There’s a Kelly Clarkson (shut up) song that I’m fond of, Beautiful Disaster. It’s about a girl who falls in love with an absolute train wreck of a man; she sings about how hard it is to be with him, how much chaos he’s brought to her life, but how, at the same time, she just can’t let him go.

I’ve been in that situation too many times, and the last go-around nearly got me killed, literally. Needless to say, that’s left me a bit gun-shy. And now that I’m starting to think about who I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, I’m less tolerant of a lot of things.

One of the big things for me is that I have a very hard time dealing with someone that can’t relate to my sense of humor, or follow me in a conversation. My humor tends to be dry and sarcastic, and while I don’t mind light conversation, I like to be able to jump into deeper waters. I get very frustrated when I’m talking to someone that can’t follow along with what I’m saying. I really don’t like having to stop and explain myself.

But there are a lot of little issues, little things that I pick up on, because picking up on things is what I do. Things that don’t make me dislike a girl, but things that make me wonder if I could put up with them forever. Forever is an intimidating word.

Of course, since I’ve systematically ruled out pretty much every girl in this hemisphere, I wonder if I might be a bit too demanding. I know, intellectually, that no one is perfect, but applying that knowledge can be difficult. I struggle to know the difference between “realistic” and “compromising.” There’s a balance.

I was talking with a friend last night, and she happened to mention that she wasn’t ready to date anyone, because she felt that she needed to get her own life right. I told her, also, that there’s a balance; if you wait until you’re perfect to, as she said, “drag someone else into your life,” you’re going to die alone. At the same time, though, you don’t want to inflict yourself on someone if you are, truly, a walking disaster.

But I know where she;s coming from. I pick up on little things about myself, too, and I have a tendency to disqualify myself. Strange things, things that really don’t have a whole lot of bearing on a relationship. I’ve found that if my training is lacking, I have trouble thinking about a relationship. Once I get that dialed in, I tell myself…

Another friend once told me that I’m a bit too hard on myself. She may be right, but at the same time, there’s something inside of me that thinks other people are too easy on themselves. It’s a bit of a neurosis, actually.

Anyway, the point of this rambling monograph is this: no one is perfect, and if you’re waiting to be perfect, or to find someone that’s perfect, you’re going to be waiting a long, long time. Keep going, keep progressing, keep improving, but don’t miss out on life while you’re doing it.

Sweat pants with words on the butt.

I really don’t get these. You combine all the wittiness of ironic t-shirts (hint: they aren’t that witty; Will Farrell is witty; quoting him on your clothing is not so witty) with the added benefit of people ogling your hindquarters. And I understand the thrill of they are so totally checking me out right now, but its generally not the hottie doing Olympic lifts doing the ogling; it’s usually the creepy old guy on the ab machine. Or the mop guy. Stupid mop guy.

And then there’s the pants that say “pink,” often in blue letters. That’s not even accurate.

I would like to take this opportunity to make the following request of the management at WalMart: when there’s a line of people fifteen deep, open more than one bleeding line. Thank you.

I know that this is a losing battle, but the left lane on a two-lane highway is typically referred to as the “passing lane.” If I’m trying to pass you, get out of my way. You are slow and annoying. And for the record, if you’re doing 45 in a 55, and I’m roughly three inches from your bumper, I’m trying to pass you. You see that lane over to your right? It’s calling your name. And so is the baseball bat in my trunk. Choose wisely.

For some inexplicable reason, I had the theme song to the Smurfs stuck in my head for a good portion of the afternoon. About five minutes of that is enough to dive a man legally insane, and about five hours of the is enough to have that same man singing “la la la la la la, stab stab stab stab stab.”

My tanning booth smelled like girl tonight. That isn’t a complaint, just an observation. The other option is apparently “feet,” and between the two, I’d definitely prefer girl. And what does girl smell like, you ask? Strawberries and promises, my friend, strawberries and promises.

