The Deer Hunter

I had big Memorial Day Weekend plans.  M and I were going to drive overnight on Friday to Vermont, where we would spend three days camping with my relatives and doing all sorts of camping related things, such as hiking, flea market-ing, cooking things over a fire and drinking various forms of alcohol, all while surrounded by the woods of southeastern Vermont and completely cut off from the outside world.

So its around 11 Friday night, and we’re motoring along through New York at about 70 mph when a deer decides to act out some suicidal tendencies on my car.   I caught a glimpse of the deer jumping into the left lane about a half second before impact, which gave me just enough time realize that I had nowhere to swerve.

When a deer hits your windshield, it makes eye contact.  And a surprising loud bang.  My poor car had its windshield smashed and most of its left side ripped up, all the way back to the bumper and including the roof.  M and I got off lucky, just a little flying glass and a slight expansion in my vocabulary.  A mildly deranged tow truck driver took us to a Best Western, which has surprisingly good waffles for their complimentary continental breakfast.  The next morning Enterprise did indeed pick us up, we cleaned out my car in case it had to be totaled, and we soldiered on to Vermont.  The rest of the drive was a beautiful trek through mountains, and we eventually made it to the campsite, 22 hours after we left Ohio.  My first greeter was an uncle passing me an open beer through the car window.

Footnotes:

It took a week for Nationwide to get someone to take a look at my car.  Despite my having arranged all of this before leaving it with them last Saturday.  Despite me paying half the cost of a rental car.  Despite my car body being crammed with sizeable amounts of now rotting pieces of New York’s finest road hazard.  Life may be coming at me fast, but I’m not sure they’re on my side.

On the plus side, my rental car is a 2007 Jetta.  Nice car, but the visibility in it is terrible, especially if you aren’t 5 foot 6.   I am completely taking advantage of the “unlimited mileage” segment of the Enterprise rental contract.  I’m not sure they expect someone who just wrecked their car to use the rental to drive 500 miles to Vermont and go tooling around on dirt roads.

In a slight change of plans…

After reflection, I realized that M and I having apartments across the street from one another was a little silly, given the likelihood of us spending all of our free time together anyway.  So after we had placed deposits on two apartments on the same street, I mentioned to her that it might make more sense if we got a place together.  Which, apparently she had thought about a good amount but didn’t mention in the interest of being a nice girlfriend acting with the understanding that guys are required, by law, to fear any situation which will potentially diminish their future chances of hosting a party with a guest list limited to the cheerleaders from a major sports franchise.

With the assistance of our very patient realtor, we made an appointment to look at a three bedroom apartment this afternoon.  This was a little nerve-wracking, because they had been very helpful, had access to our bank accounts and this was their ONLY vacancy for a place this big within ten miles of where we wanted to live.   While we had the option with going with another company, they kind of had a monopoly on the neighborhood we wanted, so I was pretty nervous when I was walking through the door on the top (3rd) floor of an old apartment building.

Not sure what caught my eye first, the 12 foot ceiling and fireplace in the living room, or the brand new everything in the kitchen, from granite counters to new cabinets*.   Or the big dining room, the seven closets, the arched doorways, the back entrance, the new windows, the included utilities (well, no internet or electricity) or the 1600+ feet of shiny hardwood floors.  This place kicked our original apartments collective asses, and in terms of cost per square foot, it is probably one of the cheapest places I’ve found in 3 months of looking.  All this, walking distance from the train downtown, a grocery store, a movie theater, four bars, restaurants of brazilian, italian, hungarian, japanese and mexican persuasions, a diner, a homestyle cooking place and an art gallery.  Not to mention the farmers market set up every saturday, year round, 50 yards from our front door.    The location is actually a bit of a geographic oddity.  It is technically in Cleveland, and we pay Cleveland taxes.  But through a zoning blip, we get city services and the community center of the suburb next door, which is one of the richest in the area.  Ice skating for free in August?  We can do that, at half the tax cost of everyone else on the ice.

