Bucketlisting: #42 Backpack Europe, almost check!

This morning, the sun and heat creeped through the blackout curtains in my room, jarring me out of my strange visions of Supernatural-esque motel-hopping in which my father and I connected over our experience of watching Lost. We both thought Locke was badass and hoped that Kate would just die already, knowing full well that she would never be killed off. As of late, probably secondary to my increased health & metabolism, I can't sleep-in after waking up. It is an unwelcome side-effect that I'll just have to get used to. Small price to pay for my future 8-pack.

Part of my morning ablutions includes a cleansing of overnight emails via my smartphone. But today, I chose to turn on the TV to view the Today show (no ESPN in my room). And a quad of metrosexual guys* greeted me with talk of their bucketlist. The coolest item was to hoop it up with the Commander in Chief, President Barack. Part of the inspiration behind the endeavor was they felt inundated by the random stuff that just didn't matter. They were lost; they lacked direction. The list was the cure. Or something like that. I am a guy after all, and I am not immune to that male-centric disease of only hearing what I want to hear.

I've been trying to find direction in my life too. Most of it had been appropriated as an outgrowth of my father's desire to become a medical doctor. And when it wasn't him, there were (and are) plenty others willing to chip in their unwanted 2-cents. But I am the master of my domain, in the narcissistic, non-autoerotic way. When I realized that, my outlook changed. No, I can't be whatever I want to be (such as a PGA tour golfer), but I have the power to do what I want to do, and inversely and perhaps more importantly, not do what I don't want to do.

So a bucket list would be perfect to progress this do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try mentality.

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#42 Backpack Europe. I've kinda been wanting to do the Euro-trip thing, complete with hostels, tattered foreign language dictionaries, friendly & unfriendly locals, and sexy females with exotic accents. During my experiential training, my classmate and the professor casually suggested that I should backpack Europe, in a tone which you might use to suggest to the naive guy that he should experiment a little before proposing to the first girl who would have him. At the time, I didn't think I'd have the chance, given the rigid, unwavering path my parents had laid out for me. But "behold, now is the accepted time" with two good friends, a big guy noone would mess with and the other with little hesitation for chatting up new folks. BTW, I'm leaving next week for a month, so you may not hear from me besides posts like "Such-and-such is amazing!"

#15 (quarter) Cross-country road trip. The bad part about having stable, responsible guy friends is that they're highly desirable to stable, responsible women. My friends' wives are awesome, and they probably wouldn't stop the dudes from having a grand adventure to Vegas, but my friends aren't going to neglect their duties for a spontaneous weekend getaway. But a perfect excuse will be when some chick finally bags herself the big one, moi. And by "big one" I mean my enormous melon of a head. The Hangover, part g, anyone?**

#69 Nookie in 15 different countries, preferably with local(s). But taking the same girl to multiple countries would still count in my book. So to all the sugar mommas out there, baby I'm still free, take a chance on me. Planning to make progress on #69 while on #42. This is dedicated to a fallen comrade who recently proposed. His noble dream was to father a child in every country and name the kid after himself, boy or girl. As of this post, he has zero kids (that he knows of).

#23 Apply for the Amazing Race with one of my best friends. We will be billed as the two doctors who somehow manage to do an inordinate number of stupid things because that's just good TV. He has the planning, leadership and determination, whereas I'll bring the muscle and indestructible stomach. And if I succeed in #8 (below), I will try to spend a large amount of screentime doing my best emulation of Daniel Dae Kim with his shirt off. I say apply only because I'm not leaving my Bucket List up to chance--it's not my fault should they fail to recognize greatness when they see it!

#4 Bungee jump, then skydive. Fear of heights is a good thing. Stretchy things have stretchy limits, and parachute packs are sometimes filled with silverware. But I will do these one day, alive or dead. My last will & testament will have a clause stating that to release funds, my heirs will have to tandem jump my putrid corpse gently (or ungently, for that matter) back to earth before putting me six feet deep.

#16 Complete the Big Texan 72-oz steak challenge in Amarillo, TX. I know it's a spectacle and gluttony is a deadly sin, but I'm an exhibitionist and steak is delicious. It isn't a nicely marbled ribeye, but we're going for quantity over quality. My only food challenge thus far was a 4-lb bowl of pho which I demolished in 45 minutes at Pho 24 in Houston. The largest steak I've had was 32-oz, and I felt I could easily pack away an additional 8-oz.

#73 See a live performance & get a kiss from Iliza Shlesinger (a comedienne--get your minds out of the gutter!). The goal is a peck on the cheek, but if the lady should opt for a full French connection, a gentleman should always oblige. She's another blonde-haired, blue-eyed piece of kryptonite, a weapon of my destruction. And I'm a sucker for sharp wit, snarky comments, dirty jokes & killer legs. I almost forgot about her if not for Excused, a spiritual successor to Blind Date. I also want to see Daniel Tosh, Mike Birbiglia and Demetri Martin one day. (Thanks to the commentator who posted about Martin. His comedy has that intelligent word-play I crave!)

