One month and counting

At this time a month from now I'll be at the pre-departure orientation in Denver preparing to leave for the big trip the next morning. Here's where everything stands:

Right now I'm starting to get excited again. I've said my goodbyes to a lot of people and now I'm just looking forward to meeting new people and a change of scenery. Things are starting to become a lot more real now: I just sent off my visa application today, I got to meet a few other people doing JET last Saturday, I've learned some new stuff about my living situation and in a couple of weeks it'll be time to move out of my house.

I think I'm also becoming more excited because I continue to be bored out of my mind. I gave up on the summer job hunt awhile ago. I've been looking into volunteering to take up some of my time but most places want a longer commitment than what I can offer. It's pretty sad when you can't even get accepted as a volunteer! To make things worse my phone got disconnected today despite the fact that I've paid the bill they're bugging me for (more than once I might add). This means I'm even more cutoff from the world. This blog is all I have left!

One more note: I added a counter to the bottom of this page and I'm surprised at just how many visitors I've been getting. Maybe someday I'll become as popular as the kancho guy everyone tells me about. Sadly, that means I'll have to be kanchoed often, but I'd be willing to do it for fame and fortune!

Surly Pants explores Ft. Collins!

I finally got around to fooling around with my digital camera! Not only did I take pictures; I created an online photo gallery to boot. I'm still trying to figure everything out with my camera, but I don't think this is bad for the first batch! The one downside to this gallery is that I only get 20MB worth of space and each of my pictures is a pretty large file size. Anyways, I've added a link to the gallery over on the links section. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/surlyp/

Blood Sucking Vampires!

Here's a slight warning for any of you people in Ft. Collins who even plan on donating blood:

Don't donate with Bonfils! They're the blood blank that sets up blood donations at the university. If you donate with them they will never leave you alone! I get phonecalls and pamphlets in the mail that could arguably reach the level of harassment! I seriously think that they somehow prophet off of the blood they receive; I've never seen anyone more desperate to suck it out of people short of dracula...

If you do donate with them then for the love of God DON'T GIVE THEM YOUR REAL CONTACT INFO! In fact, just donate with the Garth England blood center in Ft. Collins near the Poudre Valley hospital. They don't endlessly pester you and you can be sure the blood will be put to good use in the local community right away. I also think they had a better selection of snacks at the end. Just ignore my other blog about the homicidal nurse....

A dark day for the captain

I just heard that Andre Agassi is going to retire after the US Open this year. Even though I saw it coming, it sucks to see one of my favorite tennis players go away. This calls for an angsty picture!

I visited my parents! (and other tales of terror)

My family finally nagged me enough to convince me to visit for the week. I don't get along with my parents particularly well and I am always bored out of my mind down here. Thank God for my blog! I've decided to use this space to record the war atrocities, violations of the Geneva convention and just insanity that occurs when me and my family get together. In the event of my death and/or disappearance this blog can be used as evidence in a court of law.

Monday:
-My mom woke me up at 8:30 to tell me that "she had some ceweal waiting for me" in an obnoxious baby voice
-Everytime I visit my Dad seems to have picked up a new annoying habit. Today he kept saying things in the voice of the guy from Sling Blade
-While visiting my grandmother at the nursing home, my dad berated me when I said I was tired. Specifically he said "poor Kevin had to wake up at 8:30"
-My parents had tickets to a Rockies game and bought an extra ticket for me; however, this afternoon Jared, my best friend from high school, called and said that he was moving to D.C. tomorrow but wanted to hang out with me one last time. My mom gave me a guilt trip when I told her I didn't want to go and I cracked. As a result I only got to spend about half an hour with Jared before we left.
-My dad has always obnoxiously sang every damn country song that comes on the radio at the top of his lungs. Today's ride to and from Denver was no different (he even did some of the singing in the damn "Sling Blade" voice)
-The seat my parents bought for me was out in the boondocks of Coors Field while they were just three rows up from third base. They made me wait and sneak past the usher in the fourth inning.
-Bad traffic and construction made the drive home over two and a half hours long. This gave my dad plenty of time to drive me crazy with bad talk radio and by serenading me and my mom with such country classics as "I love this bar" and "Billy has his beer goggles on". Country music is surely the music of the gods!
-On a side note, something came up with Jared and he won't be moving until Wednesday at the earliest. I guess some good karma finally came back to me (despite my endless bitching about my parents)

