable by that time without any chemical “enhancement” that there is no way to just stop. So you continue along in a self-reinforcing cycle of doing things that make you hate yourself more so that you use more to mask the self-loathing so that you hate yourself even more so that you use more…well, you see where I am going here.

So today marks the anniversary of a moment in my life that is amongst my proudest: the first day I stopped using and did not pick back up again. Seven years ago today, I sat on my front porch crying because I had not yet used that day, but I was on the verge of doing so anyway. I was physically shaking from the horror of my certain knowledge that in a few minutes I was going to get up, wander to the cupboard, and get a drink. On this day seven years ago, instead of going to the cupboard, I gave a friend a ride to a 12-step meeting (you know, entirely for his sake, because I certainly didn’t have a problem or anything). Seven years ago today I clung to my sobriety with knuckles as white as printer paper and only noticed years later that my grip had slowly relaxed; that blind obstinance had turned into a way of life. That I was no longer merely not using, but actually recovering. Seven years distant from the trenches of what is known as “active addiction” (a fancy term for the time spent actually using).

So today is something of a dichotomy for me, as much somber retrospection as holiday. It is a celebration of seven years of freedom from actively pursuing my various addictions to be certain, but it is also a day of reminder for me. It is rough, remembering the people I hurt, the things that I have done, and the feelings I felt through over a decade of abusing drugs and alcohol; but it sure feels nice to have stopped being that person. Today, I will celebrate my clean-time, and I will strive to make the rest of the year my time of remembrance.

Now, to quote my friend Dave, back to working on getting day two-thousand, five-hundred, fifty-eight…

Wedding! The Informal Report…

Wow, I’m married!

Seriously, that is just now beginning to settle in. I am a lucky, lucky guy. It is a pretty safe bet that I would not put up with, from a spouse, anywhere near the amount that Ger puts up with from me, so… lucky… you see? And now, the story of the wedding, in narrative form…

On Wednesday, I swung by the rental place and picked up the tuxedos for Cody and I. We each tried ours on before we even left the store because I refuse to have to get problems solved later, when I’m not present. I’m especially glad I did so, given the problems others in the party had with getting theirs to fit. Cody’s jacket was a bit snug, so we had them slide the button out a bit and all was well. Ultimately, we made an early night of things because it was pretty obvious that given the amount on our plates for the next several days, sleep was not going to happen much.

Let me tell you a little bit about Thursday. First, I’m an idiot, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying. I way…WAY overbooked myself. Thursday I went to work early so I could study for that day’s final exam(!!?!), after which I immediately went to said exam. It could have gone worse. I raced home, finished packing, and by 2pm Ger, the kids, and I were all at the hotel. Ger and the bellhop brought all of our stuff upstairs (and helped ConChair Matt Arnold muscle much of the con stuff into the storage room) while I settled some problems at the front desk.

Families came in and we did a quick “rehearsal” of what was going to happen then went to a very crowded dinner at Bob Evans. Dinner was remarkably more fun than I’d expected despite several bumps in the road (like having one meal served sometime after everyone else had eaten… that was fun.)

The remainder of the early evening was spent alternately dealing with hotel issues related to the convention and doing all of the last minute work for the wedding itself. The evening was spent setting up and testing all of the music sets, writing and rewriting a script and timing cues for our master of ceremonies, revising my vows for the millionth time, and entertaining not one but two families. The last job is the one I feel I did the most poorly on, and I am a bit apologetic for that. If the temporal proximity of wedding and convention detracted from anything, in my eyes, it was from time spent with family that traveled a great distance to see the event. My apologies. Due to a last-minute line-up change, I took a break in the middle of the prep to go over things with our new officiant. Once I was relatively confident in my prep, I finally retired for the night.

Next came the big day. Seriously…what can I say?

I was up by around 6am on Friday to make sure things started off well, and was running around like an idiot by 8am. The photographers showed up around 9:30 to capture some of the setup and dress-up…and let me say, Greg and Jennifer rocked. I felt bad for Greg, especially, as he had to try to sprint around a convention with me snapping photos until I (way too late in the day) got around to tux-ing up.

Once we were all set, we had ourselves a wedding. In every way, it was just what we were hoping for. It was gorgeous, casual, fun, and it had a bit of us in it. I don’t remember everything that happened, but some highlights include me forgetting about Orvan’s ring delivery and being genuinely confused when he wandered down the aisle, whipping out the phone for that special look of horror on Ger’s face, power eating cupcakes, and finding out as we walk onto the floor that Ger doesn’t know how to dance (my favorite quote…“Seriously? You were a dancer though?”… “Well, I could do a pirouette if you want…”).

I’m sure Ger will have more to say on the topic of the ceremony and reception itself, I’m just glad it came off well. I really enjoy planning these sorts of things, and it really was a good time. That having been said, though, I could not have done it without a ton of help and tons of folks, so I would like to take some time to say some Thank Yous to some very important people without whom the entire process would not have happened (or would have, but far less smoothly, amounts to much the same thing.) These are in somewhat random order, forgive me.

