Fish Sticks and Green Jello

I just took the quiz.

I'm only 25% picky.

Your willingness to look beyond the surface for other qualities shows that you are grounded in reality when looking for a relationship. Just beware of going with the flow too much and settling for 'OK' instead of 'fantastic'.

Ouch. I thought I was really picky. Actually that's not true... I think lately I haven't been picky enough. Live and learn!

Yes I know! People love to give me crap about this but I love reality TV. I watch shows like Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race and so on. I'm also a fan of a little show on NBC called Last Comic Standing.

Last night's show was tense, three comics had to compete head to head to see which one comic would be eliminated. Would it be Corey, Alonzo or John?! Who was going to be in the FINAL FIVE?! I've always been a big fan of John Heffron so I didn't want to see him go. Of course I'd already hung out with him throughout most of Saturday evening/Sunday morning so I already knew he was in the final five.

Although I was kicking myself for not asking him who was in the final two... but then I realized that he wouldn't have known that. The only real tip was that he made it to the final five. Its at the point in the show now that people can phone in after each episode and vote the comics through to the end. So it's all up in the air still. I say vote for John! :)

Okay so here's my story. Saturday night I headed out to dinner with my friend Johnny, then we went to Toranado on Haight, then The Top. Around midnight I headed over to my friend Shawn's birthday bash at his loft space. The party was already winding down by then so I wasn't there long. Another friend showed up and we took off. Then I got a call from yet another friend who suggested we head over to this all night "speakeasy" type place. Basically it was an after hours club that served alcohol all night and had a dj etc. Members only. Since my friend was a member we got in.

The crowd was semi yuppie-ish but okay overall. It got more crowded as the bars let out and overall it was a nice setting. A basement club type place. Anyway, I was sitting around and saw this guy from across the room by the entrance. I pegged him almost immediately. John Heffron! My friend went over and asked him at my bequest what his name was. Yup it was him! He came on over and was apparently very drunk but I couldn't really tell. He was very nice and very cute in person. He was also pretty chatty so it was cool hanging out with him. I won't go into to much detail other than to say that he's getting married this coming weekend, so congrats to him! Although now that he's a semi-famous comedian tv show guy he's probably getting lots of hot chicks coming up to him all the time for... oh you know.

Darnit! All the super cute, nice, job having, career having, sucessful guys are taken.  Okay not all, just the ones I happen to maybe spark an interest for. And knowing me that's like two maybe. I'm generally attracted to commitment-phobic, emotionally unavailable,  jobless, no career future type guys that are out dating multiple women at the same time (at least one, some or all of the former). I'm going to die alone with 6 cats and 5 dogs. Being that I'm a knitter I'll sit around and knit little scarves for all of them while listening to "All By Myself" by Shelby Lynne. It's good to have goals.

Your Ice cream Flavour is...Neopolitan!

You aren't satisfied with just one flavor. They say variety is the spice of life and this shines through in your Ice cream of choice! Just don't eat all the chocolate and leave the strawberry and vanilla behind!

What is your Ice cream Flavour?

Find out at Go Quiz

Woah. Blogger got cooler looking.  The posting mechanism did I mean. Wow. Neato! Lookin good! Okay enough of that.... Sorry I haven't been posting in awhile. Between crunch time at work, appointments, updating my very old ipod with new firmware (holy crap did that suck) and my new hobby (more on that shortly) I've been busy! 
 
So I'm officially a gym junkie. Laugh now, get it all out. My friend Kymm goes everday and I never understood how the heck she did it. I've been the last 6 days and I'm not stopping anytime soon! 2 of those days every week are with my personal trainer at a private gym. That's where I do my super slow weight lifting which involves a lot of weight for a short amount of time in very slow reps. Pretty excruciating but I've gotten very strong since I started last February. I had about month off in there on and off due to being sick but I've kept up with it. I even see a bit of muscle definition here and there. 

The other 4 days have been spent at 24 hour fitness on the elliptical. I started out at about 30 minutes. It was such a rush to finish that. I felt so accomplished. Then I went up to 35 min and up a higher level as well. Now I've gone up another level and I'm up to 40 min. I have to find my groove I guess. I have about ten times more stamina then I did 6 months ago, so yay me! Woo! Oh also, I've been a bit on and off about the Weight Watchers thing due to my vacation recently but I'm definitely back on again. When I weighed myself for my weekly weigh in this morning I got my first 5lb milestone star. Yup I've lost a whopping 5lbs since I started.
 
