Ramble On

I usually watch shitty tv. Or sometimes good tv, but mostly just sitcoms and other light nonsense of that ilk.  It is the only way that I have found to at least temporarily dull the sensation of her absence.  I don't know why I still have to endure it.  I would think that it should have passed by now, it has certainly been quite a while.  For whatever reason though, I can't move on.  I am stuck.  Stuck at 250, stuck on her, stuck on this couch.  I really do know and believe that she was wrong for me, and that she could never be right for me.  I get that.  I know and believe that she treated me like shit, even if she maybe also loved me.  It is how it is sometimes.  I used to wonder about my friends having trouble getting over their emotionally abusive boyfriends.  I would ask "What is it?  Why would you even think about talking to that guy, let alone want to be with him?"  Now I understand when they said, "I don't know."  I understand because I do not know.

Once a week, usually.  Sometimes when I am driving.  Too many songs remind me of her.  So sometimes when I am driving, I will scratch lazily at an itch on my cheek, and then I will understand what is happening.  I sing sometimes when I drive, too.  Before, I used to scream.  Loudly and unabashedly.  I think that I actually did some real damage to my throat doing this, but it helped me express something.  Probably anger, but I think frustration most likely.  I for a while was scared because I found myself converting all emotions to anger.  My old self thought that this was bad, and that all anger was to be avoided.  In real hindsight, anger was saving for me.  If I didn't learn how to change despair into anger, I would not have come out of it.  A few times, I thought about borrowing something from a friend to finish things off.  I figured out slowly how turn anger into movement.  How to use it as fuel.  I don't hold a grudge, and I don't do things out of spite.  I learned to use anger.

Just another photo example

Here are some photos of Dr John Berardi that were in an article on elitefts.com.  The article is about intermittent fasting, and can be found here: http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-big-help-or-big-hype/

Interesting short article.

Anyways, he attached the following two photo sets.  The first one is him at 10%, and the second is him at 4%.  With all lean body mass remaining, this would be my general condition at 210lbs, and then at 196lbs.  Dr Berardi is obviously far more well developed than I am, so I would not be quite so bomb looking, but this gives another glimpse at different body fat percentages.  I am currently sitting at 253lbs and about 25%, which is admittedly far away from my goal, but way closer than it seems.  Just a little dietary discipline and the addition of cardio, and I think I could be within spitting distance of single digits by next mid-Summer for sure.

Anyways, on to the photos.  The first set is 10% bodyfat, the second is 4%.  Had trouble locating his bodyweight and height.

ou'll probably observe that the most noticeable difference shows through in the abdominal definition and back definition.  Some of this is due to the dramatic lighting of the second set of photos.  You may also notice his face actually leaned up a little bit, even though it was certainly not chubby or anything in the before photos.

I don't have a great set of before and after photos, because I frankly was just not that interested in photographic proof of my fatness.  So, in light of that information, here are the best I can do.  These first two are from when I hiked the Grand Canyon in October 2010.  This was actually not my top end weight.  In these I weighed about 280 or so, and I estimate that I was easily over 40% body fat.  Probably in the range of 45%.  I topped out by the end of the year at 300lbs, and probably close to 50% body fat, but I literally have NO pictures of this stage of my life. 

Now, this is the best I could do for progress pictures.  This is me all bossed up for a night out with Blaise.  This is very recent, and I'm about 258lbs and 26% body fat.  Obviously, since I'm wearing a suit jacket you cannot really see much, but for those in the know, I went from a size 56R jacket in January at my largest to a 48R in this picture:

Sometimes When You're On, You're Really Fucking On

An interesting thing happened today.  Interesting enough to warrant a post.

I was at the gym today (I had today off, because I worked Saturday for someone).  Did some shoulders and chest and a little bit of arms.

I asked the personal trainer guy there if he wouldn't mind checking my body fat percentage for me (I offered to pay, but he said that was not necessary).

Here are the results:

Weight..................................256 lbs
Body Fat.................................26.5 %
Lean Body Mass........................188 lbs
Fat Mass.................................68 lbs


This is interesting, because my long-term goal has been to get to 185lbs. For anyone not following this on their own, if I were to retain my current LBM and also achieve my previous goal of 185, I'd be dead.  I'd be negative body fat.

This is actually a great thing.  This means that I'm much closer to being in a desirable body (desirable to ME, fuck you society and your shitty standards) than I'd previously thought.  Here are some new goals:

Short-term weight goal.........225 lbs
Long-term weight goal..........200 lbs

These weight goals are associated with a presumptive retention of the same level of LBM (although, an increase would not be a bad thing either).  This means the following:

At 225 lbs, I'd be about 17% body fat.  The last time I was around 17% body fat, I weighed about 187 lbs and felt fucking fantastic.

