Trolley’s Moving Out

Trolley’s mov­ing out, and tak­ing most of the liv­ing room with him. I’ve been pre-occupied with match­ing two-piece sec­tion­als, clever hid­den stor­age cof­fee tables, other things that are com­pletely unnec­es­sary in the hunter-gatherer sense of life. Pat’s tak­ing me fur­ni­ture shop­ping this Monday, from morn­ing to night. I’ll be in debt soon, going into my line of credit off my house for the first time, but it’ll be oh so worth it.

Father’s Day Without a Dad

Father’s day came and went. I waited until the 3rd Sunday of June to see if my dad would call me first, but he never did, not since the divorce. Not ever actu­ally. It was always my mom who called, and passed the phone to him. We’d make small talk for roughly 30–60 sec­onds, and he’d pass the phone back to mom. The last time I spoke to him was when I went back home in April. At least my mom called to make sure I was okay after she broke the news. Even she told me to call him, but I don’t feel like it. If any­thing, he owes me.

A New Paddle

Table ten­nis at the club ended, as the venue is shut­ting down until the fall. The only phys­i­cal activ­ity left for me is the occa­sional match with Pat at his new place. I bought a new pen­hold blade, a Mazunov OFF+, and two Sriver 2.1mm rub­bers, mark­ing the first time that I started using speed glue with a cus­tom pad­dle. I’ve only had the chance to try them out a few times, but I can tell that the setup has been per­fect for my offen­sive style. I was appre­hen­sive of get­ting rub­bers that were too thick (2.4mm) and fast, for fear that my foot­work wouldn’t be able to keep up, but I’ll def­i­nitely con­sider it once these ones wear out.

Getting Slashdotted

I met one of my life’s goals when I was Slashdotted for my HomeStar Planetarium review. The vis­its for the first 12 hours nearly jumped to 15,000, but the server han­dled the load, albeit a lit­tle slowly. Something I can cross off my list.

I Quit

Another thing to cross off is quit­ting the weed. Not for John this time, but for myself. I’ve always had a love-hate rela­tion­ship with mar­i­juana. It’s not the same addic­tion as other drugs. Dr. Andrew Weil, who’s not a pot critic by any means, describes the prob­lem per­fectly in his 2004 book, From Chocolate to Morphine.

Marijuana depen­dence can be sneaky in its devel­op­ment. It doesn’t appear overnight like cig­a­rette addiction…but rather builds up over a long time. The main dan­ger of smok­ing mar­i­juana is sim­ply that it will get away from you, becom­ing more and more of a repet­i­tive habit and less and less of a use­ful way of chang­ing consciousness.

When I tried to quit before, I’d always tell myself “this is the last day”, but I’d say the same thing every day for months at a time. I’d always need an excuse to stop, but none of the excuses I could come up with would ever work. This time it’s offi­cial. I’ve learned all that I can from it, and lost all desire to get burned again. Darren tells me that he’s done too, and when he vis­its soon it’ll mark the first time that we’ve hung out sober in three years. I’m curi­ous if we’ll have any­thing in com­mon now.

New Business

There’s been an upturn of busi­ness. Through Pat, I got a small web­site con­tract for my per­sonal com­pany, and I recently joined a stock pho­tog­ra­phy site to make some extra money off my pic­tures. I take my cam­era with me every­where, and I don’t have to do any­thing for the roy­al­ties if other peo­ple pur­chase them any­way. All that’s left to do now is get­ting some model release forms signed from peo­ple of var­i­ous par­ties that I’ve taken. I also bought a book about real estate invest­ments in Canada, in hopes that I’ll soon be able to make my money work for me, instead of vice versa.

A Few Events

Aaron’s Canada Day bar­be­cue is on Saturday. Darren’s com­ing the next week­end. I’m also sup­posed to see Shirley at some point, since I haven’t seen her in half a year. I gave her a call two weeks ago, in hopes that I could take her fam­ily out for some dim sum, but she hasn’t returned. I’m a lit­tle hurt. We barely get to see each other any­way, but it’s hard to blame a mother of three for being too busy.

Not that I have much time myself lately.