Blog Views per Entry

As my life is likely going to go through significant changes this next year and time no longer allows quite as much time to devote to certain odd passions of mine, I'm going to probably stop updating this blog regularly. It takes a lot of work and relatively few people read it, as seen in the table of relative popularity of my blogs per entry:

Reading by Genre 2013

Here's the breakdown by genre of what I read this year:

Most E-mails Received by Person in 2013

I wanted to see how many e-mails I received in 2013. This doesn't include Facebook messages, which means some people are not here that probably should be. Still, it's been an interesting year insofar as I went from seeking and from dating around to having a girlfriend, and in part I was wondering how that impacted the messages I received and from whom. (A few years ago, I realized, too late, that one woman had been writing me for a long while and was probably interested--I didn't pick up on the hint soon enough and lost out to another guy.) This year, however, the larger numbers come mostly from women penpals overseas, people firmly established as friends, or from the gal who became my girlfriend, with only maybe a couple of other women I might have been able to date had I made such a move (and, in the latter case, mostly only in the first half of the year).

Or to see it in another way:

Spam, Spam, and More Spam

I continue to get excess amounts of spam at work right to my inbox. This is beginning to affect productivity. I received over one hundred spam messages Monday through Thursday a few weeks ago. Here is the time by which I received one hundred (starting from 8:00 a.m.):

Fights with Girlfriend

She's the first official girlfriend I've had, me at age forty-three. I've tried before with other gals but have always been rejected before we reached the exclusivity stage. Things with this gal have been stormy, especially since exclusivity. A lot of it's my own fault, my own indecisiveness and anxiousness about the relationship, which I'm frustrated by. I really want things to work, so why do I keep sabotaging it?

Trips to Boston

I visited Boston in October on a research and work trip. It was my fourth time to the area and the first in a decade. Here are the times I've visited Boston in the past:

I love Boston. I almost moved there at one point. But I don't know that I'd actually like living there. I've always visited in the fall--never had to endure the weather. And it's superexpensive.

Music Minutes by Year 2

It's been a couple of years since I last charted the number of minutes I had of music from each year. I've bought a number of albums in the past couple of years, including several jazz albums, which was previously not something in my collection. I like jazz, though I prefer to listen to it live; still, with my parents traveling with me for a bit and with their absolute hatred of contemporary music, I had to find something we could both be satisfied with. No show tunes or big band for me, no alternative rock for my parents, so jazz it was. Let's see how the years fared:

Looks like the 1990s are still where most of my music collection resides, with a fairly heavy drop-off in the 2010s. There's been a small uptick in the 1980s collection, probably because I've been replacing tapes with CDs where possible. I could suspect several reasons for the current drop-off in CDs: digital online music means that used CDs for contemporary music are more rare (I buy most of my music from used CD bins); I'm less familiar with contemporary music (indeed, I listen to college radio less than I used to, as it has been overrun by stupid talk shows; I go out to see bands less frequently than I used to; and I pay less attention to music blogs than I used to); and there are fewer music stores at which to buy music (again, I still tend to buy CDs rather than downloading, which means that a number of artists' new works are still on the to purchase list, since the dearth of local record stores means I can only check one or two venues to see if an album is in stock rather than five or six as I used to be able to).

Amount Saved by Place of Abode

I wanted to see how much each place I've lived has contributed to my savings, as it's likely I'll spend down much of this in the upcoming year. Here's the amount compared by percentage:

The amount I lost in Mississippi isn't surprising, except maybe in the fact that it was so little: I was in graduate school and had to live very cheaply. Texas didn't treat me very well, it appears, as my nearly five years there actually led to a negative cash flow balance.

Amount Saved by Decade

I wanted to see how much each decade has contributed to my total savings, as it's likely I'll spend down much of this in the upcoming year. Here's the amount compared by percentage:

What I hadn't realized? Just how bad the 1990s were for me financially. They actually made a negative contribution to my life savings!