  • Geralyn – Thank you for saying yes! Well, aside from that, there is no way that I could have done it all without her help, support, and willingness to put up with my cranky, harried self for the last month. I less-than three you baby.
  • Nick – Nick was there to ensure that anything that needed doing got done, and I really appreciate it. From dropping an energy drink on me the morning of to trying to ensure that I remembered to void my bladder before the ceremony, to dropping off the tuxes on Saturday, he ruled. Thank you!
  • Scott – The thanks I have for you are huge like the comically oversized head on a panda suit. You put up with me delaying, delaying, delaying and playing much of the proceedings rather off the cuff and with minimal plan. Thank you so much.
  • Greg – OMG thank you! You stepped in like a pro and I really, really appreciate it. There is much man-love here!
  • Greg and Jennifer of Croft & Campbell – Seriously, more than just taking pictures, being the folks that were able to say “this is what some couples do, and here are alternatives”, you guys as much as anyone made it possible for us to make this wedding really “ours” and I cannot thank you (or, for that matter, recommend you) enough.
  • My new family – Thank you for helping make the room gorgeous, and a special thanks to those of you that helped to make sure that Ger had her special day, the way she wanted it. Those of you who made it about *her* hold a very special place in my heart and I appreciate it immensely.
  • Josh – True story: Josh hand made every single one of those duct-tape flowers with love and care over the past few weeks…then had the temerity to thank us for the privilege! Seriously! Josh, you utterly rock, and we are the ones that thank YOU! Now get back over here to this side of the country.
  • Chuck – Thank you for picking up my dreadful slack on the hotel circuit for the duration of my actual wedding and reception so that I had only to deal with the most major of issues. I would have had to have a six-second wedding without you!

I’ll probably have to add to this list as time goes, because I *KNOW* I’m missing a million people, but for now, this is what it is. Thank you all.

Top 15 Reasons I Will Be Passed Over for Father of the Year 2008

For a relatively intelligent guy, I make a lot of stupid mistakes. This also holds true when it comes to my parenting style (if, by “style”, we mean “series of not well thought out choices”). It is because of these that each year I jokingly suggest that I am not a likely candidate for Father of the Year. Here are the top 15 reasons why this year is not looking good…

15.If Found, Please Call…
While at the Renaissance Festival, it was pointed out to me that many of the other parents had written their phone numbers on a sticker on their child. Not to be outdone, I wrote my phone number and the phrases “Do Not Rape” and “No Kidnapping” in permanent black sharpie on both children on their arms and stomach. Sharpies are, as it turns out, more permanent that one would think.

14.Cody’s Giant Head
I’m sure that there is a special place in hell for people that purposely try to make someone else self conscious about a part of their body. I’m sure that the part of hell set aside for parents that do it to their children must be extra specially horrific. (But damn, look at the boy’s head!)

13.Tricking Children into Swearing
I am absurdly amused by the sound of swearing coming from my children, so much so that I get crazy enjoyment out of trying to trick them into swearing. They are too old for my favorite (having them sound out the spelled out version of a naughty word), but there is always value in the attempt. Most recently, that attempt has been in the form of foreign words and phrases.

12.Birthday Slaps
In 2006, an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” changed the lives of my children and I in a very specific (and ultimately painful) way. It started the birthday slap bet. Now, a good parent certainly wouldn’t allow his children to beat him about the face and neck in excess of thirty times, nor return the favor; but it is so funny. To be honest, this is probably the last year of the event; frankly, the kids are too damned big, and this shit is beginning to HURT.

11.Adam Sandler is Rarely Appropriate
Sitting around the table laughing at funny songs, everyone remembers the “Chanukah Song” (all three versions) and the “Thanksgiving Song” is safe enough; but what happens when you forget and queue up “At a Medium Pace” for the kids? What happens is they get the lyrics:

“Spit on your hand and stroke my cock at a medium pace,
play with my balls and tell me how big they are…

before you get a chance to hit stop. That was a great moment for us all.

10.Turkish Coffee
This is a gag that I have fallen for many times: the kids want to try something that I am consuming, I am sure that the flavor will dissuade them, and it utterly fails to. This iteration involved Turkish coffee at Al Sultan, which is particularly strong. I hand the little cups to each child assuming they’ll sip it, hate it, and move on. Instead, they sip it, catch the minty leave-behind , and proceed to down a full shot each. Any drink dispensed in shot form is definitely not a child’s drink. Most adults probably already knew this.

9.Extra Strong Salsa
Many of my moments of ineptitude stem from playing practical jokes on children that probably are best not done to such small people. In this case it was placing some insanely hot salsa in the center of Amber’s burrito. To give you an idea, I tried a dab the size of a pea, and it was PAIN personified. In Amber’s burrito, I placed about two teaspoons. She was feeling rough afterwards. Perhaps I should have tasted it first.

8.Enjoy the Nightmares
I had already seen the movie “Hot Fuzz” once, and couldn’t recall any bad parts so when the kids wanted to watch it with me, I saw no problems with it. As it turns out, there is a rather fantastic amount of blood in that movie; cartoonish amounts, actually. Whoops. To add insult to injury, each scene kept getting more and more grotesque than the one before until, when a certain building piece aligned (with great momentum) with a certain character’s head, even Amber said “I can’t believe we are allowed to watch this.” Nor can I, baby, nor can I.

7.Should Milk be Chunky?
At dinner, I pull out a nearly empty milk jug, noting that it is a full week past the expiration date. The sniff test is ambiguous, it doesn’t smell BAD, but it doesn’t smell good either. Amber picks up the jug and, with no fanfare, takes several huge swallows. She then confirmed that it doesn’t taste “quite right” then, seeing my discomfort, proceeded to put chocolate syrup in the jug, and finished off every last drop, punctuating her completion with a loud burp. You have to admire that commitment to fucking with me, even as your stomach turns.

6.Cold Showers
A simple formula: a pitcher of ice cold water, quiet feet, and an unsuspecting child in the shower minding his or her own business.

5.Children are not Cows
While visiting my fiance’s family farm, it occurred to me that the kids had never before seen an electric fence, so after a bit of time spent assuaging their fears, they were convinced to touch it. What I wasn’t aware was that modern, thyristor driven fences differ in many ways from the old style fences I was used to; the most notable of those ways was in intensity and duration of intensity. Testing the fence after the kids each complained of its strength showed me that this fucker HURT. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…oops.

