Nerd-Lonely

I tried to use Craigslist to start a new social group for current & former nerds in the Bay Area.

Not a single response in 7 days. And you know these are the type of people that use the technology at their disposal. Problem is, rare is the nerd that embraces his Nerd (capital N) and looks to join up with other Nerd-embracing nerds. Especially if there’s no promise or even mention of MMORPGs, Meat Space RPGs, or hacking Prius batteries (so bay area).

I’ll try again. There’s gotta be at least two, and maybe they were both at BOTCON that week.

I’ll keep you updated. Meanwhile, notice that Wyltie here just turned 50. I offered to throw him a party, but he just wheezed, which I’ve learned to take as a sign that he’s less than interested. Also, that I’ve personified him to sound a lot like my grandpa Pete.

Posted in bay area, friends (not the show), Nerds, Wyltie | No Comments »

Today’s LONG Run and my missive to The Guy In Charge

Alright, so we stayed up ’til 2 last night with Mike & Tina, which obviously made the 8am start time with Punchie an unreasonable expectation. He graciously agreed to wait ’til 9, but my head was closer to 10. So I did, unfortunately, punk out on my running partner today. BUT, importantly but not more importantly, I did NOT punk out on the long run. I did 8.5 miles, all by my lonesome… and I didn’t walk. At all. I stopped 4 times for a 30-90 second stretch break, which at a minimum added 15 seconds to my pace, but then I kept going. So it wasn’t a GREAT pace… but it’s better than I’ve been doing. And what do we always say is the most important thing? (“Breakfast.” “No, family.” “Oh, I thought you meant of the things you eat.”) Going the distance. Pace & effort & elevation & heart rate can suck it. Distance is what matters when you’re going for the twenty six and two.

Let me also say it was f’ing WINDY on the way to Hopper’s Hands. And of course, by the time I got turned around to come back with the wind, it wasn’t freakin’ there, and I had a word or two with The Guy In Charge Of The Weather. Because he also happens to be The Guy Who Already Engineered My Body Not To Be Able To Do The Things I Want To Do But If I Maintain Dedication And Train Consistently I Should Be Able To Do Them, I asked him what the f was up with the wind holding me back on the way out and not helping me out on the way back. He wasn’t online, of course, being it’s his “day of rest” or whatever. But man will he get an eyeful when he opens his email tomorrow. That frikkin’ guy. I question whether or not he truly has my back.

Dear Guy In Charge,

Do you have my back? You f’ed me up with the wind today, and then you didn’t even hit me back on the flip side. What the f? And don’t say it has anything to do with the fact that I say ‘What the f’ all the time – you know as well as I do that the words themselves are only given meaning by the emotion behind them, and you know damn well what my emotions are: occasionally passionate but never evil.

If I’m going to accomplish this feat of human dedication & physical conditioning, I would APPRECIATE it if you’d just lay off with the frikkin’ wind. And the rain. In fact, if you were a TRUE friend, for the next 3 months you’d turn off as many of the less-than-beneficial-to-my-training parts of your weather system as you can. I’m not asking you to cause droughts or make the flowers bloom artificially, but to the extent that you can just let a brother get his training in & give me a pleasant frikkin’ environment, a STABLE frikkin’ environment to do it in, it would be much appreciated.

Also, while we’re on the subject, enough with the digestive instability. Make me regular again. I don’t mind the burping and “turning on the afterburners” every so often whilst running, but having to stock so many ponds with brown trout is beginning to affect my sunny disposition. That’s all I have to say about that.

I don’t want to end on a sour note, but I did want to make sure I said what needed to be said. I know, in the end, you’re a friend to be counted on. And you have REALLY great ideas & intentions most of the time. (I still think the whole “Women Shall Have Breasts” thing was your finest hour.) But I’m trying to accomplish a Life Goal here, and I just think you forget that sometimes. It would just be nice if you paid a little more attention & were a little more aware of the results of your actions.