I really don’t know why the mop guy is so fascinated with me, but he seems to follow me around a lot. I was working out a few months ago, and the guy - no joke - came over and mopped under my feet while I was squatting. This time, he just moped underneath me while I was getting dressed. I really don’t understand this. Was the floor in such desperate condition that he couldn’t wait ten minutes? Did I look like I really enjoy wet socks? I don’t know.

The Generation Conference was this week, which threw something of a wrench into my schedule, but I was still able to get to the gym a few times. One of the great things about MetCon is that, when I need to, I can get in, change, work out, stretch, shower, and get dressed, all inside of an hour. I even had time to use the massage chair after. Mmmm… massage chair.

Everyone else made a bunch of excuses. “I have to sing in front of hundreds of people in a couple of hours.” “I haven’t eaten since 9am.” “I’m running on four hours of sleep.” “I strained a ligament in my knee and my doctor told me that you’re an evil sadist that should be avoided at all costs, you psycho.” Well wahh.

Monday: MetCon

5 Chins
20 Dips
20 Dumbbell Swings @ 45 lbs.
10 Long Lunges per leg
20 Crunches
5 Circuits

Thursday: MetCon

5 Chins
20 Pushups
20 Dumbbell Swings @ 45 lbs.
10 Long Lunges per leg
20 Pikes
5 Circuits

Friday: MetCon

5 Chins
20 Dips
5 Snatches @ 95 lbs.
10 Long Lunges per leg
20 Crunches
5 Circuits

My diet this week, for those of you who are following along, was comprised mostly of Diet Coke and Skittles.

But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

James 1:6-8 (NIV)

When you’re in the gym, you really have two options: work get get leaner, or work to get stronger. There is some overlap, especially for people who haven’t been training for very long, but if you want to excel, you have to pick one goal and focus on it with laser-like determination.

But that’s hard to do. When I’m dieting down, there comes a point where I start to lose strength, my muscles start to flatten out, and I am generally unhappy. So, I’ll “take a few ays off,” eat a lot of carbs, and do a few powerlifting workouts.

And when I’m bulking up, there comes a point where I’m softer than I want to be, heavier than is comfortable, and again generally unhappy. And so, I’ll “take a few days off,” clean up my diet, and do a lot of MetCon.

The end result of this is that I am neither as lean nor as strong as I could be. I haven’t focused on one goal, but two, and because of that, I haven’t completely achieved either. I give up, change focus, too early.

There are a lot of ways to be double minded. Some guys really, really want a girlfriend, but they don’t want agirlfriend, they want any girlfriend. They don’t focus on anyone, but kind of hit on whoever happens to wander by. I can’t imagine that this creates a great impression.

Some people don’t know what they want to do with their lives, so they major in pre-med, take a bunch of art classes, and fill up their electives with computer courses. And when they graduate, they’re qualified to… well, they don’t really know.

Some people hate their jobs, and are almost ready to move on, but they think that if they stick around just a bit longer, they’ll get a raise, or a promotion, or be put on a different team. They have on foot on the corporate ladder, and one foot out the door, and wind up going nowhere.

The point is, whatever your goal may be, you have to focus on it with piercing determination. It doesn’t have to be the only thing, but it has to be the most important. You don’t get to the Olympics by working out three times a week, and you don’t become a virtuoso by strumming a guitar on the weekends. Greatness demands dedication.

But this passage is talking specifically about our faith, and a peculiar thing that we the faithful do from time to time: we pray to a God we don’t expect to answer. We make an act of faith, but have a heart of doubt.

The Scriptures are filled with men and women like this. When Jesus told a man that his son could be healed if he had enough faith, the man replied “help me with my doubt.” (Mark 9:24). When Jonathan went out to do battle with the Philistines, his encouraging word was “maybe the LORD will act on our behalf.” (1 Sam. 14:6)

God moved for them, but what happens when the answer isn’t so immediate, when God’s answer isn’t quite so forthcoming? What happens when Jesus isn’t standing right in front of you, ready to give you the healing you so desperately seek? What happens when your enemies don’t fall before you?

