Its almost a record time for a relationship to end with me. I started hanging out with a new girl on Friday, and here it is Thursday, and after getting together with her 4 times in the past week, I'm done with her. Crazy Jen at least lasted like 9 days or so. Not sure if this girl was any crazier, but I should've known better when I saw the similarities between the two of them. Whatever, you live and you learn. Although I liked the girl and had fun hanging out with her, it was the time in between I didn't enjoy. She was way to clingy and needy, and this is only after a week folks. Maybe I'm just used to being single, but I can't have someone up my butt all the time. I'm used to my personal space and time, and don't appreciate it when someone tries to suck it all up. Not fun at all. Besides, I have so much other stuff on my plate at the moment, I don't need a time sucking girlfriend at the moment. Thats not to say I don't want a girlfriend, but I think I'm a lot different then I used to be.

I used to want to see someone I dated all the time. Now, not so much. I like my own space and my own time to do my own thing and if I don't get that when I go out with someone, I think it would really piss me off. There needs to be a balance, and while I used to think it was like a 4 or 5 time a week thing I'd want, I'm thinking now, more like 2, or 3 tops. Seeing someone any more than that at this point and I think I'd just throw the balance I have in my life right now all out of whack.

So thats that. Whatever. Move on, live and learn and all that other stuff.

Besides, I have bigger things on my mind. Like February 24th. That is the day, I think, of my big gig. My teacher still doesn't know the date, but thats the date thats listed on the places calendar of events, so thats the date I'm going with. American Idiot is down cold pretty much. Now its on the Hash Pipe, which has a bitch of an opening riff, but once I get that down, I'll be good. The rest is easy. Then its onto another tune and I think that'll be enough for me. I have less than a month. I need to bear down!

OK, I'm going to stop babbling now. Back to work.

The exercise and diet regime started anew this morning and I must say, it felt good. I woke up at like 5:30 in the morning and hopped on the elliptical at about 5:45, did 30 minutes and sweated to death. It really does feel like a good workout. Now the key is keeping it going and doing this every morning without failure, and especially not breaking down on the weekends and going back to eating crap all weekend long. We shall see how long it lasts. Hopefully awhile.

I'm really psyched and at the same time even more frightened about playing with my guitar teacher's band. I really need to step up the practicing on the songs I want to play and get them down pat and tight. I have a month. I know I can do it. I just need to focus and force myself to learn it, instead of trying for a minute and giving up because I can't get it. If I don't, I'll never learn. It should be fun, the more people I tell about it, the more they want to come. So I have friends, my roommates, my brother, maybe a co-worker or two all interested in checking it out. Hopefully I won't disappoint.

I'm going out with the new girl again tonight. I have to pick her up at her house, which is her parents house, and then we're going out for Thai food. I guess this means I also have to briefly meet her parents, which I'm not really that worried about, as I'm always good with parents. They usually like me, eventually! I know it took the bitches dad awhile to like me, but then once he did I was good.

Well, thats about it. I wish there was more to report, but there really isn't. Have a great Monday everyone!

Sorry about the lack of posting this week. I could lie and say I was busy, but thats not really true. I will just leaves it at this, I was preoccupied, with talking to women. I don't know what it is, but since the New Year the amount of people that I've been talking to online has spiked big time. Is that a popular New Years Resolution for single women, besides dieting and exercise, find a man? It must be. Thats my theory and I'm sticking to it. I actually went out with one of them on Friday night and we had a really good time. So much so that we went out again last night as well, and had an even better time. I think this one might actually develop into something, instead of fizzling out like every other girl I go out with does. We shall see as time wears on. I won't go into any detail as I really don't want to jinx anything at this point.

Other than that, the other big news to report is that my guest stint with my guitar teachers band has gone from 1 song, to a few. He said if I'm going to do it, might as well do a few more. So now I have to apply myself a little more to get a few more songs down pat. So far we have Green Day's "American Idiot" and I think I'm going to add to that Weezer's "Hash Pipe," Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle," and some Blink 182, either "Dammit" or "All The Small Things." All simple songs with simple power chords, simple solos (except for the Jimmy Eat World one) and all under three minutes long each. Should be fun. I was asking him if I should bring my own guitar, and he said that although he wouldn't me playing his, he thinks I'd be more comfortable using my own, which is true. Plus he's only got two that he gigs with, so if a string or something else breaks on one, he needs the other. Also, I have to bring my amp and all the rest of my gear, which I'm hoping will be loud enough. If not it needs to be mic'd up. I don't know, sounds like a whole lot of effort for just a few songs. But it should be fun. I'm really looking forward to it, and really dreading it at the same time!

