"Halo 3" ... oh, man.

So I'm not so big on the regular "story" mode (it's OK so far, but it's a lot of shootshootshootshoot, get a new weapon, throw the grenades, shootshootshoot, throw more grenades), but The Swedish Kid and a couple of his friends play every day at about 4:30 ... and it's going to be the death of me. Today we played for almost 3 hours, through several "this is my last game" moments.

I'm going to way 400 pounds someday. I'm going to have to more than double my weight to do it, but games like this make it easier.

I'm bound to wash my back with a rag on a stick yet.

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"A and E" by Goldfrapp

There's a new Goldfrapp record due next month, and I'm looking forward to it with great anticipation, as her last album ("Supernature") was pretty much all my iPod played for six weeks after I bought it. The new single is "A and E", and though it's a different sound than I'm used to hearing (it's a really pretty pop song, but not nearly as electronic as "Ooh La La" or "Fly Me Away"), I'm starting to dig it. I'm not used to hearing little bits of acoustic guitar. Anyway, if you go to MySpace it's on my profile - or, you could go to her page and check out more of her stuff if you're not familiar with it - WHICH YOU SHOULD BE!

Trust me, for me to get this excited about music like this (compare the rest of my collection, you'll see what I mean), it means one of two things:

• She's great.

• I'm getting older and lamer.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, I suppose.

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Battling unemployment with a heavy dose of not spending money

I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do, employment-wise. We have one car, and "downtown" Morristown (within walking distance) appears to mostly consist of banks, spas (if I wanted a manicure (which I don't, for the record), I'd have plenty of choices), and restaurants. There is, however, a relatively large complex of sorts called "Headquarters Plaza", which is home to my gym, a Hyatt hotel, a 10-screen movie theater, a swanky looking bar called SM23 (perhaps this is where people go for fun?), and some offices in the upper levels of the building. I have to research what some of these companies might be, as they're probably my best bet in the short term.

If you were to walk through the lobby of the hotel, or enter through any other doors for that matter, you might be confused by the presence of security guards sprinkled throughout. I know I was. The first time I went in the building, I walked up, looked through the window, and saw a security booth. I figured, since I was looking for the gym, this had to have been the wrong entrance, so I kept walking until I found another entrance that seemed more likely to get me where I wanted to go. Anywho, I found the gym, which is less than a football field's length from the movie theaters, which is within stumbling distance of the bar mentioned above, and so on. All under one roof! I found a couple of security stations, near each set of elevators. Some of the folks going up the elevators had to show passes (or so it seemed) to the guards, so I figure the guards are there to keep rowdy drunkards and hotel guests from going upstairs and wandering about whichever businesses rent those floors, letting in only actual employees.

And since they all seemed relatively nicely dressed, with ties and such, this is where I'll look first.

I'm hoping there's something unusual up there, though, as my job in Portland was wonderful in that neckwear was not only unnecessary, it was usually jeered and made fun of. That, and my boss's orange sneakers.

The lack of a social life out here has taught me how to conserve funds, though, which is a good lesson for me. I've always been more of a grasshopper than an ant, if you recall the fable, but less and less so now ... I saved up a little cash before leaving PDX, but after buying some new stuff (a printer, a couch, a new TV, a GPS ... stuff I "need", ahem), the funds are dwindling. My dreams of working at home remain a possibility, however distant, but I'm starting to go a little stir crazy these days. On the plus side, I get a lot more sleep than I have in years, AND I get to listen to Howard almost in his entirety every morning. On the negative side, no income, no social interaction until Nicole comes home, no new friends ... And, despite how much I play, it turns out I suck at every single video game I own, and can barely manage to get past most levels (you name the game, this applies to all of them) unless I spend a couple of hours trying and re-trying.

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33 down, 66 to go.

I went back to Boston in late December (twice, actually) to visit family and friends, once for the holidays and once for a reunion concert at the Paradise. The five-plus hour drive (depending on how many pit stops needed on the way) gets easier and easier; it's the leaving that gets harder and harder.