4.Just Like Their Father
While driving somewhere, on a whim, I dug a booger from my nose and wiped it on my son’s arm expecting the obvious reaction. Instead, he calmly looked at me, scooped it up with his finger, and popped it into his mouth. “Delicious,” he uttered. There is a great deal of me in this child. (No pun intended)

3.Hunger Strike
Many of these items seem to relate to what my children eat; this relates to what they occasionally do NOT eat. More than once they have allowed me to sleep in, and when lunch time nears, the following conversation takes place:

Me: Alright, who’s hungry?

Them: We are starving, we haven’t eaten yet!

Me: You didn’t have breakfast?

Them: No, we were out of cereal.

The time to mention this would probably have been before lunch, eh?

2.The Beatings Will Continue…
I walk into the living room, preparing to don my belt when Amber takes off down the hall ahead of me. Overtaken by my inner hunter, I instinctively lash out with my belt, scoring an accidental direct hit on the back of Amber’s arm with my metal-studded belt.

Oh, it gets worse.

Cody observes that it couldn’t have hurt THAT much, and I take over 15 attempts to snap him in the ass with it before accidentally contacting his lower back. Best…father…evar.

And the grand winner, the reason of all reasons that I will not be getting the coveted “Father of the Year” prize this year is…

1.Birds and Bees
My ex and I decide to have “the talk” with the kids. As such things go, “us” talking to the kids tends to mean “me” talking while she nods along helpfully. This was no exception, and I did what I do best—extemporaneously recite off the cuff facts and manufacture a lecture from thin air. Most of the time this works out quite well; most of the time I’m not speaking to children. I cannot profess to recall everything that I touched on, but I can say with absolute certainty that the concepts of beastiality, masturbation, birth control, and multiple-partner-sex came up. Yes, the first item on the list was beastiality. No, I don’t know how that came about.

As I have said, it’s not looking good for this year. Maybe next? What is, I suppose, most troubling with this list is that it is not yet Thanksgiving as I write it, and these 15 came fairly quickly and easily. I still have the entire month of December during which I can make even more stupid mistakes. It is rather scary when you think about it.

 

[Edit] I can add another to this list, as I allowed the kids to read this list while I was getting ready this morning. It was only when they both giggled maniacally and I glanced over their shoulder that I realized there was, perhaps, something worse than playing the Adam Sandler song for them; that being, of course, typing out the lyrics for them to read. Well played!

The Photo that Won’t Die (Revisited)

As I have mentioned once or twice, there is this particularly horrific picture of me that the HFCC PR department took that resurfaces periodically with the apparent intent of causing me embarassment. In this picture’s last adventure I was the “featured student” and the photo was on the front page of the website. Not so bad, I mean, how many people go to the web site, and more importantly, how many people actually read the front page?

This week, they upped the ante. This came in the mail:

Oh the humanity... or was that 'huge manatee'...

I am rather impressed, however, that they find different soundbytes from the lengthy interview process to use for each advertising method. This one reads (for those that can’t see it):

I’m the custodial parent to two children, ages nine and ten. Spending time with my kids is important. Being an HFCC co-op student really works well with my schedule. I’m able to work and take classes while my kids are in school. I can even see improvement in my children’s schoolwork now that I’m around more.

Oh, and this time, I’m a…

Former soldier, US Army; Marketing Entrepeneur; Computer Software Developer; Future teacher; Single parent

in addition to being an HFCC student. I have to say, I’m somewhat more impressed with myself.

But DAMNIT that’s a crappy picture.

The Photo that Won’t Die!

As I had briefly whined about in an entry several months ago, HFCC has been using a particularly horrific picture of me for some of their press. Of course, that was in August, and no mention of any more advertising travesties have been made to me since that time, so I was feeling pretty confident that the situation was over. Until today.

While walking down the hall one of the instructors uttered the cryptic sounding statement, “Hey, featured student!”

“What?”, thought I.

A short while later, one of the workstudy students opened a browser window and the default homepage opened up. The HFCC main page.

…and that’s when we saw it.

Featured Student: Jeremy Lance

Clicking through the link brings me to more horrifying visions…

Jeremy Lance - Super Genius

Yes, the picture that will not die… WILL NOT DIE!

It’s not that I’m not flattered. I really am. Truly. But this is an atrocious picture of me. I don’t really look like this. At all. Even a bit. Do I? And isn’t “Marketing Entrepreneur” overselling the case just a tad? I mean, Marketing Entrepreneur? Really?

HFCC Student Wins $250 Scholarship in Co-Op Essay Contest

Henry Ford Community College student Jeremy Lance had little idea that returning to college at age 30 and obtaining a cooperative education (co-op) position at HFCC would significantly alter his life plans and lead him toward his dream career.

It did, and the experience paid off in more ways than one. Lance was recently awarded second place and a $250 scholarship in the Carol Quandt Student Essay Contest for writing about his co-op experience at HFCC in an essay titled, ‘A Change of Plans.’ Lance was the first community college student ever to win an award in the statewide essay contest.

The contest was sponsored by the Michigan Council for Internships and Cooperative Education. Students were asked to write about factors that have been most influential in making their co-op experience valuable. The contest was open to co-op students from all Michigan colleges and universities.

Lance, 30 of Inkster, enrolled at HFCC in the winter 2007 semester to earn a degree in Computer Information Systems (CIS) so he could advance in his job, after working more than a decade in information technology in a corporate setting. Lance also enrolled in the Cooperative Education program at HFCC to earn money and to add more experience to his resume. At first, he did not realize how much he would learn from the program, which combines work experience with college credit.

“I can say that my time with HFCC’s Co-op program has been a life altering experience,” explained Lance. “Employers work with you and your schedule, which is very beneficial.”

Lance began his co-op position working as a lab tech in HFCC’s student computer lab. His job included helping Computer Information Systems (CIS) students with their course work and with lab equipment, as well as other jobs around the lab. It wasn’t until he was asked to assist students in a large introductory computer class that he discovered he had an interest in teaching.

