Who is the real American Psycho?

Lots of stuff to talk about this morning...and coincidentally, I actually have lots of work to do today, so I will be writing intermittently and probably not post til the end of the day.

Where to start? I guess I'll go with the bad news first. Paula's (Jenn's Mom) boyfriend, Gary, is in the hospital. He went in Thursday night doubled over with severe pain. Turns out he had gall stones. After 2 surgeries, the Doc's thought they had gotten everything, but Gary started feeling bad again yesterday. He got 103 fever and was kinda delirious. The Doc's concluded that he must still have some stones in him that they missed, but that they couldn't do another surgery until his fever went down, so they scheduled it for today. Let's all pray for a speedy recovery for him! I will keep you updated on his progress.

Friday night Jenn, Grady, and I went to the second annual Fiesta Brevard held at the Holiday Inn Cocoa Beach. It was just as much fun as I had anticipated! Lots of different salsa's to taste, tons of prize give-aways, a crazy hat parade, salsa dancing lessons, wonderful food, and many non-profit organizations that benefited. Grady is a sucker for the non-profits, so I got a picture of him getting early onset writer's cramp. Mary Beth works for ARC Brevard, so she had a booth set up...that's her with the Meriachi Band. I happened to be my friend Brian Hawkins' 39th Birthday that night as well, so I got a pic of us together..(and what's that in my hand? Why, it's a bottle of water! I actually have a pic of me without a Corona in my hand! Imagine that!) And for those of you who enjoyed Jenn riding the baby cow so much at Cinco de Mayo, more pics of Jenn mounting animals for your viewing pleasure :)

Now, the reason I was drinking water instead of beer has to do with me getting up at the butt-crack of dawn Saturday morning to race in the Run for the Gecko 5K. The race started at 7:30am and Jenn and I left at 6:45am to give us plenty of time to stretch, take pics, drink water, pee and all that good stuff. So we show up at Wickham Park Pavilion ready to race...and noone is there! Where the hell is everyone!? Did we get the location wrong!? So we drive around the park, and nothing. Noone in sight. Crap, there goes our 20 bucks. We begin the drive home, disheartened that we don't get to race today, when we finally see everyone over by BCC! Ya, note to self, Wickham Park Pavilion and Wickham BCC pavilion are two different places!

So we scramble to the starting line with barely enough time to get in a quick stretch, and no time to pee. But we did make it, and so the adrenaline starts flowing with the anticipation. The race starts and Jenn is off to a great start. She is keeping pace with me, which means she is running around 5.5 mph. At the 1 mile mark, we are about 1 minute faster than her usual time! Things get a little rough in mile 2 though, but by mile 3 she is picking up the pace again. We finish strong and Jenn has just run her fastest time ever! She shaved off a whole 9 minutes from her first race! That's impressive for only 2 months of training! I'm so proud of her, she did such a great job.

By far the cutest thing of the day was definitely the kids race. This is something all 5K races should have. Seeing the little ones move their tiny feet so fast and with such determination made me almost tear up with joy. Jenn and I cheered them on all the way to the finish. You go kids! What a great bonding experience for parents and kids. This is something I definitely want to do with my children someday.

Saturday night we decided to celebrate by heading down to Tapps in Palm Bay. Since they have been under new ownership, then place has changed a bit. They got rid of the upper area and made the whole place one level. They bought new high-top tables, new TV's, and installed new lighting to give the place a more upscale feel. It's very weird having your old dive bar turn fancy-pants on you. At least the beer is still cheap.