Tuesday:
-I got yelled at for brushing my teeth in the wrong sink
-More sling blade from my dad
-I was hoping that one good thing about this visit would be that I could eat a little better. So far today I've had cereal and ramen...
-More guilt from my mom for wanting to spend time with Jared before he leaves
-I spent a few hours with Jared this afternoon. It was a good diversion from my family but pretty disappointing at the same time. Jared and I have known eachother for 9 years and he's probably my best friend, but there are time when I just can't stand him. He's selfish, cranky and never wants to do anything. Today I was hoping we could do something cool as a send off. Instead we just channel flipped for a few hours before he became visibly anxious. He hadn't talked to his girlfriend online since earlier that morning apparently and decided to kick me out so he could go talk to her. Normally I would be pretty understanding, but I became pretty upset since he's moving in with here and that this is probably the last time we'll see eachother for a long long time. I can't say I'm surprised that he did this, but I'm still a little sad and disappointed by the whole thing...
-Chinese beer torture: Usually when I visit I'm supplied with high quality free beer by my parents. What's the problem you ask? Well, my parents usually twist my arm until I agree to have a beer with them; however, my mom acts like I'm an alcoholic if I ask for or get any more. In the book "Misery" the woman gets the guy addicted to pain killers just so she can torture him by taking them away later. The beer situation is basically the same thing

Wednesday:
-The good news: My dad stopped talking like the guy from Sling Blade. The bad news: My dad started talking like Humphrey Bogart
-Both my parents were gone this morning. Although I got some peace and quiet, they still managed to call about once every twenty minutes between the two of them...
-I usually buy my own clothes now that I'm a big boy (I didn't say I made good choices...); however, I'm broke and I need an entire new wardrobe for Japan. This meant having to go shopping with my parents and having them foot the bill. There's nothing like having your parents tug and pull at your clothing while asking about your crotch in the middle of a busy department store. We spent 4 hours between two stores and we didn't really get all that much. What we did get was mostly clearance crap that nobody else wanted. My dad got pissed off that I kept turning down cheap and ugly shirts in colors such as pink and purple. Looks like my new clothes will be as shitty as my old ones!

Thursday:
-Humphrey Bogart was replaced by Mr. Ed
-Today we went to Canon City to visit my grandparents. My aunt, uncle and cousin were there as well. I could probably go a long rant about just how insane this day was, but I'm too damn tired. Just imagine 8 people with conflicting personality types bickering for 12 hours. Top the day off with embarrassing home movies that could traumatize you for life and you pretty much have my day.
-One thing I feel like noting is just how weird my dad can be. Today he spent 3 hours just watching people do the construction on my parent's new house. They made me watch for 45 minutes until I just decided to walk back to my grandparents house. Later that night he went back for almost another two hours after spending most of the day golfing. I wonder if it's just his weird OCD side coming out with the house or that he picks up that everybody in my family thinks he's obnoxious. It's probably a little bit of both.
-Lately my cell phone has become more and more of a decoration because of the lack of calls. When I got back tonight I had missed not 1 but 2 calls! Needless to say I was pretty damn excited. I quickly became disappointed when I listened to the voice mails: both were from bill collectors. One was for the cable bill and one was more my cell phone. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but at least I got to hear from somebody other than my insane relatives...

Friday:
-I slept for like a bajillion hours today. There's no better escape from reality than sleep! -I went with my parents to a restaurant called the Cracker Barrel. That place has been the bane of my existence since it opened. They serve "country" cooking. This means that everything is deep fried, has about 6000 calories yet still tastes like absolute crap. The atmosphere is dark and depressing and half the people that eat there are morbidly obese rednecks. It should then come as no surprise that it's my dad's favorite restaurant! My arteries still hurt from lunch... -We got kicked out of our house for several hours today as the real estate agent showed off my parent's home to a bunch of people. In order to make the time go as slowly and painfully as possible, we decided to spend more time shopping for clothes! After about an hour of arguing about pleats and trying on ill-fitting shirts we decided to go visit my dad's tailor friend to see what kind of sizes I should be getting. I could tell he was a friend of my dad's because he took the first chance he had to berate me. He pulled out his tape measure, wrapped it around various body parts and told me that I stand like a "south park kid". Once he was done measuring me he delivered the bad news. Apparently, no clothes fit me because, and I quote, "I have a pencil neck, huge shoulders, long arms and no gut". How could I ever think that a disproportionate freak like me could ever wear clothes?! He told me that pretty much anything fancy would have to be tailored to fit me. After that I went off to cry in the bathroom and we called it a day. -We went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Tako's. My family has been coming here once a week since my dad had a heart attack in high school. It's one of the few places he can eat at regularly without having to worry about his health. It's not a bad place, but my mom and I (especially my mom) have become sick of going there. The waitresses all know our names, we know all their names and we always get free shit from the owner. This also means that the waitresses all know that I'm going to Japan/studying Japanese, so they drive me nuts all dinner by forcing me to say common Japanese phrases and then telling me how good I am at Japanese. A small complain I know, but I'm feeling extra surly today.

