Just a gimmick

"Suppose I were an extraterrestrial," the man said quietly.  "Suppose I were several million years ahead of this planet.  What one question would you ask me?"

"Why is there so much violence and hatred among us?" Benny asked at once.

"It's always that way on primitive planets," the man said.  "The early stages of evolution are never pretty."

"Do planets grow up?" Benny asked.

"Some of them," the man said simply.

"How?"

"Through suffering enough, they learn wisdom."

Benny turned and looked at his odd companion.  He *is* an actor, he thought.  "Through suffering," he repeated.  "There's no other way?"

"Not in the primitive stages," the man said.  "Primitives are too self-centered to ask the important questions, until suffering forces them to ask."

Benny felt the grief pass through him again, and leave.  He grinned.  "You play this game very well."

"Anybody can do it," the man said.  "It's a gimmick, to get outside your usual mind-set.  You can do it too.  Just try for a minute - you be the advanced intelligence, and I'll be the primitive Terran.  Okay?"

"Sure," Benny said, enjoying this.

"Why me?" The stranger's tone was intense.  "Why have I been singled out for so much injustice and pain?"

"There is no known answer to that," Benny said at once.  "Some say it's just chance - hazard - statistics.  Some say there is a Plan, and that you were chosen to learn an important lesson.  Nobody knows, really.  The important thing is to ask the next question."

"And what is the next question?"

Benny felt as if this was easy.  "The next question is, What do I do about it?  How ever many minutes or hours or years or decades I have left, what do I do to make sense out of it all?"

"Hey, that's good," the stranger said.  "You play Higher Intelligence very well."

"It's just a gimmick," Benny said...

That passage is from The Universe Next Door by Robert Anton Wilson.  It's one of my favorite books, and while the novel as a whole is pretty chaotic, this passage is one of the most coherent, simple, straight-forward expressions of an idea I like that I've ever read.

I have no empathy - or, at least, so little that it might as well be none.  I don't qualify for Antisocial Personality Disorder solely on the basis that I'm not violent (I dislike violence and destruction in general).  I think a big part of it is that I don't feel like a member of the same species as everyone else, so that no one ever feels like "one of us" to me.  Everyone's a stranger.  I can stand in a room full of close friends and family and still feel completely isolated and alone.

Now, don't get me wrong - I fake empathy well enough that most people just think I'm a little distant/weird.  Jokes about Vulcans and robots and "typical IT personality" surround me, but they're "just jokes" to most people.  The truth is, I'm actually a fairly good student of human psychology and extremely adept at both manipulation and faking.

And, yet, I don't do it (most of the time; I admit to slipping once in a while).  I don't take advantage of people or abuse others' emotional states.  In fact, I'm often the person who is more concerned that others aren't being mistreated or feeling left out or abused: I'm better at seeing it, because I know how I would do it if I wanted to.

Sometimes, having no empathy is an advantage.  My step-father hurt himself pretty badly last week, and I spent the first 24 hours after trying to keep my mother from going into emotional meltdown.  Her statement, once he started improving and she started being less frantic, was, "You're my rock."  Yep, that's me - the rock, the stone, the one who isn't moved.  She meant it as a compliment, as most people do, implying some kind of virtue on my part for sacrificing my own emotional needs to be supportive of others.  Except, I had none, so there was nothing to sacrifice.

What it is, really, is what the passage at the start of this post asks: even if there's suffering in this world, even if there's tragedy or personal struggle, the question we should ask is, "What am I going to do about it?"  I decided I dislike such things, aesthetically, so I do what I can to stop them: to help those who need help, to be the rock for those who need a rock, or even to just give a single moment of hope to someone who otherwise might not have it.  It's what I mean when I say, "I can't save the world, but if I can save one person, I can help teach the world to save itself."

