after a few aborted attempts at tackling various serious and not-so-serious topics, today brings you a fine new blog post updating my life and hopefully providing me with a stepping stone for building further conversations about actually interesting things.

my last two weeks have been seventy kinds of busy, and here’s a handy rollup of maybe the last couple months of my life full of html code for your reading pleasure.

• scott and chris got their new boat and it is really fun to drive.
• andrew and susan got married and it was fantastic. i am so lucky to have such great friends.
• i’ve been biking and took 2nd at the greenlake race on friday.
• mel and sean graduated and showed off fine works at the portfolio show. i still feel like avoiding such get-togethers.
• after talking to martin at the show a bit, i’m now planning on going to greece with him and ross for two weeks sometime in mid-september or october.
• so of course i’ll need an ipod, 10gb 2nd generation so i can get the retardedly large 2100mah battery for it.
• i’ll also need a new bag to use as a european mens’ carryall
• since i was doing some shopping, i also picked up my first real printer, it can hang out in the living room hooked up to the airport express for wireless networked-from-anywhere printing.
• i needed the printer since i’m now the co-leader of a bible study with bethany community church and we needed a way to print out question sheets, etc. every week. this will be deserving a longer topic soon.
• i have a co-leader, she is neurotic but we’re cool with that. i am trying to get her to drop this south beach tomfoolery so we can have co-leader beers more often.
• i’ve also invented the ‘bod’ diet: beer-or-dessert. (as opposed to the ‘bad‘ diet). everyone who hasn’t seen me out on the boat thinks i’m skinny now.
• okay so some of that may be because i’ve started running and playing ultimate (and soon, hopefully, soccer.)
• not to have this be all about my toys, but i like my new shoes alot.
• i’m not going back to school this quarter, but i am teaching a weekly sql seminar for my colleagues here in the lab.

in addition to all that above, i’ve been having lunch with people and just trying to spend a summer intentionally hanging out with folks and making time for that, instead of one sitting around my house being mopey or dinking around on the computer. there is plenty of computer dinking to be done at work!

speaking of…

even though i use wordpress sometimes i feel like i ought to be using livejournal, given the mental state i am in whenever i make a post anymore. observe my typical twentysomething angst!

nonetheless, i just have to get this out there: how do you transition from being sad every time you have a happy memory of something lost to just remembering with joy that you ever had such good fortune? for once i would just like to be happy remembering the happy times and reminiscing and not simply feel an unfulfillable longing to be back in the ‘good old times‘.

i hope i figure that out soon.

friday addendum: looks like i won’t. i don’t know if i can handle feeling like this for the rest of my life.

i have been hanging out with alot of old friends lately. or rather, thinking about them and trying to do so. thus far i haven’t been all that successful on following through.

a couple weekends back i did make the effort to track down a high school friend i knew was still local and hang out with her. i don’t think we’d spoken in a year, and i’m not sure i’d seen her in five. it was fun to hang out and catch up on old times.

it sure can be awkward to hang out with girls though.

i think over the past year i’ve become really self-conscious about pulling what might be known in our small circle here as a “scott”. scott is one of my best friends, a brother in Christ and one of the coolest guys i know. he also is always getting himself into trouble with his friends that are girls. he’s nice, pays attention to them and – apparently – girls start to think of him romantically at which point the conflict occurs because it’s not mutual. i scoffed when i first heard about it because scott is not exactly ’smooth’ with the ladies, but i’ve been subject to enough half-drunken corroborating evidence that it is indeed a real phenomenon in our social circle.

i’m not suggesting that i felt like there was a huge possibility of that – the sixth grade crush notwithstanding – but i think the slim chance made me surprisingly worried. i can’t say i’ve ever been one who has been that concerned (perhaps aware is a better term) of the subtext that might be carried by my interactions. it’s not been that big of an issue for me. romantically speaking, i’d guess that i’ve only ever been actually-would-make-an-effort interested in a couple dozen different people. i’ve never been one for crush-of-the-week syndrome or playeritis. i’d never really considered the idea that other people might become interested in me.

a few people took the initiative to prove to me that my theory had a few glaring mistakes, and the end result is that i’m trying to figure out how you moderate interactions with people who you don’t want to think you are a huge jerk (despite the fact that you might be) but don’t want to think you’re interested in them romantically (because you’re… well, see below).

as i think about all this i wonder if i really know a damn thing about romantic relationships. the people i’ve been interested in? a few of them are good friends still, with others there is still awkwardness, and most have slipped out of my life. my interest in the latter was ultimately a fleeting thing, but at the time it seemed to be so vitally important. how does that even work?

perhaps i should just go back to my plan of becoming a monk.