So this morning my alarm goes off at 5:30, as usual. I turn it off. I think "I'm going to take it easy today. After all my back still kind of hurts from straining it last week and I need a break."
Couldn't get back to sleep. So a half hour later I just up and go to the gym anyway. What's gotten into me? I wonder if I've just trained myself to be a morning person. I've been getting up relatively early ever since about 1999, when I started working the early-morning shift at UPS (3:30 a.m.). Then it was the mission (6:30), then back to UPS, then regular job for a while (7:00), now here. On weekends I can't sleep in too late because when it gets light in my room, I have a hard time staying asleep. Now for the past 5-6 months I've been doing the early-morning gym routine.
Oh well, I guess there are worse things.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Third Wheel
This past weekend a friend invited me to go to Vegas, where she lives. She said she needed someone to take to a wedding reception and she also wanted to see me/hang out with me. At first I wasn't sure because work was busy and I didn't feel comfortable leaving work early on Friday to get there on time. But in the end I decided what the heck, took some stuff with me from work (to work on later), and jumped in the car and drove out.
We go to the wedding reception. It's interesting. Odd couple. But the food isn't totally unpalatable so I'm happy. Then we go back to her place and meet up with her (male) roommate and decide to go see a movie. So we go see a movie. Two guys and a girl. A little weird for me--but no big deal.
Next day after she gets off work we go to hang out again. This time she tosses her keys to her roommate and has him drive. I get the back seat. Sweet! Now I'm officially the third wheel. They continue their banter from last night about life in Vegas and friends they have and gossip and just talking about their lives in general. I don't know what they're talking about. I feel a bit left out, not sure how to contribute, other than saying "Oh who is so-and-so? Why was that funny? What happened there? Let me in on it all!" (Of course I didn't say any of that. I wasn't raised in a cave.)
I'll be honest: no one has ever invited me to drive 3 1/2 hours to visit them only to make me the third wheel for the weekend while they hung out with their roommate. I was a bit taken aback. Didn't really know what to make of it. Ultimately I decided I wasn't having much fun, so at midnight on Saturday I hopped in my car and drove home.
Am I being hypersensitive? I don't know. I felt like a genuine outsider to everything going on. Personally if I invited someone here to "hang out" with me and I professed wanting to see them, I think I would at least make them feel like they were more than a stranger who is crashing on the couch for a couple days that is tagging along with me and my friends while we do our normal weekend thing.
I had a buddy years ago who always wanted to be the third wheel. I'd invite girls to hang out or whatever and I'd encourage him to get a date or find someone to take along. For some reason he rarely would and often it'd end up being me, my date, and him. Not that I felt intimidated or anything, it was just weird. It's like, if you put two males with an attractive girl, even if one is not "interested" in the girl, it still seems like there's an invisible struggle for attention going on. This seems normal, actually, because when three people are together there's usually only two ways to divide any single person's attention. Anyway, after my buddy kept this up for a while I vowed to never do it again. In the following years living with my old roommate Josh, we would never be a third wheel to each other. It was either you had a date or you went back to your room and played video games or listened to music. No exceptions!
So that was my weekend. How was yours? Oh--highlight of the weekend: While my "friend" was at work, I went to a nearby Ross and bought this dark brown perry ellis polo. It's an amazing fit and super comfortable. And because it was Ross, it was cheap. Score!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Should've seen it coming
So I was stupid (surprise surprise) and messed up my rental car reservation. I flew in to Salt Lake on Sunday night, and mistakenly made my reservation starting Monday night (Note: if you make car rental reservations over Priceline, make sure you've got the right date and times, because the independent rental company can't modify the reservation once your bid is accepted). No one wanted to take me back to the airport on Monday (can't blame them), so I took buses and TRAX to get up there.
