A Pixelated Mind

Did I accomplish all of my goals for this year?  Did I accomplish any?

1. Get down to 172 lbs. or 12% body fat
   Fail. Damn. I thought I’d set the goal at 175. Even then I failed. I got down to 177 for a while, but it turns out I just have a bigger frame than I thought. I got to the point where I exercised every day for three months, counted calories, and maximized my protein intake, but it just wasn’t enough to overcompensate for the heavy, regular drinking.
2. Start and maintain a podcast
   Ambivalent. I have many things to upload and many things to work on,
3. Maintain my Sarah Project
   Success! Sort of. I messed up last week.
4. Maintain my secret Sentence Project
   Fail. I simply cannot keep up with projects. I think I should stop.
5. Pass my departmental prelim, write a chapter
   Fail. This has not happened. It will by April, though. It has to!
6. Super Friend Bash 2011
   Success! Oh no!
7. Finish writing my microfiction
   Fail. Though I did start the @puntitled account. That was kind of fun.

Hay Gauys!

Would you like to buy a used Honda Civic Hybrid? I just replaced the electric engine and got new tires.

Unfortunately… it has 145,000 miles and the transmission is shot– Jiffy Lube tightened it up too harshly and cracked it. To replace it is gonna be $1800.

Also: I am broke and sad.

Can I have your moneys now?

Here‘s a syllabus I made!
It’s so nice and shiny. You should enroll in my class!

Today I turn this:

visited 34 states (68%)

Into this:

visited 35 states (70%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where one of the characters talks about how groups of women always look hotter than each individual woman. They called it the “Cheerleader Effect.”

In high school, my group of friends was huge. As a result, we would go out and do things almost every day. There was always something going on and always enough people so that any event would be well attended… and awesome. It was one of the best times of my life.

I think about that time still to try to understand what happened and why it fell apart. First, of course, time changed our circumstances. Pam & Miguel went to Albuquerque, Fernie joined the Navy, and so on. Second, people’s priorities changed: motherhood, getting into careers, etc. Third, there was some intra and inter-group relationship drama.

But mostly, I just don’t think most individual pairs of people in the group had that strong of relationships. The relationships were strong in the abstract, but when the group as a whole began to dissolve, many of the constitutive relationships also fell apart.

This didn’t just happen with my high school group (indeed, most of those relationships have been the most resilient to time), it also happened to my friends at Turnbull Hall in IUP, the gaggle of friends I made in Australia, and the TRUpers from my time at the student newspaper. I still hold special places in my heart for dozens of people I met in each of those places— and still talk regularly with a few— but my relationship with the rest of the assorted group is more of a casual acquaintanceship with memories of better times. I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking to stay at their house, for instance.

So yeah. I don’t really have a point. I’ve just been thinking about this recently.