moving

i'm moving

http://blog.idamaster.com

same julius. new URL. funnier blog posts.

what to blog about

i stared at this screen for nearly 2 hours today...

i thought of a dozen things to blog about, but none of them really shouted at me...until i realized i spent nearly an entire evening trying to figure out what to write...so i figured i list some of them

• marriage: so many people are getting married..i thought about writing about marriage since i met with derek (who will join the people getting married soon crew) but i didn't like it. as an old friend used to say, "i don't wike it"
• work futility: i bricked my sync module 6 times today. 6. most of my day was spent reflashing my module, and not coding.
• parenting: helicopter parents need a lesson. i intend to give them one someday
• men in general part iii: what were we thinking when it comes to hitting on women?
• the game: men and women play games with each other. i intend to draft some rules
• royal oak: what's so special (or not special) about royal oak, mi
• sex: it's amazing. but why do girls and guys have different feelings on the subject.

so i figure, tomorrow, i'll address one of these subjects.

a goodbye

tonight, i went out with my friend ingrid, who over the last 4 months has lived in detroit monday-thursday as part of her consulting work with accenture. tonight was her 2nd to last night in detroit, so we went out to the dbc to say goodbye.

i find it amazing, that someone who i've known for so long (nearly 7 years) can find themselves back in your life so many years later. ingrid and i were close for most of her freshman year, but only kept random contact throughout the next 6. surprisingly enough, she was the first to talk to me after my most recent relationship fiasco.

it was good to have a bit of home come to detroit for a short period of time. many days i miss chicago, my friends and my life that i think i could have had...had i lived in chicago. i chose to move to detroit, and prayed for my friends to visit...so many have, and to those that made it here, i thank you all the time.

ingrid's 4 months in detroit, and her opinion of the city, makes me proud i live here (she also told me detroit is in the nyt's top 53 places to visit in 2008) it's sad to see her go, but at the same time, i'm glad she got a great impression of detroit, and an experience she may not have had visiting another big city like ours.

holiday shopping

sunday, i ventured to the mall. not just any mall. no, i went to:

the somerset collection

not a mall. a collection. they're even so special, the add THE in front of their name. and what is somerset. it just sounds haughty. well that's what it is and sadly, most of the time i feel like i fit in there.

the somerset collection is the only mall i know that is divided into two malls. one for rich people, with stores like banana republic, anthropologie, and an apple store. the other part is for oppulently wealthy people, including stores like louis vuitton, gucci, coach, tiffany & co. and countless other stores that would kill to collect 2 months of my salary for a purse thats made in china with a fancy logo on it. also, the mall has a skywalk to get between the two sides, and 3 starbucks. 1 on each side, and 1 in the food court. it's like my haven. i hate to admit it, but i like going there. i like throwing on my $300 wool coat and roaming the mall, and getting compliments for it (1 in banana, the other in the store i bought it in, bachrach)

anyway, i find the somerset collection one of the greatest places on earth to people watch for many reasons. its located in an area of michigan which makes it accessible to thousands of upper and middle class individuals out shopping. many of these individuals make boatloads of money, which frustrates me as to why these individuals, who probably dress quite nicely to goto work, go out shopping in tights, some cowboy boots, and a green holiday sweatshirt with an embroidered santa clause face on it. the 12 year old daughters of these people seem to have gotten the budget for dressing nicely to go out. what ever happened to the brady bunch phrase of "put on your sunday-best kids. we're going to sears." except these people aren't going to sears. they're going to coach and buying their 9 year old daughter a $800 purse because how could she goto the 4th grade without it.

each starbucks had a line of 20 people. many of the individuals completely impatient and unfriendly, curious why their ridiculously embarrassing order "wasn't quite right." (a testament to all the baristas out there that get orders for a skim half-caf triple shot 2 pump chai white peppermint mocha with light whip perfectly while serving 6 other customers and have 15 queued up behind them)

sometimes, i think people get wrapped up so much in spending money during the holidays, that they forget its about being a family, getting together, being thankful for the time you have together.

this year, my grandma is flying in from poland to spend the holidays with my family. i see her once every two years. that's something to be thankful for.

what a weekend...

stephanie's visit was phenomenal, and i can say without a doubt my life was completely changed. no, literally, she rearranged my entire loft. while it was sweet before, now, it's just freaking "radass" (as stephanie would say) i'm amazed at how much fun we had in a short period of time, and in the 40ish hours stephanie was in detroit, i managed to try at least a half dozen things that i hadn't done before (my favorite of which was mrs. grass chicken soup with golden nugget.) it felt awesome.

after a night out with friends in dearborn on friday, we took the evening in to chillax and get to know one other. the next morning, i took steph to some of detroit's finest establishments (avalon bakery) and art installations (heidelberg) we enjoyed coffee, roamed the city, enjoyed a sticky bun and scone, and talked like we were best buddies. we made a pizza together. i learned how to get cheese that is stretchy on a pizza, and i helped a literal stranger rearrange my entire apartment. it's freakin' sweet. and after all of our talk about hitting up the jazz club (cliff bells) and maybe another establishment to dance the night away, we ended up watching 300 on the couch in HD. i respect a girl who can watch 300, let alone yell, "SWEET!" with a cackle as a persian gets his leg cutoff with a sword by a bulked up spartan. that's when i knew stephanie is the radass she aspires to be.

