Sean Middleditch

Hello Music. Good-bye $50.

iTunes is an evil conspiracy. Tons of music at your fingertips, one-click purchases, and $.99 **seems** so small and insignificant. Oh well. I now have more music, and music makes me happy, and I’m not sure what the purpose of money is other than making me happy, so I guess the money is well spent.

I’m going to be spending a lot of time with music in the coming month or so, too. Winter makes any sort of sport impossible to play, KANAR isn’t running, and even nature walks are out of the question unless I decide that I don’t mind if my nose and other extremities turn blue and fall off. There’s abso-freakin-lutely nothing to do other than listen to and play music and work out. Even hanging with friends is going to be difficult given how many of them have family-oriented priorities during the holidays. Curse you, Jack Frost!

Oh, but good news is, I now have a much needed new wardrobe. I look the spiff. I’m still debating getting a haircut - my hair is the source of all my power! - but I think I’m going to need one if I want to pull off the new, modern, sleek, sophisticated, damn sexy look I’m going for. I just don’t know what exactly to cut it to. Having thin curly hair is teh suck. I’ll probably have to go to one of those fancy hair places where some hair-geek will find something suitably dashing for me. Not my idea of a fun evening, but I’ll just have to get over it.

I have also discovered that my boots transform me. My personal confidence, charisma, and air of authority sky-rocket when I wear them. Clothing really can make a difference in one’s life, it seems. My current hunch is that when wearing the boots, the persona of Daedron (my LARP character, who I play while wearing the boots) comes through. Daedron is confident, Daedron is a bad-ass, Daedron is authoritative, Daedron is brave. Sean is none of those things, normally, but the boots seem to change that. Perhaps Daedron is only the way he his because I also wear the boots while playing him. Who knows. Either way, I’m thinking of wearing my boots more often. I had heads turning towards me all morning at school (and I’m trying to tell the pessimist in me to shut up, because he says it was because I looked like a dork and people were staring at me the same way they stare at a someone whose face looks like they just got mauled by a bear) and I rather enjoyed it. Now if only it would attract the full attention of the particular young lady I have my eye on. We’ll have to see what sort of success Monday brings in, eh?

What I really need is something massively entertaining to fill the winter months with. I need a new sport. I’ve been wanting to take ball-room dancing lessons, maybe I’ll do that. Will have to figure something out or I’ll go stir crazy before spring.

**Update:** The freakin’ treadmill is broken. There goes one of my two methods of working out. And the more fun and fulfilling of the two, I might note. *I’m going to go insane this winter!*

My bass plucking fingers now have nasty blood blisters on them (I hate those, they look hideous and I’m stuck with them for a month or so) and my pincky on my left hand is also blistered. Three hours of practice between an electric bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and mandolin will do that to you.

On the upside, my bass playing is almost up to par again, I seem to be able to handle picking on a guitar better now (it’s a lot different than picking on a mandolin), my pincky fretting is close to decent, and I can now play a few bits of Crazy Train and can play more of both Stairway to Heaven and NIB.

Someday I might actually be able to play a whole song. :-)

I’ve also started a new diet. Namely, I’m just not eating like a pig. Normal-sized breakfast, normal-sized lunch, a snack around 4-5 o’clock, and a smallish dinner. Lost 5lbs in less than a week. Yay me. Unfortunately, it also seems I’m not getting enough protein, because my strength improvement rate seems to have stagnated over the last two days. That could just be a fluke given the short time period, though. Anyways, I’m hoping that I can stick with this long enough to at least get back down to 220, then switch to just a normal person diet. I’ve been eating way too much since this semester of school started (I eat when stressed), so I need to do this. I’m not knowledgeable on healthy dieting, but I’m not seeing a flaw in what I’m doing now. I’m not eating insanely small portions and I’m getting my usual variety, even candy as my 4 o’clock snack. I guess if I keel over dead in a couple weeks we’ll know that my diet wasn’t a good idea.

Things are looking both up and down in the social life department. I’ve had very little time for hanging out the last few weeks. Haven’t seen any of my good friends in a long while and haven’t hung out with any of my newer friends like the KANAR folks in even longer. On the upside, the little bit of socializing I’ve done as been with new people I met at school, so at least my circle of friends is expanding.

On the Open Source front, I just haven’t had time for anything. The little bit of coding I’ve done has been for various contracts, which every time I think I’m done with I end up with more. On the plus side I get more money, on the minus side I don’t need the extra workload. Oh well. I’m looking at a potential $800 in the near future, which for me at this point would be a godsend. If nothing else I can get my savings well over the $1,000 safety buffer I prefer having.