#8 Get an 8-pack & benchpress 2 plates or 225-lbs (1-rep max). My current workout regimen is intense, and I'm sad I'll have to put it on hold for a little bit while in Europe. I didn't think a 6-pack was possible for me, but my faith is growing. Besides, if those meathead drunks on the Jersey Shore can do it, certainly I can! Thus the 8-pack: set 'dem goals high, big swhoal***. I've maxed out at 185-lbs in high school when I was a scrawny 155. So 40 extra pounds should be within reach.

#100 Finish the Modern Library's top 100 novels of the 20th century, whether I understand them or not. I've read about 25 so far, including everything in the top 10 except for Ulysses. It will be my capstone and is the reason for the condition "whether I understand [it] or not." Portrait was difficult but intelligible. Ulysses must be some odd mixture of Greek, Esperanto, Elvish, Klingon, and Na'vi with a light smattering of English to gel it all together. Damn you Joyce! I'm sure I'm not the only one to curse your masterpiece of literary masochism.

The numbers on the list have been brought to you by Lost, Sheldon Cooper (73), and a well-known position. Disclaimer: Numbers shown may not actually reflect the numbers on g's list since said list has yet to be fully written.

-g

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*I think all these guys are straight, but I wouldn't be surprised if all swung the other way (not that it matters, of course).

**At this rate, I'll never sucker anyone into marrying me! :D

***my version of swoll

Tri, Try Harder

You must excuse me for yet another post about yet another woman, but this 2-part set was already typed up, and I’d hate for it to go to waste.
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Dear follow-up readers,

...continued...

The pretty blonde did not have a ring, just as that gentleman had said. I need to improve my ring-spotting skills.

She came by the next night, and I remembered her name and her prescription not only because she was pretty, but because she was a troublemaker. People with any kind of insurance or attitude or other problems get that label, which means that I spent, or will have to spend extra effort on their prescriptions. Like in public schools, only the problem-children get any attention. Note to pharmacy goers, if you pitch a fuss, the pharmacy will take extra care of your prescriptions just because we want to limit the face-to-face time as much as possible.

Hers was a weird issue which I had figured out overnight using some knowledge and intuition. She was not impressed that I remembered her name; she is probably used to people going out of their way to know her name and fawning at her every desire.

I explained what had happened to her prescription the previous night, and she nodded reassuringly, confirming what I thought had happened.

Blonde 8.5: ‘Yea, I had left because I saw how busy you were. I wanted to give you a break.’

At some point in the will-call to register to signature capture, she glanced at my name tag.

Blonde 9.5: ‘That’s an interesting name. How do you pronounce that?’

I said my name, wishing that she would do the same. My wish was soon granted, but not in the way I had hoped.

Blonde 9.0: ‘Tri, try harder.’ A subtle grin appeared on her rose-colored lips.

‘Wow. I haven’t heard that since high school. You’re bringing back horrible memories.’

Blonde 9.3: ‘Oh, I’m sorry. High school sucked for everybody. But look where you’re at now.’

She continued her coy smile, as pretty girls are wont to do when they’re teasing you. She wasn’t really sorry.

Me: ‘Well actually, it wasn’t all that bad.’

At this point, I should have just reflected her smile and stopped talking. When I get nervous or flustered, I start talking random gibberish to fill the silences, and the stuff that comes out oftentimes isn’t favorable. So to try to impress this girl, I rambled on and on about AP tests and how I became a book hermit to get out of school a little quicker.

It was like a scene out of a chick flick where the nerd thinks that explaining the difference between speed and velocity* would somehow make him devastatingly irresistible to women.

I guess I had made some stupid comparison to jocks, and so to humor me, she said something like, ‘where are they [jocks] now?’ Thinking on that question, they are still probably scoring, but to a lesser extent (the player-hater side of me hopes so). Jocks are like American light beer: they're best when they’re fresh. I hope I’m like premium wine: better with age.

So after I had sufficiently stuffed both my feet in my mouth with talk of my nerd-dom, I ended with my customary, ‘Have a great night!’ The awkwardness was painful to endure on my end, though I’m sure she’s used to it because she has caused many a man to find himself speechless.

One thing I’ve learned in my interaction with people is to never read too much into things. You’re not that important for people to prepare themselves to talk to you. Most people just say the first thing that pops into their mind, and you should just take it at face value.

