Happy Birthday to me

Huh. I don’t know what’s up with me lately. Busy, I s’pose. But not really all that busy. I guess blogging—like my 87 unfinished stories, my very limited knowledge of guitar and piano, and triathlon goal—is just one more thing that I’m losing interest in. But I’m not. I guess I just don’t know what to write about anymore; before I got a job, I found a fun little niche in the blogosphere where I documented my woes resulting from my job search. Then I got a job and tried to keep the blog alive by changing its name and taking a advertising focus, but I think that’s working out quite right.

I guess I could change the blog’s name and focus…maybe a blog dedicated to my inability to fix my freaking mountain bike, with small highlights focusing on my repeated, shameful returns to the bike shop to get my stuff fixed.

I don’t know.

I’m all over the place today. I don’t know why. I feel like shit. Well, kind of. Sort of. I don’t know.

A list of things that are molesting my brain:
1. Separated shoulder. On Thursday, my bike met with a large rock, and the rock won, sending me over the handlebars (an endo, in biking speak) and driving the vast majority of my 300 pounds into my left shoulder. For more info on shoulder separations (no, it’s not a dislocation…just click the effin’link, damn you) go here. I am on heavy pain meds (gotta love oxycodon) to keep me from waking up in severe pain and setting fire to my apartment complex. This means no mountain biking or lifting weights for at least two weeks. Not happy.

2. My birthday. Actually, it’s not until Wednesday, but it doesn’t really matter. Every year around this time, I get upset. Not because I’m terrified of getting older or anything, but because I wonder if my dad is going to remember. But since I don’t confront my feelings directly, I will probably do what I always do: either eat too much and gain wait; or not eat, get super pissed off because I’m not dealing with it directly, and get into a huge argument with SockMama.

3. My job. The sum total of what I’ve been working on for the past three months can be summed up in two words: email blasts. That’s it. No conceptual thought at all. Oddly, that’s what my review from last year said: they (the company) want me to work on more high-level conceptual projects. But apparently we don’t have the overhead to allow me to do just that, so I am stuck in the teeming hell of a tech company blasting out tepid, staid emails with absolutely no creativity or warmth in them whatsoever, and then our client gets pissed because no one signs up. Fun fun.

The best laid plans...

Funny thing about camping in Oregon after Labor Day: it's friggin' freezing at night. And I'm not being overly dramatic because SockMama and I only made it through one night - it was actually 28 degrees in Central Oregon. I was getting over a cold, SockMama was just starting to come down with my cold, and our dog wouldn't come out of the tent. Yes. It was THAT cold.

It would be different if we were a little better prepared for the frigid temperatures. But we weren't. And it would be WAY different if our dog could actually sleep and leave us the hell alone instead of moving around restlessly all night because he can't burrow underneath the covers like he gets to at home. But we have sleeping bags. Which means Scout can't burrow, which means we have to unzip the already underrated (both bags are rated at 40 degrees...you do the math) and sacrifice what little warmth we had to appease one sullen-looking beagle.

So we made it a night. My cold was back, SockMama's was just starting to get comfortable in the bottom reaches of her lungs, and every inch of surface area is covered in gritty dust, courtesy of Central Oregon's high desert. Needless to say, we packed up, drove back to our cousin's place, took two long showers, and spent two more nights there. Camping was done.

But, before we got depressed about a vacation wasted, SockMama decided to use the money we saved from camping around Oregon to get a bike for her. It's a cool little Trek hybrid bike and we've been cycling around all week.

Ahh...the great outdoors.

Tough couple weeks

Okay. I have a confession. I haven't been blogging very much. But...I've been incredibly busy at work, so that's one thing. In fact, these past couple weeks were so bad, I took a short vacation over Labor Day weekend. SockMama and I loaded my new bike (actually, this object could soon replace SockMama's and Scout's positions as numbers 1 and 2, respectively, in my life) on the car and hit up Bend (basically a mini-Whistler, B.C.) in Central Oregon. It was a blast, except that on Monday morning, I awoke to that glorious tingling in the back of my throat. So for the past couple of days, I've been at home, sick, and still working. Not fun. In fact, it was so rough that I am going to have to take yet another vacation to get over this week.

Actually, this vacation has been planned for a couple of months now; the Bend trip was more on a whim, if anything. So next week, I am going to be camping. First, we're heading to Tumelo (close to Bend) for four days. We were actually supposed to go to Lake Shasta, but they're experiencing flash floods at the moment (and off and on thunderstorms through next Tuesday) that the campsite was kind enough to let us out of our contract thing. Then, we're off to Southern Oregon to camp at the coast for a few days. Then it's back home, where I will immediately post pics and blog about the trip. It's the least I can do to make up for my abscence, old and new.

Oh, and being a native Louisianian, I would like to thank whomever might be reading this for their thoughts and contributions in whatever form to the state of Louisiana.