Plan "B"

So, what's 2%? (this isn't a weight gain blog entry by the way).

* 2% milk is darn good, but 0% tastes like water.
* 91% is an A, 89% is a B.
* If 2% of the worlds population had cancer, we'd do something about it, right?
* 1 week out of a year is 1/52nd or roughly 2%.

(actually, I'm speaking of 8 days of a 365.25 day year, but don't make me get technical on you).

Well, my 2% is next week. I've spent 2% of my life camping at WP. It's the place that tells me I'm loved and accepted. It's the place, I can sow wild oats to reap them next year. It's the place I can do everything - and nothing. It's a significant place in my life.

Every year, me and 100** of my closest friends go camping there. This will be our 30th year by most counts. I've seen babies grow up until they can drive up on their own. Heck, I've been one. I've seen people die, and their widows/widowers don't come up any more. I've seen people change. I've see people remain the same. I've seen strangers hook up one year and become strangers the next. I've been attacked by ladybugs and butterflies. I've been eaten alive by mosquitoes. I've been lucky in love. I've been unlucky in love. I've been frightened of the grown ups leaving the bar drunk. I've left the bar drunk.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely days where I could not find a friend.

Oh, and let's not forget karaoke!

** Some names I could think of without thinking...Mom, Dad, Donna, Josh, Jude, Adeline, Michele, Bill, Aileen, Jenny, Eric, Colleen, Karen, Rachael, Kyle, Joe, Joan, Carol I, Carol II, Lisa, Kris, Jim, Janet, Kim, Dan, Craig, Emily, (can't recall Dan's wife's name) Kristi, Bill, Lucy, Lynn, Susan, Bill, Pricilia, they kids/grandkids/etc., Dennis, Pat, Richard, Jeanette, Moose, Scott, Mark, Patty, and that covers the people I can usually see from my porch. That's not counting the Lynches.

I got remeasured last weekend. I don't have the stats in front of me, but basically I fell a little short of where I wanted to be. My goal was to gain a net of 10 lbs while loosing some of the 41 pounds of fat (yep, I was carrying around 41 pounds of fat on my 180 lb body). That would be a gain of over 10 lbs of manliness.

I'm down to about 38 pounds of fat, and I gained 3 lbs. So, that means I've gained about 6 lbs of lean muscle. That's pretty good considering that I don't have a lot of body mass to work with.

Can't believe it - I turned 1000 bananas into 6 lbs of lean muscle. Ain't anaerobic glycolysis neat?

I'm jealous of my nephew. He seems to be completely transparent even though one would think he has so much to loose by being so up front about his past. What's past is past though, eh? I guess it's the more case that he has nothing to hide. He can't change what's happened, right? He's changed for the better despite of his past though. His recent post has moved me to not just be honest and not just blog from the heart (i.e. no backspacing allowed), but to expose myself more. But then I think, what if this is just a "shock-blog" thing where people attempt to outdo each other by showing how outrageous their blogs can be.

Then I think, what if I'm still the same person I was when I did all those stupid things? That would make me the same stupid person! Have I learned nothing? What if my attitude is the same? What if just have all these demons and guilt inside and can't let them out? Do we all have demons? A past? Things we regret and can't do anything about? Will bringing them to light do any good? Would I hurt more people than help? How do the people who have successfully beat their demons do it? Questions abound.

I'm sure of one thing though - keeping them in eventually lead me to divorce. Of that I'm sure, even if she isn't. Hmm - call it serendipity, but "Baby, I love your way" just came on. And suddenly, I can't type anymore. Perhaps I'll be brave later.

Is it just me, or does al Jazeera reporting seem to be a bit one sided? My Arabic isn't what it could be, so I'm limited to either reading it in Engligh or looking at the comics, but the stories all seem to show one side - their side.

Then, I started thinking about American & European news agencies. I'm glad I've stopped getting my news feeds from CNN, Fox, BBC and NPR, but where *DO* I get objective news from?

The answer - I don't. There is no reporting body out there without bias, without spin without an agenda. What then? Do I just not care? When people bring up a subject, do I say, "I'm not interested in that sort of thing"? Never. The best I can muster right now though is, "The situation is very complex, and I don't have the neccesary resources to do a proper evaluation in order to comment. Let's talk about cruises instead, eh?"

Well, if that ain't the cheeziest answer.

