Catching Up

Not much happened today so I think I'll catch up on a few things. Last Monday (Nov 19th) I was up early walking the Shelbster and was able to snap a few pretty good foggy morning shots:





These were taken from the edge of my apartment parking lot, and you'd never know there was a smelly dumpster only a few feet behind me. The field where these were taken has been the focus of several of my pics and looks great in the winter covered in fresh snow.

I also decided to buzz my hair last week. It's not really too much of a change in appearance for me since it was slowly taking care of thinning itself pretty well; it's more of a psychological thing. I've finally reached "that point" when my hair isn't going to be lush and magnificent anymore and it's time to put it out of its misery and just keep it shorn from now on. And truthfully I'd already reached that point a few years ago, I was just hanging on and trying to get as much time out of having hair as I could. And yeah there are a few little gray bastards poking through there. No worries though, it's time to start aging gracefully I guess.

Tuesday

Well the website thing at work went ok today. I played around with it on and off for most of the day and have some ideas on how to spruce it up and make it more functional once more of our offices get used it it and start using it more. Even if it doesn't go much beyond what it is now I think it's definitely going to rekindle my interest in work for a while.

After last week's unexpected boredom, I've been thinking about things I can do to get myself out of the house more. And I'm not talking about going out to a bar or working the street corner or anything; other than quick bursts, I'm too old for that kind of thing anymore. I'm thinking of some kind of social group or activity that I can join up with and actually get to know some new people. Some kind of volunteer type of thing isn't out of the question either. I just need to find something that interests me or something that I think I would enjoy learning more about. I'm not really known for my follow-through when I come up with ideas like this though, so we'll see how things turn out.

Back

Today was my first day of work after taking the entire week of Thanksgiving off, and I was actually looking forward to it. I've done the week-long vacation thing for the last several years, but I think this is the first time I was ready for the vacation to be over so I could go back to work. It's not like I was looking forward to being there since my job is completely vapid; I think I was just bored sitting here at home all week. And that's unusual for me as I typically find being home alone is the only time I feel completely comfortable.

Then again, after a single day back at work I'm already bored there. Things are looking a bit brighter though; I get to "launch" a website tomorrow and that should give me something different to do and be interested in for a while. It kind of fell into my lap right before I went on vacation so I didn't have time to think about it much until I got back this morning. It's nothing fancy or anything, but it'll at least be something new and creative for me to play with for a while. And who knows, maybe it'll turn into something that will hold my interest for a long time.

11-11

Many months ago I started seeing the number 11 everywhere. It would pop up all over the place for days on end. Every time I looked at a clock it would be at 11 minutes past the hour; the convenience store bill would come to $11.11; numbers and addresses all through the day at work would have an inordinate amount of 11's. It would stop for a day or two and the numbers in my life would go back to appearing at random. But then it would come back with a vengeance and there would be day after day with the number 11 suddenly everywhere I turned.

Googling it turned up quite a few results of varying believability. Part of me knew that it may have been just a coincidence (once I noticed the first few 11's my mind started looking for them subconsciously and I just thought they were everywhere). But at the same time another part of me thought it was a sign the universe was sending out and I should listen. I decided to take a mid-range approach and use a mix of both to be what I would go with: if it's a sign then that's cool, they'll eventually point me in some direction and let me know what it's a sign of...but if some big sign doesn't happen then it was just in my head and I didn't need to think about it anymore. Naturally the 11s disappeared. I didn't notice when they stopped, they just went away like it had never happened. It was either all a coincidence or I pissed off whoever was sending me the signs by being so apathetic about it and they stopped sending them to me.

Whatever the case, I hadn't thought anything about it again since early summer. Until Friday night. I realized that Sunday (today) was the eleventh day of November, 11/11, and everything came crashing back into my head with an odd sense of urgency this time. I even had some run ins with 11s earlier in the week but I hadn't noticed them until Friday night. I don't know if there was something profound or life-altering I was supposed to do or learn today. I've decided not to let it go this time though. I'm going to treat it as a positive sign and see what happens.

You Can't be Serious

Halloween JUST happened. It's barely the 2nd day of November and I've already seen a Christmas commercial on TV. And not just one either. I saw the same Christmas Commercial more than once tonight. It was an old one from Lowe's Hardware that they first played last year; and it wasn't even very clever then when it was new. But somewhere in the long food-chain that exists between me and the person who schedules prime-time Thursday night TV on NBC someone decided that I needed to see the very first, extremely premature, Christmas Commercial of the year.

And they didn't even have the common decency to at least make it a new commercial.

I hate this time of year.