Mutha 'Fo Fathers

Do you wake up on your own, and wonder where you are?

I've been eating a lot at this conference, it seems like every time we leave for a break there are all these gourmet sandwiches and deserts laid out for us, which I can't resist. For dinner the other night we had filet mignon and salmon, last night I went with of people from my cohort group to this restaurant downtown, which was pretty swank. I've gotten up every morning at 5:30 and went for a 3 mile run around the downtown area of Portland, and lifted weights. The weight room here kind of sucks, but I did as much as I could. My prof wants to meet on July 5th, but my girl has already bought plane tickets and reserved a hotel room for July 4th - 9th. I'm not sure how this is going to work out. Maybe I can't meet with him. I'm a little behind on my work, I should have stayed in last night and done my homework instead of going out on the town. I figured it's my last night in Portland, I may never be back here. I love to travel, I really need to do more of this. Really looking forward to a 6 day trip to DC with my girlfriend next week, that should be really fun. Sick of these nerds here.

And now I'm going to pack up my laptop, walk out of this room, scam some more food, go up to my room, grab my bags, check out of the hotel, catch the shuttle to the airport, remind my girl to pick me up, catch my plan, listen to my audiobook on the plane ride home, catch a ride home with my girl, and maybe do some studying tonight. Goodbye Portland, it was fun and educational.

Will work for attributes

Day 3 in Portland, second day of the conference. Yesterday was very long, I almost fell asleep during one big presenter's speech - and I didn't have my girl around to kick me under the table. I'm learning a lot about some upcoming legislation and the implementation process, we're not really going into the nitty gritty technical details, which is what I wanted to see, especially clustering scenarios. I asked one of the gurus yesterday about these issues, and he couldn't help me. They are serving some really good food - last night I sat around and bullshitted with a couple of guys from Indiana and Michigan as we ate filet mignon and salmon. There was a nice indian lady from Ohio and a couple of nice guys from Texas. My girl was texting me throughout the day with her new idea to take a vacation next week in Washington DC. Seeing most of the historical sights would be free and it's cheap to fly there this time of year. I'm game, it sounds fun, only thing is I have to finish up all the questions for my class before my Prof. goes away on July 10, so that I can take my final mid-August. At the rate I'm going I have to study about 3 hours a day until the trip, I should email him today. Fell asleep last night, exhausted. I only got about 4 hours of sleep the last 3 days. I went jogging around downtown Portland this morning, beautiful city. It's like a smaller, wild west version of San Francisco, a lot less ghetto than Chicago. Today is gonna be long, I have to do a lot of reading tonight if I really want to go on this trip to DC.

Do you remember when we used to dance? An incidence arose from circumstance

I have not done any studying the past 2 days, I have a status report to turn in for work too. I spent Saturday getting drunk with my girl and her family. We hung around her house drinking wine and beer, then had a big dinner at the Olive Garden. Her mom and dad and college aged brother drove into town to see her triathlon. They are very nice, down to earth working class people, very easy to talk to. They are just like my girl, constantly cracking jokes and looking for opportunities to crack jokes, especially her dad and brother. I can see that she gets her sweet side from her mom. They sent me on an errand to buy baloons for the triathlon, then we went to bed early - we had to get up at 3:30 in order to make it to the triathlon course by 5 o'clock, when they start taking their practice swims and getting their numbers and such. I was very impressed by my girl - the triathlon was gruelling - 1/2 mile swim in a cold lake, a 15 mile bike ride, and then a 5 mile run. I can't even do a 5 mile run, let alone any of the other stuff. And this is a girl who just 15 months ago had cancer. Me and her bro and dad sat around watching the racers go by and cracking jokes. One running joke was that they should add a full contact kick boxing to the triathlon, to even the field a little. JCB was conveniently busy when he found out it was at 6 in the morning. After the tri, me and the girl said goodbye to her family, had breakfast at the Golden Angel pancake house, then we slept for the rest of the day. I really liked her family - I felt bad that mine were relatively standoffish around her. I am really liking my girl a lot these days - sometimes I let my mind wander and I have these crazy thoughts about settling down with her and trying to make a go of it. Doing something like moving to California together, build a new life, accumulate a lot of wealth together. She doesn't even particularly like California, and she's not as materialistic as I am. Anyways, I got up around 6, packed my bags, we had dinner, then she drove me to the airport, as I had to make my 11 o'clock flight to Portland, where I am going to be attending a conference this week.

