i went out for a little bit to run and errand and eventually found myself at sportsmart. i wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but i found something that i have been looking for a long time now. it’s a pull up bar that you can install into your door frame. i remember a friend of mine had one when i was very young and we would play with it by hanging all sorts of things from it along the door frame. occassionally we tried to do pull ups too.

now, i haven’t done a pull up since middle school so it was interesting to see how many i could do, so i got the bar, installed it in my room and then tried. let’s just say that i’m a little surprised at how few i can do. =P i guess it’s time to practice it up. so sad.

today has been spent mostly working. it’s kind of sad, actually. i guess i’ve been doing a lot of work this weekend.
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it seems that i’ve been rather busy lately. so busy that i haven’t been able to really write anything. i guess i’ll just do a braindump and see how far that takes me.

this morning [url=http://jimmy.ocliw.com]jimmy[/url] called me up to go biking with him. greg, jimmy, and i set off to go biking and about 5 miles into it i started to feel really sick. i thought that i was going to vomit so i stopped at the chesbro reservoir and sat in the parking lot for a while. i told jimmy and greg to go ahead and go on without me while i rested and eventually headed back home. still, it was about a 10 mile trip in about an hour. par for the course, i guess. i wish i could have done the full ride though…kind of disappointed that i couldn’t.

i think that i may go biking tomorrow. not sure where just yet, but i do feel the need to go out and seek the open road. when i made my way back by myself all of the reasons why i liked biking started to come out. biking along and enjoying the surroundings around me while alone with my thoughts…it’s just quite a pleasant thing to be able to clear your mind and just let it wander.

and wander it did…

one of the big things on my mind was about dating. i guess it’s been on my mind a lot lately. not sure why, really. well, probably because i’m single, but mostly because i think that i’ve been surrounded by couples lately and the site of pairs seems to be omnipresent.

i thought that i had it all figured out. i thought that i knew exactly what kind of a woman i would want to date and how they would fit in with me. but i think that i’m starting to realize that it really isn’t a ton of things that i’m looking for. the only thing that i’m really looking for is someone who makes me smile…but not smile just because they are funny, but smile because of the things that they do. those things that they do will endear them to me…and it isn’t anything spectacular that they have to do, it’s just the little everyday sort of things that i find endearing and that make me smile. i’m not sure if that makes sense. perhaps it is better said that i’m looking for someone who makes me smitten with them.

but anyway, i’ve been obsessing about the laptop that i ordered on the 4th. i’ve been constantly checking the status of the order and finally they have shipped it. i think it is due to arrive at work on monday, so monday should be an exciting day for me. i think that i will be bringing my ram with me to install at work…oooh, i should remember to bring a screwdriver to work as well.

work has been pretty crazy and busy lately. lots of changes. i think that i’m just getting my head wrapped around it all and i’ve been trying to manage my stress level lately. usually don’t have to do that sort of thing, so it was a little odd.

i’ve been having a pretty erratic sleep schedule again too. pretty bad. i think that i need to keep myself on a better regular schedule so that my energy level stays a little more constant.

today was spent mostly resting, watching lord of the rings 3, and running a few errands.

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it’s been a while since i saw you. it’s been a while since i talked you… i mean, really talked to you…with no pretense…with no discomfort…just because we wanted to.

and it felt good.

maybe this is a sign of better things to come.

the laptop that i ordered over the weekend now has a ship date of the 13th which means it won’t arrive until the 16th-20th, they say. that’s so sad. what’s worse is that according to their web site, they’ve already finished building and testing it and all they have to do is box it. why does it take a week to put a laptop in a box? i just don’t get it.

sometimes knowing too much about something just makes it worse.

i guess that’s true about many of life’s dilemmas. when i was younger i used to be quite the advocate of ignorance. i figured that ignorance was bliss because you really couldn’t get upset at something you didn’t know about. but as the years have gone by, i think that it’s become more and more evident that i no longer believe that this is the case.

take love, for example. if ignorance is bliss, then having never loved someone would mean that you would never have felt the sheer agony that is love. one would think that this may be a good thing, but to have never known the depths of such love is criminal. i would never trade all of my past heartaches for never knowing what it means to love another…never.

i was talking with a friend last night and they had commented about how it must be nice to have the fortune of dating what they think is a lot of women. i told them that dating a lot of people isn’t really a good thing. though it may seem like a desirable thing, i would have traded all of my dating experience in a heartbeat to have found the right person to spend the rest of my life with…or to find out that i won’t find that person at all. either way, i think that i would be happy, though. but quantity is not an impressive thing, nor should it ever be thought so. if anything, i think it’s a little sad because it just means that all this time that i’ve dated, i’ve yet to be fortunate enough to have found that one person who i can call my own.

but yes, ignornance? i don’t think it’s such a good thing. you deprive yourself of too much, both good and bad. that’s what life is all about.

