slice.

but not necessarily in that order.
I’m finding that I still haven’t gotten used to working all day. Does that ever get easier? I feel like I’m in a downward spiral of energy. All of it goes into working, and then coming home, I’m starving and exhausted. I have no energy for working out or doing fun things, the only thing that gets accomplished is some TV time and dinner. And I haven’t joined that gym yet either.

Oh, speaking of depressing…I’ve finally made it official. I spent 3 hours at the DMV Friday, and in 3 to 5 weeks, I’ll be the proud owner of a California drivers license. For now, all I get is a hole punched in my old one and a piece of paper telling me that I can legally drive. Of course on thing that I’ll miss is the odd looks I get from bartenders when I show them my ID. Gone are the days of getting a chuckle as I show them what I look like with long hair and a goatee. Oh well, you gotta grow up sometime I guess.

I spent entirely too much time sitting on the couch this weekend. Friday night consisted of Guitar Hero III, followed by about 5 hours of Rock Band. It’s soo fun, and hard to put down, even at 3am. Saturday consisted of sleeping in, Rock Band, work, some crazy (but delicious) Japanese food, then more Rock Band. Sunday you would think I would take it easy? Nope, the only thing accomplished was laundry and about 10 hours of Zelda. 10 hours! I couldn’t believe it either. The sad thing is that I had every intention of being active this week. Big Bear was in the works for Friday, but fizzled out, biking was a possibility, that is until Rock Band was purchased. So not only did I do nothing, but ate a bunch of crap too. Albertsons is minus one bag of potato chips. I feel like shit right now because of those delicious pieces of lightly salted fried goodness.

And the icing on the cake? I was going to join a gym this weekend. Maybe tomorrow

I finally got back on my bike this weekend after about a two month hiatus. It felt good, but I continue to wonder if the clipless pedals were the right choice. It seems like about every ride I have a little tumble that I can blame on them. The good thing is that they have all been at slow speeds, which leads me to believe that it is my balance, and not the fact that my shoes are clipped to my pedals. In fact, I know thats what it is. I have horrible balance and control. I do a lot of looking directly at something in front of me that I want to avoid, which, of course means I run right over that huge rock, or wide deep rut. Meanwhile, there is smooth trail a foot to the right.

I really need to add a pictures page; I’ve been sitting on 400 pictures from Dublin and I have no idea how I want to put them up. It’s possibly a job for flickr, but in the meantime, enjoy the one good picture of everyone.

That is all. It’s 80 here. It wasn’t 80 in Chicago. In fact, much much less then that.
Despite the temperature, I really like Chicago. I don’t think that I have ever had a bad experience there (this, of course, does not include O’Hare Airport) despite usually going there for some form or another of helping my sister move. This time it was only putting up pictures and such though, I can handle that.

We took a really cool behind the scenes tour of the Field Museum that one of her friends bought at an auction. I never realized what went on there. Everything from using a glorified toothpick to clean actual fossils to an enormous room in the basement filled with jars of almost every sort of animal. Yeah, not for the squeamish. Everything from more fish then you know what to do with to a baby tiger. No joke. Needless to say, sushi was not an option for dinner that night, so we basically just went bar hopping. Unfortunately, it’s still damn cold when you’re drunk

We also hit up the Chicago Auto show. It’s cool to see something that came out of the doors of your work being displayed for probably millions of people to see, the plaque even had our name on it. I had seen it at the LA auto show, but somehow it hits a little harder when you realize that it has traveled across the country and is surrounded by people taking pictures.

The CD “The Legend of Johnny Cash” just isn’t long enough. I’ve had to hit the back button a few times simply because I want to listen to more, but I don’t have any other Cash. For shame. Maybe some Jurassic 5 will fill the void…

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. Since Christmas my weekends have been full of such things as a vacation in Dublin, moving into a new apartment, 3 ski/snowboard trips to Big Bear, a trip to Vegas and to cap it off next week a trip to Chicago. Despite all the money I’ve spent, I think it is all well worth it.

Everything on the preceding list was about spending time with friends or family. My only wish is that I didn’t have to go so far to spend time with the people that are important in my life. I keep thinking that I should find new friends and meet new people, which I am actively doing, but no matter how far away I am or how long its been, I’ll always miss being close to the people who have been there for me, and whose lives I can be a part of.

On thing that I never considered was how easy moving was compared to how hard it is to stay. For as much stock as I put into picking up and moving, I never realized that it was the easy part. Is this the point where I fail in my journey to self reliance, the point where I realize there is something to be said for the way it was, some comfort in it?

I just don’t know. I can be stubborn with things like this, spiting myself. Make no doubt about it, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I need this in my life.

Now that that is out, and I have used some form or another of “i” far too many times, a picture is in order. I only took a few in Vegas, but I think this one is pretty cool, and perhaps more importantly, not of me…