“I learned I enjoyed teaching college students and found new opportunities before me,” notes Lance. “Teaching was always something I wanted to do, but I didn’t realize that teaching at the college level was something attainable for me.”

Working with CIS students allowed Lance to deal with a variety of students with different needs, goals, abilities, learning methods, and skill levels, and he wrote about the benefits of that in his essay.

“Just two short semesters has already improved my ability to explain a concept from many different perspectives,” Lance wrote. “This time spent has also served to teach me new ways to communicate effectively with students.”

Lance, who also is a member of HFCC’s Phi Theta Kappa chapter, the national honor society for two-year college students, has been invited to be an unofficial tutor this semester, which allows him to sit in on lab time for two separate CIS 125 classes to provide extra instruction to students as they complete their assignments.

“The experience, as a whole, has been extremely gratifying,” says Lance. “The feeling of working with someone who is having a problem with a concept and being there when they have that ‘breakthrough moment,’ and to know that I was a part of that process, is something I wish to remain a part of.”

“I can’t imagine having ever had the chance to take part in this type of work without this co-op position.”

HFCC’s Cooperative Education program provides students with both work experience and classroom instruction. Students are employed in practical, paid positions directly related to their educational and career goals. Students receive a paying job, a letter grade, and college credit while enrolled in the co-op program at HFCC. Students registered in co-op must fulfill all terms of employment as well as attend regular class sessions and complete all course requirements.

To enroll in the co-op program, students must first pick up an application from the Co-op Office, located in room T-112 in HFCC’s Technology Building on the main campus located at 5101 Evergreen in Dearborn. Students must also prepare a resume and meet with a Cooperative Education specialist to submit the completed application and resume. Resume guidelines as well as more HFCC co-op information can be found at www.hfcc.edu/coop.

“Jeremy is a joy to work with,” says Nancy Stupsker, HFCC cooperative education specialist. “He had received excellent feedback from his co-op supervisor not only for his outstanding computer skills, but for his ability to work well with students. I am very proud to have him represent our college.”

In the future, Lance plans on attending the University of Michigan-Dearborn to earn a bachelor’s degree and hopes to come back to HFCC as a CIS instructor.

“If I could make any suggestion to potential co-op students, it would be try something new,” Lance wrote in his essay. “Do not simply do what you have always done. Instead, take this relatively risk-free opportunity to spend a semester doing something different. It might open up a new avenue of possibility for you that you had no idea existed.”

For more information on HFCC’s Cooperative Education program, please call Stupsker at 313-845-6359. For more information on HFCC, visit www.hfcc.edu or call 1-800-858-HFCC (4322).

A Change of Plans

Returning to school at thirty years old, I found myself somewhat jaded at the prospect of my career after school. I was certainly not excited about the prospect of obtaining a degree so that I could return to a career that I considered to be, at best, a chore. As a result, I initially entered into the co-op program at Henry Ford Community College with the expectation that I would gain very little outside of a grade and another entry on my resume, and the further expectation that it would be more of the same, uninteresting thing that I have been doing for years. Surely, there would be nothing of importance that I would be able to take away from a part-time job that I had not already gained from nearly a decade in corporate Information Technology. I could not have been more wrong. This co-op did not just give me a grade. Instead, I can say with no exaggeration that my time with this work-study program has been a life altering experience.

As a Lab Technician, my official responsibilities could be summarized best as an “equipment babysitter” of sorts; someone to ensure that the lab rules are followed while signing in students and helping students with the equipment. Unofficially, I spent much of my day during the first semester helping the Computer Information Systems (CIS) students understand their coursework. It is in this capacity that I found an exciting, enjoyable niche. I learned that I enjoy teaching college students. Suddenly, a new branch of opportunity sprouted before me, and my future prospects were no longer the bleak, dismal things that I had been dreading.

Now that I have adjusted my collegiate plans to those of an aspiring college instructor, my time as a co-op student has become even more useful. The time I spend at work is now time spent learning how to deal with a variety of different students with varying needs, goals, abilities, learning methods, and skill levels. Just two short semesters has already improved my ability to explain a concept from many different perspectives–trying repeatedly until I can find one that will work. This time spent has also served to teach me new ways to communicate effectively with students. These improvements have been key factors in the considerable expansion of my role as unofficial tutor this semester. I have been invited to sit in on the lab time for two separate CIS125 classes so that I can provide supplemental instruction to the students as they are actively trying to complete their assignments.

The experience, as a whole, has been extremely gratifying. The feeling of working with someone who is having a problem with a concept and being there when they have that “breakthrough moment,” and to know that I was a part of that process, has made the entire process something I strongly wish to remain a part of. I cannot imagine having ever gotten a chance to take part in this type of work without this work-study position. Had this position not been available to me, I would be continuing on my path back into a job field that I have never particularly enjoyed, merely to make money.

A significant percentage of the reason that this program has worked so well for me is that my employers are also educators. As such, they have an understanding of student life, of going back to school, or choosing a career path that suits your strengths, and of finding a path through the educational experience that will end some place meaningful. Certainly, the value of the time I have spent at work would be lessened, had I not been working with a corps of fine educators who have worked hard to help me succeed. The influence that each of these instructors have exerted upon my experience has been a great boon in guiding me down that path.

If I could make any suggestion to potential work-study students, it would be this: Try something new. Do not simply do what you have always done; instead, take this relatively risk-free opportunity to spend a semester doing something different. It might very well open up a completely new avenue of possibility for you that you had no idea existed.