Was Blonde 9.7 (her score increased from 8.5 to 9.7 for teasing and humoring me) interested in me? No idea, but my bet would be on ‘no’. Face value: she asked how to pronounce my name and made a cutesy jest out of it.

As I grow less socially awkward, I hope I can parlay these very minor indicators of interest into some digits without violating HIPAA.

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*speed is distance per time and is scalar, whereas velocity is displacement per time and is a vector; velocity takes into account the initial and final position of an object. Example: if you made a complete revolution around the earth in an hour, your velocity would be 0 m/s, because your initial and final position would be the same. In contrast, your speed would be a value larger than the number of Charlie Sheen's horizontal tango partners, which is a lot.

Senior Rings

Dear Saved By the Bell fans,

Balfour’s business model depends primarily on school pride and the popularity that exists only amongst seniors during their last year in school. Fortunately for them, it works enough to pry a couple hundred from enough cash-strapped students to make it somewhat profitable. They did not get anything from me; all my cash went to one of the only two adornments a guy can wear without question: the wristwatch. The other adornment is the circlet of death typically worn on the finger next to the pinky on the left hand. Let us have a moment of silence for our fallen comrades. May their mates forgive them their foibles and not nag them too terribly much.

I had recently watched an episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) gets tricked into buying fake rings for the entire school. And it seemed like the entire school got a ring. Honestly? Was it just the times (a 90s era sitcom) or do most people at predominantly white schools buy rings?

As a male in the real world (i.e. out of school and working), I find that tailoring first impressions is a must to be successful in any venture. The clothes someone chooses and the expression someone wears on his face tells a lot about the character, even if I don’t know a shred of the ‘personality’. The exterior gives an impression of the interior. Always. A man who doesn’t take care of himself externally likely doesn’t take care of himself internally. And the converse is mostly true as well, except in the case of depressed narcissists, which is fairly common (a psychologically tortured person with a show-stopping exterior)*.

This is not in defense of people who are shallow. And I'm not saying that the 'inside' doesn't count. I am simply stating that people develop preconceived notions because of a generalized perception of truth, which may or may not be ultimately true. As one of my favorite authors** wrote, 'If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.' If you see what looks like a car but you've never actually seen the model before, would it be prejudicial to think that it has four wheels, a steering column, a gearbox and brakes?

(Finally getting to the point of this post) So in my opinion, a man who wears a class ring is stuck in the nostalgia of former days long lost. Or he is still a boy in the midst of getting some serious poo-tang as a high school/ college senior. (Maybe I should have gotten a class ring). A class ring is like a letterman jacket, an article that is only attractive to pre-pubescent girls and those under the tender age of legal consent. Whereas my Gucci has turned heads from 12 to 21 to 51 to 71.

Thankfully I haven’t seen a letterman jacket except at church, worn by obvious teens. And fortunately, the class ring is starting to phase out among the younger crowd, though it seems that Aggies and Longhorns still have a tendency to pimp the right ring finger.

[insert one of 10,000,000 Aggie jokes here]. Half my high school who went to college when to A&M, so I think I can say this. If they're insulted, they can always point out that my alma mater's website is www.uh.edu (double-u double-u double-u dot uh dot com.

I can’t say anything about women with class rings since I clueless about women fashion. All I know is that some Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos cost as much as my entire watch collection, and my watches never touch the pavement.

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*reference: all the people who end up on TMZ.
**Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Lego Hair

Dear gel-lovers,

For the longest time, I had shiny hair that glistened as if it had been layered with shellac. In actuality, it was just simply plastered with level 12 extra-mega-super hold gel. One of my friends referred to it as 'lego hair', the look of the fake plastic helmet hair you attach to the yellow cylindrical heads of your Star Wars Lego figurines (I still have my Han Solo action figure).

When I graduated, I wanted to change my appearance, so I opted for the long hair which ended up being a bust because it was so high maintenance. So after I got a fade (which felt like 3 lbs of hair had been taken off my head), I went for the mousse instead of the gel. Even then, the lowest strength I could find at the Blue Box Retailer was a 7 Extra Hold.

Nowadays, I wet my hair, apply the mousse, and style as desired. After about half an hour when the mousse has dried, I run my hands through my hair a few times to minimize the comb marks and shellac-y look. Sometimes I forget, and I end up looking like a high-schooler for a few hours.

One of those nights happen to be while working. One of the smartass techs came over and tapped my hair.

'Just checking to see if it was real.'

Now, I make sure I check the mirror before I leave the apartment.

The Time-Has-No-Meaning Watch

The weekends are slow, like the calm before the zombies start gnawing on your leg a la Shawn of the Dead. It's as barren as the Dallas streets when the Cowboys are playing; more people were outside after Fat Man (an atomic bomb, not an actual Fat Man) dropped on Nagasaki. If tumbleweeds still existed in this part of Texas, I'd be ducking and diving to avoid them. Slow. S...L...O...W...