Anyway, hope you’re enjoying your day of rest. Hope we’re still solid. R sends her love. Thanks for including us on your holiday card list – we’ll return the favor next year.

Rock On,
Brian

Posted in The Guy In Charge, training | No Comments »

Wyltie made a linkback to Technorati!

I realize it’s not really that big a deal, but hey, a man can dream that one day his blog will be a staple of the blogosphere. Right? Maybe one day 1 million people show up to read Wyltie once or twice a week while they eat their Muesli or wait for the laundry.

It could happen…

My hopes and dreams began with a Technorati appearance (Wyltie’s there twice!)

Posted in backlinks, blogosphere | No Comments »

Today’s 5 Miler

Below is a map of today’s 5-miler that I did with Punchie (or Mr. Smith). Definitely a gorgeous trail out there along the ocean, but the knee has got to get better if I’m going to keep doing big climbs or staircases. Coming back down hurts. But at least I didn’t have to stop to drop trou after the 2nd mile. More than I can say for some people.


Posted in training | No Comments »

$#*%

I just dropped a pair of scissors on my crotch.

They don’t teach you how not to do that in elementary school… though I understand it should be naturally assumed, given the whole human propensity for self-preservation and species propagation instincts.

Somewhat interesting that the same biological reasoning that explains why sex feels so good is the same reasoning to keep shearing objects safely in-hand as opposed to dangerously in-crotch.

Still hurts.

Posted in $#*%, propagation of species | No Comments »

MQotW – Work Edition Vol. 1 Issue 3

The New Wii Fit Game MUST Revitalize My Enthusiasm For Psuedo-Exercise Because My New Year’s Resolution Is To Play More Video Games,

Last edition’s quote: (whisper) “He’s cooking our garbage.”

The correct answer is Uncle Buck. Starred Macaulay Culkin before his heyday, as in pre-Home Alone. Oh, and people sometimes forget that it also happened to star JOHN CANDY, funniest man from Canada in recent history who has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Last edition’s winner responded in less than 5 minutes with not only the full title of the movie, but also with the name of the actor (though not the name of the character in the film). Our trigger-happy winner was Andrew “Why? Because I SURSA!” Ysursa, who is from Idaho but may as well be from Kraplechistan, because he NEVER meets other people from Idaho. Not only does he have to deal with the solitude of being an Idahoan (not to mention the challenge of correctly pronouncing “Idahoan”), but he also has to deal with geographically-deficient individuals confusing his home state, from whence God Delivers Potatoes, with IOWA, from whence God Delivers Corn. In an interview with Andrew, he says “You’d be amazed how many people f*ck up that basic piece of 5th grade geographic pop culture. It totally spuds my taters.” When I asked Andrew about this “spuds his taters” comment, which appears to be a hyperlocal colloquialism, he could not recall having said it. “I could swear I didn’t say that. I said it totally spuds my taters.” Sensing what may be going on, and being ever the quick one, I asked him to write down this last sentence. He WROTE “I could swear I didn’t say that. I said it totally boils my [censored].” Just as I suspected, Andrew Ysursa is suffering from Idahoatuberism, where he vocalizes discontent in terms of potatoes instead of other, more widely accepted euphemisms. I’ve seen it a hundred times with people from odd states. The two friends I have from Iowa say “That really shucks my husks”, my friend from Wyoming … crap, what does she say? … I can’t remember what she says about Wyoming… hmm… what would she say about Wyoming? It escapes me. In any case, as his prize for winning MQotW, Andrew’s affliction, though not entirely unpleasant and simultaneously vegetarian-friendly (as opposed to the Chicago phenomenon involving the phrase “cases my kielbasa”), will be immediately treated, gratis, by my good friend Dr. Poopsteihn. (Pronounced ‘POOP-sten, not poop-‘STANE.) He’s from Alabama.

Sadly, even after weeks of hiatus, we had no second place winner for Issue 2. While this is unfortunate for my ever-growing popularity & widening distribution list, it suits today’s situation particularly well, as I’m completely spent after the whole “spuds my taters” thing.

