Ryan Martinsen

From what I’ve been able to gather from the others participating in the read-a-thon, they started at a later hour than I did. I started at 1:30 AM EST and it’s now 1:00 AM the following day. I am going to bed. Between falling asleep, running errands, and attending birthday parties for 2 friends (I read on my phone while at the parties!) I certainly did not spend a full 24 hours of reading. I’ll wager I read and listened to books for a good 12 hours.

12 hours is quite good I think. About 11 hours more than usual.

Still, it doesn’t seem right to sign up for, and participate in, a 24-hour read-a-thon without reaching the goal. So, I plan to make it up this week. I don’t think I’ll be able to fit another 12 hours in tomorrow, but I certainly can over the next few days. I will keep all ya’ll updated by posting my progress here.

Thanks to all the ‘cheerleaders’ who have commented on my posts for encouraging me to keep reading!

Soon after my last post I realized I needed to buy some dress shoes for tomorrow. Upon ensuring that I had an audiobook I could listen to I struck out for Macy’s. While waking I listened to Catch 22 and while waiting for and riding on the subway I read 1984 on my iPhone. Amazon’s Kindle app is by far one of my favorites. I also have the new Barnes and Noble eReader app, but have yet to use it.

Since returning from my shoe errand I finished The Fellowship of the Ring and have delved deeper into 1984.

While I love days like this, a part of me (the inner narcisist perhaps) wishes I could show more. To say I read 10 books in one day would be awesome, but then I’d have to choose different books. Oh well. I may not be able to demonstrate progress with numbers, but that’s really not what matters anyway.

I started at 1:30 AM, read until 3 AM, fell asleep until 9 AM, and have been reading since. I’m rubbish at that whole staying up thing when super tired, especially when reading. Anyway, I’ll probably not get a full 24 hours in, but at least it’ll be close!

Currently reading: Fellowship of the Ring. I started this book forever ago and have yet to finish it. I’m only a chapter or two away from the end.

Next up: 1984 by George Orwell.

My mom doesn’t like the word moist, my friend Adam can’t stand the word grok, Carrie hates the term read-a-thon, Justin has a strong distaste for ‘webinars’, Brandon doesn’t like the word soil, Craig dislikes ‘loaf’ and ‘moist’ (but likes moist loaves of fresh baked banana bread), Alex hates ’should’, Lexi hates ‘whatever’, Missie is very picky and hates 5 words, Mandi hates ‘lowly’, Jenna hates ‘parabola’ and ‘bulbous’, Curtis can’t stand manager speak, Peter hates ‘quick’ and ‘poll’ (though that may be because I was conducting a ‘quick poll’), and one of my sisters can’t stand ‘toot’ and ‘tune’ (who tooted?!).

My least favorite words? While I share some dislike for webinars about read-a-thons wherein books about all things moist are discussed, two of the words I dislike most are ’sleep’ and ‘deprivation’, the former only when used in connection with the latter.

Long-term sleep deprivation has caused death in lab animals.

Insofar as far as we can tell, we are not lab animals. But still. You never know.

Tomorrow I intend to deprive myself of sleep by participating in a 24-hour read-a-thon. Yeah, I know. Not only is it a read-a-thon, but sleep deprivation is inherently required in the ‘24 hour’ part. Self-inflicted torture.

At least as long as I eat the right food I won’t have to toot much while reading. That’s the worst. You have to go find a new spot to read.

Anyone who wishes to bring me a loaf of banana bread is welcome to come over. I’ll even give you a dramatic reading of whatever I’m reading at the moment.

I started blogging exactly 5 years ago. My first post was excruciatingly boring. This post is going to be excruciatingly boring, too. You know, in celebration.

Have a nice day.

On the surface I’m just an average 27-year-old guy, but when you look closely you’ll discover that I am, in fact, just an average 27-year-old guy. I like to think I’m different, above the mark, funny, comical, smart, intelligent, witty, hilarious, though perhaps a bit repetitious.

I haven’t been shopping in quite a while. And by quite a while I mean since June. While it may be a slight exaggeration, it’s not too far from the truth (because that’s what slight exaggerations are: not too far from the truth).

I moved to New York City in November of last year, right after Thanksgiving. My apartment is located in Spanish Harlem on the island of Manhattan; my roommate and I call it Hotel Harlem. The reason for this name is obvious: we know a lot of people and a lot of people come to have sleepovers. We have an uncomfortable couch and a few uncomfortable air mattresses. Perfect for a hotel.

