Flibbertigibbet

Over the Top

I've noticed over the past few weeks that neither of my roommates are willing to replace the toilet paper on the roll. Actually, since I know one of them is hardly ever there and he does most of the cleaning, I strongly suspect it's the other one who IS there most of the time and tends to leave messes.

It's really strange to me because it's not like the toilet paper roll holder thing is all that hard to work. And it's not like you have anything else really pressing to do when you're sitting there. And further, leaving the new roll on the back of the toilet requires twisting around in an awkward position to retrieve it when you need it.

It seems like any sensible person would just replace the roll.

I've done it a few times, but since I noticed it was always this way, I stopped doing it. I'm not home most of the time, so it doesn't really affect my life with much frequency.

I just find their unwillingness or indifference to replacing the roll somewhat perplexing.

Insomnia

Last week, I saw an interview with Martha Stewart and she mentioned that she is an insomniac.

My best friend is convinced that she wasn't being completely honest when she said this; he prefers to believe that she chooses to sleep only a couple of hours a night because she is an incredibly driven and productive individual. There is some reason to think that may be the case as she has said in past interviews that she doesn't like to sleep because there is so much to do. At the same time, she's also stated in other interviews that when she can't sleep at night she gets up and irons her linens.

When I can't sleep, as I can't tonight, I usually watch a lot of television. I rarely do anything productive. I should perhaps give some thought to changing that because usually when I can't sleep it's because my mind is racing.

The problem with a racing mind apart from the fact that it keeps me from sleeping is that it is really difficult to focus. My thoughts are scattered across the surface of my mind that so much spilled sugar on the kitchen floor. Hard to make a cake like that.

I think one of the reasons that I don't just get up and do something productive is because it's hard for me to just give in to the idea that I really just can't fall asleep. I'm usually good at falling asleep. I think that if I were to launch into some project, it would really just keep me from getting down to the business of falling asleep. I don't know that spending more time trying to sleep actually results in falling to sleep faster than doing something until one feels calm and tired.

Well, I just have this episode of Doctor Who to watch and then my DVR is pretty much empty. I may have to then actually resort to forcing myself to go to sleep by remaining still and quiet and meditating until I doze off. I don't like doing that, though.

OK. Doctor Who is halfway done. Gonna go watch it and then make myself sleep.

Fun Fact

Even though I hate it when people put clothes on monkeys, I think dogs with clothes are are hilarious. I especially like seeing them walk around with shoes on.

Crazy Week

At the end of this week, I'm heading to Miami with some friends for my birthday celebration. It's going to be a nice, long weekend full of sand, sun, surf, and mojitos. I don't like sand, but everything else should be AWESOME, so I am really looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I have a bunch of things I have to do this week to get prepared for it, the least of which is to figure out what to pack.

Blogging may be light this week and non-existent starting on Thursday, but I'll try to remember to let you know how everything goes.

Let's Get Physical! Physical!

I had my annual check up the other day with a new doctor.

I hated my first doctor I had here in New York. He was an hour late for my appointment, which was a real problem because my appointment was his first of the day and I had to sit on the floor in the hall of his office building while I waited for someone to show up. Then, the office was chaotic and he was a pushy person.

He wanted to put me on blood pressure medicine after seeing me once when I was pissed off.

Anyway, I don't have high blood pressure and I now have a new doctor.

He's really cool. His office is very nice and he is very friendly. He has a nice Irish lady in the front of the office who helps people. I like her. The whole office is very clean and that's good for a doctor's office. (I can't say the same for that first doctor.)

And so I had my check up and it was good. They even gave me an EKG, which I'd never had before.

My heart is fine, though. I knew that. Sometimes doctors wonder if it isn't because I had scarlet fever as a kid and that sometimes hurts your heart.

Well, he called me on the telephone today and told me that my blood test results came back.

My overall cholesterol is 136, which he says is good because anything under 200 is alleged to be good.

My bad cholesterol (LDL) is fine, he said, but my good cholesterol (HDL) is low. I don't know how low, but he said I should exercise more. Twice he said that, actually. I don't have time for that, so I have to figure out how to drill for oil on a fish and/or get more fiber.