At 200 lbs, I'd be about 6% body fat, which is ludicrously ripped.  I may in fact not even want to be this low.

Here are some picture examples that I lifted from: http://www.myfitnessstudio.co.uk/what-different-body-fat-percentages-actually-look-like/ and http://www.naturalphysiques.com/144/body-fat-percentage-guide-for-men-by-jeremy-likness

30% (this is not me...none of these are me):

25% (definitely look/feel fatter than this):

20%:

~16%:

10%:

~6%:

So 6% may not look too good on me.  I think I'd look a little emaciated.  I guess we'll see.

Anyways, every now and then, it can be awesome to have a day in the gym that is not JUST disappointment and disgust.

Also, abject heartbreak can be a great reason to drink.  It can also be a great reason to improve yourself. Your choice.

Photos of Women from WWII

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/world-war-ii-women-at-war/100145/

Worth a look

Preparedness

Preparedness is a concept that I have been thinking about a lot lately, especially with all of the recent uncontrollable natural disasters.  The most important question is simply, "Are you prepared?"  however the other side of that question is, "What is preparedness?"

I am attempting to separate out the various arenas of preparedness.  I am not talking about being prepared for slight changes in the weather, or being prepared for a job interview.  I am mostly talking about survivalism in the face of sudden catastrophic disaster.  Something along the lines of a nuclear war, I suppose.  In this instance, there are a few key areas that I think I should consider, and maybe try to improve on.

Mental Acuity
Strength
Endurance
Orienteering
General Usable Skills
Hunting/Trapping
Cooking
Water

So let's just start at the top, and try to describe each one.  Then, I will try to come up with a series of questions that should give you an idea of where you fall in the spectrum of preparedness, as observed by myself.  I am not talking about becoming the ultimate warrior, so most of the markers that I am creating are applicable to both men and women.

Mental Acuity
This is your ability to analyze a situation and come to a logical and rational conclusion.  You don't need to be trained in most areas of survivalism if you are just a generally sharp person who can use rules of science and logic to figure out a problem.  Additionally, this also encompasses your ability to keep a calm head during times of extreme distress.  If you lose it, and start acting like a fool, you will certainly die.
Can you use science and rational thinking to examine a situation?

 Strength
Quite frankly, strength will be extremely necessary if you find yourself suddenly thrust into the wilderness.  There may be situations in which you have to be able to pull yourself up off of a cliff.  Or maybe a boulder has rolled on to a companion, and you need to be able to move it.  Now, some lack of strength can be offset by intelligence (lever and pulley systems), but there may still be situations in which you have to act immediately and with great strength.
Can you do 15 chin ups?
Can you lift a two foot diameter boulder off of the ground?
Can you press at least 135 pounds over head? 


Endurance
This would be the other half of the athletic spectrum.  All the strength in the world will prove itself quickly useless if you suddenly need to run far and fast.  I think that this domain is obvious, as many natural predators may be willing to chase you for more than a mile.  Additionally, in the event of something like an erupting volcano, you may just need to flee.  I suppose it is true that if a predator that is wildly faster than you (think cheetah) is coming upon you, you're sort of screwed.  But if you're being chased by a group of roving cannibals or something, you may stand a chance if you can respond affirmatively to the following questions.
Can you run 6 miles without stopping?
Can you run 6 miles without water?
Can you climb a 30 foot rock face?
bonus: Can you run 100 meters in under 15 seconds?

Orienteering
Orienteering is really the ability to use a map and a compass to determine your location and a route to get where you want to go.  In the case of a sudden disaster though, I assume that you won't have a local map and a compass on you, so this is more about the ability to use geographic landmarks and astronomical figures to determine your bearing and present location.
Can you draw a rough topographical map of everything within sight?

General Usable Skills
This encompasses all areas of survivalism that you ought to know beforehand, instead of trying to figure out on the fly with your mental acuity.  Things such as how to use available materials to braid a rope, how to create an arrow head, and how to carve a spear using rocks.  In the event of complete societal collapse, this may expand to include simple things such as how to build a chair, or dig a latrine.
Can you braid a 15 foot rope using grass and plants?
Can you create a temporary shelter using found wood?

