Update on my life

When I was on vacation in Alaska, I wrote a journal entry about how I really don't care if I were to go my whole life without having sex. This of course means for everyone who doesn't know, I am a virgin. I am very much ok with that. I have had chances to have sex, but actually chose to resist because I didn't feel right about it for one reason or another. I am not looking for sex in a relationship, not that I am opposed to it. I truly feel that a method along the lines of The 40 Year Old Virgin would in fact be a good thing to starting a relationship. For those who are not familiar with that movie, it involves on going on a lot of dates without engaging in sex, I believe the number was 20, but I could be wrong.

I think that sex can complicate feeling in a relationship and actually hide your true feelings, of course this is just my observation from other people not from my own experience. I already have trouble with my emotions and feelings without sex even being involved, so I can only imagine how horrible it would be with sex involved.

I have a friend who has a friend with benefits and was telling me how great it was, but I could just never do that. I wouldn't want to have sex with someone that I didn't like, and I also wouldn't be able to separate my feelings for someone that I did like just to have meaningless sex with them.

In the past I have talked about how I really wasn't going to look for someone, but my mind and I guess also heart just have to find someone to have a crush on. I don't know why I feel the need to always at least have a small crush on someone, but it really can get annoying when your mind just latches on to someone who is clearly not who you are looking for just so you have someone to think about. It is not like I develop real big crushes on the girls, but it is more of a placeholder crush until the next person comes along.

I definitely have a way of convincing myself that someone is a good fit for me even if I know they are not at all. I don't really know why I am so needy to have a crush on someone.

As it stands I do have a crush on someone, but it really has come about in a very weird way. It is someone that I started following(could twitter have come up with a creepier term?) on twitter a few weeks ago. I followed her after something she had written was retweeted by the Minnesota Twins Twitter page, just for fun. I have noticed that she is hilarious, as well as a huge Twins fan. A girl who can combine those two things actually exists? I was as mystified as you are. She also makes lots of hilarious references to tv and movies, something I also really enjoy. Now the question is, do I actually have a crush on her? I think I actually do. The more I have found out about her, the more I have liked. She also does not drink, which is rare to find in a 24 year old girl. She is also very cute, while not a priority, never hurts. I am sure that m min is assisting with the development of a crush on someone who hardly even knows that I exist. I have tweeted to her a bunch of times and sometimes she tweets back, but I am sure she gets a tons of tweets and does not have the time to respond to all of them.

My current goal is to find a way to get her to follow me, that will be step 1. Step two will then be to possible find a way to see if she would go out with me in some capacity. I realize that this is a hard goal, but also it is just weird for me to think about. I don't know exactly how I would go about doing this, or even exactly where in Minnesota she lives. I just really think that from what i know of her that we would honestly have a fun time discussing anything and everything, from the serious to the comedic. She also pays attention to the comedy world, which I have been getting more and more into, thanks to twitter and podcasts.

As always posts like this are usually to help me clear my head and kind of act as therapy for me. I would love to hear any advice that anyone has for me, or any amusing related stories that people might have about similar things.

Thanks for reading.
Peter

Alaskan Trip Journal Part 2

5/27/10

I got up on my own at about 7:15 and did nothing much but watch tv for a few hours. It took Mike a while to get up so I had lots of time to kill. Once Mike got up we had breakfast, then out mother took us to the hospital where she works to meet all of the people she works with. She is, at least for the time being, the supervisor in the lab at the hospital. The people we met seemed cool.

Kind of a tangent here, but when I was writing my journal I was thinking about my writing style. I really tend to be a boring writer using the same words and sentence structures repeatedly. I really wish I was more creative and comedic in my writing. I don’t know if it gives my true self justice, but alas it is how I write. I have a dream of writing jokes, articles or maybe in a different world scripts. There is of course plenty of time to work on my writing and maybe someday I can achieve that dream.

Now we must get back to the adventure at hand. Following the stop at the hospital we went to a local beach known as both Bugge Beach and Rotary Beach. There was a small pool type area for people to go swimming in, beyond that there was an area of rocks with some trees on top of a little hill. When we were there the tide was pretty low so mike and I were able to go out on the rocks and look around. We got out pretty far. During this time there was a seal near the shore and it popped its head out of the water for a minute or so then went back under and disappeared. Mike found some tiny little hermit crabs on the rocks as well as many starfish.

