I am writing while at school right now. I am fighting to keep awake during a lecture I should be listening to. I am so sleepy and want to go to bed… but I will be reqarded soon I am sure.

No news.. except we met for dinner last Tuesday for Keith’s birthday. We went to FIREFLY; Spanish Tapas fare. I engorged myself on food that will make your head explode! It was soooo delicious. It was so deliscious and made the synapses in my brain fire incontrollably. Best choices were the dates stuffed with an almond, wrapped in bacon, and coated with a sauce. #2 was the duck egg rolls with hoison sauce! Oh, the ceviche was also amazing! And with all of it I had their white Sangria drink. YUM!

No word from Allan as of yet. He got pretty upset with me when we last talked, so I figure this might be as it was meant to be.

Anyway, mom is sick. Adolfo is sick… if I get sick I will go insane. I cannot afford to be ill at all.

I want to quit my job on some days and on others I want to do more in it. School is going to give me more options… I need to go. BI!

School has kept me a little on the busy side. On top of all that, I am trying to do a few things and then forget the other things I want to do. I keep studying with the television on and that is working against me. I have to behave.

I have been stressing a lot lately even over little things. Mostly stupid things. Peopl get on my nerves all the time. I have, in recent weeks, bitched out a few people around me including Keith, Allan, and a few people I know outside this site.

School is going well. I need to get my FAT ass to bed. Nighty!

Saturday night… I am such a dork. I had some plans, but they went up in smoke.

Plan A: go running, try to get to bed early (after Big Brother).

Plan B: Study, watch Big Brother…

Wow.. I am mister excitement.

Other: Have not heard from Allan. have not heard from Sam in a while either.

Sam sent me an e-mail with 2 people as emergency contacts in case he drops ff the earth. One was his dad and one was his ex or something like that. I called his dad today and there was no answer, not even a answering machine. ugh… I feel a little worried.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm….

Tom went back to the doctor today and is cming along very very very well. I am thrilled. His eyes look almost normal. We go back in a month for another e3xpensive follow up. Ugh!

Anyway, as some of you know I am back in school again. I started yesterday and I am back in the position where I do not have enough time to myself. Adolfo is already bothered by it, but understands, because this means I am not as available to him as I was. I go to school 4 days a week… two of the days we usually spend together.

It’s gunna be less than a year and the benefits will outweigh the costs; as it were.

I have to leave very soon for school tonight. I am trying to get some reading done, but I am feeling sleepy. I am getting distracted. Ugh, I gotta get back to it.

Other news: Allan is upset with me. I was talking to him last night and I wondered about something… which he took very personally. Maybe I was being too analytical? I asked him what was the beenfit of his freindship to me or him? I am thinking that I am helping this man live his life in a way that is very self-diestructive.

Now, no one KNOWS who Allan is or WHERE he is. He is a married man who works for a large, foriegn owned company. He has had very small affairs with guys, but loves his wife passionately. They are cute together.

The affair included HER nephew (an adult). It included a few other guys on his travels, but nothing really successful. He’s a dork when it comes to sexuality with men, by his admission (no personal knowledge here). Some of the stories he told me about are absurd, anyway.

He drives himself crazy because he wants to meet someone he can have casual, safe encounters with that strictly involve hand jobs and jerk-offs… whatever. I looked out there and found him a hunky escort to hire and he hired some loser from a local rag and then went to hell.

Allan gets off with his porn. There is so much more with this story that is can get very conveluted here. I asked him to make his own blog, because it would be VERY VERY VERY intersting.

BUT… I wondered what we were doing each other as freinds. He lies to the people in his life about his sexuality, his finances, his basic motives, takes his company resources, keeps these skanky people in his circle; all of whom he puts-on-airs over with to the extreme.

A couple of his “friends” keep asking him for money for this or that, co-sign a loan, bail them out of jail, fix their teeth, get them their STD prevention shots…. ugh. It’s all this mischief, this desception, this shadowy behavior that makes me sick. It’s toxic. It’s self destructive. I am more of a therapist for him than a freind.

So, I pulled back a bit. I told him I would, but Allan got very upset. I think I should pull back a while longer and see where he goes, if I ever know.

