I’ve gotten myself on a weird sleep schedule. It’s 2am now and I’m not really ready to go to sleep. This may be because I slept from 530 to 900. Which in turn was caused by sleeping from 2pm to 7pm yesterday. I also think I made the mistake of going around drinking from opened water bottles because I think that I’m pretty much immune to germs but as it played out I got what I would describe as a sore throat, not from a cold. It’s like bacteria hanging out in the back of your throat bothering you every time you swallow. I have no cold symptoms though and I expect it to go away tomorrow.

The weekend was pretty typical. I pretty much stayed in all weekdays and was feeling really good on Friday. I went to the gym after work and then met the challenge of the wagon for beer pong. He won the best of 7 series in 6 games even though I hit the last cup in game 6. Then he won the best of 5 in 5 games. We wagered 10 bucks total which was a big deal to him considering getting him to spend money on anything other than the necessity to survive isn’t easy. After that we went to a bar and I was pretty buzzed and somehow started making out with some random chick. With no intention of bringing her back I abruptly left mid song and without saying anything just left. Probably didn’t do much for her self esteem but it seemed like the right thing to do. Then I went to another bar by myself, creepy I know but when you’re 15+ beers deep, logic and reason are dismissed. I chatted it up at this bar for a while with some randoms but alas went home by myself.

I woke up Saturday feeling fine. Won a 12 dollar 45 man tourny for 150. I used the profits to play a 55 hu sng and lost. Then went to play bball at La where me, bake, and Jkash were the only white guys. We picked up two and ended up winning 2 games against some brothers which obviously surprised them a bit. The constant arguing over the score and rules make the games take forever but all in all they are decent runs. We have a game this Wed so hopefully we can chalk up a W. Saturday night I wagered a hundo on a 3 fighter parlay on the UFC card. Naturally it hit because UFC favorites usually don’t lose. These have to be profitable to people who watch this because the best guys just don’t lose. That won me 231 dollars so I put 160 on the bengals which didn’t cover. Then I put 50 on the Birds which did cover and I hit a 25 dollar parlay to win 65 on SF and the Under tonight. That tallys me at -50 for the 13 week football season.

That pretty much sums up my last couple days of no posts. Since I’ve won a couple bets I expect to degen it up for a couple of days trying to hit a hot streak. This is basically the last full week of work before a few days off kick in. My dad has been coming back to the office here and there so that’s some relief.

I didn’t get a chance to watch Californication but I caught Dexter. I’ll write about them tomorrow. My brain is kind of jumping around a bit right now and I’m hoping I can go to sleep to get back on a normal schedule. A final thing, I finished the John Grisham book the Associate and it’s the 2nd thing I’ve read by him that had a disappointing ending. Good for 250 pages and the end just absolutely blows. Any good book suggestions are appreciated but if it sucks, I won’t forget it. I think I like literary books (1984, catcher in the rye) more than these novels put together in 5 minutes.

A final final thing. I’ve been wasting my time with sporcle and think I know more about music than most. Prove me wrong. Can you beat me? I finished with 136 and would have had 2 more if I could spell.

I don’t necessarily have a fear of public speaking, but it isn’t really my favorite thing. If it’s as simple as standing in front of a crowd reading from index cards, I can do that. They prepare you in school with 3-5 minutes speeches starting in middle school and then you move on through to high school with various presentations. My first speech was on Babe Ruth in Mr. Leslie’s class and it was a real bore. I spent hours making these charts displaying how many hr’s he hit each year and I didn’t even use them as a prop. My next speech was a demonstrative speech where I showed some yo-yo tricks. This one was a lot better and I even repeated it again in college. I still remember how to go around the world, rock the cradle, walk the dog, shoot the moon, and other various ones. I had a speech in college where I was speaking and literally forgot everything. I stood there shaking being that “guy” that froze up and couldn’t speak right. It still haunts me to this day.
That’s background for my next topic. If I have to ad-lib off the top of my brain, houston, we have a problem. A huge fear of mine would be to go in front of a crowd as a stand up comic, with people watching, and then trying to entertain them with jokes. I don’t tell jokes. I can’t tell jokes. I’m not sure if people have a database of jokes in their brain that they can just use anytime. Not me. I remember having a dinner with a bunch of work related people who I never met before and this one random guy was busting out these knee slappers and everyone was in tears loving it. I’m sitting there thinking, “the only joke I know is why can’t stevie wonder read and I don’t think this is the time or the place.” Do people sit in their rooms memorizing jokes just so they can be a huge hit when it comes to social situations? Even if I know a joke, I will mess it up while I’m telling it. Either I’ll forget the exact punchline, or halfway through I’ll realize it’s not funny and then I have to try to make something up and that just makes things worse.
The reason I thought of this is because I’m reading this John Grisham book and the main character is a 1st year associate in a law firm having dinner with a bunch of partners and it said he felt out of place and didn’t have much to add to the conversation. So this reminded me of my dinner in the example where I sat there with nothing to talk about feeling retarded because I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. Now when I’m loaded this isn’t even a blip on my radar. I can pretty much shoot the shit about anything with anyone after some drinks, but if I’m on good behavior, awkwardness occurs from time to time. This brings me back to joke telling. If you have an arsenal of good jokes, it’s a good way to break the ice and people think you are funny which is usually a plus. You don’t want to be the jester but I think people prefer to befriend extroverts than introverts, because it’s less boring.
I don’t know what it is about the pressure being put on public speakers. I am amazed how people like Dane Cook and other stand ups can entertain 20,000 people for hours at a time. I get this sinking feeling in my stomach and my brain starts spazzing and then words turn to mush. I haven’t had to give a presentation in years and I think I’ve probably matured past the nervousness. I sort of think now that nothing in this world is that important that its worth getting crazy over. If you flunk a test and think it’s a big deal, the world is a lot bigger than your test.

I thought these size examples were pretty interesting to show how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things

Now I know this isn’t my usual weird unusual rant about something that bothers me. But there is this feeling of complete let down and disappointment when you visit someones blog and they haven’t updated it in days. I think people will cut you some slack if you skip a day but if you start skipping day after day then people will replace you. I don’t have the amount of traffic that I would like but eventually I hope to get there. I’ll try to keep putting up reasonably interesting content even if my life is undeniably usual and boring. Stay tuned.

ps.
I have this “I” looming next to the first picture and I thought

would bring it down under the last picture but it isn’t working. Anyone who knows HTML please tell me what I’m doing wrong because I’m a noob.