Since I always worry about not having enough fiber (I'm slightly paranoid about my prostate and all the goings on of my butt. This is largely because I can't see it. It demands a lot of attention on pretty much a daily basis and that kind of scares me, so I do everything I can to keep it happy.) I'm going to concentrate on the fiber part. Maybe I could get some powder and mix it in with the shake I drink for breakfast.

He ALSO told me that I do not have Hepatitis A, B or C. He confirmed that I am immune to Hep A & B, too. (I also go get inoculated for things because I love the idea of being immune to diseases. I wish I could get inoculated against poisons, too, but I don't have the patience or balls to eat a little bit of ricin every day just in case the terrorists try to poison the shake I drink in the morning.) And I don't have chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, or Lyme Disease. One of these things is not like the other, but I don't have any of them.

I THINK he also meant that I don't have HIV, but he didn't say that, so I'm going to give him a couple more days and then call just to make sure. They don't usually give HIV test results over the phone, though, so probably he didn't mean that. I'll give him a couple of days and see if I should come by.

Anyway, your blogger host here is in fine physical condition.

Not so Unlucky Break

So, remember my tax problem?

Well, after reviewing the numbers, I decided that there was a mistake in my return. I went to my parents' guy that year, but I thought the mistake was still my fault because I'm kind of sloppy about these things and I remembered that I didn't have all of my paperwork for him and I had to send him some stuff. I thought I just didn't give him the documentation he needed.

I didn't want to call him because the mistake was mine. It wouldn't be fair to cost him more work (and I didn't want to spend money on paying him to help me) to correct something that isn't his fault.

So, I've spent the past couple of weeks calling my financial institutions and getting documents from them. I've also procrastinated a little bit because I hate dealing with this kind of stuff and I have until the end of the month to respond.

This evening, I decided that I have to get it done so I can send it off tomorrow and be done with it. Well, done with it in the sense that I will have to get on speed and get a job as a night manager somewhere so that, when I'm ready to be like Angelina for real, I can afford to rent a couple of Namibian babies until this parenting fad passes.

Well, I was going through the worksheets and doing something I never do - math - and I came across a fax that I sent the tax guy that lists the very item of contention. Not only did I provide him with documents that show it, the cover letter describes them both.

Sooooo... tomorrow I'm going to call the guy and explain the situation and what has happened and see what he says.

I'm kind of pleased that I didn't mess this up and I'm also pleased that now I have good justification for asking him to help me on this free of charge. I also trust his math and ability to understand these forms better than my own.

I'll still owe the IRS some fees and interest and some extra taxes, but maybe not so much as I thought. This isn't good news, but it's not SUCH bad news.

Mystery Injury

Last weekend, I was walking along and I noticed a slight pain in my left ankle. It was the kind of stiff pain that usually indicates that the joint needs to be stretched and popped. I rolled it a few times and tried to stretch it out and gave it no more thought.

Then, last night, I got off the subway and my ankle really hurt. I didn't do anything to it except for a near slip on the stairs going into the subway, but this was a half hour after that and there wasn't any pain before that.

The near-slip was like when you don't get your foot all the way on the tread and you are obliged to support your entire weight on just your toes to prevent from slipping down to the next step and falling. This usually happens to me because I tend to hurry wherever I'm going.

This morning, I wasn't sure I would be able to walk to the subway to get to work. I limped to the shower where I gingerly stretched and massaged it. I wrapped it before putting on my shoes and socks and I can walk well enough now, but it's still painful.

I think maybe I strained the muscles during my slip on the stairs and to make matters worse, I had another near-slip this morning as I rushed to catch the train.

Update: One of my coworkers speculates that I hurt my ankle participating in the IFL last night in my sleep. More obvious explanations aside, how do you think I hurt my ankle?

Until Next Time and Happy Sailing

I had the pleasure of eating dinner with reader and friend, Scott, last night.

Scott is an exciting guy. He's just completed a summer internship here in NYC and is heading back to school in Michigan tomorrow. (If you read his blog, you can learn more about what he's up to.) He's super ambitious and I'm excited to see where he goes in life.

