Recently, I have:

• Turned 28, to relatively little fanfare. Which is probably appropriate, because it’s not a terribly significant birthday. Drinks at the friendly local “We have a ton of awesome beer” establishment were fun, though.
   
• Found a surprisingly viable backup employment plan if I can’t get on anything for the fall season (which I’ll go into at some point later on if/when it happens). But the good news is that I am relatively confident that I will not be boiling my own shoes for dinner. At least not until after Thanksgiving.
   
• Had my phone deteriorate to the point where it’s going to take a lot of restraint for me to not smash the thing with a ballpeen hammer between now and next Friday when I get the new iPhone. Thankfully I have kept a dedicated phone replacement fund and have decided to say “Screw unemployment!” and just get the damn new one.
   
• Gotten new neighbors after 5 months of the apartment next door being empty because the landlord refused to face reality about the way rents are falling around here. They seem nice, but their cigarette smoke seeps into my apartment on occasion, and they let their cats roam about, which tends to freak Chaplin out in the middle of the night from time to time.
   
• Broke down and finally gotten myself the “Hooray, I lost 80lbs!” reward I’d been planning to get for months: An iPod shuffle/waterproof headset combo which will keep me entertained while swimming long distances. I’m now doing 2 miles with no problem, and I’m considering bumping up to 4km when I can get away with it.
   
• Watched an absolute fuckton of TV. Rewatched entire 4th season of BSG, now working through Netflix discs of Big Bang Theory (more geekily amusing than I recalled it being, since I dropped it after the pilot) and re-watching Band of Brothers, probably going to go through all of Deadwood next.
   
• Received a sternly worded letter from the landlord to the entire building that the toilets are ONLY for disposal of human waste and toilet paper. I’m not sure whether or not I want to hear the story behind that one.
   
• Have fought the good fight against my body’s natural instinct to stay awake ridiculously late and then get up mid-morning. Generally won, though this week I’ve mostly lost (as evidenced by the timestamp on this post).

I am a terrible cleaner. I keep my kitchen completely spotless because I spent some time living with people who let food fester and attract pests, but otherwise, my place generally veers between “hit by a tornado” and “aftermath of a car bomb.”

Having been unemployed and stuck at home long enough, however, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I feel like it ought to be addressed. And I’m getting pretty far down on the list of other projects that need to be done.

Hauling about four bags of crap to the trash and sticking another box in my car to go to Goodwill after just hitting the living room and bedroom at a moderate level today felt like progress. There are now several more square feet of visible floor than there were this morning.

The problem is, that’s just what I had to do to get the place clean enough that I would be comfortable actually having a cleaning professional come in and clean everything else. Sadly, I splurged on something else (that I’ll write about once it’s up and running), so my time vs. money ratio tells me it’s all on me to clean.

It’s a definite multi-day task. The bathroom alone is probably going to take me a goodly chunk of tomorrow, and there’s a filing nightmare that awaits me in about a year’s worth of paperwork that’s currently sitting in a gigantic pile on my chair, telling me that I need to switch more of my bills to e-bills.

But hey, it’s something to do. And when I’ve reached the point where I’m so bored that I’m resorting to cleaning to have something to do, it is officially time for me to get a job.

It’s been less than a year since I first headed south on the Marvin Braude Bike Trail, a trail I’d formerly been content to ride the five or six miles north to its terminus, then turn around and stop wherever I’d started.

The first time I rode south, I got my ass handed to me. I rode with my friends Jessica and Dan to Hermosa Beach, about 15 miles south, but not anywhere near as close to the end as we thought we were when we cried uncle and went to an Irish pub for a burger and a beer.

By the time we got back, I wound up availing myself of Jess and Dan’s offer to give me and my bike a ride back to my apartment, because I wasn’t sure I could make it the final two miles without falling over into oncoming traffic.

The next time down was even sillier: I decided to ride to the end of the trail, which I thought was about half a mile south of the Hermosa pier, but was in fact at least 3 miles further, two miles south of the Redondo Beach pier.

But I managed to not only make it all the way to the southern terminus, I managed to do that AND make it all the way back to my house in one piece. I could barely move for two days afterwards, having brought nothing but a ton of water and a granola bar with me, but I did it.

I’ve been working towards riding the whole trail ever since, incorporating such radical ideas as “bringing a lunch” and “drinking some Gatorade.”

I wanted to go for it last week when my car needed the first of its two hideously expensive repairs, but last week it was so windy I had to get off and walk for long stretches of time.

But today, during repair #2, it was overcast and about 65 degrees with minimal wind. I ate a giant breakfast, and I set out with lunch, granola bars, a crapload of water, and 32 ounces of Gatorade, and I did it.

I rode the whole fucking 44 mile round trip trail in just under 5 hours, including a couple fairly long stops for lunch and another rest when I got all the way to the north end, and a bunch of shorter breaks.

Once you throw in the six miles I rode getting to and from the mechanic’s, it works out to almost exactly 50 miles. And while I’m pretty damn tired, I’m not the kind of bone-exhausted that I was after that first ride south.

While the weight is not coming off the way I’d like it to anymore (although at least it’s staying put), it’s milestones like these that make me feel like I’m still making good progress.

Well, all the posts that imported seem to have reverted to GMT. I’ve got to figure out how to fix that.

Update: Yeah, I have to go through and hand-update all 1885 posts. At least it’ll kill some Unemployment Time.

Via Defamer, the perfect one-word [over and over again] summation of being a Lost fan:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcatQSyRK6c&hl=en]

I love people with the kind of free time that allows them to put something like this together.

