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Tomorrow I’m leaving on a road trip so today was a cluster of prep work. I cleaned my camera lenses, laid out the pills that Max would need to take in my absence and baked a few things for my future hosts. I was loading audiobooks onto my iPod when I checked Craigslist on a lark for the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens I’ve been lusting after. and there was one 90 minutes north in New Jersey. Just close enough that I could go there grab it and be back before dinner. I dashed off an email including my phone number and received a call from the seller in under a minute.

Him: Hello, is this Terry?
Me: Yes. I am interested in the 24-70mm, T2i body, and 77mm Hoya filter. I’ll give you $1100 for everything.
Him: Ok, would you like to get together some time during the week?
Me: I need this today. I will leave now and be in your area in 90 minutes.
Him: Oh uh, that sounds good. Um, I’m new to this. How do you pay me?
Me: Well, if I were underhanded I’d ask to pay you in check. If I were honest, I’d pay in cash.
Him: How are you paying?
Me: Cash.

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A friend is moving to the area and needed a bed so I’ve been combing Craigslist for a reasonably priced queen-sized bed set and tonight found one. The dealings went down via text message and at 8:00 he asked when I’d pick it up, I said after 9:00 and around 7:30 I began a round of Mann vs. Machine which took me until 8:50. Then, rather than shower, I decided to bullshit in Teamspeak until I was nearly late, threw on my non-exercise clothing and gunned it to Horsham to pick up the set.

I had been walking quickly and sweating quite a bit so there was an immediate sweat stain on my shorts where my the sweating was strongest, i.e. my crotch and it looked like I had wet myself. I parallel parked my dad’s truck and was met by the man selling the pieces who was a special type of plastered.

Me: So why are you selling this stuff?
Him: Lost my job.
Me: What did you do?
Him: Warehouse work. Until they brought in these… Asians do the job as contractors.
Me: I’m sorry to hear that.
Him: You know, everything’s going that way.
Me: What way?
Him: Contractors.
Me: Yep. If it makes you feel better about selling this for 25% its original price, I’m unemployed.
Him: It does. What’s your name?
Me: Terry.
Him: I’m George. If you ever need anything, call me. You seem like a good guy and I’m glad to have you as a brother. You should take this end table, I want you to have it.
Me: Sure…

This man was profoundly white.

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The suit slid on comfortably for its first wearing and the gel in my hair was stylish without being sculpted. The pens were in the left inner pocket and phone in the right. The Fossil watch draped over the left wrist had enough give to slide up under the shirt cuff but not enough that it would rotate. I looked good.

I made it to the interview location within 30 seconds of on time and sat down to speak with the hiring manager. 30 minutes in, I hadn’t cursed, made an innuendo or forgotten how to speak and I was passed a competency test for SAS, SQL, and statistics. On this I did well and thence spake with two more people, the hiring manager’s manager, and the VP of Operations. Things were going well. I shook hands, I got business cards, I thanked the receptionist, I strolled, no strutted, out. I did well.

The car ride home went slowly and at the intersection of County Line and York Rd I was gripped with terror. One of the question was “how much greater is 5/8ths than 3/8ths”. Somehow, I responded “40%”. Whoops.

Return home, remove suit, hang up suit, unpack bag, find competency exam somehow in folio. Whoops.

Maybe I didn’t do as well as I thought.

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Today was probably my last visit to the New York Botanical Gardens for a while. My passes expire at the end of the month and I have used the heck out of them including six visits to the Gardens proper and usage of their reciprocal services in five other states. I missed the lotus bloom this year. I missed the magnolia bloom this year. I missed the cherry bloom this year. I missed the rose bloom this year. Maybe I should get another set of passes.

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French onion soup always looked like a good dish but only recently have I felt confident enough to try preparing it. Well after midnight, I sliced up some onions into strips and put them to reduce on a skillet. The recipe indicated to cook them for about an hour at 300 degrees and not having an electric skillet I assume medium would do.