He says that he intends to come back to NYC next summer either for more school or work, but I do know how things can change over a year. Whatever happens, I do hope I get to travel in his circle again.

This post is for wishing him well and much success.

It was a great summer, Scotty, and it was great to get to know you! Come back soon! When you're 21, we'll head back to the Cuban place for mojitos.

Update: I was just catching up on Scott's blog and came across this video on You Tube that I like: Put Your Hands Up for Detroit! (a lovely city)

Work, Astoria!

Mister Bookworm and I had a brief encounter with an enthusiastic supporter of homosexuals this weekend.

I've mentioned in the past that on three separate occasions I have had people yell rude things at me for being gay.

1998 - I was in college and a frat boy yelled "FAGS!" when he saw me and my boyfriend entering a bar together.

2004 - Frat boys in an SUV in Athens, GA yelled to me and a friend of mine, "YOU MAKE A REALLY CUTE COUPLE TOGETHER!" I'm not sure if that was really intended as an insult or not. I think it was.

2006 - Some kids in Cooper Square here in NYC yelled "FAGGOTS!" at me and a friend as I escorted his drunk ass home one night.

Well, we had the opposite of these things happen to us yesterday.

We were walking down the street to brunch holding hands and chatting when a woman on a cell phone approached us from the opposite direction on a bicycle. She was gabbing away and riding on the sidewalk.

When she got close to us she said, "Oo! WORK, Astoria!" And then she blew right on by.

I didn't even understand what had happened to us, it was so fast.

Mister Bookworm found it particularly amusing that she pronounced "Astoria" like "ASS-toria."

We both took it as a compliment, though.

My Super Power

I can sleep anywhere. I'm also a very heavy sleeper, so I can sleep through almost much anything as well.

I say "almost" because I can hear my cell phone ringing from two rooms away and will awake with a start.

I bring this up because I just woke up from a nap. (Ok, not JUST. I started this post a couple of hours ago now.) I often take a 10 to 15 minute nap during my lunch break because I find that it clears my head and helps me concentrate through the rest of the day.

My coworkers laugh at me because I just lean back in my chair and doze off, but more than one of them has expressed envy at my ability.

This power comes with a weakness, though: boring meetings will put me right to sleep. Because I can sleep sitting upright, it is a great struggle for me to remain conscious during the billions of pointless, disorganized, meandering gatherings and presentations that confront me in my career. It also presents a problem for me when watching long movies, especially at home.

Flibbert Capone

My stress levels are through the roof today. I got a letter from the IRS yesterday saying that they think there was some kind of error on my 2005 taxes and now I owe them a BUNCH of money.

I do kind of think they are in error, but I now have to go on a bit of a paper chase to prove it.

It's a long story that I don't care to get into here, but I hope you won't mind if I'm a little distracted from blogging.

This Weekend

To avoid having another All You Tube Day, I figure I'll tell you what I did this weekend.

On Friday evening, Mister Bookworm and I enjoyed a glass of wine and some television together. It was a very nice evening.

On Saturday, my Harry Potter book arrive after 1 o'clock and Mister Bookworm and I went into Central Park to read. Well, I read and he was doing some work of his own. Of course, it's kind of hard to read when he's around because I always want to either talk to him or smooch him. But I got a little reading done amid watching dogs playing and listening to children squealing. It was a gorgeous day in the park: not too hot and with a nice breeze.

Saturday night, one of his good friends had a birthday party at a bar. That was a lot of fun.

And on Sunday, I did more reading and in the evening, I went with Mister Bookworm to his office, which sports excellent views of southern Manhattan.

It was a pretty restful weekend, I suppose, but I really didn't get much reading done on Harry Potter. There were lots of interruptions. Very, very pleasant interruptions.

Buddhista sent me a text message Saturday night at 9:45 saying that she had finished the book and couldn't wait to talk to me about it.

Sadly, I'm still less than halfway through the tome and don't expect to get a lot of uninterrupted reading time any time soon.

And I just remembered that I forgot to take my laundry to the cleaners.

