Al Jolson Lives On

The 4th of July is this weekend. I happened to find this out when my Dad called me up to tell me that he is off work on Friday and that he and Mom will becoming down the weekend. This was not a question it was a statement. I asked "Why?" To see the fireworks. What fireworks? The 4th of July. When? This weekend. Well alright then.

Then I called Mom. This is because Dad does not have any say in anything. Mom wears the pants, so unless she says they're coming they aren't coming. Mom confirmed they were coming and that I needed to come up with fun things to do. I told her I would, but Mom of course already had the entire weekend planned out. "You need to figure out what we're going to do." Alright, I'll think of something. There's putt-putt. Alright. Swimming. Fine fine. Tennis and racquet ball. Yes. Church at 5. Of course. Dinner. Dad does need to eat. Fireworks. If we must. Movies. That's what the TV is for. We need popcorn and butter. Just as my heart needs a beat.

Then my sister texts (I hate texts) and lets me know she's coming too. And Mom again confirmed that they are picking her up on the way.

Dad, Mom and Orca are all pretty excited. But that's natural. Seeing me is a big deal. And then the next day Dad calls. "Would you be mad if Mom and I went to San Francisco instead?" No. Do you want to know why we are going to be there? Business? There's a 2006 fully-loaded Highlander we want. In San Francisco? Yes. California? That's correct. You're going to California to get a Highlander? Maybe. We'll know on Wednesday. Why? Have you seen the Highlander? You are never going to retire. Probably not, but this will be Mom's retirement vehicle (mind you Dad just got an Acura as though they need two retirement vehicles) and we'll sell her van. The Highlander should last us 10 years. Put Mom on the phone. Mom are you getting a Highlander? Have you seen it? You're just like him. I just don't want to do the trip home. What about the trip there? Oh we'll fly for that. But can you imagine driving home with him for 3 days straight? I think we should just ship it in a truck and fly back. So you're serious about this then? Well it is a nice vehicle.

The thing is, that actually sounds like a lot of fun. I want to go on an adventure.

Not an Indian Stone

There is not a whole lot to say about Normal Illinois. It is a small town near Bloomington and I have only ever had two occasions to go there. The first was around 5 years ago or so during Halloween. That was probably the best undergrad night I had. The second time I went was today because I needed to pick up a new toy, the Adobe CS4 Master Collection! If you don't know Adobe makes Photoshop, Flash and a bunch of other fantastic products which help out with all sorts of art applications and web design. The problem is that these products are very expensive. This creative suite, which is the complete unabridged Adobe product line is $1000 for the student version. But today I was able to get it for $275.

I found a lady selling it on Craigslist. She had bought the PC version and she needed the MAC version. Even though she had not taken it out of the shrink wrap, because she had taken it out of the cardboard box it was shipped in Adobe would not allow her to return it. So she had to spend another $1000 on the MAC version and was left with the unusable PC version. And she couldn't find a buyer because most people download it illegally nowadays. But I have been trying to do everything legally as of late and got to get this fantastic deal.

Interestingly, $1000 is actually very cheap for software. At work a customer just paid me $18,000 to add a feature to one of our programs that the customer uses. Think about that. $18,000 not for the program, just for an additional feature. Of course I don't get to pocket anywhere near that full amount, but I know when I first found out about how much these things cost to develop it came as a shock.

Anyway, now that I have this suite, hopefully I'll be able to get this blog page looking good. I don't know yet if I'll be able to get any flash on here since I have no way of storing the files. I could host them on another site and link to them from here, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having this site. But with Photoshop and Dreamweaver I should be able to make a more interesting template, or at least improve the background. I'm so excited!

Malts

Maintaining weight is a tricky affair when you have a high metabolism. It is fantastic in that you can eat whatever you want when you want, but it is terrible in that putting on weight requires huge amounts of food. One of my current goals is to increase my muscle mass to the point where my arms can actually fill the sleeve on a small-sized t-shirt. If we go with the European system of meaure I am almost there. By the American standard, I have a long ways to go yet. To help speed up this process I have been using protein powder and other supplements such as Steak and Shake milkshakes.

Last Sunday and today I stopped by the local Steak and Shake to grab one. Now, last Sunday there was a cute girl at the window who took my order and handed me the shake.

