...I am actually feeling like I am in control of things right now.

The last few weeks have been crazy for me. School, work, band, and home have all been pulling at me for my attention as of late. It's been a struggle at times. School has been the hardest of all of this. I did not really know how to handle this semester. But after today when we had our little get together about who did how much work in the class it was decided that I did quite a bit of work and that some one else did not. For this, I get my final grade for the assignments shifted up one full letter, while his goes down.

I busted my ass to cover for the lack of having some one there. At least the rest of the group agreed with it. I had the one participant a bit lower, but kept myself even with everyone else. I guess I was just playing nicely and not trying to rock the boat for the most part.

Overall, I think I decided to take over in things in my daily life. I can't just sit around and wait for it to happen. I have to really get after it from now on.

...I decided to set the record straight.

You can stop asking
"What do you eat?" now.

Over the weekend, I had a good friend of mine tell me that he wanted to have a discussion about me being vegan. He wanted to do it another time as it was late, but I said we should do it now. This would be the second time of the night that I would be explaining this.

During both discussions, I made it perfectly clear that I started this path, on my own, for health reasons. That's why I started it. As I have grown in to it, I have a greater passion to protect animals, no matter which ones they are. I also let it be known that I will NEVER push this on to anyone. If they ask, and want advice or mentoring because they want to do this as well for the reason I am have, I will be more than happy to do so. I'm not going to go and tell someone else what is right for them. That is their choice and theirs alone.

I have a couple friends who are vegetarian and vegan. My girlfriend is also vegan. Now, it was in my second conversation of the night that I had the question posed to me : "did you go vegan because of your girlfriend?"  This pissed me off to no end for the rest of this weekend. My friend, who at least had the courage to ask me, let it be known that it was something that was mentioned to him by other people I know and in conversations in general about me, without me there. I would like to state right here so that anyone reading this gets it straight.

I did NOT decide to be vegan in order to start dating my girlfriend. 

No matter what you hear from anyone else. I did it for ME. When I started on this, it wasn't even with her help. I had the assistance and guidance of another friend of mine. Grow some balls, stop spreading assumptions and rumor, and ask me.

Or, you can read this and know exactly why I did it.

I -=DID=- decide to change my lifestyle for the following reasons.

• I hated feeling like hell 20-30 minutes after I drank milk or ate any dairy product
• I hated feeling like I was going to die when I needed to use the restroom
• I hated not knowing when that sudden urge to use the restroom would happen and then I would get that urge to die as mentioned above
• I watched Food Inc. and was disgusted by our food industry and how animals that become food are treated
• I hated that my weight was ballooning out of control at a rate that I realized was not good at all, even when I decided to start eating a "healthy" omnivorous diet.

I have been vegan for over a year now. I feel better now that I have in a VERY long time. My weight is to a manageable 187 instead of 220+ at my largest (and I haven't fully killed my flabby belly yet). I've come to a point where I am not buying anything made of animal product. Food, clothing, or furniture. Guess what? That's my choice. Talk to me about it. I don't push it on to people as some sort of "agenda". I'm not a crazy PETA activist. I'm not going to run around and call you a sick person for eating meat/fish/dairy. My kids still eat meat when they are home with their mother. They understand why I did all of this. They get it. They even decided to cook with me and eat what I eat when they are here.

Now, I can fully respect people living life the way they want to... so why can't people respect the way I want, and need, to live mine?

...I am the best in the world at what I do.

I can haz halp button?

Ok, maybe not. Hopefully some people get the reference to this post... if not, well... here. Today at work, I realized that I do one thing VERY well. I get things done and I make people happy. I make the problems go away. I make sure that when someone hangs up the phone with me that I have taken care of everything humanly possible, or they know that I am going to track down whatever it is I can for them at that very second.

I have my moments where I slip, sure. But I have this ever growing passion to just help people. I don't care if I get recognized for it, praised in front of a group, I don't even care if I get a thank you. I just want to make sure the problem is solved and the department doesn't look like idiots.

