Longklaw.com

I came up with a list of things I want to do in 2011. I hate to use the term “resolution”. I reserve the right to change my mind of any of these without feeling guilty. I didn’t do this last year, so I can’t whether I was successful this year or not.

• Move. I want to move either to a better place in Starkville or out of Starkville. One or the other is going to happen. The time is right now.
• Go to my first convention. I want to go to San Diego Comic-con, but if that doesn’t work out I’ll go to Dragon Con in Atlanta.
• Keep exercising. I’ve lost 45 pounds so far. I just need to keep it up, even if my gym becomes unusable because of all the new people in January. I also want to start strength training.
• Buy new clothes. I need new clothes, especially new underwear. I hate shopping. The only clothes I get are the ones I get for Christmas presents. I need to change that.
• Learn something new. I want to learn something new and cool tech-related.  Unfortunately, my job doesn’t provide me with many opportunities to learn new things.
• Meet new people. Most of the time I’m happy to sit at home, hang out with Reese, and catch up on TV. I just don’t feel like going out. I don’t know how to meet people around here since there’s nothing to do and I’m not a student anymore. It may be that I don’t meet any new people until after I move.
• Listen to music more often. I listen to too many podcast and neglect the music collection that I’ve spent so much time on.
• Blog more. I’ve done well this week, but normally I blog only once a month. I want to do better without setting an arbitrary frequency that I might struggle to stick to.

I think these are pretty simple and very doable. Hopefully, I won’t forget to look back at these throughout the year and at the end of the year.

Happy New Year!

Update, 1/5/2011
The title originally said 2001 instead of 2011.  Thanks to Morning Toast for pointing that out.

I’ll start with my birthday the week before. I’d been saying all year that all I wanted for my birthday was TRON: Legacy, which came out on the same day. Well, I got it. I got off work early and drove down to Brandon to hang out with my friend John. It was good to catch up with him since I haven’t seen him much lately. We went out to eat, saw the movie, and got drunk afterwards. It was a blast. The hangover the next day wasn’t fun, however. It was only the 2nd time all year that I’d drank any alcohol. The last time was in Austin.

Christmas was good. It was hard to be away from my dog for 47 hours, but I enjoyed spending time with the family that was there. My sister and brother-in-law were stuck in Atlanta with the flu. My mom seems to be doing better, after being not-so-well for a couple of months. Thank goodness! There are some things she doesn’t remember, but otherwise she’s her normal self, which means she’s driving me crazy :).

I think I said this last year, but I do miss getting presents. I’m a little jealous of all the cool things I saw people getting on Twitter and Facebook. My sister and her family are the only ones who regularly get me gifts now, but they weren’t able to come. They’ll be mailing their presents later. I did take part in the Twitter Secret Santa that one of my Twitter friends organizes every year and I got an awesome Walking Dead t-shirt that I will be wearing during warmer months, if not before. I’m grateful for that. I will say that watching my cousin’s kids open their presents pretty much made up for any disappointment I had.

Even though it was an odd Christmas and disappointing in some ways, I think this was one of the best Christmas seasons I’ve had recently.

The new TV season started a few weeks ago.  I tried out a lot of new shows.  It was hard to keep up with them and the old shows that I was already watching.  A lot of the new shows were mediocre, so I’ve been able to drop a few and free up some time.

I’m still exercising.  So far I’ve lost about 27 pounds.  I’m starting to get bored at the gym, so I may need to switch it up a little bit.

Work has slowed down.  The project that I was working on for the first half the year has stalled, so it’s back to the same old stuff that I’ve always done.  The next month could be pretty busy though.

Some things are finally starting to fall into place.  It’s time to make some of the changes I’ve wanted to make for a while.  There are things that I want to do while I’m still young enough to want to do them.  Maybe I’ll make a list and post it here.  Hopefully, there will be raises in the New Year because I won’t feel comfortable trying to do some of these things until I have more income.  I’m single, so I don’t have 2 incomes at my disposal like most of the people I work with.  If there are no raises, then it might be time to move on.

I need to blog more.  There are a lot of things on my mind.

What’s been happening lately?

• My back and everything else is feeling better. It’s great to feel completely healthy for the first time since early summer.
• I had a little vacation around Labor Day weekend. It was so good. I mostly got stuff done at home that I’ve been wanting to do for a while.  I went to visit Mom for a little while. My sister and her husband were in town as well, so I got to meet my niece for the first time. I’m going to enjoy spoiling her.
• I’m down about 16 lbs so far. More to come.
• I’ve been doing the same stuff I normally do in my spare time.
• I caught the little town blues.

Summer has flown by. Fall classes begin next week. It’s one of my favorite times of the year because Starkville and MSU become more alive. Even though summer break ends next week, we still have a little longer before the summer season ends. 44 more days. We should be getting some relief from the heat before then, right? This heat is making me miserable.

I didn’t move at the end of July like I thought I would. My landlord said I could stay where I was and he would put the person that had rented my place in a different one down the street. I’m glad because I wasn’t looking forward to moving.

About a month ago my back starting killing me all of a sudden when I was walking to my car after work. It was hard for me to stand up straight for about a week. It’s feeling better now, but it’s still not 100%. My wrist and shoulders are also hurting and my thumb has been popping constantly. It all started around the same time. The doctor seems to think it’s from too many hours working at a computer, but I don’t think she really knows. Nothing that I’ve tried has helped much. I hope I can start back exercising soon so I can re-lose the weight I had already lost.