So yes, an amazing, insanely cheap apartment in a great location dropped into our laps.  While the whole living together thing is quite a step**, so is living across the street from each other, the only major difference between the two will be a lack of complete separate retreats.  However, the reasoning behind a three bedroom apartment was the flexibility it gives us room-wise.  I have an alcove with what will become the man room and the adjacent man bathroom.  Think black leather couch, black leather chair, a pile of cheesy action movies and my nintendo games.  I will rescue the princess this year.

*pictures will not be forthcoming, because we forgot a camera and don’t move in until July 1.  Just imagine awesomeness.

**this will probably lead to some interesting blog postings.  Hijinks await, mostly of the I-screwed-something-up variety.

Things men should not say…

Girlfriend checking out the weather forecast online:

“Look, they have a link that lets you predict the weather on your wedding day!”

Me, from the  couch:

“I think its probably gonna be a pretty cold day…in hell.”

I’m still counting up the bruises.

A well-balanced diet…

I’ve been trying to eat much healthier over the past two years, mostly for environmental and health reasons.  Environmentally because some aspects of our food production are insanely unsustainable and polluting, and healthy wise because I was getting a bit o’ belly and it seemed easier to eat better than to work out.  So I’ve become a “flexitarian” if a label need be applied.  I eat meat maybe once or twice a week, and then I try to have it be a flavoring, such as pepperoni pizza, as opposed to the meal, such as a steak.  Beyond that, I’ve been eating a lot more vegetables and fruits, lots of almonds, walnuts, beans and tofu for protein.  I don’t drink milk much anymore (trying to drink more water), but I eat a lot of cheese.  I don’t add salt to any of my food anymore either.  I will say that it makes me feel much better to be eating this way, in terms of energy and most noticeably in not feeling lethargic or sluggish after eating.  I’ve been eating a lot more spicy and ethnic foods lately too…Thai, Mexican, Indian, Lebanese and Japanese, mostly.  And I’m normally pretty good at sticking with the new food regime (I don’t like calling it a diet, because I’m eating more and better food), although I do have plenty of fast food relapses, especially nights when I’m just too tired and hungry to think about microwaving a bean burrito and hit up Mcdonalds instead.

I am eating some interesting, healthy stuff though.  For lunch today, I had a mixture of black beans roasted with red onions, peppers and mangos in a mango sauce, over a seven grain rice pilaf, all organic.  Full of protein, fiber and vitamins, sustainably grown.  Even cooked it in the microwave, because for small meals microwaves use much less energy than ovens, due to the smaller size, shorter cooking time and lack of pre-heating.  It almost made up for breakfast, which was a bag of cheddar goldfish and a pickle.

“I’ll jumpstart YOUR engine….”

Yesterday, at the tail end of a road trip to Philadelphia and New Jersey (“Death Before Road Construction”), my older sister was getting ready to take the nieces to various places when she found out that her car, just back from a few weeks in the shop after an accident, was somewhat disinclined to start.  I immediately speculated aloud that the problem was with the battery, since along with “the tires”, “the engine” and “the smokey thing”, it is one of the few car parts I can recognize.  My brother-in-law comes charging home from work, freshly purchased jumper cables in hand, and we set about the manly task of automobile repair.

I’ve seen jumper cables used many times.   My brother-in-law has a mechanical engineering degree from an Ivy league school.  The jumper cables have instructions on them.  We have, between us, something on the order of 12 years of college.

All of which makes it somewhat embarrassing that our first attempt to start my sisters car resulted in a lot of smoke, and the second would have probably ended in our blowing up both cars had Em not pointed out that we were doing it wrong.  She managed to straighten us out, we got the car started and my sister and brother-in-law head out, leaving Em and I to pack up and head back to Ohio.  We load up the car and as I turned the key in the ignition…silence.  I hate cars.

Its comforting to know I have a girl that knows much more about cars than me.  Also, cooking, credit scores, ironing, travel, technology and a whole host of other grown-up how-to’s, including actually having one of those job things.  But for all that I can still kick her ass in Tetris.

