Why I don’t have Cable TeeVee

I got rid of cable because I had the realization that I never turn on my teevee unless I’m watching a DVD, and when I got my broadband they upsold me on a cable modem/digital teevee package that was costing me $120/month… and then Comcast wanted to raise the price. I declared “Last Straw” and called their CSRs, who were ready and waiting to assist me. They tried to tell me I was getting a $10/month discount on my broadband by having cable.

Hmmm… I can’t imagine being someone for whom that would be a tough choice: pay $55/month for broadband that I use all the time, or pay $135/month for broadband I use all the time and teevee I never use. I tried to imagine myself as that person. Couldn’t do it. They finally talked me into getting the absolute, bottom-dollar, basic Basic Cable: just the local stations and the public access channels, no converter box, no remote, for +$11.00/month, so I could still get the $10/month discount. I figure $1.00/month is worth it so I can watch The Simpsons (which is the only thing I watch, now that Buffy’s gone and Angel’s been cancelled).

Truth is, though, that after I disconnected the digital box, I haven’t even hooked the bare coax up to my ancient teevee, so there would be work involved if I ever wanted to actually watch something…

Short list

Haven’t been posting in a while. And there’s so much I could be posting:

  • Full review of Coachella, including all the acts I saw, some funny stories about the trip…
  • Intimate details of the women I’m dating/have dated (just kidding! Scared some of you out there, didn’t I?)
  • Review of any of a number of CDs I’ve bought in the last couple of months (Just saving myself from listing them all, ’cause it’s a lot)
  • Oh, damn, movie reviews, like “Kill Bill Vol. 2” or, um, that other one
  • I hate making lists. Why am I doing this?

Hang on, let me catch my breath… this list-making is exhausting. Feels like I’ve been doing this forever. How many is that? One… two… WTF? I’ve only done six freakin’ bullets? And one of them is blank, and another one is a complaint!

OK, this isn’t working for me. I’ve got to make an actual post. Stay tuned.

Commute

Ran to work today. Managed a 10-minute pace over the 5+ miles of the run. Not too bad. I’ve done better but for some reason I haven’t been feelin’ the run-love lately. Meh.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Been busy and stressed and stuffed.

Hello? *tap* *tap* Is this thing on?

What really happened

Wow, what a weird weekend. I managed to escape, though.

Remember back on 4/24 I posted an “awkward moment in dating?” About the girl who joked that she was stalking me? Go ahead, click the link, I’ll wait.

[Waiting]

We went out a couple of times, didn’t hit it off, and I thought that was that. Well, last week She showed up outside my work, which is weird, ’cause I move from building to building during the week at random. She asked me if I wanted to get some dinner, and as I started to answer, a van pulled up along the sidewalk right behind Her. The door opened, and She stepped back towards it, like she was expecting it, and I stepped forward out of curiosity, and, well, before I knew what hit me, I was falling forward into the van.

I must have blacked out for a bit. When I came to, I was in a windowless room (a basement, as it turns out, somewhere in the Coast Range). I was tied to a creaky old bed, and, well, naked… She was there, waiting for me to awaken… and… and…

…She did things to me that have never been done before.

Even though I was only there for about three days, the time seemed much longer than that. I’ll never be able to fully describe what happened to me in that time — words fail me when I try to remember. Images, sensations, all blur into each other. Colors have a scent and sounds taste like… like…

At some point, the combination of the oils and the flames must have loosened my bonds, but I had retained enough animal cunning not to reveal that fact to Her right away. My resistance must have been more than She expected, because it seemed to me that She had tired a bit too quickly after only three days, but this didn’t disappoint Her, no, it seemed to excite Her all the more… which chills me to my core thinking about it now. What more could She do to me that hadn’t already been done? I knew I had to make an escape.

It may have been moments later, it may have been hours, I’ll never be sure, but some time later I heard an electronic noise that cut through my delirium: an S.O.S. Her cell phone was getting a text message! I had heard that before on one of our dates. She seemed torn between continuing Her assault on me and responding to the text message, but though it was a close battle, in the end Her desire for attention was victorious over Her lust for taking me to my physical limits. I humbly believe that my resistance was also a factor; She was both ennervated by the struggle with me as well as feeling the need to, well, brag about me. I was the strongest victim She had yet encountered.

For some reason (vanity? embarassment?) She left the room to respond to the text message. The sound of Her high heels on the concrete steps filled my soul with mounting joy, quickly replaced by a rage and a cunning cold intellect that aided my escape. Once free of my bonds, I was able to locate another doorway out of the room that I was previously unable to see from my prone position. My strength returning, I scrambled up the stairs I found. The small vestibule I emerged in was filled with candles illuminating shelves of alien-shaped ceramic containers and glassware, all filled with horribly-colored substances, liquid, oils, powders. But I had no attention for the foul contents of the room, for on the other side of a pentagram on the floor came a freshening breeze from the door open to the night.
But She was there, between me and my freedom.

Her naked body shimmered in the night, dancing and chanting in a sacrificial rite. I bolted past her, nearly slipping on the ashes at my feet, shoving her aside in my haste to escape. She must have fallen against the shelves, stumbled into one of the candelabra, because the room behind me brightened as the flames ignited something flamable…

As my wounds and burns were salved by the night air, the house behind me was consumed by a cleansing fire.