Thats about it. I have some crap I need to do today, like get ready for starting the diet and exercise regime anew on Monday. I need to change my guitar strings and lastly, I have a whole plastic pretzel keg full of change, I need to count it out to cash it in, because I'm broke and need the cash! Plus there's football to watched in High Def. I don't know who I'm rooting for, but I think Denver, because I like Jake Plummer, mostly because he was featured in a thing on Animal Planet about people that have Bassett Hounds, that always ran next to the same show on dachshunds. On the NFC side, I think I'm rooting for Seattle. We shall see.

Adios for now.

So I'm at my parents house, have been since Friday night, and its snowing outside. So I think I'm going to hole up here for as long as possible. I have tomorrow off for Martin Luthor King Jr. Day tomorrow, so I may just stay here tonight too. I feel like all I've done this weekend is run around, not fun.

Yesterday I had my guitar lesson, and I'm still on to play some American Idiot in a month or so. Should be interesting, I almost have it down, but then playing it at full tempo and with a band is going to be a slightly different experience I think. Whatever, it'll be interesting, thats for sure. After the lesson I had to run my car over to VW real quick for them to replace a bulb in my headlight. I noticed Friday night as I was driving to my parents in the fog that one of my headlights didn't look to be on, and I was right. Who knows how long I've been driving around like that. Thankfully I didn't get a citation from a cop or anything. That would've been fun. After that I went to Best Buy with my dad and brother where my dad proceeded to drop who knows how much cash to buy himself a new 50 inch plasma TV. It should be delivered today, hopefully. Then on my day off tomorrow I need to go down to the cable place and swap out his box for one that outputs to HD, again, fun times.

After Best Buy, my brother and I met a coworker of his to go see Hostel, and damn, that had to have been the worst movie I have ever seen. The only redeeming quality was the massive amounts of nudity in it. Other than that, it was just beyond retarded. It was like gore for gore's sake, and I didn't even find it that gross. Maybe I'm just sick and desensitized to movie violence. Who knows. The only part of it that I actually liked was the scene in the locker room with that guy talking about doing it old school. That was funny. The rest of the movie sucked, big time.

After the movie, we were in the neighborhood of my house, so my brother and I hauled my TV over to the Best Buy I bought it at and returned it. After lugging 120 pounds of TV down the stairs, into my car and then out of my car and into Best Buy, all in the pouring rain, gave me the inspiration to get something different. I returned the TV and upgraded to a 32 inch Samsung LCD TV. Much better. Its thin and light. I was able to carry the box out of my car and into the house by myself. Much easier to move around and setup as it didn't weigh a ton. The quality is just as good, and its slightly bigger too, so thats a plus. Only a couple hundred more too, so I'll just pay it off over a longer period of time. No big deal. But damn, I must've racked up the Reward Zone points, between my TV and my dad's, I should have like $200+ in Best Buy gift certificates coming! Woo hoo!

Other than that, nothing new to report. The plan for today is relaxing and waiting for my dad's plasma TV.

I'm officially pissed at my brand new TV. I went and picked up an HD cable box yesterday, got it home, plugged it in and after it took 5 years to finally boot up and setup, none of my premium channels worked. After 15 minutes on the phone the woman offered to send a tech out to me or I could go and swap out the box again. I had the same problem when my box died on me a month ago and they were able to fix it over the phone, so I demanded to talk to a manager and after another 15 minutes it was fixed and I was good to go. Good lord, HD is beautiful. I was watching college basketball on ESPN in HD, and I don't even like basketball, it just looked so good. I watched about an hour of a hockey game featuring two teams I don't even like, and it looked great.

All was good until I switched over to a sitcom and something didn't look right. On the rigt side of the screen was like a splotch of slight discoloration. I didn't notice it while watching hockey, because most of the background is white, but whenever someones face was in that one area, and especially any time the color red was in there, it just looked off. The red looked purple and the skin tone didn't look right. Tuning it to a grey screen let you totally see the splotch. And of course it wouldn't go away. So now I'm left with either calling Samsung or calling in on my Best Buy extended warranty. I know I just bought the thing and could go and exchange it for something else, but I just got it, its heavy as hell and I don't really feel like lugging it back to Best Buy for this. They should either come to me to fix it, or bring me a new one. We'll see how that goes.

I can't call them tonight because I'm going to the Rangers game in the city. Looking forward to that as it should be fun. Haven't seen a game in a long time and the Rangers haven't been playing well for an even longer time. Except this season they kick ass, so I'm psyched for the game.

Alright, thats about it. Back to work!

So all in all I'd have to say it was a very interesting weekend and that nothing happened as expected. But hey, you roll with the punches and move on.