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how wise is it to be friends with an ex?

my personal take on this is that i think it really depends on how long you’ve been dating and how the break up went. the longer you’ve dated someone the further in extremes you reach. you can either never be friends again or you will always be friends forever. it’s hard to tell which way it’ll go, but i don’t think that there’ll be much middle ground.

there are some people who i’ve dated for a long time and i have absolutely no interest whatsoever in being friends with them. there’s just too much emotional scarring and it’s just a part of my life that i would rather forget. the thing is that regardless of how much i try to forget, i probably never will forget anybody i dated. part of that could be because of the psychological trauma that i went through, part of it is because they were valuable dating lessons. from every experience, i feel that i have learned something new. it helps shape what i am looking for and what i want. so it would behoove me to remember these experiences so that i know what i should avoid and look for in the future.

there are other people whose lives were so intertwined with mine that trying to unravel that seems like an almost impossible task. they have left their footprints on my soul and i have inexplicably affected my life. these are the people who i will most likely stay in touch with and hope to remain my friends. these are the people who i loved so intensely that the thought of them out of my life would feel like a void. a part of me would die if i knew that they were not in my life still.

do i think it’s a good idea to be friends with an ex? defintiely not immediately after the break up. both people need time to process their feelings and to get closure and to move on. the mark of being over someone is when you can see them dating someone else and being happy for them that they’ve found happiness. that’s the measure that i use to see if i am over someone or not. can i see them kissing someone else and not be bothered by that? can i be happy for them for that? because that’s about as bad as it’ll get and if you can deal with that, then you know you’re over it.

but still, the question remains…friends with an ex? i am friends with a couple of exes and friendly to a few more. there is a difference. to be friendly to one is sort of leaving them at an acquaintence level…being civil and all. but to be friends with them would require you to make the effort to talk to them…or to know that if you ever needed to talk to them that you could.

i guess the way i see it is that i would take things on a case by case basis and see what would happen. right now, there are few exes of mine that i am friends with…it’s a hard and painful process to start down that road of friendship once you’ve dated them, but in my experience it has been quite rewarding if you can get it to work out because these are the people who know you best. these are the people who understand you. these are the people who you would want to be your friends because they are the ones who are best equipped to help if you need their help.

when it comes to friends, i think that i have three levels of friendship status.

the first level is pretty easy to get into. it’s the acquaintence-level friendship. these are people who i may know by name, but not really know too much about. most people i meet generally tend to fall into this level of friendship pretty quickly if i get a good vibe from them. it’s the launching point to the other levels of friendship. because of the broad nature of this level, most people i know probably fall into this sphere of influence.

the second level is what i what start to consider as my good friends. these are people who i can depend on and who i go out of the way to be nice to. these are also probably my “everyday” friends…that is, these are the people who i probably talk to on an almost everyday basis. these are people who have the potential to be in the inner circle of friends who i hold very dear to my heart.

but the last level, the inner circle, is the most interesting group of friends that i have. these are the people who i trust implicitly. these are the people who i would do anything for and these are the people who i go to when i am in need. it’s a very small, select group of people who i feel i can trust. entry into this part of my life is heavily guarded.

i’m a pretty private person. when it comes to some of the more important things in my life, it becomes more difficult for me to share these things with people. it wasn’t always like this…no, i used to be quite a trusting person, confiding in others when i needed advice or help, but over the years i’ve been burned many times by people who i thought i could trust and this has forced me to reevaluate who i can trust.

trust comes in many forms. how one obtains this trust also can come in a variety of ways. some will gain my trust when they have trusted me. it seems a little unfair that other people would then have to expose themselves to gain my confidence, but that’s one sure fire way that i feel i can guarantee that this person is trustworthy.

some of the people who are in my inner circle were trusted after years of knowing them and as we got to know each other it became easy for me to trust them because i know the kind of person that they are and i know that they would never betray my trust.

others still fall into my inner circle because of some kind of history that we have. maybe we both went through some hard times together, maybe we dated and are still friends, maybe one of us was interested in the other and while we played the dating game and realized that we weren’t a good match we realized that we were great friends. who knows what the circumstances are, but they can all lead to having that bond of trust.