Hunting/Trapping
This one is pretty obvious.  If you find yourself living in wilderness, you'll need to be able to acquire food.  You can get by for a while by foraging berries and edible plants (although, if you don't know how to choose edible plants, you can get yourself in trouble quickly), but eventually you will need to hunt or trap some game.  Some of the other areas come in to play here as well, as you will probably need a spear or boomerang type thing in order to hunt.
Can you track game?
Can you accurately throw a boomerang device?
Can you create a trap for small game?


Cooking
If you manage to capture yourself an animal, do you know how to make it ready to eat?  Some of cooking will depend on the availability of water.  In the greater Phoenix-Tucson area, you can mostly assume that you won't have a great supply of water, so you'll have to cook everything on fire (instead of boiling).
Can you gut and dress an animal?
Can you build a fire using natural materials?

Water
Without water, you will die.  Relatively quickly, too.  There is a certain art to finding water in the desert, or maybe even in a place like a tropical island.  On an island that gets rain, but does not have any real lakes or rivers, you  will have to look first for plants that are designed to capture rain water in their leaves.  If you can't find that, then you better know how to convert salt water to fresh water without the benefit of fire (assuming you don't know how to make a fire, or don't have a vessel to boil water in).  There is a cool distilling method that involves one large tub with salt water, a small cup standing up in the middle of that water, and then a plastic sheet over the top of all of that with a small rock directly over the cup.  You end up creating a very humid type atmosphere inside, and fresh water will condense on the ceiling plastic.  Then, it will congregate and roll in towards the middle (due to the weight of the rock), and ultimately will drip in to the cup in the middle.  Additionally, if the island gets rain, you can use certain obvious capture methods (mental acuity comes into play again).  In the desert, finding water is significantly more difficult, and requires some basic common sense.  The only hint I'll give you is you find a wash.  After that, you're either going to be hiking forever, or digging forever.  Your choice.  There are also a certain few plants that can save you from immediate lack of water death, but I wouldn't count on them as a major source of water supply.
Can you find or make water?

More later...

Thanks a LOT, Adam!

Chasing Manhood

It's probably true that every man (and many women) wonders at some point what it is to be a man.  Masculinity.  Testosterone.  Other buzzwords.  Some men think that masculinity is modern rape and pillage.  Some women think so, too.  Some men think that masculinity is being able to be a woman, sometimes.  Some women hope this is not true.  There are those of us who see and acknowledge a quantum leap between biological human men and the things that we are now.  While once we performed outrageous feats of strength and athleticism merely as a daily necessity, we now throw up after running 10 kilometres.  Do you hear what I am saying now?

One of my favorite blogs recently pointed out one of my favorite truisms.  Scientists and the such rebuilt Viking longboats and tried to replicate their, um, adventures.  They used Olympic rowers, but found that it was impossible to conduct the same things that the Vikings are documented to have conducted for hundreds of years.  It was too hard for Olympic rowers (considered the best rowing athletes in the world, apparently) to power Viking long ships.  It was too difficult to navigate with their technology.  It was too cold.  Is this registering?  Some of our best living athletes could not even temporarily perform the task that peoples of old routinely performed.  ROUTINELY.  There is something missing.

Has anyone thought about work?  What does this have to do with the world?  What does this have to do with being men, and being women?  What did your money...save?  Prevent?  Create?  I don't think there are answers to these questions, of course.  This is something that most everyone thinks about.  It is related to the question of masculinity.  I think that, biologically, it is very much related.  People like to think of the differences between men and women as being the differences between "Hunters" and "Gatherers."  I don't think that it is this simple, of course.  Cavewomen, as I will refer to them, probably hunted a ton as well.  They were bigger than modern women.  Most muscular.  More like what modern people consider men to be?  Don't know.  The point is that they were well equipped.  They were strong.  They were vicious and biologically inclined, and they killed.  Is killing the key?  I hope not.  Or, at least, if it is, I hope that nature does not abhor a metaphor.  Men killed too, of course.  Until civilization, men killed for dominance.  Men killed for food.  Men killed for sex.  Dominance.  Food.  Sex.  Not necessarily in this order, I suppose, but definitely IN.  To be a man, it appears that you must care about domination.  You must care about food.  And you must care about sex.  Don't be an idiot.  Nothing I ever say is literal.  Unless, I say it is.

It appears that every important thing any man has ever done that was great enough to be remembered by the collective consciousness was done for food, domination, or sex.

What would you kill for?

I am looking for something to dominate.
I am looking for food.
I am looking for sex.

