This is the one with a depressing haircut.

Last night I went into Supercuts to get my hairs cut.  Don’t hate…Supercuts offers quality cuts for an affordable price.  I know a lot of gays that say things like, “I don’t let anyone but [insert fag-hag stylists name here] touch my hair,” which is great…but I just need a quick trim every month and I’m not about to drop more than $20 for that.

Anyway, the lady cutting my hair was pleasant enough.  There was an odd moment in our conversation where she was talking about my job and said that she liked that we help “low class” families.  Umm…first off the term is “lower class” not “low class” and I’d prefer to call them working class.  But whatever.  She knew what she was doing with the scissors.

About half way into the cut her cell phone rang.  She took it out of her pocket and looked at it.  “Oh god,” she said.  “It’s my son.”  She paused and just stared at me, as if she was waiting for me to give her permission to answer the phone.

“Get it,” I said.  Hoping I could just make her do something.

She answered the phone and there was a lost connection.  After she put the phone back in her pocket I learn that her son is only 4 years old.  The hair stylist is going through a nasty custody battle and her ex-husband is being a dick about letting her talk and see the kid.

Drama.

“I guess it’s good that we got disconnected,” she said.  “I would have wanted to talk to him for an hour.”

Ha Ha – I fake laugh.

And then her freaking phone rings again.  She didn’t even ask for permission this time.  She just stopped cutting my hair and walked to the back room.  I sat in the chair covered by that restricting haircutters tarp.  I looked around and the woman sitting across the way getting her hair cut gave me a knowing look.

This was strange.

I sat for about five or six minutes.  Waiting.

And then the stylist came back…crying. I’m serious.

“He said, ‘mommy I miss you and love you,’” she told me.  “Usually I have to say it first.”

I was afraid that this overly emotional woman was going to fuck up my hair.  But…I think she did okay.  Thoughts:

This is the one about my blood.

I woke up this morning with the best blood sugar reading that I’ve ever had since my diagnosis.  Seriously.

I did do 45 minutes of cardio after work yesterday…which made me dip to a 66, and then I just skipped my bolus insulin for my dinner (14g of carbohydrates, btw).

I’ve had quite a bit of stress in my life the past month, but for some reason my glucose levels aren’t reacting that way.  It’s really empowering to see my choices having immediate positive effects.

I’m a sucker for results.

This is the one where I’ve become the mayor of your face.

Are you using Foursquare?  You know, the location service-based social network game.  The gist is that you “check in” when you arrive anywhere and it lets your friends know where you’re at.  Imagine Google Latitude knocking up Twitter.

The fun part, for me anyway, is that you get points for checking in.  The points aren’t really good for anything (yet), but you can gain badges for different check in combinations.  For example I received a “BENDER” badge for going out four nights in a row.

And then there’s the mayorships.  All you have to do is be the person that has checked into a location more than anyone else and you’ll receive the crown of mayor.  So gratifying.

At the time of this writing I’m the mayor of five location:

• Dan’s House
• The North Tempe Multigenerational Center
• My Work
• My Work’s Admin Offices
• My paren’ts house

There are two badges that I’m really dying to get (oh my god I’m a nerd).

I need the Gym Rat badge.  Yes, I said “NEED.”  To get this badge you have to take ten trips to a location that is tagged “GYM” in a thirty day time span.  This is important to me because I’ve made a recent decision to regain control over my health.

I also need the Super Mayor badge.  To get this badge you need to hold down 10 mayorships at the same time.  And it can never be taken away from you!  I kind of suck at mayorships right now…I’ve only got five.  I just need to get better at checking in at the bizarre places I go where people don’t have smart phones.  For example, maybe it’s time to go visit my friends next door in the senior center.

I’ll keep you updated.  I’m not one of those super-annoying Twitter people that broadcast every god damn location they visit.  I only broadcast when I win a mayorship, or when I unlock a new badge.  So if you want to follow me on Twitter, go here.

I’m sorry if this is super-nerdy…I feel as obsessed as a World Of Warcraft gamer nerd – but at least with Foursquare you’re out in the real world.

This is the one that is spoken in jest.

Many A True Word Is Spoken In Jest

I think that this quotation is contributed to Chancer…but I can’t find it on Google, so maybe I made that up.  And I do know that in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Edmund says:

Jesters do oft prove prophets.

But who cares who said it.  The reason I’m bringing this idea up is because it is one that kind of consumes me, and I’ve realized that I’ve never verbalized it.

If you only know me through blogs, youtube and twitter, perhaps you are unaware of one of my very bad habits.  I joke.  Not just an every-once-in-a-while-pithy-comment.  Just about everything out of my mouth is non-serious.  Even when a situation is super-serious and requires my utmost levelheadedness, I struggle to repress jokes.

