Annoying People, Part Deux

I took last week off from the Annoying People post mainly because of forgetfulness.  My one and only loyal reader, Miss Marie ;), suggested bad drivers as my next topic but I'm not quite sure how much bandwidth eblogger.com has; that topic would be endless.

So I was having a hard time coming up with my next annoying person to talk about, since I've been spending my 2 weeks off from school with my ass planted on the couch.  I did make it out of the house on Wednesday to go see Tropic Thunder--f'n hilarious, BTW--and I found this week's annoying person in the theater.

No, it's not the people that text during a movie, although those mother f'ers are annoying.  Do they not realize how distracting the illuminated screen is?  Nor is it the people who wait for the exact moment that the movie starts to open their Twizzlers, Milk Duds and Raisinets, with the plastic wrappers crinkling and crackling loudly throughout the entire theater.  It's not even the people that talk during the movie, although I would like to slap the Jesus out of them.

Nope, this week's annoying person is the jackass who, despite the fact that it's the middle of the afternoon and the theater only has 12 people in it and TONS of empty seats EVERYWHERE, has to come and sit down RIGHT NEXT TO ME.  Ever heard of personal space jackass?  There are entire rows that are empty, is the chair two seats down from me that attractive?  I mean, I am aware that I ooze sexuality and coolness (sarcasm).  Who wouldn't want to sit next to me?  Sometimes I wish I could f@@k myself I'm so hot (more sarcasm), but good GOD, don't sit right next to me in a movie theater that is 95% empty.  Do you realize how creepy that is? Uber!

Of course, had it been a hot young female that sat next to me I wouldn't be bitching.  Problem was, it wasn't a young hottie, it was Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. 

This is one of society's unwritten rules.  Like when men go to a public bathroom and there is a wall of urinals with only one or two guys occupying any of them, you NEVER, EVER, EVER go to an empty urinal that is right next to another guy.  You put at least one empty urinal between yourself and the next guy.  If possible, you put the entire wall of empty urinals between you and the next guy.  We are never taught this in any class, it is just instinctual, appropriate social behavior.  Some people just don't get it.  Those are the people that probably spent their high school years either stuffed in their locker or pulling their underwear out of their ass.

Well, enough ranting for today.

Later-ELI3 

 

Excuse me, I just Wooted!

Does anyone here use woot.com?  It's a pretty cool website that I discovered thanks to someone over at Fried Chicken.  Basically, they sell one highly discounted item per day.  Once it is sold out, that's it, you have to wait til the next day for the next item.  I stop by and peek at their offerings daily but until Friday had never actually purchased anything.

I popped in Friday and they were offering a Reebok heart rate monitor/calorie counter for $19.99.  It just so happens I've been looking for one for quite a while but a decent one is hard to find for less than $80, especially one with the calorie counter as well.  I've looked into the Polar brand as well as Nike and Timex but never a Reebok so I'm unaware of how it stands up to the other more established heart rate monitor brands.

I've recently gotten back into spinning twice a week and am often curious to know how many calories I burn in a 45 minute spin class.  I know that on an elliptical machine I burn around 600 in 45 minutes but I don't get my heart rate nearly as high on the elliptical as I do in a spin class.  Now, once my item ships in 5 days and school starts again in 2 weeks, I can see how many I am burning.  God I hope it's about 900+.

Last year, spinning 3-4 times a week, as well as a healthier diet helped me lose 30 pounds in a relatively short period of time.  But once I moved I stopped going to the gym until about 3 months ago when I started using the school gym on the days I was on campus.  Problem was, on my own I don't really work hard enough so being on the elliptical doesn't really help if I don't do what is necessary to get the old ticker pumpin.  So I decided to start getting to campus earlier so I could take a 7:30 a.m. spin class prior to my classes starting.

By the time I get out of spin, my shirt and hair are completely drenched and I am gassed but man do the results start showing quickly.  After about 2 weeks of being back in spin my shorts are hanging a bit lower on my hips and I have more energy during the day. 

Even though school is out for 2 weeks I plan on going to a spin class on Tuesday so that I can go ahead and get my books before the lines get out of hand.  While I am there I may also attend the football team's last open scrimmage of the fall.

Woot doesn't offer things I am necessarily interested in on a daily basis but I'm sure there are people out there who have no use for a heart rate monitor either.  Mostly they offer computers and other household electronics.  They also have links to other auction style websites offering similar deals.  Yesterday I found a 16G USB/Flash drive for $34.99 on one of their partner sites. 

So the moral of this story is shopping at woot.com can help you lose 30lbs.  I'm not receiving anything for this post either, just trying to share the savings.

Have a happy Sunday-ELI3

 

Life Imitating Art

I'm sure at one point in our lives we've all seen some movie about time travel where the traveler is always warned not to change anything in the past for fear of some ripple effect that could change the world as we know it.  I sometimes find that to be true about the people we come across in our daily lives.  We have no idea how the impact one small conversation had with a stranger may change the course of our own lives.