It seems like every day I wish that I were somewhere other than here. I want to go back to Texas. I want to go to California. I want to go to New York. One of these days….

As of yesterday, it’s officially summer. Summer used to be my favorite time of the year. I’m sure most of that had to do with being on vacation from school. Summer isn’t as big of a deal now, probably because I haven’t had a summer off from everything since 1997. The thing I associate with summer the most now is the heat. Damn, it’s been hot. But still, summers working for a university in a college town are a little more laid back than the rest of the year.

I don’t have anything excited going on this summer. I didn’t renew my lease on my current place, so I’ll be moving in about a month.

In 2006, I made a Summer Mix CD. I’ve included the track list. I usually bring it out at the beginning of summer and listen to it throughout the season. It’s on my iPod now, so I’ll probably be listening to it even more than normal.

1. “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper
2. “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles
3. “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince
4. “Whoops Now” by Janet Jackson
5. “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash
6. “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves
7. “Soak Up the Sun” by Sheryl Crow
8. “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams
9. “Summer” by War
10. “Summer Nights” by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
11. “Summertime (featuring P Diddy)” by Beyonce
12. “Girls of Summer” by Aerosmith
13. “Sex in the Summer” by Prince
14. “Hot Fun in the Summertime” by Sly & the Family Stone
15. “If You Steal My Sunshine” by Len
16. “Cruel Summer” by Ace of Base
17. “The Boys of Summer” by The Ataris
18. “And On And On” by Janet Jackson

Update, 2/23
Oops! I had messed up the name of Sheryl Crow’s song. It’s corrected now.

I found out last week that Reese had bilateral patellar luxation, grade II.  It means that his knees pop out of place.

After I got back from Austin, he was acting a little weird, sleeping a lot, not following like he normally does, and going off on his own to lay down.  I figured things would go back to normal after he had rested.  After a couple of days, things hadn’t changed much.  One day at lunch I tried to get him to jump up on my like he normally does.  He hesitated, but eventually he tried.  As soon as he did, he started hollering and moving around in a weird way.  He was obviously in a lot of pain.  I took him to the vet and they examined him and determined what was wrong.

From what the doctor said and what I’ve read, patellar luxation is a common defect in his breed.  It’s not unusual for symptoms to show at his age.  A girl that works in the vet’s office said that her 1-year-old had been recently diagnosed with the same thing.  He has grade II out of IV, so it’s not as bad as it could be.   The doctor prescribed medicine that should help with the pain and with the cartilage in his knees.  Eventually, he’s going to need surgery, which is $600 per knee.  After a couple of days on his medicine, he’s back to his normal hyper self.  I don’t let him jump on me, even though I can tell that he wants to.

This is him still groggy after they sedated him for his x-ray.

This weekend I discovered that I had snakes under my place.  There a little brick step under the back door and that’s how they are getting under the building.  At first I thought it was just one. I saw it poking its head out once when I took the dog out.  But the next day I saw 2 and they had slithered out a pretty good distance away from their hiding place.  All I had on me was a pooper scooper.  I tried whacking at them with it, but it didn’t do any damage.  One quickly hid and the other climbed on the wall and waved its tail at me before running off to hide like a little bitch.  Damn, they were fast.  Later in the day I got some bricks and covered the opening to their hiding place.  I hope they’re not trapped inside.  I don’t know what kind they are, but there black and slim.  I did some googling and I think might be Southern Black Racers.  Hopefully, I won’t see them again.

A few weeks ago I watched Julie & Julia because I like Meryl Streep and I was catching up on some of this season’s award nominated movies. The movie did inspire me to start cooking better foods. Lately, I’ve been keeping it pretty simple. When I get a new place and get an over that I don’t think is going to kill me is a little more reliable, I hope to branch out some. Maybe I’ll buy Julia Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, so I can make her beef bourguignon. Either that or I’ll find a cookbook for single guys that don’t want to spend a lot of time preparing meals.

2009 was a pretty good year.   It was much better than 2008, which was a shitty year for me.  I’m hoping for even better in 2010.  The only complaint about 2009 was that work got a little too crazy at times mostly due to outside factors.  I’m not going to complain too much, because crazy is better than boring.

I’ve probably given more to charity this year than all previous years combined.  I have given to:  Autism Speaks, The American Red Cross, The Humane Society, and The Andy Roddick Foundation.

I didn’t get a lot of electronic gadgets this year.  The biggest one I got was an iPhone.  It is the best gadget ever. 

The place I’m living in now was supposed to be short-term.  I should be out of here when my lease runs out in July.  I don’t like the place.  I don’t like the neighborhood.  I don’t like not having a fenced yard.  I’m going to start looking for something soon.

The decade is also ending tonight.  This decade I’ve had the best times of my life and the worst times of my life.  Of course, I’m looking to make things better in the next decade.

Right now I’m enjoying another quiet New Year’s Eve at home with the dog.  I’m finishing my Lord of the Rings re-watch today as is tradition.  I used to watch the New Year’s Eve stuff on TV, but not anymore.  Who knows what I’ll be doing tonight.  Maybe next year I’ll go out somewhere.