My flight was delayed, but I got in around 3 am. So here I am in Portland, sitting in a conference room, eating cinnamon buns and drinking coffee, waiting for the speakers to begin their presentations. This morning I went for a little walk around downtown Portland. It seems like a small town, a really clean and friendly place to live, despite there being some bums around. It's nice not having to go to work today, I won't miss some of the assholes I work with. Been stressed out about money and this class I'm taking lately. I have some organizing, planning and work to do when I get a chance later on tonight. If I do not pay attention to my work and finances for a few days I start getting anxious. I'm reading 'The Millionaire Next Door' right now - or, listening to it on audiobook, it's really inspiring. I think my whole deal with my finances is that I am motivated to simultaneously live the status conscious consumer lifestyle, and also maximize my net worth as quickly as possible, you can't really do those two things at the same time.

Meet the Fuckers

It went pretty well, as far as I know. I was surprised. Everybody was nice to my girl. She was really nervous, which is uncharacteristic of her. I think she was intimidated by my in law's house. My brothers were the same around her, goofing off and whatnot. My mom and dad were surprisingly standoffish. I don't think they knew how to handle me bringing girls around. One hopeful sign is that my bro's wife and my girl seemed to get along, and my bro's mother in law was really nice to her as well. How can you not like my girl, she just has a naturally sweet and pleasant personality. Maybe this will lead to me becoming closer to other people in my family eventually. I was certainly glad that my girl was there to keep me company and distract some attention from me, I never feel comfortable at those types of family get togethers. We'll see, I may hear about it from my mom and dad later on, they are just unscrupulous enough to bad talk one of their son's girlfriends to his face.

After the brunch thing for my dad, me and my girl took a long walk down by the beach and watched the sun go down, came home took a shower together, got it on, then lay in bed watching Grindhouse on my laptop until we fell asleep.

Meet the Fockers

So my girl keeps giving me a lot of shit that I never take her to meet my parents (despite the fact that I've asked her to a couple of times), am I ashamed of her and what not, which is just ridiculous. Typical girl stuff, my therapist says that she is ready to 'take it to the next tier'. I told him I liked the tier that we were on. Next week I'm supposed to go out to dinner with her parents and her brother when they come to town for the triathlon. So I asked her to go with me to meet my parents, brothers, sister in law and inlaws today when we go have lunch to celebrate Father's Day. I called my dad to let him know, I think this is all just entertaining to him.

Last night my girl got pissed at me. I took her to see a show at Second City. They sat me and my girl in the front row right by the stage. I don't know what happened to me, I think it's that I haven't been sleeping that much lately with all the crap I have to do, but I kept falling asleep. She kept kicking my leg to wake me up, towards the end of the night she was pretty angry with me. Imagine those Second City performers with this guy in the front row who keeps falling asleep with his mouth hanging open. Maybe they thought I was retarded or something.

Anyways, everything will be different between me and my girl, and between me and my family, in about 3 hours. I will undoubtedly have a lot of things to write about next week.

I'm Slowly Turning Into You

Some randoms, I don't have a lot of time to write these days, I'm really busy with this business class and other stuff, I'm not feeling conflicted about anything, I'm pretty happy most of the time. Every once in a while - about once a month or so - I experience a mini anxiety attack that lasts for about 10 seconds where I kind of zone out and become paralyzed about stuff that's out of my control like terrorism, the US political system, our society's dependence on fossil fuels, the possibility of nuclear war, overpopulation. These attacks fade out fairly quickly, I just find it curious that they happen at all. I don't think this is normal.

But most of the times, life is busy but generally happy. I've been learning to play golf lately, I go hit golf balls at the driving range with my dad and mom every once in a while. It's a surprisingly complex game. Relations with my family are better than they have been, probably worse than they should be, but overall friendly. I make an effort to see my immediate family every week or so. My cousin Mike - the father of my godson - is having a birthday party soon, which I don't plan on attending. Mike is kind of a jackass sometimes but he's a good guy - the reason I'm not attending is because I don't really feel like hanging out with the whole crew of people on that side of the family like my cousins's friends that I don't know who are generally annoying.

My girl has been sleeping over all the time, or else I sleep over at her house, which I don't like to do because I have a longer commute. When she stays at my house I feel like I have to have a lot of food in the fridge and a really clean house, so it's more work for me when she stays over but that's fine. We are really using the new bed :) it's a pretty sturdy bed, which is good because we broke my old bed. Oh yeah - my neighbors hate us. They bang on the walls and we have to keep the sex noises down at night, which sucks. I tried turning the radio up last night but sexxing to rap music on B96 got really annoying so we turned it off. Most of the time we cook for each other, we sit on the couch and watch CNN, we play guitar or I record her singing her songs on Garageband, we already have a pretty decent sounding song recorded. On the weekends we go walking around the city sometimes.