So that was my week at my parents. This one wasn't nearly as bad as they usually are, my dad kept his chastising of me at a (relative) minimum and I got an abnormal amount of peace and quiet. I guess they drugs I slipped them really did the trick. Tomorrow it's back to Ft. Collins after an informational JET meeting. Once I'm home I guess it'll be back to the usually routine of watching tennis and crying myself to sleep...

Quite a Day

Today was just one of those days that for seem reason just seem to stick out; one of those days that I don't think I'll soon forget.

It started at about sunrise today when I woke up in a crowded tent. A group of us had gone camping the night before and I had trouble sleeping in the cold weather while being more than a little inebriated. The sunlight had waken me up prematurely which gave me a whole lot of time to lay awake and think until other people woke up. Eventually the 8:00 folks woke up and we went down the mountain nice and early.

The reason we left early was because my buddy Sam and I had plans to spend the day at the renaissance festival with a couple other of his friends. Sam's leaving to study abroad for the summer and by the time he gets back I'll be in Japan, so this was really our last chance to hang out. We had hoped to get there by noon, but once we got back to Ft. Collins things went amiss. Sam had forgotten the keys to his house and could not get hold of his landlord right away for a spare. The landlord did call back a good half an hour or so later, which resulted in us having to go all the way across town to pick up a spare key, go back to the house, get prepared for the trip and return the key before we could leave town. We arrived in Littleton a little bit after 1:00, but because of some more delays we didn't actually get to the renaissance festival until 3:00.

We had a pretty good time at the festival; it was defiantly worth all the trouble. Personally, I was just trying to soak in the good times, but of course it's never that easy. At some point just before the Puke and Snot show my left eye started driving me crazy. At the time I thought I had somehow got sunscreen in my eye. After closer review I noticed that the pain started around the time I saw a bar wench with the biggest breasts I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure that caused a blood vessel in my eye to rupture. Whatever the reason, the rest of the time there was made less fun by the searing pain in my eye.

We walked around the festival some more while Sam took a break to throw some vegetables, Sam's friend wandered off a lot and I took frequent trips to try and wash the pain out of my eyes. Soon it was time to leave the festival and to say my goodbyes to Sam. My eye pain once again mucked up an already difficult moment just as it mucked up my plan for all good times at the festival. Soon I was 0n the road to Colorado Springs, trying to drive with one eye shut (don't try this at home kids). Thankfully my parents would be out of town for the night, giving me a good chance to take a rest and soak everything all in.

After a long nap I went to the nearby Subway for a quick dinner. Just as I was leaving, a man opened his car door too far and nicked the side of my car. He apologized, told me I looked like (tennis legend) Boris Becker, then left. I just stood there looking dumbfounded.

The point is that even though things didn't go nearly as planned today that these are the moments that you never forget. Because of that, I wouldn't change one effing thing about today for anything.

Here I am at 11:30 in the morning watching soccer. More specifically, I'm watching the Fifa world cup which I guess is a pretty big deal in the soccer world, but this is just a educated guess. Right now it's Ghana vs. the Czech Republic with Ghana leading 2-0 82 minutes into it.

That's right, two goals scored in 82 minutes...

I decided to watch because everybody in the world seems to love this sport except Americans. I played soccer for several years when I was really young, but even then I don't think I would ever voluntarily watch a game. Hell, right now I'm more focused on why my breath is still so garlicy from the pasta even though I've brushed my teeth multiple times since lunch yesterday. Why won't my garlic breath go away?!