I owe a lot of this to C by the way. She's done more for me mentally and physically in such a short period of time then anyone else I know. Funny how that is. She's so modest about what an influence she has on me but take some credit! You rock! I'm not sure when she started being my "role model" but she's influenced me so much that I even have a regular therapist now. I feel great about the path my health is taking too.
 
I've had some angst lately that helped propell me to the gym. I've been working that out in other more private outlets rather than on my very public blog. Hopefully I'll be better soon and back to regular postings here. In the meantime, I'll just keep working out. 

I hate going to gyms. I hate working out with a bunch of people you don't know. It's weird. I''m kind of self concious sometimes so that doesn't help much either. I've had a gym membership the entire 3 and a half years I've been at my job. My first membership was to Club One, which I went to about 4 times total. No motiviation at all, even though I went with a co-worker. My current gym is with 24 hour fitness. This is better because there is one closer to my home and work now than there is a Club One. Had I used it at all? No.

Today I went to my local 24 Hour Fitness. I was determined to break the gym barrier and actually go use it. I walk in and check in, so far so good. The desk guy is pretty nice and lets me know I have the Ultra membership which entitles me to not only use any gym I want but I can use the ultra sports clubs which have day spas and juice bars and stuff. Neat. Okay I did a lap around the gym to check out what was available. It wasn't too crowded which was nice. There's a pool in the back which is pretty cool. It seemed nice overall. I felt pretty comfortable.

I decided to use the elliptical today. Which is funny because I actually owned an elliptical which I got rid of from non use. Of course mine wasn't nearly as good as these were. I wasn't sure how long I'd last on it because usually I go about 10 min and want to pass out. Today I went a whole 30 min plus. 2 and a half miles, 300 calories burned. It seemed so easy too. I think all the strength training I'm doing is paying off. You see, even though I seem lazy (and generally am lazy) by not going to the gym I do go to a personal trainer two days a week to do super slow weight lifting. It's pretty gruelling but I keep increasing the amount of weight I am using so I know I'm getting stronger. Anyways, long story short, I loved the gym and plan on going back again tomorrow.

In fact I realized something about myself today. Something that I'd read in C's blog about why she goes to the gym. Going to the gym with a lot on your mind (among other things) can really help push you through the workout. I've been a bit heavy hearted the last few days. Not caused by anything bad, but more likely caused by a longing or a hope. Rather than dwell on what if's I decided to go work it out at the gym and that was the formula I needed to motivate me to succeed. I look forward to working all this out at the gym everday if I can! I'm actually pretty excited by the whole gym thing and am happy about that. Life's not so bad.

I have been so very very busy since I've gotten back. Busy being tired, busy trying to clean my house, busy writing my review at work, busy doing work, busy running errands and so on and so forth. Usually I'm quite good at throwing a post out there the second I've arrived back from an event or a trip but this time I've been a tad slow. So slow in fact that as I write this I know I'm going to save it as a draft and continue it another day. This will be the post that took me days to write versus minutes. Luckily Blogger is very nice and will "backdate" it for me... ie, it will post it with the date and time on it that I started it. So you might think i was quick, but now you know the real truth!

Friday I took off for a long weekend in Seattle. I arrive mid-afternoon and picked up my kick butt Pontiac Grand Prix. Who knew it was a sporty full sized car thing? It only had 900 miles on it too and upgrading to it cost me an extra $3 a day. Thanks nice Avis lady for the killer recommendation! I drove into Seattle and met up with my friend Cristy at her house. I cleaned up and we went out to dinner at some Sushi restaurant in some part of town that I don't recall. It was quite good though, albeit slow service-wise. Poppy headed off to see Calexico at the Showbox and Cristy and I headed over to the Lobo Saloon to catch my friend Theo's band, The Teenage Harlets, play with 3 other bands.

I won't go into long boring detail since there's a nice pictoral. I'll just say that the crowd was great, I met some new folks and met up with some folks I'd met before. It was a ton of fun and everyone was crazy! Whee! Poppy came and met us later on in time to catch the Hot Rollers, a local Seattle band. We ended up that evening by heading to a party around the corner for an hour or so then moving on to another party in Ballard. I had such an amazingly fun time, I mean it. The best thing in the world is going out and meeting a ton of cool new people you can hang with. Plus hanging with my friend Theo and co. is always a blast.