Be the first to guess the title of the movie from whence the below quote was taken, and you will receive a grand fake prize from yours truly. If your correct response is received second, you will receive no prize whatsoever, but will be mocked for your inferior movie knowledge and/or less-than-catlike reflexes.

Please note: The point of MQotW is to acknowledge those with a completely useless mental database of movie knowledge, NOT to reward you for book marking IMDB.com or some other movie site & being able to type quickly; therefore, if you are found guilty of such high treason, you will be summarily dismissed from the distribution list. And I will flame you on MySpace. Research at your own risk.

Because this contest has some timing aspects to it, and to be fair to all my homies, I will distribute the MQotW at noon every Tuesday. Unless I’m busy.

Without further ado, I give you this edition’s…

Movie Quote of the Week:

“How do you like that? The guy gets laid more times dead than I do alive.”

Good Luck!

Potatoes are Tubers,

Brian “I Missed My Calling & It Didn’t Even Leave A Message After The Beep” Hansen
Master Quotidian
MQotW Creator & Founder & President & CEO & Ampersand User & Title Acquirer & Pennsylvanian
“That really clangs my Liberty Bell.”

Posted in idahoans, MQotW, tubers | 3 Comments »

Counter Update

Old counter pooped out on me, and the last number I know I saw there was 561, so have started again. Let me know if I’m off.

More later, maybe.

Posted in General | No Comments »

Scallions

Most recent lesson life has taught me: I can’t digest large pieces of scallions. Takes a few days to exit, and when it passes, it looks like rope. I noticed this because I saw it and said, ‘When did I eat rope?’ (Also could’ve been a candle wick, but I’ve stopped eating those as well.)

Hey, you asked.

Posted in rope | No Comments »

Welcome to 2008

Happy New Year!

We are officially back from the year-ending honeymoon, and I gotta say that being on your honeymoon in New Zealand is a great way to end any year. Lots of good stuff happened in ’07, and I’m very excited to see what happens in 2008.

We’re working hard on priority goals 1 and 2: pick out all the wedding pictures and get them printed & published to the web; and pick out all the honeymoon pictures and get them published to the web & share them with everyone. Other than that, all the wedding/honeymoon hoopla is officially over… which is definitely a sad truth, but a bit of a relief as well. Time to turn our attention to the rest of our lives.

First on my list is training for the marathon. If you read the last post below, you saw that I registered for the BSIM on April 26th. Since that post and this one, my dear friend Choi has decided to pick that exact same day for his wedding reception. (He’s getting married in March, in Seoul, Korea, but having a reception for his gaijin friends that can’t make it to the land of fermented cabbage.) He’s lucky that I love him like a brother, because I was very excited about & already committed to this marathon… but the right thing to do, in spite of the fact that the marathon was booked first, is to go to his reception and forfeit my registration. Though apparently I may be able to sell my number on eBay – anyone ever sold or bought a race registration from someone else? So while I may not be training for Big Sur at the end of April, I’m still going to train and will book one in the same basic timeframe very soon.

Runner-up to that is to keep going with Improv stuff. Roadblock there is that BATS isn’t offering the next class in the series until April (at the earliest)… so that means I gotta go find another school or another pursuit and jump in just to keep momentum going. I’m kinda okay with that though – as much as I love what I’ve been doing at BATS, some of it isn’t indigenous to their school or their way of doing things. I’ve actually had two out of three of my classes disappoint me in some way or another, and have noticed that their crew’s performances (the long-form ones I’ve seen) are not what I really want to do. Those particular performances I saw, and what they seem to preach through their classes, purport that improv is funny by way of being improv… meaning that the funny bits are pleasant by-products of improvisation. I’m starting to think that my preferred method of doing this would actually be to marry the two together. IMPROVISE FUNNY STUFF. Obviously you can’t be funny all the time, especially when it’s completely spontaneous, but … for me, the whole point of this is to get the laugh; that’s why I do it.