Think about that this week while you lament the cowardice of the bombing of Boston or shake your head in disbelief at the explosion in Texas.  Instead of asking why - why they would do such a thing, why regulators let such a dangerous place be surrounded by families - ask what you, yourself, are going to do about it: a $5 gift to a charity, donating blood at the local hospital, a different vote on the next ballot, whatever it may be.  It doesn't have to be much - there may not be much you can do - but a few hundred million people doing a little is a whole lot better than seven billion doing nothing.

And think about what the advanced intelligence would say to the primitive Terran.  What harm can it do?  It's just a gimmick.

Distractions

I'm just going to dump this here, because that's what this is for, right?

So, the last couple of days, I've been thinking over an idea.  It's a small, stupid thing, but 1) I think it's patentable and 2) it's the kind of small, stupid thing that could either be a waste of the filing fee or make millions.  I've been spinning it my head (literally, in some cases; yay for mental 3d rendering engines) and will probably, in the next few days or week or so, actually make a model of it that could be sent to a prototyping house or something (I'm pretty good with CAD programs).

The problem?  While I think it'd be a good idea to bounce the idea off of a few other people, the mere thought of bringing up even the fact that I have an idea that could be monetized, much less the specifics of it, around most of my friends makes me cringe.

I hang around a lot of people who stylize themselves as "creative types" - writers, actors, movie folk, even graphic designers or system architects.  People who are used to being the ones who create ideas and leverage them.  It's great - there are all these people I know who always have fascinating perspectives or new insights.

I'm not thought of that way.  I'm the support person - the adapter, the improver, the guy who fixes things or makes them work better.  People come up with an idea, then come to me to ask my advice on how to make it more practical or more realistic or more fiscally sound.  Throughout all of this, it's their idea - I'm just helping out.

The few times I've come up with things on my own and mentioned them, they've been... well, co-opted is a good phrase.  Suddenly my idea becomes "our idea" or even their idea (especially if they decide, unilaterally, that some facet of what I've described isn't perfect and, therefore, by changing it they own most or all of the idea).  This isn't me being paranoid - I've had one friend take over at least two ideas for stories, and another latched on to a marketing concept I mused on randomly one day and actively try to make it work (without acknowledging it being my idea at all).  Others seem to just assume that whatever I'm saying must be some extension of something they've come up with and, thus, is theirs to do what they like with (I've been told that at least once point-blank by someone I no longer speak to).

I have to say, writing that makes me more than a little uncomfortable: I've gotten so used to being the support person that even saying, "No! Mine!" about something I legitimately came up with on my own feels selfish or egocentric.  But, that's the way it always seems to be: no matter what happens, control of the idea is taken away from me.  Maybe it's meant as a compliment (that they think it's good enough that they want to work on it with me), or maybe they don't realize they're doing it.  The discomfort/selfish feeling is compounded by the fact that, legitimately, I'm in a better financial position than most of my friends (for a variety of reasons) so that, by wanting to maintain ownership, I'm selfishly denying them a share of profits or whatever (assuming there are any).

It's extremely frustrating.  It's one of those moments that makes you wonder - makes me wonder - if, in fact, I have the "right" friends.  I think I do, for the most part; they're great people in a lot of ways, and they certainly put up with many of my eccentricities.  It's just that, on this issue, I feel both trapped and almost guilty for feeling trapped (and then annoyance beats out guilt, because I always think of guilt as a useless emotion).

Anyway, that's a distraction for the moment: I've got an idea, and no one I feel comfortable talking to about it.  And that's pretty sad.  There are far worse things going on in the world, so this is definitely a #firstworldproblems moment, but still.

Sprung forward

Y'all (at least, those in the US) remembered to change your clocks this morning, right?

... The part I hate most about consulting is waiting for people to pay me.  For the consistent jobs, it's just a matter of getting through the first billing-to-payment gap; after that, things start going fairly regularly.  When you're only invoicing every months, though, that ends up being a pretty big gap.  I'm very glad I have the day job and that this is mostly "fun money".