Once there, I went to the counter and got everything squared away. I asked the guy what car I'd be driving and he said "Oh probably something like a Ford Focus or Chevy Aveo." Pretty lame picks if you ask me but who cares, it's just to get around, right? Well I walk out to the guy with all the keys, and he hands me a pair that fit a Mitsubishi. The spot he told me to go to (F22) had a minivan in it, so that couldn't be right, but E22 had an Eclipse parked in it. Sure enough, my keys were to the Eclipse. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to drive this sporty little car. I'd always thought Eclipses looked cool, and this one looked to be only a couple years old.
It's a fun little car I guess. There's only like 3 inches of leg room in the back seat, so I would never buy one, but for rental purposes it's fine. I've been a little unimpressed with its power. You'd think a small sporty car like that would have some all right acceleration, but not really. My Passatt has a lot more power than this Eclipse. Smoother ride and less exterior noise, as well. The interior looks pretty, though. The exterior, too. It's all show, I've decided.
This, of course, didn't prevent me from driving fast on the freeway. There's something about being in a sporty little car that compelled me to go fast and weave in and out of traffic. Now I understand why they do that. (I also want to point out that Utah drivers, at least on the freeway, are more courteous when it comes to letting you pass than California drivers. Almost everyone I caught up with in the fast lane would move over to let me pass. In California? Yeah, right.)
My fun ended when I shot past a highway patrolman in a big suburban. As I shot past, I noticed that it was probably a cop, so I slowed down, but then I had to speed up again to get around someone for my exit. Busted. Got pulled over...I was probably doing 85-90. Fortunately I think the cop bought my story about being from out of state and there just visiting, so he wrote me up for going only 9 mph over the speed limit (which prevents the ticket from going on my record). Nice enough guy, I suppose. I should've told him I just wasn't used to the speedometer, which doesn't even have a "90" mph indicator. It would've only been half-true, anyway.
Was this story very interesting or exciting or humorous? Not really. But hey, I'm going to pay $82 bucks for it, so gimme a break.
Once there, I went to the counter and got everything squared away. I asked the guy what car I'd be driving and he said "Oh probably something like a Ford Focus or Chevy Aveo." Pretty lame picks if you ask me but who cares, it's just to get around, right? Well I walk out to the guy with all the keys, and he hands me a pair that fit a Mitsubishi. The spot he told me to go to (F22) had a minivan in it, so that couldn't be right, but E22 had an Eclipse parked in it. Sure enough, my keys were to the Eclipse. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to drive this sporty little car. I'd always thought Eclipses looked cool, and this one looked to be only a couple years old.
It's a fun little car I guess. There's only like 3 inches of leg room in the back seat, so I would never buy one, but for rental purposes it's fine. I've been a little unimpressed with its power. You'd think a small sporty car like that would have some all right acceleration, but not really. My Passatt has a lot more power than this Eclipse. Smoother ride and less exterior noise, as well. The interior looks pretty, though. The exterior, too. It's all show, I've decided.
This, of course, didn't prevent me from driving fast on the freeway. There's something about being in a sporty little car that compelled me to go fast and weave in and out of traffic. Now I understand why they do that. (I also want to point out that Utah drivers, at least on the freeway, are more courteous when it comes to letting you pass than California drivers. Almost everyone I caught up with in the fast lane would move over to let me pass. In California? Yeah, right.)
My fun ended when I shot past a highway patrolman in a big suburban. As I shot past, I noticed that it was probably a cop, so I slowed down, but then I had to speed up again to get around someone for my exit. Busted. Got pulled over...I was probably doing 85-90. Fortunately I think the cop bought my story about being from out of state and there just visiting, so he wrote me up for going only 9 mph over the speed limit (which prevents the ticket from going on my record). Nice enough guy, I suppose. I should've told him I just wasn't used to the speedometer, which doesn't even have a "90" mph indicator. It would've only been half-true, anyway.
Was this story very interesting or exciting or humorous? Not really. But hey, I'm going to pay $82 bucks for it, so gimme a break.
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