Forbes original article here, actual list here.

Out of the top 20, I:

-live in #3 Merced
-went to school in #5 Sacramento
-am from #9 Vallejo
-work in #17 Fresno

Really?!?! WTF, right?

California has 8 cities in the top 20. Out of those 8, 6 are located on highway 99, and all 5 of the major cities in the Central Valley (the two I listed above plus #1 Stockton, #4 Modesto, #20 Bakersfield). Apparently highway 99 & the Central Valley is not a happy place to be in or around. I wonder what the suicide rates are in the cities on this list, like if it's higher than the rates in "happier" cities.

My take on it, living in a miserable city doesn't necessarily make you a miserable person. That's all up to the person and how they deal with their situation.

So I was at Applebees last night, cause it was bingo night, and I witnessed another “interesting” patron. He looked like a young, american-born, eastern european guy. When he first approached the bar, he seemed sorta confused, cause he just stood behind one of the seats, staring ahead. I’m not sure if he was looking at the beers on tap, or the Katie the bartender, or what. So he finally sits down in-between me and another guy at the bar, with one seat buffer between us. The guy to his right was about to leave, and tried to give him his bingo card. Apparently, he had never heard of bingo before, so the leaving guy tried explaining the game to him. The guy seemed perplexed the whole time leaving guy was talking. Frustrated, the guy finally blurts out “I’m not really into this kind of stuff”. It’s freakin’ bingo, it’s not exactly rocket science, right?

Then Katie comes over and asks what he wants to drink, and the 1st thing he says to her is, “I know this is going to sound weird, but I have an empty bottle of Corona in my jacket pocket and I have no idea why I have it there, but could you throw this away for me?” Katie gives hims like a wtf kinda look and says sure. Then he tries to order a pitcher. Katie explains him that a pitcher is $12 and only pours 2 talls, and that the happy hour special, $4 for a tall, is a way better deal. But for some reason or another, the guy still wanted a pitcher. So Katie obliged and then asked to see his ID. The guy then starts to pull wads of cash (mostly $1s & $5s), and other misc. stuff from out of his pockets. He didn’t have have any ID on him, so Katie refused to serve him. Then he said he birthday was something-something-83, but Katie wasn’t having any of it. Dood did not look like he was 2 years younger than me at all.

So then the guy left. But instead of just walking straight to the entrance/exit in the front, he slowly walked to the back towards the kitchen, then stood in the bathroom walkway for a bit, walked through the dining area, and then found his way to the front. And all this time, the manager and several employees were standing at a register at the end of the bar watching his every move.

So many questions. Like, how did he get there? Did he walk there? If he didn’t have any ID on him, then he didn’t have a drivers license. Driving around with an empty beer bottle in your inner jacket pocket AND without a license? This guy is asking for trouble. How the f$#@ do you not know what bingo is? And even if you’ve never heard of it, the game is so freakin simple, what’s not to get? How can you not understand it, let alone not play it for a chance for a $10 gift card? Does he not understand simple math or a good deal when stated plainly to his face? Or does he have some weird fixation with pitchers? And no one believed his story about the empty Corona bottle, no one.

So yeah. I’d say this guy falls in-between “the girl who ordered a Corona and then crammed 20 slices of lime into the bottle” and “the girl who got completely hammered off one mojito and totally embarrassed her boyfriend”. Yup, this is the Merced Applebees......

I don’t think the Vallejo Applebees is that bad, but then again I’m not there too often, although for some reason I’m the duke there (on Yelp) with only 6 check-ins, and I don’t even live there full-time anymore (in comparison, I have 22 check-ins in Merced. Chris has 28!). I can only remember that one bad experience, where that one guy sitting by himself was approached by his ex with a restraining order and then called his buddy and put himself on blast for everyone to hear.

Applebees.....I wish there was another option.

Windows of opportunity aren’t open for long. If you wait too long to make your move, that opportunity will no longer be there, and you’ll be kicking yourself for not acting sooner. Whether it’s buying something you really wanted or chasing after a girl, the principle is still the same.

The regret here applies to the missing of the opportunity and the hesitation that preceded it. Let’s say you didn’t miss that opportunity, but the result of it was less than desirable. That could also lead to regret, but for a different reason altogether (unfavorable outcome vs not taking the chance to get to that outcome, favorable or not).

When people say they live their life with no regrets, I’d like to think that they’re full of sh!t. I find it hard to believe that a person can live a perfect life and not have changed anything, that they were SOO sure of themselves, in every decision they made, that they never missed any opportunity to somehow improve their life (or not). I just don’t believe such a person exists. Then again, I’m more pessimist than optimist.

Oh, and this really doesn't apply to anything of any importance in my life right now, it's just that I think about a lot, and when I do it makes me reminisce the experiences in my past where this applied.

In a word, cooking for one sucks. Not my cooking itself, but the fact that it’s almost impossible to buy ingredients in single-serving quantities (also, it’s not very economically, but that’s not the point of this post). For example, if I feel like eating spaghetti (or any type of pasta for that matter), even when buying the smallest sizes/packages of noodles, sauce, & all the other ingredients, I end up having enough left over for lunch & dinner for at least the next 2 days. By then, I’m totally sick of it and don’t want to make it again for quite a while.

Really, someone needs to make the anti-Costco. Instead of buying things in big quantities, quantities bigger than what you find in a regular supermarket, the anti-Costco would sell stuff in small, single-serving quantities, typically smaller than what you’d normally find in supermarkets. It would make cooking-for-one so much easier. No more leftovers, no more getting tired of even your favorite foods. Just enough for one meal, then you’re done with it. Is that really too much to ask for?

Man, I can't believe I've been working in Fresno and living in Merced for 1 year already. My boss reminded me of this milestone by giving a form he signed that said he approved by annual merit pay adjustment, which is basically my yearly 5% raise (yay for more money!!). But it really hasn't felt that long, either, and I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. Regardless, I've got the crucial 1 year of experience under my belt, which will hopefully look good (or better) on my resume. Ever since Gov. Brown was sworn in and the hiring freeze was supposedly "lifted", I've been applying to state jobs (outside of Caltrans) like crazy. I'm putting in the work to get out the central valley of perpetual fog. Hope someone hires me soon. Can't wait to get out of here, so that I can actually get on with my life. It's hard to firmly plant your feet somewhere when you know you're not going to stick around for long. It sorta feels like my life has been paused or put on hold as I accumulate more EXP (I suppose I level up every year). Ultimately, this is just a pit stop, solely to get my career on-track. Now with that more or less set, it's time to continue on with the plan and move to/get a job at a destination where I'm comfortable settling down at, and possibly buying a house and all that good stuff. I'm not sure what the next step is after that, but I'm definitely sure the step after is profit (+10 nerd points to whoever got this reference)

(grrrr......i sorta hate how that was one giant ass-paragraph**, but i don't know where the logical break point is. everything seems to flow right into each other)

**credit goes to xkcd for moving the hyphen one word to the right. after reading that comic strip, i do that all the time now