Crazy.

Hey all. It’s about 3:30am right now and I am still awake. Why, you ask?  I’m goin to the beach in a few hours, AND I got a crackbe…  er, blackberry.  But it’s mostly the beach keeping me up.

So I fell asleep pretty much right after I wrote that sentence. It is now six fortyfive am and I’m in the back seat on the way to the Outer Banks. My sister has some odd country on the stereo and my “noise-cancelling” earbuds are not pumping out “Virginia Coalition” loudly enough, or securely enough I guess.

This blackberry thing. I kinda like it. It took me a few minutes to adapt to the size of the keys, but once I got used to it I was fine. I haven’t really had any problems since, have just been flying across the keyboard. The web browser, while sparse in the features department, gets the job done. The media player, another place that RIM (the creators of the Blackberry line of products) took a minimalist approach, could also use some attention. It does get the job done, nonetheless. Earpiece and speakerphone quality are actually two places that the unit exceeded my expectations. Word on the street is that with the new BB operating system, which comes out soonish, both the browser and media player, among other things, get some much needed attention. :-)

This year, my sister has decided to document our trip to NC. She has taken maybe five photos so far, and I am pretty sure she has missed her mark on the majority of her shots. At one point she took a random picture (with the flash on) and my mom asked her what it was of, thinking Anne had seen something neither of us had. Turns out she hadn’t: her response was an over-excited “TREES!”. I sometimes wonder about that twin of mine…

The presence of a camera this early in the trip gets me somewhat excited. If any of you remember my trip last year, you will remember that I returned home with some pretty sweet photographs. I did some research on the area we visit each year and read about some pretty cool-sounding places that aren’t too far away. Only real question is will I really want to sacrifice a day on the beach to go shoot some photographs? Guess that will just have to depend on how badly I burn this year.

In my diabetic life, nothing has really happened. I am due for an A1c drawing, but just haven’t been able to fit it in anywhere. Now that I’m done working the Villanova summer music program and will be home for a few weeks, though, I should be good to go. I did have an incident on Thursday that might be good to note. I had a thigh site on, a rare occurrence these days. Turns out my thigh sucks. The insulin wasn’t getting absorbed after day two, and I ended up around five eighty while I was at work. Woof. Needless to say, that was fixed. And then I somehow ended up going low a few hours later. It sure is nice to be on a see-saw again. :-p

Well my thumbs are actually getting a little tired, so I’m going to read for a bit. Maybe pass out for a bit in the process. Take it easy ya’ll, cause life’s just too short.

_Tom.

PS: My mother sometimes drives like a crazy person. And my twin is tone-deaf. I guess my mom’s driving is simply because she is following my dad, who is driving pretty erratically. As usual. But that doesn’t change the fact that Twin can’t sing. Shame.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind.

This past weekend was a great weekend.  My numbers were, well.  They were numbers at least.  I held my own.  I discovered that getting out of Villanova for a while and just relaxing is the best.  Nova reminds me of school (duh) and makes me miss the people that aren’t here for the summer.  It often makes things go down the drain, and makes me act like I’m six.  Getting out of here, however… out of sight, out of mind.  Sure, I missed people.  But I missed the right people.  I missed the people that don’t make me hate night time.  I missed the people that make me smile and don’t cause me grief.

I bought an Xbox 360 the other day.  Purchased two games with it, one roleplaying game (Lost Odyssey) and one semi-tactical shooter (Gears of War).  After Gears flat out did not work in my machine, I returned it and bought a legit tactical shooter (Rainbow Six: Vegas 2).  I went home Thursday night after work, and walked into a house of chaos.  My family from Texas visited for the fourth, and of course the kids came along too.  Let’s just say that having a five year old, a six year old, and a fifteen year old added into the mix was pretty interesting.  The Xbox kept the kids entertained for the most part, but the pool surely helped too.  Ended up starting the campaign in RS:V2 on Thursday night and completing it on Sunday afternoon.  It was somewhat difficult to find time to play since it is rated mature due to language (not to mention the fact that you do a lot of killing people….).  We tried to shield the youngins as much as possible, and ended up renting an offroad racing game to play while they were present in the room.  Turns out that I flatout suck at dirt bike games.

