Kind of like riding a bike. A bike that you never, ever can seem to get off no matter how hard you try.

The restaurant where I waited tables for five years called me a few days ago, in a bind because too many waiters had taken off for the holiday. "Come in," they said. "And you'll make some money. Things have been busy."

I have not really shared this I don't think, but I've been pretty broke this school year. My take-home pay is $1092 every two weeks, and after rent/utilities ($600), student loan payment ($180), car insurance ($130), phone bill ($60), and gym bill ($45), I'm pretty much broke and living for my next paycheck. The summer decimated my savings, and I'm still trying to pay down the little bit of non-secured debt (mostly from taking my last class at Towson) that I have. I'm also trying to save for a new car and a new house, but right now my savings are still just three digits big.

To be fair, the main reason I quit my second job, besides having not much of a social life and working too hard, is that I finally got my Master's Degree and the nearly $7000 raise that comes with it (Step 9 on a Bachelor's Degree to Step 10 with a Master's). The raise did not kick in until Wednesday, despite all the correct paperwork being submitted in July. My paycheck jumped over $200 for Wednesday's paycheck, and while I don't quite understand all the numbers on it, I think it's probably the raise - which is awesome. I've also not been given my tuition reimbursement from last spring, so that's something else I can look forward to soon.

Still, even with the recent good news, it's no surprise that I took the shift. I'm not working there again with any degree of regularity, but it's nice to be able to go in there, make a hundred bucks ($102 last night), and be on my way, and catch up on all the restaurant gossip to boot. Waiting tables is, as my friend joked with me, kind of like riding a bike. A bike that you never, ever can seem to get off no matter how hard you try.

I was also reminded of one of my favorite parts of waiting tables - those human interactions that you just can't have anywhere else. I waited on a woman and her sister who were on their way to see a show at the Fells Point Corner Theater. This isn't unusual, as we're one of the closest restaurants geographically to the theater, and anyone cool enough to go to that hip, out-of-the-way, hard-to-find theater would also probably be cool enough to research out our out-of-the-way, hard-to-find bohemian bistro. What was unusual about this one was that, while we were chatting, I learned that the woman's daughter was one of the stars of the show. And she made me promise that I'd go see her in the play (and I probably would have gone anyway - I quite enjoyed the theater's previous show, Take Me Out, and the new show has gotten good reviews, plus I've usually liked plays written by Wendy Wasserstein).

When they left, she wrote a note to me stating her name, her daughter's name, and reminded me of my promise. She also thanked me for dinner.

It was a nice little moment, and a good reminder why waiting tables can be kind of cool.

24

I'm really excited about 24 coming back on tonight. I like the feeling of following a television show, of "needing" to watch it every week. 24 was the only show that did that for me from probably 2001-2007 or so, and, then, it lost me with a bad season and a year away after it. Here's hoping that tonight's episode grabs me again.

Meanwhile, it's been a good weekend. I had a workout yesterday that I thought I should call a press conference for - 2 hours, 20 minutes on the eliptical machine, plus a back/chest workout in between. I was watching the MSU game on the eliptical machine TV, and felt no desire to get off. I kept my heartrate at around 140 all throughout the workout, so it wasn't crazy intense, and it just felt damn good. During halftime, I lifted, bookended by the hour plus on the machine while watching the game. It felt especially good, because I ate some junkfood on both Friday night and Saturday morning that I'm sure is not going to be sticking with me.

Back

So I've been without real internet access for a whole week, which explains the lack of updates here.

The week in the personal life:

* Workouts every single day. Woo-hoo! I'm feeling great.

* Saw Madagascar II. It was the date's choice. Funny. and a great date!

* I watched all of Season 4 of Entourage on Friday night/Saturday morning. A great season. Too bad I have to wait so long for Season 5 to come out on DVD now...

Someone asked in a comment why I came back. Well, I never really left. I'd been trying to come up with a new concept of a personal blog, and none of them made sense. This one still does.

I'll perhaps get to all those other questions some other time...

Someone asked why I came back here.

ER

I've spent the last few years not watching really watching television, but have sort of started watching The Office and 30 Rock, two of the funniest television shows I've ever seen. I've caught up with both of them on Netflix, and now rarely miss an episode. Because NBC is on at 10pm, I find myself usually having ER on when I get ready for bed. The show is at once familiar and foreign to me - the stories and situations are the same, but the characters are different.

I noticed that Angela Basset, one of my favorite actresses, is on, and admit to being curious about the return of Anthony Edwards. Talk about a great television actor. Tonight's episode, which integrated in flashbacks of Edwards' character working on Basset's character's son, while Edwards was battling his losing battle with cancer, was amazing. I couldn't turn away. Wow. Very powerful, and it was just so cool to see him back, as well as a few other characters who made cameos.

Anyhow, I'm glad I watched. I'm going to be paying more and more attention to ER as it comes to a close this season.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?

Saw an epic performance of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? tonight at Center Stage. It was awesome, with some of the best performances I've ever seen. The play itself was so interesting - basically 3 hours and 15 minutes of a couple arguing in comic and tragic ways. I want to rent the movie, which apparently stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - should be good.

I overslept for the gym today, meaning my day was very unhealthy. With no opportunity to go to the gym in the afternoon after oversleeping, I didn't get any exercise. And it seems I had 100 things to do today.

Eating wasn't so great.

Breakfast:

2 bowls of cereal (good cereal, Optimum Protein cereal)

Lunch:

A really crummy Asian vegetable stir fry. Small, about 400 calories.

Dinner @ 4pm, before class:

A personal pan pizza at Subway, with jalapenos and olives. Really good. Also probably 800-1000 calories, by my estimation.