So there was a wicked cute guy sitting behind us, all by himself, and I invited him to come over and hang with us. Turns out, I've met him before...small world. I met Joe about a year and a half ago at a business networking group. I only saw him like twice though, so I didn't remember him at all...at first, that is. But I must've made a good impression on him at least because not only did he remember the company I used to work for (Canon), but he remembered my last name! I was impressed. So the more we kept talking, the more I started to remember about him. And then I busted out with his last name and impressed him...and surprised the heck out of myself. He had to leave to meet some of his buddies over at On Tapp. I asked him if he was sure that he couldn't stay, but he didn't take the bait. I remember him having a girlfriend the last time I saw him, so maybe they are still together? Or maybe he didn't like me? Either way, he left and didn't get my number or anything...but he did buy us a pitcher of beer before he left, so everyone won in the end :)

Grady showed up to Tapps looking all sorts of nasty. To quote Jenn, "he doesn't pull off the casual look very well". T-shirt and basketball shorts, a ball cap and sneakers, not to mention he just looked grimy. He knew we were meeting up there later...why would you show up looking like that? I assumed he wasn't going to stay long, and I was hoping I was right because he was not being very fun...plus I was having a blast just hanging out with Jenn and he was kinda spoiling the vibe.

We decided to do a little change of pace and head over to Main Street Pub for the remainder of the night. There we met Heraldo, a Computer Science teacher at FIT from Brazil. He was fun and interesting to talk to, but not dating material. He wasn't that attractive, plus he was old. He asked for my number at the end of the night, but I turned him down. He took it well and said he still hoped to see me around. Nice guy :)

Sunday, I checked out the Church of Viera's 11:15am service. I went by myself, not by choice, but noone else would go with me. The music was great, the message was good, the clip of the children we watched was funny...but I still got a sense of aloofness from the congregation like I did last time I went, like 2 years ago. The only other bad thing was that this guy asked me to sit with him, and he was really weird. I think he had something wrong with his brain. Not only did he talk kinda lethargic like, but he stuttered a bit and stumbled over his words alot. He would just spit out random stuff...you know, kinda like that kid who was waiting in line with Ralfie to see Santa in A Christmas Story, "I like the wizard of Oz". This guy was like, "This is my cross."..."Do you like my shirt...it's an Eagles shirt...it says Hotel California on it"..." The girl who cuts my hair asked me out but I don't cheat on people, cause I'm not a cheater like that"..."Is that your natural hair color?" This one I answered to, because it was actually a question instead of a random statement. Now, I had just dyed my hair Saturday and it is wicked bright red...it is definitely a color that you do NOT see in nature. I was trying to be cute, so I said, "Honey, does it look natural?" He stared me straight in the face and with a condescending, extremely stern tone he said, "don't get smart with me!" He was totally making me soooooo uncomfortable. He shut up after awhile, but if he would've kept going, I would've had to switch seats. Yikes!

We had planned on taking Paula out for lunch for Mother's Day, but since Gary had that high fever we just ended up getting some take-out from TGIFriday's and eating it in the hospital. That night we headed to coffee and Grady met us up there...with a surprise for me no less. Ok, keep in mind that we had just had a talk with him, twice, about always buying things for people. We said it makes you look desperate, and it can make others uncomfortable. So what does he do? The very next day, at coffee, he shows up with a copy of American Psycho...wrapped in a gift bag...with tissue paper. WTF?! Evidently I had mentioned that I love that movie at some point, and I guess he picked up on it and decided he should be the one to buy it for me! He had also bought the game "Dirty Minds", and at the time, I assumed it was for Jenn. Turns out I was wrong and he didn't buy her anything?! Ok, seriously, do I have a sign on my forehead that says "Boys, please buy me stuff!?" because this is the second incident in a month of an unwarranted gift. And the second time I have gotten the answer, "Because I'm just a nice guy" when asked why the gift was bought for me. AARRGGG!

I have decided to put down rules for guy friends to follow when buying a gift for their girl friends, so let me know what you all think, and if I missed anything:

Guys, if there is a group of girls that you hang out with, you cannot just buy one of the girls a random gift...you must buy for the whole group. The exceptions are:
a) if it is her birthday
b) if it is a thank you for something she did for you
c) if it is wicked inexpensive (like something from the dollar spot from Target that you know she wants), and it cannot be wrapped!
d) if it is an inexpensive gag gift that the whole group would get a big kick out of

By not following these guidelines, you single out one of the girls, make her feel extremely uncomfortable, make the other girls feel bad, and put the question in her mind that you want something more from her. Just don't do it guys. It does not make you look like a good guy...period.