Fun-do

Last year, my family made it a tradition to have fondue for dinner on Christmas Eve, and so tonight, we had our second annual Sitzman Fondue Bash. It was really good. We had meats, fruits and breads to cook and then dip in cheese or chocolate and whatnot. Even though we didn't have enough fuel for the burners, and had to use candles, everything still went well, and it was especially fun after we started doing "dare dips". You could use up to two solids, dipped into up to two fondues, and then covered in one sauce. It actually kind of evolved as it went, and i got to go last, so naturally, i got the worst one. My sister made me do a beef and marshmallow sandwich, cooked in the oil, then dipped in the cheese sauce, and then covered with A-1. Yummy in my tummy. As long as you keep chewing, you basically never get the bad tastes mixed together, and the cheese kinda tied everything together. So i give it a solid B. Try your own combinations at home during your next fondue party.

Have a good Christmas everyone.

Learning to smile

Alright, if you're not ready for a bunch of sentimental bullshit, then you can just go on without reading this, cause well, i'm a sentimental guy. And i feel the need to write sentimental bullshit. But recently, most people have been saying that i'm a downright grumpy motherfucker, and for the whole part, they're right. I really try to be happy. I do everything from taking naps to drinking green tea, and working out to release all those bad endorphines or whatever might make you mad. But I think i found the root of the problem recently.

My ex, lori, is back in town again. Now, I don't talk about her a whole lot to you folk, but just recently i found out that she's kind of engaged. Not fully, just kinda. As in, in the works. Now... this really bothers me because, so you get the full story, back when we broke up, we didn't break up because we were mad at each other or anything, but because she was going into the marines. The stupid thing is that when we broke up, it was at the point where we said "alright, it's kind of at the point where we break up and see what happens when we go our separate ways, or we get married." Still being in high school, it's a little bit hard to even take yourself seriously when you say that, even though i was totally ready to do the latter, but i just didn't have the means or the edge on the situation.

So, as you know, she took off to the marines. I didn't like the choice, since i mostly hate the military, but i knew that if that's what she wanted to do, then that was that. But then i realized that for the most part, not really having closure on the whole situation with her really fucked up most of my other realtionships with girls, and mostly left me sad because i'd also lost one of my best friends. It's not to say i never talked to her, or tried to get her back, but because of just some shitty luck and all, there was several times where i was basically right next to her, but never got to see her.

Then i heard about this boy she was dating, and i didn't think too much of it, since i knew they would be moved to different camps and whatnot, but when he ended up flying across the country to see her, i tried doing the same when i was in california to make one last stand, but never got to see her because shit just went wrong again. And now that she's home again, it's hard for me to not try to get back what we had before, because it's affected me so much for so long. With the latest news, i've basically just been feeling morose that i couldn't do more now, and that i couldn't do more to keep her here back when we were together.

A wise guy once said that it takes just as long to get over a relationship, as it took for the realtionship to... take place or something like that, so i could either wait longer, or take this chance now that she's home to get some kind of closure in the relationship, whatever kind it may be, once and for all. I just have to find a reason for me to stop liking her. And her getting engaged is a poor excuse.

Notice

For all you Dane Cook fans:

For all of you who've seen the movie Mystery Men, I'm guessing it's probably been a while, so check back and you'll be able to see Dane Cook's cameo as The Waffler. You'll probably remember what I'm talking about. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, it's pretty hilarious anyways.

Dreaming! Dream on...

I love sleep, and I love dreams. They're amazing. A long time back, I remember I had this series of dreams from different nights, where my friends and I went cliff diving into a river. Once we tried one, we'd go to the next cliff and jump off that. It was a really good time, obviously, and we're lucky on one died. We'd hit the bottom of the river everytime we jumped in, but it never hurt, we'd just jump back out and do it again.

So last night, I had this dream, where in a large group, a bunch of us were running around in the wilderness playing capture the flag, when I look over and I see a river. Then I go, Hey! This look familiar. So I walk down the shore and look up and there's the same cliffs that we had jumped off in my dreams a long time ago. Everything was the exact same, and the geography was still how it should've been, even though I was looking at it from a different angle, and walking around where I hadn't been before. It was just pretty cool. It's almost like taking a vacation again. And no... it wasn't the cliffs what we jumped off of in Mexico.