Had the best wine I’ve had in ages (hahaha ages….  let’s say a while, at least) on Thursday night as well.  Homemade wine is definitely the way to go.  It was Raspberry, which would normally turn me off, but this stuff was pretty good.  The alcohol content was absurdly high, so it was more like taking a flavored shot (drinking out of dixie cups — classy.)  No one else that was there really liked it, my sister couldn’t even stand the smell of it (which is very good, since she was the dd and I wouldn’t have wanted to make her miss out on something she wanted).  The night was going well until I thought it was a good idea to start sending texts to a certain someone…  and then the night got pretty quiet.  After that, though, it was completely out of sight and mind.  Which made for an awesome night.  =P

The actual fourth was spent wishing the rain would stop, and then sitting in the chilly pool making sure no children drowned, and then making sure no children ended up getting beaten to death by their brother.  Can you say aggressive?  Never seen a kid who takes a swing that fast and then thinks he did nothing wrong.  Excuse me, no.  If I can lift you out of the pool with one hand, you better not be throwing punches at me.  It doesn’t take much more effort to throw you over the fence and forget about you for a while. ;-p  The food was great, fireworks were loud, unsure if they were cool lookin; never made it there.  Saturday was pretty chill though.  Hung out with a friend, midnight swim, watched a movie, really fun night.  All in all, the weekend away from Nova was the best I’ve had in a really long time.

Anyways.  I’m reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes right now.  The further I read, the more I want to go to Europe and simply enjoy life.  Everything here seems so ‘do this, do that, do this faster, make this bigger, play that louder, get more of that’.  The concept of just relaxing and enjoying life seems to foreign to me, and I can’t figure out why.  I’m not stressed (much), I’m not really worried about much of anything (anymore, short of grades and graduation and pleasing others, I guess), so I don’t get why it seems like such a crazy idea to just slow down and enjoy it all.  The thought of sitting on a balcony in the German countryside, particularly, enjoying some fine locally brewed German beer in the evening…  it seems like such a dream.  But ah… it’s such a good dream. haha  Expensive, but… mmm.

Alright, I have work at 7.30 tomorrow morning. Time for some bedtime reading.  Be safe.

Peace,
Tom.

Dear Reader, I’m Fighting Myself.

So I was sitting here tonight thinking. Not really about anything in particular… I’m just kinda burnt out from the week already. But anyways, I grabbed a copy of the Tao Te Ching off of my bookshelf and flipped to a random page. I turned to chapter 68. The first stanza of the chapter is as follows:

” The best warrior is never aggressive.
The best fighter is never angry.
The best tactician does not engage the enemy.
The best utilizer of people’s talents places himself below them. “

[ Tao Te Ching, translated by Charles Muller ]
[ published by Barnes & Nobles Classics ]

After reading these few lines, I sort of returned to sitting and thinking… digesting what these words were saying. The way I interpret this is that the best tactic in life is to let things come to you. “The best warrior is never aggressive”, if one is always on defense, there is no pressure to make anything happen. You deal with things as they occur, and prepare for the inevitable. “The best fighter is never angry”, one must remain cool-headed. As soon as anger sets in, you get sloppy. You interpret things wrong. You screw up. “The best tactician does not engage the enemy”, I interpret this similarly to the first line. A good tactician will never enter an open field, but will always hold the advantage of the high ground and wait for the enemy to approach. By not engaging, I’m going to assume that one should never actively engage in conflict, but simply wear the opponent out passively. Yup, that one’s foggy… The last line, “The best utilizer of people’s talents places himself below them”, to me at least, means that in order to best manage people in a group setting, you must first be humble and not look down on your peers or subordinates. By simply using the term ’subordinate’, that last line is contradicted. I just didn’t know what else to call them.

I feel that I should strive to live in this way. I have never really been one to “go with the flow”, really… no matter how many times I agree that it’s the best path, or how many times I tell others to “just roll with it”. I pretty much suck at rolling. I have lately had the mindset that if I don’t make something happen, it will never happen.

When I was home last weekend, my mom said something to me. CSI was on, so I’m not positive on the wording, but it was pretty much how I’m never happy with what I have, and am always trying to get more of something or trying to get something new. My current want is a Blackberry, which requires funding for both the handheld unit and the data and airtime plans. This is one of those new and shiny things that I want. A new tattoo is another. More hours for work is a third, even though there is a softly-defined maximum of 40 hours a week with no paid overtime. I’m not sure whether to call this greed, boredom, or something else. But she definitely has a point. I have never truly been happy with what I have. I have always wanted something more.

