My subscription to World of Warcrack ended about a week ago, and now I am going stir crazy. I keep bopping all over the same internet web sites over and again. You know that feeling you get when you've drunk too much caffeine? That's what I'm like now without the caffeine.

I'm glad I finally stopped and I have no desire to go back. I don't regret playing, but I have so many other things I can do with my time now once I get past this pinball man feeling (bouncing off things).

I have also been in the process of breaking up with my girlfriend. Well, the process is actually over, but I'm still in the process of adapting. She did get back together with the father of her child. She wants to remain friends and has chatted with me over the internet about every day (and the word was "benign"). I've been a bit mopey about the breakup, but I've also have a date lined up with an Ivy league professor who i met on one of those online dating services. She has gone to Italy for a couple of weeks for a conference, but we have been exchanging emails and will hook up when she gets. I know. Probably way over my head, but I woed her with my sense of humor, and I get a certain vulnerabiility vibe from her that might give me an in. (or maybe not)

So anyway, I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm not pleased. I gained another five pounds over the winter and I stopped all the hiking I had been doing, so I'm pretty out of shape.

So I'm doing the weight loss thing. I think there is this critical period where I either get committed to losing weight or I don't, and I'm in the middle of it. It's this sort of not all really all that hungry but overwhelmingly tempted to snack anyway. Once I'm at the point where my stomach really starts hurting, I'm good. But today that edge just started hitting me in the afternoon and I was lucky enough to be out of change or I would have stuffed my face. I remember digging through the drawers of my desk, checking every corner of my wallet, and coming up 9 cents short. I think that 9 cents might have been the line. If I had bought that candy bar, the weight loss thing would have failed. It still might.

I went on my first hike of the year on Sunday. I brought a field guide and I identified a couple wildflowers. We were in a mixed pine/oak woods, which is not the norm around here, and I'm not sure whether it was deliberately cultivated or whether the soil was slightly more sandy, which would promote that sort of growth.

Lots of changes in the wind. While I was hiking with the large group I go with, I kept analogizing it to a World of Warcraft dungeon party. I feel like I have woken from a online dream that lasted all winter. Even now the images are fading.