Today I went back, I wanted to get another shake, and she was the one who took my order again. I decided to ask her out to dinner. The trouble was she is a Steak and Shake employee. My problem was that I figured she was probably younger than older to be working there. But still possibly old enough. She looked somewhat older, but I didn't want to be a complete freak asking out a 16 year old who looked older because of makeup. So when I pulled around to pay I asked "Do you mind my asking how old you are?" She just stood there looking at me for awhile and then said "20". I told her "Oh, never mind then" and she sort of smiled standing there for awhile more and then said alright and went to get my drink. A second later a guy came out with it. I laughed and said "Have a good night" he was chuckling too and said "You too". And when he went back in I could hear lots of laughter in the background. Like I said yesterday, I was overdue for a little humility. I didn't mind though. I don't think anything was wrong in that. For one, I know several sensational people who have worked at these types of restaurants through college summers. The greatest being me of course. So she may well have been slightly older. Secondly, regardless of who is doing the asking, it should be flattering to get asked out or even inquired about. Which means I may have paid her a nice compliment and thereby did my good deed for the day. Thirdly, I think it's a good character builder. We live in this silly society of virtual relationships (take this blog for example), such that a lot of people can no longer go up to friendly strangers and start talking. I tend to be the shy type, so doing this is good for me.

The shake was also very tasty.

Fake Muscles

A bookworm's tan can be likened to a farmer's tan. A farmer's tan results from a person wearing a short sleeved shirt in the sun so often that when he takes off his shirt there is a negative effect on his skin and you can see the out line of the shirt. A bookworm's tan uses similar principles and is what I am currently sporting. This tan is accomplished by reading out in the sun in a lounged position. In a lounged position the person is sitting upright but at an obtuse angle with respect to the ground. The result of this is that the stomach is in a crunched position but only just so, and after several hours a razor thin tan line results. If the person sits at 90 degrees or less (hunchbacked I suppose), that crunch becomes more enveloping so instead of a razor thin line you'd end up with a bar of white. The best part of having the bookworm tan is that those razor thin lines occur at exactly the same location as the lines of a 6 pack. So by being a nerd in the sun, I can go around looking like I have a sweet 6 pack. This is fantastic.

Today I was at the club house with my book lounging by the pool. It was a little early in the day so there were not too many people around. After about 15 minutes a girl came who I hadn't seen before, and she sat in such a fashion that I could only see her bottom half. I don't want to take the time to explain how this occurred but it has to do with the layout of the land so just go along with me. Now from what I could tell she had lovely legs and I was intrigued. I figured it had been about a week since I had last been completely humiliated and that it was about time to be again. That and as gripping as De Trinitate may be, it just doesn't have the same attention grabbing effect as a nice pair of legs.

About 25 minutes later my Mom called, and I decided to milk the opportunity. I used her phone call as an excuse to try and laugh slightly louder than a typical person for two reasons. First to draw some attention to myself and secondly to point out that I have a good sense of humor. Yes, I know the girl couldn't actually see me either but she would have been blind not to have seen me sitting there when she came in. So she could have inferred it was me laughing just by the sound. However, I suppose it is possible she didn't know I was there as I have had a friend in the past come in and sit right next to me in an empty room and have no idea I was even there until I spoke up.

After the call I decided to jump in the water. In the three summers I've spent here, I've never jumped in the water before. I've never had a reason to before. When you're by yourself at the pool there's not a lot of playing around to do. But this time I had a good reason, which was to do a lap or two to show to the girl that I was in shape. In reality I couldn't be much more out of shape, however years of swimming lessons were not lost on me and I can fake a lot just by having good technique.

Then I was ready to make my move. My move was to go up to her on my way out and ask her if she'd like to join me for lunch or drinks at the club house. So I got my things together and started to walk past her on my way out. And then I saw her upper half. Sigh. I was not impressed. That and she didn't even look at me as I walked by. If she would have at least looked in my direction I would have said "Hello", but she was looking at something else. Oh well, at least it wasn't all a loss. My bookworm tan is looking incredible.

