I know it’s the 3rd of the month and I’ve yet to post which is not my usual schedule. I’m sure everyone is eagerly anticipating what I have to write about. Sadly I don’t have much to offer. I could list my new year’s resolutions or a recap of 2011 but that seems really cliche (I’ll probably do it later). There are also plenty of things I can comment on ranging from Katy Perry to Tim Tebow to the myriad of other pointless things society deems important. I think I’m just recovering from the end of 2011 and haven’t decided how I’m going to start 2012. New Years actually lived up to expectations which was smart to set low. We then got plastered on the day after heading down to Philly for the Mummers Day parade. Yesterday was pretty mild and today was the first day back at work which tended to drag. Believe it or not I’m actually happy to be back at work. My life without structure can get downward spiraling. I haven’t been to the gym in a few days and I feel like a dirt ball which can attribute to the somber mood. Fortunately time heals and I will get back to normal posting in the near term. I appreciate the checking in though and will hope to make rnningfool.com better in 2012.

These last few days reminded me a lot of my college days. Back in college we had a group of 3 that we referred to as the Haggard Crew. Our now late leader was referred to as the captain, self proclaimed of course. In retrospect he definitely deserved the title as he was far more haggard than anyone I knew. He’d go days without showering, wear the same clothes day after day, and would get totally smashed after just a few drinks. This would leave him staggering around and making outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Aside from the getting drunk part I’m not really sure how haggard I was considering I came from white suburbia. The 3rd member, GRama, is still active but his haggard past has left him docile. I wouldn’t necessarily call these dark days but they certainly weren’t my most productive. We’d listen to music and argue about irrelevant topics but it seemed important at the time. Funny how 5+ years later and those times seem long forgotten.

I’ve been waking up at 10am, watching some Breaking Bad, going to the gym, and basically hanging out. Nothing of any importance. In some regard it’s a bit sad that I haven’t really changed much but I’m legitimately content. I live stress free, I’m healthy and in great physical shape, and I’m happy. Could I be happier? Perhaps but everyone’s version of happiness differs. Just because you think you want to live life this way doesn’t mean that someone else wants to live the same way. It’s weird though to have so much time to do virtually nothing. I feel like this would be what it’s like if I had millions of dollars in the bank. I’d probably have a tad more freedom but nothing major. I’m sure some people would give their left nut to live this care free but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. There’s nothing real exciting happening but at least I’m not doing anything stupid either. A constant trade-off.

The picture below should give you an idea of the carefree mentality. Don’t care about my hair. No undershirt to the zip hoodie. Ready to pop open a beer.

2 days ago I went to WaWa to buy more normal breakfast which consists of a breakfast sandwich, a 16oz Snapple Iced Tea, a bag of Smartfood, and one 16oz coffee. I usually eat that and then wait an hour or so before I go to the gym. Life is tough when you have nothing to do. Anyway I did the same WaWa breakfast today and when you don’t change anything, you run into the same circumstances. Everything usually goes into a bag but I hold the coffee. When I enter my car and go to sit down it’s difficult to do this lightly so the coffee starts shooting out of the top lid on a rough landing. When this happens you never no where the coffee goes. I feel like Ben Stroehmann in Something About Mary. This is one of those little things that make me so mad. Another thing that pisses me off is when I go to close the front door and a gust of wind or maybe even the wind tunnel prevents the door from closing on the first slam. That really irritates me. I’m just taking life’s problems one step at a time. These would typically be called white people problems to me but recently there was a person (not white) who said they were going to create a blog called “first world problems.” This never struck me as accurate.

In other news, a big game between Atlanta and New Orleans will determine my fantasy football results. I played in 5 leagues this year totaling $150 in league fees. I failed to make the playoffs in 2 leagues, got to the playoffs and was eliminated in the first round in one, and made 2 championship games. I’m up 40 points going against Sproles and Graham in a half point PPR. I think I should win and that would win me 400 for the league (350 for the title and 50 for the regular season winner). The other league I’m up 10 points against Kasey, White, and Gonzalez and unless something unusual happens, I will be losing. This will net me 85 bucks (60 for 2nd and 25 for most points scored). With a 200+% return, I’d consider that a good season.

A Lindsay Buckingham song title by the way. I spent holiday’s with the family and we had a fine time together. We all spent some quality time watching the first season of Breaking Bad which I thought was pretty good. Things seem to happen very slowly but at least it’s always interesting. Sam and I played probably between 25-50 games of ping pong which I enjoy. We put on some tunes and just play. He beats me most of the time but the games are getting tighter and with more play I still have plenty of room to improve, as does he. Without a real backhand slam I let too many points continue and I still don’t have the consistency of finding the table but we both started making better shots as the games went on. Christmas was simple but I think that’s the way we like it. As we get older I’m starting to feel more and more aware that these times of us getting together aren’t going to last forever. Jeff missed his first Christmas this year which didn’t allow our family to be fully together. It’s a weird feeling. Plus it seems like everyone is getting engaged or talking about it which just puts additional pressure. The glaring eyes of society are constantly judging asking “when’s it your turn?” Aside from that though things are really good. I’m happy, healthy, and glad to get some time off to relax. Life is good.