Take school for instance.  Each semester I enroll in classes with countless other students, spend 16 weeks getting to know those students, listening to their experiences and possibly heeding their advice.  Then at the end of the semester we go our separate ways, most likely never to see each other again unless we cross each others paths on campus, at a football game or in a mall. But like one of those fantasy books that allows you to choose your path, my interactions with these people could be life altering.  

In Summer A I took Spanish II and became friends with a student named Alex who was raised in a Cuban speaking household.  Needless to say, he spoke spanish pretty well and was pretty much the lone reason I passed the class.  Now think about what could have happened if in a previous class another student had told me that I didn't want to take that professor for Spanish II.  I might have heeded their advice and not taken that class, not met Alex and then failed Spanish II.  Failing would in turn cause me to have to take it over again instead of taking another class where I may or may not have met the person that in the future would introduce me to an editor or publisher that would help me produce a bestseller. 

Over Summer B I've been taking a Creative Writing class and I've also met a couple of interesting people.  Now if there are actually students, especially the younger ones, in my class that think they can learn from my experiences, I'm happy to share them.  But not everything that I have done has turned out right, otherwise I wouldn't still be in college at the age of 36.  I hope that I would give advice that leads them to becoming Nobel Prize winners rather than strippers or cab drivers, but you never know. 

If the evening that I met my wife at the beach a friend had called me and asked me to go to a club or party instead of cruising the strip I might not be here today.  I was living a fairly self-destructive life until then. 

I guess the point of this is to point out how random life can be.  The smallest interactions and conversations could change the course of our lives for the better or maybe for the worse.

Choose wisely-ELI3

Back on Topic

I started this blog as kind of a school social experiment. It was going to be titled A Day in the Life of a 36-year old Married College Student but that was too wordy. But after a couple of days of posting I decided that I didn't want to only appeal to my fellow Golden Panthers. I mean, the best I could possibly hope for would be that 10% of the student body would read it, which would limit me to 3800-3900 readers. So I decided to spin off and just do more of a random, play it by ear style of blog. Granted, I am new to the blogging world and have yet to perfect the art of writing an interesting, grab the reader by the seat of the pants blog, if such a thing exists.
I spend plenty of time researching other blogs to find what works and what doesn't and as I've mentioned before, Working Girl (work-girl.blogspot.com) is the best thing going. She's topical, current, funny and interesting. The blogs that I absolutely hate are the photo blogs. Type something, PLEASE! Tell me what I am looking at. These people that just take pictures of their kids or vacation spots and post them on a blog without any narrative are just God awful boring, in my humble opinion (IMHO, the H could also stand for honest, honestly).
But Tuesdays and Thursdays are school days for me so I figure that those would be the best days to go back on topic. Once football season starts, Mondays will be reserved for my reviews of the weekend's action. Annoying People will continue to be a weekly feature and perhaps a beer review will pop up here and there. I've got a stat counter tracking the daily traffic and each day the number of people stopping by has increased a bit and so has the number of returning visitors so I guess a few of you might find my musings tolerable.
So without further adieu, today's school topic is......you just read it. See you tomorrow.

I Hate Mondays

I don't know what else to title today's blog.  This is my third try at starting a post today.  First I was going to review my weekend but since I thought my weekend was boring, why in the Hell would I think you would want to read about it.  Then I was going to write about what a lazy day I had today but once again, who wants to read about nothing.  

So now I'm just going to summarize all of it together.

Over the weekend we didn't wash the cars, didn't even talk about it.  Nor did we go for our walk on the beach.  The only thing on our weekend routine that we did do was go to the grocery store. 

We did try a new place for dinner on Saturday evening, Tree's Wings and Ribs (thanks for the suggestion Sean).  I thought the wings were OK but Tina really enjoyed the ribs.  I did think that the house dressing they made for dipping the wings in was awesome.  

The Amberjack Ale that I bought on Friday turned out to be an excellent beer.  I tried to contact the brewer to find out where else I might be able to find it but my mail was returned with a message saying that the address was no longer accepting mail.  I had a bad feeling when it was the last 12-pack in the fridge and there were no singles or six-packs anywhere else in the store.

I haven't yet decided what I will be drinking this weekend but I will let you know what I think of it next Monday.  I will probably go back to my usual, preferred Hefe-Weiss beers.  Those are my favorite beers as long as they are not American made.  I haven't found a decent American wheat beer yet.  Before you Blue Moon fans start barking, that beer sucks and so does Widmer.  If you want a good wheat beer try Tucher or UFO.  If you are lucky enough to find Julius Echter anywhere, definitely try that.  There are plenty of other good wheat beers and I'll name some more of them for you next week.

Sorry to hear about Murphy Miss Marie.  I have a cat too and he's like a child to me.  A really lazy, sleepy child.  I'm not sure a new pair of shoes could replace him though.  

Let me wrap this up by saying that I have a new poll up today asking your opinions of my weekly feature: Annoying People.  Please vote.