It's a rainy day here in NYC. My favorite weather, but the AC is broken and work is kind of boring.

Ok. I'm rambling now.

Talk to you later!

Welcome to the Most Boring Blog Ever

Sorry I haven't been posting. I haven't really felt like it. Really, I've just wanted to come and tell you about anything and everything related to Mister Bookworm.

We went out again last night (as you can see from my last post) and had a fantastic time even though I was kind of tired.

But constantly gushing over him really doesn't make for a very interesting blog and since he sometimes checks in over here (Hi!) I kind of have to maintain some mystery about me.

Oh, but we ran into one of my coworkers at a bar on Friday night and he asked me about the Bookworm and I was telling him that I'm excited about him and he gave me the worst advice ever. He actually told me that we shouldn't "talk too much."

He had commented that we were very engrossed in our conversation when he saw us and I remarked that we were getting along great and our conversation was lots of fun and long-winded. And he said we shouldn't talk too much.

Whatever.

Anyway, I wasn't going to talk about this more.

I've been looking at the news to see if there's anything I care to write about, but none of it seems very fun or interesting to write about.

Ergo and I are kind of discussing the maintenance of roads in an ideal society, but I think he's going to blog on that, so I will likely wait to let him have first stab at that -- although I'm not especially interested in the question, at least not to the extent that I'd need to be in order to write about it at length.

I'm reading The Three Musketeers. It's fun.

The weather is hot and muggy.

Workouts have been alright.

I mean, what do you want from me?

Busy Weekend

Friday Night
- Went to the Pier to hang out with friends.
- Friends and I went to dinner
- Friends and I went to piano bars.
- I got home at 1

Saturday
- Chatted with another friend about boyfriend woes.
- Met another friend for lunch.
- Met still other friends to see Transformers.
- Came home to take a quick nap.
- Met up with friends from Friday for dinner.
- Friends and I went uptown for a birthday party in a very fratacular bar. (Straight people are weird.)
- Friends and I ditched the party to hit a gay bar. (Gay people are weird.)
- I got home at 1

Sunday
- I woke up and I really do not want to go work out, but I should. I'm giving myself 9 more minutes.
- Supposed to meet friends for brunch at 1 in NoLIta.

This was supposed to be a calm, relaxing, uneventful -- boring, even -- weekend! No such luck.

So Close, Yet So Far

When I moved to Astoria, I moved into a hell hole.

The apartment is old and not well maintained. It was dirty. Filthy. Dirty. I'm not talking about simple clutter or disrepair. I'm talking about dirt.

I moved in with the utmost optimism, but since March my sunny outlook on the possibility of the apartment has given way to a less than benevolent view of things.

I really believe that the only reason we haven't been carried away by rats and roaches is due to the hardware store downstairs which seems to emit a steady stream of pesticide and poison that seeps into everything. You get used to the smell after a while, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's unhealthy.

Since I moved in, however, one of my roommates, The Actor, and I have been working our butts off to fix and clean things up. (He works at it a lot harder than I do, actually.) We've:

- Refinished the floors
- Hung a new cabinet in the kitchen
- Repainted almost every room in the apartment.
- Repainted much of the trim
- Installed a new sink in the bathroom
- Installed a new medicine cabinet in the bathroom
- Repainted the stairs and walls in the main hall
- Repaired a damaged part of the ceiling in the main hall
- Put numbers on the apartment doors
- Re-secured the fire ladder to the roof
- Put down vinyl tile in the entryway
- Put up bookshelves in our hallway
- Sealed the skylight so that it doesn't leak anymore

And all sorts of other odds and ends. The neighbors helped with some of the painting in the main hall. The Law Student has not helped with anything except to grudgingly pick me and The Actor up from Home Depot and to take us to Ikea once or twice. The Landlord hasn't done much except he did provide us with a few supplies, some of the paint, and odds and ends. He also bought us a pizza one day while we were painting in the hall.

I wish you could have seen it before and compare it to the way it is now. It really is an incredible transformation. I am so sick of it eating up my free time, though, and I'm sure The Actor is over it, too. As mentioned, he has done more work on it than me.