Bad news first as its always better to get it out of the way first and move on to the good news, and end on a happy note. First, I don't think I'll be seeing Elana again. We had a nice time at the movies. Munich was great, by the way. After the movie we headed to a diner for some food and once that was over as we went to say goodbye and setup plans for the next date I got the "I think we're better suited to being just friends" speech. To which I said, thank you and then left. I don't need any more friends anyway, and if it didn't work I really don't want to see the person again, you know? Why waste the time. I'll just move on and find someone else. Plenty of fish in the sea. I was a little upset as I really did like the girl, but I'm over it. How so fast? Because, when I get upset over a girl I really liked not wanting to hang out anymore, I but myself stuff. Case in point, I stopped hanging out with Jen back in late September, early October, a week later I went out and bought my guitar and amp. Problem solved! So what did I get myself this time?

An HDTV! Pretty nice, right? I just didn't have the cash for a plasma, or LCD or DLP or rear projection LCD or any of the other fancy TV's, so I went with a good old CRT TV, but with HD. Its nice. 30 inched, widescreen, takes the most high tech HD input from the cable box and it looks gorgeous. Perfect size for my room I must say. I tested it out with a DVD last night and Sin City looked awesome. I threw in Star Wars Episode 3 this morning to get a movie with some color and it just looked great. I'm leaving work like 15 minutes early to get to the cablevision store to swap out my regular cable box for one that gets HD. No charge there. Just had to spend a shit load on the right kind of cable, HDMI. Pricey shit. All told, it wasn't that bad for the TV, the service plan on it, the HDMI cable and the high quality component cable for my DVD player/ home theatre system.

I know what you're saying, impulse buy, right? Wrong. I've been thinking about getting a new TV for awhile now, even before I got the guitar. But I held off on it because I wanted the guitar more. What really pushed me to get one, was actually two things. One, I had the money I was going to use for my replacement rim on my car, which I didn't need anymore, and two, my ex-roommate came back and took her TV from the den, so we were left with no TV there. So I got a new one, and put my old 27 inch in there. Looks nice too.

OK, so second bit of good news. Had a ridiculously hard guitar lesson. Well, not really hard, but I have this crazy hard exercise I need to master this week, which is good, as its my New Years Resolution to really apply myself at the guitar more. So I'll work through this thing, that my teacher said they taught him at Julliard. Yeah, I was shocked by that statement too. So after that he asked if there was anything I was working on, so I said I wanted to learn the solo to Green Day's "American Idiot" so that I'll have to whole song down pat and its one more I can add to my repertoire. So we go through it slowly, and I say out loud that it doesn't seem so hard and I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. He asks if I could by sometime next month. I said, I hope so. Then he invited me to play it with his band next time they do a show, which is sometime mid-February. I'm scared and psyched at the same time. I just need to practice it non-stop, and while standing up, which isn't any easier unfortunately. But I think I can do it. It'll be cool I think.

So thats about it. Interesting turn of events. Not exactly how I thought the weekend would go, but still good for the most part.

So I've been at my parents house since Thursday night, which is just a little too long than absolutely necessary. I took Friday off to get my car fixed, and now that I have a nice and shiny new rim, with a new tire on it to boot, I'm good to go. I even got it washed too, which made it really sparkle. It really needed it too. Considering the new rim was dirt free and the other three were various shades of black, I figured I'd even the playing field and make everything nice and clean. I have to admit, the car looks really nice after its been washed. I should probably do that more often.

I think I made a deal with the devil though. My dad offered to pay for the rim, which after taxes came to an even $600, if, and only if, every Sunday that its needed of me during tax season that I drive my mother to Brooklyn to visit her aunt. I can see at least every other Sunday partially shot for me, but it saves me the $600. I was going to throw it back in my savings account, but I used it to make a dent in a credit card. I'll start saving again soon and get the guitar gear fund going once again. All in due time.

I'm just relaxing at my parents by myself at the moment. Well, not entirely by myself as Keyser is laying in his bed in the sun right next to me. I'm getting ready to head to my guitar lesson and then I need to call Elana and make plans for tonight. We were supposed to go ice skating on Friday but she's had a busy as hell week, so we pushed that back to next week sometime. I think the plan for tonight is the old standby of dinner and a movie, or a movie and then dinner, or in this case, I think a movie and then breakfast for dinner. Either way, its a meal and a movie in one order or another. I think we're going to see Munich, which I heard was really good, but doesn't exactly scream date movie to me. We shall see.

Thats about it. Just being a lazy bastard otherwise. Have a great weekend everyone.

Couldn't help stealing the line from one of the funniest movies from my college days, the stoner comedy Half Baked, but damn, my lower back is killing me. I pulled or strained something, and the pain is fierce. I took one of the anti-inflammatory pain pills I took when I hurt my wrist the morning, spent a little extra time in the shower with the hot water just hitting my back, and all to no avail. It kills. I hope it doesn't sideline me from going ice skating on Friday, because that would suck and I'm really looking forward to that. Although maybe it could get me a sympathy massage. That'd be nice!

Anyway, thats about all there is to report. I'm in pain, and it sucks. I'm going to try to not move out of my chair today unless absolutely neccessary. Wish me luck.

