Okay, I didn’t actually drink more than one horrid shot. But I compensated in other ways. The highlight of the whole night was spending it cuddling with the professional model for several hours. I did get a few mixed signals. She didn’t want to kiss at all, but I did see her necking with another guy who is quite a bit more aggressive. Still, she did want to spend her time with me.
Then she disappeared. She wanted to talk to some other people who were hanging around. I decided to take the opportunity to help my bodypainter friend with camera troubles and did a quick trip to my room to grab some stuff. When I got back she was gone. Others said that she said she would be back, but I didn’t see her for the rest of the night. Apparently the E she had rolled made her a bit ADD.
This was the last night before my friends were mostly leaving. So I didn’t want to waste it sleeping. I continued to hang out around the resort, finding small groups of them.
Eventually the sun rose. I did know that the beautiful porn star was leaving at 6:00, so I helped her with her stuff. Mostly though I stopped her from oversleeping. She’s invited me to visit her in L.A. and I am very tempted.
After she was gone I took a short nap (although I’m not sure I actually fell to sleep) and then got up to say goodbye to the next group of people leaving. I continued that pattern for most of the morning, until noon when I found the professional model again. We cuddled for a few hours and then I sent her off on her bus to the airport.
The weather has been interesting today. There is a hurricane hitting Cuba, narrowly missing us. While the rest of the week was calm and cloudy, today has been almost stormy. The wind isn’t blowing too hard, but the waves are crashing on the shore, destroying some of the boardwalk.
I found out how powerful the waves were when I went to the nude pool to get some filtered sunlight and kept getting splashed when the waves went over the walls. I did try and take a nap. I missed sunset completely. I heard it was beautiful.
Now I’m tired. I’m going to bed. My bags are mostly packed. It should be an easy trip home tomorrow.

Today was fairly laid back. It has been the first real sunny day for the entire week. I spent time with the professional model. She’s really cool. I’ve also been hearing comments from people that I should be naked, or skimpily dressed more often. Women here are admiring my body. I feel like a piece of meat. It’s great!
I still have to get over my social phobias. I clutch a camera and take pictures instead of just living in the moment. And I have taken a lot of pictures. My 4 GB memory card is full. I wish I could download it to my computer, but my card reader doesn’t recognize it. I think it is too big for reader to handle.
I also keep forgetting to drink. Alcohol that is. It doesn’t seem to be stopping me much. Tomorrow though, a lot of my friends are leaving. I will have to be more proactive in socialization now. Drinks for everyone!

It is finally beautiful out. The sun is shining. It is almost uncomfortably warm. There is a beautiful women to my left in a photo shoot. Life is good.
And what am I doing? Fooling around on a computer.

Nerd.

It was ever so nice to sleep in today. I should probably have taken a shower before bed because my sheets got covered in bodypaint. But eventually I did get up to have breakfast. I was fairly lazy, the high point being going water-skiing. I thought about signing up for scuba diving tomorrow, except I don’t seem to have packed the card that says I know how to dive.
In the afternoon I spent time in the nude pool area getting some sun and reading an old Time magazine. The problem here has been that there hasn’t been much sun. I can’t really remember seeing any. Continually overcast. But it is much warmer than home and I can deal without sunlight. To compensate we are treated to nice calm oceans that are great for water-skiing.
For a lark, I tried a “pole dancing for men” class. I have a new respect for the women of the pole now. You need a lot of upper body strength to do anything there. That is a quality I do not have.

It actually took me awhile to get to dinner. I still didn’t have energy. Something must be wrong because I actually spent a bit of time fooling around with a computer game. Sitting in my room! But eventually I did leave and had a pleasant dinner at the Pastafari restaurant. Unfortunately I ate some shrimp, which eventually started the allergic reaction we know and love. Just a stomach ache though.
I took some Benadryl for the shrimp, and to help with another allergic reaction my legs seem to be going through. In addition to the decongestant and the vitamin pills I’ve taken, I was in a weird state. I had trouble listening during dinner.
After dinner there was the tribal party. I just used my gladiator loin cloth and a pair of sandals. That seemed to work. But to make it better, I got the local body painter to paint some muscles on me. I looked really ripped now. At least until I take a shower. But I’m going to put that off as long as possible.
Tomorrow I will do my best to sleep in.