Anyways, here's my working theory. In the more uneventful sports like Baseball and Soccer you have much more time to focus on getting drunk. When somebody eventually does score a goal, it's that much more exciting, especially when you're about to puke on whoever it is sitting in front of you. Americans must be more victims of the MTV generation than the rest of the world. We need that constant stimulation of goal scored, touch downs and home runs to go along with our heavy drinking. I also think the lack of collisions hurts the sport. There needs to be more serious injuries in soccer dammit!

Now excuse me as I try to get rid of this damn garlic taste in my mouth...

Myspace Revelations

Last night somebody tricked me into finally joining myspace. This is actually a major feet, considering I had to be bribed to join facebook as well.

While looking over the personal information crap they asked, I suddenly came to a realization: I have no idea who the hell I am. Four years of college somehow just turned me into just a 6'3 zombie (who doesn't particulary care for brains). About me? I have no idea how to answer that. Really. I guess if I thought hard enough I could describe myself as quiet and sarcastic. Favorite music? No idea. Favorite move? I can't even remember seeing many movies at all? Favorite book? As I lay Dying by William Faulkner, but it's one of the few books I can recall reading.

Back in high school I would have had no problems answering any of it. I has passions back then. I was just an easy going guy who you could find at the karate studio on any given afternoon (and sometimes Saturday mornings!). Now about all I can say is that I enjoy getting drunk and being surly. Oh, and blogging, can't forget that.

I've decided this has got to change. In Japan, I'm going to find myself (insert other cliches here). I'm going to find something to love in life again (possibly a Japanese girl?)! Besides, if all else fails, I can continue to be a surly alcoholic....BUT IN JAPAN!!!

The origins of Captain Surly Pants (Part 3)

Previously on the Adventures of Captain Surly Pants: Kevin recalls the time he broke his toe. Also, the Joker escaped back to his secret hideout after stealing the hope diamond. Now the exciting conclusion!

As I said in the last entry, the week or so after I broke my toe is blurry because of the sheer amount of painkillers I was taking. Thankfully that week was the last week before Thanksgiving break. About all I can remember from that time is that I continued to neglect my other History paper and that I was also frantically trying to figure out a research topic for my capstone paper. More to the topic, I also only had two weeks left to send in my application to JET.

I had everything I needed for the application ready except for two things: my statement of purpose and my letter of recommendation from Dr. G-antz. I planned to write the statement of purpose at the beginning of Thanksgiving break. As for the letter of recommendation, it had been at least three weeks since I asked Dr. G-antz to write it for me, and the combination of time ticking down and Dr. G-antz's notorious unreliability was causing me much concern. It was time to switch to plan B.

I had already scheduled a time to meet with Dr. G-antz about my capstone presentation (yes, I know I said I didn't remember anything, but it's coming back to me now dammit!). The afternoon before I decided to buy a small box of chocolates as an early thank you gift (I also bought one for my Japanese professor who had written the other letter). The next day I gave her the box of chocolates in an attempt to speed up the process and it seemed to work. She made sure she had a time to meet with me to hand me the letter. She also ripped apart my capstone proposal, but at least I had my letter on the way! She got it to me Friday afternoon right in the nick of time. I went back to Colorado Springs as soon as class ended that day.

Other than the traditional murdering of a relative, nothing of note happened during Thanksgiving break. I spent about the first half of the week writing my statement of purpose. I'm normally not an anal essay writer, but there were a few aspects to the statement of purpose that made it fairly time consuming. First, this essay was actually for a job. Normally when I write I'm just pulling an essay out of my ass for some class. Not being the best of students, I would usually just write until I reached the page limit, throw in a conclusion and do minimal proof reading. This time the anal side of me came out, causing me to re-read and rewrite the statement of purpose until my fingers went numb.

The second thing that made the essay such a pain was the mix of the 2 page page limit mixed with the long list of specific questions they wanted answered. Some of the questions needed a long paragraph to answer such "What are your career goals" and "What about you would make you an effective teacher" etc. After a few drafts I got my essay down to the point were I felt it had all the essential information while still being short; however, when I was finished I was still a couple of lines over the page limit. I spent many hours trying to figure out a way to shorten some of the content without having sentences such as "I want teach". It was an exercise in frustration for the most part, but I eventually got it done. The next day I sent of my JET application and it felt like a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders. Little did I know just how much more stress there was to follow...