How Far the Team I Was Cheering for Advanced in the Playoffs

So baseball season is nearing the World Series, and this year my home team (well, home when I was a kid) made the playoff hunt. I have my sets of favorites, and I was wondering how, in general, the teams I cheer for have done in the playoffs. Even though there is no direct correlation between my cheering and the team winning or losing, I'm curious to know how my "luck" and the "luck" of my teams has fared:

Looks like if I'm cheering for the team, you have a good chance of winning the division series you're in, but if you're aiming to win the pennant, your chances are less than fifty percent what they should be statistically, and the World Series the same.

Church Retreats

Each year I attend a convention held by my church. I've done so since I was a baby. I only remember the locations from age five on. I've gone to sites outside the United States six times (to Argentina, Australia, Britain, Canada, and Spain). Here are the states I've been to and how many times:

What I Did This Weekend

The weekend seemed to fly by, and I didn't--as often seems to happen--accomplish near as much as I would have liked. In fact, I feel like the weekend was to a large extent wasted. Let's break it down then by activity, starting from 5:00 p.m. on Friday until 8:00 a.m. on Monday (63 hours total):

After looking at the chart, I can see that I wasted almost five hours online--not really accomplishing anything, just scouting around (although part of that time was spent looking for jazz music to play in the car on an upcoming trip, so not a complete waste). Still, I can see that I treat the Internet much as I used to treat television--and that in turn is why I rid myself of television. Sometimes I think I might do myself a favor by ridding myself of the Net; the problem is that the Net is much more interactive and useful, so it's not as easily abandoned, given that it's the main way I stay in touch with some people. Still, far too much time is spent essentially doing the equivalent of watching TV, so this is an area where I need to improve.

More Spam

The spam at work seems to be getting worse. It's not even going into the junk mail folder most of the time anymore, which makes for a lot of wasted time deleting stuff. I read how one company actually did away with e-mail because of how much time it often wasted. Alas, e-mail is probably my favorite way to communicate at work, and possibly anywhere. I don't think I'd like that. Here are the spam totals from a few days in August.

Timing of Dates

So after a few disappointments in November, things turned around for a bit and even, to an extent, got to be a little stressful in terms of dates because I was spending time with more than just one really great woman--and it kind of saddened me to think that I would have to eventually settle on just one, assuming one would have me for something serious.

Interstates I've Driven and Ridden On 2

It's been a couple of years since I last updated this, so I thought it might be good to feature this map again. Trips (by bus and car) to Indiana and (by car) to Raleigh, North Carolina, and within parts of Colorado mean I've seen a few other roads.

And if you find the map above interesting, someone else has a whole set of U.S. maps about linguistic differences from place to place around the country that you can find here. I often don't seem to fall into either the California or the Deep South camp; I have no idea why my pronunciations are so generally strange (for example, I say q-pon, not koo-pon for coupon, which apparently is odd just about everywhere).

Time Spent with Friends in May 2013

I decided to break down how much time I spend with various friends and acquaintances, so I kept a log during the month of May. What surprised me was how little time I spend one-on-one in person with anyone--or at least, how little time I did so in May. One friend barely shows up here, Al. I imagine he'd at least get a couple of hours one-on-one each month most months, but he was bedridden most of May, so we stuck to short phone conversations.

The chart shows time spent with friends in groups (for example, at parties--in fact, mostly at parties), on the phone, and one-on-one face-to-face. Time spent at organized activities I have to attend--namely work or church--are not counted. 

The Dating Game

I don't know how one can win this game, but I keep on playing.

Obviously, I created this chart in one of my more cynical moods. Seems like I've been rolling mostly threes and fives (with a few short-term sixes) in the last few years, though I haven't completed my second turn in one case yet--I'm still hoping a die will prove to have a seventh side and send me spinning into that ring. I suppose I should be happy I've even had a die to roll with the last few years, because I've gone long spans without even a chance.