At some points in life this is a good thing. At work, I do my job. I do it right, and I do it in a timely manner. I have been told on multiple occasions this week that I (and a co-worker that has the same mindset in regards to the job) are on the ball, and are much more efficient than last year’s crew. I forget if I filled the world in on my job. I’m one of 12 people working for Villanova’s Summer Music program. I’m in charge of all of the A/V stuff, but also do whatever else needs done throughout the day and week. Turns out, I’m on the ball. That fits into the “always striving for more” category though. I’m always striving to be smarter at work and to utilize my time more efficiently.

But at the same time, always wanting more is a negative. I budget money out before I have it. I try to force things before anyone involved is ready for them to happen. I get stupid and try to put round pegs into square holes, and then are too frustrated to realize why things aren’t working. And while all that is going on, my patience runs thin for all of the wrong reasons, and I get sloppy. “The best warrior is never aggressive” fits in well here, as does “The best fighter is never angry”. Both of those statements are being directly contradicted here, and in doing so, the situations get exponentially worse as time progresses. All because I am a bad tactician and have engaged in things.

Now if only I could subscribe to those words and ideas. Imagine how much simpler things might be in my head. It’s funny, because half the time the person the warrior is aggressive to, the person the fighter is angry at, and the person the tactician has engaged… is all myself. Half of the time I’m engaging myself in an intricate tug of war, and in that particular situation, I always lose. Some tactician I am, eh?

Looks like I’m off to the war room to have a chat with my troops and battle planners.

.

.

Thanks for listening,
Tom. =)

The Curse of Big Eyes.

So it seems that when my doctor told me way back when to bolus before I ate, she had never suffered from the eyes bigger than your stomach problem. I had dinner tonight and got set myself up with some desert… it was a somewhat rough day…. so I crunched my numbers, and bolused. I got dinner down. I was feeling a little full, but knew I had some time before all the insulin was processed, and that the food I ate would metabolize quicker than the insulin. So basically I had time before my numbers plateaued and then started to drop into a low. During this time, the feeling of being full did not subside, and to add to my problems, I began to feel a bit nauseous.

So here I am, sitting here with this crazy carbo-binge desert (45g of carb total…. it was a rough day. gimme a break). I’ve got 12ish units of insulin in my side… my numbers are dropping…. and I have absolutely no desire in the world to eat this desert. None. I opened the packaging, the smell of it hit my nostrils and I sorta did a “ew get that smell outta my nose” maneuver. I tried to just shove it down my throat… that failed horribly and I just ended up breaking it into a couple of large, messy pieces on my desk.

I hate it when this happens. I never know what to do. There’s no way to hit “undo” and have that insulin pop back into my pump. There’s no way to pop a 45g sugar pill. It all involves eating something… and there simply isn’t room, nor is there the desire, for that food to enter my body.

It’s kinda funny…. this happens 90% of the times that I pre-bolus for a meal. You’d think I’d have learned by now. Guess I’m just a silly little kid at heart. I don’t seem to be learning from my mistakes.

Well… I guess I’m just gonna have to suck it up and eat it. That is, I believe, one of the most horrible things to ever say. “Guess I’ll just have to eat it…”

Whatever,
Tom.

EDIT: Me going low changed everything. That desert got wrecked. It’s now in the vicinity of my stomach, and my sugar is in the vicinity of 100. All is well.

Medical IDs.

A medical ID is something that I am often taking for granted.  I always hate looking at my wrist and seeing the ID hanging there (never could get it to fit right…) or feeling the chain around my neck.  While the necklace ID is much more comfortable for me, I often wonder “Will a paramedic think to check if the pendant on this chain is a medical ID, or will s/he simply think ‘Oh, a necklace.  Probably has Jesus on it or something.’”  At one point in time, I had misplaced the pendant ID, so I was forced to wear the bracelet.  More often than not I would choose to go sans ID, and wouldn’t really think twice about it.