Spring Training

I went running yesterday morning.  For 55 minutes.  Without walking.

This was a major accomplishment, seeing as how lately I am unable to walk up more than two flights of stairs without getting out of breath.  There is something embarrassing about sitting down in a classroom and being that person who’s breathing heavily but trying not to sound like it for the first ten minutes of class.  So its time to get back on the wagon of being healthy.

(sidenote: why is the phrase “on the wagon” used to refer to doing something that’s considered difficult, like when an alcoholic stops drinking?  They are “off the wagon” when they start up again.  It makes no sense to me, its a hell of a lot easier to be riding on a wagon than running alongside.)

Starting next week…

Aside from a few aberrations, I haven’t worked out in a year and a half.  I generally have a pretty hard time motivating myself to do so without some sort of challenge before me, so I’ve been trying to pick something physical that I can try to attempt.  Here are a few options I’ve been weighing:

1) Run a trail marathon in October.   This would get me out doing some running, without necessarily requiring more than a few hours a week of training time.  Probably the most relaxing choice as well, since most of my training would consist of running on little paths through the woods.

2) Race a half-ironman in August (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13 mile run).  While quite a bit more intensive training wise – probably like 10 hours a week, the training would give me an excuse to buy a pass to the gym and some shiny new bike parts.  Plus it sounds more badass than saying “well, I like to prance around the forest in my little shorts”.  This assumes you think that speedos are badass.

3) Finish a full ironman in August-September (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26 mile run, whew).  This would be a little crazy – closer to  15 hours a week working out, some weeks closer to 20.  On the plus side, unlike the first two options its me doing something I’ve never done before, and its something I’m afraid of, so it would very much be motivating.  I have mixed feelings on the time commitment though.  Epitome of badass manly man activities, frequent speedo wearing notwithstanding.

4) Run an ultramarathon sometime late summer.  Basically a trail race that is something longer than a marathon, probably something in the 30-50 mile range.  Also something I’ve never done, higher up on the badass factor (pshh, marathons are for wimps), won’t take too much training time, maybe 6-8 hours a week.

5) Start playing volleyball again, ideally with a fun team of apathetic individuals),and force myself to go to the gym and jog a few days a week.  This option has the bonus of not involving excessive amounts of tiredness, plus the beach volleyball league I play in is one of the few organized sports where the predominant concern of all playing is that no wild hits knock over the beer cups.  Downsides include sand in my shorts and the resounding guilt that I feel when I’m the dumbass that spills all the beer.

6) Rock climbing, orienteering, hiking, canoeing and other random things combined with volleyball…a lot of fun, not too much effort, and I’d still have time to play volleyball.

7) Give up on working out and spend my free time with my butt planted on a couch watching Simpsons DVDs and drinking beer.

Going to the mattresses

Last night, for the first time, I saw The Godfather. I had anticipated that viewing the movie would have acted as some sort of rite of passage, checking off one more box on that long list of things guys must do before we become “All that is man”. And while I did enjoy the movie, I was left feeling somewhat hollow after it ended. I didn’t feel any more manly, if anything less so, as the realization struck me that the biggest impact the movie had on me was that I finally understood a couple of comments that Tom Hanks made to Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail.

I thought Marlon Brando was impressive, but I’m not sure if that was because I actually thought he did a good job or because I’ve always heard he was amazing in the movie and adjusted my expectations accordingly. I refuse to believe everything the man did was magical…I saw The Island of Dr. Moreau. Al Pacino was better – he used to look good back when he was eating things. Didn’t realize until afterward that Robert De Niro was in the movie.

On one level, the movie did speak a lot about loyalty, respect, violence, and to a lesser degree, love. Al Pacino seemed to get over his first wife getting blown up rather quickly, but then again he stated his intention of marrying her after seeing her herding a group of kids wearing a purple dress, so who knows? I’m sure my understanding will be furthered when I get around to Part II.

(I realize that its possible to add imdb links to all of the actors and movies above. I just don’t care enough to do so.)