Angelica Houston in 3D

Today is an appropriate day for another music related post. Growing up I was extremely fortunate in that I got to go to Disney World all the time. I remember back when I was somewhere between 2 and 4, before we moved to Podunk, and my Mom was counting down the days with me for the first time I was going to go, although that was to Disney Land in California but it's close enough. I even have a faint memory of the plane ride.

Epcot is typically my favorite of the parks. The Magic Kingdom is great for the Disney Characters, but I always like seeing all the countries at Epcot. And I will always remember seeing Captain EO in 3D. It was so cool. At the beginning you were flying through space and they ran into a meteor shower, and it looked like they were going to crash into you. And at the end there was this spider lady who terrified me, but I quickly learned that if I took off the glasses she would become a blurry mess. I even remember standing in line to go on that "ride" the second time because I so excited.

My point is that Michael Jackson rocked, and his death is so sad. I was really looking forward to seeing his new concerts in London.

Music is important. I think everyone should be able to play an instrument. It's just something everyone should know, even if it's nothing more than banging out a scale. And nowadays there are free lessons all over the internet, and books at libraries. My favorite instruments are the piano, guitar, and harmonica. But I only play the piano. I'm trying to learn the guitar but I'm not as consistent with it as I should be. Harmonicas are cool because of the great sounding blues they can produce.

Today I thought I'd change things up a bit, and post a video. For now I wanted to keep it simple since this is my first video and I wasn't sure how to set everything up right, both in terms of filming and in getting it online. I'm just using my digital camera here so it's nothing amazing, but it's still a lot of fun seeing myself on the bigscreen.

This is also on YouTube. I thought I was going to have to go through there to get it posted here, but apparently I was wrong. If this works, I'm really impressed that Blogger lets the user upload to its databases, because the limit appears to not be with the quantity of videos but rather to the individual size (100 MB). If you'd like to see this on YouTube, you can find me here:

www.youtube.com/user/reggyro

Enthused x3

It is extraordinarily rare for a girl to approach me. Although I'd be bashful around me too. When girls approach guys I find there are two methods they use. There's the casual flirt type approach to let the guy know you're interested and then there's the flat out ask him route. The former is how all girls should work. If you see a stud you like then let him know by batting your eyes or whatever it is you girls do. But leave it to the guy to actually ask you out. This isn't the Sadie Hawkins dance. Which I might add I still had to ask out the girls too.

Now, online meetings are a little different but not much. Girls, online it's totally fine to favorite start up a conversation with a 'Hi' or use whatever tools these messengers or services have to grab someones attention. But let the guy send out that first e-mail or start the first conversation. That's just the way these things work from a natural level. Males are initiative (need a better word) creatures and girls are receptive creatures. This goes from the physcological level down to the gamete level.

Yesterday, a girl did not follow the nature order. I got an e-mail from a girl who wanted to talk to me through one of those online instant messengers. The e-mail was very nice, and was not spam, it was genuine. Here's my favorite part from it:

I absolutely think you are soooo cute!!!:):):) Sorry, but just being honest!!:):) You look like either a model or someone famous, like some actor off of tv or the movies!!:):) "

This is definitely the way to get my attention. Flattery will take you very far. Especially when it's spot on. Actually, I keep getting told that I look like the guy from "Shakespeare in Love" from all sorts of people, but I have neither seen this movie nor intend to so I don't know for sure. In any event, the e-mail I got was very nice. But there were some problems.

First and foremost, I hate all forms of texting. If you get a text from me, cherish it, because I hate it. The only thing I hate more is voice messaging people (see Flap in Front or Back). And this girl sent me two e-mails asking if I'd like to converse with her through texting. That's no fault of hers, but it automatically deducted 5000 points from her score. So right off the bat she's at -5000. Next up, I'm not a fan of extra punctuation or emoticons. Clearly, from that little clip of e-mail, shes a very excited, happy person. But at 28 years, we should know better ways to express our enthusiasm. It's a little confusing too. Two of those three sentences end with a '!!:):)' Maybe I should treat those as a regular sentence. I guess that would make the triple !!!:):):) equivalent to a regular '!' But I do not mean this as a critique. I cannot blame a girl for getting so worked up over my stellar bod. It happens.