for someone who i met for just a couple of hours at a wedding, and talked with back and forth for the past few weeks, there wasn't a single minute of the time we were together that i considered awkward or strange, considering we knew very little of each other. but with steph, i felt like we had known each other for ages, that we had been best friends forever, and we were finally seeing each other after years, of well...not seeing each other.

i can say without a doubt that the weekend that just passed was something new, exciting and completely different. it felt like my life started something really good.

strangely, after re-reading what i just wrote, i realize that none of the words above come even close to describing the weekend. just so many things, feelings, emotions, activities, it felt like nothing i was familiar with.

it was like i met a new best friend and i'm sad (understatement) that she's gone! i wish my new friend lived closer. a lot closer.

UPDATE: while we certainly did blow a lot of sunshine up our asses the last few weeks...we learned we are two kick ass people, so it was okay, we were just telling the truth about each other.

you've known her for how long?

tomorrow, around this time (barring flight delays), i'll be hanging out with stephanie, a girl i met just 6 weeks ago, at a wedding which i was supposed to attend with a girlfriend, that dumped me before the wedding happened.

stephanie and i danced the night away...and had it not been for timing, a random trip outside for fresh air, and choice "julius-like" pick up lines like, "would you like to come on a sandals vacation with me?," or "if we're going to grind on each other, i think we should know each other's names," a girl that lives half a country away away wouldn't have booked a flight to visit me (in DETROIT IN DECEMBER!!!) for a weekend.

for so long, i marched down this path of just stupidity, locking myself to one person emotionally and physically on many levels. meeting stephanie, and just talking to her for the last ~6 weeks, nearly every day during and after work, has made me realize there are so many good things in life to be happy about. taking her outlook on life and love has made me feel so much more comfortable in my own skin, has helped me deal with the past few months, and kept my mind occupied on the things most important to me, and not the things important to another person.

it also helps that the she thinks i'm funny and amazing, and is willing to fist fight anyone that doesn't think i'm amazing. and she knows i feel the same way about her.

here's to a fun weekend...

men in general round 2

alright, so while at the y today (like I am nearly everyday), i get to experience probably the worst experience of my life.

i picked a treadmill following the men's public restroom urinal rule, which mathematically breaks down into the following algorithm.

1) let x(n) equal the position of a urinal where n is the number of urinals.
2) if a urinal is occupied, x(n) equals 1, else x(n) equals 0
3) let x(0) and x(n+1) equals a wall (with a value of -1)

one must choose x(n) where x(n-1) and x(n+1) <= 1 with lower values getting precedence. if the value of x(n-1) and x(n+1) > 1 you should leave that bathroom or use a stall.

anyway, i use the same algorithm to choose a treadmill, yet, someone pulled up right next to me, a bigger man, who looked like he had been lifting for hours before he got on the treadmill.

...his stench is now ingrained in my clothes, which are currently burning in my sink. never have i experienced such terrible pain and suffering from inhaling "air." i felt like gary indiana was located in this guys shirt, and his arm pits were harbingers of death by smell. i wanted to stop running, move one treadmill over and continue running, but i felt it would have been rude. when i came home, realizing how bad the smell had permeated my body, i decided it was rude of him not to warn me that prolonged exposure to him from 3 feet could cause severe bodily injury and irreparable damage to my brain.

listen, i probably don't smell great when i come home from the gym, and i'm not the greatest smelling guy at the gym, but i use liberal amounts of deodorant when i go to the gym, and make sure no one will die by running next to me.

this guy...just killed me.

sickness

so i've wasted a better part of my day sitting on my couch, or sleeping in my bed, trying to recover from whatever made me feel like shit since 1PM monday. maybe it was something i ate, or less likely, some virus i got from all the people i made out with this week.

no, but as i realize i'm laying on my ass, i hate the two things people always tell you when you're sick.

"drink a lot of fluids." there is a reason i don't drink orange juice unless i'm sick. because when i am sick, i drink gallons of that junk.

"get a lot of rest." i just feel lazy. like i'm wasting precious time in my life, that i could be productive, and doing amazing things. here i am, doing nothing. sitting. wasting away.

sucks.

men in general

An open letter to men:

alright, time to get down and dirty. a lesson for guys. here's some advice, just general stuff. no worries. (although, really, i think this letter should target guys between 30 and 50, i think you have the most issues with this)

