Bet it all
I just made a huge monetary investment in this idea that I have. I realize that huge is relative, but based on my income level it could be all of the money that I'll ever have. I don't know if it's going to work out or not, but after a lot of contemplation I decided that even if I lose everything and nothing comes of it, it's still better than not having taken the chance and never known if my idea would have panned out.
My brother used to have this song of inconsequential title that started with a sound clip that said, "The funny thing about regret is, it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done." Don't look up the context or it'll ruin the quote, but I still think it's true.
Black lies
I have an attribute which some people find quite distasteful about me. The nicest way this has been described is that I am "honest to a fault." (It's definitely been described in less-friendly terms.) A good friend of mine once said to me, "Don't tell me your opinion. You're too honest."
I don't like the "white lies" that people tell others because they'd rather tell a person something that will make them feel good than tell them the truth. I think that lying in any form is wrong, and even though it sometimes means telling people what they don't want to hear and what their other friends won't say to them, I haven't felt guilty about that.
Unfortunately, I recently realized that I haven't been as honest as I'd thought. I have no problem telling the truth to someone when it's something bad about them, but I have a much harder time telling someone what I really think or feel when it's something good. I hardly ever tell my friends how much I care about them or admire them; instead I pretend that I'm indifferent to such things. It's like if it's someone else's ego on the line, then I'm perfectly willing to be honest, but if it's my own ego on the line (maybe for embarrassment or fear of rejection or fear of commitment or whatever it is that prevents me from saying nice things to people that I care about), then I hide my real opinions.
I'm a much worse type of liar than all of the people that tell their "white lies," because I tell lies that keep me from telling someone how much I appreciate them. I'm a liar that protects my own feelings instead of those of others.
A Golden Winged Ship
Just when I'd thought that all of my hopes and dreams were ruined, and that I could never have what I wanted, everything changed.
Today I was talking with my therapist (my
physical therapist, not the other one), and I asked him if I could start using a cane instead of crutches. He laughed at me, but he did consent that it wouldn't hurt anything and that I could use a cane. I'm so excited. And you should be, too.
Hyper-sensitive
The other day I was chatting with Stefani (
her name be praised, this week) and Marissa dropped by. For some reason I suddenly felt like I needed a hug, so I asked Marissa for a hug. She was rightly skeptical, since I've probably never willingly given or received a hug before, and she thought I was playing some kind of trick on her. I got upset that she didn't trust me and banished her from my presence. (That makes me sound powerful and slightly evil.)
As soon as Marissa left, Stefani scolded me for being stupid, and told me to stop being so hyper-sensitive. (Sound familiar?)
So, I don't know what the heck is wrong with me lately, but that's just a single example that made me realize how imbalanced I am. I think I've been getting bothered by silly little things a lot lately, though. So, anyway, if I've recently freaked out on you (or if I do in the near future), I'm sorry for being stupid, and please be patient with me.
I'd like to blame it on the drugs, but maybe I'm just crabby and need a nap.
Being Stefani
This weekend Tyler stopped by for a few before his brother's wedding reception. Aaron was over, too, and we were just sitting around chatting, and then the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch several hours later, and they were both gone. I'd fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation.
This surgery and the corresponding drugs make my sleeping habits drastly different. I can't stay asleep because my leg always hurts, but I can't stay awake because the drugs make me drowsy. During my first class last week I kept falling asleep, and I couldn't help it. (When I woke up and asked the guy next to me what was going on, it seemed that no one that had been conscious understood anything either, so I don't feel too bad about it.)
The point is, of course, that now I know how Stefani feels.
Best laid plans
When I went to therapy the first time after my knee surgery, they told me that I could just walk normal and use the crutches to take some of the weight off, and that putting weight on my leg wasn't going to hurt anything. I saw that I could get around pretty well this way (except maybe on stairs, in which case you should go around me, because if you're following me up it might take a while).
So, then, I got this plan, that when I was comfortable walking on the crutches, that I'd switch to a single crutch, and when I could walk on that ok, then I would switch to a cane. I was pretty excited about that last step.
I went to the doctor this week for my follow up visit, and he told me something that ruined my plan to have a cane: he said that even if I could get around ok without the crutches, that I needed to stay on them until I could walk without a limp. Well, the problem with this is that the single crutch or the cane always give a limp (that is, if you're putting any weight on them at all). So basically, I can't use a cane until after I'm well enough that I don't need one at all.
Science yields mystery (A misleading title)
At the end of last semester Stefani started making "Top Ten" lists for everyone. They were basically just her ordered lists of who she thought each person should go for. I know these things are silly and pointless, but they're kind of exciting and fun, too, so I got caught up in it.
After I made my own ordered list, though, I used a lottery technique that I learned in my Artificial Intelligence class to give a utility to each person on the list. That's a nerdy way of saying that I tried to come up with how much I liked each girl. I did this by imagining that I was dating a certain girl on the list (girl A), and I would then think what odds I would need with the girl one position higher than her on my list (girl B) before I would break up with girl A in order to take a change with girl B. Those odds are then used to quantify how much one girl is preferred to another.
(Don't think that it's inappropriate for me to apply math in this way. It's definitely nerdy, but not objectifying. It's basically the same games as MASH and other silly things that we did when we were little, it's just that now that I'm a grown-up nerd I have more high-tech ways of playing the game.)