After Bugge Beach we went to as far south on the island as the paved road would allow us to go, a place called Herring Cove. This cove was known for seals making appearances there. We saw plenty of seal heads poke out of the water, but they were not really playing around, so it got old pretty quick. And we went back to the apartment for our lunch of random leftovers.

In the afternoon we went to Ward Lake for a hike. We really didn’t see too much wild life. There was a really cool family of fuzzy headed ducks that I had never seen before on a log, but that was really all. We hiked a full circle around the lake which was good. We got some good exercise hiking around as well. After the hike we went to the grocery store and picked up some things.

Back at the apartment we listened to the Twins game on Mike’s computer. It was pretty great Kubel had 2 HRs. We had dinner during the game. After dinner we went to the new turf soccer field and kicked the ball around. It was good to get some more exercise in while on vacation. We also threw the Frisbee around some.

We went back to the apartment and started to gather up a little bit of firewood that we could use in the fire pit out back. We got a small fire going for a while and had some smores, but before too long I started getting eaten alive by bugs. I went inside to relax for the rest of the night.

5/28/10

I didn’t really do all that much today. My feet were a little tired from all of the exercising I had done the previous day. I watched some TV, we listened to the Twins game, and I read my book. That is more or less all I did. It was a very relaxing day which always enjoyable to have on vacation. I also took my mom’s dog for a walk. She didn’t used to like me, but she really seems to like me whenever I see her now.


5/29/10
Slept in today, didn’t wake up until 9:50 Alaska time, which is 12:50 central time. I thought it was crazy that I was able to sleep in that late. I had gone to bed before midnight the night before, which made sleeping in that late all the more interesting. When I got up my mother and I went to the local history museum which is located inside of the public library. Ketchikan has a lot of history to it. There is some stuff on the history of the different native tribes with all sorts of artifacts. The first Caucasians to come into the area arrived from Seattle. The town is the salmon capital of Alaska. It used to also have lots of lumber mills; there was a short lived gold rush in the area. The museum had all sorts of cool artifacts and pictures from the city’s past.

We met mike down at Godfather’s Pizza for lunch. The bar right next to Godfather’s, its called The Office, is owned by the same guy. The bar has 6 or 7 flat screen HD tvs all along the same wall, so you can watch a bunch of different games at once. They also allow people to order directly from Godfather’s and have it delivered right to the bar. We wanted to watch the Twins game, but because it was available on local Fox stations only we were unable to watch it.

After we finished lunch we went to the grocery store because we were right next to it. Mike and I stayed in the car. We saw a bunch of bald eagles gathering on the rocks next to the store. It was weird to see them flying in from a few directions. Mike and I went over for a closer look at there were between 10 and 20 bald eagles just sitting on the rocks all at once. It was really cool to see, but it didn’t last that long. A truck went by and spooked many of them away.

We got back to the apartment and listened to the remainder of the Twins game on the internet. The Twins ended up winning which is always a good thing. We relaxed most of the evening, until the Stanley Cup Finals first game was on.


5/31/10

I skipped a day in my journal, the entry had nothing to do with the trip, but it may or may not become a blog post, I haven’t decided if I want to share it or not. We will have to wait and see.

I have to start off by saying that Memorial Day was a great day. I woke up on my own without an alarm early and felt very well rested, which is always a plus in my book.

Mike and I had breakfast together and then started our descent down the hill; we were going on a boat tour of the Misty Fjords. Mike’s girlfriend Kendall works for the company that gives these tours and she was given some free passes that she could give out to whomever she chose.

We had the fortune to be on a tour that she was working as well, which made it all the more enjoyable. The trip would have been less fun if we had not been able to talk to her throughout the trip. As we were heading away from Ketchikan, the ship slowed down a little so that people could get some pictures of a bald eagle in a tree. Mike and I had already seen so many of them so we were not all that interested in seeing one more. I really think that they might be the most populous bird in that area, if they aren’t they are close; ravens are the other bird with a major population in the area. Pigeons must have found their own way into the area following people.

Following the stop to see the eagle we got up to our cruising speed and the scenery started to change for us. It went from forested islands to ice capped mountains. Our first stop was at a rock, that was discovered by I think John Vancouver. The rock seemed very phallic to me, but that’s just my opinion.

As we moved along, we were next to the sides of some mountains that had little waterfalls trickling down their sides. I have pictures of lots of different things from this trip. We got to see lots of porpoises just peeking out of the water. I never really got a good look at one, but they are supposedly like small dolphins. You could see the ripples of the water where they were coming up for air.