If you watched tonight’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, you will be highly, highly amused by the extremely long, hysterically funny song on this site referenced in the episode (warning: audio loads automatically).

They had way, way, way too much fun creating that. It’s almost as long as the goddamn episode, but sweet lord, it’s awesome.

I eat a lot of Healthy Choice frozen food. I am a terrible cook and I’m trying to lose weight, so their products appeal to me.

One of their more respectably tasty entrées is their “Chicken Margherita”, a nice little chicken and pasta dish. For years, it was served in the traditional small, flat box.

The packaging has recently been changed, however:

They have decided, for some reason, to make this a “Cafe Steamer” dish. This is problematic for several reasons.

The first is that it vastly increases the size of the packaging, to the point where I can’t fit more than one in my freezer at the same time. Why is this?

Because each individual package is now two very large, thick pieces of plastic: A bowl the sauce sits at the bottom of, and a steaming basket that sits above it with the pasta, chicken, and bits of tomato and garlic.

This leads me to my second problem with this change: Did anyone think of how much more waste this whole process produces? To go from one flimsy piece of plastic to two very strong ones a) cannot be cheap and b) is just a wee bit earth-unfriendly.

And frankly, it doesn’t really taste any different from the way it did when you just nuked the traditional flat package.

It does, however, lead me to the most amusing problem: Hilariously obvious instructions.

This is a picture of the directions on the back, which you can click to enlarge:

I direct your attention to the text in italics on the bottom right. If you can’t read it from the picture, it says:

Meal can also be enjoyed by placing steamed food on a plate and topping with sauce.

Wow! You mean I’m not legally obligated to use this giant plastic thing included in the packaging? I totally thought that’s what I was agreeing to by purchasing this Cafe Steamer.

Overall, it adds up to a needless, wasteful, and downright silly redesign of a product that was just fine the way it originally was.

I’ve finally uploaded the last of the best of my Europe photos, from my 2005 trip with Mark.

Here’s a link to the full set, the captions have descriptions of what the hell it is that you’re looking at, along with some entertaining stories of stuff we did while over in Euroland.

If, unlike me, you don’t have an abundance of free time on your hands, they’re also broken down country by country if you don’t want to look at all 400 or so of them.

As long as it took me to upload all my photos, I’d hate to see how long it takes Mark to upload his. He took about three times as many pictures as I did, though in all fairness, he’s a much better photographer.

And since I’m talking about Mark as a photographer, I think this is obligatory:

‘Twas the night before Strike-mas, and through Hollywood
Every crew member thought, “Oy, this can’t be good.”

The pink slips had been rolling on in for weeks
And news only came out in rumors and leaks.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds
While parents sought Advil to quiet their heads

I was sitting inside, bundled in winter gear
Having turned down the heat to try remain austere

When out in the alley honked a very loud horn;
‘Twas a Teamster in his five-ton, looking forlorn

I opened my window and shouted “Hey, yo!
It’s after midnight, don’t you have somewhere to go?”

He replied, “It’s all from the Christmas episode,
Fake trees and ornaments, an entire truckload.

Our vendors were shut down, our office laid off;
Every light in town seems to be turned off.”

I asked, “Can’t you take the truck to the studio?”
He said, “Their lot’s so full, it’s got no place to go.”

I said, “Let’s take it to Les Moonves’s house!
He ought to have room, that $30-mil-a-year louse.”

“Or Chernin or Grey,” he said, “Or Barry Meyer,
Maybe Zucker or Sloan, or Lynton or Iger.

They all make good money, even Patric Verrone,
And some guy I saw on TV named Gavin Polone.”

So I pulled on my jeans and I pulled on my boots,
The Teamster and I were now in cahoots.

We charted a course towards Beverly Hills
Ready to get in a last few cheap thrills.

With some inside tipsters and Google Maps Mobile
We took on a task…perhaps somewhat ignoble.

I will leave out the name of the victim selected
But do rest assured, he was quite well connected

We were dressed all in black from our heads to our feet,
To flummox security guards we might meet.

But our worries were baseless, ’twas no one nearby
As the shadow of the five-ton darkened the sky

We pulled up to the gates and claimed a delivery
Our friend didn’t know it was heavy artillery.

We hung a huge banner urging negotiations
And left the truck there, despite protestations.

A silly and juvenile prank, to be sure,
But since when have crew kids ever been mature?

We fled the scene and I whipped out my crackberry
And called us a taxi to someplace more merry:

To the party of one friend who still had a job
And hadn’t turned into an unemployed slob.

We drank to our family and friends and moreover
To the hope this will end before hell freezes over.

—

Now I end with a plea for a wee bit of reason
Though it sometimes seems such a thing’s out of season

Please stop the name-calling through press releases
And try to begin to pick up the pieces.

For Peace is the one thing we B.T.L.’s seek
And the return of our 70-hour workweek.

Though I’ve fled from L.A. for a Christmas that’s white,
Merry Strike-mas to all, and to all a good night.

Many thanks to the providers of the Online Rhyming Dictionary, without which this would have been even sillier.

Hope everyone had fun last night. I definitely did, though I believe “getting hammered and playing Cranium” qualifying as fun makes me approximately 400 years old.

Sadly, this will be my last update for a few days because I’m about to get sucked back into the vortex of work. My boss is directing the episode that starts shooting tomorrow, so that’s going to be very interesting but with some very long hours.

In my absence, please feel free to debate in the comments what the people behind the Geostationary Banana Over Texas project are smoking.