BATS is typically not about the laugh… or at least the teachers I’ve had thus far don’t emphasize it at all; indeed they sometimes dragged me away from the laughs, kicking & screaming. And okay, I understand that improvisational acting is more than improvisational comedy, and that the skills involved in the first certainly augment your endeavors of the second but not necessarily vice-versa… but that’s not really what I want to do with my time or money right now. I want to be funny, and I want people to want me to be funny, and then I want to learn about how to be funnier. So I’ll shove off to find a way to do that very soon and will update you accordingly.

R, on the other hand, is about to kick off her first knitting class at Atelier Yarns over on Divis. She put that on her Xmas list, and ’twas a gift certificate that she received from my wonderful parents that paid for it & her supplies. She starts Monday & is very excited. It’s also something that’s going to help her keep one of her resolutions: to make/take more time for herself. Work has been summarily taking advantage of her for a few months now, and she’s had enough and is committed to getting her time back. Let’s all help her keep that one, okay? She’s excited for learning a new hobby, and she’s hoping it’ll turn out to be a therapeutic one – one that will calm her down as opposed to giving her more fodder for her task lists and the cute little heart attack that she knows she’s got half-baked in the bottom of her ventricles.

I’m all for a relaxing hobby, because, love her as I do, I still can’t keep her from being this big ball of stress for a larger-than-fun portion of time. I may still have a talent for talking her out of a complete frenzy like no one else could, but it’s akin to saving someone from drowning but still being stuck in the middle of the ocean – I can swim for both of us only so many miles, and then we both have to figure out how the hell to make it to dry land for beer and crab cakes. (I would only ever get stuck in the ocean in an area where the coast would supply both of these things a-plenty.)

The honeymoon was great for letting both of us totally forget about anything other than being married, being in New Zealand, and being twentysomethings with respectable salaries and slightly modest tastes for food & wine. We had a great time – I’d write a full post about it, but I still haven’t finished the Wedding post, and feel obligated to finish that one first – and now we’re back, trying not to get stressed out by America, by corporations, by what little obligations we do have.

But we’re trying not to think of 2008 as another year of obligations to things that don’t make us better or make the world better… I’m trying to make sure that I invest my time better in ’08. I even toyed with the idea of resolving not to watch ‘Friends’ any more. The amount of time I spend in front of the TV is easily 30-40% consumed by re-runs of episodes I own on DVD. So not only is it not productive time, it’s a REPEAT of a non-productive time. (In my defense, it’s a great show that won Emmys for a reason… but that is not excuse enough.)

I want to invest in this year so that ’09 is easier for both of us. More time out of the apartment, more time taking advantage of living on the West Coast, more time exploring new restaurants/activities/creative pursuits… do away with the days that go by because we’re too busy planning other things. And if we make the effort to take time for doing & enjoying new things, I’m less likely to need that time in front of the TV, laughing at lines that haven’t been said yet but that I know are coming. (There’s nothing inherently wrong with that at certain points in your life, but I’m past that point for now.)

One thing I’m definitely looking forward to doing is finding some open mic nights. Gonna start spectating a few first, build up the ol’ confidence, work on my own material, and eventually make a debut. I’m on the fence as to whether or not I want people I know to be at my first one or not… I’d love to think I’d be funny enough to have my friends & family laugh at me out of getting my jokes instead of loyalty, but am worried about being able to tell the difference. And if I DO bomb, I certainly don’t want everyone I know there to see it or to try and make me feel better about it… If they come and help me feel great my first time, when I go out again & less of them are there, I could bomb & not have that salve of loving ego-strokes with which to dress my wounds. But rest assured, I’ll blog about it either way.