Not my date the other night, that went quite well and we're going out agan on Friday. I'm talking about what happened to me yesterday on my way home from my parents house. The only reason I really went there yesterday was to get my laundry, horrible, I know. While I was there I had to help my dad resurrect his computer because it just kept dying on him. The hard drive is failing, so I backed up all his stuff to another computer in the house, and I ordered him a newer and better hard drive, along with some RAM for his PC. That'll come in sometimes this week and I know how I'll be spending my weekend, at my parents, getting that thing back to life. The fun!

So I get ready to leave. Load all my nice, new and freshly ironed clothes into my car and set off for my place. I get about 3 miles from my parents and I hit an enormous pot hole. I'm talking car shuddering pot hole. And stupid me, I remember sort of hitting it the other day on my way to grab some lunch after my guitar lesson. It was dark and rainy last night, and I just totally forgot, and I must've hit it just right, because something felt off after the fact. I pulled into the nearest parking lot and examined my tire and wheel, and wouldn't you know it, I bent the rim, and bad enough that air was leaking out of my tire, my brand new tire mind you. So I call my dad and explain the situation and started heading back to their house so my brother could help me change the tire. So an hour later I'm getting ready to go and my tire, a full size spare, but a different sized and type tire and rim are only rated for 50 mph or lower. And I'm sorry, but not way I'm getting home and to work all week like that. So I begged my mom to switch cars with me, as she only works 2 miles from their house.

This morning I start the fun process of getting it all fixed. I called the VW dealership about a replacement rim, and even though I know the company and model of the rim, they say its a specially made rim from the company for VW, and oh yeah, its going to run me $555.45. Do the words ouch come to mind? Yeah, it pains me too. First my bumper, now this. Thankfully anything thats gone wrong with the car has been all my fault and all cosmetic. But still. Come one, $555 for a rim? I'm hoping the tire isn't damaged though. If it is, I'm pretty sure I got the extended road hazard warranty with them, so I'm covered under this, if its damaged they'll replace it free of charge. If not, I'm probably looking at another $150 or so for the tire. Fun fun fun.

The upside to all of this is that I've been saving money every month, throwing about $100 from each paycheck into my savings account, so I have enough to cover the cost of all this stuff. Call it my rainy day fund, considering it was raining yesterday and still is today. Previously it was known as my next guitar fund. So I guess that Gibson SG 61 Reissue is going to have to wait awhile longer. The rim should be in on Thursday, so I'll probably take Friday off and take care of all this crap. Yay!

Onto the brighter side of things, my date went really well the other night. We get along, have a lot to talk about, she's very pretty, and tall. And we're going out again on Friday, so all is good. Makes up for all the crap that happened last night.

I'm up way too damn early on New Years Day, especially considering I was up until about 2:30, being a hardcore bas ass and playing Trivial Pursuit, the 90's edition with Seth and Shari. I know, it sounds lame, but it was actually fun! I got back to my place from my parents about 5:30-6 or so and Seth and Shari were watching the Fantastic Four on DVD, and it reminded just how bad a movie that was and how much better it could've been. Ton of wasted potential there. After that we just channel surfed for awhile before Shari made some yummy mudslides in the blender and we watched the Giants game. If they won they clinched the NFC East and hosted a playoff game next week. I could care so much about the game that I spent most of the two hours between 9:30 and 11:30 passed out on the couch.

Once I woke up, rested mind you, we flipped the channels to find a decent New Years Eve show to watch, we settled on Dick Clark on ABC, and damn, what a poor bastard. That stroke he suffered last year really affected him. I felt kind of bad for him. But, on the bright side, it was better than watching Regis Philbin on Fox, or Carson Daly on NBC. CBS didn't even bother, and there was no way in hell I'd suffer through some teeny bopper crap on MTV. So we watched the ball drop. I broke out the bottle of champagne, that I somehow managed to polish off all on my own, and we started in on the Trivial Pursuit.

Don't ask me how, or why, but I am just a repository of useless trivia. So naturally I kicked ass at the game and kinda won. I say kinda because I never could answer the toughest question in the middle. I was the only one to get all six pie pieces before we called it a night. Seth had 3, Shari had 2, so I was declared winner. Go me!

Plans for today? Finally wake up and get out of bed at some point. Exercise (that elliptical machine is an awesome workout. Been doing a half hour every morning since last Tuesday). Hopefully I don't have to run to my parents house to let me dumbass brother in, as he has no housekey. Then I have a date with Elana tonight. We're going to Dave and Busters, which is kind of a restaurant/video arcade/bowling alley/pool hall. Its cool. Should be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully it'll go well and we'll still have plans for ice skating and breakfast for dinner on Wednesday.

Alright, thats about it. Hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year Eve. I'm trying to muster the energy to get out of bed and get going with my day. I know, its not easy.