Hangover & Houses

The weekend came and went.

Friday:

I got up really early as I had a meeting in Salisbury at 8 am and the drive down 73 to 85 takes me about an hour.  I delivered my presentation around our New Product launches with ease.  That’s pretty easy subject matter because “new” tends to get plenty of “oooh’s & ahh’s”.  After the meeting I stopped at East Coast Wings for lunch with two of my counterparts.  This random place in Kannapolis, NC won 2nd place at the national wing competition in 2010…competing in the “naked-hot” category.  They have like 100 different flavors of wings.  I dont’ really remember what we got, but I know Jalapeno Cheddar and Polynesian Blend were two of our choices. 

I got back in the office around 3pm and sent out some follow ups from the meeting.  Afterwards I grabbed the tickets to our Luxury box at Time Warner arena.  I have 4 box/suite tickets to every event at the world-famous Time Warner arena…which plays host to such powerhouse teams as the Charlotte Bobcats and Charlotte Checkers (rolls eyes).  There are concerts too….but not Friday night.  The Bobcats played the Pistons. Terrible game, but I’ll take the trip uptown for free booze and food anytime.  I took Mudd, Eric and Emily and it was fun.  The Bobcats got murdered and I think I only watched about 5 full minutes of the game.  The rest was spent bull-shitting, pounding free beers and fighting off the urge to smoke a cigarette in the conveniently placed smoking balcony right down the hall from our suite.  I quit New Years eve….and honestly…it really hasn’t been that hard.  I’m one of those people who claims “non-smoker” status as I “only smoke when I drink”.  What I’m not telling you is that I will easily kill a pack a night on Friday and Saturday.   If I go to happy hour and have a couple of drinks during the week….i’m smoking pretty steadily as well. 

The smoking needed to stop.  I fought off the first couple of nights surprisingly easy as it was a fun novelty act for my new year’s resolution.   Strangely enough,  now that no one cares or is impressed by my will power….i find myself saying, “who cares”.  I actually really like smoking.  I love how going outside to have a smoke breaks up your night.  You go outside, mingle with whoever else is smoking and occasionally blow a smoke ring or two (I’ve been told I don’t look as cool as I think I do when doing this).  In the end….I did not smoke Friday night, but was surprised that the urge randomly popped up after seemingly having this thing licked.

Saturday:

Jamie, my real estate lady, met me at around 10 am.  I decided on a house in Birkdale that is about 50 yards from my current apartment.   We met, I made a list of contingencies and finally put an offer on the property.  The seller was over priced at $300K and I came in at $251K.  As a side note,  we’re still doing the negoatiation dance….and I’m hoping to get this firmed up by Wednesday of this week.  Around 3 pm, my old intern and her roommate came to visit me from UNC Chapel Hill.  Angie and Hillary stormed into town with all of their young college energy and I took them out to some of the better spots in Birkdale & then later Charlotte.  When I asked them what they wanted to do….they gave the classic “I just want to go to a normal bar and chill….i don’t want to go dancing” answer.  You bet your ass when they got to Whiskey River,  they didn’t leave the dance floor.  We popped bottles and I spent entirely too much money.  It was good to see Angie again and I think her roommate had a good time as well.

Sunday:  Omelette Bar & mimosa at my house (I was so pleased with my station I posted a picture to Facebook).  Shipped the young girls out around noon.  Nap.  Football.  Bed

This week I’m getting back on track with exercise and eating right.  Monday went in the books as successful.  So far so good this morning.   I will try not to miss more days of writing….because as you can see….I get lazy and less articulate when I have too many days to chronicle.

Day 2

(Voice in my head):  This is not about being interesting to the world (all the time…anyway).  This is about frequency, record and capturing your thoughts.    Write about your boring day and what you thought about it.  Weekend coming soon….there will be more material.

WordPress is kind of confusing to navigate.  No buddy list?  Age/Gender/Zip Code search engines?  No “twenty-something-circle” to appeal to?….Oh yeah….thats why I’m here. 

Yesterday came and went as most Tuesday’s in the office do.   My boss (for another 3 days until my new role starts) was in town, from Philly, and I saw him for about 50 minutes all together.   He was here for reasons that didn’t pertain to me, but we did go to lunch at Qdoba.  The chicken burrito with habanero salsa, lettuce and cheese delivered on taste,  but not on form.  The burrito was rolled too short and fat and busted open about half way thru.   I was too lazy to chase down the rogue ingredients with a fork and threw the rest in the trash. 