There were many cool rock formations along the way, some looked like faces. I have an album of pictures on facebook. I will post a link to them at the bottom of this post, let me know if it does not work. I don’t really take many pictures, so some of the pictures might leave something to be desired, but there are some really cool shots if I do say so myself.

On the way back toward Ketchikan, we may have passed an otter swimming on its back, but I did not get a good look at it. We saw a lot more porpoises on the way back. We also passed a rock that had a bald eagle sitting on it, with some seals sunning themselves on it. There were also some seals around the sides of the rock with their heads just out of the water. When we were getting our little cup of soup we saw a pod of orcas. I was able to get a few good pictures of dorsal fins. It was cool to be on the first trip that had seen them this year. We didn’t get to see and humpbacks but we did get to see orcas to I feel that we were on a special trip.

Mike and I wandered around the tourist area of town while we waited for Kendall to finish with work. I looked through several stores trying to find some cool stuff that I could buy as souvenirs. I ended up getting some teriyaki salmon jerky, which I have yet to sample, and some cool posters that were created by a local artist for a local coffee company. I don’t even like coffee, but these posters definitely caught my eye. The store I bought the posters in was actually owned by the artist, and he happened to be working the checkout at the time, so I got them autographed for free.

When Kendall was done with work we all went to a local burger place called Burger Queen for lunch, although it was already like 3 in the afternoon by then. The back of the workers’ shirts said, “Burger Bitch just didn’t sound right,” which I thought was hilarious. I can’t remember what exactly I had on my burger, but I do remember that it was delicious. They had at least 30 kinds of milkshakes available, I picked the white chocolate shake which we all shared, and agreed that it was amazing. I also got some onion rings which very interestingly they sprinkle parmesan cheese on, instead of salt. After we finished eating we walked back up the hill to the apartment to relax for the rest of the day. We played some Yahtzee, and were able to watch the Twins game on TV because they get the mariners games up in Ketchikan.

6/1/10
The final day of my trip might have been the worst, just because a few things didn’t go well. The trip all in all was great, just not so much the last day. During my first flight from Ketchikan to Seattle I began suffering from airplane ear. It is a weird condition which I researched when I got back to Eau Claire. It is a blockage in your middle ear, usually in the Eustachian tubes that is caused by the combination of changes in pressure and a small blockage. It was not all that painful, but it was annoying because my hearing was greatly reduced in my right ear.

I had a few hours in Seattle and needed to find myself some lunch. I bought a California roll and a tuna salad flatbread sandwich, both of which were good. The tuna salad sandwich was a lot bigger than I thought it was, so I was definitely full for the rest of the day. The flight from Seattle to MSP went smoothly except for the continued discomfort of the airplane ear. I was able to watch Invictus on the plane. I can’t even remember the last time that I saw a movie on a plane before that. Invictus was ok, nothing really that great in my opinion.

We were early to arrive at MSP, but we were forced to wait a while before we were able to exit the plane. The gate we were assigned was set up for a different type of plane. Originally we were told that we would have to move to a different gate, but in the end they adjusted the jetway to work for our plane.

As I got off the plane, I tried calling my father as I walked toward the baggage claim, but I got no answer. After I got my bag, I tried to call him again and I still got no answer. I was getting worried that something was up. I didn’t really have any other way to get to his house where my car was. As it turns out Memorial Day had mixed up his days and he had thought it was Monday. In the end it really only slowed my trip to Eau Claire by about half an hour, nothing too bad. When I got back to the apartment the cats both rushed out to say hi. They had clearly missed me.

The vacation definitely allowed me to relax a lot in a worry free environment. I am very glad I was able to take this trip, everything in my life seems refreshed since I have returned home.

Link to my pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/album.php?aid=2235746&id=59500822

Alaskan Trip Journal Part 1

The following is a journal of my vacation to Alaska. I started out writing at random times then at the end I was doing daily entries to make it easier.

5/23/10 11:36PM

We are on the train and rolling. Mike and I got to get on the train early because we were traveling together. We also got to each have our own row because the train is not going to be full. That will definitely make the ride much more comfortable, and we won’t have to fight over the window. The people in front of Mike and I can’t seem to find their tickets or the stubs with our destination that we were given when we got on. They are really stressing out about it. Its funny to watch two grown adults searching every nook and cranny for these little stubs. The guy across the aisle from me has taken his shirt off. Its just weird to see something like that. He is as large as I am if not even larger, and he is just sitting there trying to sleep with no shirt on. That’s awkward for everyone, and its actually not all that warm on the train. I am really enjoying looking out the window. Its dark out but I can still see lots of things as we are not that far out of the Cities.