Nationalities

Because my ancestors are relatively recent immigrants to this country, I still know just how much I am the various nationalities that make up me. I am as follows: 

Women in My Life as an Adult

Until about a week ago, I'd never had an official girlfriend--that is, a girl I was seeing exclusively who was also seeing me exclusively, with an eye toward marriage (sometimes I've had an eye on a gal and spent time with her and not had anyone else in my life, but when we finally got to "the talk," I've always learned she just saw me as a friend; likewise, there have been a few times when I had more than one gal in my life, which led to my own inability to be decisive, and I ended up losing out on all the women, usually in quick succession--something that almost happened to me again this past spring). Anyway, I was talking the other day with a rather consistent phone companion over the first half of 2013, and she noted that I probably always had some gal who was a friend who I spent time with to kill the loneliness. I said sometimes, but I didn't think that had been the case with me most of my adult life. Hence, I decided to do a graph to see. Below are women I averaged probably at least an hour with on the phone or in person each week during a particular span of time (these are estimates; it's likely I've undercounted time spent with a few women along the way and they're not showing up, just as I've likely overcounted time spent with a few of these women):

Pretty much, I've only had such "relationships" since graduating from college. Of those, the longest was a strictly platonic friendship--I had no romantic intentions and the woman knew this. Right around age thirty--the end of my time in Texas and the start of my time here--I had quite a few women in my life; unfortunately, none of them ended up quite suiting me. Since then, I've tried to stick to mostly spending that much time with women only when I had some real intentions toward them. It's not that I wouldn't have a platonic friendship again that involved as much time as that (or those--since most of the gals in Texas were women who I dated who turned into platonic friends) in the late 1990s; it's just that I've been more focused on trying to find someone I'd actually want to settle down with. Unfortunately, I lost out on the few women I'd gone for since about 2003, sometimes because I was unwilling to commit but most of the time because the woman didn't like me in that mysterious way. Quite a few women I've had a strong interest in don't show up here because I could only manage to get smaller snatches of time from them. Since 2010 I'd been fairly blessed by women's presence (though I keep expecting a return to a more consistently quiet and depressing time, as that has seemed more typical of my adult life).

Interest in and Success with "Ideal" Women

I'm defining "ideal" here in a most basic way: never married, no kids, of my faith, within my preferred age range (eight years younger to four years older). I'm then adding in the degree to which, with those basic concrete variables, I was actually interested. I am doing this because I occasionally spend time with women who don't meet this criteria, and I want to get into my head just how slim the chances of a woman who meets such standards showing return interest is likely to be.

Here, over the past thirteen years, are the number of women who never responded to messages, who responded a few times before dropping correspondence or explicitly rejecting me, who have stayed in correspondence but whom I have never asked out because of my own lack of interest, who rejected me after the first date, and who accepted more than one date. Also denoted are the degree to which I was myself interested in or attracted to these women. I'm basing most this off a singles site devoted to my faith, a site on which I contact every person so that I don't have to feel like I'm trying to pick anyone up, which tends to make me self-conscious, and on a few people/dates I actually recall.

Looks like the chances of getting a date are about 20 percent, which isn't as bad as I thought. However, only one gal of high interest to me (only two total) who meets this criteria has accepted more than one date in the past thirteen years (and none of mid interest; unfortunately, I only got two dates with that other high-interest girl). When considering that the pool of church women from which I'm drawing is about fifty (and finding women outside that pool is difficult), a 4 to 6 percent total for more than one date doesn't actually bode very well. And that's why I opened myself up to dating a mother, and I'm glad that I did.

Another Month of Dinners

Here are the dinners (main courses, not including side dishes, like salad) I had from April 16 to May 15. This survey is perhaps a more typical month dinner survey I did, since I could eat breaded items all this month--hence, more tortillas are incorporated.

Enchiladas were more frequent this period because, as noted above, I couldn't use leaven for a week or more, so they took the place of a couple of other dishes I usually eat. What surprised me was that I ate out five times during this period, three times at restaurants; I don't think of myself as eating out the often--but friends wanted to get together.

Classmates Who Died

Four people from my high school have died since our graduation that I know of. I went to a small high school, so there were only about thirty or so in each class (my graduating class had thirty-five). One of those who died was one of my best friends, from about age ten through a little after age thirty. Unfortunately, we had a falling out about that time, and the friendship never recovered. A couple of years after our friendship came to an end, my friend's body started to shut down through the auspices of some odd disease, such that the past decade has been one of great pain, a pain I could only read about third-hand through a blog that at the end of April came to an conclusion.