I took her to meet JCB and his friends over memorial day. JCB btw is with this new girl who is a manipulative AW. She is really turning him into an AFC. Sometimes he calls me with 'why hasn't she called me/what did she mean when she said this', it's really disconcerting to hear him talk this way. I tell him to dump her. What kind of girl will tell you shit like 'JCB, go buy me a t shirt at bluesfest.' 'JCB, go buy me a Tiffany's necklace', 'JCB go buy me a toothbrush'. She really has him whupped, he's always like, 'screw this, I don't need this bullshit', then he takes her back. It's like he's forgotten his training. I want to hook him up with my girl's friend. I told him that we should go to one of his ultimate fighting matches together, as it seems my girl's friend is into that kind of crap.

I'm probably going to be running a 5K in July.

http://www.chicagoevents.com/event.cfm?eid=100

My girl tells me I'm ready, I've been going running with her a lot. I don't feel like I'm fit enough for it, we'll see. What else. I've been seeing a bunch of concerts, I have Ozzfest tix, and I'm supposed to see Poison/Ratt/White Lion in July. I'm going to Second City this weekend. I've basically been going out a lot but not on sarging related excursions. I've been doing a lot of work for this class I'm taking, it's taking up most of my free time. My finances are really shaping up lately. I have everything finally organized, even my house is in good shape lately. We've done so many renovations on it, when my parents came over the other week they were so surprised at how nice it looked. The next thing I'm gonna do is some electrical work, changing lighting fixtures and whatnot. I can't wait til this class is done at the end of the summer, I'll have more time to focus on this certification and planning my next career move. Life will be a little more simple then, hopefully, and I'll be able to do more of my personal programming stuff, although I'm doing a lot of good stuff at work lately. Some weird shit with people I work with, I'm starting to think that you can never get away from the office politics bullshit. Even if I sold everything and moved to Alaska to be a salmon fisherman, there'd be some dude on the next iceberg that would be doing shit to annoy me.

Big ups to all my playas. Hope you are having fun out in the clubs this summer.

How to be charming

from http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Charming

Charm is the art of having an attractive personality. This characteristic can only be achieved over a period of time. While everyone is born with differing amounts of natural charm, much can be acquired and honed through practice and patience. As with dancing, the more you practice, the better you will become. Effort and careful attention to the needs and desires of others will ensure that charm becomes a permanent part of your character.
Steps