5/24/10 12:45AM

The pair in front of us finally found their little slips and seem extremely proud of themselves for finding them. We have just left the first stop since getting on the ride, in St. Cloud. I read my book most of the time since my last entry in this journal. I am enjoying it a lot so far(Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). I am a little apprehensive about using the bathrooms on the train because I am not sure what I should expect from them. I am sure I will go before I try to sleep. I am currently watching the lightning ahead of us which looks really cool against the surrounding darkness. I am the only one in my train car that has a light still on, its not that late and I am not all that tired right now.

5/24/10 3:50AM

We just stopped in Fargo, ND. The rain was pouring like crazy. I feel bad for the people who had to walk through it and then sit on the train for hours on end. Like an idiot I left my sweatshirt in my checked bag so I am quite cold sitting on the train trying to get to sleep. I really hope I get some more sleep tonight.

5/24/10 9:12AM

I guess I got a little sleep here and there. I knew I would be very dehydrated by the time this train trip was over. I drank a lot of water after playing tennis with my dad the day of leaving, but most of that ran right through me. There is water on the train, but it has a taste to it. I am not quite sure exactly what that taste is, but in my opinion water should not have a taste. I might adventure into the lounge car soon to see what it is all about. I was not expecting to sleep all that much on this train ride. I have not yet seen the sun on this trip. It is still solid cloud cover and we recently passed Minot, ND. There was a lot of cool lightning to watch last night.

5/24/10 2:29PM

I have been sleeping on and off since my last entry. We just passed through Chinook, MT according to the town’s water tower their school mascot is the sugar beeters. I am not even sure what that means. Do they beat people with beets or what? We are now into Mountain Time.

5/24/10 4:08PM

Border Patrol comes onto the train for a surprise inspection in Havre, MT. Two in the front of our car are removed from the train because they did not have valid papers or something. All the agents asked me was if I was a US Citizen, I said yes and he moved on.

5/24/10 8:07PM

We are going through Glacier National Park. There is a ton of snow on the mountain tops. You can see the remnants of trees that remain from the most recent forest fire they went through. We have officially passed the continental divide and are more than halfway to Seattle.

5/24/10 9:00PM

The first glimpse I have had of the sun all day is as it peeks through the clouds while setting. Such a sneaky bastard.

5/25/10 5:10PM

Today started with the final leg of the Empire Builder. Mike and I arrived in Seattle about half an hour before we had originally been scheduled to do so. We were unsure how to get to the light rail while staring at the map a man offered to show us the way. We had a good talk with him while walking a few blocks. The man had been through some unfortunate events so of course I gave him a generous tip.

Some of the light-rail stations are cool; they are under street level and are a combination of bus stations and light rail stations right in the same area. I guess it uses the most of limited space. We took the light-rail from there to the Airport. We needed to find some place to store our bags before we would go explore Seattle. We didn’t really feel like carrying around duffel bags all day. We found a place at the airport to store them, even if it was for a fairly expensive price.

We hopped back onto the light rail and rode it all the way to the other end of the line. We got to go past Safeco Field, but didn’t get out to look at it. Of course it sprinkled on and off for some of our ride, but that’s what I would expect from Seattle. At the end of the line we went to the surface, which put us in the middle of a mall. Looking outside there was a nice pedestrian mall that we could have gone down, but I saw a sign for Pike’s Place Market and we headed that way, it was only a few blocks away. We wandered through the market seeing all sorts of interesting knick knacks that were available. We sampled some perfectly ripe peaches in the market, definitely can’t get peaches like that in Wisconsin.

We picked a seafood place that was in the market. It was a little expensive, but its vacation so it was tolerable. After lunch we wandered the lower levels of the market. After which we decided to go back to the mall and hop on the monorail. I was unaware that the monorail only has 2 stops on it. The science fiction hall of fame and some music museum were actually built right around the monorail which was definitely interesting. We exited the monorail at the Space Needle. We got out and examined the Space Needle up close. We decided not to go up because of the price. We took some pictures around it. We then went into the museums to just check them out, but once again we didn’t pay to go in.