Nothing has happened yet that really warranted the need to wear ID 24/7, but think about it.  You have a freak low in the middle of the grocery store.  Unless someone has a good eye and knows the symptoms of hypoglycemia, what are the chances they would handle the situation correctly?  The ID at least gives them the information that you’re a diabetic.  They’ll probably think sugar, and then grab some and forcefeed it to you.  Or they’ll at least be able to tell paramedics “Hey, diabetic passed out on the floor… bring sugar.”  That is why we wear the ID.  Not to tell the world “Hey, I’m diabetic!”, but to tell that one or two people that are working to save your life “Hey.  I’m diabetic.”

There are tons of online stores out there at which to buy some pretty nice IDs.  Last night I got an e-mail from Austin Cooper, the founder of EvasionID, about his ID line.  I remember seeing these a while back and thinking “Hey, that’s pretty slick.”  Austin was diagnosed as a type1 at age 15, and when he looked for an ID he liked, he was bum outta luck.  So what’d he do?  He made his own.  He set up a website.  Now he is sharing his creation with all who care to shell out the cash for one ($19 or $24, depending on thickness).  The IDs themselves are actually pretty sweet:  leather bands with a metal plate fastened to it with the medical symbol on it.  “Type 1 Diabetes” is imprinted on the inside of the band.  While I feel that the “Type 1 Diabetes” should be a little more accessible (looks like the EMT would have to take the entire bracelet off instead of just flipping over the plate), it will still do its job.  This bracelet will say “Hey.  I’m fashion conscious, and I’m a type 1.”  So for those of you who are looking into getting an ID, whether it be your first or your fiftieth, head over to EvasionID.com and check these out.

For those of you that don’t like the look of these leather bracelets, there are more traditional IDs offered at American Medical ID, where I bought both of my current medical IDs.  They’ve got a few choices in the way of style for both bracelet plates and pendants, each offered in 5 different metal choices (ranging from 10k gold to stainless steel).   In addition to the more adult IDs, they offer a line of kid’s IDs that utilize sports bands instead of chains.  All I’ve gotta say about the kid’s line is that, while there are only two plate options… they look pretty ballin to me.  If I had been diagnosed as a kid, I probably would have wanted one of these.  Especially the red and navy blue sportsband.  Makes me think of power rangers for some reason.  But then again, I doubt these were offered back then.  So no power rangers for me.         …unless I buy it now.

But seriously.  Everyone should have a medical ID.  I pray that I will never need mine to save my life, but hey.  It’s kind of like Pascal said about God.  “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”  In this context, this is saying “If you need medical ID and you have one, you’re fine.  If you don’t ever need medical ID and you have one, you’re still fine.”  Think of the other side to the coin.  If you need an ID and you don’t have one…  well that’ll be a sticky situation.  Another way to think about it is that medical IDs run on the same concept as a condom.  Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.  =P.

So if you’re out there reading this and don’t have a medical ID, please head to either of the links I have provided, or do a google search, or call your doctor.  Just… get an ID.  If not for yourself, then do it for me.  If it’s a financial issue, your endo can probably hook you up with a free ID.  I’m not positive on this, but I think I remember getting a pamphlet about a free medical ID when I was diagnosed.  All I have to say is, please get yourself a medical ID of some sort.  [Writing your info on your hand with a sharpie does not count.]

Peace,
Tom.

Another new look. Not a fan.

So as you noticed if you read my last post, or can now see, there is a new look to the site. This is the second change in recent weeks, as I didn’t like seeing all the things I had fixed in the old theme… looking ugly again.

I re-designed my header image to try to keep that theme… but in the end I flat out didn’t like it. So I ripped my old header image off the site, and put in a new theme. So here we are. Once I can scrape together some cash to pay for the custom CSS ability here on wordpress.com, I’ll probably change back to my old theme. The one that I really liked. Well, this is here to stay for now, and I can’t change anything other than my header image and very basic layout options. So. Hope you like it, and enjoy.

I’ve been working on a post in my head for the past two days while I’ve been at work. It has to do with the concept of old souls, rebirth, art forms, and in a more broad respect religion. It just seems that once I’m done with work (and class after that on Tuesdays and Thursdays [I assume it'll be the same on Thursdays as it was on Tuesday]), I am too tired to form those thoughts into well-formed sentences. Occasionally I can form a sentence, but then I am hit with another, more daunting task: putting the sentences in the correct order so it tells a story. Maybe this weekend I will have the mental power to get it down in ink or pixels.