Here is a chart of the way people from my high school have died:

All of the deaths are unique, as I guess in some way all deaths are. The first to go was someone else in my own class; he died within a year, in a motorbike accident. Tragic as it was, somehow, it didn't seem surprising; he had always had something of a wild streak in him. I don't remember the order of the second and third, but suffice it to say that marriage did them both in: one had a wife who left him and his response was to hang himself; the other had a husband who killed her. They were each a couple of years ahead of my own class in high school.

Forty-two seems a young age to die, let alone nineteen or one's twenties. But I suspect that as I grow older now, the deaths will begin to mount up, more and more of them by disease.

Local Spending in April

I hadn't done a survey of my local spending--or an accompanying map--since near the start of this blog two years ago, so I decided to do one in April. Here's where I spent my money locally in April:

If these places were sized on a map relative to how much money I spent, here's what the map would look like:

Etienne--great food, first time I'd eaten there. But it's a bit above my usual price range, so I doubt I'll return anytime soon. Credit an acquaintance with blowing my entertainment budget for the month.

Places Heather Has Been Sited

My friend Heather requested to be part of a chart on my blog, so here it is.

I live in what is in some ways a small town, even though well over one hundred thousand people live here. What I mean by that is that within certain circles, one tends to come across certain people with a degree of regularity. Hence, you'll meet someone who you might well have met many times in the past but never really registered as more than a face.

Back toward the end of March, I met a gal who I didn't recognize at first as someone I already sort of knew. The reason: She was wearing glasses, which I'd never known her to do before. She is someone who skates in similar circles. I'd seen her play in a band a friend of mine was in, and I'd seen her play one or two solo shows when she was playing among a list of other musicians I knew. Finally, I'd seen her a few times--and been introduced to her or vaguely hung out on the edge of shared conversations with her among shared acquaintances--at a bar I frequent. She struck me as an attractive woman I would likely not have much in common with. I don't know exactly how I came to that assessment, since we'd probably exchanged all of two sentences in the years I'd known (of) her. Perhaps, it's that I'm a personally very conservative person, while most of the people I have contact with in town trend pretty liberal (that said, most of my nonchurch friends are fairly liberal and many of them would say I'm liberal too--I guess much just depends on how one assesses these things; I tend to feel like an leftist oddball among religious people and a rightest oddball among the artistic crowd I often mix with).

So in March, I went to see a performance of Indonesian-like music at the college music hall, mostly because a band I like called Electrophoria was among the participants. Heather struck up a conversation with me as I walked into the hall. Should I sit with her? I wondered. Well, why not? Neither of us were with people, a friend of mine having turned me down for the event. I'm glad of that, since it meant I got to spend the evening getting to know her. It was only after she mentioned being a musician that I realized who I was talking with, that I already kind of knew her, and that we had a ton of friends in common. And it was only after talking with her--spending time with her, at a bar after the show--that I realized that we actually had more in common than I'd have imagined and that my assumptions about her had locked me out of what might have been an interesting friendship much earlier (though, fact is, I probably wouldn't have had the guts to talk with her anyway).

Anyway, since that evening in March, I've had several more occasions to run into Heather or hang out with her, and it's been a joy each time. Heather is this incredible combination of sweetness, cuteness, strong-headedness, quirkiness, and, well, funness (is that a word?). I'm glad I've gotten a chance to get to know her and to spend time with her. Below is a map of places at which Heather and I have been present at the same time:

Typical Weekday Meals by Food Group

I've been reading a bit about food habits lately. I need to incorporate more vegetables into my diet, as I've long known. I tend probably to overdo the carbs. Here's a typical breakdown of breakfast, lunch, and dinner:

By contrast, the breakdown should look like this:

That grain side should be even with the fruits and vegetables side, and the meat and dairy should be even with each other (although I do tend to think Americans generally overdo the eating of meat).

Approximate Weight over My Life

Unlike for some people, becoming overweight has not been a problem for me, but I do find that as I'm aging, my weight does increase, such that one day it could be a problem. During my early years, I basically gained ten pounds each year, but I hit a plateau around high school and stayed there until just after high school; after gaining ten pounds in my early adulthood, I lost it when I moved out on my own. One-twenty was way too thin, but I couldn't put weight on. Slowly, over the years, it moved back to 130 and then 135.