The remainder of the semester was spent just finishing up school work (especially my capstone) and having problems with my shitty roommate who owed my a ton of money. Winter vacation would be a greatly welcomed break, but I wasn't exactly looking forward to the long, boring month in Colorado Springs...

The origins of Captain Surly Pants (Part 2)

With the problem of the two recommendations out of the way I was able to focus on the rest of my application and (theoretically) back on school work. I had collected all the other documents and had filled out the pretty straight forward online application. I decided to put the statement of purpose off until the end so that I could get some more experience under my belt to pad it with.

To help with the application padding, I began English language tutoring with the Japanese assistant professors for a few hours a week. First I helped Tokitake-sensei. She was an English major in college so her English was better than I expected and the tutoring wasn't much more than just having basic conversations with her and writing down words she didn't know. After she left, I did the same thing with Kikushima-sensei whose English wasn't as good, but I enjoyed my time with her much more. These sessions gave me the gist of the general problems with Japanese speaking English: they can read and write it just fine, but have real problems understanding spoken English. This knowledge would later come in handy for an essay for my Language and Culture class.

This time of year was also when the work load for classes becomes overwhelming, especially around the time of Thanksgiving break. I remember having two big papers to write: a big research paper for Medieval England and an even bigger book report for US history. I had been fairly preoccupied with the JET application and therefore I didn't put much thought into these topics until the last minute. Hell, I hadn't even bought the book for my history book report yet.

My research paper for medieval England became a source of great stress for me, especially since that was around the time the JET application was due. I could not even think of a topic to write about, so I think I just opened up my notebook and picked the first name I saw to write about. I finally got to the library and checked out all the books on whatever his name was 2 days before the actual paper was due.

I spent the next couple of days going through all the books I checked out thinking of an argument I could make about the guy I chose but with no luck. At about 10:00 PM the night before the paper was due I just decided to start writing, essentially just paraphrasing the poor sap's story. I just spit out words about fast as I could despite becoming increasingly tired. At about 1:30 in the morning I had about four pages written and I could barely keep my eyes open. I decided to go downstairs for a coke to try and stay awake.

That turned out to be the worst idea I had in awhile. I didn't turn any of the lights on in my house so that I wouldn't wake up roommate. As I went to go downstairs I caught my little toe on the frame of the door. My toe was stuck, but the rest of my foot just kept doing. It was dislocated and badly broken. It only felt like a bad stub, but when I turned on the light I noticed that my toe was sticking out at a 90 degree angle; to this day I wish I had a picture of it. To make a long story short I spent the night in the hospital and was given a ton of pain killers. Needless to say I didn't finish my research paper.

The next week or so is more or less a blur because of the pain killers I was on. I do remember that my Medieval England professor reluctantly gave me the weekend to finish my paper. I managed to spit out about 8 more pages in spite of me being so drugged up I had to concentrate just to walk up the stairs. To this day I'm afraid to read that paper to see just how bad it was. Thankfully the professor had mercy on me and gave me a generous yet undeserved B-.

I'm not sure what all this has to do with the JET program. I just felt like writing it, so bite me.

The origins of Captain Surly Pants (Part 1)

All my loyal readers probably already know most or at least parts of this story, but I decided it would be good to write a long version of my adventure up to this point just for posterity. It might be a little long, but I'll try and make it at least a little bit entertaining.

It all started long long ago in the early spring of 2005. By that time I had completed all but a few of my requirements for my Anthropology degree and I was faced with a plethora of elective credits I needed to fill. I had always been interested in foreign languages and I was regretting not sticking with Spanish even though I had neither the time nor the credits to take it throughout college. I realized that taking a foreign language would be a good use of the elective credits, but my Spanish had become very rusty at that point and I didn't want to have to start it over from scratch. Instead, I shifted my focus to the more exotic languages CSU offered and on little more than a whim I decided to take Japanese.

Fastfoward to Fall semester 2005. The professor keeps hammering how hard Japanese is and emphasizes just how important it is practice the language for hours a day. As you probably already know, this lead to an almost obsessive-compulsive doodling in Japanese is my classes to the detriment of me taking good notes. That didn't matter much to me as I had more motivation to sincerely try and learn a foreign language than to engage in discussion about medieval nuns.

