There's a Burning In My Pride, A Nervous Bleeding In My Brain

Critically Correct will not be updated for the foreseeable future. I am driving myself into a massive pile of dung this week, followed by a Reboot Weekend beginning next Friday.

It is long overdue.

Until next time, B3 out.

Twenty Six Years Old, Never Kissed This High

I just returned home from a couple of hours out on my bike, so I am writing this with a bit of a biker's high. Biking has always been my way of sorting out my thoughts - a way of clearing my head - so it is no surprise that I come home with plenty to say.

As I bolted around downtown Perrysburg, over the Maumee River, through Side Cut Metropark, and back again, I really began to understand how great I really have it lately. I almost hate to sound like I am constantly bragging, but everything I dreamed my life would be at twenty-six years old is pretty much spot-on. Aryn was right: we did it. What I defined as success is what I am now.

You know the routine: great job, great city to live in, yadda yadda. As a bonus: I am planning a return to school in a year or two and I am planning on taking my first solo vacation this fall. Despite a few rough spots in my life right now, I have never, ever felt this good about where I am, where I am going, and what I want for my immediate future.

Fuck yeah. B3 out.

B3: Unhinged and Unchained

82 degrees. Sunny. Two bike rides and a walk with Elli. My parents' deck with a beer and grilled food. Yessir, today is goddamn near perfect. Time for a hit-list.

• Am I not my old self? According to my closest friends, no. Something is different about me. After a little reflection on my life in the past two months, I can only say this for now: I am not necessarily a changed man, but one rediscovering a side of himself buried since early college. I am much more carefree (and sometimes careless) than I have been in the last five or six years. To be honest I have almost been conservative (as much as I hate using that word) compared to my younger years. If I complained about my life being boring or stale a year ago, I am only a "new" person now because I have learned to be the same forward-thinking, independent and adventurous person I was ten years ago. And for that I am very, very excited.

• I have visited Cedar Point this year five out of the six weeks they have been open. And you know what? I have loved every minute of it. I have a Platinum Season Pass this year - my first (of many) - and it has been a great success so far. This is my first weekend since mid-May that I will not be going - presumably, anyway. Tomorrow is Sunday. Oh God, I might just go.

• Biking is back. In yet another nod to the great year of 2001, I have spent about a quarter of my free time this past week on my bike. Between riding around Perrysburg and riding on the Towpath to and from Grand Rapids, I am back in full form. Despite all this great exercise, I am actually gaining weight. I blame my food-filled job. Ah well.

Now I am off to do some brainstorming for a some fiction, eat dinner with my parents, and eventually settle down for a quiet night at home - to do bills and paperwork. Boo-urns.

B3 out.

Mud On My Face: Why 2011 Is Still Awesome

Tonight was something special - super special.

Let me back up for a moment: I was really hoping to hang out in Toledo tonight, but that plan fell-through (for good reason). So what was I do to on this relaxingly-cool Friday night?

Easy: I went biking. I hustled down the Towpath Trail tonight just like I did so often ten years ago. The best part of the ride came three miles into the seven mile ride: I learned that the re-stoning project that the Metroparks embarked upon last year is complete, and the entire trail is now perfectly ride-able. What does that mean for me? Daily rides to Grand Rapids and back, of course! This is like a reunion with an old friend, and beginning this Sunday, I will be making the 16-mile round trip between Waterville and Grand Rapids three or four times per week.

I have been waiting for this moment since about 2008. I have been wanting to return to my regular biking routine since graduating from BGSU - something I have not been able to do because of my job in Findlay and the erroneous stoning job the Metroparks did on the middle section of the Towpath in 2007. To keep a long story short, the roughest part of the trail was stoned with a very large grade of stone - far too large for most bike tires maintain a proper grip. Last year the trail was re-stoned with much smaller fill and is now perfectly ride-able. This is amazing news for me.

I will have a bit of a ceremony this Sunday at Farnsworth Metropark to kickoff my summer biking season. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come out to Farnsworth this Sunday around 11:00am to make the 8-mile trip to Grand Rapids. Once in town I will be stopping for food, drinks and sightseeing before making the 8-mile trip back to Waterville. Contact me on Facebook if you have any questions.