We were kind of tired from all of the walking around after not having been on our feet much for a day and a half. We took the monorail back to the mall then went down like 4 or 5 levels to the light-rail and rode that back to the airport. We got our duffle bags, checked them then waded through security. By the time we got to our gate we were about 2 hours early. We had to take a little underground train to our gate.

The Seattle Airport has free wifi available so Mike and I were glad to use that. We watched some of the Twins game on Mike’s laptop while we let everything charge on the few outlets that we could find. We had to hop back onto the train to take us back to the main terminal because our gate was changed at the last minute. The plane didn’t begin boarding until well after the scheduled time but we made up for that time in the air because there was a strong wind on our side. Mike and I worked on a crossword puzzle in the in flight magazine most of the flight, time went by pretty quickly.

We landed in Ketchikan and grabbed our bags. The airport there is actually on a different island than the city so everyone has to take a ferry across to the other side which costs 5 bucks each. It sounds like a racket to me, but I paid anyway. Our mom picked us up and Mike’s girlfriend Kendall was there waiting for us as well. We went back to the apartment had some delicious Hawaiian Pizza and relaxed the night away.

5/26/10

Got up at about 8am and I woke up naturally which is always good. Mom had made some of her whole wheat pancakes that only have natural sugars in them. I had some strawberries and a banana with them. It was a great way to start the day. Mike got up a bit after I did and we waited until a little after 10 to leave the apartment and start our sightseeing tour. The first thing we did was drop the dog off to get a bath.

We went to a wilderness area as far to the northeast on the island as the roads would take us. I can’t remember the name of the place we went. It had trails going off in different directions and some paths going down towards the water. When we were there the tide was fairly low so we were able to see all sorts of different things exposed on the rocks that might have otherwise been underwater. There were a great many tiny little mussels out of the water. There was also a lot water plants on the rocks that made them somewhat slippery to walk on. The coolest thing that we saw here were some purple star fish or sea stars depending on what you want to call them. They have both purple and orange sea stars in the area.

After that we went along one of the trails toward a waterfall. We went on a bridge that went over the water coming from the waterfall. Apparently people come to bridges like this all over the island to watch bears catch salmon, when the salmon are going up stream so they can spawn. One of the plants growing in the forest is known as skunk cabbage because of the terrible smell that it gives off when the stalks are broken. Bears eat it to clear themselves out after hibernating. There is another plant called Devil’s Club that is the only thorny plant in the forest. It is known for its medicinal properties and how it was used by the native people as a cure for many things. We hiked back up a bit of hill to the end of the road. From there we followed the road back to the parking lot where we had started.

The next stop along the way was a place known as Totem Bight. This is a place where they have started recreating totems in the fashions of the natives. There is also a clan house here where different types of gatherings would be held including dances. Little known fact that I may have blogged about before: the lowest thing on a totem pole is the most important, which is contrary to the phrase low man on the totem pole.

The first day there we could not have had better weather. It was dry and in the mid 70’s. Ketchikan is part of a rain forest so it rains most days at some point. Most people think of tropical rainforests when they hear rainforest, but this is a temperate rainforest.

We went down to the tourist district of town right near the docks for lunch. I had some sort of seafood medley for lunch, I don’t remember exactly what was in it, but it was good. After lunch we walked down to an area called Creek Street, which is used to contain all sorts of shops, saloons and bordellos back in the olden days of Ketchikan. A back path down the side of the hill to get to this area is known as Married Man’s Way because married men used to sneak out at night and come down the hill for different types of pleasures.

Most Alaskan cruises stop in Ketchikan, usually either the first stop or the last stop on the voyage. There is a large population of people who come to town just to work different jobs during the tourist season. My step father works as a driver for one of the cruise lines. He drives people to do different activities on the island. Mike’s girlfriend Kendall works giving different tours at different locations around the island.

We went back to the apartment to relax the rest of the day. From the front windows of the apartment you can see right out onto the narrows. There are sailboat races going on as I write this. Someone my mom works with participates in these. Barges have to bring in all the groceries for the island, so everything is a little bit more expensive. An empty barge left pretty recently. There are so many seaplanes in the area that take tourists on “flightseeing tours” all around the area.

We got to watch the Twins game on ESPN which ended up being a disappointing loss to the Yankees. It is really hard to stay up late in Alaska because there is nothing on tv that late. I really think I would be able to live in the Pacific Time zone or the Alaskan Time zone, because I can watch everything I want to watch in a night then get to bed at a reasonable hour.