So I got this nice e-mail. And honestly, despite those problems with it, this girl seemed genuine, clearly interested, and very sweet. But I was not interested. And since it makes me sad when people don't respond to my e-mails or calls, I felt a need to respond to this one. That whole do unto others mentality. This was extremely difficult to do though. I'm working on being honest but in a charitable way. A few years ago I worked on just being charitable. "No, you don't look fat in that dress." That got me in a heap of trouble. So then I went straight to honesty, "Yes, you look like a lardo in that dress." But that too got me in trouble. Which now has me on the nice honesty route. "I do not feel that dress is doing you any favors."

In the case of this e-mail I brought up two main points. First she wasn't nearby so I could play the long distance card. It's not that I'm against long distance - I've tried very hard to make long distance friendships work after all (and all have failed miserably) - but I've got to be mighty interested in the person to be motivated to put forth the effort. Had both the profile been better, and she had been around an upper 8 then I would have tried it out. But they weren't so I'm not. Second I tried to say that while her profile and e-mails make her sound very nice, I did not personally feel we would make a good match. Just different personalities. And that's true too. There were little things here and there that put me a bit off. The problem with the charitable honesty route is that it is really just a 'wishy-washy' sounding no. There's too much room for the person to write back. For example, a firm, 'you type like a middle-school girl at a Jonas Brothers concert', would definitely make my feelings clear. So the trick becomes making that nicer route just as firm. Hopefully my own e-mail accomplished this.

I'm reading St. Augustine's Trinity, and am having a ball with it, because back then the writers took the firm honesty approach. They couldn't have cared less about feelings. All they had any concern for was the truth. In fact, in Photios' Mystagogy, the publisher has a note at the beginning asking the reader to keep in mind that this book was written in a much different time when this type of writing and conversing was how everyone behaved and that we musn't think it mean or offensive. Augstine uses language like "I cannot fathom how anyone could be so radically insanse as to take that position." Photios will say things like "They have not reached the understanding of even a small child." And both of these are saints! I'm not necessarily saying we should go back to that way of expressing ourselves, as much as I am saying today's world is very different.

Giggle Inducing Acts

My family is very competitive. To the point where we do not have family game nights because we all hate to lose so much. I always thought the concept of a game night would be fun, after all the few times my family does try it we occasionally smile, even if it's only when showing the others how they just lost. So it's not very often where I get to experience playing games with large groups of people, but I like to very much. And maybe due to my competitive nature it was in my good fortune that one of the first large game nights I had recently was with a group of nuns.

Nuns are fantastic. They love to be motherly and I love to be mothered. They're always making good food, and always seem to know which girls are single and looking. They make sure you are eating right, getting enough sleep, keeping up with work, exercising and relaxing.

Every now and then a group of nuns from another city comes to visit their other sisters here in town and when they do they have a game night for anyone who wants to come. Because they make you dinner, and the attendance is pretty much all single girls who are mostly my age, I don't miss these for anything. Sadly most of these nuns are quite old. The youngest is in her thirties and after that I doubt anyone was younger than 60 or 65. But they are very high spirited, and certainly don't act it. They need more, but only the 1 - 4's please (see Mushroom Cake). I don't want them taking my prospects. The last time I went they decided to play 'Scattergories'. Or at least I think that's the name. It's where you're given a word and you have to act it out and the people on your team have to guess it real quick before the timer runs out. And you're supposed to keep passing the timer so someone always ends up with it when it goes off.

After a few turns I was given the word 'tickle'. I thought this was an easy one. All I had to do was act it out, and since you can't tickle yourself I reached over to the nun on my left and tickled her stomach. Everyone gasped, but because I'm too competitive I didn't register what the gasps meant, so after waiting for a second for someone to guess I did it again. Just dead quiet. And the timer went off. Everyone was staring at me, and I was mad. No one guessed it. So I yelled at them 'Come on people, the word was 'tickle' how could you not understand what I was doing?' Then it dawned on me. Fortunately, when I said the word was 'tickle' everyone burst out laughing. And one of the nuns said, 'you mustn't tickle Mother Superior.' But she was laughing too and said "there's no sin in that". But then she added 'how on earth were we supposed to know what this (and she tried to tickle me) meant?' I said "I thought it was completely obvious, it's the sign for tickling". Then another nun piped up and said "that's not what it looked like you were doing." "Well sister, you need to get your mind out of the gutter."