At the end of April we had a friend come stay for a few weeks. While here she ended up getting a job. So she came back to work for the summer a few weeks after her vacation was over. She was originally going to live somewhere up north, but that didn’t work out so she ended up in Hotel Harlem for the duration.

When you have someone living rent-free on your couch for 3 months, and that person is not a jerk, they tend to do nice things like buy food, cook food, clean the dishes, etc. In other words, I haven’t needed to go shopping much in the last 3 months.

All of that is the long way of saying: I am out of food.

Like, almost completely out of food. This isn’t exactly a new situation for me to be in, but it’s never a fun one.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that our nearly-permanent Hotel Harlem guest didn’t clean up after herself! She left peanut M&M’s, some chocolate, and gingersnaps. That’s like enough food for a week! Or perhaps just an afternoon.

What would you do if the only food items you had were peanut butter, gingersnaps, chocolate, milk, butter, tapatio hot sauce, apple sauce, eggs, old cookies, honey, pancake mix, syrup, and grape nuts cereal?

That’s right. Mix it all up and eat it.

No, I didn’t do that. I don’t have a blender.

This is what I did:

• Ate some peanut butter
• Ate some gingersnaps and peanut butter
• Gingersnaps + milk!
• Gingersnaps + butter
• Gingersnaps + honey
• Gingersnaps + chocolate
• Gingersnaps + syrup
• Gingersnaps + tapatio hot sauce
• Gingersnaps + ketchup

At that point I knew it was time to stop. The ketchup wasn’t even mine. Sorry, roommate.

It was with this that I came to the realization that I am just an average 27-year-old bachelor. Single men do weird things. And I am one of them.

Oh well.

If you’re ever starving with gingersnaps and ketchup, don’t worry, it’s not as gross as it sounds.

So recently I was thinking of anniversaries. I’m really good at remembering my own: when I was born (also known as my birthday), when I turned 12 (12 years after my birth), when I started ryanware.com (June 1999), when I went on a mission for the LDS church (August 2001), when I started blogging (September 2004), when I moved to NYC (November 2008), and how long I’ve been without eating ice cream or other delicious desserts (usually celebrated by eating ice cream or other delicious desserts).

I figure if I work on remembering anniversaries now there’s no way I’ll ever forget my wedding anniversary. Of course, I do have to get married first. So that’s a bit of a trick.

A month ago I went on vacation in Utah and Idaho and, while there, ate a gazillion delicious cookies. At one point I remember thinking to myself something like, “I cannot believe I am eating more cookies. I just finished eating some! I have no self control. When I get back to NYC I will not eat sugar for a month!”

It’s been really hard, but I’d like you to know that, since returning, I have not eaten any sugar. At least not plain. I’ve never really been one to eat it straight out of the bag anyway. Easy goal. Mission accomplished.

(It’s fun to invent goals that are super easy to accomplish: I will not read a terrible book today. I will not get off the computer while typing this sentence. I will not eat a pound of raw fish tonight. Done done done.)

So on August 20th I will have a new anniversary to celebrate: not eating sugar for a month. I started on July 20th. I will admit that I have not been very strict. The reason for this is that I quickly realized “being healthy” and “having a social life” don’t go well together (for me). So the goal became: no ice cream, cookies, brownies, and other delicious desserts*.

* So here’s the part where being a lawyer would be helpful: the small print (as if the goal wasn’t vague enough already).

You know how some special offers from companies have blackout dates? Well, my no sugar goal has blackout dates: cookie night, cookie night again, and my roommate’s birthday (I had to help eat the Italian ice cream while out for his birthday dinner. There were 4 of us and 4 parts to the tartufo ice cream ball).

Cookie Night is exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of people getting together to eat cookies. There is a cookie night in Orem, Utah and it was only appropriate to continue the tradition here in New York City, in Hotel Harlem (my apartment is Hotel Harlem, as we almost always have people sleeping on the couch). Last week we emphasized cookie dough. Tonight is just plain cookie night.

All in all it’s been very interesting so far. I cannot believe how often I crave sugar (about every 5 minutes). It’s been hard (first world problems, oh woe is me)! I have plenty of self control in other areas of my life (I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or eat cucumbers), but I was lacking in this area. When it’s over I’ll probably go back to eating sugar, but I certainly intend to keep it under better control (after a day or two of making myself sick on ice cream).

I opened a support ticket with the Jungle Disk folks and they helped me do some “consistency checks” in the software and everything reappeared. Whoo! My previous post no longer applies to Jungle Disk, though I still think it’s a good thing for software not to do (ie. mess things up).

I can once again recommend Jungle Disk as a good solution for backups.