-ELI3

A New Weekly Feature: Annoying People!

In my ongoing effort to expand my reader base and increase the amount of feedback I am receiving--thank you to the 2 people who have left comments, you know who you are--I am going to try and start a new weekly column titled: Annoying People.

  As those of you reading continue to get to know me you'll come to learn one thing, I'm not much of a people person.  Maybe that's why I sit here on my couch using the internet to communicate rather than being out cavorting with real people.  But I do not think that you necessarily have to be a people person to still be annoyed by stupid people.

This week's annoyance; the lady in front of you at the checkout line that for some reason must empty everything out of her purse in order to pay for her groceries and then hold you up while she, rather than move out of the line, stands at the counter and rearranges everything as she puts it back into her purse.

Tina and I encountered one of these a few weeks ago at Target.  The funny thing was that Tina ended up having a spat with the cashier because of the woman in front of us.  You see, it was one of those trips T and I made where we only needed a couple of items so it didn't take very long for the cashier to ring our things up.  The problem was that I couldn't get to the little card swiper thing because the woman in front of us, and her cart, were still right there.  She had apparently needed to empty the contents of her purse completely in order to pay for her purchases and was now putting them back into her purse in painstakingly slow fashion.

This is when the cashier said to me (I'm paraphrasing here), "Sir, you need to move up to pay for your things." 

That didn't make Tina too happy and she snaps back something like, "Its kind of hard for him to do that with that lady still there."

Now the lady hears this and suddenly feels bad.  "Oh, I'm sorry." She says as she suddenly discovers how to put the stuff into her purse quickly and moves along.

Now the cashier starts apologizing to Tina, who is in no mood to hear it.  She thought the cashier should have been directing her comments to the slowpoke, not me.  I was pissed at the slowpoke for being so clueless and self involved.  So now everyone is pissed except for the lady who caused everything in the first place.  She just moved her self involved person right along.

Therein lies the problem.  We've become a self involved society.  Over at Working Girl's blog--one of the best blogs going, IMO--she had a post earlier in the week in which she questions whether chivalry is dead.  She makes some good points and in some cases I think she may be right.  But I do not think that every jerk that doesn't open a door or hold an elevator for a woman is unchivalrous.  What has happened is that all of the Blackberries, Bluetooth gadgets, Wifi hotspots and other tools that make us accessible 24/7, no matter where we are at, have over inflated our sense of self importance to the point that we make ourselves oblivious to our surroundings and the needs of others.  The result, in a nutshell, is the loss of common courtesy.

WOW!  What a diatribe.  I guess I am so self involved that I think that you guys have nothing to do other than peruse my ramblings.  I hope they were entertaining.

The Weekend is Here!

My first official "heading into the weekend" post.  Tina and I are fairly routine oriented.  As a matter of fact, we're almost neurotic (OK, I'm far worse than she is but I'm lumping her in with me; that's the price of marriage).   Saturdays consist of sleeping in late, getting our day started even later, catching an afternoon matinee movie followed by a trip to Target or the mall for some necessities or window shopping.  Then its home for dinner with the parents and an evening of television watching or card playing if my grandmother comes over.

Sunday is our exercise day.  For us, exercise consists of a 3-4 mile walk on the beach.  If we don't get up early--before 9--and make it to the beach, we try to go in the evening after it cools down.  Tina plans the menu for the week on Sunday; this is quite the operation.  She gets out all of her Cooking Light Annuals, her Everyday Food magazines and spreads them out on the couch and starts searching for stuff she hasn't made before.  She usually shows me the courtesy of asking for my suggestions but often turns them down for one reason or another.  Our weekly diet consists of fish twice, pork once, chicken once and a main course salad once.  BTW, have I mentioned that Tina enjoys cooking?  Weekends are kind of play it by ear as far as dinner is concerned.  We usually end up going out to eat on one of the days and I fire up the grill on another.  After she gets the menu planned and grocery list made its off to the grocery store, almost always right around 4 o'clock (routine, remember?).

So that brings us to this weekend.  We're not interested in the latest installment of The Mummy franchise so the movies are a no go this weekend which means that we'll probably talk about washing our cars and we might even do it.  A few Saturdays ago we made a spur of the moment trip to Jonathan Dickinson State Park where we rented a canoe and paddled our happy selves up the Loxahatchee River and back.  Maybe some seat of our pants adventure trip is in our future this weekend, too.  Eventually we would like to buy a couple of mountain bikes and find trails to ride on the weekends.  We're determined to become weekend warriors.

As a side note about me, I'm a bit of a beer snob when at home.  I try to find new beers all the time.  Total Wine & More has become my favorite store for alcohol shopping because they offer so many beers and they allow you to mix and match six packs.  Anyways, this weekend I believe that I will be trying Amberjack Ale which is brewed and bottled right here in West Palm Beach.  I'll let you guys--all 2 or 3 of you who are reading-- know what I think about it next week.

Have a good weekend--ELI3