When I was growing up, my father and I used to discuss what I would do when I grew up. I used to say “doctor” or “lawyer” because those were jobs that seemed to make a great deal of money. My father’s response was always the same. He would always reply, “A paycheck is a fringe benefit to doing a job that you enjoy.” To me, that always felt like an unrealistic goal, but today, having the benefit of my co-op position under my belt, I can say with absolute assurance that my paycheck most certainly is a fringe benefit of a job that I enjoy doing. For the first time since I came back to school, I am genuinely excited about finishing school and taking the next step forward, into my new, “grown up” life.

Manscaping

2 Comments

First, if a member of my family is reading this; or for that matter, anyone who is squeamish, not amused by the pain of others, or easily offended…just do all of us a favor and skip this entry.

Seriously, move along.

You’ll be sorry…

As 2006 started, my then-girlfriend, Terra, The offending wax kithad all but moved into my house, and as such all manner of feminine products had taken up residence in my bathroom. This is a phenomena that I will be investigating further at some point in the future, but for now, suffice to say there was no end to the strange devices and products with which I have little experience that have invaded my life. Among these things…a waxing kit.

Now, I have been staring at this thing since I came back from my Christmas trip to NY, and every time I enter my bathroom it calls to me…try me…try me…

As a guy, there are limitations as to what I can wax…if I was to wax my legs, arms, or chest…that would just be inappropriate (since I am not a body builder, a swimmer, or trying to pick up men). My head was a option, but I’m tired of the bald look, and it is winter. That pretty much left my “equipment”.

Yeah…that equipment.

So, I hook up the warming apparatus, and proceeded to read the instructions. It is important to note that, as a guy, I suffer from vanity. As such, when the directions indicated to try this on a small patch of hair first as a test, I literally could not do so. I was constitutionally incapable. Even though I would be the only one to know that I was such a weakling that I actually tested a small area, I just couldn’t. So, I covered my taint and sack with hot wax.

Sidebar: What should be obvious but apparently was not is that this wax is frigging hot. I mean, it’s probably not bad on legs or other intended areas, but when you hit some sensitive areas on your body, well, that’s just not cool (no pun intended, I assure you).

After the waxy coating, I added those nifty cloth strips (three to the sack, one to the taint), waited a moment for the wax to do its hardening thing, then gave a test tug to one of the sack-attached strips.

Instant tears.

“Okay,” I thought, “this is going to be pretty painful, but, hey, I’m a man, I can take it, right?” With that pep talk, I psyched myself up and decide that strip one is coming off like a band-aid, right now.

One scream and a lot of tears later, I’m laying in a ball on the floor. Wow!

The only upside to this is that there’s only three more to go, right? Wrong! Upon closer inspection, all four strips are still in place. Apparently, I failed to take into account the elastic nature of my bag of jewels. Yanking the strip merely stretched my balls to about my knees, but did not remove the strip or any hair. Panic sets in. I need to get these strips off, and pulling again just ain’t happening. I finally realize that perhaps a hair dryer would soften the wax sufficiently to remove it semi-painlessly. Wrong. You lie, random person from the Internet! The amount of heat that would be required to melt the wax is far in excess of what my nuts can take applied directly to them… and an iron? You are sick and cruel! This left only one thing to do… grab my sack (literally) and yank the hell out of the strips.

Sidebar: If there are any women reading, at this point they are probably wondering why I wouldn’t have used a wax remover or baby-oil. It is at this time that I’d like to say where the fuck were you when I had wax on my nuts?! Not to be ungrateful, but, this would have been nice information to have back then…it’s just saddening now.

At any rate, I then proceeded to expediently yank the strips from my genital region with much screaming, howling, pain and, yes, bleeding.

Bleeding? The instructions said nothing of blood coming from the very holes in which my hairs used to reside. What manner of false advertising is this?

After bathing away the folicular blood and soaking for a while to help rinse away the Not my balls, but not too dissimilar eitherpain and horror that this stunt has caused, I found a new problem… actually, two of them. First, not all the hair went away. Second, not all the wax went away either. Unfortunately, the first problem left me looking like I had the genital mange, so I was forced to shave after my botched wax job. Hey, do you know what hurts almost as much as waxing your nuts? Shaving your freshly mangled nuts, that’s what, especially with wax still present. The second problem left me painfully, carefully un-sticking my badly butchered sack from the floor of the bathtub. Insult, meet injury.

With the benefit of a few days between me and my waxy pain, I finally could comfortably do a search to find out what I did wrong… and I found this article with an important part I’ll quote for you here:

Never remove pubic hair with wax. Waxing your so-called bikini line is perfectly acceptable. But genital waxing can cause infection, and I’m told it hurts like the bejeezus.

Yes, Mr. Whittall, it does, it certainly does.

The moral of the story? Well, there are many morals you could take away from this story: Don’t wax your balls would be chief among them, but read the instructions is probably in there too. Perhaps, simply put, don’t be me?

Messy the Pooh

Sadly, I did not get a chance to post this when it happened on Tuesday.

There is some chemical property of McDonalds’ coffee that has a very negative effect on my gastro-intestinal system. Specifically, it runs straight through me. Now, understand that I’m not referring to the normal coffee-induced pooping that is a result of your average cup of Joe. No, gentle reader, the effect to which I refer can best be described by the phrase “pissing out my ass”. Keep all of this in mind when I say that Tuesday morning, on the way into school, I picked up a tall cup of this special brew on my way to an Econ test.

I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.

So at 7:30 in the morning, I’m finishing my large coffee as I take what should be a pretty simple part 1 of an exam…when I feel a gurgling in my stomach. I have to shit…no, I have to shit NOW! I’m talking about a degree of urgency that doesn’t say “You should go to the bathroom” or even “You should run to the bathroom”, but “You should run to the bathroom, and bring your cup, in case you have to stop along the way and shit in THAT!” Things were urgent.

I’ve never used the bathrooms on the third floor of this building, so I race down the hall with a 50/50 chance of the direction I’ve chosen being the Men’s room…and a 50/50 chance of it being the ladies room.