1. Improve your posture. Good posture will give the impression of self confidence (even if you don't feel that way on the inside). While walking, it is always important to maintain a relaxed yet definitive upright posture- spine long, shoulders back. Practicing in front of a mirror is great, also you could ask a friend or family member to help you adjust your stance. This may feel awkward or overpowering to you when you first practice it, but keep trying.
2.
Relax the muscles in your face to the point where you have a natural, pleasant expression permanently engraved there. For some people, it helps to dwell on something or someone that makes them happy.
3. Make a connection. When your eyes come in contact with another person's, nod and smile subtly with a subdued joy shining forth. Don't worry about the other person's reaction and don't overdo it.
4. Remember people's names when you meet them for the first time. This takes an enormous amount of effort for most people. Repeat the person's name when stating your name to that person will help you to remember it better. For example: "Hi Jack, I'm Wendy." Follow through with small talk and repeat the person's name. Repeat it once more when you say goodbye. It's not just about helping you to remember that person. The more you say a person's name, the more that person will feel that you like them and the greater the chance they'll warm up to you.
5. Be interested in people. If you meet a new acquaintance, for example a coworker, a classmate, a friend of a friend, etc. find out about their immediate family and interests. Be sure to ask after the names of family members and remember them. Also ask after their particular interests in life. These two topics will ensure much better small talk than just harping on about school or work. Most people don't like to think about those things at social occasions unless they have to. Even if it is about networking, you should understand fully the worth of taking a break from talking shop. It is important to refrain from talking up about yourself. Be purely interested and impressed by the person with whom you are speaking.
6. Orient topics toward the audience. This means taking into account topics that interest those around you, even if you are not so keen on them. If you are in a sporty crowd, talk about last night's game or the meteoric rise of a new team. If you are amongst a group of hobbyists, draw out their hobbies and make remarks related to fishing, knitting, mountain climbing, movies, etc. Nobody expects you to be an expert. It is your level of interest and willingness to engage in topics that makes you an interesting person to be around. Exercise an open mind. Let others do the explaining. If someone mistakenly thinks you know more about the topic, be genuine and simply say that your knowledge is limited but that you are hoping to learn more about it.
7. Praise others instead of gossiping. If you are talking with someone or you are talking in a group of people, and up pops the subject of another person in a positive or negative way, be the one to mention something you like about that person. Hearsay is the most powerful tool in gaining charm because it is always viewed as 100% sincere. It has the added benefit of creating trust in you - "Oh, s/he never has a bad word to say about anyone." They know they and their reputation are safe with you.
8. Be honest. A lie is something you say for which there is some direct evidence somewhere out there that contradicts it. If you tell Mary that you like Jane and Billy that you don't like Jane, Mary and Billy will talk and your reputation will be ruined. No one will believe a word you say.
9. Issue compliments generously, especially to raise others' self esteem. Try to pick out something that you appreciate in any situation and verbally express that appreciation. If you like something or someone, find a creative way to say it and say it immediately. If you wait too long, it may be viewed as insincere and badly timed, especially if others have beaten you to it. If you notice that someone is putting a lot of effort into something, compliment it, even if you feel that there is room for improvement. If you notice that someone has changed something about themselves (haircut, manner of dress) notice it, and point out something you like about it. If you are asked directly, be charming and deflect the question with a very general compliment.
10. Be gracious in accepting compliments. Get out of the habit of assuming that the compliment is being given without genuine intent. Even when someone makes a compliment out of contempt, there is always a germ of jealous truth hiding in their own heart. Be effusive in accepting the compliment. Go beyond a mere "thank you" and enjoin this with "I'm really glad you like it" or "It is so incredibly kind of you to have noticed." These are "compliments in return." Avoid backhanding a compliment. There is nothing worse to a person complimenting than to receive the response "Oh well I wish I was as ______ as you/that situation." That is tantamount to saying, "No, I am not what you are saying I am, and your judgment is wrong."
11. Control your tone of voice. The tone of your voice is crucial. Most people feel insecure somewhere inside and have an inability to accept praise. For this very reason, when you praise, do it subtly and glibly. When you say, "you look nice today" it should be in the exact same tone that you would use to say "it's a nice day." Any variation from your normal tone will arouse suspicion about your sincerity. And since you will be trying hard to be a breezy, caring, happy personality, your eagerness will come across in both simple and complimentary talk. Practice giving compliments into a recorder and play it back. Does it sound sincere? Whether your praise is true or not, it must sound sincere! Practice until you get it right.


Tips

* Always remain relaxed. You want to please other people but you do not worry about what they are thinking. If you do, it will be written all over your face and you will be perceived as a doormat or a people-pleaser - a person with a desperate need for others to like them. And remember, what people are thinking is rarely about you. It is generally about themselves and their to-do lists.
* The degree of charm that you possess depends on the creativity of your praise. Say something that is not immediately obvious and say it in a poetic way. It's good to have some premeditated compliments and phrases but the most charming people are able to invent them on the spot. This way, you can be sure that you are not repeating it.
* Every so often you will have no choice but to express an opinion that few others hold (to adhere to the honesty policy). You must do it in a humorous way. Humor is the teaspoon of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
* Empathy is at the core of charm. If you can't tell what makes people happy or unhappy, you have no way to assess whether you are saying the right or wrong thing.


Warnings

* Never argue. Remember if half of the people who hear your argument agree and half disagree, you have failed at being charming. What you say must be pleasing to 100% of the people who will hear it, whether they hear it directly from you or not.
o Be that as it may, remember that arguing is not the same as disagreeing. Feel free to express your opinion, but don't attempt to dominate the person with whom you are chatting.
* Never laugh at your own jokes. That smacks of poor taste. The joke ought to stand alone. You can smile generously. And don't worry if no one else laughs at your jokes. Sometimes people just don't hear or understand a joke. It is as embarrassing for them to miss the punchline, and to have to own up to it, as it is for the person giving the joke seeking to wind up a jovial response.
* Never over-explain anything. To do this is to belabor a point. Unfortunately, it simply confirms a lack of self-esteem in that you do not trust that others have understood your point. In addition, it displays arrogance in that it demonstrates a feeling on your behalf that your listeners cannot think for themselves. People will listen to you when you cut out unnecessary explanations and force them to be active listeners. Trust that your listeners can put two and two together.
* Many people mistake arrogance for charm. In fact, arrogance is anti-charm. Charmers live to please others. Arrogant people live to please themselves. Arrogance only attracts insecure people while charm attracts everyone.