Singles Awareness Day

People have been asking me for weeks what I'm doing today (Valentine's Day or my new favorite, Singles Awareness Day). My original answer to people that I thought would deem it appropriate was, "Well, I'm going to go home, and play some music to serenade myself. Maybe cook myself a nice dinner that I'm really impressed with. Then I think I'll sit down on my hand and give myself a stranger." That probably won't fly for 90% of the people who asked so I've decided to provide a comprehensive schedule for my plans:

5:01 - Alarm goes off, I roll out of bed and do some pushups and crunches and stretch a little bit. Blindly make my way to the bathroom in total darkness. Bump my foot into the metal futon frame, curse a little bit.

5:10 - Private bathroom time, usually reserved for shaving, using the toilet, showering, plucking my eyebrows, writing my blog. Usually does not include: combing my hair, looking at my face in the mirror, brushing my teeth, not shivering (the window in my bathroom is f'd up and that keeps the temperature in there about a degree or two within the outside temperature).

5:25 - Get dressed, try to tie my tie 2-3 times, give up. Put all my various badges and gadgets in my pockets. Put on my coat.

5:36 - Begin trek to work. Walk to the metro, think about how dark and cold it is outside, complain quietly to myself about my ankle hurting. Take the metro one stop and walk to work.

6:00 - Arrive at work, get something to eat from the deli downstairs, jokingly talk with the deli owner about why I didn't get her flowers. Eat my breakfast and check all the news of the world. Review all the websites and stuff that I normally check. Answer e-mails halfheartedly.

7:00 - Start doing real work, maybe take a few phone calls and get up to use the little boys room once. Dodge any calls from my mother, she knows I get into work early so it's important to check what the number is when I get a call. If she manages to get past my rigorous screening process, "talk" to her for a bit (listen and do work while she talks, sometimes ask random questions to seem like I'm interested) then claim that I have a meeting (I don't) in five minutes so I have to go. At some point I might copy and past a blog I wrote and publish it.

11:30 - Go eat lunch, either with somebody random but probably by myself. Actually apparently I'll be having lunch with my father, I'll probably have to help him find an emergency present.

12:15 - Get back to work, check to see if there is any dire emergencies or news I missed. Continue to do my job.

3:00 - Take a walk around the office pretending to look for someone, but really just stretching my legs. May stop by someone's desk who I know is gone and ask if they are around, act disappointed when they aren't.

4:00 - Freedom! Walk back to the metro and go home! Normally it would be straight to the gym to play racquetball but since my ankle is jacked I won't do that.

4:30ish - Arrive at home, check the mail for bills. Take off my work clothes and workout.

5:30 - Get done working out and shower. Once done with shower reheat some leftovers or make myself a simple dinner. Chef Boyardee could be involved or maybe something simple with rice and vegetables in a stir fry, who knows, maybe I'll bump it up a notch and make some chili, ohlalala.

6:00 - Free time, probably spent cleaning or doing laundry (but never ever folding it), maybe go on the internet and read my home e-mail.

6:40 - Leave for the gym.

7:00 - SPIIN class, hate life for an hour and nearly kill myself. Worry about if my asscrack is showing to anyone who might be on a bike behind me. Sweat alot, and when it's done wipe down my bike and exchange pleasantries with the instructor.

8:15 - Drive home and take a shower.

8:35 - Talk with my roomates, or if they've already gone out drinking sit around and read or write or watch tv or play video games.

10:00 - Think about heading to bed, get distracted by something shiny.

11:45 - Go downstairs, stretch and do some pushups and crunches, get in bed and think about life for awhile.

2:30ish - Fall asleep, have nightmares.

I think my original explanation is more concise and humorous. Maybe I should just stick with that. It's also much less depressing. On the other hand I'm not having to spend mega dollars at dinner or on a present that will ultimately lead to my significant other being disappointed with me. Ahh Valentine's day...

It finally happened.