Guess which I picked?

For a brief moment, I considered just using the women’s restroom, but the damage I was going to visit upon the toilet was something I couldn’t bring myself to do in anything but a men’s room. Chagrined, I pressed on, retracing my steps and heading to the men’s room.

Walking like a duck. POWERwalking like a duck.

By the time I got to the stall, the urgency had reached a fever pitch. Luckily my pants are oversized, because I didn’t unbuckle my belt or unbutton my pants, I just smoothly slid everything down below my ass and let fly as my ass approached the seat.

The extra few seconds I saved by not waiting until my ass was in actual contact with the seat was my downfall. You see, what came out of my orifice had the appropriate color and odor, but aside from that bore absolutely no resemblance to crap. To begin with, it was purely liquid. More importantly, it came out of my ass at an ALARMING velocity. Fortunately, I was able to stop myself from sitting all the way down, because the vile matter that was being expelled from my colon sprayed all over the seat, the floor, the back wall…even a little on the side-walls of the stall. It was horrifying.

When the initial volley ended, I popped the door open, peeked around the bathroom to ensure that I was alone, and scooted into the next stall so I could sit down and finish my business. A few moments later, I was finished and cleaned, and I started pulling some paper towels to mop up my mess…

…but I really should get back to my test, right?

So I ditched my mess and went back to my test. Mission accomplished, no harm, no foul…except the guy that sits at my desk with me then gets up to go to the bathroom. It did not occur to me that anything could go wrong when he returned and said, in a very loud voice, “Someone shit ALL OVER the bathroom. It’s all over the place, it’s in like, three stalls!”

To which I responded, “It was ONE STALL!”

Then I realized what I’d done…and just went back to doing my test.

Nobody has mentioned it to me yet.

Porno for Pyros (and Entomologists)

In 1995, two friends, my girlfriend at the time, and I moved into a huge house in a nice neighborhood near Fort Lee, Virginia. Because we were young and dumb, the 5 bedroom, 2 and one half bath mini-mansion quickly fell into a state of disrepair, as most party houses do, but no party damage could rival that caused by an invasion of bees and my attempt to exterminate them.

One day in the late spring, I arrived at home and noticed, as I waited for the garage door to finish raising, that there were an awful lot of bees swarming around the entrance. As the days progressed, the swarm grew.

Now, I hate bees. In fact, I don’t like any stinging insects. These invaders needed to go.

The next day, I bought several cans of Raid spray and, upon my arrival at home, sprayed the walls, roof, porch, ground, and bushes in an attempt to dissuade the pests from hanging around my garage. The next day, it was apparent that it didn’t work. They were back in full force, completely unimpressed with my attempts to evict them.

I decided to perform some reconnaissance. I went out that evening, when bees sleep, and looked for a nest. That was when I saw the hole that they had been flying in and out of… and it was huge. It was roughly the diameter of a golf ball, and fairly deep looking. I sprayed the hole down with the last of the Raid, and went in to call my father, because if anyone would know how to deal with this problem, my father would.

Just a short while on the phone with dad gave me the hope I needed. According to him, all I needed was to pour gas into their nest at night, and my problem would be solved.

So I went to the local gas station and purchased a second five gallon gas can full of gas to go with my mostly full five gallon can at home. I figured, whatever was left over after I filled the hole could be used in my car or lawn mower. With my gas ready, I dressed for the occasion.

I know I mentioned that I hate bees, but I don’t think I conveyed the depths to which I abhor these stinging little beasties. I hate bees! Not wanting to get stung, I went a bit overboard. An outer layer that included a flannel shirt, oversized jeans, and a pair of combat boots concealed layer two: a hooded sweatshirt, sweatpants, and thick wool socks. I hid my hands in heavy winter gloves, and covered my head and face with a hood, a scarf, and a pair of motorcycle goggles. There wasn’t a bit of unprotected flesh exposed.

This, in all likelihood, saved my life.

At midnight, the hour when I felt the bees would be most asleep and least likely to stir, I proceeded with my plan. I went outside with my 8 or so gallons of gas and box of strike-anywhere matches and began the process of exterminating the bugs. I started to pour gas into the hole.

Do you know the sound that a drain makes when you pour water straight down the center of it? That is the noise the hole made as the gas disappeared into its maw. I kept pouring and pouring, waiting for the hole to fill so I could stop… and the hole just wouldn’t fill. I started on the second gas can when the first was empty, and unloaded the bulk of that into the hole before I gave up. My best estimate is that was about 6 or 7 gallons of gasoline in the hole when I finished.

Now it was time for the lighting ceremony. I took a strike anywhere match, lit it, and threw it at the hole, making sure to stand plenty far enough away to be out of harm’s way.

The match went out.

I lit another and, edging closer, threw it at the hole.

The match went out.

Edging closer still, I threw another lit match at the hole.

The match went out.

Being the problem solver that I am, I created a solution. I rolled up a newspaper, lit it on fire, and stuffed it into the hole.

Well, near the hole at least.

Several problems conspired to make this situation dangerous. First, the amount of time I spent dicking around with the matches allowed plenty of gas vapor to accumulate near the hole. Second, gas vapor—as it turns out—is VERY combustible. Third, my newspaper starter was sufficiently short so as to force my arm to be very near the entrance to the hole. Finally, there was a LOT of gas in that hole.

Well, in roughly the amount of time it took for me to think, “Oh shit, this was a bad idea!” my plan went horribly awry. The flaming paper, as it became proximate to the hole, ignited the vapor surrounding the hole. The process of sudden, rapid vapor ignition could best be described as a Big Fucking ExplosionTM. The explosion shook the ground, the concrete slab that was my front porch split, the foundation of the house cracked, and a plume of flame shot out of every place in my lawn where the system of tunnels I had filled with gas met the surface. Unfortunately one of those outlets was immediately beneath a bush in my yard; so my bush lit on fire. A river of fire, originating farther down my lawn, flowed its way into the road where it puddled.