At around 6pm I decided to get a famous bowl from KFC and do some holiday shopping. I went through the drive through and decided to eat the bowl in the mall parking lot. Mall parking is pretty chaotic at this point in time so I just take the first available spot fairly far away from the entrance. I pull into the 2nd spot face first leaving the other spot behind me. I start eating my famous bowl and am about half way through when an SUV pulls up behind me. It’s a guy and a girl about 17 or so. After settling into the parking spot they lip kiss each other for about 10 seconds. I’m watching this in my rearview finishing my bowl. Next thing I know the girls head went into the guys lap. Unless she just happened to lose her contact there’s only one reason I could think of why her head fell out of sight. So I’m basically sitting there ready to go shopping and I’m stuck in my car. I can’t open the door or else they’d be like “what the fuck?” I was completely frozen for like 5 straight minutes praying to god they don’t walk forward past the car. An eternity later they finish up and thankfully exit rear car. Not what I was expecting on my holiday shopping spree.

Last night Laura and I had dinner at a nice restaurant in the Rittenhouse Square area called Devon. It’s known for its seafood. When you walk in there is a main bar section and then a lower level that is the dining area. It was way bigger than I would have thought and equally as nice. We sat at a 4 person table which I’m always unsure if I should sit next to her or in front of her. I got some sort of butterfish that was from New Zealand as a tribute to Jeff. The meal was really nice and reasonably priced although I’d certainly tip the scale towards the higher side. I went back after that went out with Big Steve and a few other people in Manayunk and Dooley said that it was the most sober he’d ever seen me. After dinner I was really stuffed and I couldn’t drink for a while which is why it was the case. I hung out til about 1am and then went home to watch the second part of the 24/7 Flyers-Rangers. I really enjoy this program even though I don’t really like hockey. I woke up at noon the next day which is pretty pathetic but a day off here and there is ok. This brings me to the title of this post.

I need to eat something. I’m deciding if I want to make something from the freezer or just drive to WaWa and have someone make something for me. It takes 20 minutes to make something and I’m not in the mood so I’ll just drive and it will probably take 20 minutes round trip. There are two WaWa’s near me. One is about 8 minutes but the drive is easy and there will be adequate parking and it’s a nicer facility. The other WaWa is about 5 minutes but the parking can be a nightmare. I’m going to drive the extra minutes for the convenience. This goes against my usual “do everything as simple as possible” but in certain scenarios it just makes sense. After food I plan to go to the gym and then buy a few more gifts for people. Living the life.

I had a pretty typical weekend. I went to the bar on Friday night and had some drinks. On my walk home at 2am I walked into a random house party and was promptly asked to leave. On Saturday, my dad, Sam, and I went to a holiday party at our cousins. It was nice seeing everyone who we don’t see all that often and things went as smooth as they could. After that I drove into the city to hang out with the Wevs and the Wads along with 24 and Bake. We went to The Irish Pub and pretty much just hung out. The Shee said the Rum Bar had a dance floor so we went in there for a minute but we sort of stood out if you catch my drift. We hit the Sugarhouse late night and I booked a solid 75 dollar profit. I think I had some pretty big bets in the 3-400 dollar range along the session. Fantasy football playoffs are also ongoing and I got some tight games. In 2 out of 5 leagues I’m down to the final 4 and as we speak it’s close in both. I need Gronk to step up. Other than that thought I don’t have much going on.

The ebb and flow to life is odd. Sometimes it seems that it doesn’t matter what move you make things seem to work out for the best. Other times Murphy’s Law is present. I’ve been going through a stretch of the latter recently after a nice stretch of the former. Starting with the stock market, I bought 100 shares of the volatility index TVIX (the share price moves with the VIX) at $48.00 a share about 2 weeks ago. Today it is opening at 37.00 and I’m wondering if I’m smart to just sell and exit the position taking the 1,100 loss. The hardest thing with the market is taking a loss. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to sell something that is a loser. If you want the best reason to not invest, it’s that you never have any emotional ups and downs entering your life.

Another major blunder came in fantasy football last night. I picked up the Falcons D before the game last night and they went for 21 points. Sounds great except I forgot to start them. Getting 21 out of a D is tremendous but seeing them on my bench in a big playoff matchup is sickening. Especially because I’ve won the regular season for the 2nd straight year (with the most point scored) and this is a complete bragging rights league. So that was really disconcerting.

Stupid matters aside though, I’ve been feeling great and ran 3 miles in 17:24 yesterday and then did 2 straight miles on the track doing 400 meter intervals. I did the first 4 in 72, jogged a 100, 77, 105, 76, 110, 75, 110. It was a pretty good workout and physically I haven’t been in this good of shape in a real long time. This probably supersedes any money woes I may have. Should be a fine weekend upcoming and I have a few good posts in the pipeline that should be posted sometime this weekend. Thanks for reading.

On a whim I decided to google “what is my website worth” and found this page which checks things like traffic, longevity, and information and then spits out a value. Rnningfool.com came out to be somewhere in the $4,000+ range. I checked out other sites and the value varied from $1-$5,000 bucks. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. I’m fairly certain that no one will pay me that much for this site but it’s good to see that there’s at least some light at the end of the tunnel. If someone said they’d give me 5k to sell my website I wouldn’t accept it anyway. I think my price is closer to 50k. There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in this site that non life changing money doesn’t touch.

The neat thing to note though is how all this traffic happened. Yesterday was the second day in a row with over 1,000 visitors and it is all Storage Wars traffic. As I found out, my MSPaint Brandi Mug shot comes up in the top 20 or so pictures on a search for Brandi in Google. I owe all my traffic to that stupid picture. Obviously Brandi is the perfect level of obscurity that there aren’t thousands of pictures of her and a person like me can take advantage of this. I’m considering dedicating my life to obscure celebrities who don’t get enough attention and then finding their mug shot pictures (or making one up). Seriously. It’s nice to know though that even a site without ads can still have value if it brings in enough traffic.