Here it is. I was riding high earlier. And I'm a little down now. I can't pinpoint anything.

I biked to work and back today. Close to ten miles each way. I felt great coming home. Went to a show. Came home. Sat down and I don't know.

I put on the most meaningless, mindless, thoughtless, entertaining movie I can think of. At this point its Shoot 'Em Up. What little thought (probably a lot of thought) went into this movie, to make a plot that is seemingly inconsequential to the general entertainment of the movie is a great achievement.

I don't even want to watch it though. So I'm going to take my contacts out and go to bed. Although I'm hungry. Considering the exercise I got today I should have eaten more. I was talking to Lenore tonight and telling her how...well out of all my friends I always figured myself the loner. Not loner as in I don't have friends. But loner as in I don't need friends close by. That's true and not at the same time. I'm good by myself. I make my own fun. But when you're down, and don't have the friends you can really on to easily hang out with or call up to go get a beer. Someone to talk to in person. She's right though.....I need to do more to fill up my time. So I guess I have to work on that.

I wrote that I take tons of pictures of myself when I'm trying to think of what to draw. I used to search google for images, but sometimes its easier to just take a picture of myself. My ankle seems to have disappeared in this picture.

Maybe I do too much half-heartedly. I don't know. I draw on a daily basis, but don't do anything with my artwork other than put it online for friends and family to see. I don't really throw myself into projects any more. I used to. I should more often. I haven't put a lot of effort into much lately. I have just been floating. Or really just drifting. Half-hearted.

Take tonight for example. Got home around 6:45. Made some dinner, sat and thought about what to draw. I had to do a make up drawing for yesterday. So I had two drawings to do. While thinking of what to draw I put on the TV. Not to watch but more as background noise. I took a bunch of pictures of myself, which is what I do when I come up with ideas to draw put need specific poses or images to draw from. I got a small glass of whiskey on the rocks. I drew, which took me a few hours (really...when I sit to draw it takes me a while to finish a drawing). Some days I can finish a drawing in a few minutes, most of the time it takes me half an hour to a full hour. And I drew two tonight. I played with Angelo, drank some more whiskey, read some news online and chatted with a few friends. And here it is. Midnight.

Things I intended to do tonight included sending out resumes, knitting (I actually got out some knitting stuff, but only located it in pieces and didn't start anything), the dishes, or read. But I did none of those. Eh....just feeling, out of sorts a little tonight. No friends around to hang with tonight. So its been a long night of very little.

So maybe, I'll start putting more effort into my life. I wonder how many people say that to themselves at one point or another. I wish I could say that its a sobering moment. One of those grand realizations, but its not.

I love the scooch. The scooch is when you can just scooch in and out of pants you are wearing without unbuttoning them. Jeans that used to fit very well a few years ago but now are too big. The scooch makes you feel really good. The scooch makes you wear a belt all the time. The scooch reminds you that you are healthier than you were.

Siblicide. I went to my friend Lenore's movie premiere last night. Maybe movie premiere is the wrong word. It was a small film "Battle of the Films" at the Cleveland Lee theaters in Cleveland Heights. There were 12 short films being shown there and everyone who went got to vote on what their favorite films were. Lenore's was by far the best. She had wrote it (with someone else), directed, filmed, edited, yada yada yada. Basically everything but act in it and create the music. So go watch Siblicide at YouTube. Its a comedy about sibling rivalry.

I had this dream last Friday. I was living in some hobo society. Kind of a like a make shift camp near a cliff. I had been there for a while, and my mother and Grandmother were there. Someone gave me my Aviator glasses which I was eternally grateful for. My mother told me we were leaving and as we were walking to my old car (Jasper, the 1990 Toyota Camry I used to own) we walk by my Grandmother. I go to give her a hug and over her shoulder I see my dead Grandfather. And I have a small breakdown. Did he ever know how proud I was to an Albert Charpentier? Did he ever know that even though we weren't close, I loved him? Did he know? I lean down to pick up Angelo (my cat) from the ground by a bush and a rattle snake comes out of the bush. I hand Angelo to my mother and they leave in my car. The rattle snake curls around my leg and then bites me over and over again.

It was a strange dream. And another very vivid one. And kind of creepy.

