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Frustrations.  Irrationalities.  Lameness.  No, I’m not talking about W’s State of the Union address.  I’m feeling rather blah lately.  I don’t know why.  Take today for example - I’d decided to walk to campus rather than ride my bike (partially for a change of pace, also because its more exercise than riding my bike) and took my camera along to take a few pictures along the way.  I get home, download them onto my computer and I just don’t know what to think of them.  Nothing ever seems to be in focus.  Autofocus on a camera like this isn’t just a guess, its supposed to be dead-on focus.  Even so, I was shooting with a small aperture which eliminates most depth of field focus issues, and should produce a fairly sharp image.  And still, things just don’t seem quite right on it.  I don’t know if its the lens, the camera, or a combination of the two.  Not only are things seemingly never in focus, but my poor laptop is just too slow to process these images.  I have 2Gb of RAM and the thing still crawls along.

I’ll be upgrading as soon as two things happen:  1)  I find out if my portfolio is accepted and I continue with the Photography major, and; 2)  OS X Leopard ships.  When I find out if I do/do not get into the degree program I’ll decide if I want to get a MacPro with lots of horsepower, or maybe scale down for an iMac and maybe a used medium-format film camera system.  Long term, medium format is what I want to be shooting, but Mamiyas and Hasselblads run in the multiple-thousand dollar ranges for brand new.  But I still need a new computer either way - even with film capture and digital printing, the storage requirements that I will have will surpass my poor little laptop.  As it is, I’ve had to move gigabytes of data onto a USB drive so that I can have room to work.  If I max out my flash-memory card on my camera, I’ll need 2GB of hard drive to download them all.  Yikes!

There’s other stuff going on in the background that I’m not going to bore you with the details on, but its all weighing down on me niggling me to death.  It’s really tough for me to focus sometimes.  When I want to be awake, I am sleepy.  When I want to get to sleep, I become manic and think about everything that could possibly worry me - thus keeping me from falling asleep.  I can count on my right hand the number of times I’ve fallen asleep before midnight in 2007.

I’ve taken a number of approaches to improving my health so far this year.  I have made an effort to not eat-out as much.  I originally said I would eat out ZERO times for January.  Well that wasn’t realistic.  So I have tried to keep it to one or two-times per week for dinner.  Lunch is usually something on campus, thus far it hasn’t amounted to much as there really isn’t anything on campus that is healthy, quick and inexpensive.

Meh, sorry for the downer post.  I’ve already started to bore myself with my whining, so if you’ve managed to read this far I award you a golden star!

Oh!  Battlestar Galactica started up again on Sunday, which is kind of a bad sign.  For SciFi to remove it from Friday is not the best way for the network to promote what is still one of the best (my opinion) shows on TV now.  Season Three has certainly taken a new angle on the show, and its getting to be a bit more philosophical in its narrative.  I like to fantasize about Apollo, Helo and Starbuck’s man-bitch in a hot intergalactic three-way.  Hell, let Starbuck in and make it a fourgy - she’s got a bigger dick than anyone else on the show anyway.. hehe.

Ugh, I’ve said too much. 

I apologize that I haven’t been as active in my blogging as I should be. Allow me a quick recap of things that happened over the most recent weekend:

Thursday: Watched “Over the Hedge” with Mike, Carlos and Chez. Really cute movie, especially Hammy the Squirrel. “But I like the cookie!” Friday: Joined a gym! (LA Fitness) Played with Carlos, Sam, Mike and Chez at the Biltmore Hotel.. we went swimming, drank booze and ate pizza. It was good times.

Saturday: I sold my 15GB 3G iPod to That Man for $50. Later I went to Targé and then to Quizno’s for dinner. As I pulled into the parking lot I could see the person sandwich jockey behind the counter shout “FUCKING GO AWAY” at me. So I went in anyway, since they weren’t yet closed, and proceeded to be as disgustingly nice as possible. I won’t go back there again though.

Sunday: I dreamt about eating pancakes with Viggo Mortensen so when I woke up I threw on some clothes and went to the store to buy pancake stuff. (Weird right?) In the afternoon I made it to the gym for my first workout! All I did was the elliptical runner because I didn’t want to kill myself by starting out too fast. Later, Emitt made me go watch A Prairie Home Companion. For this he will suffer. At least we had Pei Wei before-hand. Actually the movie wasn’t that bad but it just wasn’t that good.

Monday: Nothing exciting happened until Emitt got bored and didn’t want to hang out at Emitt’s house any more so he came over and made me clean my kitchen (bastard). Afterwards we cooked pasta and drank lots of wine. Hoooray wine!

fin

So today was day #2 of responsible eating & exercise. I’m DETERMINED to get myself back into shape. I did a lil exercise to get the muscles and bones to wake up, and will gradually build up as parts get back into shape. The only thing I am worried about is when I do upper body strength training. My left elbow is still very weak - I feel like I am being a big pansy when I do certain movements with a 3lb weight, but that’s all I can tolerate right now without immediate stinging pain. We shall see how things feel tomorrow. Pfffft.

I’m at a low point right now both physically and mentally - and the bad physical shape is what I think is bringing me down mentally. My goal is to get back down into the 170-180 range. I’ve got a ways to go, but I can handle it. I’ve done it before!

My current plan of attack is to do alternating days of cardio and strength training 6 days a week. On the “off” day I will allow myself to have one semi-decadent meal - this will serve two functions: first, it will be something to look forward to at the end of the week; and second, it will make sure I don’t have a major break since I don’t believe that completely denying oneself of things you like. Yes.