1) Your pants should come down to the top of the heel of your shoe. in my 2.5 years at ford, i've never worked on then 2nd floor, so i've never taken the stairs (or escalator) to get to my desk each and every day. but when i walk to my cube, i take the escalator up, most often with a variety of gentleman on the steps above me, all whose pants are too short. Most egregious: pants that end at the top of the shoe. If you're standing, i should not see your sock. time to invest in new pants. but wait, it's not like you grew 2 inches in the past two years because you're young and might still be growing. you're 40! buy new pants! god forbid your cross your legs, your pants will come halfway up your leg. err on the side of too long. you can always TAILOR them to be shorter, but then again, if you got your pants tailored, we wouldn't have this problem, because your tailor wouldn't make your pant legs stop just 1 mm from the top of your shoe. listen, it doesn't matter where you shop or how much you spend on pants. usually there are 2 integers with an x in between them. the first is your waist, and while I could comment on the waist measurement, i'm more concerned with the 2nd number, which is called the inseam. from my personal experience, it looks like you all opted to get pants with a 28" inseam. I'm 5'9" (read: average male height in the u.s.) and I get pants with a 30" inseam. I didn't think you could find pants with less than a 30" inseam, but apparently your warddrobe has them (or you're wearing your pants way too high, in an effort to cover the integer that comes before the x)

2) I swear, everytime i use the urinal, there's always one guy, herein labeled "that guy" who stands at the urinal with his hands on his hips. WHAT?! i don't know if i'm more jealous or pissed off by your ridiculous display. personally, i need to hold 'mine' to pee into a urinal. maybe your age (or prostate) has done something that allows you to be erect while peeing, or maybe you're not peeing, i don't know. one day, i hope you piss all over yourself. this isn't your house where you can aimlessly pee into the porcelian basin below you. this is a freaking public bathroom and you're peeing in a urinal. be a man. hold it, use it, put it away.

2.5) To the guy in the stall behind me taking a dump while on a cell phone. i see this more and more each day. listen, this probably works fine at home, where you only (usually) have one toilet per bathroom, and you can flush when you're off the phone, but this is a public bathroom. you're talking about work, and other people(!!) are flushing their toilet! i'm pretty sure no one thinks, "you know, i'll skip flushing, that guy's talking on his cell phone...i'll wait until he's done to flush"

3) After writing all that, i feel like you get the point. talk to your wives, girlfriends, or your friends that have wives or girlfriends. they can put you on the right track. but at the same time, don't you ever dare let them fall to a similar fate: http://stephaniehay.wordpress.com/2007/12/01/tis-the-season/

UPDATE: thanks to mike volk, i'm reminded of another terrible bathroom faux pas. personal hygeine in the men's room just isn't going to fly. brushing your teeth with your finger? washing your hair in the sink? shaving? yeah, its almost as if you said, "work starts at 8:00 am. i can shave at home, and show up to work at 8:06 am, or i can waste 6 minutes at work, and claim i was working during that time"

next time you decide whether to show up exactly at 8, or spend the extra 10 minutes at home, doing the things you should be doing their anyway, please choose home. or at least use a toothbrush.

shoddy journalism

i'm not a journalist, but i lived with one during my senior year of college. he could instantly identify errors, identify bias (even the slightest sign of bias was detectable) and was just very aware of news and media.

i think of this, because saturday morning, while i was at the y, i was reading the cnn news ticker running on the bottom of the screen. of note was the line that discussed the "murder" of sean taylor, the redskins football player. taking the lessons from my senior year roommate, i immediately thought, "shouldn't that read, 'shooting death' and not 'murder.'"

when i returned home, i turned on espn to watch some college football, which also had a running ticker, which was reporting on the "shooting death" of sean taylor. wow. espn got it right? (at this time, the death hadn't been ruled a murder) shocking.

its funny, because i noticed this particular piece instance, and not some of the other glaring errors that occur in journalism. or maybe this one to me was just so glaring i had to blog about it.

later in life, i wonder if i'll notice the errors, or if i'll care.

chinese toys

everyday, somewhere in the news media, an article is written about the dangers of chinese toys and the fact they have lead in them. recently, i've heard that china is recalling one million pounds of lead because there are toys in them. americans quickly latch on to news like this, and discuss the possible dangers to "our children" (another post on parenting will come soon.) but the point of this post is to talk about manufacturing and china.

in this day in age, china has become the manufacturer of nearly anything and everything. but we rarely hear or care about the high quality products that the chinese manufacture, and we use everyday.

most of the clothes purchased in the u.s. are manufactured in china. the old navy, gap and banana republic companies all have a significant portion of their goods coming from china. many higher end suits from hugo boss or calvin klein come from china, not some european country.

nearly all of the apple juice consumed in the u.s. comes from china, and china holds a 63% market share of the global apple juice concentrate. (julius fun fact: poland is 2nd making up nearly another 25% of the market for apple juice concentrate)

china is also the biggest manufacturer of magnetic and optical card readers. that right, we cannot use our credit cards in this country without a reliable machine from china. it should also be noted that china manufactures exports more audio visual equipment and heavy machinery than any other country in the world (most of it to the united states)

we just love to latch onto bad news about a place like china, and particularly when our economy is performing at a level which can be considered "mediocre" we like to rally behind america and take a stand saying, "no chinese toys," but go ahead and try to say, "no chinese tvs" and you'll quickly realize that you need to cancel your cable service (and return the cable box, which was, oh that's right...manufactured in china)