I don’t think I’ll be able to go scuba diving here. My throat was scratchy last night, and I feel somewhat congested. Congested is very bad when diving. It’s not too severe, and maybe it will go away. I can still go water-skiing.
This is probably because I’m not getting enough sleep. I got up early to go on the excursion so I didn’t get a lot. On top of that, I haven’t been sleeping well. I don’t feel like I’m getting into the deep sleep that gives you a restful night. I’ve been totally without energy most of today.
The excursion this morning was a canopy tour in the mountains of Jamaica. That means you travel on zip lines through the jungle. It was fun to fly through the forest. In a way it was like a Disney ride. Especially the one where you just plummet to the ground. It was an experience, but I don’t think it is one I would want to do again. It didn’t feel worth the money. I preferred the horseback ride I did last year.
Maybe I’ll try the Jamaican dogsled team.
I’ve taken a sleepless nap now, but I don’t feel healed. Still, I do need to go eat dinner.

Just happened; Achingly beautiful porn star knocked on my door in the middle of the night.
Looking for someone else.

So, the night I’ve stayed up the latest will be followed by the morning I want to get up the earliest. That is, if I want to go on an excursion with the achingly beautiful porn star.
Today has been a good day for my self-esteem. I started it feeling a little down. A water-skiing didn’t improve it a lot. Maybe the lie down I had after breakfast helped? No, the real thing was a professional model who kept gushing over how good I looked and wanted to talk to me. She liked back rubs and foot massages as well. I spent a lot of time with her. You could say I’m still doing-it-wrong, but I consulted with some other people who have been coming here, and they’ve been doing-it-wrong too. I feel better now.
Other than that, there was a pool party in the quad. It was a lot of fun, with raunchy inflatable pool toys abounding. There was a fire eating demonstration, with hands on experience. I found out that fire tastes like gas. And the wrist is the most sensitive part of the arm to fire, whereas the rest of the forearm doesn’t even seem to care. Well, the hair I used to have did, but we shall talk of it no more.

Okay, the getting to bed early is falling apart. But I’ve been hanging out with friends for most of the day. In the morning I did the water-skiing lessons with some of them. It was a blast and I hope to do it again soon. Hopefully tomorrow, weather permitting.

I’m going to bed early again. (For a given value of early.) It’s nice to get up when it is still cool in the morning and go do stuff. Weather permitting. Hopefully water-skiing tomorrow.
I should sign up for scuba diving, but I’m still not sure of my health. You should not go diving if you have a stuffy nose. This morning I wasn’t sure, but at the end of the day I feel fine. I’m hoping it gets better, but I might have missed my chance if my nose gets worse.
And it has been a good day. After I wrote my last entry I went to the main bar and met a very nice girl. And I would like to think she is open to helping me not-doing-it-wrong. She was appreciative of a foot massage, although we found out she was a squealer. We would have probably stayed together except we both had things to do.
My excuse? Helping the beautiful girls change for the fashion show. Beautiful girls who have a good body image and don’t mind changing in front of stage hands.
I like this resort.
Oddly, I still don’t have a roommate. I’m not complaining, but it is weird. For once I don’t have to worry about having a snorer in my room.

An interesting experiment is taking place. I’m finding going to bed at a decent hour and then getting up early is a lot more productive than staying up late and sleeping in. I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn, but I am getting things done. Mostly spending time with friends though. I hope to do a water-skiing lesson tomorrow.
I spent some time in the afternoon helping with a fashion show. I’m not going to be in it, but I will help the beautiful girls backstage.

I caught an achingly beautiful girl checking me out this evening. I started spending time with her. She’s a porn star, but she was previously a computer programmer.
So, I got up the nerve and asked her out. I got shot down very politely. She has a boyfriend and wants to stay faithful. But if she didn’t, she would.
Still, I’m getting out there. And she is still very hot.
I think we’re going to try going parasailing at some point.