Problems on the whole front

Why does bad stuff happen to good people? Now that I'm working with the general public, i see more and more that this really is the case. The world is set up so the only way you can get to the top is to backstab your way there. It's been known for a long time, i'm not really trying to bring new things to light. The jackasses that come into work with the "the customer is always right" are the ones that make our lives a living hell, but they're always the ones that somehow get the better end of the deal at the end of the day. Then the people that are nice, and pay what we ask, and chat it up with us and tip and all, really come out worse, financially at least. And since money rules the world.... Now, i'd like so much to change this, but again, just the fact that the customer has the advantage of being able to give a bad report to the boss, we have to stay in line and bend over every once in a while. I hate it.

Now, i'm not saying i'm the good person that bad stuff happens to, like i said before, but it's the customers.

Also, the way i grew up, it wasn't sheltered, but my parents aren't divorced, and everything just sorta worked out, i guess. Recently, i've seen more how weird the world is, and how quickly shit happens, and how quickly someone can be gone. About a week ago, my mom told me that their neighbors, who i've lived next to my whole life got a divorce. They'd been married for 32 years, and they just kinda did it, i guess. I always had a good relationship with the dad, who'll probably still live there now, but the mom and the kids will probably be gone indefinitely. That sucks because the son is my godfather, which these days doesn't mean much, but he was always a good friend, and it's stupid that i might not see him because of some weird differences after 32 years.

What's more, Barry, the guy who i worked with for a lot of this summer at my dad's kennel died early this morning. They're not really sure why, they think maybe an accidental overdose on painkillers, or maybe a heart attack, but it was pretty unexpected since he was still pretty young. I also got to know him more when i played poker with him and his brother and friends this summer, and they kind of developed into my adult friends, so it sucks that he's gone.

Well, that's probably enough downer shit for tonight. I hope everything's going well in everyone's lives, especially with finals and christmas coming up. Ooh, and we got some good snow falling last night, if you were up at 4 in the morning like i was. It was amazing. Laters.

World AIDS Day

Spread it.

A couple short stories

So it's been a while since I rapped at you guys, as brought to my attention by meg, so I'll just rapid fire through some of the better stories that i've come across in the past few weeks.

First, there was the guy at alley cats that tried hustling me at chess for a cup of coffee. He could've been a lot more subtle about it all since i could tell the moment he sat down that he was actually really good at chess. And no, i didn't bite.

Next, my mom won a family membership to the fort collins club for three months, so i've been going there a lot, and i have to say, i don't mind if guys are naked in the locker room, it's easy enough to avoid them, but then there's some guys who really, uh... as they say... put the penis on a pedestal. These guys seem to go out of their way being naked. They'll get out of the sauna or something... go get a drink... comb their hair... sing and dance in the hallway, all before they put a towel on. Come on guys. Does it take that long, or take too much effort to just put on a towel like the rest of us... geez.

Then, we had some adventures in cooking last night. Edward and i. I was looking through my chinese cookbook, and i was gonna make some orange chicken or something, but then edward suggested eggrolls, so we went and got all the shit and put it together from scratch, and then it came to frying them. It said that oil was supposed to be at 375, so i didn't know how that translated into the low-high scale, so i just tried high. It worked out ok... it cooked them faster than the human torch could, but it took us a few eggrolls to figure that all out. Once we got a hang of it, they turned out really freaking well. That is until i spilled a bunch of the oil on the burner and started a fire, then set off the smoke alarms. The smoke was really bad, and the smell was even worse, but we got most of it cleared out.

So what did we do with the eggrolls that were bad? We chucked them at the dumpster from our balcony of course! No one made it in, but i did nail the car right next to it. Booyah!

After everything settled down, matt and i went over to blockbuster to get a movie. Now the back story is... we used edwards xbox to watch movies in the living room before he took it back to l.a. over break, and there just so happened to be a movie that i had rented in the disc drive when he took it. So when we went over to blockbuster, even though there's no late fees, i didn't want to rent on my account so they wouldn't see. Matt tried giving his phone number and everything, but the guy ended up saying that he should just start a new account. To save him from the paper work, i just go hand my card to the guy and say "oh, i forgot i had this, it's been a while." I was just trying to keep it cool, but then he says "yeah, it looks like you've been here in the past two weeks." "yeah....." No more cool. He didn't say anything about the movie at least, but it still kinda burst my bubble bobble.