"There must be something we can eat
Maybe find another lover...
...Try to see it once my way
Everything zen...
...There's no sex in your violence"
-Bush

Just Asking For It

I'm now openly asking someone to direct me to either pursue or NOT pursue Ms. Julee once again. Give me what you got.

Do You Want To Come In?

Check me out. Erin said that she didn't really like me writing about her in here instead of just saying things to her face, but here I am, writing away.

Erin wasn't really responding to my texts. She wasn't exactly answering my phone calls. She most certainly was not calling me back. After about a week of this, I was convinced that there must be something up. Turns out I was right. She happened to also be sick that week, but that major player here was this very blog. She stumbled upon this thing most likely by following comments on Adam's Italy blog (not a big deal as I did originally gave her the address, but she told me she couldn't deal with the rules, and would therefore not read it). She most likely did what most people would do, and searched her name to see if I'd written about her, which of course I have. She found the old entry about herself, and focused in on a very specific portion of it.

I wrote about Paul, very briefly. Keep in mind that this was about a year and a half after he'd gone. My observation sounded cold,

"She has experienced shit, and her life is so empty, that it almost makes me angry. Paul died, and killed a large portion of her. The bags under her eyes are my monument to him, and they will seemingly never let me forget him or his impact on her. If I were to want her to love me, I am not sure that I'd ever be convinced that I had 100% of her. She belongs to him still, and I do not know how to help her let go; I'm not sure if she's ready to yet.
It was always understood (by her and I) that she and Paul would end up together after he cleaned up."

Now, to me, this doesn't sound as bad as I suppose it might to someone else. What I meant at the time was that Paul had become such a big part of her life, and with him gone, she didn't know how to refill that void yet. There is an interesting phenomenon to mention now. In some clinical studies, scientists looked at hibernating animals in order to understand the relationship between calories, fat, metabolism, exercise, and obesity. Basically, a hibernating animal is a very obese form of its normal self. The animal puts on a tremendous amount of weight in anticipation of a cold hard season that would yield an insubstantial amount of food to continue daily living. The weight is in the form of fat (brown fat, I believe), and it serves as an energy source for the animal, who then enters a state of something sleep-like wherein they can dramatically reduce their energy requirements. This reduction is generally attributed to the drastic lowering of core body temperature and the slowing down of all bodily functions. Blah blah blah, we all know how hibernation works, I guess. Anyways, scientists would take an animal who was in the midst of hibernation and then surgically remove a portion of their fat. Now, I'm not sure what I would have expected to happen, but what happened was certainly unexpected. The animal regenerated the lost fat to compensate. Considering that no additional food was going IN to the animal, it's baffling to try to figure out how they managed to regenerate fat to replace that which was removed. The point of this, though, is that when an important part of them was removed without their permission, they were able to replace it with something just as valuable that ultimately may save their life.

Erin is a hibernating ground squirrel, and Paul was forcibly removed by a curious surgeon. Her self has since regrown and recouped, in a way that ultimately saved her life. While once she was cold inside and her heart was beating very slowly, she is now gallivanting about the meadow with a thousand acorn-producing trees in each direction. The piece of her that was taken has not prevented this from happening.

To continue, Erin must have read the various parts of that post in which I extol her virtues and proclaim undying secret love for her. I wonder why I don't feel more embarrassed about this? I mean, she must have put the pieces together to understand that nothing has really changed, right? I think so, at least.

On Friday night, I had my bike and a jones for some trouble. I laced up and hopped on the light rail in to Phoenix. I rode in to downtown, where I got off and rode over to her (parents') house. I texted her, "Can you come outside for a minute?" and waited about for about ten. No answer, so I called her. She woke up and came outside to talk. We talked lightly for a minute or two to lighten up the mood or something? We hadn't spoken for like two weeks now, right? Then I just launched in to it and asked her what was going on. Laundry list. I hurt her with the stuff that I'd said. She didn't understand why I didn't just say it to her. She always comes to me with her problems, and maybe she should start to distance because she won't always be able to do that. A few others. Nothing that really surprised me, I guess. I apologized, because I think this was largely misunderstanding. She can't tell if I'm writing facetiously sometimes or not. Fair enough. I almost spilled guts when I started to tell her about how she had confused with me a few things, but it just didn't feel right yet.

Eventually, it became time to leave. I made motions to this effect, and she said that she would walk me to the light rail stop, which was right near her (parents') house. She was barefoot, but insisted that it wasn't a problem. We walked and talked and it was cute. Got to the light rail, bought a ticket, sat down. We continued to talk. Light rail arrives, but there appears to be approximately three crap loads of people on it, and no more bike hooks open, so I say that I'll just ride to the next stop and catch a less busy one. We start walking back to her house then, since I'm not going to get straight on a train. I don't remember when or how, but she offers to drive me home. I sort of felt like riding actually, but the night seemed unfinished, so I said okay. Drive home is light, but fun still. At the apartment too soon.