Didn't do yoga today.  I got in to lotus, which is how the dvd starts, and immediately started feeling my back muscles vibrating.  They've been a little sore/stiff the last few days, but this was "more than a little", so I took it as a hint and instead walked a few miles (I still did my rowing; that's before yoga).  It's all working, though.  I'm up to 38% muscle, down to 18% body fat.  Not all that amazing numbers, I know, but better than I was: targets to adult men are 42-50% and 14-17%, theoretically, and I started off at 36% and 21%.  So, basically, in 2 months I've converted 6 lbs of fat into 4 lbs of muscle.  If I can keep this up (and I certainly plan to), I ought to be in the ideal range within another couple of months.  Also, the scale is only approximate - I *think* I'm actually a little better than it's reporting, but it's at least a useful guideline to measure progress if not exact details.

I'm also noticing *some* changes to clothes: shirts are a little tighter, pants a little looser.  I can also see some changes physically, which is one of the big payoffs of course :)  Another big payoff, though, is that I can also feel the phsyiological changes when I try to do various things.  For example, even after only a week, some of the yoga exercises that I collapsed out of early on the first few days I can hold (albeit barely) for the whole duration now.

I also got a nifty (and free, so even better) media server set up on my computer so I can share my dvds and mp3s on whatever device I'm using, at home or out and about.  The dvds, I use so that I can run my yoga stuff from my Android tablet (which doesn't have an optical drive); today, on a whim, I used my cell phone (Windows 8) to stream music (The Beach soundtrack, if you must know - trust me, it's paradise) on my walk rather than grabbing my old ipod from the car.  There's a little bit of "ooh! new toy!" here, but I can really see this being useful.  I may actually get around to building that full-fledged home server that I wanted to make now.

15 weeks until Hawai'i.  Haven't decided if I want to do something for Memorial Day yet - might be something quick, unlike last year's 1400 mile drive (which was fun, don't get me wrong).  Also thought about hitting the white party, though I don't think I'll quite be in shape yet for that (it's at the end of March).

... Well, I've got breathing down pretty well...

... Holy fuck, yoga's kicking my ass.

It's probably not helping that I'm doing it after rowing.  It's also only my second day, though at least I made it all the way through the video today (even if I collapsed out of some of the poses early).  I definitely feel like my ass hurts, and not in a good way.

It's kind of strange: I'm really flexible in certain ways, and really stiff in others.  Like, for years, I've been able to cross my legs and then lay my forehead on the floor, but my achilles tendons are wound super-tight.  I fully assumed it would take a while to get into and up to even basic speed, but I didn't realize how much I needed to loosen up.

Didn't make it to the pool today, but I do have my goggles.

Anyway, off to try and relax some of the muscles for a while, then it's Jack the Giant Slayer tonight.

Checking in

So, just sent off my passport for renewal.  It doesn't expire until May, but I have this irrational fear that I'll suddenly have somewhere awesome to go last-minute for Memorial Day and won't be able to because it'll have just been mailed off for renewal.  As it is, I'm now in a low-grade stress on the (totally unlikely) possibilities of work needing me to travel somewhere in the next few weeks.

Yes, folks, this is what OCD is really like.

In other news, taxes are filed.  I'm getting almost $3000 back in total, which is nice and more than pays for my birthday vacation.  I'm also doing more consulting; not a huge amount, but $1500 a month or so at this point.  The woman I did the huge job for a couple years ago has stated she might want to use me for a slightly-smaller-but-still-decent thing this summer, and the guy I'm doing the stats analysis for wants us to keep going at least until the end of April.  Plus, I'm still doing some work for my old employer; that's mostly tapered off for the moment, but they're going to want me to help them with an upgrade in a month or two, and that's likely to be 30-40 hours of work over a couple months.

If I start getting steady enough income through consulting, say after-taxes $1000 a month or so, I may bump up my 403b contribution at work.  Max for us folk under 50 is $17,500 a year; I'm at about a third of that now.  I doubt I'll max out unless I start making $2k or more after taxes each month on the side; that being said, money that goes to the 403b (it's like a 401k, but for non-profits) is pre-tax, so every $100 only "costs" me about $75 out of my paycheck.  Something to think about, certainly.