I've been working here at the Office of Naval research for almost two and a half years. Throughout that time I've seen some pretty wacky proposals cross my desk, things that sometimes baffled me and made little sense. But I could always recognize some part of what we were trying to do with our research without having to go look it up. I've raised my eyebrows at times, such as when we were funding a team building study by watching people play Age of Empires III (a video game). I've questioned the value of our work sometimes, such as when I found out we were paying to find out the inner workings of marine mammals skulls. But I've always at least understood in some small part what it is we were trying to accomplish.

Today that changed. I have a document sitting on my desk that is so far over my head that I have no idea what it is about. It contains words like "Polydimethylsiloxane systems" and "proeinaceous glue". Neither of which I have ever seen or used in a sentence myself, "Hey Mike, I fixed my shoes using this proeinaceous glue, that stuff was great! I'm sure glad I had the Polydimethylsiloxane system to help me..." What we are doing with this money is far beyond my simpleton understanding, I think it has something to do with the environment, but don't quote me on that. I'm fully in awe of this project, and I wish very much to learn to drop these terms in casual conversation.

People ask me what I do all the time, and very rarely do I get to drop words like "Polydimethylsiloxane" or "barnacle glue protein chemistry" or even "biocides". How cool would it be if someone asked me what I did and I got to say, "Oh me? I help facilitate funds for the research of biocides, yeah no big deal, we're just doing comparisons between normal (`hard?) and gummy (`compliant?) baseplate adhesive phenotype barnacles using micro-Raman spectroscopy. No big deal."

Fluffy Kittens AHHHHHH!

When most people have dreams about petting a cute white kitten they don't normally react as though it were a nightmare. Luckily I'm not most people. Sunday night in the 3ish hours of "sleep" I got, I awoke several times in a frightened nervous mood from seemingly benign dreams. Nothing scary or ominous about the dreams, but I awoke as if they were nightmares of the most horrific kind. Weird right? I mean, I don't even normally have lucid dreams, most of the time I don't dream at all. But on this given night I had a series of dreams that weren't scary at all, but that didn't change my state of terror when I woke up suddenly. Maybe someone somewhere was wishing ill of me.

One of them as I mentioned involved me petting a cute kitten. The kitten was purring in my lap and I thought, wow this is a nice dream, what a delightful encounter. This kitten was no doubt eating my very soul! Preparing to rend me with his really sharp kitten claws and then run around at night when I'm sleeping (kittens night run). In one of them I was eating dinner at a nice restaurant, nothing odd about it, but I still woke up as if I was being chased by the devil himself in my dream. Looking back on it I'm sure that the restaurant must have been serving food for the damned, otherwise why would I have awoken with such bad thoughts? Lastly I was driving a car, nothing special about the car as far as I could tell. I wasn't about to get in an accident or hit someone. But when I shot up from my pillow I was as scared as I've ever been. I think now that the car must have been talking to me and calling me Michael and I had sweet hair.

I'm sure there is a simple explanation. I know one of my roomate was waking up with nightmares when I was, both because I could hear him wake up at the same time as me, and because we talked about it the day after. The wind was also going nuts all night and I'm sure that produced some loud noises that woke me. But now I'm afraid to dream at all, what if all of my calm dreams make me awake in fear? I don't want regular dreams…what if I wake up afraid from a lovemaking dream with the love of my life? I don't want that. Bring on the nightmares, the terribly odd dreams about me being chased or something. Then I'll wake up dependably shaken. Nothing like consistency to calm yourself. Forget these benign simple cute dreams, christ those are scary, give me all the fear I can handle, that way I understand why I woke up scared. Also beware of cute kittens, as they are likely the harbingers of dooooooom.

I wish I was a bear

Did you ever feel like you wanted to just hibernate? Just fall asleep for a couple months and let all the weariness of your body and taxes on your spirit just drain away? How cool would that be? You'd wake up with a month or so of rest and you could take on the world with your newfound reserves of energy.

I mean you would have to get rid of the bedhead you would have sustained while in hibernation but after 4 minutes of fixing your hair, a quick shower, and maybe a shave you would be ready to go punch out the sun. But you will have to pick out something to wear. After all you want to make a positive impression with your newfound cache of rest because you don't want people to think that you are some kind of bum who sleeps for months at a time. So you need to spend some time thinking about what you are going to wear, who is going to see you? Do you need to impress them? What kind of impression do you want to make, and is it possible to offend people by being too formal? But once you decide what you are going to wear you are ready to go and nothing is going to stop you!