Today we had an issue that came in with only 10 minutes left in the day. From there, an email came to me AFTER 5pm. I could have let it lie, but I made sure it got taken care of. This was a must. Deadline day. No way to really say no and I didn't. I tracked down someone and got it done and made sure that all was good before I went home.

I bust my ass on a daily basis for my job. I have to go in there with the attitude that I am the best in the world at what I do, but also know that I am human... and I make mistakes as well.

...I used my supreme navigational skills to get to work on time today.

I totally bypassed this today.

It always happens like this. I have to absolutely be somewhere for work at a certain time. Today it was 8am. When things like this happen, there is always one thing I can count on. Traffic. It never fails. I get up on time, everything is running great. I love the day and the birds are chirping and the sun is shining. Then it happens. I hit the curve and there is a sea of red lights staring back at me.

Many times this happens I am in between exits and I'm stuck for a couple of miles waiting for the next exit that everyone else is taking. I lucked out today. I got off the exit and got to the office only 4 minutes later than I was supposed to be there. My boss understood. It was no big deal to him. We just had a 9am meeting in another town and had to haul ass out there for it.

I'm glad I had my experience that I did when I worked for the ice factory. I learned the roads in three counties and I can get to anywhere just from people telling me landmarks. I'm trying to get someone else I know a bit better with her navigation as well. Knowing what exits are where, what the main streets are, that whole thing. I rarely get lost. I used to try to get lost. I couldn't. I would always end up somewhere that I recognized soon enough and then I just headed home again. 

At least I didn't have to sit and wait in that mess this morning.

...I got to sleep in my own bed.

I stayed at a hotel down in Chicago this weekend, I'm not going to say which one. But the bed that was there really beat me up. It was way too soft, no support for my body and when I woke up it felt like someone stepped on my head or repeatedly kicked me in the upper back all night.

I go to sleep in my bed last night though, that has really worked out a lot of the pain that I had from that.

So, with that being said, Chicago was a blast this past weekend. The lady and I went down just to get away for the weekend. We had a deal that we bought online a while ago and we needed to use it. This was the ONLY weekend we could. So, we went down there, got settled in at the hotel and just bummed around for a while. Then we wanted to eat. Eventually we ended up at Chicago Diner. As always, awesome food! The Karma Burger is fantastic. Love that place. The chili almost killed me though. Super spicy, couldn't finish the damn thing.

When we got back, we just kicked back and watched Airplane 2 through the wonders of using my phone as a wifi hotspot and connecting my computer to the hotel's TV. I'm way happy it worked. I didn't think it was going to.

The next morning, we woke up late, had to rush out the door and get our stuff to the car so we could head down Michigan Ave. and do some window shopping. I actually ended up getting a couple shirts for work, and the lady, well.... she didn't buy anything. She really wanted to though.

Side note, we were looking for a place to eat, and started going down Rush St. We're walking by this Italian place across from Giordano's and she goes "heh, Rod Stewart"... I stopped, looked at her and said "No, honey, that IS Rod Stewart." Sure as shit, there he was with his woman and what could only be their baby and some other younger girl. It was kinda funny.

After that, we went to the Sushi bar just past there called "Friends Sushi". It's a really nice place. Very clean looking, custom wood chop sticks. Very nice decor. I really like that place. They make their sushi differently than I am used to (they GRILL they asparagus for the asparagus rolls!) but it was all very well done. The presentation was nice and the staff was quite kind.

After shopping a little bit more, we started to make our way back to the car. It was at this time I was suckered in to a shoe shine. It just all happened so fast. The guy was lucky that I had cash on me. I didn't want to be that guy who gets pulled in to something like that and then not be able to pay. But, my shoes look better now than they did when I bought them.

Once we got back we cooked a simple dinner, I did some homework, and we started our venture back in to the Matrix.

But, the highlight was that I got to sleep in my bed last night and wake up in it with my lady again.