Allan: if you get this far reading this…. let’s take a break and maybe you will reconsider where and what you are doing in life. If you’re okay with it all and like the status-quo then we will evaluate that later on whether I can hang around or not. If you gorw, change, accept new ideas… then who knows.

It should be noted that Allan has lost 100 pounds of weight and is making some great changes in his life. He has less than 40 to go…. yeah!

nighty

Today I began examing my diet a little better. As some of you know I have been struggling a bit. I first really mentioned it during Terry’s birthday in May. Since August first, I tried taking this exercising thing more seriously. I thought I was before, but I may have been deluded.

Chck this out… this month I started to monitor a few things to see where I was going with dieting. My Chart is interesting. Today I wrote down most of what I consumed and added the calories and fat intake.

This is all part of my Goals clarification as well. I am working on what I need to accomplish as well. Those goals have been gaining structure as well. I made some important updates there and have already began making some accomplishments.

Thanks to Gary, thanks to Brian, I have renewed fire in my commitments. Adolfo has been limited help… infact he has been more of a barrier… but I love him anyway. I think he subconsciously wants me fat because it makes him more secure that I am not out looking for more ass; cock or what have you.

He needs to watch his own ass so he doesn’t balloon out. He is a petit 120#s and is heavier than we first started dating.

I still feel that we would be better off living somewhere healthier and happier. The weather is as harsh as the life here. I am so over Las Vegas.

My thoughts: As I was typing this Allan was talking to me through chat. He told me about something completely stupid he did! Then he praddled on and on over it… but I have no sympathy right now. He wants to fuck up his life I cannot stop him.

Sam and I talked on-line today, too. From my view, Sammy has been in a seriously bad relationship with someone who sounds more like a monster than a human being. Sam is no innocent flower himself. Still, it kills me inside to feel like he is being torchured; whether self initiated or by a nut-case boy freind. Still, I fear he is playing me… at the same time I want to be a freind. I really deeply cared about him once.

Sam is smart and crafty. Sam was self sustaining and spiritually driven; which I admired most about him. He was sexy and a tease. I liked that, too. However, as far as I know, Sam never accepted the normal responsibilities of life and never assumed a structure of evolving himself into a functional adult. He as aliented his family, but having met some of them I have a sense they are waiting for him to make the first move. People like them never completely give up on family.

So, I told Sam he could come to vegas and get his stuff together. I hope I do not live to regret that choice. I care about the man, but he has to care about himself first.

Good news from what I can see… Tom is doing better. His eyes seem almost unnaturally large all of a sudden, maybe because he was squinting so often for a week or more before. He takes his medicine well … this includes 4 to 6 drops of one medicine in each eye per day, AND 2 drops of another medicine in each eye. He’s such a good pumpkin!

School starts again next week for me. I have been struggling over the whole goals thing. I began registering with the University of Phoenix for my degree in IT, but got side-tracked when I checked out CEI and registered for a series of certificated programs with them in MicroSoft (the devil’s) software. Ugh… at least it could mean a better position for me someday.

The balances for the Culinary Career v. Information Technology is perilous because I am starting from the bottom in one and have an established hiostory in the other. There is some security in cooking, but it is not work for the cereberally inclined. I like to use my brain and I feel like I am in a mental vacuum.

Fact is… a lot of people in this industry are basically ignorant, self-indulgent, needy people with more mental scars than psychologiest or sociologists. The out of control Id in these poeple sucks. I got caught up in a lot of that in school… it clouded my goals and feeling toward some people. I also started looking to other people more for approval and was being extremely tough on myself. I guess I decided I did not need that.

There are some remarkable and fun things about cooking, but I think without that monkey on my back it frees me up. I do not need to shudder when a supervisor is ticked off over something or sink into the shadows when one more chef is having one more mood swing. I am over it as of now.

So, I already began looking for a new job. I would like to stay in the Venetian for a while? Maybe get into their IT department, but therein lies a new mystery. How? I have been paying attention to the people working there and spotting the IT poeple though we are far removed from them.

Anyway, I hope I am making the right turn. What about my goal to open my own restaurant? It’s still there, but it will come to life maybe a long way down the road?

This is me and Tom; my puppy. Over the past few days we have noticved Tom has been squinting a lot, rubbing his face on the carpet, and basically has been kinda struggling. His eyes have been really red and irritated.