Oh, and my shirt was set aflame. It was chaos.

So there I am, running around with my clothing on fire, a bush burning like something out of a Bible story, a river of fire blazing like a sign of the apocalypse, when my neighbors come out to watch the show. Did anyone help? Not a chance; they just came to watch the show. Even my roommates were just observing dispassionately out the window.

I ultimately managed to put myself out (Stop, Drop, and Roll people… Stop, Drop, and Roll), and after a fairly short time, the gas was all consumed and the various fires went out, leaving charred grass, a burnt husk of a bush, and a complete halt to the bee problem.

The next day, I called my father back to tell him how poorly his plan went. A few words into the story, he said the words that I keep with me to this day.

“I didn’t say to light the gas on fire,” he said.

And you know what? He didn’t.

The Magic of Addiction

One of the things that I enjoy about the television version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the fact that, when they “hit” a storyline, they really hit the hell out of it. I have recently finished Season 5 and have made my way into Season 6, and one of the somewhat minor story arcs has reached its azimuth in “Wrecked”, Willow’s addiction to magic. I’ve been watching this grow and have frequently thought to myself how convincingly this mirrors the process that my own addiction took. The similarities are almost frightening.

Much like my own addiction, Willow’s began as a simple crisis of personality, and now in retrospect, it is a crisis that clearly began as early as Season 1. Willow has struggled with being the nerdy, boring, un-special part of the group since the group began. I can empathize with feeling out of place, even in your group of friends. It is such a struggle to feel like everyone around you is more important, cooler, funnier, more worthy of attention, and in general, better than you. It is so easy to latch onto the first thing that sets you apart.

For Willow, it was magic, for me, it was drugs and alcohol.

Several seasons passed with very, very few specific abuses of her newfound powers. It wasn’t until well into college that things really began to take a turn. My brush with addiction began a bit earlier than hers, so my personal arc began sinking quite a bit earlier, around my senior year, but both of our ascents and descents followed a fairly parallel pattern. For a time, addiction served the purpose it was meant to. It caused no problems and it was just fun, it was pure, and it could never devolve to the point where it would be an issue. Don’t be silly. I felt popular. I felt special. People knew my name. I was a “rock star”. I used to joke around that everywhere I lived and everywhere I went, I was “that guy”. You know the one; that guy you hear about at parties that did that totally ludicrous thing that made everyone amazed and amused. You would hear about “that guy who did that funny thing that had the whole party rolling for hours” or “that guy who was just so amazingly fun to be around that people wanted to party with him. Even when those stories took a rather sad turn and became “that guy who ate a handful of random pills, drank a case of beer and a bottle of bourbon, and beat the shit out of the neighbor for calling the cops about the party”, or “that guy who brought a different woman home every night for weeks because he could”, it was still fun to be famous, even in such an insignificant way. It’s what I wanted.

Of course, ultimately the stories became less party-impressive and more party-pathetic. The stories began to be about “that guy who had alcohol poisoning five times last month” or “that guy who lost his mind in a drug and alcohol fueled rage and sent his roommate to the hospital for changing the TV channel”, or “that guy who got arrested again”. It was hard for even ME to be amused by my own press. At that point, however, the only way to not feel bad about what I did the night before was to do more tonight; and to hell with all the nay-sayers. They were just haters anyways, they just hated how much fun I was having; let’s go get drunk and forget about all of this. My addiction became self-reinforcing. Willow found out about this when she started trying to use spells to quash fights that magic started in the first place.

There is something particularly pitiful about seeing the irony in your living situation, and feeling helpless to do anything about it.

Needless to say, because of my history, I saw the storyline of “Wrecked” coming quite some time ago. It was a matter of time, and Joss Whedon’s handling of emotion is entirely to real and true for him not to address Willow’s problem in a realistic way. It was a difficult episode to watch. Despite time spent away from the horrors of what we refer to as “active addiction”, it still hurts to think of some of the ways my addiction affected those around me. When Willow brought Dawn to the “dope house” as it were, I was haunted by hearing some of my famous lines repeated back to me. “I just need to stop in here for a second”, I would say as I swung by my dealer’s house, kids in tow, to pick up a little something for later. “I’ll just be a second”, would be the last thing the kids would hear before I wandered inside for a half hour, an hour, two hours, however long I felt the need to hang around and get freebies as I bought the evening’s fare. They would even point out that “we were going to go have fun” and I would reassure them that “of course we are, Daddy just needs to take care of a few things first.” How many times did a day of fun with the kids turn into a day of them watching their father get too drunk to move at a friend’s house on the way to the park? This is how people I love were treated; you can’t imagine how everyone else was regarded.

Seeing Willow break down after she injured and endangered Dawn, hearing her promise that she was done, that she’ll stop, seeing her pain; I remember so vividly saying that time and again. I was “all done” and “a new man” more times than I care to remember, and time and again I went back because, the alternative was to be me. Why would I want to be me again?

I think that is the part that so many people who don’t suffer from addiction cannot understand. It is not about the drugs. I never cared what drug I was on, or what the effects were. Not much at least. It is not about being high. Being high is merely a means to an end, and so many manifestations of addiction do not even make room for being high. It is not about having friends or being popular, that is, much like being high, a means to an end as well.

It is about self hatred. For as long as I can remember, I hated being me. I was, in no way, shape, or form, good enough. Acting on my addiction would allow me, for a time, to stop hating myself; or at least to not notice how inferior I was in every possible way. Being high, feeling popular, being the center of attention, feeling loved; these were the ways to mask the self loathing. Doing drugs, doing outlandish things, making an ass of myself, and being promiscuous; these were how I attained these things.