When something like that happens, we have a tendency to hear “no,” even when God might be saying “not yet.” That’s where the prayer of faith comes in. It’s easy to believe when your life is charmed, but it’s hard to stand fast when the storms start to rage. When out prayers are long in being answered, when we suffer setbacks and disappointments, it is our faith that gives us the courage to struggle on, to endure. Without that faith, we’re likely to give up the battle before we see the answer we are looking for.

Whatever you’re believing for, whatever you’re fighting for, be it secular or sacred, you have to believe that you will succeed; otherwise, you will almost certainly fail.

I’m not a huge fan of talking about money in church.

Now, I need to say that my pastors are all men of integrity, we have an annual business meeting to discuss how the church is spending money, and I’ve never felt manipulated into giving anything.

My issue is more that other people have an issue. Religion has a bad reputation when it comes to money: people tend to assume that everything we do is just to get the people to give us more. Even when this isn’t true, people often expect it to be, and I sometimes cringe when it’s time to take an offering, because I wonder how it all looks.

But that wasn’t the case last night.

Pastor Benny Perez spoke last night. He’s the Senior Pastor of a relatively new church in Las Vegas, and one of the ministries they have started is an outreach to teenage prostitutes. He started to tell us the stories of some of the young girls he and his people have been reaching out to, girls as young as eleven years old, selling themselves on the streets for seventeen dollars a day, abused and exploited by some pimp. He told us the story of eight of young girls that came to his youth ministry- with their probation officer, of all things - and gave their life to Jesus Christ. And he told us about how their pimp retaliated, about their blackened eyes and broken bones.

Benny’s church is doing something about this situation. They’re putting together rescue teams, people who will go and pick up any girl who wants to escape from that life, people who will minister to them, love them, and tell them that they are far more valuable than they ever believed. And they are building safe houses, places where these girls can go while God works on their heart and they put their lives back together.

Craig Groshel talked Wednesday night about a Godly burden; he said that you could recognize it because it would break your heart, or make you angry. This qualified on both counts. I wanted to weep as I listened to Benny tell these young girls’ stories, and I wanted to find the men that had hurt them, and make sure that it never, ever happened again. These burdens, he said, were given for us to act on.

There isn’t a whole lot I can do for a ministry in Las Vegas while I’m in New York, but I can at least sow into what he is doing, and I was very glad when pastor Mike took an impromptu offering. It was amazing to watch hundreds of teenagers coming forward and putting their dollars and cents into an offering so that other teenagers, people that they would never even meet, could be blessed. This was a true, dramatic, New Testament offering. Tonight, Pastor Mike told us that this group of young people raised over ten thousand dollars to help these girls through this ministry.

Benny isn’t even really “my kind” of minister; he’s more charismatic, and I’m more cerebral. But what he’s doing in Las Vegas is absolutely “my kind” of ministry. Lives are being changed, and girls - eleven year old girls, for God’s sake - are getting their first real chance at life, and I thank the Lord that there’s a Man of God like Benny Perez doing what he is doing. Differences in style and even theology absolutely do not matter, because the Gospel, the real, life-changing Gospel, is being advanced by his church.

Benny Perez is the senior pastor of The Church at South Las Vegas, and if you want to donate to his program, you can do so on line.

Just catching up:

Monday: MetCon with Sierra and Michelle

5 Chins
20 Dips
5 Snatches @ 95 lbs
20 Box Jumps
5 Circuits for time

Tuesday: MetCon by myself, because everyone else sucks

5 Chins
20 Perfect Pushups
20 Dumbbell Swings @ 45 lbs
10 Lunges per leg
20 Pikes
5 Circuits

The “Perfect Pushup” is a tool I use, not a brag. They spin underneath your hands, forcing you to stabilize yourself, and activating more muscles.

