Been a while

It's been a while since I blogged here, I did the myspace thing for a little while but the whole thing with myspace seems a little "kiddy" to me. Facebook is better, but still. I looked at some of the blogs I've done here, wow. It's been a long time since Sheri, and it's really sad I still think about her every freekin day. I want so bad to find someone else... I've been dating a lot, too much probably, but none of them had it, whatever "it" is. Sheri had it though, I think I simply may have met her too soon. If I had gone through all these women first, then I would have done a lot more to at least try and keep her. But it's too late, way too late. So I just hope one day I'll meet a woman I I'm attracted to and can fall in love with.

So, I pretty much worked out all last year, 2007. I'm in a lot better shape, I weigh about 185 lbs, and do strength and cardio. I was going to get to 200 lbs, but at 190 I felt like I was having to force feed myself. So, a muscular 185 seems to suit me well enough.

Right now, it looks like I may get an interview with a place in Houston that would actually pay a decent salary. Crossing my fingers. And the other day I worked my ass off at my granny's, pulled up 3 stumps, fixed up a step path, pruned stuff, weeded/hoed... a lot of yard work since my granny is about to put her place up for sale once some work is done to fix up the house. Well, this guy comes by, loves the yard and offers $60,000 as is. My granny told me I made her yard beautiful. She also said they walked along the steps I had fixed up and liked them. So basically the guy is buying the place based almost entirely on the yard. We figured it's a good price considering how much it was going to take to get the house up to snuff... it needed a lot of work. So now as soon as she closes on the house, my dad will buy her a new place.

Oh, I also read a ton last year. I started off reading some novels... SK's The Cell, and a good one called The Last Templar. Then, I decided I wanted to try something different, a different genre. So, I did a lot of research and decided I would try out the, "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Or at the very least the first book of it. So, I bought "A Game of Thrones" which is the first book of the Song. Oh... My... God... that book SO kicked ass. The book is thick, but the story is so good you wish it was even longer. And I guess it is, but you have to buy the next book, and I did. And it was either just as good or maybe even a little better! There's 4 books out in the series right now, the 5th one should be finished shortly, according to GRRM, the author... George R. R. Martin. Oh, the genre is Fantasy, but it's not at all what I thought it would probably be like. I had read a Fantasy book before, called the Magician, I think it was 2 books in one, had a character called Puc I think. Anyway, it had magic and all that junk in there. But in Song, it's hard for me to truly characterize it as Fantasy, or at least pure Fantasy. It's more... hard core, grit... people die in this, people you wouldn't think would be killed, it really catches your attention and makes you think, "What the?!?!" And then there are the adult scenes which is nice since you know this was made for adults. Anyway, I can honestly say I haven't read anything that I've truly enjoyed reading as much as this series. I just wish the author wouldn't pussyfoot around so much and would just concentrate on finishing this series. Yeah, I'm selfish like that. :)

So, I read all 4 books and wanted more. So I did a little more research and decided to go ahead and try my hand at the "Wheel of Time" series, by Robert Jordan (pen name). My research basically told me that the first few books were good, but that the author seemed to be dragging out the series, and spent too much time describing things that didn't matter. Also, the author had a blood disease and was working to finish the series in the next book, even if the book turned out to be 2,000 pages. I figured, maybe by the time I read all 11 books, then the last book will be out or will out soon enough. Oh, I also read that one could skip books 7-10 and wouldn't miss anything (that's so wrong). So, what the heck, I'll give it a shot, and if it gets too boring I'll just find something else.

While reading the first book, there appeared to be somewhat odd similarities to what's found in Song. Not a direct stealing of ideas from Jordan, but you can tell some things aren't a far stretch. Anyway, if you read that first book then you HAVE to read the second, and then the third, and so on, in my opinion. Yes, I found another series I really liked. I got to the books that some people had said could be skipped, and they were entertaining, and flowed with the story, and if you skip them you're stupid. I got to the "Crossroads of Twilight" which has lots of reviews on Amazon, some of the funniest reviews ever are regarding this book, all putting it down in imaginative ways and rating it low. But, it's actually good. I think the real problem is that when you wait 2 years for a book to come out, you get your expectations too high. However, reading the series straight through eliminates the unreal expectation and the whole body of work flows very smoothly. But, unfortunately, I believe it was while I was reading Crossroads, that I found out Robert Jordan had succumbed to the rare blood disease. It was really weird, I opened up my excite.com homepage, was going to check my email and just happened to catch his name in the news section, and it said he had died. A whole world in conflict, good and evil colliding, Rand, Aes Sedai, the Chosen, the Aiel, Matt & Tuon, Perrin & Faile, Aviendha, Elayne, Min... so many interesting things going on, and the storyteller is gone.

Luckily Robert Jordan, knowing that there was a chance he wouldn't be able to finish writing the book, made sure a couple of people knew the conclusion he had in mind, and made notes, outlines, etc. so that someone could finish it for him. So, as I write this, some guy in Utah is writing that critical last book. There are a lot of people that have read the WoT series since it has spanned nearly two decades. Hopefully this guy won't make the same recurring grammatical errors that Jordan seemed to be fond of. I'm sorry, I can only take so many "had had" and the use of the wrong homonym. But writing fiction is really more about ideas and telling the story than getting perfect spelling and grammar. Anyway, I think the last WoT book is due out in 2009.

So, reading took up a lot of time for me in 2007, and I figured I wanted to do something different this year. I thought about what I deficiency I could improve on and enjoy in the process. Well, I definitely don't watch as many movies as most people, and people will talk about some well known movie... and there are movies that everyone seemingly has seen or should have seen by now. One example I guess is Schindler's List, never saw it. So I decided I'd work on movies this year, and got on with Netflix, 5 dvds at a time. So, since about February I think, I've been watching a lot of movies. I think I like reading more. But, I'm going to go through a bunch and then I'll either quit Netflix or reduce it to maybe 2 or 3 dvds at a time. I won't Blockbuster because they force movie makers to edit their movies to BB's standard. Don't believe me, watch A Clockwork Orange from BB, they cut out a lot. I had rented it since my cousin had never seen it, and I couldn't figure out why it seemed to stupid, then I realized that it had been chopped. Much like how Walmart won't sell CDs they deem vulgar, the maker/distributor simply edits the product to make it suitable for the retailer. Corporate morality... Thanks, but I'd rather see the movie as it was meant to be seen, I'm a grown up, I can handle it, jackass.

Ok, enough for now.