I had one last night that was less creepy, but just as vivid.

I was driving with Brian and Mark (some friends in Buffalo). We parked at Mark's house (which was near a cliff as well). We had arrived five minutes before everyone else and were just shooting the shit until Mike, Sean, Rollin and Pat showed up. We all started playing and talking. Some played frisbee on the rolling hills by the cliff. Some were playing basketball. I went and played frisbee. I stole the frisbee from Sean and when I threw it the frisbee went down by the water at the edge of the cliff. I ran down and got it, and found lot more frisbee half buried there. All of them were Wolfs. No one was interested in a Wolf frisbee. Sean suggested we all go to Chestnut Ridge, but it had started snowing/slushing and no one really wanted to go. Unfortunately we had also discovered that as Mark's house was at the bottom of a hill we were stuck there because the cars wouldn't make it up the hill.

I broke down and just went to a grocery store to get some food. I bought a frozen dinner (one of those Lean Cuisine ones....they are pretty good). I also bought a half cake from the bakery that was on sale. A Dr. Pepper flavored Creme Cake. Pretty good. And a gallon of milk. That's it. I couldn't wait until four for the chinese restaurants to open, and was really hungry.

But while I was there I looked around and realized the only people there were they sad lonely Easter men. Really. Just a bunch of older men picking up food for themselves. And I was one of them. How sad.

I gave Angelo a much needed bath today. He's been shedding a lot lately so it helped rid him of some hair, and also makes him smell nicer. He's been pretty dirty too since hiding under couches any time anyone comes over. Angelo looks really sad when he soaking wet.

It was a good bike ride. About 90 minutes in 40 degree weather. I was wearing shorts while everyone else had scarfs and thick jackets on. I wasn't really biking fast, but then again my gear shift broke so I can't shift gears. That's something I'll have to either fix or get fixed soon. I think I was grinding my teeth subconsciously while riding as well, because they hurt when I got back. But I biked into downtown Cleveland. Watched people lining up for the baseball game today (or at least that's what I assume they were doing at Progressive Field).

I was let down when I biked by the laundromat near my apartment. Its closed today. And the Thai place that I wanted to eat at doesn't open until 4 (if it opens today). I wanted to try the Papa Nick's pizza as a back up, but its not two yet and I'm not entirely sure if they open today either. I really would rather walk someplace and get food than drive somewhere. And I don't really want fast food from a chain either. What are 30 year old bachelors supposed to do on Easter? Apparently we can't do laundry.

Time to make an Easter list.

-Bike Ride (I'm going to try for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, into downtown Cleveland maybe)
-Chinese food (I had it last year for Easter, why not make a tradition out of it)
-Another sketch
-A bath for Angelo (he needs it)
-Laundry (maybe)

I don't have much else. Maybe if I'm ambitious I'll go play frisbee golf. I was thinking how little holidays mean when you're not around family. Really....think about it. Why would you care about Easter without family. Or Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. Or any other random holiday. Heck even my birthday didn't seem like a big deal. I live someplace hundreds of miles away from my family. And I don't have close friends out here either. I have friends out here, and I'm grateful for them, but they don't quite equate close friends. Not yet. And I know I live out here by my own choice. Its just that I was just thinking today about how weird holidays have been lately compared to how significant they where when I was younger and had family around me. I'm not sad and thinking about those times, just thinking in general about holidays, and how little impact they've had on my life lately.

April 10, 2009. 100th day of the year. Am I better off now than 100 days ago. I think so. I'm definitely a happier person than 100 days ago.

I've been thinking about random Cleveland things. The price of gas fluctuates more in Cleveland than any place else I've ever been. On a random normal day, the price of gas at a gas station changes 5 - 10 cents. I'm serious. I can drive to work and pas the gas station on the corner by work and it will cost $1.97. On my way out of work on the end of the day it will cost $2.08. It bizarre. And it does this on a daily basis. Sometimes going up, sometimes going down. But always fluctuating.

There are two gas stations on different sides of the street by work. They both are always the same price, never more than 1 cent apart. One has an electronic sign, and the other has a normal sign where the numbers must be replaced by hand. I feel sorry for that guy.