Second dinner @ 7:30, after class, before the play:

Caesar Salar @ Iggies

I also managed to eat a small cup of gelato at Iggie's and three chocolate chip cookies tonight at the 2nd intermission the play.

Not a great day. I'm too tired to count calories from it, but I'm going to have to work out hard tomorrow - and it's another very long day, as I'm committed at school until 8pm.

Regime

For the life of me, I can't figure out why I weigh 238 lbs. I've been stuck in the 235-245 range for nearly a year, and I just can't seem to get below it - despite near-daily gym trips and a general commitment to eat healthy.

By the way, this weight put me at a 33.4 BMI, well into the "obese" range. I don't think many people would call me obese, as I have muscles and athleticism, but it's still sort of sickening to think about.

It used to be that just feeling okay was fine with me, but I really would like to get my weight down to the 200 range.

I've traced what I've eaten pretty closely in the month, and just started using FitDay.com again to trace it more closely. I have to figure out where the extra calories are coming in. It's ridiculous that I work out from 6 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. just about every morning and still have these issues.

One thing that I've been doing a lot of reading about is processed soy products. I eat veggie burgers or veggie hot dogs nearly every day, but am going to try to eliminate this from my diet. While their label suggests they are (very) healthy, the processing of foods in general has made me concerned and makes me want to look elsewhere. I have also read lots of things lately about those fake meat products in general, about how they might really be pretty bad for you.

I'm not sure what I'd replace it with; I honestly love them and hate spending any time at all to cook (veggie hot dogs take 1 minute to heat up in the microwave, and I often choose them over the veggie burgers primarily because the burgers take 3 minutes). Still, I probably need to cut down.

Otherwise, I just don't know. Friday night Happy Hour? Eating late at night? These I partake in on occasion. But I count my calories and count how much I burn off and it seems like it should be even.

One of my former students is about to get an exercise science degree, and, after running into him the other day, he just emailed me and asked me to work out with him. This could be a jolt that I need.

I'm also thinking about tracking my food here, just because it's way easier to use than Fitday and there is something to public showcasing of eating habit.

Today:

Gym Trip:
35 minutes of eliptical work

Chest, Back, Deadlifts, Abs - 60 minutes

Breakfast
1 Banana Muscle Milk


Mid-morning snack
1 Promax Exercise Bar


Lunch
1 Smart Choice invidual frozen spinach pizza


Afternoon Snack
1 bag of carrots

1 cup Fiber One cereal


Dinner
2 veggie hot dogs

1 low-carb tortilla wrap


Evening Snack
1 handful almonds

1 100-calorie popcorn bag


That's about 2000 calories, which doesn't seem too bad. I'm not hungry now. I got about 80 grams of protein there. One thing I notice is that it's way heavy in the evening instead of the morning... but I find this hard to prevent if I'm exercising in the morning.

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8

I find Keith Olbermann pretty smug and annoying sometimes, but really get into it when he's passionate in his special comments. This one is certainly worth a listen:

W.

Disappointingly, I hadn't been to the movies since the awesome The Dark Knight. I quit the second job two months ago, but haven't made the most of my time in ways that I've wanted to.

So it was nice last night to get to The Charles and see W.. I wasn't expecting greatness, but my political junkie self was really interested in seeing this movie.

However, I did get greatness - this is a great movie, or, at least, almost great. It's not a satire, as I expected, but a Shakespearean tale of a man trying to live up to his father. It made George W. Bush sympathetic and that's a feat indeed, and the acting was pretty incredible. There were a couple of lines that I didn't much care for, the ones that were cheapshots that didn't need to be there, but otherwise this was a pretty great film.

Clouds among all the sunshine (Black homophobia and Prop 8)

My joy over an Obama victory has been somewhat tempered by the passing of Prop 8 in California, which wrote a banning of gay marriage into the state constitution.

How sadly ironic it is that it was primarily black homophobia, hand-in-hand in tandem with Morman funding of the proposition, which wrote discrimination into the state constitution. 70 percent of African-Americans voted for the proposition, the only group of people that voted in favor of the measure - white people, Latinos, old, young, men, and women all were evenly split or a little on the no side. This historic election, with an increased black turnout, brought with it increased discrimination in California.

They're on the wrong side of history, and that's nice to know. But it's still sad.

Hope is Here

Tonight, I went to a sort of scuzzy liquor store to get a bottle of cheap wine for the Election Night get-together some friends were having.

A black woman with gold teeth smiled and said, "A lot of people seem like they're celebrating tonight, huh?" She was speaking to me, and to the cashier. She seemed like a regular.

"Well, I think we have a lot of reasons to celebrate tonight," I told her, motioning to my Obama t-shirt.

She smiled. Then she said, "Well, you know what? I'm just so proud of white people. Cuz, you know, when Jesse Jackson was running a while back, I just voted for him because he was black. I admit it. Now I hear the crazy things he says and can't believe I'd vote for someone because of that. But you white people, you're not like that. You didn't vote for McCain just because he was white. I'm so proud of you! All you white people!"

"I'm proud of all of us," I said, grabbed my wine and headed back out into the drizzle while chuckling at the goofy, but happy, moment that had jut happened. I waited 2.5 hours to vote today, more than two hours longer than I ever have waited before, and sometimes in spitting rain. It felt good, though. Felt like I was making history. Felt part of a movement, which is one of the greatest feelings a person can have.

Ohio just went for Obama. Never before have I actually voted for someone with so little cynicism. Obama isn't perfect, but he's the leader we need right now.

What a historic day for America. Let's hope that Obama fulfills his promise and leads us where we need to be. I've never been more confident that a leader will.