I hadn't weighed myself in years and had always been skinny, so when I discovered that, somehow, I'd gotten up to 150 pounds, I was shocked. I actually put myself on a diet for a while, counted calories, got down to about 140. These days, I don't really count; I just try to get enough exercise and to not eat too much sugar. My weight seems to hover around 145, which is about right for my height and body type. I do feel a bit nervous about that, though, knowing I could easily creep up beyond what I should be if I'm not careful enough. All weights below are approximate.

No Beard Comments

I received quite a few comments on my beard. By contrast, after I shaved it off, I had quite a bit fewer comments, most of them all within the first week. The comments being mostly in the first week is somewhat understandable, since a beard takes a while to grow, so some people might just think, early on, that I forgot to shave and don't say anything. Still, I'm surprised how many fewer commented on the nonbeard. As with the last--and only other time--I've had a beard, most people who liked the beard said "Cool" when I had it; most people who didn't reserved there statement of dislike regarding the beard until after I'd shaved it off.

One Month of Dinners

My friend Al claims that I eat spaghetti every night. It's not quite true, but I do have it very often. Here are the dinners (main courses, not including side dishes, like salad) I had from March 16 to April 15. They're skewed a bit because this period included the Days of Unleavened Bread, so I was trying to get rid of bread just before the days and then wasn't eating certain things I usually would have eaten during them. Hence, I'm extending the survey one month further so that I can compare later. The first survey breaks down this way:

Enchiladas were more frequent this period because, as noted above, I couldn't use leaven for a week or more, so they took the place of a couple of other dishes I usually eat. What surprised me was that I ate out five times during this period, three times at restaurants; I don't think of myself as eating out the often--but friends wanted to get together.

Spam E-mail

Gmail does a pretty good job of keeping spam away. I receive only 1 to 4 pieces of spam per day in any one of my accounts, and it's rare that they go to anything other than the spam folder. These accounts include one posted publicly online that anyone could write to and one I give out specifically "for spam" (you know, when the grocery store, etc., insists on an e-mail address).

By contrast, my work e-mail address is inundated with spam each day, to a point where sometimes I feel like the spam interferes with productivity (especially since, if I'm writing an e-mail at a given moment when new mail arrives, I have to click out of the program and then back in it in order to continue writing). In addition the spam filter seems ridiculously ineffective, this despite the fact that I often mark mail as "junk," which is supposed to help the system learn to recognize such mail. I'm not sure why the ineffectiveness is like so, but here's a typical week.

I say typical, but actually Tuesday and Wednesday of the week featured here were not. E-mail was down completely for much of the day both days; strangely, I didn't have as much spam waiting for me once the e-mail system was back up as I likely would have received had I been in my account.

The amount of spam hasn't always been this prolific. I had fewer junk e-mails when I first started. My years of being in my position have likely added to the amount of spam I get (as they have to other long-time employees). In addition, I've noticed rises and falls in the amount I receive. Right now, I'm at a high level; however, I've also seen times when these numbers dropped to half what they are.

Distribution of Acceptances

Sometimes I begin to feel as if acceptance slips have not come to me in a long time. I was wondering, in this most recent spate of rejections, how accurate my current feeling is. It's been four months since an acceptance slip, and I've gotten over eighty rejections. In recent history, that's closing in on the higher sets in terms of the number of rejections--and give it another month or so, it'll also be up there in terms of time.

The top graph shows the space between acceptances by time (x axis) and by number of submission rejections between (y axis) from the time I first started submitting materials.

I ramped up my submissions significantly around 2008, so the following focuses on more recent years:

Interesting: acceptances do often seem to come in clumps. (Days after I created this chart in April, I received an acceptance, from probably the most prestigious publication I've ever had work accepted by. Since, then, though--two more months--back to rejections.)