I also have to think about setting money aside for a new car at some point.  That's a long ways off (unless someone dumps $40k or so in my lap), but it's still something to plan for.

Photos aren't selling, but hey, not too worried about that.  Doesn't really cost me anything to leave them up on the site, and I keep nudging them every now and then.

I'm still working out on the rowing machine every day.  I'm definitely getting results, though it's obviously slow.  I've also decided that, starting in March, I'm going to try one of those beginner at-home Yoga things when I get bored/have free time/feel like it.  Definitely, being able to exercise in my own time in my living room is a huge huge thing for me.

I'm also going to try to get into swimming once the weather really warms up; it's supposed to be in the 80s on Saturday, so I may see about getting in the pool a little then.  I can swim - my dad never would have let me on the boat if I couldn't - but I've never really liked doing it.  I think it's time to try to get over that dislike if possible.  I've got swim goggles to help out.

Let's see, money, fitness... oh, yes! Cooking...

I've pretty much switched to eating at home all but one night a week.  Really, that's being "forced" by my working out: I do so as soon as I get home, so I can't really stop and get food on the way home.  Once I'm here, it's just easier to eat in than go out.  I've gotten a little more into cooking as a result, and I've also gotten back into munching salads a couple nights a week.  Eating better, combined with the workout, means that while I'm not actually losing much weight, I'm actually losing body fat slowly.  So, yay for that.  Plus, it ends up being cheaper, so some money saved.

This whole "being an adult" thing is a little dull, but I guess it has its advantages.  Still, after writing all that crap above, I feel the irrational need to finger-paint the walls.

Plowing the carpet

I have callouses on my fingers. Even with gloves, they still develop.  I think of them in a joking way as a badge of honor.

So, it's been about three weeks since I started rowing every day - just 10 minutes to start with, though I've been ramping up the resistance.  I'm definitely getting broader in the chest, but that's not necessarily saying much: this is the first time in my life when my chest hasn't been defined primarily by my ribcage.  At this point, I'm going to start increasing the duration bit by bit, working my way up to a 20-minute session hopefully; most of what I've read puts this as the practical "cap" for even extremely-fit people.

And, yes, by "every day" I mean every day.  I've long tried to abide by the "work a single muscle group once or twice a week" method, and while I've had some results with that over the years, it's never really worked well.  This is showing a significant amount of improvement in a relatively short period of time.  I doubt it will progress as quickly in the future, but I'm off to a decent start already.

(Just for the record, this is what I have.)

So far, I haven't changed my diet at all, but I'm losing a little bit of weight (with the extra mass and calories burnt, that's not unreasonable).  I figure I'll keep this up until the end of February, give or take, and then start working a little more on eating better.  I doubt I'll be in any condition to go to the white party (which is 3/31), but I'll hopefully be pretty well off by my birthday at the end of June.

... Oh, right, birthday.  Just booked my annual pilgrimage to Hawaii. This time, I'll be spending 7 days just south of Kona before heading to my usual spot on Maui for the 4th of July (and a few days after).  This'll be the first time in years that I haven't been on Maui for my birthday, but I'm a little conflicted about the changes they made to the resort: they look decent, but I don't know how they'll play out in experiencing them.  We'll see.  They also jacked the prices up a fair bit (like, 20-30%), so that's a consideration as well: I'm spending more on 4 nights in Maui that I'm spending for 7 in Kona.

I also had to do the flights in 3 separate reservations to minimize the number of miles I'm spending, but I'm basically getting first-class fights from LAX to Kona, Kona to Maui, and Maui back to LAX for a less than $400 total.  Looks like all those years of booking my own business travel at the last company were actually useful.

Uhm, dating-wise, nothing in a while.  No worries on that - I don't think I'm the kind of guy most guys are looking for.  Doesn't hurt to leave the page up, though.

