My Current Funk

The road has the potential of making an animal out of you.  Long distance driving, followed by work and then figuring out the basic necessities of life.   Solving the food problem everyday, for example, is one such dilemma.  Where should we go today?  Not pizza again.  Chinese sounds okay.  Italian would be cool but all that bread at night.  It gets Garg-xhausting. Life has also been an endless stream of checking in and out of hotels, packing and unpacking, and missing my life lately.  I have school work to do and I'm often so tired that I put it off to the last minute.  It takes me a while to wind down at night and my brain is not functioning properly enough to do any real challenging thinking.  In the morning, I vegetate in bed for some time until I finally get the ball rolling and do something productive.  The most disappointing thing for me has been my lack of hitting the gym out here.  I've only done it about four times in ten days.  I have to get back on the ball and not let things spiral out of control.  I do get exercise when I'm working but all the stopping and going is not the same.  I've been only out here for ten days, man but it feels like it's been months.

As I eluded to before, one problem is, after I work hard all day, I want some kind of reward in the form of eating.  It is not easy to not eat at night out here.  There are a lot of good veggie-restaurants for sure.  The formula is one for potential disaster.  A possible reversal of all these months that I've worked hard to attain- namely my loss of 43 pounds prior to this trip looms in the precarious future.  So far, I haven't gained any weight out here but I know I am losing my momentum a little.  I can't let an occasional fall off the wagon make me discouraged and give up my goals in this connection, though.  Intermittent lack of strictness has to be factored into my life and I have to allow myself failure sometimes.  Two steps forward and one step back is perfectly acceptable.  Even one step forward and one step back is passable when you are trying to survive out on the road.

Today, we are in the Philadelphia area.  Sunday we were in Hartford.  Before that we were in Baltimore, D.C. , Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C., in that order.  Dhrits and I get along fine.  I do the driving because I feel comfortable with it.  I know my way around up here and I've driven a few million miles in my life.  I'm very good at it.  Dhrits is older. He'll be 58 in a few days but he still has a lot of energy, considering his age and girth.  He is pretty funny too.  For the most part he is easy-going and laid back.  He is content if he gets the remote in the hotel room.  I'm not interested in it.  I will be interested when the new episodes of True Blood start in mid-June, though.  He watches the NBA playoffs, which I am happy with on in the background while I write.  I would be just as happy with classic movies but I don't care so much what's on.  I adjust myself according to who I'm with.  He makes a lot of political commentary.  He is very anti-Republican, which is a-okay with me.  Every time he starts watching Fox News for a second he says, "I'm not going to watch this and increase their ratings," and then suddenly changes the channel.  When I told him we have to be part of the Nielson ratings to matter, he just shrugs it off.  By the way, I am in love with the Democratic party by any means,  but hey, nothing is perfect in the material world.

Right now I have a B-average in Genetics and an A-average in Meteorology.  I've fallen behind a little in Meteorology but the professor understands and has cut me a little slack.  It is a Summer-A course, so it is jammed packed with work considering it only lasts six weeks. Each exercise lasts several hours. I'm not a science guy, so it is not something I look forward to doing several times a week.  As I said, I'm often very tired after the activities of the day, so surrendering to science exercises is not something I get ramped up about.  I have to catch up on that stuff today, as some papers are due in a day and it looks like we'll either be traveling to the Buffalo area or Saratoga Springs tomorrow.  Either way, it's a long haul.  It's suppose to rain for the next few days, so we bought about 120 ponchos each to sell in case of that eventuality.  

When I was regularly writing this blog, I think it was more interesting because it was filled more with daily anecdotes.  I fear it is becoming a bit of a boring cursory overview about how I feel at any particular moment concerning the last week of activities.  In short, devoid of details, I dread that I'm losing my edge.  I need to re-sharpen myself and shake things up a bit.  I must snap out of my current funk.