I’ve been at the resort for awhile. There are a lot of my old friends here and we are already making plans for the rest of the week. It’s good to see them.
I’ve been working on the goal of not-doing-my-vacation-wrong, and it is progressing. I’ve been drinking and talking to women. Some of them are single, some are not. My friends here have been encouraging, giving me pointers. I had one say that I should be working harder on a particular girl, even though she has a boyfriend. Here. I find that idea uncomfortable. However, the girl in question actually said out loud she couldn’t ever consider being a swinger.
As far as I’m concerned I should just be treating her as a friend and move along to the next one.

I’m in Jamaica. I arrived with all my luggage. Now I’m on the bus to the resort. But we appear to have taken a rest stop where the locals can ply their wares. I’ve been here enough that I am comfortable ignoring them. I’ve seen this stop before. They have nothing I want that I don’t already have. Why would I need another conch shell.
The weather is rainy. They say it is a warm rain, and I can trust them on that. I’m just not testing the theory out yet.
But the sea air is hopefully improving my health. I can’t feel my throat tickle as much anymore.

I’m worried about my health. I’ve got a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat. I think the lack of sleep has weakened my immune system. I need to sleep more.
So I should stop watching movies on my airplane monitor and just get to sleep. I’m not even watching good movies. On purpose though. I want to watch good movies on big screens, not little tiny ones. So I have to save those ones for a better venue.
I did sleep a bit on the flight to Toronto. But the football player behind me kept punching buttons on his seat monitor. I’m glad I wasn’t sitting beside one. They are huge. Much worse than a fat person.
They have fancy diamond encrusted watches.
I have remembered something I forgot. For the Death Race I got little vials of liquid that give you an energy boost for 3-6 hours. I have no other reason to use them because it isn’t often that I need to stay up late. This is probably the one time where I could have used them.

I’m off to Jamaica now. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten anything yet. That puts me ahead of last year. I’m really tired though. I was up late last night packing and nervous excitement got me up too early. And I know I’m not going to have much time to sleep in Jamaica. It isn’t nice to be starting at a sleep deficit. Maybe I’ll sleep on the plane.
My only regret is that I am missing halloween this year. I do enjoy dressing up and going to the bars. The one time I’m socially acceptable. I saw a few costumes on Whyte Avenue today, but I’ll miss the important day tomorrow.
I’ve been hearing a lot about socialization and alcohol’s influence on it. So I’m going to try to use alcohol to self-medicate myself into social skills. I can think of some people who will take great offense at this. But the majority of people have claimed I’ve been doing my vacations wrong. I would like to do them right so something has to change.
The Edmonton airport doesn’t seem to have free wireless internet anymore so I can’t post this entry right now. I’ll put it up when I have access. So I can’t tell anyone I’m on a plane full of football players. I’m glad I got through check-in before them. There are a lot of them and they are very large. Montréal Alouettes. They might be cranky because I hear that Edmonton beat them tonight.

I used to think that Java programmers were coddled. I entered computers before that language. So I have learned to deal with memory management, pointer arithmetic, and rewriting the program for different platforms. That’s what real programmers do.
Now that I have been moving into Java programming I am beginning to change my mind. I think I am the one that was coddled. My tools for programming are all robust and mature. My debuggers let me dance around the program counter with impunity. My IDE connects automatically with version control and will help me maintain the code. It will automatically show me the variables that are currently interesting instead of making me hunt them down.
Java does not do any of this. I feel like I’m programming with fifteen year old tools.
In Java’s defense, a large part of this might have to do with the tools they are making me use at work. There are probably better ones out there, and I’m just feeling bitter.

Hmmm. I don’t like the sound of that. I can hear by alarm clock going off in the other room.