Finally, best-friend's wife is preggers (yay!) but not necessarily doing well (boo!) - she already miscarried once, a year ago or so, so they're really worried about this one.  But, as a result, he's really thinking about getting a job closer to home (he's about an hour away now).  There'll likely be fallout from that, but oh well.  We'll manage.

... Stands on golden sands...

Okay, so, time for a fun topic...

Vacation!

It's a new year, and it's time for me to start looking at what I want to do for my birthday.  My usual is Maui, of course, but the Sunseeker's had some changes and I'm not sure how it'll end up being.  For one, while the sundeck looks a lot better now, they got rid of the hot tub up there, which was one of the highlights to me.  The result means everyone's likely going to be a bit more spread out, so the feel's going to change a bit.

My rough plan was to hit up Kauai or the Big Island before/after Maui.  I've got enough vacation time for up to a couple weeks out there, now that I'm earning 3 weeks a year, and I could easily spend a week on, say, the big island and then hop over to Maui for a few days.  The problem with that is that I'm kind of picky where I stay: one, I prefer gay-owned properties, just as a support-the-community thing (though I'm not adamant about it); and two, I really really prefer clothing-optional places.  That leaves me with like 2 options on Kauai and a handful on Hawai'i, none of which look all that appealing to me.  This is one I'm considering, though the reviews are a bit hit-and-miss on the facilities themselves (the staff is apparently great).

Perhaps a little oddly, part of why they're not appealing is that they're too private: one thing that's nice about the Sunseeker, as well as the Highlands Resort in Guerneville and a few other places I've gone to, is that while you can be private and alone, there's also the option to socialize a bit in the resort: they're big enough that there's a variety of people there.  The fact that I like traveling alone and making my own plans doesn't mean that I also don't occasionally meet cool and fun people when I travel.  Hawaii as a whole doesn't have much "centralized" gay culture outside of Honolulu, and I'm not much of a bar person anyway.  If the place I stay at doesn't have a socialization factor, I'm probably not going to get much of it at all.  While that's likely okay (and even sought-out sometimes) for a little while, after 4 or 5 days I'm liable to want to socialize.

That doesn't mean I've ruled those out as options, but it's just something to consider.

As a result, I'm also looking at a few other possibilities.  I've always loved sailing, and I've probably mentioned a desire to go to the south pacific and other places on sailing cruises.  So, I came across this - and, specifically, these.  The timing's wrong for a birthday trip, but I may keep my birthday down to a week (and just hit Sunseeker or something) and save the time/money to go on another vacation later.  I might save that for next spring's St. Martin trip, though Greece sounds interesting.

There's also still one of the more mainstream cruises, though I think the one cruise that I was looking at for Tahiti doesn't sail there any more.

In addition, I've been told I ought to hit up Cairns in Australia at some point, though that's definitely September-March thing.

I could also do something more tame, like heading to Key West or Ft. Lauderdale, or more adventurous, like Paris.

I don't know.  Too many options, none of them "perfect" yet.

So, any of you have any ideas?  I doubt any of you are also likes-to-get-naked-on-vacation people, but in general?

(Title from Somewhere Beyond the Sea)

... Retry

... So, ended up sleeping about 13 hours last night.  I certainly feel better, though still not 100%.  Tonight, I was going to go home, pack, and just relax before driving up tomorrow.

I say "was" because, as I'm driving into work this morning, I get a call from my mother.  "Dad's computer won't start."  From the description, it sounds like a bad power supply.  Her next statement?  "I hate to ask, but can you come by tonight...?"

1) I told her, yesterday, that I was feeling like total crap from doing too much recently.  She said she sympathized.
2) My step-brother - who graduated with an engineering degree from CalTech and currently works for a major software company - is, right now, sleeping in my old room down the hall from the broken computer.
3) There are, like, five computers in the house for the two of them - three notebooks and two desktops.  Seriously, they have more computers than I do.

This is mild compared to some of the shit she used to pull, but it gives you an idea of what I end up dealing with.