A few weeks into the semester a former student of my Japanese professor came to the class and talked about this thing he was doing called the JET program(me). Essentially they ship off a bunch of underqualified college graduates off to anywhere in Japan and pay them to speak English to Japanese schoolkids. My parents had stamped out any hope I had for studying abroad pretty early in my college education, so the idea of being paid to live in a foreign country for a year sounded more than a little appealing to me. Despite the myriad of lucrative Anthropology jobs awaiting me upon graduation, I decided to follow my heart and pursue the JET program(me).

A day or two later I wound up going to the school career fair where the JET program(me) had a booth set up. I talked to the dude and he gave me a packet with all the things I needed to prepare along with the application: two references, proof of enrollment/expected date of graduation, my college transcript, a statement of purpose and probably about two or three other things that I can't remember. The actual application would pop up online in mid-October, but this gave me plenty of time to get everything ready by that point.

The part of the application package that worried me the most was the two letters of recommendation. I never really got to know many of my professors outside of class and I was pretty sure I didn't want anybody at Target writing one for me. This left me in quite the predicament. It was pretty clear to me that the Japanese professor would be a good first choice to write one of the letters, so I immediately started sucking up and brown-nosing.

For the next month or so I became the uber Japanese student. I did all the homework, I studied for hours a day and I always volunteered in class. This also directly lead to more in-class Japanese doodling instead of learning about the mechanics of bipedality. I had to get as much sucking up done in a short period of time because the application had to be in by the last week of November. I eventually built up the nerve to ask her to write the recommendation and she readily agreed. In fact, she added my sheet to a stack of about thirteen other students who had already asked her to write one. I felt pretty dumb at that point.

One recommendation down and one to go. I was completely stumped by who to ask for letter #2. There were only a couple professors that I had ever spoken two at of class and only one that I thought would recognize me outside of class. This particular professor was also my current capstone advisor. She shall remain nameless, but what I will say is that her last name begins with G and ends with antz. She will be known as Dr. G-antz for the purposes of this blog.

Anybody who has had a class with Dr. G-antz would probably understand my apprehension for asking her to write a recommendation. She tends to be very blunt and sometimes condescending. On top of that, she isn't known for her reliability, meaning that even if she agreed to write a recommendation for you that there's a strong chance she'll completely forget and/or not care and just not do it. After getting some encouragement, I finally manned up and asked her to write a recommendation after class one day.

Dr. G-antz readily agreed, much to my surprise; however, at that point she assumed I was just asking for a letter of recommendation for grad school. Once I explained the JET program to her she seemed to cool off to the idea. She seemed especially disgruntled after I showed her what she would have to write about me (my ability to teach, my ability to adapt to a foreign culture, why I wanted to participate, etc.), but since she had already agreed she said she would write the letter on the condition that I send her an e-mail which basically answered all those questions for her. Fair enough!

Minor Miracles

My roommate came back last night with a nice big check for all the utilities he owes me. As if that wasn't cool enough, I finally got my damn refund check from Circuit City (weird camera issue). What this all means is that I'M NOT BROKE ANYMORE! Excuse me while I go get something to eat that has meat in it.

PS: Sorry for the lack of a picture.

Well, the big day is about 40 days away. At times that 40 days feels like it's a long way away, and at other times it feels like it's coming way too soon. In the long scheme of things, these next few weeks will be so little time and time that I'll probably wish I had more of. On the other hand, I've had little to do to fill up my days, making each day go by very slowly. I've also had a lot of time to think, probably too much time.

I'm normally not the kind of person to get too nostalgic or sentimental, but lately I've been way too affixed on the past. Instead of looking forward to the next stage of my life, I keep looking back on my life so far. I think of all the good friends I had in high school that I haven't seen in years and I may never see again. I wonder how college went by so fast, and I can't help but feel like I missed out on something along the way. I don't feel like I'm ready to leave at all, but everybody has to move on at some point; I just wish I felt more ready.

I realize that this wasn't the funniest blog entry in the world, but I've discovered that blogging can be a good form of therapy dammit. All this has been weighing heavily on my mind the last few weeks and I really haven't been my normal self because of it. At least there's a picture of a beaver right below this for some comic relief! Oh yeah, I took this photo a few days ago. I feel that it fits the angsty tone of this blog entry.