Until then, just keep smiling. =)
Tom.

Risk.

When you enter the word ‘risk’ into an online dictionary, I chose the one used by dictionary.com, you receive a number of responses:

Risk:

-noun

1. exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance: It’s not worth the risk.
2. insurance
   a. the hazard or chance of loss.
   b. the degree of probability of such loss.
   c. the amount that the insurance company may lose.
   d. a person or thing with reference to the hazard involved in insuring him, her, or it.
   e. the type of loss, as life, fire, marine disaster, or earthquake, against which an insurance policy
   is drawn.

   - verb (used with object)

3. to expose to the chance of injury or loss; hazard: to risk one’s life.
4. to venture upon; take or run the chance of: to risk a fall in climbing; to risk a war.

   - idioms

5. at risk,
   a. in a dangerous situation or status; in jeopardy: families at risk in the area of the weakened dam.
   b. under financial or legal obligation; held responsible: Are individual investors at risk for the debt
   part of the real estate venture?
6. take or run a risk, to expose oneself to the chance of injury or loss; put oneself in danger; hazard; venture.

When you look at that, it’s pretty straight forward. A risk, is… well it’s the chance of exposing oneself to the chance of injury or loss. It’s right up there. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, then why are there entire fields in the professional world dedicated to measuring risk? Why is risk such a scary thing? Well, because of that chance of injury or loss.

I took a risk the other day, one that I had weighed out, had measured and walked through in my mind. All of the scenarios that could come of it, all of the possible outcomes. I thought I was prepared for anything that could be thrown back at me, but low and behold: I took a risk, and I was exposed to that chance of injury and loss. And I was both injured (emotionally), and lost a part of something that I truly enjoyed. I have since slapped a band-aid on the wound, built a bridge, and gotten over it. But for a day or two, it sorta sucked. You think you are ready for something, but as soon as you walk through that door expecting a nice fastball, you get thrown a curveball.

Then I got to thinking about more general risk. Every day, we take a risk. While some are more harmless than others, human existence is all about taking risks. Louisa May Alcott, the American novelist who authored Little Women, once said “I’m not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship” (Lessons from Mom : A Tribute to Loving Wisdom (1996) by Joan Aho Ryan, p. 69). That is what people do. They don’t fear the possibility of a storm, they know they must learn how to sail their ship, and they just do it. Crossing the street: you look both ways (hopefully), but you still take that step and accept the fact that at any point during that crossing you could be struck by a vehicle. Hopefully you weigh out that risk well enough to not get hit, but yea.

We, as diabetics, face many risks in our daily lives. Over-bolusing and going low, under-bolusing and going high, …forgetting to bolus…. cough cough…. for pumpers (mainly), everyday basal rates, exercise basal rates, sick day basal rates…. all of these add more risks to our days. Not to mention the risks that none of us want to think about: neuropathy, retinopathy, ED (ay yiy yiy that scares me), kidney problems, gastroparesis, foot problems… and that’s just to name the big ones. Those risks, while they are preventable given care is taken, are real, everyday risks. What we do today affects our lives down the road.

WordPress is currently doing updates. My post keeps getting erased. I am NOT A FAN.

So now that I’ve had my post deleted twice (and only having saved half through copy+paste), I’m writing in word. And I have since lost the drive behind this post. This happens far too much.

My basic message: Life is about risks. Take them. Don’t be afraid to get burned. Only through failure does one truly learn. And after the first, failure should not be an option. Life is about experimentation and learning. If you don’t take a risk every once in a while, you’ll be that creepy cat lady on the 13^th floor that no one wants to help with her groceries. Don’t be that lady, people. =)

Tom.

Addendum: It’s 2.50AM right now.  My sugar was 37mg/dl a few minutes ago.  It has climbed to 54 now.  But this is a first.  My entire mouth is numb.  Tongue, cheeks, gums, lips… it’s all numb.  That has never happened before, and I’ve been lower than 37 before.  No strange food has been consumed in the past 24 hours, no allergens have been in contact…  Nothing I can think of that would mess with the interior of my mouth like this.  Anyone have any ideas?  Does low sugar do that to anyone else?

Just Some Stuff.

Hey ya’ll,

This post is gonna cover a few things that have drifted through my skull in the past few days. Lows, the bodily alarm system, being different… just some stuff.