As I was doing this I realized that my ordering had been off (and this is really the point of the story). I got to one girl, and as I was thinking what it would take for me to give her up for a chance with another girl (who I had been actively pursuing at the time), I realized that if I were dating this first girl, I wouldn't give her up for any odds with any girl. The only reason that she'd been farther down my list was because I didn't (and don't) think that I had good odds with her at all. It's almost unimaginable for her to actually like me, and so I was unwilling to admit to myself how much I liked her. Is that normal? Healthy? And what do I do with those feelings now that I've discovered them? Do I keep suppressing them, or do I embrace it, even though it's bound to disappoint me?
All time worst
Flightplan just became my all time least favorite movie. I've never been so miserable sitting through a movie as this one, nor have I even seen such poorly-written characters that I actually wanted the bad guys to win because the good guy was so annoying.
To start off with, the movie didn't develop a plot until we'd been there for 3 hours. Instead it starts off with a really paranoid mom and her little girl. You think that they're going to explain what happened to them or what they're afraid of, but no. Instead they use some flashbacks to introduce the dad, and then the writer gets distracted and forgets that he had done that, so they never go anywhere.
I have to admit that the writer did convincingly portray what a crazy, delusional woman must be going through, as well as how hard that must be on those around her. I guess someone decided that wasn't a good enough story, though, so they switched it around right at the end and made her sane, even though it meant that the story no longer could be. I don't know how they expected us to care what happened to the lady's daughter after they spent the bulk of the movie convincing us that she didn't exist.
Add in the most inept air-marshall-turned-terrorist ever and some unapologetic racism, and you have the worst movie ever. Way to go,
Flightplan.
Better than Bionic
I always wanted to be like the $6 million man. Maybe for the super-human speed and strength, but maybe just for the noise that it makes when he jumps. When I hurt my knee, I'd hoped that I'd be able to have it replaced with a bionic knee: better, stronger, faster. I realize that such things probably don't exist in real life, but today I found a hope for something better: a Chuck Norris knee.
Today at my physical therapy they put me on the Total Gym, which every late-night TV watcher knows is the source of Chuck Norris's many powers. While to the average person, the Total Gym only offers a complete workout, but I figure that since my knee is in a newly reconstructed state -- like an embryo building itself up -- that my knee will be able to absorb more of the Chuck Norris's power from that Total Gym than a regular person would be able to. My Chuck Norris knee is inevitable.
Numb
Have you ever woken up after having slept on your arm wrong, and all the blood has rushed out of it, so that it's numb and just dangles there by your body and you can't move it? That's what my leg feels like right now.
I had a surgery on my knee today. Everything went fine, and I think I should probably be glad that I can't feel it right now, because it'll probably hurt when it's done being numb. When I was trying to hobble out of the car after the surgery, I was having a hard time holding the numb leg up. On one step I didn't have it high enough and my toe touched the ground while I was trying to step, so my leg wouldn't come forward. I was stuck and had to have my dad move my leg back around. It was kind of weird.
First Rejections of the New Year
Last night we went up to the First Night celebration in Salt Lake. Besides being the most poorly planned public event of the year, I think it serves as a place for desperate people to find a hook-up. Not that I'm against the idea, just that I think I'm a little bit discerning.
As we were leaving the place a girl stopped Loyd and me and asked us if we'd had our first kiss of the year. She wasn't a bad looking girl, but a little rounder than I usually go for. We looked at each other, not knowing what to say, and then I put my arm on Loyd's shoulder, and he says "I'd had mine."
The girl pretended that she thought that was cute and we walked away. That was my first time pretending to be gay to avoid a girl this year.
The Trax stop was crowded so we had to wait there for a while before getting on the train to go home. This girl across the street from us yelled "Happy New Year," and I of course responded by yelling it back. Unfortunately, this drew the beast's attention.
She yelled back that she knew me. I tried to ignore her and just kept being obnoxious to the passing cars, but she persisted, trying to think of where she would know me from. "Do you play bingo?" she yelled.
This of course, was too much, and I had to say that I did play bingo. This excited the creature, and it walked over to me, with a crooked walk and an uncanny ability to hold its belly out in front of its body. She said I went to high school with her, and asked how I'd been since then. I tried to be polite, but as soon as she was distracted for a moment I walked away as fast as I could.
That was my first time being chased by a bingo-playing monster this year.
We just walked a little further down the street to the far end of the Trax stop, and we walked past this old couple. I raised my hand to the man and said, "First high five of the new year!" He smiled and gave me a high five as I walked by. We then heard the old lady that he was with yelling at him that he had ruined her New Year's Eve. We couldn't understand everything that she was saying, so we weren't quite sure what she was so mad about. Based on her accent she was probably Romanian (because she reminded me of a gypsy), so maybe a high five is just a dirty thing in her country.
While she was fuming and not talking to him, she walked over by me. She kind of stood there next to me for a moment, trying to be sly, like she had snuck up and no one knew we were talking. I was scared. I thought she was going to yell at me for doing something so inappropriate with her husband. Instead she leaned over to me and said, "Take a picture of the old man. I'll tell you later." I was afraid to upset her craziness, so I obediently took a picture of him.
She'd stopped talking to me, so I never found out what heck, but I deleted the picture because I started to feel guilty for helping her persecute the poor guy.
That was my first time breaking up an old gypsy couple this year.
