I am, Irish, Man, and Geek

So in the last 24 hours, I have brewed my own beer, fixed my car, and noticed that the name of the car battery I bought, was both applicable to transformers and Tron. It is the mega-tron II, and its green, so it was perfect.

Sure I may be tooting my own horn a little bit, but I am very excited to finally brew more own beer. I know it has been something that I have been wanting to do for a very long time. My wonderful fiance' got the very unsubtle hints that I gave all year, and she did not disappoint. End of January, I will have some people over, pop open the beer, and I can only hope that it is at least bearable as a first try.

I also love working on my own cars. Whether it is fixing a simple issue, or more heavy duty stuff, i like getting my hands dirty. I have one car that is not running at all right now, and I am out of ideas. Hopefully with the help of a friend I can get it running, and learn something in process. Every little thing I successfully fix on my cars, the more confidence I get in trying more complex things, and someday I hope to have the skills to completely restore a car. Some day, some day.

That is all for today, gonna finish watching a car show, and maybe turn on the Xbox for a little while.

I'm just sayin...

Post Birthday Events

So yesterday was my birthday, and nothing terribly exciting happened. Went out, had some Buffalo Wild Wings, some beer, and watched "The Fighter". My review of the movie can be found here. It was good, but thats not what im really here to talk about.

I just like many other people around this time of year, look in the mirror, and say "there is something I really dont like about what I see here." and I am clearly stating I am in that boat right now. Now, for me, it is not necessarily because I have put on some weight over the holidays, because I have, but I have always had physical goals for myself and I have always underachieved. I am even more frustrated with my failures in that department because I am trying to rehab an injured ankle, that until it is good to go, prevents me from doing almost anything with my legs, which sucks. I dont like running, but it keeps you in shape, I cannot do that. I can't play basketball, can't do squats, cleans or deadlifts, and cant do any tumbling, gymnastics, or acrobatics. I have always been the type of person to push through aches and pains, but this one just keeps getting worse with that approach. I have had to slow down activities to almost a standstill, and it's frustrating as hell. In the short run just being in shape is a goal, but being athletic and explosive is my true goal. I had someone who went to the same highschool as me tell me today that he looked up to me as a football player and he changed his number to mine his senior year, after wearing the same number his first three years. It was definitely cool to hear, and more flattering and surprising than I would have thought.

Some of the things that keep me motivated are movies of athletes or sports figures, having to fight for what they want to do. Watching things as simple as Ninja Warrior on tv, guys like Damien Walters on Youtube. Even something as simple as watching football on tv makes me miss the sport, and sport in general. For now health wise, and exercise wise, its about getting my body back on track, and starting to do some of the things that I know I love.

On other fronts, I started my first home brew today, using what I got for Xmas from my lovely fiance'. It is an Irish Red, which is fitting, and in two weeks I bottle and then two more drink. I am excited, and really cant wait to brew again, if only for the great aromas that boiling the wort and hops fills the house with. Add something else to the list of things that I enjoy doing.

Little bit of car maintenance tomorrow, and some taming of the facial hair is in order. Until then,

I'm just sayin...

Xmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, of course me being delusional and thinking anyone will ever read this.

Although my holiday lacked a family gathering, it was still a good day. Got up around 11ish, opened presents with my fiance' an the dogs, and was just overall lazy. Overall i can say that my fiance' is the definition of awesome, you want to know why? Because she gave me a beer making kit and the megablocks Halo pelican dropship. Ya, beer and toys for Christmas, what else could you ask for. We also went out for some dessert, and ended up at IHOP mainly because they were one of the only places open. Had me some New York Strawberry cheesecake pancakes, and they were delicious. We went and saw "How Do You Know" after that, and it was ok, good writing, kind of dragged on, I can see why it failed in the box-office.

One good thing about the main part of the holidays being over, is i wont be so tempted by all the wonderful, read fattening, treats and food. It will be time to get back on the wagon tomorrow with some quality time at the gym, and start to move in the right direction.

I have the next week off, so hopefully i can start some projects, continue an old one or two, and finish the book im reading so I can move on to the next one. There will be more interesting things to come, really just wait.

Lets try this again

So, I got lazy and complacent last time I tried to start this, lets see if I can get it rolling this time.

Last week I probably had one of my worst days in quite a while. I was kindly informed that I screwed up so bad last time I was enrolled in college, that none of the local universities will grant me admission. After all the hoops they made me jump through, including calling a school I never went to, to have them fax the school I was applying to, just to tell them I indeed never attended their school, I simply pissed the chance away 3 years ago.

Now I do not have the biggest ego around, but it definitely brought me down a little knowing that I now actually want to be in school learning something, and I cannot because before I did not care. I thought I had a plan in my head to do certain things and have something accomplished by the time I am done with my commitment. I kind of gave up, did not know what to do, where to go or who to talk to. I could not convince anyone to admit me, even though I could pass any entrance test they have, and considering the general education level of the state I am in, and pass it with flying colors.

This is one of those situations where I could just shut down and say “eff it, I quit” and continue doing what I have been doing for the past 4 years, just getting by. And you know what, I did for a couple days, because I was quite simply exhausting myself worrying about what to do next.

It has led me to one thing for certain though, and that is I need to put myself back in control of the things in my life. That does not mean I need to control everything, but the things that are perfectly controllable, that fall squarely on my shoulders, I need to get them back in line. Including but not limited to, finances, school/grades, health, fitness, and my free time. I can and will enroll in some online schooling to get my grades to an acceptable level to transfer into one of the local schools. I really need to concentrate on rehabbing my ankle so I can do the things that I really want to do. Free time, well, I think less random tv and more books is probably a good option as well.

Lastly for now, this past weekend I did go see the new Tron: Legacy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I enjoyed it even more the second time around, after re-watching the original again, and spotting a few more hints/odes to the original. I realized that I do really enjoy movies, and not just the movie theater experience, but movies in general. If you have ever had me around and there was an actor or movie we couldn’t quite think of, I am sure I quickly referenced IMDB.com for the information. They have a top 250 movies of all time there, voted on by users, and I have realized that there are so many good films that I have never made the point of watching. I think one thing that I really want to do, is start at 100 and go to zero and review all of them. Whether I have seen them once, twice, twenty, or no times, watch it again and review it. Not only on its own but possible in context to its place on the list. Now I know that a list like this is fairly subjective and opinionated, but with the amount of votes most of these movies have, that’s a pretty accurate rating for the movies. So my next step in that is trying to find where im going to have to look for movies like Metropolis(1921), and then get a webcam so I can do video reviews as well as written ones here.

Life is an adventure, and I have forgotten that as of late, so its time to start exploring again and enjoying the things that are right there for the taking.