I can no longer find the quote, but there was an article about Robert Downey Jr. that compared drug addiction to putting the barrel of a gun in your mouth, and you know that you hate the barrel there, and you know it is dangerous, but you just love the taste of the gun barrel. To me, drug addiction was like putting the gun barrel in my mouth, and I hate the taste, I know it is dangerous, and I do not want that barrel there, but it feels like the only version of me I do not have utter contempt and distaste for is the one with the taste of steel and cordite on his tongue. If that version self destructs in the process, so be it.

Of course, the corollary to this is, in true cliched form, that I do not despise myself today. I do not feel the need to use drugs, or alcohol, to feel like I am somehow special, important, or otherwise worthwhile. I have my moments, just like every normal human being does; but those moments no longer rule and destroy my life. Still, as I sit and watch the final few minutes of “Wrecked”, I cannot help but reflect upon the torturous journey that lies ahead of Willow, and how grateful I am that I have the people in my life that I do; or I would never have survived my version of that same journey. I would not have even wanted to.

(Somewhere in the midst of this diatribe, I’m confident I was supposed to blame my parents for some transgressions, or society for failing me, or school for giving me some complex, or the media for glorifying such forms of “escapism”; but that is rather boring and trite. I, instead, am going to blame Mr. Rogers for having a rather creepy demeanor and Erin Pendergast for never going on a date with me in High School. I hope you are happy!)

Why I Don’t Date Often

Well, I went on a date with the waitress I’ve been flirting with recently, and I’m reminded why I don’t date often.

The plan for the date was to hit dinner then meet up with my friend, who was giving a lecture, so we could all hang out and play some poker. After I explained the details of the plan, she asked why I wasn’t going to see Bob’s lecture. I explained that it was because I had assumed she wouldn’t want to go, and she said she wanted to, and off we went.

A promising start, little did I know that this would be the last enjoyable part of the evening.

We chose to play Texas hold’em because she said how much she loves playing. I purchased her $20 buy-in, and away we went. Things started to get weird almost immediately when it became clear that she didn’t have the slightest clue how to play poker. I’m not talking about a general lack of understanding of the strategy behind the game…I, personally, have no CLUE about how to effectively play poker. No, I’m referring to a lack of understanding that these flat rectangular things are cards, and the flat round things are chips that represent money. In short, I think she might have sustained a closed head injury that prevented her from understanding concepts that involved 2D objects.

Throughout the course of the game, she fielded or initiated several phone calls, during which she referred to me as her “boyfriend” and us as a “couple”. When did this happen? Why wasn’t I informed? Don’t I get a say in this? My friends, sensing my discomfort, did an admirable job of easing my pain using a mixture of barely restrained laughter and pointed questions like “is Jer a good boyfriend?”

I hate my friends.

I got tired and really wanted to end the date, so as she lost the end of her chips I went all in, called, and sunk my chips into the pot.  I started to get up, assuming we were preparing to go, and she asked if I would buy her back in. For some reason, I did.

What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment.

An hour or so later, she managed to cook that $20 and it was now about 1 AM. I asked if she was ready to go and she looked confused. She said that she had told her parents (with whom, apparently, she lives) that she wouldn’t be home that night, so she wouldn’t be able to get into her house until at least 8 AM, and, couldn’t she just stay with me at my place?

I said that I wasn’t going to drive home, and she could crash on Bob’s spare bed while I—ever the gentleman—slept on the couch. She agreed and left the room while I reclined on the couch to watch the remainder of the game and talk shit (mostly, truth be told, about her). A few short minutes later, she returned to the room in a scant amount of clothing that apparently passed as her pajamas for the evening asking if she could sleep on the other end of the sectional couch with me. Grudgingly, I agreed. Since my trash-talk was summarily interrupted, I put my head back and started to drift to sleep.

“Jer!”, Scott shouted, waking me from my near slumber.

I looked up and glared at Scott, which is when I noticed that Shaina had changed her position to lie on my lap with her head in my crotch. I’m a fairly light sleeper, so she must have moved like a ninja. Accepting the inevitable, I started to go back to sleep.

“Jer!”, Scott shouted, halting my drift toward sleep.

Glaring at Scott again, I noted that my pants were unzipped, and Shaina, “in her sleep” had rested her hand dangerously close to my now open zipper. In a room full of people. I made a point of re-zipping my pants and going back to sleep.

Only to have Scott jar me from sleep again; and again; and again. More than a half dozen times, Scott would yell at me for drifting off and, upon waking, I’d see evidence of Shaina’s attempts to get, literally, into my pants. It was only after the fourth or fifth time that I realized that the whole reason Scott was even waking me was to stop her onslaught.

I suppose that I should be flattered, but, no means no, right?

The next morning, I prepared to drop her off early before my softball game. Seemingly dejected that the date was to be over, she expressed an interest in watching the game, so—for reasons that I cannot fully fathom—I brought her along. At softball, she tried to join in several conversations with my friends and I and came off as so immature and uneducated that I wanted to crawl under a rock FOR her. In order to avoid further cringe-inducing conversation, I skip post-game lunch and drop her off at her home around 2pm. It wasn’t the worst date that I’ve been on, but it certainly wasn’t in the running for best either…at least it was over.

Or was it?

Today, when she calls, I explain that I’m too busy for dating, and, frankly, I don’t think it’s going to work out anyways, so I don’t want to see her again. She says that she understands…then says that I should call her tomorrow so we can meet up and hang out…then hangs up before I can correct her.

Umm…is that an option? This would have changed my dating prospects considerably in the past had I known!

I feel like I have to change my phone number, move, burn my clothes, put garlic cloves over all my doorways, and pour a ring of salt around my bed…but maybe I’ll have sex with her first, just in case…