Fun Fact!

Did you know that the beaver can cut down over 40,000 trees in a year?! It's true!

I figured now would be a good time for another rant while I'm still dizzy from being drained of blood.

Today was quite an interesting experience at the blood bank! At first they rejected me as a donor because me pulse and blood pressure was too high: 96 pulse and 134/103 for the blood pressure. With those kinds of numbers I'm due for a heart attack at any moment! Once I convinced them that I wasn't morbidly obese (it took a good 10 minutes) they decided to do a manual blood pressure test. Everything came out fine the second time around and all was well in who-ville.

I then went and sat on the little lounge chair they had for donors and waited for the nurse to come over. I should have sensed trouble with her right away when she didn't comment on my huge veins; unfortunately, my spidey sense was all out of whack. The nurse then gave me a quick "you'll feel a pinch" warning and ruthlessly shoved the needle into my arm. Normally this doesn't hurt all that much, but the butch nurse didn't seem to care very much for precision. I sat there in heavy discomfort for a good five minutes as the life fluid was slowly drained out of me.

Most of this time the nurse was on the phone. This caused her to neglect the beeping which indicates that they've sucked enough of my blood out. I think they took way too much because I'm still really dizzy about two hours after the fact. Another, nicer nurse had to come rescue me. After that I had to obligatory awkward conversation with the old snack lady and left.

It was only 12:30 at this point so I decided to try and get some other things done today (I have so few things to get done at any point so I try and pace myself). First, I went off to get a haircut. I tried a couple places, and both claimed to have over two hour waits. It's a freaking Tuesday afternoon, why is everyone getting a haircut?! Easily discouraged from the haircut fiasco, I decided to finally try and get this computer upgraded, but, of course, the place was out of memory sticks. 6-6-06 is truly an evil day! Thank Bob tonight is free pool night at Coopersmith's. Nothing can go wrong with that....right?

2:00 AM blues

Due to popular demand, here is another entry for my blog...
Unfortunately, my life has been painfully uneventful, so here's another angsty picture!


It's out of focus, just like my aimless life...

I'm Hungover!

I figured this would be the natural extension of the "I'm drunk" entry. We like to show cause and effect here at http://surlypants.blogspot.com.

My hangovers are weird. I usually don't get a headache, but instead I get a weird aching in my wrists and ankles. I'm wondering if it has something to do with my hemochromatosis and the alcohol just magnifies the joint pain or something. Which reminds me, I need to donate blood! I urge all my loyal readers (all 2 of you) to do the same. People will look at you and say "wow, that guy is tough! He donated blood, I'm not going to mess with him!" Also, you get free juice and crackers at the end of it. That may not sound like much, but that's about the equivalent of a week's worth of groceries on my current food budget.

Everytime I do go to donate blood the nurse always has to comment about how big my veins are. It's more than a little bit creepy. One time when I went to donate, the nurse actually called the other nurses over to look at my huge veins. I've never felt as sexy as I did that day. I should have invited one of them over to my place for coffee...

Packaging styrofoam. Feel the pain.....

I'm drunk!

Picture time

Ok, I finally got around to playing with my digital camera! I took some pictures of some random things at weird angles. These pictures represent my inner pain and are an expression of my teen angst...

Here's one of my can opener!

Since the beginning of this week I've been staying up until ungodly hours to watch the French Open. A few days ago I didn't go to bed until about 11:00 AM. Today I took a different approach. I went to bed at around 10:00 PM and woke up at 4:00.

I have some weird fascination/obsession with tennis. I have no idea where it comes from. Most of the matches aren't very good and I tend to get bored watching. The women aren't very good looking either so it doesn't even have that going for it. Yet still, here I am writing this blog entry at 7:30 in the morning, watching a really dull tennis match. Somebody needs to hold an intervention for me!

In an unrelated topic, I've decided that the two things I'm going to miss most from Colorado are football and New Belgium beer. The Broncos are going to play at around 5:00 AM on Monday morning. The sad thing is that I'll probably wake up early just to follow the play by play on the internet (much like I do with tennis, I seriously need some professional help). As far as the New Belgium beer, I figure I'll have to fill up my growler a few times and do some binge drinking. I haven't had a fat tire in a few weeks; I figure I'll have to fix that today. End rant.