I thought it was allergies. Unfortunately, nothing was letting up so I finally took him to our vet today. After blood tests and exams I was told that he might have Gloucoma. Holy Shit! They gave me a referral to a Animal Opthamologist.

So, I drove over there for another visit and he got poked, prodded, and squeezed. The docotr have him shots in each eyes. Oi Vay! They put these test strips in his eyes and stuff. Poked him in the eyes with some machine that measured pressure inside. Oi! Poor puppy was so cool through the whole thing.

Anyway, he is on medication 4x day and is at risk for losing his vision. He has about 30% loss of vision right now and is struggling a bit.

In the end, the bill for the day was 400+ with insurance to buffer the costs at 1 of the 2 doctors. Ugh… so at least he will be okay…

In other subjects today:

I signed up for school today on a program that I thought would last about 9 months. Looks like it will be a year. A year. A year. A… mother fucking damn year. It’s a prgram that stirs toward some of the goals that I discussing in previous rants… I mean diary entries.

These are microsoft certifications for applications and hardware for my resume. I want to get my bachelors, but I decided to hold off on that one for a while longer. I can get some serious work by going this route which means more serious $$$ for me. Me me mememememememe.

The University of Phoenix was a good avenue for me, but from what I saw they have a lot of problems. The infrastructure is questionable at best. I have to wonder where the validity is in the accredidation of the school is????

When I was on the campus they could not get their computers to print a simple Adobe file. We went through a couple machines and no luck. Thei IT guy was there who acted like it was no big deal and barely cared… so I asked “how is a school going to teach me about IT when they cannot get their own computers working?”

No one actually asnwered the question. i called and left a message on the Dean’s voice mail. God knows where in the world this dean is at? The woman working with me on my enrollment wrote me this morning a very professional reaply which makes me think she got reamed?

What else?

I got my electric bill today. It was 200 for one month?!?!?!?!?! ugh.. summer here sucks so bad!

I wanted to go to the Blue Moon resort and hang by their pool, but other important thingas came up… my Tom-Dawg!

nighty night… Big Brother is on so leave me alone!

I have not heard anything about my posting earlier today from anyone?

Well, I went to CEI and decided to go there for some school for the next 9 months before going to the University of Phoenix. This could be good for me…

Keith, if you’re reading this, then you should know we missed out on applying for Amazing Race 7. Last night I saw the announcement for the applications and I went on-line today…. well, they applications with a video tape are due today. Ugh! This would have been fun to do, huh?

Anyway, last night I made dinner for friends. I made my favorite dish in individual portions. I love Beef Wellington. I added a goose terrine to it and bought Choice steaks from a sirloin… oh my god. There is a huge difference in beef with government inspections versus beef without it. I also made a cream corn, mashed yam… for desert I made domes of caramel creme brulee with a carmelized sugar drizzle, wine poached bosch pear, and a pipe of meringue torched on the plate for decoration.

So, we know another couple we want to invite next week. I want to make a crown of lamb (lamb crown roast) with all the appropriate accoutrements…. sound good? Jelous?

My Thoughts:

So… my brain has been working overtime again. My auger compass has been spinning… I am lost on my path of life… anyone see any signs?????

I was certain about where I was going to go in my career. That lasted about 20 minutes. Then something happens making one doubt one’s-self.

Plan: Go to school and get my BS in Information Technology. In the meantime, get certain job related certications so that I can pump up my resume even more and find the ideal IT job in January 2005. Graduate with my BS by January 2006. All the while, work part time in the Culinary Industry in a savory kitchen either paid or unpaid.

Whats gone right with that plan?: I registered with University of Phoenix and signed up for the Bachelor’s program in IT. I also called CEI about their certifcation program and will be talking to them later today*. I also have a fully updated resume on Monster.Com that looks quite remarkable. I have a lot of expereince in IT and it seems silly on touse the vallue of that????

Whats gone wrong with the plan?: I have really enjoyed making pastry. In fact, when I get training on new recipes and concepts with some of the supervisors at work I feel really excited, because I believe I do quite well at the Venetian. It gives me pause when I get that excited about working with food that I am doing the right thing.