Except for that nagging pain in your stomach! You haven't eaten in a couple months and your stomach is all rumbly and you don't function well on an empty stomach, so you need to get something to eat before you solve all the world's problems. You need to decide what and where to eat. I mean you could go out and get food and come home and make it but that might sap some of the energy you had plus you feel refreshed so you kind of want to have a really great meal that doesn't take a bunch of your time to make. Ahh but then you'd have to go out to a nice restaurant and spend a bunch of money and you haven't been working while you were hibernating so you are a little low on funds. If you go out you need to decide where to go, what kind of food do you want? I mean it's been months since you last ate, and all your favorites are calling. Decisions decisions...

So you get something to eat, and now you are ready to fight evil and carve out your place in the world! They'll be singing your praises in no time, glory be to you with all this energy, nothing is going to stop you! But then you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, oh god, you haven't been to the gym in months. You are a skinny pasty wimp and all the muscle and cardio work you did before your big nap has gone away. Geez you need to hit the gym, hard, because not only do you care about your health but you don't want to spend extra energy because you are out of shape. You will have to spend energy to work out but it will be ok because it is just a little energy and it will pay dividends later.

But you are at the gym and you realize that you have no idea what is going on in the world. New music is playing on the radio, pundits are talking about what's going on and you don't have a clue. Did your clothes go out of fashion? How did your favorite sports team do and what were the major stories that you might have missed out on? What television shows or movies should you have seen? What happened to all your favorite celebrities and were there any major disasters you should know about (note: death of a favorite celebrity would be a disaster, you will need time to cope)? So may things you need to learn about since you've been out of touch, so after the gym you'll have to go home and learn that stuff quickly so that you don't seem like a dolt when people talk to you. But once you do that you'll be ready to go, and there's no telling what the limits of your energy will bring.

When you get home you realize you haven't been keeping up on your correspondence. You have 5201 voice messages and over 1 million e-mails you need to sift through. Not to mention all the text messages and mail you've received. You'll need to catch up on all that stuff after you learn about the current events. But you can spend a couple hours doing that and then you will be ready to...go to sleep.

It's been a long day, you had to wake up and groom yourself and eat and go to the gym and read the newspaper and all your favorite blogs and such. Then you had to catch up on all your mail, your e-mail, all the social things that you neglected while you were asleep. After all that you are pretty tired, but that's ok you can go to sleep and wake up and finish the things that you didn't have time to do today, and then you are ready to change the way people think on this planet with your energy. But you have to get a job to pay for next year's hibernation and that's not going to be cheap so you will have to work really hard, and rarely do working hard for money and changing the world go hand in hand. But after you work hard you will be ready to hibernate again and once you wake up from that you will have all kinds of energy to do the things you want. Just as soon as you get something to eat and go to the gym and etc etc.

Hibernating is way more involved then I thought, in fact it sounds like a lot of work. Man I'm going to be so tired after I hibernate, I'm going to need to take a nap.

I'll work for peanuts

Have you ever been given or seen a tin of deluxe super expensive peanuts? The gourmet kind that are absurdly priced and when you receive them you smile and nod but the whole time you are thinking how much you really needed another pair of socks instead? Well if you've ever been allowed to opportunity to consume some of the high-end uber peanuts you will discover, as I have over the years, that they are often bland, tasteless, and altogether unappetizing. Whereas your run of the mill ballpark peanut is filled with flavor, a zesty fullness, and character wrought from the cruel lessons of the street. A hard living, fast moving peanut is the nut for me man, as I let my tie flow freely in the wind atop a sense of self satisfaction garnered from my own superiority complex while my close cut hair remains matted. The tin of peanuts you can buy at any convenience store in the country tastes better than the gourmet peanuts that the lower class such as myself cannot afford.