there are some people in my life who have bounced from level to level. some have gotten as far as the inner level only to fall down and out into obscurity. some have always stayed at the first level of friendship and will never really make it any further. someone told me once that i have unreasonably high expectations for my friends. it made me think about how true that statement is and whether or not i was expecting too much of my friends.

generally speaking, expectations can lead to dangerously bad situations, but i think that part of the responsibility of being in the inner circle of friends is that you respect the other person and you take them into consideration before you act in a manner that may affect them. for example, if i were to tell a friend about something i’ve been struggling with and it was something hard for me to talk about, i would expect them not to tell everyone else in the world because i may not be able to talk to other people about it. or perhaps i just needed to rant to other people about someone…and after ranting i feel better and it isn’t much of an issue anymore. it would then aggravate the situation if a friend tells the person who i was ranting about what i had said because i was already over it but now i have to relive the whole ugly situation.

so, yes, i do hold a high bar for those who i feel are my closest friends. i guess that’s the burden that they bear if they become that close to me. for me, i don’t feel that it is so much a burden as it is just a courtesy to just take the other person’s feelings into account. i mean, they’re a dear friend of mine, isn’t that just a given?

i had dinner at maggiano’s last night with [url=http://www.phamily.org]paul[/url], [url=http://leafee.ocliw.com]leeya[/url], and mia. we decided to have the family dinner there which affords you 2 appetizers, 2 salads, 2 pastas, 2 main courses, and 2 desserts for i think $23. AND on top of that, you can ask for seconds. mmmm, so good.

we ended up all full and then we took the remainder of the food and put it on our plates and asked for seconds. shortly thereafter, we asked for boxes to box the second helpings. so bad. but oh so good.

i was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we had gotten to the topic of dating an ex. for me, i don’t think that i would really entertain the idea of dating an ex. generally speaking i think that’s a bad idea because there was a reason why we broke up. in fact, i think that getting back together with someone you broke up with is a recipe for disaster because it’s already been proven that things couldn’t work out.

but…

what if so much time has passed that the two of you are two different people? does that change things? it made me wonder. i do believe that i am a very different person than i was 10 years ago. would i be interested in the same kind of person that i was interested in all those years ago?

one of the first girlfriends i dated had a very strong spirit…to say the least. she was very demanding, controlling, and overbearing, but back then i think i liked all of those things. i think that i was a lot less sure of myself and i sought to find the direction i needed in pretty much everything from that girlfriend.

nowadays i know for sure that i could never date someone like that. we would butt heads way too often and way too hard. this, generally, is a good thing, i think. i do enjoy being in a more balanced relationship where each person has a more equal footing in the relationship.

but what of other exes? what were the things that made us part ways? do those things still exist? have we changed so much that maybe things could work out?

it’s a dangerous and tricky situation to be in and i think that when one breaks up with someone else, it’s probably best not to try and open that door again. it’s a door that should be closed and sealed. too many potential problems can come up and there’s still that history that you had…some of that may just never go away.

time does have a nice way of coloring the past though. sometimes it gives you perspective, sometimes it gives you rose-colored glasses from which to look upon an ugly situation and have it look less ugly.

another friend of mine asked me if i would ever consider dating a certain ex of mine again if the opportunity came up. i told them that i don’t see it happening because even though a lot of the problems we had probably don’t exist now because i’m a different person, i still don’t think it could work out because of the history that we’ve had. it just gets too messy.

more recently i’ve come to realize that my mood can be largely affected by the people around me. it makes me wonder what that says about myself. sometimes i think that i may need to build a rougher exterior so that i’m not so easily affected by other people’s moods. it was something that i noticed recently that my mood changed drastically when i was around people who were generally down. someone actually asked me what was wrong with me because it seemed that my mood was so affected.

i guess i need to hang out with shiny happy people.

apparently the santa cruz boardwalk rolls back its prices on monday and tuesday nights to 65 cents for all of its rides, hot dogs, and sodas. pretty cool considering that the rides ordinarily cost something like $3.50 to ride. i have to say that the rides that we went on were alright. maybe i’ve been too spoiled with the likes of great america.

it was nice to be at the beach, though. it’s been too long since i last saw the ocean and it was nice to be able to gaze into it and let my thoughts wander for a while. i think that the beach has always been a reflective place for me.

the hot dogs that i had didn’t sit in my stomach very well though and i don’t know if i would really recommend them to anyone else. but aside from that it was good to get out there.

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