Well, its 3 am on a Friday night and of course I’m awake. I missed my workout today again for the third straight day because whenever I want to go run the complex’s workout room is already closed, and I don’t feel like driving all the way to work to use their gym. Since I usually like to work out at night I figured that I would just go ahead and buy my own treadmill so I don’t have an excuse anymore to not run. I just got done putting it all together and trying it out and it seems to work okay even though I think I would’ve preferred the pricier model just because it seems to work better but this one will do. One unexpected problem that I’m going to have to deal with is the fact that the dog completely freaks out whenever I’m trying to run on this treadmill and does stupid crap like nip at my heels, bark like crazy, and jump onto the moving belt only to be flung off the end because he doesn’t understand the needs to run instead of stand still. Stupid dog.

There’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be going to Hawaii in April for a week or so for Kasey and Shannon’s wedding. It’s not a done deal yet that I’m going for sure since I have to wait and see if Gabe can find some accommodations more appropriate for poor divorced bachelors. Hopefully it will all work out since I haven’t really gone on a trip anywhere since the trip to Europe.

It turns out that I got more of a raise then I was expecting because of the fact that I got moved in to pay grade 5 which gives me an extra quarter in shift differential on top of the raise I already got. I can’t really complain about that, that’s for sure. Never in my life have I worked at a job where they were so fair and timely when it comes to getting raises. Every other job that I’ve never had except for the military was like pulling teeth to even get a nickel more.

Well I noticed that there was a small group of finches that have been hanging out in the bush in front of my apartment for a couple months now, most likely because it’s a sunny warm spot that’s out of the wind. I would say that there was under 10 of them tops. Anyway I decided to throw up a bird feeder so I could watch the birds. It took them a day to figure out that there was food in there but after that they blew through that one in less than 2 days. I bought 2 more feeders and now it looks like they can go through all 3 in less than a week. Their numbers have grown significantly since I put the food out thats for sure. I can’t get a good count of how many there are now because they are very skittish little fellas and fly away whenever I try to watch them through the window but it’s probably over 30 now. They do this coordinated feeder attack where they all hide in the safety of the bush and then swarm the nearest feeder with food in it 15 at a time fighting over a spot on a perch and the rest on the ground underneath picking up the stuff dropped on the ground. Then they all fly away simultaneously at the first sign of people. They aren’t bothered by the dog in the window at all for some reason though. He doesn’t seem to be interested in them either, which is strange to me because usually he’s interested in all small fast moving animals.

Yeah, I know I’m a little late with the New Year’s Day update, but I guess I just didn’t get around to it. I was all excited about my vacation finally getting here but you know what? Now I’m bored. I guess it’s pretty pathetic that I don’t have much of a life outside of work. I think I would’ve been better off just taking a couple days off and adding it to my weekend rather than taking a week and a half off. I got my yearly date knocked out for last year right before the year finished up, which seems to be about the average number of dates I go on per year. Nothing is going to come of it though, she was a really nice girl but I don’t think we have much in common. I think I’ll just sign up for match.com for a couple months and just go out on a barrage of dates just to get back out there again and get back into practice since I’ve pretty much become a hermit and don’t get out of house much other than to go to work.

I actually did something for New Year’s this year for the first time in probably five years other than fall asleep at 10, wake up at two, and then go back to sleep. I’m not a real fan of going out to the bars on New Year’s Eve since there’s always a $20 cover charge and every place is packed. Not to mention the fact that there’s cops everywhere waiting to give you a DWI. This year and my cousin Cassie was having a garage party at her place. I don’t really have much of a desire to drink any more, but that setting would be my preferred thing to do rather than hang out in the bars. I had a couple of beers, drank some of the champagne, watched the fireworks that Joe lit off at midnight and then pretty much called it a night. When the hell did I get so boring?

Well I started my “the beginning of the year is as good a time as any to start doing something since it’s easy to remember when you started doing it” exercise goal for the year. I’m going to try and run the half marathon in the beginning of May. So basically I have four months to train enough to be able to run 13.1 miles, which actually is a pretty lofty goal for me. Today I ran one mile and it hurt really really bad since I haven’t really worked out in a while. There’s a 5K and 10K race which fit nicely into my training schedule that I’m going to enter in between now and the half. The nice thing about the half marathon is that if I finish I get another sweet ass medal to add to my triathlon medal that I didn’t really deserve from last year. If anyone would like to come out and cheer me on, that would be completely awesome. It’s on May 4th, in the morning. Plus it would help me to not blow it off completely if people are coming to watch me finish and I’ve made my intentions of running it more public. That’s all I’ve got for today.