Most of the time when I go low, I simply think to myself “I feel low, I should check.” The other day when I went low, I said to myself “I feel like I am around 47. Let’s play a game.” Low and behold, I was 47. I’m not sure when this developed, but it seems as though I have been able to pinpoint my sugars fairly accurately pre-test. Not a reliable alternative, obviously, but I still think it’s kinda cool that I’ve learned how to gauge it by just the feel. Another thing that has sort of made me grin is how, aside from last night (explained later), I haven’t over-treated a low in a fairly long time, and have actually paid enough attention to curb my night time lows, instead of saying “Hey, I’m 83 before bed. Sounds good, peace out.” and simply going to bed. All of that is kinda sorta nifty to me.

Last night, I dipped a bit low (into my favorite spot it seems – the low 40’s). I remember slowly waking up covered in sweat, and just laying there; knowing something was wrong, but not being able to figure out what or move to do anything about it. I just laid there for what felt like 20 minutes thinking “Why am I awake. That was a sweet dream. I just need to go back to sleep.” After a bit, I finally figured out how to move my body in a way to extend my arm the 10 or so inches to reach my meter and test, and confirmed I was low. The next big hurdle was to get out of bed and fix it. I should keep something on the table / shelf for when I go low, I know. I just… don’t. The next bit is vague to me. I do not remember getting out of bed, but I remember running into the doorway to get to the kitchen. I don’t remember drinking chocolate syrup (???), but it was on my hand when I woke up. I don’t remember eating peanut butter, but it was on a plate on my bedside table when I woke up as well. I do vaguely remember making the decision that low sugars can only be treated in bed, though. I also remember tripping on a stair and rug-burning my knee. That all seems sort of crazy (and freakin scary) to me. Anyways, I woke up in the morning, obviously alive, and was flying extremely high around 270. Let me tell ya. That hangover effect? SUCKS.

It amazes me, though, at how well the body takes care of itself when the brain let’s out a big ol’ “Eff you.” and goes back into hibernation. The body knows that it needs to take care of itself with or without the brain’s assistance, and gets the job done eerily well. That ability to bring itself out of sleep and usually just know that your sugar is low… amazes me. Over the weekend I thought about it, and to a “normal person”, when you describe a low, I feel like they’ve got no clue how scary it can be. There are lows that make me wonder sometimes: “What would have happened if I hadn’t woken up? Who would have found me? My parents or room mates in about 7-24 hours, after I had already gone into a coma. Awesome.” Without that bodily alarm system… we would be so, for a lack of better word, screwed (yea, that isn’t the original word. Hooray for having standards!).

Tonight I had a sensation in my side that felt like a tubing tug, but my site was on the other side of my stomach. I turned to my mom and said “You know how it feels when your tubi— wait. You don’t have a pump… nevermind.” Sometimes I forget that I am different from everybody else. Being attached to this pump 24/7, it has become so ingrained in my being that it doesn’t feel like anything. I sometimes forget that not everyone carries testing supplies around with them, and that not everyone has a little plastic box in their pocket, and that not everyone knows that the odd odor they smell is insulin. Just a thought I had, and it made me sort of chuckle.

My subscription to WordPress.com’s custom CSS option has run out, and right now I simply do not have $15 to throw at it just so I can improve little things that irk me visually. I’ll need to revamp the look of the site and create a new header icon that works with that obnoxious split in the center. Should be… joyous. Just a heads-up that things could look a bit different soon.

I’m planning on getting a second tattoo at some point over the course of the summer. Placement is most likely going to be the outside of my right calf, about an inch-and-a-half to two inches above my ankle bone. Right now the only good timing seems to be in early June or early August. June would allow the required healing time, but would also allow me to be like “Hey. Check out the ink. Pretty ballin, eh?” for the entire summer. Only problem that I see with that is the financial one. It’s definitely not going to be a cheap tattoo. Early August is an iffy time too, though, as it is right after I get home from the beach (tanned, quickly dying skin?), and is close to band camp, which means turf practice, which means being outside for 2-3 hours in the sun a day, which leads into football season, which means more turf practices for the band, in the sun. So in reality, I may not be getting this ink until winter. Which makes me a very unhappy, minimally inked person right now. The intended ink is below, for all of your wonderful eyes to see. =)

I saw a movie tonight, Martian Child, and it made me think. People, for the most part, are expected to stick to a social norm that is set by who knows who. While some are able to stray from this mainstream expectation and get away with it, most people end up being drones in the machine; sticking to the humdrum of the social norm. There was a quote that John Cusack’s character said that hit me pretty hard and got me thinking about the world and how people truly interact within this social norm.

