wow, look at the new blogger--pretty swank. now i've got to re-learn a bunch of stuff. it's like having someone rearranging your bathroom--everythings still there, and the toilet hasn't moved, but who knows where the hell your toothbrush is.
i know, i've been slacking lately. but look at everyone else--madpony, jonny Q, orangenutts, the non, etc.--they're all slacking, so i don't feel as bad.
trooper update: the next medical/physical is scheduled. the long wait is nearing the end. just another month and i should know if i'm in or not. i'm not holding my breath--i'll be pleasantly surprised if i do get in. today's 1.5 mile practice run took 10:46:93--and that's 7 hundredths of a second faster than i need to match the 70th percentile--the time needed to graduate from the academy. pushups: 40 in 50 seconds; well under the minute limit. situps: 45 in one minute, 48 hundredths. 48!!! so close. soooo close. it's my goal to be at the graduation level before i get in (that's if i get in.) to enter the academy, among other things, you must run the mile and a half in 12:18, and 40 situps and 33 pushups in a minute each--child's play! barring any unforseen injuries, passing the physical exam will again be easy. but i want that 70th percentile now. it will happen soon. no injuries, no injuries...
it was in the plans to blog today, and here i am doing it, albeit a bit later than i hoped. i spent the afternoon in the grand metropolis of Freeville, NY, visiting with my friends becky and jason. we haven't hung out in a while and they've had a new house for about a year now and it's high time i went over to see it. when i rolled in the drive, jason ("ingram") had just crawled out of a silty, muddy hole in the back yard and was covered from head to toe with muck and crap. he had on his shitty clothes and he looked ten years older than usual. ahh, the pleasures of home ownership. look what it does to you.
i was immediately recruited to stand in the basement (or, i should say, hunch over in the low-overhead basement) to listen for and locate a drain hole as ingram shoved a drain snake in the pipe from, like, what seemed like 500 freaking feet away out in the back yard (in the silty mudhole.) no luck--i heard nothing but the electric hum of the water softener. apparently his basement gets really wet and the drain is possibly located under the furnace, but no one knows for sure. it was my guess that the drain has been filled in and the end of the snake was bonking up against a concrete wall somewhere. but who knows. only time, or perhaps dynamite, will tell.
after that project was abandoned, i got the grand tour of the place and i was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not the condemned hellhole ingram had described it as. we had a nice steak dinner and had a great time catching up and telling stories. all this talk made me want to move back to the area. yet another reason to come back to ithaca. plus, ingram is a pilot and gets to jet all over the country--maybe i could stow away if i was in the area more often. i'd be up for a trip somewhere--anywhere, i don't care.
on a side note, this was my second (free!) steak in a row--i got a free dinner with the boss and coworkers last night at delmonico's on erie blvd in syracuse. never been there before but i've wanted to go. that was a good time as well. hey, not too bad--two social events and two free steaks in as many nights. i've had neither in a while.
have you ever had a conversation with someone that you know you know but you just can't remember who the hell it is you're talking to? yes, you have. and i had one of those today. i was at wegmans, dressed in my crappy gym clothes (why are there always a million hot girls at wegmans when i'm dressed like white trash, but none when i'm in khakis and dress shirts??) so anyway.. i was at wegmans and i ran into a middle-aged woman, who looked entirely familiar, and we stopped to talk. she knew: 1. my name, 2. that i had recently changed jobs, and 3. knew enough about my family to ask how they were doing. this was 3 things more than i could remember about her. the whole time i was thinking "her name will come to me" but it didn't and we parted ways. I'd pulled off the act that i'd known who she was. as i walked away, i couldn't for the life of me remember who she was and my only guess was the dean of the ag school at cornell which made no sense at all cuz what the hell would she be doing at the wegmans in syracuse and how would she remember who i was from, like, 3-4 years ago? but that was all i had to go on. so, knowing that i would not be able to sleep at night not knowing the answer, i circled the store until i saw her again and asked her who the hell she was (i didn't say it like that, but yeah)--turns out she's my ex girlfriends aunt-- DOH! dumbass! i felt like a total dope but i made it look funny somehow and she didn't mind my stupidness, and we talked some more til i had to go.
i guess i had the "right" to forget who she was since i haven't seen her since... uhh... last year? i can't remember when. i had to call the ex and tell her about it before the story trickled down to her in maryland. it was a good excuse for the ex and i to catch up, and a good excuse for her to call & catch up with her aunt.
and it's 12:27 and that's a good excuse for me to go to bed. more exciting blarf later.
