So…I’m not really sure where to begin in the cavalcade that is my life. I’d like to say that my long absence has been a result of being busy–which is true in part–but in reality, I just plain haven’t felt any real desire to pour my little heart out. I half considered quietly taking down the whole site, but I reconsidered. I still don’t know why. Maybe because it feels like I’d be ending a 7-year project? That must be it. I’m rapidly approaching the seven year mark on my site, and it seems like such a shame to discontinue it over something as trivial as, you know, a lack of motivation to actually maintain the site. But I’m paid up through January, so I might as well keep going.

As some of my family and close friends have either been told or have surmised for themselves, Erika and I are no longer together. She decided that her job was more important, and that’s the end of that. Am I bitter? Sure I am. I was, at least. I was mad as hell at her for awhile because it seemed like I was being dumped for a job, and that’s about the lowest on the scale of things to get dumped for in my book. There’s a scale of reasons, really. Another guy? Sucks but I could accept it. Moving and not coming back? Tough break, but that’s how the ball bounces. Feelings for me gone? Sorry to hear that, but it happens. But to tell me I can’t fit into a work schedule? Now that’s a cop-out.

Work has never been important enough for me to arrange my life around, and maybe that’s just how I feel about work, or maybe it’s because I haven’t found the right job to feel that way about. Work to live, don’t live to work, that’s my credo. Erika seems to have taken the latter of those choices, much to my dismay. In the end as we were ending it over the phone, I finally just told her “You know, it’s just a fucking job.” You can fit anything into your life if you really want to. You find a way if you really want it. So I guess that’s what happened: she didn’t want to find a way for whatever reason. I think what hurt the most was that this was the second woman in a row who had told me that they wanted a lifestyle that there wasn’t any room for me in…so there’s always that, too. When you hear the same line coming from different women, it hurts a little more.

I shut down for awhile, and to a certain extent I haven’t yet turned back on fully. I still feel like something’s missing even though it’s been four months since I last saw her. In any case, all this I’d like to avoid talking about, m’kay? Everyone always says the best thing to do is talk about it, but really, what’s there to talk about? I said yes, she said no, that’s the end of the story. I didn’t talk to Heather Darrow for a year and a half after we ended things, so unless I get a call from Erika when she might be back in town when she’s done for the summer, I guess I won’t be talking to her again for awhile. She’s got two of my Calvin & Hobbes books and my pocketknife, though, so I wouldn’t mind an anoymous package in the mail returning my stuff.

Work has been kind of a mixed bag. I’ve taken on several projects of my own accord which has kept me busy, including getting the entire firm’s antivirus software upgraded. If you think one machine is tough to keep free of viruses, spyware, adware, and other malware, try doing it with 175 computers. I have about 150 workstations to watch, plus another 25 or so servers that need a greater degree of vigilence. It’s slow going, too, because the firm had mixed versions of the software installed, and some of them were still broken from a virus infection in February that swept through the firm like a California wildfire. Heck, there’s a machine that’s still infected that I can’t fix because it requires rebooting to fix, and it just so happens to be the server that handles all the firm voicemail. Fortunately, it’s not connected to anything else, so at least it’s not going to spread. If I had my way and could set firm policy, I’d have Mozilla Firefox installed on every single workstation, which would cut the amount of spyware that gets installed from one or two a week to zero.

It wouldn’t help with viruses, but it would sure cut back on the other bad stuff.

As it turns out, the guy who I replaced was sort of handling the antivirus stuff when the virus hit earlier in the year, and his lack of response and his misconfigurations were the reasons why he was encouraged to leave. This means that since I took this on, I’ll take the blame if it happens again. Great stuff, but I’m being pretty proactive about it so unless I really screw the pooch, I’m not going anywhere. Heck, I might even just save the day and stop another infestation if I can ever finish the project.

Potential pitfalls aside, I’ve been enjoying my work. I got called into the HR manager’s office yesterday for what I hoped wasn’t a bad sort of chat, but he just wanted to pass on some words of praise from the higher-ups who have been impressed with my work, my attitude, and just me in general. They also gave me a 20% raise, so it wasn’t just empty words. Oddly enough, when I was hired I was told I’d get a raise after my 90-day probationary period, and when it didn’t come a month ago I thought about saying something but decided that a $1/hour raise wasn’t worth griping about. So I kept my trap shut, and they gave me a $3/hour raise instead. Funny how that worked out in the end.

‘Course, I gotta wait for the next paycheck to see my raise, and this last pay period was short, so it’s going to be tight.

I’ve been doing a lot of jogging in the nice summer weather, and I’ve extended my tri-weekly jogs from 3 miles to 4.5 miles, so I’m now doing close to 15 miles every week. This week I’ll do closer to 18 since I’m jogging an extra day–though since it’s forecast to be 102 degrees on Saturday, methinks I’ll go in the morning. As a result of my jogging and a self-imposed abstinence from spirits, I’ve lost close to 10 pounds, though I’ve slowly been drinking beer again and it hasn’t affected my weight, so I’m thinking the jogging does more for me than the lack of empty calories. I’m finding that a lot of the shirts I bought as recently as a few months ago are a little big for me now, so I may have to go buy some additional clothes. I’m having trouble believing that I may have to start buying medium-sized shirts after years of wearing L and XL. Shoot, I went and bought a couple of pairs of pants early this week to replace my 10 year old khakis, and my new 34-32 chinos are a little loose around the waist, even with my belt on the third notch.

I’ve been playing on the firm softball team, too, which has been a lot of fun. I haven’t played softball or baseball in probably 10 years, so it’s been tough to get back into, if you’ll forgive me, the swing of things. I went and hit some softballs in a batting cage on the 4th of July, and my hands are still healing the blisters I got. I guess I overdid it that first day when I hit 175 softballs without batting gloves on, you think? Our team is 2-2 so far, and tonight we had a real groove going. I’ve been playing 1st base a lot, so the pressure’s on, but I made two beautiful catches tonight that more than made up for the double-play I messed up in our first game. If I can stop popping the ball up when I’m at bat, I just might be an OK player again.

I’m not really sure what else to write about at the moment, as it’s getting late and I didn’t sleep well at all last night. Tomorrow, I’m getting up, going to work, buying myself a cup of coffee (despite the 100 degree heat that’s forecast for tomorrow) and a scone, having lunch with my Dad, some Thai food for dinner, and then going downtown later to wander about with a friend and see if I can find anyplace interesting with music that is willing to serve me beer without charging me money to get in. It’ll be fun, though probably a bit warm.

I’m off to bed. Night all.