But this is true at many levels, where a less expensive and more readily available confections are better to the palate then their haughty overpriced brothers. Ballpark nachos are often far more fulfilling then your high priced restaurant equivalent. Or maybe it's that my tastes aren't as sophisticated as my social and economic betters. Perhaps my lowbrow preference distinguishes my ignorance from that of your average peanut gallery (a group of knowledgeable peanut connoisseurs, I bet you've never seen that term used this way). What can I say, ignorance in this matter is perhaps bliss, my desire for peanuts only goes so far. I don't sit around in a room with other hobbyists sampling the latest and greatest crop of deluxe peanuts. I'm afraid I don't have the patience to divine what years were best for peanuts, "My good man, '83 was undoubtedly the pinnacle of peanut perfection, never again will we see vintage gourmet peanuts like that again! Now if you'll excuse me I have to go have my moustache waxed while my Rolls Royce is buffed to a fine sheen."

You know what? I'm glad that I prefer your ordinary run of the mill cheap peanut. It saves me money on the rare occasions that I desire to consume such things. Hell I might just go out and buy some of those honey crunch peanuts..."Why Reginald, flavored peanuts? I must say such a thing is most uncouth and unsightly. Your impudence will be the end of you, you'll be the laughing stock of the peanut ball if you are allowed in at all...flavored peanuts...well I never!" All I know is that I'd have to pretend really hard to notice the difference between one gourmet peanuts which sucks, and another. I guess I should cancel my subscription to Peanut Fancy, and Groundnut Enthusiast, and Legume Quarterly. My counter-culture peanut stance is what keeps me on the edge of the highbrow peanut loving crowd. Which is why I guess I never get invited to fancy parties. "Oh God! It's Marty! He has such dreadful taste in snack peanuts, I can't believe they let his type in here. Darling get my coat, I won't stand to be in the company of such a Neanderthal." I guess I'll never get to the peanut ball…if only there was a peanut fairy godmother…sigh.

Paying attention

We had a staff meeting yesterday, I thought the subjects we talked about were so important that I did a ink drawing of a sailboat. I thought it looked pretty good. I scanned it and it didn't look as good but here's a copy of my sailboat:

It looks better unscanned, trust me. Also I shouldn't have drawn the clouds, they look terrible and I feel great shame. I didn't originally intend to draw a sailboat. I just started drawing a shape and it turned into the hull of a ship. Then it slowly turned into a poorly drawn horribly malformed sailboat. Oh God what have I done! I was not meant to create visual art! Last week I drew a plant during a training session, it has since jumped off my desk and into the shredder to spare anyone who might accidently look at it! What was I thinking for those sails by the way, and the top of the mast? People are going to see this and wonder if I've ever even seen a sailboat before. "Oh look honey, that stupid man is trying to draw something that was described to him in a book once. Let us mock him and tell him that he smells funny."

I guess I should probably be more attentive in meetings...Probably doesn't reflect well on me that I'm "making art" while discussing financial management.

Political Pleasantries

In honor of super tuesday I have decided to write something about politics, this is a tale of my most recent humorous encounter with political values. Saturday I was in a chat channel with three friends. One we will call Olive, who is a devout democrat and has worked as an intern for one of the longstanding traditional senate democrats, also dislikes most of the republican candidates outwardly. One we will call Vandalay, a perennial ball buster and jokester supreme, he lives in NY and I think he leans to the left. One who we will call Inter, a staunch Republican. Lastly myself, political preference ????

I will try to recreate the chatlog that had myself and Inter rolling in laughter.

Vandalay: So marty you will be voting for Ron Paul?
Me: Not sure yet! Who knows who I will vote for. I'm guessing you will be voting Clinton in 2008?
Vandalay: Fuck you.
Vandalay: I get to vote in the primary before all of you, that means I'm more important.
Inter: Grats
Me: Good for you
Olive: That's nice, who you gonna vote for?
Vandalay: I don't know, I was thinking...
Vandalay: Mike Huckabee
Olive: Bye
**olive signs off**
Me: Holy shit, that's awesome.
Inter: Wow, just wow.
Vandalay: Nice touch don't you think?

Out of context it doesn't seem as funny, but watching my friend sign off in anger immediately following Vandalay's joke made me laugh for about 10 minutes. Until I heard my roomate put a hole in the wall upstairs.