Anyway, I still have my old computer, and the power supply in it should be more than sufficient (assuming it'll fit).  So, if that's the actual problem, I can possibly get it fixed tonight.  If not, then when I get back, I'm going to get asked to spend a day or two copying Dad's files from the old hard drive onto the new one and getting shit installed, and I'd really rather not have to do that.  Even if it means spending a couple of hours elbow-deep in circuit boards tonight.

I think it's a nacho day.  I could really use some nachos.

Out Of Cutlery Error - Abort, Retry, Fail?

I feel like crap today - not quite bad enough to be "sick", but bad enough that I'm going to go home after work, crank up the heater, crawl into bed and just sleep until tomorrow morning.

I haven't had a "day off" - my lexicon for "a day without forced socialization of some kind" in almost three weeks.  Normally, Sundays are my day to just recharge, but the last two Sundays I've had to help my step-dad take apart and put back together all the storage in the garage so they could get the garage doors replaced (long story).  Add to it that Christmas was at my parents' house (which is low-key but still OMG-I-have-to-deal-with-people!), that I worked Monday and Wednesday (and today and tomorrow), and that Wednesday was my stepdad's 70th birthday and all his kids (and grandkids, and spouses/girlfriends) were there, and...

Well, let's just say I feel like a polite train wreck.  You know, where the train comes to a gentle stop - and then just falls off the track.  If you know the spoon theory, I'm not exactly the kind of person who generally runs out of spoons; today, I feel like I've used up all my spares, raided the cabinets for any I could find, and have borrowed a couple from the neighbors.

There were a few moments of interesting things.

A minor issue that's been bouncing around for a while (as in, decades) is that my mother never really accepted that I'm not "normal" - or, rather, she only sees the good parts and none of the complications.  As a kid, it was both accepted that I was brilliant and therefore different, but also that any struggles I had with anything had to be because I wasn't trying hard enough since everyone else could do it without issue.

Over the years, I've gradually gotten her to accept that I'm ADHD (I wasn't diagnosed until late teens), largely by pointing out how she reflects a lot of the same symptoms (case in point: to relax for bed, she has a large glass of hot, heavily-caffeinated tea; she never thought about this being contrary to normal until I pointed it out).  She's never really fought me on the OCD, but again, she's got the signs of it in herself, so that's also pretty clear.  She has fought me about dyslexia, but since I've got a piece of paper for that one too, there's not much she can do about it.

I've never tried pushing the Autism Spectrum Disorder issue much, though, because it always seemed like "a bridge too far" as it were: the common idea of Autism is a stereotype that isn't necessarily representative.  I'm not Autistic, but ASD encompasses a wide range if symptoms that stretch from (probably; it's still being debated) ADHD on one end through Aspergers to Autism on the other, with a few different points in the middle.  I also don't have a formal diagnosis in ASD - there are other confounding factors, and since I had the ADHD diagnosis anyway, it didn't seem necessary.

Well, during conversations with friends and family the last couple of days, my mom volunteered information that, whether she realizes it or not, is classic ASD.  The first was when she was commenting on my tendency to take "escape" vacations.  She referred to her desire to do the same thing - especially before she retired - as "taking time to just be", to "escape from people and not have to socialize."  The overpowering need for such "recharge" time or escaping is a very common thing in ASD folks, and those with Autism and Aspergers tend to get it very severely.  In kids, it's often the cause of stimming or seeking heavy blankets and comfort - in sometimes literal terms, of enclosing one's self in something secure and safe and "blanking out" all the scarey, noisy, troubling stimulation.

The other thing she mentioned, this time in the context of things we did when I was a kid, was: "You always hated loud noises, even when you knew they were coming.  You'd cover your ears and, if you could, even curl into a little ball."  The "too loud/too bright" reaction is also classic ASD - generally brought on by hypersensitivity to stimulation (which I have in other ways as well).  It's often one of the first things that parents of Autistic children notice.

This is all on top of having speech impediments as a kid, being delayed in maturation (I hit puberty a little late and then had a longer and slower developmental period - part of the reason I still look a lot younger than I am), all the troubles I had in school despite being an "A student", etc.