My alarm clock is over ten years old. It does not work properly anymore. It still tells the time, but the actual alarm part of it has descended into annoying. I find I sleep better if I don’t have an alarm to wake me; I still wake up at approximately the correct time. But, in its age, my clock has decided to ring the alarm even if I have set it off.
This hasn’t bothered me too much. Since I don’t trust it, I’ve never set it, which leaves it at the default alarm time of midnight. Apparently I can turn it off in my sleep because I can’t recall it waking me. (Ironically, if it is set for seven in the morning, that will cause me to wake at five in the morning, but that is my brain’s fault.) But last night I came in after midnight to find my alarm ringing and decided enough was enough. Out came the screwdrivers and soon my clock was in pieces.
I found out some interesting things. (Nothing entertaining, like don’t poke electronic bits that are plugged into wall sockets.) The crux of the problem is that the on/off switch no longer has a metal part to allow it to complete a circuit. But why would that set off the alarm?
Apparently, the default state of the clock is to ring the alarm. When it is set to the off position, a theoretically working switch completes the circuit to not ring. When it is set to the on position, all the circuit does is turn on the light to indicate that the alarm is set. i.e. The on light is totally separate from the act of ringing.
The handyman’s secret weapon was tinfoil. Ram it in the on/off switch so it can start doing its job again. Another option would be to cut the speaker cord, or permenately complete the “off” circuit. But I still have the idea that there might be times that I want to have a working alarm again.

I have a weird situation at work. I do not feel challenged there. I haven’t been happy lately and I’ll admit I haven’t been doing my best job. This could possibly be described as slacking off. This is not a good thing to be doing in this wintery economic climate. Especially since money is tight for me right now. Actually, it isn’t really that tight, I’ve just artificially made it that way because I am investing too much through automatic withdrawals and I’m too lazy to change that.
Still, I borrowed a large amount of money in April to go investing with and now I have to pay the interest on that regularly. I know, terrible time to invest. You can’t make me feel stupider than I already do.
Anyway! I got a surprise announcement from my manager today. I’ve been promoted, given a raise, and I’m going to be transferred to a project that actually has life and people caring about it.
I do not usually expect life to be that nice to me.

I had decided to once again go into a low spending situation for last month. You know, the challenge to spend less than $300 on my credit card for one billing period. It didn’t go that well. I kept the spending down, but I failed right out of the gate.
To prepare for it, I did a bunch of shopping the day before the billing period started. I filled up on gas. I did some grocery shopping. I signed up for Match.com. The problem was that all of these purchases took place on a Saturday. Apparently, that means they don’t go through until the weekend is over.
Then my first cell phone bill arrived. This was different from my previous landline bill; I had the option of doing direct deposit from my bank, or putting it on my credit card. One lets me delay paying for a month. I did the ethical thing and put it on my credit card, further making my goal unreachable.
I, of course, am still injured from the Death Race, and it is time I saw a physical therapist for it. I could try and hold off, but this is a medical expense and I can’t stall any longer. That went on the credit card as well.
But just because I am guaranteed to not succeed is no reason to stop trying. I still lived frugally for that month.
My physical therapist highly recommended I see a masseuse. Apparently most of the muscles in my body are way too tight. There was a masseuse that was supposedly the best in Edmonton. They specialized in runners. They wouldn’t be able to take me for three weeks though. Luckily, they phoned yesterday. There was a cancellation and I was able to get a therapeutic massage today.
It does not feel nice like the usual massages you can get. This one hurt. And it hurt a lot. And I am most likely going to be very sore tomorrow. And the next day.
I’m going to really try to keep the long distance running down.

In the movie Groundhog Day there is a moment early on where Phil Connors is accosted by Ned Ryerson. Ned, despite it being years since they last saw each other, recognizes Phil immediately and Remembers His Name!
Today, I went to a play and saw someone I recognized. I haven’t seen her in years and I thought she had gone off to Scotland. It took me an hour to try and remember her name. After which I felt I could engage her in pleasant conversation.
Is this common, or is it just me? Can other people remember names instantly? Ned seemed to have no trouble.
The play was very good. “Thrubwell Pies”. I would highly recommend it to a friend. And I good lesson in British accents. It dealt a lot with pies.
In the middle of the first act, my cell phone went off. I am new to having a cell phone, but I’m surprised with how fast it took for me to have one go off in a theatre. In my defense, it was set to vibrate and, if that didn’t work, the ringer was set to as low as possible. I don’t think anyone noticed.
At the intermission I found it was a friend telling me to not bring a pie to the game tomorrow.
Coincidence?