Luckily, before I could succumb to exposure, the firefighters that arrived to douse the wicked flames found me, wrapped me in an itchy wool blanket, and began the process that eventually returned me to the comfort of my home in south east Portland. I am thankful to those heroic men and women for their aid, as I was not a civilized man after my ordeal. I am both haunted by and strengthened by the events of the past several days, perhaps a few more grey hairs on my head, but I retain a steely resolve in my eye as well.

Either that, or I’ve been busy all weekend and haven’t had a chance to update my blog. One or the other.

Adding stuff

Short post today. Live with it.

Added a bunch of filigree to the site. Added a Picture of the Week and a “Powered by Blogger” button over there to the right, added a hit counter and stuff over to the left. That stuff hasn’t migrated to the other pages, other than the Archive pages, yet. Still workin’ on it.

Added some pictures from an old trip to the Portland Underground to the Picture Gallery. These are tunnels underneath Old Town in Portland, OR that were used 150 years ago to quietly shanghai able-bodied men to work on ships leaving port. A fascinating time of Portland’s history. Now they take groups down there on tours.

Didn’t run today. Bleh. Didn’t feel like it.

Upcoming

I mentioned The Long Winters last week, part of my post-Coachella CD-buying spree. Remember? Sure you do. I checked their website and they’re playing Portland this month (Thursday 27 May) at The Aladdin Theater, opening for The Decemberists, about whom I have heard nothing.

Oh, and They Might Be Giants will be playing later this summer at The Bite of Oregon. That’ll be fun. (I only mention TMBG because I first saw The Long Winters when they opened for TMBG. My mind connects things like that, for some reason.)

Waterfront with friends

I ran the Waterfront last night with a couple of friends. I brought up the idea of doing two laps, which would be around 5 miles, and they were favorable. Then, during the run, they both sped off like they were being chased by lawyers. When I got to the second lap, I had to stop and walk a bit. I kept thinking of excuses why I didn’t do so well, especially considering that I’ve done that distance before, and recently; it’s 5 miles when I run to work, which I’ve done just last Friday. I thought that it was the weather (rainy and windy), my lack of food (had only taken in 1580 calories that day), lack of good food (ate a lot of junk that day and the day previous), time of day (I normally run in the morning), yadda yadda, blah, blah, blah… but in the end, I didn’t do too bad. I only finished about a minute behind my friend, who finished a minute and a half behind his girlfriend.

Then afterward we went and I pigged out on a Quiznos’ Black Angus Sandwich, and a mollasses cookie and soy chai from Starbucks’.

Tonight I’m going to the gym and doing anything except run.

Oh, and I feel heavier. I weighed in at 171.5 lbs today, but I feel all bloat-y or something. I can still feel the lump of food I ate yesterday in my stomach and parts south, working its way through my digestive system. I’ll feel better once it’s gone.

Site has a theme

I’ve added my Trophy Page but all I have are links to the results page for each race I’ve entered.

I’m going to add a picture and link to the gallery for that race, along with a table of my actual results.

Hmmm… I was thinking I want to add an “About Me” page, but on reflection, this entire site is “about me”, isn’t it? Again with the self-absorbed… this blogging thing is all about self-absorption, isn’t it?


Update: The section referring to my “Trophy Page” is no longer accurate. – 7 May 2009 BAM

Memories, old and new

I’m still uploading pictures to my Picture Gallery. I guess the next step is to modify the CSS to make it match the rest of my site. That will be fun. I’m in no hurry, though; the current layout doesn’t suck too much. Update: My pictures can be found at Flickr under my username “lunarobverse”. – 7 May 2009 BAM

It’s fun going through all my old pictures. Lotta old memories there. Call me self-absorbed, but it’s funny seeing how I looked a year or two ago, while my friends haven’t changed much at all.

I’m going to start listing my races and times on another page. I may include my weight, too. I’ll call it my “Trophy Page”.

This coming week I’m going to step up my mileage and add hills again. Monday and Tuesday I’m going to run the Waterfront; probably after work. I’m going to run one lap on one day, then two laps on the other day. Can’t say for sure which day will be the long one because I’m waiting to hear back from a friend on which day he wants to join me. Wednesday I plan on going to the gym for a workout but no running, then Thursday I’m going to tackle Terwilliger Blvd. again. Friday will be a rest day, then Saturday I’ll have a nice morning run and I’ll try to fit in a workout, too. Sunday, of course, another rest day.

Whoo-HOOO! Next week I get 2800 calories per day! I had to work at eating 2600 calories today, mostly because I was so distracted cleaning my apartment and working on my website. I think I’m still several hundred short for the day. But that’s OK. I feel full…

And my apartment hasn’t been this clean in a long time… it’s good to kick out the clutter once in a while.

Lake Run 5K Official Results

They’ve posted the official results for the Lake Run — that was fast!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t that fast, at least compared to my last race. I finished 176th overall, and 11th out of 18 in my group, with a final time of 29:37 and a pace of 9:32.

Gotta work on my hills, I guess. It might also have hurt me that I ran 5+ miles yesterday. And the train might have cost me more than I thought…

Those are all excuses, but, actually, I did well. I’m happy I went. The next race is going to be massively hillythe Mt. Tabor Challenge. Whoo-HOO! Bring it on! Looks like I’ll be hitting Terwilliger a lot in the coming month…