In the larger scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if my mom acknowledges all of this.  It's not going to impact my life today, and none of her grandkids (my stepdad's grandchildren, really) seem to have any of these issues.   At the same time, though, part of me wants an apology.  Part of me wants to hear her admit that she made my life hell growing up, and that all of the pressure and stress she put on me was unfair.  I mean, I eventually started pushing back against it, but that was only after years of mental/emotional abuse and eventually trying to kill myself, so one could argue the damage was done.

(I should probably add here that I like my mother, as a person.  She's kind and brilliant and supportive, and as a woman, she's kicked some serious butt throughout her life.  She's the kind of woman who is a feminist whether or not she calls herself one.  She was just a very crappy - and codependent - mother, especially for a kid who needed more than to simply be pushed.)

I'd just like, in general, for the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" narrative that a certain portion of the (mostly conservative) population seems to love to be blown to hell.  It causes far more harm than good, and it's predicated on this notion that everyone is the same and has the same strengths and needs.

Anyway, Saturday I drive off to relax for a few days.  I looked into a lot of options, including Tahoe and Yosemite and King's Canyon, but as I really don't want to spend $400 a night in hotels, I'm just going back to Guerneville - they didn't end up getting flooded out, and the hot tub is always nice.  For now, I just need to make it that far.  No meetings, comfort food for lunch, and wrapping myself in my heavy coat to keep warm.

And, maybe, stealing some spoons from the cafeteria.  They're plastic, but hey.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

... It's probably a bad thing when you score more than 20 points (self-diagnosed, so probably suspect) on the PCL-R.

Hey, there.  Been a while, though it's been fairly boring here.  Not so in the news lately, of course, but in the interest of not triggering people, we'll stay out of that.

Trying to decide what to do for New Years.  I've got the 31st and 1st off, and kind of want to go somewhere there's snow, but since I won't know that until a few days before, I haven't made any plans yet.  That being said, I haven't even started Christmas shopping yet.  I should probably get to that.

Speaking of shopping, I finally decided to try and sell some of my photography as posters and such.  I'm testing out a few different sites; no purchases yet, though there's a bit of interest in some of them.  My totally-arbitrary-mental-abacus says I need to get about 100 viewings of any one image before I'll sell something, and I'm getting close.  Not bad, considering I'm not advertising at all.

I also uploaded a bunch of photos to a stock house, so maybe that'll end up selling some as well.  You never know.  At least they're all non-exclusive licenses, so I can do it all at once and still retain the original rights.

I got a new phone, finally.  My contract was up last December, but I hadn't seen anything since then that I liked until recently.  Picked up a Nokia Lumina 920.  Seems pretty decent so that, though it's a bit large.  I love the voice-to-text options: I can have it read me incoming text messages and reply to them by voice while I'm driving.  Cool feature.

Dating, not so cool.  Pretty cold, actually.  I've had a few messages back and forth, but only two tangible dates out of it in a year or so.  I'm not terribly bothered by this, but it does raise the question as to whether or not I want to keep putting any effort into the idea.  I may try a different site, just for kicks.  It'd be nice if there was someplace local I could just go and hang out, but seeing as I don't drink and don't get along with alcohol well, the bars seem a wee bit contraindicated.

Finally getting some definition in my upper body.  The rowing machine seems to be doing the trick, and I finally figured out now not to get callouses on my hands doing it.  Still not losing the bit of excess just under my belly button that I've had for like 10 years now.  I may have to actually need to try changing my eating habits, which I've been hoping to avoid as I don't know how sustainable that is psychologically.  That being said, my weight's been stable, so maybe all it would take is losing that bit and I could keep it off with my normal habits.  We'll see.

Anyway, there's that.  It probably won't take me 3 months to post again :)  Maybe something exciting will happen.  Well, assuming we don't all die in a horrible fiery explosion on Friday (and no, I don't think that's going to happen; even the Mayans didn't think that was going to happen, and it's their damned calendar).