So, I'm at work right now and my favorite Duran Duran song just came on. So, inside I'm thinking "woo hoo" right? Well, I took a look at my playlist. Duran Duran, Lipps Inc. (Funky Town), Abba (Dancing Queen). It's Dancing Queen that put me over the edge. It's like I'm hopelessly gay. Being thin, neat and single is one thing, but "DANCING QUEEN"? I mean c'mom.

Lately, I prefer chicken to beef. I drink soy milk instead of cow milk. I talk with my hands A LOT and let the wrists fall where they may. I wouldn't think of changing my own oil (but I do drive a truck at least). I'm growing concerned that my butt doesn't look right when trying on pants, but I won't be wearing anything pink any time soon. I love a good chick flick and never saw Fight Club. I've never said, "I'm jiggy wit it" except in jest.

Gay? No. Just a little different.

I nearly had kittens last night at the ATM. I put in my ATM card because I wanted to see if my house payment was made automatically. So, I went looking through their very informal GUI for something that said "mini statement" or words to that effect. I couldn't find any such menu item, so I decided that I might be able to calculate the event by checking my current balance. I clicked on "current balance", but the amount that appeared on the screen was *WAY* lower than the amount I was sure I had in the bank whose ATM I was attached.

I printed the receipt and looked carefully. I counted the digits and looked at the dollar sign to see if I could be missing something between the "$" and the first digit. I payed attention to the commas (err, comma), but I was sure there was a digit missing. A big digit! Not like a "house payment" digit - more like a "luxury car" digit.

I raced home to check my bank statements. The most recent one I had was over a month old, so I took a chance and dashed off to the mailbox. My new statement was sitting there along with my spider waiting to be picked up (and fed). I riped it open right there. Well, as of last week, I had the amount I thought I had, so how do I explain missing this much money over the course of a week? I can't! It was like I got crazy at Vegas over the last week or something.

My mind started racing - how did this happen? Is it identity theft? Or perhaps the home loan people messed up and took the extra digit. Or maybe some charity check was misdirected into bad hands. I really had no idea, but I was going to get to the bottom of this.

First thing this morning I took all my paperwork along with the ATM receipt to the bank. The line was long and I became concerned that this transaction would take a long time and upset all the other people behind me in line.

"I can help you, sir", waved an arm from behind the counter. "Hi", I started, "This one might take a manager's help to figure out."

"Well, you're in luck - I'm the manager", she said.

"Well, I got this bank statement in the mail recently and the amount on hand is *very* different from what this ATM receipt says."

"Wow, hmmmm", she offered. I didn't have a warm fuzzy feeling all of the sudden. The keyboard under her hands clicked and the mouse got poked for a while. "Well, you're balance as of today corresponds with the monthly statement. Could this be someone elses ATM receipt? "Well, that's the one that came out, and...", I started, "I don't think it's anyone elses, because the last four digits on the ATM card are . . . Um, the last four digits are... the last four digits are the last four digits for my daily account at another bank. I had put the wrong ATM card into the ATM. Oops. Hi, I'm an idiot. Have a nice day."

We both gave out a sigh of relief. I thanked her and apologized for taking her time.

So, I was IM'ing and I used the term "pragmatic". Then, I thought to myself that perhaps I don't know what that work means. So I looked it up online (of which there are least a dozen good ways).

prag·mat·ic ( P )(prg-mtk) adj.
1. Dealing or concerned with facts or actual occurrences; practical.

Hmm, that's not the definition I was looking for, although the subject at had was definitely that.... Oh yeah, "prosaic" is the word, so I looked it up.

pro·sa·ic ( P )(pr-zk) adj.
1. Consisting or characteristic of prose.

Stupid dictionary. So I went to the thesaurus.

unimaginative, actual, banal, blah, boring, clean, colorless, common, commonplace, dead, diddly, drab, dry, dull, everyday, factual, flat, garden variety, hackneyed, ho hum, humdrum, irksome, lackluster, lifeless, literal, lowly, lusterless, matter-of-fact, monotonous, mundane, nothing, nowhere, ordinary, pablum, pedestrian, platitudinous, plebeian, practicable, practical, prose, prosy, routine, square, stale, tame, tedious, trite, uneventful, unexceptional, uninspiring, vanilla, vapid, workaday, yawn, zero.

Yeah, that's closer, but I guess in the case of my IM, the subject at hand was both. It had to do with why I don't bother looking for dates (or why I don't accept offers for dates). I have too many reasons to not date and only one real good one for why I should. But that's where the prose comes in to convince me not to go through with it.

Besides, my Bible says it would still be adultery.