My problem is that the Culinary field is a young persons career. You need a lot of strength and stamina to stay in it. You need to make a lot of sacrifices for time and self-esteem. I worked my way through the IT field to a certain point befopre I stepped away to explore this career and I am left feeling more stunned, numb and confused than anything else.

I want to own a restaurant and do all the work associated with it. I am willing to make all the sacrifces with owning a restaurant, etc… I would like to have a show on the food network or some other independant channel. I think that would be fun. Whether you think I am deluded or not is not important to me… I can do whatever I set myself to accomplish.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnyway… I find writing in this journel to be very theraputic. It allows me to take the layers of thoughts in my head and transmit them to “paper” as it were. The fact that I broadcast them out to all of you is a complex phsychological paradox that is in my head. Gary is like the voice of god with his feedback that boosts me. My toxic buddy Allan tries to do much the same thing… but he is undergoing his own transmutation into a new outlook. My biggest surprise for great feedback lately has been my ex-BF Brian who recently gave me some phenomenal advice.

So, which brings to mind another point. I was watching Regis and Kelly today and Jeff Probst was guest hosting with Kelly. They discussed a survey that 36% of people have regrets in life usually associated with a past love. For me it’s true….

Adolfo and I broke up in 1994 after seeing each other for 1 year-ish. I

never forgot him and regretted that we did not get along so well back then; I

had expectations that he could not meet.

Pete and I dated for a few months in 1995(?) and I loved him so much. His

best freind and I could not get along and it was affecting our relationship.

Last I heard Pete was living in New Jersey… we talked and updated each other

in 1999 or 2000 and I think that ember has cooled for me and for him.

John from San Francisco is someone I cared a lot for and I hurt very badly.

I cheated on him.

James from Northridge, CA was someone I fell in love with. I met him at a

sex club of all places and really clicked. I held onto the idea of him wanting

me back for years after until I finally realized he was not coming for me. I

moved to Boston right after we broke up.

Then there was Brian… my ex while I was in Boston. We broke up in 1999

after seeing each other a year. The reasons we broke up were valid, but it

seemed that all those reasons changed when his next BF put him through the same

things I felt he put me through. Brian even commented to me about it once…

well, I expected him to come back to me for almost 3 years after we broke up. I

find him in my heart even to today, but I know it will never come to pass.

My point in this ramble is that Jeff Probst said, from Kelly and Regis, that he never looks backward in regret and that he always looks forward. I know that is ONE of my issues which probably even brought Adolfo and I together today. I can learn something from that, because there will always be someone out there if I want that.

I think Adolfo and I would have broken up if I was not concerend about my own feeling of regret and doubt about what I want versus what I think I want. I have been wrong when I broke up with Brian, and James and I broke up, and when John and I fell apart, I was wrong sooooooo many times.

Before Adolfo there was Ronnie who died without knowing how much I loved him. We broke up when I shold have done more to resolve our problems. He was often not a nice guy, but I never gave him much of a chance. Hell I was younger and even more stupid back then.

What a quandary, huh?

So, I am sorry to all of you for being so back and forth over the board. I hope the continuity of the ramble was not too far off stream. You think that maybe one day I will have my shit together? Will I ever be happy? Can I ever be happy? Would I even know what that is?

MSN Astrological Forcast:

“Your normal pace, slow and steady, usually wins the race, dear Capricorn,

but today you might need to take some short cuts. Feel free to jump on

opportunities that seem to crop up out of nowhere. However, don’t feel like you

need to commit to anything at this time. Take your chances and see where lady

luck takes you. There is an adventuresome spirit in the air that is urging you

to take an unexpected gamble.”

Isn’t that cute… I was looking at some of my Astrological stuff and I just kinda shutter. I believe in a lof of that stuff… often to my demise with SOOOOOO many charlatans out there. Anyway, they say to be exact you need the birthdate and the time of birth… which I keep secret. Why? It is also said if you give someone your date/time someone has power over you…

Don’t ask me WHO they are…

Linda Goodman at www.astrologyzone.com says:

“You got through July, your toughest month. Rest assured that August will be

better and September will be the best month of all. In fact, it could become

your very favorite month of the year. Every day, in every way, things are

getting better for you.”

Yeah, well, we’ll see. Anyway. I need to get going as it is getting late and I am slowly melting. The goals project has wained this week a bit… I come home from work exhausted.

I need shock-therapy.