An interesting exchange occurred at the apartment. She had stopped the truck, but it was still running. We had a moderately awkward, "okay, well, I guess, goodbye then?" sort of moment happening, so I said, "Do you want to come in?" I was almost joking, but not really. Then, in a tremendous mindfuck, she thinks about it for a seconnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddddd that lasted what God considers to be eternity. She eventually declined, due to lack of privacy, sort of? I mean, I don't think she was even considering the extrapolated extreme ending that is implied by my question, but it's fun to live in fantasies, isn't it? It feels like being a goldfish. You live in a fish tank with a castle and a rock and a seaweed thing. When finally someone introduces another goldfish to your tank, it is the beginning of an epoch. A new era of existence that surpasses your three month memory. Something better than a new castle, or a piece of coral, or a diver guy with a treasure chest that floats bubbles to the top of your tiny world. You can't ignore it when God puts a new colored rock there, but after three months, you forget why the rock was interesting in the first place. You always have someone to swim in circles with, though.

As for love:
"If you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have."
-Sir James M. Barrie

He's Back??

The Ecological Disaster That Is Dolphin Safe Tuna

http://southernfriedscience.com/2009/02/16/the-ecological-disaster-that-is-dolphin-safe-tuna/

This is an interesting article about how "dolphin safe" techniques cause significantly more damage than "non dolphin safe." Here's the big highlight:

Dolphin Safe:
“Ten thousand sets of purse seine nets around immature tuna swimming under logs and other debris will cause the deaths of 25 dolphins; 130 million small tunas; 513,870 mahi mahi; 139,580 sharks; 118,660 wahoo; 30,050 rainbow runners; 12,680 other small fish; 6540 billfish; 2980 yellowtail; 200 other large fish; 1020 sea turtles; and 50 triggerfish.”

NOT Dolphin Safe:
“Ten thousand sets of purse seine nets around mature yellowfin swimming in association with dolphins, will cause the deaths of 4000 dolphins (0.04 percent of a population that replenishes itself at the rate of two to six percent per year); 70,000 small tunas; 100 mahi mahi; 3 other small fish; 520 billfish; 30 other large fish; and 100 sea turtles. No sharks, no wahoo, no rainbow runners, no yellowtail, and no triggerfish and dramatic reductions in all other species but dolphins.”

And the math:
"If you work out the math on this (and you don’t have to, because the environmental justice foundation did) , you find that 1 dolphin saved costs 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks, and almost 1,200 small fish."

Weird.

Girl Picture Reference: Terra

Terra = Enid from Ghost World + Shirley Manson + any/all SuicideGirl(s) + (Christina Ricci x 1,000) + Sex

If You Love Me,

Make this happen

Blow to the Old Account

Got a speeding ticket today, by the way. Going 43 in a 30 on Chaparral. I guess I can take an online class for it. TCB.

Much Ado About Something ... Again

It recently occurred to me that most people appear to get more and more crazy as they get older, but with the exceptions of senility and dementia I think most people stay the same and society just moves away from them over the years.

Also, I wonder if for those people who really DO go a little crazy, do they know it? Do they recognize it happening? I can so easily see myself becoming more and more obsessive and getting to a point of insanity somewhere in the not too far off future. I have shockingly little control. I mean, I have many times more control than the average person (arrogance), but I also have exponentially more to control. In other words, if they have X amount of control to exert over Y amount of whatever, I have 5X control, and Y^10 amount of stuff to control. Does that make sense? I'll do more with what I have than most people who stretch themselves to their absolute maximum. I'll do that, but I'll leave quite a bit undone, and I'll always wonder why I didn't save the world. Or maybe I'll wonder, "When will the world know that I've saved it?"

I'm looking forward to that calm that I so desperately hope comes with certainty of purpose. I mean, I'm certain that I HAVE purpose, but I don't really have any specifics. Great American Novel? Musical Revolution? Medical Breakthrough? Something much, MUCH smaller? I don't know.