Wednesday: Strength

Bench: 135×3, 185×5 185×5, 205×5, 225×3
Chest Supported Row: 135×3, 185×5 185×5, 205×5, 225×3
Deadlift: 225×5, 225x, 315×5, 375×5
Leg Press: 200×5, 250×5, 250×5, 300×5
Arnold Press: 45×5, 45×5, 45×5, 45×5, 45×5

Thursday: Basketball, 1 hour

Friday: Metcon

5 Chins
10 Renegade Rows @ 25 lbs.
5 Snatches @ 95 lbs
10 Longs Stance Lunges per leg
20 Pikes
5 Circuits

The annual Generation Conference if two days away, and we’ve all been preparing, both spiritually and mentally.

Spiritually, we’ve had awesome times of prayer in the mt. Zion sanctuary. I think God is really ready to do something at this event.

My mental preparation is, I think, interesting. Basically, I review what is expected of me, and rehearse the character traits necessary to pull all of that off, hoping to absorb them along the way. It’s sort of like method acting. Without all the adoring fans. Or money.

Anyway, this process is made a bit more difficult by the fact that “what’s expected of me” is kind of nebulous. I have no title, and I am not a part of any team. My access badge simply reads “staff,” and that’s only because they refuse to give me one that says “stay out of his way, he knows what he’s doing.” I answer only to Steve Lisi and to God.

The best description you could probably give to what I do is “waiting.” But this is no idle, thumb-twiddling exercise, oh no. This is Chuck Norris style waiting, a poised, ready crouch that could, at any moment, become an unleashed torrent of furry. Or hugs. I’m flexible.

Due to the mercurial nature of my assignment, I’ve taken to calling myself the GenCon Problem Solving Ninja. Computer go down? I’m on it. Have something heavy that needs to be put up on a high shelf? I’m your man. Someone causing a scene? I’m a 225 pound power lifter with a background in Judo and 28 years of pent up rage, frustration, and spite. Someone speaking in Latin while their head spins around? I do exorcisms, too.

We here at Thomas Galvin Ministries aim to be full service.

The only real direction anyone has every been given concerning me is Steve’s yearly pronouncement: “if you find anyone weird, get Thomas.” This leads some people to refer to me as The Security Team. Yes, that’s capitalized. And yes, I’m the entire team.

It was this sobriquet I was discussing with my coworkers this morning, along with the irony of having a Security Team at a Christian conference. The following are likely scenarios:

• If you get too crazy about Jesus, I’m going to have to take you out of here.
• What would Jesus do? He wouldn’t bring in outside food or beverages, that’s for sure.
• Cause trouble, and I will redefine the term”Laying On Hands.”
• You can love God all you want, as long as you do it in the designated areas.
• No flags, no drums, leave your shofars here.
• Yes, real men cry. No, they do not lean on a teenage girl while they do so.
• No, I will not ask the speaker to sign your Bible.
• No, the worship band does not take requests. They especially do not play I Kissed a Girl.
• Please do not make change from the offering bucket.
• If you so much as think about jumping up on that stage, we’re going to see if this crowd has faith to raise the dead.

I went to the gas station tonight. That alone would make me angry, since it costs almost as much to fill up my car as it did to buy the stupid thing, but that complaint is a bit pedestrian for my literary efforts.

What caught my attention was the text on the little display above the credit card slot: “Basic Table 1″. Being a software engineer, I immediately knew what had happened: someone broke the gas pump. More precisely, I realized that someone had deleted the localization tables.

You may be asking yourself what a localization table is. Well, that’s why I’m here, dear readers. In the software world, one of the “Bet Practices” is called “Internationalization and Localization,” which is abbreviated “i18n,” because it starts with ‘i’, end with ‘n’, and there are 18 letters in between. This style of programming separates the text displayed to the user from the code, allowing you to easily ask a New Yorker “Would you like a receipt,” while asking a resident of Georgia “Yous all wantin’ a ticket for that there gas,” all by replacing a simple text file, rather than rebuilding the entire application.

