chakadrum.com

These Type of Things

I hesitate, in an effort to not be overly dramatic, but this is the kind of stuff I’ve been dreaming of doing. I’m thrilled that I’ve finally found someone to go do the fun things the world has to offer that really aren’t that much fun doing on your own.

On Thursday night Erin stopped by after frisbee practice and we drank beer and ate pizza for dinner.

On Friday neither of us had anything to do so we met up for Moroccan food and a nice bottle of shiraz at a BYO down the street from her house.

Saturday we met up with Danielle and one of her friends to go to the theater. We saw this fascinating comedy entitled Hysteria. It was bizarre tale about the end days of Sigmund Freud’s life. I highly recommend it. We then stopped by Monk’s for a drink. What a great night.

Whether it is simply coffee and conversation or a nice dinner, this thing feels very good and I can’t wait to see what is next.

I was trying to think up at least once sentence that won’t make people puke all over the place from this flowery language of butterflies and shooting stars but I’m at a loss. I can’t really think of anything funny or even sarcastic to write.

Last night she told me I’m a thoughtful person. I really appreciated hearing that.

3.4 Mile Race

I woke up at 7am this morning (a Saturday) so that I could go run a 5K in Camden, New Jersey. I know, what was I thinking. Well, I managed to convince Derrick and his lady friend Holly to join me so I wasn’t the only crazy person.

It was hot, humid and not the best course in the world in terms of organization, scenery and proper measuring. At the “1 mile marker” my watch read 9:29 and I was pretty sure my split would be a little over 7. I ended up finishing in approximately 25:59 and I knew something wasn’t quite right. The guy at the finish line half apologized for the fact that “the course was a little long today.” How can you run a race and screw something like that up. They later announced that it was around 3.4 miles.

With that said, my pace was around a 7:30 mile which seemed appropriate for the conditions. The highlight was Holly. She passed me around “mile 1″ and she was gone. She ended up being the 2nd female overall and first in her age group. I suppose I held my own as I got 2nd place in my age group. I must admit though that there were probably less than 100 people actually running and one of the motivating factors for this race choice was the small crowd and increase probability of finishing high in the rankings.

That’s how I do it: look for opportunities to make myself feel good about life. And I do feel very pleased with my life.

Now it is time to visit Capone’s for a little Kentucky Breakfast Stout!

Girlfriend

I’ve got a girlfriend and her name is Erin. She is pretty cool. She is very special and I’m lucky to have met her.

For those who know me fairly well, which happens to be most people that read this, I’ve been on a bit of a quest to try and meet a nice compatible female. It has been a long quest. The main motivation for this search has been that fact that I’m at the most exciting phase of my life to date and I feel like not having a female companion equals a lot of missed opportunities. I want to do fun things, explore the world and continue to make a name for myself and having someone equally interesting, adventurous and ambitious at my side would be a very nice thing.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how soon the conversation would happen, if at all, but I sort of wanted it to happen. I also didn’t want to be too forward or serious in the event that I wasn’t reading the situation correctly. I wish I could remember word for word how it went down, but it was subtle and appropriate.

Oh, and I told her I’ve been writing a blog since 2003.

Comment away.

John’s Bachelor Party

Saturday was spent around the Philadelphia area doing quite typical bachelor party activities. While I haven’t been to that many in my life, this was probably the tamest I’ve attended. Testosterone levels hardly peaked and I don’t really remember any grunting or chest bumping. I truly believe there are certain lines you shouldn’t cross at such an events and we were miles from said line. Despite keeping it really under control, I think everyone had a great time.

Public Post #1056

Yes, believe it or not this is the 1056th public blog entry I’ve written since December 2003. That is a lot of writing. One of these days I’m going to figure out how many words and pages it adds up to. I recently completed the migration of posts from http://chakadrum.blogspot.com (viewing now disabled) which added quite a few old ones.

I gave it a lot of thought, and I do believe Mama Troup’s suggestion that I think twice about this whole blog thing is a good idea. It is nearly impossible to remember everything I’ve written and there certainly are some risks to that. So, as of right now I’ve made almost every single post private and a great majority of them will remain that way for eternity (unless I leave the password in my will). I shall be going through each post one by one to figure out if it really belongs in the public domain. I’m sure the question of motivation is on everyone’s mind.

I did not remove them all because I’m afraid of what I’ve said and how it might impact the particular things going on in my life. I wrote what I wrote because at the time that is what I felt I needed to say. While I never really pushed the envelope in terms of writing way too personally (at least in my opinion), time has made some of my statements inappropriate in their own right. It definitely is not a matter of fear but rather a healthy dose of common sense and realizing too much information is not necessarily a positive tool. I told a very detailed stories about who I was/am and how I felt/feel and someday it might make more sense to share those details. However, right now I’d like to present myself by being myself and not second hand through stories I often wrote without proofreading or even thinking about the significance of my statements.

I plan to continue writing because it is definitely something I enjoy doing and I know that about 24% of the time someone enjoys reading this stuff.

As always, thanks for reading and sharing your comments.