We're not done, though. There's still some little odds and ends that have to be done. We need to finish painting the baseboards and trim. We need to clean the kitchen again. (We've cleaned our apartment so many times that I am now satisfied enough to say that it is no longer filthy.) I need to paint over some holes that I made by mistake and patched. There're a few other things as well.

We set a goal to have all of this stuff done for a party for Independence Day and we are almost there. We're SO close but we still have several hours more worth of work that needs to be done.

I can't wait!

When it's all done, I might take some pictures for you to see. I really wish I had taken "before" pictures, though. It's finally becoming a place fit for human habitation.

New Email

Want to reach me?

AIM: ScreamingApathy
Yahoo!: TreyGivens
MSN: treygivens@yahoo.com

Email: flibbert AT THIS DOMAIN

MySpace: myspace.com/supatrey
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/p/Trey_Givens/577560191

But don't try to add me as your friend without identifying yourself to me.

A Blog About a Hero

People often think I'm being a crazy, egomaniac when I say that I'm a hero.

But, let's put that statement in its proper context, which is my life which is that of a human being and takes place in reality.

As opposed to the imaginary anthropomorphic kitten lives filled with derring do.

In its most general sense, a hero is a person of high virtue.

Since I subscribe to Objectivism, all of the things I am willing to consider virtues are entirely attainable to practicable by human beings.

Independence
Rationality
Justice
Honesty
Productivity
Integrity
Pride

So, when I say I'm a hero, I'm saying that I'm a person who practices these things.

I don't know everything. I make mistakes in judgment now and then. But I force myself to face all the facts of reality and deal with them as a rational person. And that makes me a hero.

Update: Interestingly, Leonard Peikoff commented on something related to this topic:

Q: In your judgment, is it possible for a person who has achieved moral perfection, i.e., unbreached rationality, still to have some psychological or psycho-epistemological problems?

A: Yes, definitely. Morality pertains only to the conscious and volitional, i.e., to factors within one’s direct control, and “perfection” is defined accordingly. One can have psychological problems and still be totally moral, if he treats his problems rationally—i.e., without evasion and with the use of his full mental effort. He may not be able, in an hour or even a lifetime, to solve his problems; but if he does what is possible to him, no moral code can ask him to do more.

Moreover, there is a difference between inner conflicts and existential behavior. Apart from psychosis, a man can act “perfectly,” i.e., with unbreached rationality, even if he does have unresolved conflicts and doubts. (Similarly, he can think rationally, even if hampered by automatized psycho-epistemological problems.) In part, this involves doing what you can not to take your inner problems out on other people. For example, don’t act out motives you know to be neurotic, such as insecurity by venting hostility, or dependence by declaring love.

The above does not mean that you must spend your years trying to solve a psychological problem, if you can find no clue to its solution or to a therapist who could be a helpful guide. In such a case, in my opinion, you should delimit to the extent you can the influence of the problem in your life, but cease beating a dead horse—until and unless you discover some signs of life. In other words, you live with the strengths you have, and stop condemning yourself for weaknesses which, it seems, you cannot change. If there is ever reason to reconsider the problem, in order to shed further light on it, do so; but look for such light only when you have some idea of where to look. If so, you have done morally what you can. Only you can determine whether your decision to live with, rather than attempt to solve, a psychological problem is honest.

By the way, discussing your problems with an untrained friend is often, I have observed, one of the worst and most confusing ways to proceed.

Thanks to Diana for the tip!

Oo, Girl! Where You Been At? I Ain't Seen You Since Star Jones Ate Cake!

Sooooo... yeah. I been bizzy.

Work. Hanging out with the rocket scientist. This and that.

I haven't had much to say about my personal life, really. I've mostly been ranting about Iranian hostage situations and Global Warming and Unions and misapprehensions of Objectivism and wasting my time playing games online and reading books.

I am SO far behind in my reading. I needa jump on it. Where do people find the time?

Anywhoodles, I'm not dead. I'm still here.

Oh! I might be considered for another job in my company. That would be nice. It's totally iffy still, so we'll see.