Age Difference among Women I've Dated

I was discussing with a woman a few days ago how a certain man she knows constantly goes for women he has no chance with, hotties in their early twenties (he's in his late thirties). It made me wonder, since here I am still single and over forty, whether I have a similar pattern. I suppose it depends on what one views as an unacceptable age gap. A recent survey noted that women want a man, on average, about four years older than they are, with a good number of them accepting men up to seven years older. I can say I've mostly stuck to women within eight years of me (what I've long considered the base norm, one year above that seven years), though most women I've gone out with have been younger than me. As I've gotten older, the age spread does seem to have become more liberal, but it doesn't seem that out of whack, I don't think.

In the chart below, the difference in age is shown on the vertical axis, my own age on the horizontal axis:

The chart above is an approximation, based on memory (I haven't kept a record of each woman I've asked out, so it's likely I've forgotten a few, especially among those who I never ended up going out with). Women closer to my age rejected me just as women farther away from my age did, and women who accepted dates also varied accordingly. There doesn't seem to be an overall trend, outside of the fact that the few women I went out with or asked out in my twenties tended to be much closer to my age for obvious reasons.

Trains, Planes, Automobiles, and Buses

I recently went to Indiana via bus, the first time I've taken an interstate bus since age five, which caused me to ponder how I generally have traveled long distances. Below is the summary of how I've traveled each year, when taking trips (that I remember, sometimes estimated) over three hundred miles and trips over five hundred miles. Train and bus have not been too popular; car and plane have been used the most for between three hundred and five hundred miles, though most of that plane travel was in the early 1990s, when I had a job that involved a once-a-month trip from Southern California to Northern; on my own, I'd usually drive that distance.

Three Hundred Miles

Five Hundred Miles

Phone Calls for February 2013

I kept track of phone calls made to me and returned in February, which renders possibilities for all kinds of charts, some of them quite different from earlier charts regarding November 2012. 

Phone Calls by Gender

Phone Calls by Person

Phone Calls by Relationship

Beard Progression

So I didn't shave for eight weeks. Here were the results by week, for weeks 3 through 8 (unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos of weeks 1 and 2):

 

Beard Comments

I grew a beard about seven or eight years ago. This past winter, I decided to grow one again. There wasn't the same kind of angst as the first time I grew it. I was just being lazy and trying to avoid cold. Still, it's been curious people's reactions, most of whom don't remember the six months I previously had a beard--or maybe they do, since fewer people have commented on it this time around, it seems, as can be seen in the following chart, denoting the first time a given person has made a remark about my beard:

Tax Refunds per Year

Most years I've ended up paying taxes (as represented by the negative numbers); this year was one of the first in a long while that I received a refund.

Where My Money Went in 2012

I was curious to know what percent of my income went to what things, so I created this handy graph:

Number of Answers to September Submissions

I generally review what I will send out for the coming year in August and then I start afresh with submissions come the first week of September. I was wondering how many of those early September submissions actually got answers of some sort and how many were simply ignored. I was surprised by several things when I went back to look at the data. One, despite what I feel, most journals have gotten back to me with an answer. Two, September was not always a month to start afresh (many years, I didn't even submit in September). So here are the raw numbers:

And here it is by percent:

Average Length of Books Read

Most books I read, it appears, run to about three hundred pages, and perhaps I'm dumbing down, since the books seem to be getting shorter. (That said, I started this year with a book that was over one thousand pages, and Good Reads, from which I got my statistics ranked it as zero pages, so my page-count numbers may be less than accurate.)

Authors Read by Gender

A recent chart caused me to ponder how many books I read by men versus women (anthologies are not included). Here are the results year by year, by number and then by percent. It was pretty much as I figured--men dominate.

Number of Previous Partners of Women I've Gone Out With

Sex is not something that comes up immediately in discussion on a date, but if I spend enough time with a gal, previous experience usually does arise at some point. Because I date almost exclusively within my faith, the portion is probably skewed conservative compared to the general population--or maybe, just my perceptions are. In the following, I assume, given things such women told me, that they had had no experience, had had experience only within a former marriage, or had a few experiences outside of marriage. But I've been surprised a few times (previous marriages not mentioned, etc.). And then there are a few I never got a vibe from and never discussed such a topic with.