“But right now, you and me here, put together entirely of atoms, sitting on this round rock with a core of liquid iron, held down by this force that seems to trouble you, called gravity, all the while spinning around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour and whizzing through the Milkyway at 600,000 miles an hour in a universe that very well may be chasing its own tail at the speed of light; And admist all this frantic activity, fully cognizant of our own eminent demise – which is our own pretty way of saying we all know we’re gonna die – We reach out to one another. Sometimes for the sake of entity, sometimes for reasons you’re not old enough to understand yet, but a lot of the time we just reach out and expect nothing in return.”

In the movie, this was an argument as to why the child being addressed had to be so different, but the quote still makes sense to the general public. “A lot of the time we just reach out and expect nothing in return.” People in this day and age are so caught up with what they have to do in order to get ahead of the game and come out on top that they seem to forget the little things that they can do. Holding a door for a stranger, offering to help an elderly woman reach something at the grocery store, giving someone your umbrella, or even simply sharing it… in this day and age, many would consider these acts as weird or simply too minute to waste their time on. I am a firm believer of the “pay it forward” concept. When I make someone smile, that usually gives me one of the best feelings in the world.

Wow. I was actually going somewhere with that, but I was just attacked by a ginormous yawn and completely lost my train of thought. Crap. I may be back to fix this post. If not…. I guess my point was that people need to be nicer these days and reach out to people without having expectations of payment in return. What happened to the good people that do good things simply to do them. A good deed should not be done with expectations of a return. A good deed should be done to fortify a good soul, and should be completed with a smile. Sadly, though, it seems that the Age of Good Samaritans is on the way out the door, making way for the Age of Paranoid Ladder Climbers.

Something that just popped into my head. I’m living at Villanova all summer in an apartment, probably alone. I’m going to be cooking for myself a lot, in an effort to maximize income and minimize monetary output and waste. If anyone has any good meat, vegetable, whatever that is good in the summer and is healthy for you recipes… and wouldn’t mind sending a few my way, that’d be sweet. I’ve got my usual favorites for the summer, but could use some diversity this summer. Or else it will be a long summer of corn and hamburgers. Any recipes at all would be good, really. Winter food, fall food… I’ll be eating food all year… so. =) Hit me with some recipes if you wouldn’t mind.

With that, I’m going to go get some sleep.

Thanks all,
Tom.

EDIT: Turns out that I forgot to explain the tattoo within the post. The explanation was included in the image post, but not in this actual written post. Here it is: The kanji means ‘Little Sister’. The Sun and Moon combination represents our relationship as twins. There is still some work that needs to be done, including making the sun smile, and maybe making the moon more masculine somehow. Overall, though, this is pretty much it.

10,000.

It seems that I have just broke 10,000 views.  A little over a year, and here we are.  The D has been stable lately.  I had an eye appointment, and nothing bad was detected on the photographs, and my prescription has pretty much stayed the same.  So all in all, everything has been good in that sector, and in all sectors of life for that matter.  Really good. =)

I’ve got far too much to do tonight, and I was just yelled at by my mother…. ah the home life.  How I missed it…. ….                 …yea.

Tom.

D-Day 2008

Well, it’s that time of year again… it’s my 2-year D-day.

A lot has happened since my D came into the picture. I’ve had runs of good numbers, runs of horrible numbers… but mostly numbers that just get me by. I can deal with that. It’d be nice to have perfection at all times, but hey. We’re all human, aren’t we?

I was going to attempt to discuss the concept of ‘perfection’ here, but once I began writing it I realized that I’ve really got nothing to say about it. I have no experience with perfection in any facet of my life, nor do I have any idea what warrants the label of ‘perfect’ or what qualities cause a certain thing to be ‘imperfect’. So I will forgo the discussion of perfection, and simply move on. That’s something that has been happening a lot lately, moving on.

Summer is almost here. Get excited.
Tom.