But that text file was apparently deleted from this particular gas pump, so when the code went to look up the entry for “Please insert card and remove quickly,” all it got back was, well, nothing. Now, it was good that they provided a default value - “Basic Table 1″- because if they hadn’t, the screen would have been blank, and I would have assumed it was just not working. However, I am reasonably sure that they could have come up with something a bit more… meaningful. “Insert card” would have been a fine choice. “The name of the field I’m looking for but can’t find,” not so much.

I helpfully explained all of this to the kid manning the cash register. I took his open mouth and vacant expression as a sign of thanks, and left.

I was, for the record, able to operate the pump even though the screen showed me nothing more helpful than “Basic Table 1,” “Basic Table 13,” and the thrilling “Basic Table 22.” I’m pretty sure that either means I’m awesome, or that I’m very, very sad.

If you’ve been following my posts on FaceBook, you know that I’ve been sucked into a discussion on the moral characteristics of vampires, as well as the date-ability of werewolves. Sort of like Hot or Not for the cryptozological set.

I was bored this afternoon, and I’m still debating whether or not to write Amber’s Refrigerator Magnet application, so I had two choices: look for the YouTube of that stupid I Kissed a Girl (And I Liked It), hopefully driving it from my skull, or do a little light reading on our favorite skin-walkers. I figured the werewolves were better for my soul.

As everyone knows, the “original,” and most recognizable, werewolf legend is that of the Greek king Lycaon. Lycaon tried to serve his own son as the main course in a dinner for Zeus, and in typical angry-god fashion, Zeus cursed him, in this case by turning him into a rampaging wolf.

Scholars - yes, scholars actually discuss things like this - believe that the real Lycaon suffered from rabies, which would account for his “foaming mouth,” “crooked limbs,” “feral nature,” and “locked jaw.” Rabies also shares another characteristic with traditional werewolf lore: it’s passed on from one victim to another through a bite.

But Lycans aren’t the only werewolf game in town. Most Aboriginal cultures, like the Native Americans, believed in men called Skin Walkers, who would dress in costumes and perform various rituals in order to take on the characteristics, or even physical form, of a totem animal.

And then there are the Berserkers, Viking warriors who dressed in wolfs’ skins, who went into a trance-like state, summoned the “spirit of the wolf,” and unleashed pure fury on whatever happened to be in their way when they woke up, be it friend, foe, or bar wench. These warriors were legendary for having the strength of ten men and shrugging off mortal wounds as if they were mere annoyances, a tendency which leads me to believe that their “wolf summoning rituals” involved some sort of rudimentary PCP. Combined with the wolf-skin garb, you can draw very clear parallels to the werewolf legends.

And then I stumbled onto VikingFighting.com, which promotes “the BERZERKER Viking Fighting system” as “the best, the deadliest and the most brutal combat system ever invented by man. It’s the world’s ultimate fighting system for military, police, special forces and civilians.”

Allow me to summarize the actual Viking system of fighting:

• Get drunk
• Remove clothing (they tended, like a lot of the Celts, to fight nude)
• Kill whatever happens to be nearby
• Pillage
• Repeat

That’s it. There was no art to it, no special tactics. That’s why we say “going berserk,” for heaven’s sake.

And that is demonstrably not “the world’s ultimate fighting system for military, police, special forces and civilians.” You know how I know? Because the berserkers are all dead. People with a more refined fighting system - namely, the Phalanx - showed up and stabbed them to death.

And the Phalanx wasn’t the ultimate fighting system, either. You know how I know? Because people with a more refined fighting system - namely, guns - showed up and shot them to death.

You know what the ultimate fighting system is, right now?

Some General: Barks a command in gravelly voice
Some Private: Mashes a button
A Freaking Nuclear Missile: Destroys all of your hopes, dreams, and Thor comic books in a rain of fire and woe.