I try to comfort myself with the idea that so many great people didn't become great until very late in their lives, and even then only after doing many horrible things or failing tremendously dozens of times before. I haven't really failed YET, but I see the obstacles already piling up and waiting for me. I feel at once that I have both to choose correctly the path to fortify myself (medical school? peace corps? work at a gas station?) and also to let everything just happen. I mean, I am trying my best to convince myself that this really is a matter of destiny and that I will accrue the necessary tools naturally and in that way will find the exact thing that I am to do.

I sometimes run in to other people who speak like this. People who feel such a tremendous tug towards greatness that they've stopped denying it, and stopped hiding it from everyone. Unfortunately, it's clear that most of these people will probably never achieve what they hope for. I hope that is never me. I can't really imagine much else worse.

I need to find myself living somewhere else.

The Spread of Walmart

http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

go to that link to see a super scary video of the spread of Walmart over the years

I'm cleaning out my garage

Parents bought me some plastic shelving, which is perfect. They are lightweight but heavy duty enough to hold hundreds upon hundreds of cd cases and old shirts and novelty underwear and whatever else is floating around my garage. It was important that they be lightweight so that they aren't a super bitch to move when our lease is up (my old shelving was super heavy chromed metal and it was awful to move).

I'm cleaning this garage up. It was already pretty bad, then Louis "cleaned" the house and basically just threw everything from the living room and main house randomly into the garage. So it was almost unbearably messy. Shit everywhere. I walked in and literally said, "Oh, my God. Shit everywhere. There's shit everywhere! Damnit! There's shit on the windows! Oh, my God! My house is full of shit! He shit everywhere! Look what he did! He shit all over the walls! There's shit everywhere!" Or something like that. I don't remember EXACTLY what I said. Whatever.

Anyways, so I'm cleaning that shit and finding crazy old stuff. Like pictures of me from back in the day. And of old friends. And other things. Old clothes. Magazines. Books. CDs. I miss some of my friends that I don't get to see much. I realize that there is a chance that I'll leave for Peace Corps while Leslie is off exploring the world in the way that she has chosen to do so. I found a picture of her from her prom when she wore a blue dress with black bow detail stuff and was very tan and Stevie sort of ruined the picture, but he didn't look all that bad honestly. I found pictures from Cancun of myself with my shirt off. I found pictures from Italy of me and Elizabeth and my hair looks like Anthony Kiedis' hair did a few years ago, although the picture predates that stage of his career. Prom pics with Julee and Co. Fun times. We looked good. That one picture that haunts me of me flexing in front of my dad's car after it was painted. To be back there. I hate not being able to stop looking backwards. Saying more than once that things will change is worse than never knowing that they need to in the first place.

Oops

Have you ever meant to text something to Person 2 regarding Person 1 that may have been sort of embarrassing or totally out of line, but you accidentally texted it to Person 1? Yeah, my bad.

W T F and O M G

Let's start with OMG for Leslie:

From the Betty Beauty Bridal Division: http://www.bettybeauty.com/bridal.php
I think that blue is a beautiful color on you.

And now for the WTF:

This morning I woke up with a text from Roadrunner that said
"I was wondering whose number this is would you please text me back?"
So I texted and said
"This is Nathan, did I text you by accident?"
And she responds with
"oh good no you didnt. I needed to tell you something. I miss you and i have not been able to stop thinking about you since we broke up"

Blah blah blah, long story short, we're going out the weekend after this coming one. I'm not really planning anything either way. I'm just sort of curious to see what happens. Updates to come.

More and more

Some of my friends have postulated that I have an odd ability to befriend people who will need me in a significant way at some point. Some of my friends consider this a weakness. Some of my friend consider this a strength. Some of my friends probably don't think this is true anyways. I think that I do tend to meet people who are in hard places in life. Or maybe everyone has those hard places, and I just tend to be around when they go down. Whatever. The point is that I seem to always be called on during major crises. I've mentioned before that I love this about my life. It is kind of like being good at a really important job. I don't know, like being a food safety investigator who has never let an outbreak of E. Coli slip by on his watch or something. I mean, the other thing here is that people define crisis in different ways. For some, the crisis is simply whether or not to take a chance on loving someone unexpected. For others, it is whether they are going to be able to survive living with their parents any longer. For others still it is whether they will have a home and their daughter when they leave. I helped Terra move out of her mesa house and away from her raging husband. I packed up her uhaul. I drove to tucson to help unload it. I even slept there and tried to help console her. I tried to convince Heather that it was going to work out (it did). Et cetera et cetera. Et Set Terra. I wonder if it is that people who need me find me, or that people that I need find me. Or maybe that I'm just more aware of people who need help. I don't know. I think that it really comes down to whether I'm here for everyone else, or if they're here for me.