Day 2 had us sleeping in late since we didn't get in until 5am. We managed to drag ourselves out to Capital Hill for some food at Cafe Septeime. Another slow service experience but I was so hungry and my food tasted really good so I didn't care once my food showed up. Afterwards we caught a matinee of Spiderman 2 downtown at that fancy mall on 6th and Pine. Greatest movie ever! Loved it! I want to take Toby Maguire home and feed him some warm soup and give him some socks and jammies and tuck him into bed. What a sad sack. I was wondering where the part of the film was where his puppy gets run over. The movie had amazing character development. I loved it saw much I saw it again once I got back in town. That's right, TWO TIMES!

Anyways, after the movie we headed home to take care of a few things then headed over to the U District to meet up with Paul and his friends Neal and Deb. Neal was a former WebTV guy who still works for Microsoft except he's up in Seattle now... Ballard to be exact. We met at a restaurant called Flowers which I really liked. I had a Thai Seafood Bouillabaise which was really delicious. Poppy, Cristy and I were still burnt out from the night before so we weren't the liveliest of groups but it was still a nice dinner nevertheless. Afterwards we raided QFC for ice cream and cones then headed home to veg in front of the TV and eat our ice cream. It was already pretty late at this point and we need the rest.

Day 3 required me to get up early and get out of the house to head over to my Grandma's for lunch. My Aunt Brenda, Uncle Richard and Cousin Rebeccah were kind enough to have us up to their house to eat BBQ. Yay! I'd been jones'ing for BBQ for awhile, if you couldn't tell from my recent BBQ purchase. Anyway, we had a nice visit then I headed off back to Seattle. Poppy wanted to try and leave the city and get some fireworks from an Indian Reservation or something. Luckily on the way back I found a roadside fireworks stand where I was able to pick up a bunch of cool fireworks that shot off fireballs high into the air and sprayed fountains of sparks. Saved us a trip and some time. I also got some magic sticks, sparklers, blossoms and snakes. A pretty nice assortment. My favorites were of course the fireball ones. I don't recall every buying fireworks that shot things that high in the air. It was like our own mini display!

Once I got back we all cleaned up then headed over to Poppy's friend's house for another bbq. We got fried chicken for ourselves and we got there late anyways so we missed the eating part. Which was fine by me. I'd already done my BBQ at lunch. I met a nice group of folks there. When it got to be around 9pm we decided to hike about 20 blocks to somewhere around Capital Hill to watch the displays. We got a pretty nice spot on a hill type area, overlooking where the REI is, which is right up the street from the Lobo Saloon. Pretty cool! There were a lot of fun people out and about and about 9 of us headed down there. We lost a few on the way but we started out as a pretty big group. After the displays we hit some bar called Linda's I think and had a few there. At this point after having a few on the way then at the bar we were way too tired to walk all the way back so we took a cab. We got back at 12 or 1 something and then lit off all our fireworks. The guy down the street came out with all his rockets and fireballs, and basically outdid us. His fireworks were WAY bigger than ours! I guess he went to the reservation for those.

Next year I'd love to drive up and load my car full of them then come back down here. Hehe. Although I'm not sure what the regulations are on that in my county. Probably have to check first. So after shooting off all our fireworks we decided to head home and pass out. We got back and in to bed by 3am. Which really sucked because I had to get up at 7am to finish packing then get to the airport for a 10am flight. This included dropping the rental off as well. Luckily that was all a fast process since I made it to the gate about 30 min before boarding... tops.

So I got home fine, had a fabulous weekend. There are of course other fun details which I won't share here. :) I'll leave that up to the imagination. And get your minds out of the gutter!

Here are some movies of the fireworks display I took with my camera. They're not great by any means but if you want a small taste, there you go. I'd include the movie of us lighting the "big one" and shooting it off in the street but it's big and unedited. Maybe once it's edited I'll post it for awhile. I doubt I'll keep these movies posted long since they are a space suck. So watch 'em while you can, if you wanna. I also posted a few highlight photos. I don't wanna bore you with ALL the pics taken. I saved those for my friends to suffer through!

Movie 1 - Over Lake Union
Movie 2 - By the Space Needle


Poppy & Cristy's House


Theo, Chris & Atom

Johnny

Chris (guitar) / Atom (drums)

Johnny (lead singer)

Theo (bass)

Johnny clutching Cristy's leg (those are my shoes!)

Alexis & I

Cristy & Poppy

The Hot Rollers

Work It!

I'm off again to Seattle for a fun filled weekend with friends. Hopefully I'll have some good details to report when I get back.

In the meantime, here's a photo of Toby and I. It was taken on Memorial Day this year. We were at some strange hay filled park in Menlo Park in a relatively nice neighborhood. Johnny and Luci came along as well. All in all a nice day out.