When I was in Oregon, I missed my friends and family back east, certainly. But there was a specific and undeniable distance issue that made it "easier", in a way, to accept it. Now, knowing how much closer everyone is, and after having seen a bunch of people a couple of times in the past few months, it's weird - I'm almost more homesick now then I was in Oregon.

Not homesick. Homesick is the wrong word. I just miss being around my friends. ANY of my friends. My Boston friends, my Portland friends ... I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what it is that people do around here for fun. I've always been a "live in the city" kind of guy, and now, I'm most certainly in the suburbs. It kinda blows. And by "kinda", I mean "almost completely."

Anyway, I was given orders to start posting again. The general consensus was that even if I wasn't writing personal e-mail, people could always find out what I'd been up to by looking at the blog. Now, despite having ridiculous amounts of free time to myself, I haven't done it. I don't know why, other than to use a lack of interesting events in my life as an excuse (which is really lame, because I could start writing about politics at the very least, and piss people off who thought I was more moderate on some issues than I probably actually am - for the record, I'm a registered Independent (or will be, once I register here in New Jersey), but I lean WAAAY to the left on a lot of issues. Surprisingly, this is an issue for some people.).

In Boston, I could write about all the shows I went to. In Portland, I could write (or could have written, more appropriately) about Bryan's cookouts or about how much a foodie like me found PDX to be heavenly. Here in Jersey ... heh. Well, umm ... I watch a lot of Netflix movies. Hardly the stuff of intriguing content.

It does snow here, though. In fact, as I write this right now, I'm looking out the window directly to my right, watching a snow shower flutter down from the darkening skies above. Gentle flakes falling through the branches of the trees, starting to accumulate ever-so-much on the blacktop parking lot around the side of the building. A description poetic enough to make one pause and think, hey, how does the monkey on this blog keep firing so much without ever re-loading? See what I mean? Not terribly interesting.

I think the other reason I don't blog so much anymore is that, now that I'm married and have someone to do stuff with all the time (even if it's only playing Boggle or watching Homicide DVDs, I'm not as miserable as I was in Boston, when I blogged almost every day. It's a stereotype of sorts, but I do believe that many people find their creative muses out of their misery, which I don't seem to have any more (In Boston, young and single - no matter how many friends I would hang out with - equaled misery on a fairly regular basis for me. That's material for another post - check back in two months! Hah! That may not be a joke. I don't know yet.).

Yup. Getting older and getting boring. Hooray!

So the bottom line is, with the free time I have (for now, anyway), I really want to start writing again for my own sake, if for no other reason than to sharpen my writing skills a bit. I'm interested to see how this all turns out, if I can keep it up, as I was truly a different person back in the DiaryLand days. If misery used to be my muse (of sorts), what will be my compelling factor now? I'm far from the poor bastard I was capable of being in my late twenties, having found life to be a lot more fun than I sometimes gave it a chance to be.

I do think back to my time in college and tell myself I was far too serious, and that I missed out on a lot of great times. I think I did, at least. I still had lots of fun, and the folks I hung out with always were great friends, but there I don't think there are any former dorm-mates who, to this day, will start telling a story to their friends "I knew this guy named Jim once who did the craziest thing ..." There are no "naked Jim" stories. There are no "Jim drank so much ..." stories. (Actually, there might be one or two of those, but even then, it would be qualified by adding "... well, by his standards ..." to the description.)

I wish I had a "craziest thing". Maybe I'm just storing up for something that hasn't happened yet.

But whatever. I do feel incredibly grateful that I've been around 33 years without any major earthshaking regrets of things that should and could have been avoided. Never been arrested. Never done drugs. Nobody's actively plotting my assassination (as far as I know). So the first third of my life is over, and I think I'm doing OK so far.

Now, to blog about the next third. Wish me well!

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