While I promised to discuss the house this time, I am more inclined to talk about herbal remedies. For the past several months I have been very depressed and last time I attributed it to a mid-life crisis. Turns out it is something close--low testosterone. I have been taking a herbal supplement - Tribulus Terrestris. After a couple of weeks, I was feeling much better. I went from waves of depression washing over me while I was driving to and from work, to actually feeling calm and collected. According to some sources on the web, you should take the supplement for a few weeks and then stop and then take it a few more weeks. I haven't gotten to the cycle part yet, but I am very happy that I am feeling so much better prior to the holidays.

While I have been actually depressed until recently, a lot of the things I have been contemplating still seem like good ideas. I still want to unclutter my life, I still want companionship, and I still want to quit my job--just not as strongly. I have decided my new year's resolution will be to unclutter my life and try to not let work interfere so much. I have tried this before with little success, but I am hoping the last couple of months will help me remember why I want to do these things. My big problem is my propensity to procrastinate. That will be one of the top things on my list-dealing with procrastination. I am not exactly sure how to do this, but I hope to figure it out.

My next priority will be to finish fixing up my house on the outside. I probably have mentioned this before, but I recently replaced all the windows and now I need to have the roof fixed and I would like to replace the siding. After those two things, I won't feel rushed to do the rest of things that need to be done. I still may sell the house and get a condo or something where the maintenance is mostly done by someone else. I am not very mechanical and have a hard time fixing things myself. My other option would be to find a woman who could do all those things for me.

Until next time

Mid-life Crisis

I think I am having a real mid-life crisis. In the last 15 years I have had several mid-life crises when I bought expensive things to make me feel better--a new sports car, a condo at the beach, etc. This has been much different. First it started with depression. I kept blaming it on a new project at work, but as I am working through things I think the project just gave it a little jump start. The project took me out of my comfort zone and I started stressing over the littlest things. I lost about 30 pounds before I got it under control.

Anyhow, this mid-life crisis has me reconsidering where I am in my life and where I want to be. I have a good job with a better than average salary, but I am finding that my life is lacking. Here I am going into my forties--I am still only forty and not in my forties until my birthday which seems to be rapidly approaching--and I have no life outside of work. I have sacrificed having a family for having a good salary and where am I now? With this new project I have been traveling a lot and while my friends say they miss me, I was gone for weeks and no one tried to call me or even send an email to see how things were going. I don't mind that my friends have their owns lives--I mind that there is no one special in my life to miss me. I get off the airplane and see all these families waiting for their loved ones and lately I wish there would be someone there for me. I say this and then I don't do anything about it. There are women in my life who could probably be persuaded to be more than friends, but I won't make the move. Maybe in the new year I will take my new not obese body and meet some women.

The next item on my list is all the stuff in my life. My parents are "collectors" meaning they can't throw anything away. I have the same problem. I have problem throwing away junk mail sometimes--I even have phone bills from 1991. I have been throwing some things away--not a lot since I haven't been home a lot, but I have plans to do more in the future. The laid plans of mice and men--most likely I will get over this before I do anything about it, but I am even thinking about selling or giving away my Lego's. I have a lot of Lego's--Castle sets from the 80's and 90's, Pirate sets from the 90's, almost all of the Star Wars sets. I have the coveted Lego guy that is approximately 2 feet high and the statue of liberty. Overall I have probably spent several thousand dollars on Lego's over the last 20 years. They used to bring me a lot of pleasure, but I think I have finally grown up. I have 6 or 7 sets that have not been put together and I took apart my 4 foot long Star Destroyer and put it away. I have a lot of other games and toys that I am contemplating getting rid of. The material things just aren't doing it for me right now. I keep thinking I should pack it all up and take it to one of those eBay Stores and have them sell it for me. I am just not sure how much money they would keep.

Next time: The House

It has been a long time since I updated the blog. Unfortunately I met with some technical difficulties. Also unfortunate, the pumpkins died without ever producing a ripe one. There was one small green watermelon on the vines when some sort of worm attacked them. We'll have to see if new vines come up.

I have been very busy, although I can't seem to remember why. I bought several games for my PS2 including the new Star Wars Lego game, but I haven't played them since before the holidays. I also haven't played D&D since before the holidays. We all got busy during the holidays and then one of my friends father-in-law passed away in a tragic accident. Since we play at his house, it has been difficult. His mother-in-law has required a lot of attention--which is to be expected.

For my 40th birthday, some friends convinced me it to go on a cruise. It was a Carnival cruise. We stopped at Cozumel, Belize, Costa Maya, and Nassau. I really enjoyed the cruise--it was the first one I had been on. I was coerced into swimming with the dolphins. I really enjoyed that more than I would have thought. The one thing that was a bit disappointing was when I found out it was the Jim Brickman Valentine's cruise. It was enjoyable to watch Jim play the piano and hear Ann Cochran sing, but I was the only single person in our group. I would recommend a cruise to anyone even though we had inclement weather for most of the trip.

Other than that, I have been struggling with work. I am not enjoying my work. The only thing I look forward to is the game playing. We generally play games at lunch and sometimes after work. Bang! from DaVinci Games is one of our more played games. The second most popular is probably Three Dragon Ante from Wizards of the Coast. Recently I purchase several games from Looney Labs and we have been trying them out. We have Fluxx for years and I bought a single set of Treehouse a while back. My recent purchase included additional Treehouse sets and some other accessories so that we could play other games. Treehouse was born out of a game called Icehouse. There is even an Icehouse Wiki that has different games that can be played with the Treehouse pieces. Thus far we have played Martian Coasters, Volcano, and Ice Towers.