It’s just how I deal.  It’s a learned habit – something I got from my dad, I’m sure.  And it kind of sucks.

And a side-effect of this condition is that a lot of people joke back.  And most of the time, I enjoy getting teased…but every once in a while I’m blue and just not feeling it.  On Saturday my dad made an innocent little joke (one that I probably would have made if I was feeling better) and I can’t stop thinking that maybe there was some truth in it.

And as a jokester myself, you’d think that I’d get good at taking the punches.  I should know that jokes are just jokes and I should just laugh and let it go.  But for some reason when other people are telling the jokes, I think of the “Many A True Word Is Spoken In Jest” quote that I don’t know who to attribute.

This is the one that makes me feel old.

Today I was in a bus loaded with kids, and a 12 year old said, “hey Mike, look at that old Mustang.”

When I looked out the window a ’98 Mustang drove by. A ’98 Mustang is the same year (give or take) my high school friend Janae cruised us around in.

It feels strange to age. It is something that happens too quickly.

This is the one that is complicated.

To quote Neil Sedaka, “Breaking up is hard to do.”

It’s especially tough nowadays when all of our lives are intertwined through our blogs, facebook pages, twitter accounts and the super stalkery location-aware apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.

It took a week or so for Dan and I to figure out what the next few months were going to look like.  We’re both pretty smart people, and we thought that we had all of our bases covered and were pretty prepared to deal with this new phase in our lives.

One tiny problem that we didn’t think too much about was how our virtual lives are intertwined.  I know that he reads this blog (hi).  We read one another’s Twitter feed.  We follow each other on Foursquare and Gowalla.  An eighth of my facebook friends I know through Daniel.

It’s complicated.

For example, I changed my Facebook status:

And it was a very calculated thing.  Who is going to see this, I thought.   And who should I tell in person first.  I’m facebook friends with my nephew…so I called my mom before changing my status because she might die if she heard this kind of news secondhand.

And to make these muddy waters murkier, I need to figure out how to blog and tweet without censoring my message for fear of how Dan might read it.  And then I’ll work on not over analyzing the things that Mr. D puts on his blog and twitter feed?

Fucking hell.

In 1962 when Sedakas wrote his famous breakup song, he really had no idea.

This is the one where I just read a lot.

I’m kind of trying to read a lot in 2010.

The 16th book I read was Where The Wild Things Are by Dave Eggers.  I blogged a review at iEATbooks here.

The 17th book I’ve read this year is This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry.  I haven’t written a review  yet because I’ve been dealing with some things.

This is the one that is annoying.

I had to change the look of my page again.  For some reason the photographs in the new theme were hindering my abilitiy to write here.  I kept thinking “I could blog that…but what picture would I use?”  And then I wouldn’t post anything at all.

And in that photo-heavy theme all of the images had to be HUGE to look good.  What if I wanted to post a little pizza icon?

So here it is.  Back to the old look.

In other news, Mr. D and I are taking a break.  We’ve both got some shit to figure out…and some space might make that easier to do.  It’s super-sad, and really hard to leave him and the dogs – but I think it’ll be for the better.

We had a nice week of figuring the seperation out.  We’ve been together three years…and that means our lives are all tangled up.  It’s been really friendly though, and no bridges were burned.  So in the future we’ll for sure have some sort of relationship.

This is the one with the April 12 of 12.

On the 12th day of each month bloggers all over the world take 12 photos throughout the day and post them on their blogs. It’s Chad Darnell’s idea, and you can see his website and a list of links here.

To see my photos from past months, click here.

Here are my photos from April 12, 2010.

The mornings start early for me. Even though I don't have to be to work until 11, I get up early to take care of the dooogs.

Beezus LOVES Olive's dog bed more than her own.

We've finally unpacked all of my nuns. This one is sitting on my desk and I snapped a shot while working on some stuff for iEATbooks.

When I went to get a coffee refill, this is what I found.

We have a county head-start program in our building, and I believe this was posted by a pre-school teacher.

Tweeting about my 12 of 12.

My officemate is being super healthy...and I'm not. Guess which beverage belongs to who.

At home we filled two gumball machines with wine corks and beer caps.

And we framed 9 of Dan's Dad's records. We're going to hang them in a grid.

This is Dan telling me all about his day in jury duty. He got picked to be on a jury...and it's going to be a long one. And he'll be able to write a John Grisham-like novel about his experiences.

Meatloaf before bed.

This is the one about reading.

I’ve discovered this place that is both horrible and wonderful.

The Public Library.

I love it because I can get my hands on new releases, and it doesn’t cost me a penny.  I hate it because I’ve got too much to read already.  Can someone figure out a way for me to just quit my job and read all day?  Please.

In a somewhat related note, I finished Gone ‘Till November and blogged about it here.  If you’re counting, that’s the 15th book I’ve read in 2010.