Psidefect.com

I ordered one of these today:

I rule!

Well, another summer come and gone. I’m looking forward to the cooler weather, but there is something undeniably lonely about the fall. I’m going to miss the long days. The darkness of winter here in Philly is really a drag.

I did have a great weekend down in Avalon with the family though. I didn’t do much, but that’s just the way I like it. It was nice to get out of town for a bit, but this Tuesday morning is giving any Monday I can think of a run for its money.

At least this will be a short week.

I totally want one of these.

I have no doubt it would gather as much clutter as every other horizontal surface in my apartment, but how fucking cool is that? It doesn’t really have the home defense cred that the Remington 870 enjoys, but it’s got style.

They really need to make a center console version for the car.

On Friday my company had its summer outing. We basically head up to a park at a lake around here and spend the day playing kickball, going out on paddle boats or canoes and generally having a good time. All in all it was a really cool event.

The problem is that I’m as dumb as a sack of slow-witted hammers.

I knew I was going into the canoe, I just failed to realize taking my phone and my keys out of my pocket would be a good idea. As one might expect, I ended up in the water (three times actually, but that’s not important right now). I didn’t lose anything, but obviously the water didn’t agree with the electronics in the phone and my car alarm remote. And that, dear reader, is where the next few days of my life acquired that special flavor of hell.

Without a phone or a car is not a good place to be. Especially if your cell is your only phone. The thing that becomes quickly apparent in this situation is that one needs one or both of these items to get anything done at all, including replacing phones and key remotes.

To make a long story shorter, I am extremely lucky that I had a friend around (one of the others in the canoe) who was kind enough to drive my ass around for the next couple days to help me get my life back in order. Returning to my car again (after trying the wet keys, letting the keys dry out then trying them, trying the keys after replacing the battery, etc.) with the backup keys that were at my house (a half hour away), I realized that nothing would work. I could get in the car, but I couldn’t turn off the alarm. It wouldn’t even shut off after trying to start the car with a valid key. I was fucked. I had to get my car towed to the local dealer who informed me that if they couldn’t get the alarm remote to marry up to the car it could run up to about a thousand dollars to fix this. Well, after spending fifty bucks to replace my phone, probably another hundred or so for the car I needed to rent, and an entire Saturday (and most of a Sunday) dealing with this crap, I was not looking forward to shelling out a grand on replacing my damn keys.

Fortunately this morning the dealer called and said they were able to get one of the remotes to connect. They asked if I wanted to get another one for a hundred bucks or so and I was happy to say yes. So hopefully this whole ordeal is nearing the end and things can go back to normal.

Ugh, stupidity is painful.

I’ve been thinking a lot about life recently and I’ve come back to a common conclusion for me: I don’t know what I want.

The Traveler’s Notebook has an article on 50 things to do before you die and it’s a good list, but I can’t help realize that I have no way of creating a list of what I want to do before I die. I look at other people’s lists with envy. At least they have a goal or some sort of direction. I just have a short list of things I want to avoid; things like stress, pain and anxiety. I can tell you exactly what I don’t want, but the creative, proactive side of that line of thinking escapes me.

Lists like the this are fun to think about because they always seem to have some nugget of adventure and interest. There are always things on it that look like they would be fun and worthwile, but they just aren’t my list. What would make me feel like I didn’t waste my life? Is it even possible to get to the end of one’s life and feel fulfilled or is that some storybook tale we tell ourselves to keep from staring into the abyss?

I just hope I can think of something before it’s too late.

Last weekend I went to my fifteen-year high school reunion. It was really cool to see some faces that I haven’t seen for a long time, but ultimately the whole thing made me feel old. I feel like I’ve been twenty-one for twelve years and everyone else went and became adults. Husbands, wives, adorable children, the whole works.

In three years, graduating from high school will have been the halfway point of my life and I feel like I don’t have all that much to show for it. I don’t necessarily feel unsuccessful; things could be a lot worse. I just feel like I haven’t gone after the things that I want out of life. I realize that not having any clue what I want has kept me from doing so, but that doesn’t really take the sting out of it.

Feh. I was happier before taking a close look at my life.