And gas in Cleveland can have a ten to fifteen cent swing in just a few blocks of driving. The drive home from work (of which I had my last day before a new job today) takes about twenty minutes. Gas is low around me, get more expensive about two miles on the drive, lowers again, and raises again, all in twenty minutes of driving. It is bizarre and weird and I never feel like I'm getting a good deal on gas because I figure in a few hours it could be ten cents lower (even though its cheaper here than Buffalo).

Most of you have heard about how I broke my collar bone back in 2007. When they repaired it and put my titanium plate in they severed some nerves around my shoulder. Hence it feels slightly numb at all times. Like when you have novocain at the dentist. I can feel the pressure there but there is little to no sensation.

Often times I get an itch on that shoulder. Unfortunately while I feel the itch, I cannot scratch it. Or at least don't feel myself scratching it. So the itch never goes away. Many a night it has kept me up and prevented me from sleeping. Scary thing is that it'll never go away. The numbness that is. I wonder if its like phantom limb syndrome is?

So I find out that the bridge on the I-90 on the West side of Cleveland is basically condemned. Remember a few years ago when that bridge collapsed and all those people died. That's when they re-examined all the bridges in the US and the one on the 90 in Cleveland was horrible structurally damaged. So now its down to two lanes I believe (maybe one) and they don't allow large trucks to cross it, they have to take detours. I found out last week that they don't allow school buses to use the bridge either. How scary is that? They will let pedestrian cars go over the bridge but no school buses or trucks because they are afraid it will collapse under the added weight. Scary. Apparently its been like that since I moved out here.

Pens. I have been using the same type of pen to do almost all of my daily drawings. There are a few done in pencil, but every other one is done with one of three "Mandy's Day Care" pens my mother has supplied me. Unfortunately she has run out them, and I am afraid that the one I'm using now will die soon. I figure that because I am getting a new sketchbook this week (my sketchbook I got for Christmas will be finished on Friday...crazy) that I will ask for some pen suggestions or donations.



Other such. I'm lost. I had other such on my mind, but have lost it. So you just get pens and Cleveland junk today. Oh....it did snow here today. Wretched.

Been a while.

I had a strange conversation about women yesterday. I was at a coffee shop with my friend Lenore and we were talking about women. I told her how crazy it was to me that some girls will adamantly say one thing but secretly hope you do the other. The "testing" apparently. Lenore was shocked to hear about it. She seemed genuinely surprised that this happens. I ran through with my friend Janine this morning and she completely agrees with my assumption. I like to take words at face value. When you adamantly tell me something, don't do it hoping I do the opposite. Guys are dumb. I am dumb. Because I will never get it. Even if you say something like "I want you to come over, but you shouldn't. I'm going to go to so and so." I won't come. Because I see that as you saying "It'd be great to see you but I am going to go someplace so don't bother."

Blue Cheese salad dressing is amazing. Before moving to Buffalo I don't think I have ever been a fan. But when you live in Buffalo you pick things up. Hockey. You've got to be a Sabres fan. You start putting hot sauce on everything. And finally, Blue Cheese. Goes good on salad, with chicken wings, and for dipping pizza in also. Its great. Living outside of Buffalo, I go to the store and they have three choices for Blue Cheese dressing. Kraft, Ken's Steakhouse, and the generic. I swear in Buffalo you can get 20 different kinds. Oh well.

Fingernails. My fingernails grown to fast.

Dream, I had this dream last night that I was walking on the beach in Delaware. There was a long steep beach. I was looking at ghost crabs running around at night when the tide came up quickly. I took off my pants and shoes and put them in a cubby up by the boardwalk. But the tide came in really high and I had to grab hold of the stairway to keep from washing away. When the water receded my pants were gone. I was walking around in my boxers. It was a weird dream.

Blue plate. I have this plastic blue plate that is my favorite plate. I have no idea where I got it. But its like my go to plate. And I have a go to cup also. I know where I got the cup. It was on Spring Break of 2001. From some bar where it was mug night in Virginia Beach. That was also the night Pat saved my life. Good Times. In the background of this picture is a helium birthday balloon. I swear the thing is two years old and is still inflated. Doesn't float anymore, but hasn't leaked or gone down.