But I like my work like I enjoy some of my music: chopped and screwed, i.e. repetitive and slow. So weekend nights are oh so nice when my eyes are paid to remain open.

During weeknights, the job is hellish up until about 11PM, so I glance at my digital Casio ($20 at Walmart 4 years ago) every 5 minutes to see how much time I have left until I see some respite. I have contemplated trying to get a prescription that reads 'Xanax 2 mg #6 (six), i at 8PM on M,T,W every other wk PRN idiocy.'

Thursdays and Fridays treat me well, and Saturday and Sunday nights are paved with lollipops and generic Zoloft (which is coincidentally the preferred SSRI on my prescription coverage).

It was on a Saturday night when the Cowboys were playing the Eagles that I pimped my Movado, the one I nickname the Time-Has-No-Meaning watch. But the pharmacy greeted me with 4 waiters (people who want to wait on their prescriptions) and a couple of insurance problems. It was as if the world had sensed my assumption and arrogance and went out of it's way to punish me.

But at 9PM, even the world (or at least the 50 mile radius around Dallas-Ft Worth) took a break to watch the 'Boys skeet shoot some endangered birds from the air. And the only reason I knew the time is because 9PM is one of the few things I can look at the Movado and be certain of the time.

Elegant simplicity, for when time has no meaning except as a status symbol of how much money you make.

Is it 9:10, 10:10, or 11:10?

SPIDER: Just throw it in the bag

SPIDER Re-Release, part tres

About the first piece in my watch collection. I've stopped at three because I haven't found anything else I really like (I think Rolexes are ugly...). If I were to win a Rolex, I'd sell it and get nicer looking watches.

Number 2 was a Gucci with 12 diamonds, and #3 was a Movado.

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Sep 10, 2009

There's a new hip-hop/rap song on the radio with the hook (chorus) being Just throw it in the bag. It's a pretty trashy song, but it's catchy. I can't really see myself saying that line out loud, but I did say it in my head yesterday.

sales lady: 'So what do you think?'

me: silently, 'Just throw it in the bag.' Spokenly, 'I absolutely love the piece. I'll take it.'

What did I buy? My first watch as a pharmacist. And it's pimp, and 'overdone but nice' in the words of my trusted friend who knows how to dress well. Decide for yourself:

It's from the Raymond Weil Parsifal Collection, and it looks a whole lot better in person.

There's a phrase my brother taught me: 'I don't know.' It is used in response to a question which the questionee knows the answer, and the questioner knows the questionee knows the answer, but questionee refuses to acknowledge the question. Ask me how much I spent on it.

'I don't know.' *pause a moment, and then smile*

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Superfluous commentary: I did not pay sticker price for it, and I would not spend that much on a watch. But there is an odd appeal about of wearing a month's rent on your wrist.

Recession Hits My Jeweler

Bailey Banks and Biddle, the jewelry store chain, is going out of business. I had purchased my first luxury watch (a Raymond Weil Parsifal) there back in September from a very nice woman. I saw the same lady this weekend after viewing a TV commercial advertising the steep discounts (50-70% off). I initially did not plan to buy anything since I recently spent several paychecks on new furniture, but the silvery, concave applique at 12 o'clock of a Movado caught my eye and opened my wallet.

I know, I know, I'm so utterly superficial and addicted to luxury watches. But besides getting a second piece of bling, I left with another satisfying morsel. Some guy was looking at my Movado (he didn't realize it was going to be mine) and said to the salesman, 'I know you're giving me a good deal on this timepiece, but I'll have to think about it.' A few moments later while the guy looked at other watches (which he probably couldn't afford), my saleswoman picked up the Movado and calculated the price with 60% off.

It was just too good to pass up. 'I think the word I'm looking for is "Sold!"' The guy furtively glanced my way with a mixture of contempt and jealousy. He probably thought, 'Asshole, throwing money around like that!' And rightly so, but if he had uttered an anathema*, I would simply have responded, 'You pay the cost to be the boss.' But he didn't, and so I just grinned.

Then my grin faded as I noticed his cute girlfriend, who had brown Shirley Temple-like curls and sky blue eyes, give him a conciliatory look and squeeze of the hand. On my end of the counter, there wasn't a person there to share in my purchase except the saleswoman, who is only happy because she got another commission.

Oh well, I suppose that's life. I walked out looking at the renewed smile reflected from the face of the sapphire crystal. I'll just have to be happy that I'm at a point where I can buy a watch worth several hundred dollars with no regrets.

There's a Bailey Banks & Biddle in the Houston Galleria, and there's a chance you might get your very own luxury watch for under 5 bills. Just fyi.

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*anathema - a curse, insult