I spent the afternoon on the phone with logistics (not my responsibility) trying to track down where $500K of Hershey King Size shippers had disappeared to.   I worked on my marketing presentation for our new items (Simple Pleasures, Ice Breaker Duos and Rolo Minis) and fought with my new boss-to-be about flying to Cleveland in February (I lost).  You know what they say about Cleveland…

“First Prize!  One week in Cleveland!  Second Prize?  Two weeks in Cleveland….”

I got out of the office around 5:30 and raced to meet my real estate agent at a listing in Birkdale.  My agent’s name is Jamie.  She’s mid 40′s, dark hair, wears oversized glasses and is SUPER skinny.   Not from being an exercise or diet nut either….just looks like she’s the kind of person who doesn’t have a real interest in food (opposite of a foodie) and maybe used to smoke a ton.  Here white teeth and and old lady perfume both negate and validate the smoking thought. 

I don’t really want to buy a house, but I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to do.  The driving factor is that my company will buy my house if I move with them.  Not alot of risk about being trapped under a house and I can finally build a little equity.  The market (ewwww…”the market”…pet peeve term) is very buyer friendly and I keep repeating that sheep-like soundbyte, “It’s really about time”.  However,  I LOVE my apartment.  It’s big, it’s open and has a covered balcony the size of many Manahattan Studios.  It’s located right above shops/bars/restaurants and I love having a landlord take care of all of my problems.  I feel like Jamie coould sense my luke-warm energy for the whole process.  I saw 3 places.  One house was by far the nicest and had a huge yard for Sadie (dog).  However,  I liked the other 2 which were located a stones throw from where my current apartment is (small yards though). 

Location, Location, Location right? (gag)

I set up sometime Saturday to go look at the rest of my Zillow mix-tape I put together.  Reluctantly though….I plan to be hungover Saturday and I really don’t enjoy the errand type approach to driving around town. 

I got home around 8.  Watched New Girl, Raising Hope and the beginning of some sexually charged headline about: “High School Girl Yearbook Pictures:  Too Racy?” on the 10′ Oclock news and went to bed.

I’m terrible at closing these posts off…and I’m not sure how I want to do it yet.  Quote for the day?  Song lyric?  Tag Line?

Not sure yet.

So…..

…I’m back to taking a stab at recording my thoughts.    Simply saying, “i’m back to blogging” would have sufficed but for some reason I really hate that word.   Not entirely sure what it stems from but I credit it, in part, to the internet’s enabling of  every inarticulate, grammatically incorrect, uninteresting web crawler to consider themselves a “writer”.  Am I putting myself on a pedestal?  Slightly,  but that is not the point.  I’m not a good/great writer.  That being said, I can communicate to you what I think and many times this will come from a very observant place.

There is my safe harbor statement.  Iron clad mumbo-jumbo that permits elements of hypocrisy on entering the blogosphere that I publicly like to hate on.

How did I get here?

During a bout with procrastination this morning, I opened up my old xanga site and was reading through my early to mid 20′s (I’m still 29…. in my late 20′s for another 6 months…. so…. shut it).  Both impressed with my clouded young-adult mind and attention to clarity, I took a solid hour and just re-read my ramblings.  After growing slightly annoyed with my overconfident 25-year-old self, I clicked over to an old friend’s page.  CinnamonAngel’s (a real writer) chronicles of young-adult-ia (see what I did there?) were very well written and shockingly honest.   The first entry I read was her last one…sometime in 2008.   The last one I read was sometime in October 2005.  She gets pretty dark at times and, candidly, I don’t normally have interest in this kind of subject matter.  Most people who write about their struggles/problems are self-serving, self medicating, feeling sorry for themselves or seem damaged to a point where I question the validity of it all.  This is not that.  It showed how she kept her outer image alive and successful while balancing what she was feeling ….battling at the time.   The order in which I toured her early/mid twenties was really interesting.  She went from having a drug addicted-financial disaster of a boyfriend to a girl who joked about meeting a hot construction worker she’d had her eye on for drinks (remember the reverse order).  The backward journey through her self image, self worth,  funny stories and overall mindset was cool to read.  Honestly,  I think if she were to write about that time of her life in that same reverse order,  it would have legs to be published.  Especially with girls of that age.

I happen to be friend’s with Cinnamon on facebook so I messaged her with a little excerpt from her “early crush” days in 2005.   To my surprise,  she was amped up about finding this blog ….and more importantly….uncovering 5 years of her world she thought was lost in cyber space.

The combination of enjoying my old posts and her delight to have found the same thing made me realize that I probably need to do this again.  Without the whole world watching.  I make myself sick inside with what I post on facebook….even though I think I’m pretty witty most of the time.

I want to be able to blow it out and keep it as record.

In 2022 I want to look back at this post and laugh again at how I laughed at my younger self.

The record is worth it.  That is what I learned today.