I came home tonight covered in mud from head to toe, so hopefully the trail dries out a bit more before this Sunday, but at this point nothing will keep me from the Towpath.

So far 2011 has been eerily similar to 2001 in all the right ways, and my return to biking this summer is just more icing on an already super-sweet cake.

B3 out.

Crash and Burn With a Side of Radioactive Heartbreak

Brace yourself, I am about to ramble a bit. And break some hearts. I enjoy doing that.

No, not really. I do my best to not be a heart breaker, but dammit, I have to say this: I am kind of selfish. No person is ready for a real, solid relationship until they have been broken. I do not mean "dumped" - I mean walked on, tossed aside, torn asunder - insert whatever overly-dramatic hoo-ha you wish, but the concept is the same. You cannot learn to love properly until you have been broken because of love (that whole "you don't know what you have until it's gone" thing). I feel privileged - I was broken five or six years ago, suffered like a bitch, and came out all the wiser for my crappy experience. The single-most important lesson I learned from being broken? Never regret your past - always learn from it. It's like a goddamn religion, actually.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well - I am a different person as of late (no duh, huh?) and I am going through a lot more change than I generally express to any of my friends. In other words, I am suffering - I am breaking in ways that I absolutely do not fully understand. Is this related to a girl? Yes. But I have been broken once before - a few worries about a girl are not enough to cause me longterm stress. Is this related to my job? No, I love my new job. This is something bigger, and here is my best guess: I am grown up.

Seriously. Here I am: dream job and great place to live. Twenty-six years old. I am ready to take the next step - but what exactly is that next step? Oh boy, a blank slate. I love this.

Anywho, I am out of wine, so it is time to wrap up this mess. I absolutely do not let all the little, petty problems of my life add up into anything worse than an annoyance at best. I may certainly come off as heartless and selfish to all my friends (and shit, I mean ALL of them), and I am breaking a heart or two for the time being, but I am in a period of amazing, confusing, and outright scary transition. So much potential exists in my life right now the only way I can deal with it is by downing a glass of wine, dreaming of all the possibilities available to me, rambling on my blog for a while, then curling up in my bed to cry myself to sleep.

B3 out.

Riding For My Life

Well here we are in June. Where is 2011 going?

I spent some time this week looking at my goals for the year and realizing that I am nearly right on track with most of them. I have put to rest most of the programming-related goals on my list and I am left with some grander ambitions from now until December. Let me summarize:

• Finish 40 Pounds Down. This is now the number one item on my list and currently being worked on. With warm weather now here in force, I am resuming the task I began late last year: not only losing quite a bit of weight, but getting in excellent physical condition. This involves more than just walking all over the place. I consistently eat better - if not entirely balanced - and spend equal amounts of time outside as I do on the computer. I hope to wrap this goal up sometime around August or September.

• Create a basic Android app. This is a new one. Given some recent tasks we have been plugging away on at work, I think it would be very beneficial if I got some Android development experience under my belt, and I have a couple of demo applications that I intend to write for my phone sometime this year. I will be starting this very soon.

• Become a JavaScript expert. I plug away on JavaScript projects all the time and read dozens of articles on the language every week. Practice makes perfect, essentially. I will revisit this goal near the end of the year and compare myself to where I was in 2010 before I started all this JavaScript obsession.

• Reduce stress. This is a newer goal that I added to my list around March. The irony is that only a month later my stress levels plummeted. A new job, a new apartment, new people to see every weekend, old friends returning to Ohio, tons of free time, more money than I know what to do with - in all honesty, changing jobs pretty much took care of this goal. Not bad for a month's work.

• Expand programming portfolio. I have one more website I am developing later this year. I am also lumping any Android demos into this category, so this will be completed without breaking a sweat.

• Write a short story. Umm, yeah, about that. Damn.

Finally, I am looking to get back into biking. With 40 Pounds Down being my primary goal for the summer, I am looking to expand my exercise behind just walking and jogging, and dammit, I love biking. I will be shopping around this weekend and some of next week for a bike, and I hope that by the second week of June I will be cruising up and down Perrysburg, Maumee, Bowling Green, and of course, the Towpath Trail. I would love to see this summer be a return to form for my biking habits. It has been ten years since I have been really serious about biking.

B3 out.