After about 20 minutes, the bottom layer had burned but the recipe said “don’t worry about burning”. Hazaa! After another 40 minutes I realized this meant “it won’t burn” not “burning is good” and I had a five lb mass of burnt onion to wash down the garbage disposal. I started the dishwasher to clean the rest of the mess and went to bed. Later, I woke up for the day and went down stairs to see that the dishwasher had clogged and forced the contents of the garbage disposal back up through the sink. There, in all its glory was a stinking mass of burnt onion.

Some secrets just won’t stay buried.

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Sometimes I want to have a distance day on the treadmill and sometimes it’s hard to work up to spending 2 hours in the same place. I need to eschew distractions and find a way to push ancillary tasks away.

Today, I hopped on my treadmill, ran about three miles and received a call from a firm I had interviewed with requesting an interview. I fielded the call, explained why I was out of breath and got back on the treadmill. After another three miles I received another call from another firm requesting an interview and again explained why I was out of breath. So now, my initial contact with two HR departments is me having problems with my phone as it was linked to a Blutooth headset and me being out of breath. Joy.

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My five person beach contingent had dwindled to just me and I arrived in Sea Isle City, NJ around 2:30pm. Mike and Kacey met me and we went to the beach with a kite in tow.

The wind was fickle and while I didn’t actually hit anyone with my kite I came quite close. The string struck the neck of a man reading who without lifting his eyes, removed the string from his neck and held it above his head until I plucked it from him with a thank you.

Having had enough of kiting, I swapped it for my camera. I had just gotten it back from almost $900 in repairs from mishandling and environmental damage so what did I do with it first? Took it to the beach.
My macro lens and I explored the jetties of Sea Isle City and I received far fewer strange looks than I thought I would with my 70-200mm lens in place.

The sky was low, the clouds were mean so after some corn hole and palaver we returned to the rented shore house. I wanted to take a pano and Mike volunteered to hold my belt as I stood on the second story railing but I immediately realized that this would give me only an amazing view of the roof so I took this one instead.

After some chat and cheese I took a walk and documented Sea Isle City as the sun set.

There were a few shots I didn’t think I’d get and a few I wish I had taken. Two girls were using chalk in a driveway writing “I heart ” and I couldn’t bring myself to hit the shutter button. The shot would have been entirely legal and the kind of slice-of-life picture I relish but I still carry enough POWMS (paranoid overweight white man syndrome) to decide against it. Dammit.

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Him: So do you feel better having lost all that weight?
Me: No, not really. My endurance is much higher but I don’t feel more energetic.
Him: What about down there?
Me: What do you mean?
Him: They say for every 35 lbs you lose your dong gets an inch larger.
Me: Well, considering I’ve lost 195 lbs and don’t have a penis fit for use as a whiffle ball bat I’d say that may be an untrue claim.
Him: Oh.

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Valve released a new game mode for Team Fortress 2 called Mann vs. Machine. The backstory is that you’re defending a base under attack by robots and you and a group of up to five other people must prevent a bomb from being moved to an end point by waves of server-controlled bots.

The game mode began as unfun for me as I was playing on 4 person teams. Once I had a proper game with 6 people I found it fun. An additional game mode was added on top of this called “Mann Up” where players could pay 99 cents to play a round of a modified version of Mann vs. Machine that is harder but has rewards at its end. Today, I played my first match of this type with a group of people I vaguely knew. When a wave defeats your team, you get to try again an arbitrary number of times and it took us five or six tries.

For two hours/9.4 miles I disappeared into my computer. I had to stop to get a fake Red Bull and when we were done I felt closer to those I had played with. The deck of my treadmill was slick with sweat, and my shoes made an audible squishing noise. The last time I had gotten that involved in a game, my ass was sore at the end, now the sore parts are my legs and pads of my feet.

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My day started at 9:30 with a call from the NJ Unemployment office that started “this is your 10:00 o’clock call regarding your employment status”. My 10:00am call at 9:30. Ok.

After that was worked out, I prepared for my 1:30pm phone interview for a job as a statistical analyst. By prepared, I mean I paced back and forth, reviewed flashcards and sweat a lot. I hadn’t lifted weights the previous day and kind of had a nervous energy. I thought to myself “I could probably do a pull up right now” and I did. My first pull-up brought about by me wanting a job.