Also, your motto: “Vikings stand and fight because if you run, you’ll only die tired” is less an “old Viking saying, and more the “motto of Vietnam-era snipers.”

And finally, your self-awarded title, “Last Berzerker Supreme Grandmaster,” doesn’t really conjure images of a fearsome warrior from the Northlands. No, I’m picturing an overweigh college drop-out, living in his parent’s basement, and drinking Heineken. Which is German, by the way. You poser.

I took a nap this afternoon. That was nice. I woke up to the sounds of the Ice Cream Truck. Apparently doing laps around my house, because I had to listen to him for about twenty minutes. That was not so nice. For one thing… Mister Ding-A-Ling? Not exactly inspiring confidence in the parents of America, I think. And for another, could you possibly create a more obnoxious song?

The answer to that, by the way, is “yes.” A friend of mine happened to mention how annoying I Kissed a Girl (And I Liked It) is, and I have had that stuck in my head since three o’clock yesterday. And I don’t even know that song, so it’s just “I kissed a girl, and I liked it” over and over and over again. Thanks for that.

Tomorrow is Low Carb Refeed Day. This is not Glorious Cheat Day, though I may have one of those on Sunday, depending on how well I’m hitting my targets. The goal of GCD is to eat as much of whatever I want as humanly possible. I’ve been known to take down an entire large pizza in one sitting on GCD. The goal tomorrow, however, is to take in about 6,000 calories, and less then 100 grams of carbs. That requires careful planning.

It also requires going to Wal Mart, so that’s where I headed after the gym tonight.

I have this uncanny ability to slow down any line I join. I can’t pick the slow lines; if I could, I’d just say “hey, my gut tells me to get in this line, so I better get in the other one.” No, my physical presence actually causes the people in front of me to de-evolve, right before my eyes.

The gentleman in front of me tonight was purchasing roughly three hundred gallons of ice cream, and some low-fat milk. Because that balances out. Also, he managed to select what must have been the only block of cheese in the entire store that did not have a UPC sticker on it.

Now, that isn’t really his fault; lord knows I don’t check my purchases for UPCs before I toss them merrily into my cart. But it still made it necessary for the cashier to get on the phone and say “would the associate from Dairy please call me back for a price check.”

Johnny Ice Cream apparently has odd tastes in cheese, because the associate from Dairy was unable to figure out what product she was supposed to be pricing from the name, or even after a rather lengthy description by the harried cashier. “It’s mostly orange, with white marbling, and kind of rectangular… yeah, it’s 16 ounces… no, orange, not yellow. Marbled. Like, mixed in. No, not like tiger stripes. More like paint swirls…”

I topped paying attention at this point. A few minutes later, the associate from Dairy showed up at out line, collected the offending cheese, and stalked off, intent on finding a valid price. She did. It only took her fifteen minutes.

Now, some cashiers may have used the intervening time to ring up the rest of the customer’s purchases. Not her. She used this time to talk to her friends, chat with the people in line, and generally do everything except make it possible to get out of there in a reasonable timeframe.

When I was finally rung out, she had to give me twelve dollars and forty-three cents in change. She got the bills right, so credit where credit is due. For some reason, though, she gave me a quarter, three nickels, and three pennies, despite the drawer full of dimes she had. This bothers me, for some reason.

I’ve actually been in stores - I think the last one was in Virginia somewhere - where they had a machine set up to dispense change. Basically, the same things built into the self-checkout stands at some WalMarts an Price Choppers. I have to assume that they got tired of their cashiers messing it up.

The takeaway from all of this: I’m anti-social, impatient, highly observant, and slightly obsessive-compulsive.

While I was waiting in line, I grabbed some Cherry Vanilla Incense from the Impulse Buy rack. That was a win. My house now smells like, well, cherry and vanilla. I can only assume that my humble abode will now burn down.