There are LOTS of other things that should happen in ’08, but it’s 6:30 on Saturday night and I’m going to head out to catch I Am Legend at 7:30. (R doesn’t particularly want to go, so I get to go and drink all the soda & eat all the snacks I’ll pick up from BevMo! on the way.) So for now, I will leave you… and I promise I’ll be back in less than the 4 weeks it’s been since my last post. Plus I just bought us a new laptop yesterday and am happy to have a second tool so we can both be productive while at home.

Did learn a lesson though: make sure to ask R before any final decisions on large purchases. Both my Dad AND hers have a tendency to get single-minded on these types of purchases (computers, cars, TVs, dogs, cable packages), and they sometimes neglect to ensure the whole family is included in the decisions… it’s got a lot to do with the way women communicate their apathy about technology or TVs or whatever, but even if they don’t care to know an LCD from a labrador, it doesn’t mean that leaving them out of any decision that affects them is an okay thing. I’m sure this won’t be the last time something like that comes up, but I’m still ruminating on my response/philosophy related to it, so I’ll just let it go at that for now.

PS, thanks to those that have been commenting. I’m trying to respond in the comment threads more quickly than I can post, so if you’re looking for shoutouts or thank-yous, be sure to go back through the comment threads too, kay?

Posted in 2008, choi, decisions, friends (the show), knitting, resolutions, stress | No Comments »

The Next Step!

I frikkin’ did it, people. I signed up for my first marathon.

http://bsim.org

Big Sur’s International Marathon was a reco from my friend Punchie, and was one of his first marathons. It’s a great scene, there’s plenty of fun friendly people, and it’s full of awesome views of the Monterey Bay / Big Sur area.

I have until April 27th to get my ass into gear to run my first 26.2. I know I’ve talked about this all before, and the idea of finishing in less than four hours or whatever. Well, that’s still a goal, and a great one, but honestly, I’ll consider it a successful first time out if I cross the finish line in less than 6 hours (a deadline I have to hit if I want to be counted among the official finishers).

Twenty six point two, kids. Where am I at now? Max I’ve ever gone is 11.2. And that was 6 months ago. I’m closer to 4-5 miles on a regular basis these days. But that’s why I have almost five months to put this thing together.

Stay tuned for Training Plans, Training Updates, Inspirational Words, and Photographic Evidence (meaning, you won’t just take my word for it – I’ll find some way to prove to you that I’ve done the distance/time that I’d put on the Plan on the day I was supposed to do it).

Now… my challenge to you, dear readers. Come out to visit & run this sh!t with me! Everything, including training for this thing, is more fun when you are doing it with support. We can even do it long-distance if we have to. If you’re in the Bay Area (which probably constitutes about 5 of my 10 regular readers but whatever) and we can put some miles behind us together, then let’s figure out a way to make it happen!

If you’re NOT in the Bay Area, the end of April’s a GREAT time to make a visit out to SF. Weather will be warmer here than most any other place in the country at that time, and it will be after rainy season but before foggy season! And if, y’know, you decide you can’t possibly train for this without my support and you wanna move out here, that’s something we can arrange too. No dream too big.

I’m not going into too much more here just yet, but let me just say that this will be one of the things that I actually DO in the year of ’08. There will be other things that I’ve said I’ve always wanted to do that I actually DO in 2008… and you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what that means.

And yes, I do owe you an apology. I have NOT been keeping you abreast of life’s happenings, and I know how much you all like being breasts. I am sorry, but here’s the good news: I’m too busy with work, but am actually ENJOYING (at least a little bit) what I’m doing these days. There’s lots of big things happening in the ice cream world, and I’m involved in … wow, in almost all of them. I’d tell you more, but for fear of saying something I’m not supposed to say, I’ll just leave it with the fact that my job is busy for a reason.

As I move forward with training, I’ll either do a way better job of keeping Wyltie in the loop, or I’ll find some other vehicle through which you can keep tabs on my (or, better yet, OUR) progress towards twenty six point two.

But GET EXCITED PEOPLE! The Fat Kid’s gonna run a marathon! WOOHOOOOOO!

Posted in activity, Big Sur, invitations, training | 4 Comments »

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