Been a while since my last daylog. I've been busy, a lot has happened, it's pretty much all been good. In vast contrast to the majority of the human race, my life seems to keep getting better. It's really not very fair at all.

I wonder, sometimes, what did I do to get such a life? Nothing, really... it wasn't due to any choices *I've* made, that's for sure. It just seems to be the product of a disproportionate number of coincidences where the consequences lean in my favour. Does that make sense?

So. Anna and I have been together for a year, as of last week. A year! And our relationship just keeps getting better, we're closer than ever. We started thinking about where we want to build our house the other day, which just seems unbelievable. If you'd told me a year ago that we'd be looking around for land to build a house on now, I would've laughed.

Not that we'll get the chance to do such a thing for at least a couple of years, most likely... we may end up renting somewhere for a short while, if we can't stand to be living seperately anymore, but don't have enough money to start building yet... but I agree with Anna when she says renting seems like you're just needlessly paying off somebody *else's* house.

Xmas and New Years were both great, Anna stayed over Xmas Eve, and then came with us to my grandparents place on Boxing Day, so she's nearly met my whole family now. Her mum is bugging her to organise something with my family, so she can meet them, but Anna is trying to put it off as long as possible. I don't think it would go *too* badly, but we'd have to make sure my parents remembered to keep quiet about a few things, like the fact that Anna does *not* sleep on the couch when she comes over, hehehe...

I'll be going back to uni again at the end of February, for my final year, and moving onto part-time work. My salary will be going up though, so my pay won't be too much less, which is a good thing. I'll still have to cut back on the amount I spend on lunch and stuff though, I think, but that shouldn't be a problem with me not being in South Yarra so much.

Two of our friends got together at the end of the year, which was a great surprise; it sort of catalysed at Anna's 21st, and went from there. It's sort of funny how everybody that gets together in our group does it around the New Year, and so far it's been a year apart each time. So now we are just wondering who it'll be next year...

Anyway, ramble ramble ramble, nobody will read this all the way through, but I felt the need to write something about what's been going on. I don't keep a web journal anymore, and I think it's getting to me, heh. So this'll do for now.
Something just re-entered my mind.

Last saturday, I went with a few friends of mine to one of their apartments. After a while, we started smoking some rather terrible quality marijuana, "finest mexican shit" as one of them put it.

Anyways, after a while, as will happen when one smokes, we got quite hungry. Unfortunately we steered ourselves to McDonalds. I guess when you're stoned any food will do.

After we had finished eating, we started a rather inane question with the staff, which was interrupted by my friend chris* exclaiming;

"What The Fuck?"

*point*

I turned to see a vinyl cling type sign that said, to my chagrin;

"Don't get a job, get a career. McDONALDS."

*pause*

Laughter ensued

Chris ended up stealing the sign, which now rests in his car.


Name changed to protect the incredibly guilty.

i'm stressing, i really need to talk to someone, but not many of my friends share my time frame. arse. so i'm afraid you're gonna have to read my ventings! i was feeling really positive about drawing, producing work for my portfolio, i spoke to quite a few people the other night about sitting for me and everyone was up for it! (inc. myself for once...) so last night i thought that i should get started (not like me to be lazy) and get some practise in before i started back at my life drawing class.

oh dear.

suddenly it wasn't fun anymore. art had become work again. i tried to draw a self-portrait, and couldn't look myself in the eye! what the fuck! had my confidence/esteem dropped to an all time low??? i gave up for the night(early morning) after a few abortive sketches and went to bed hoping all would be well in the morn. mmmmmm...

slept horribly! dreams of failure and madness. I went to life drawing this evening, it was almost as bad! couldn't get my eye/arm/brain in sync, it was all bad! belinda didn't turn up, colouring my thoughts with worry, all i could think about was fucking up, i couldn't focus. what is going on!?! i remember my last term at art college now, the same thing is happening. fear of failure is paralysing me! fuck fuck fuck! this is it, my last stumbling block and i can't see my way over/round/through it! what do i do? how do i sort this out??? ('salright, i'm not expecting you to solve all my problems)

what's the industry standard solution to writer's block?

maybe i need to read some self help books

My mind is a little more, well, stable, and quiet tonight that it has been most nights lately. Despite some things that happened today and some things that didn't happen today I am not as depressed as I could be.

Well I was disappointed today because the wonderful Ed was not online. I love him. He is such a great guy. In fact it's his fault I'm here. (on Everything) =) He always says the right things, right when I need to hear them. He is like really really smart too. He always helps me with my psych 101 coursework and remembering the HTML stuff to use on here. He always helps me with my computer problems too. It's so cute when he doesn't want to log off and go to bed (even though it's already like 5am) cause "I'll miss you too much" It's both funny and frustrating when he falls asleep in his chair. Sometimes he can be really immature but I can be really immature and stubborn sometimes myself. In short: I love Ed and miss him.

I'm really frustrated. My printer is not working. Spool error. Whatever that means. I have some stuff for school that I need to print. It's not really a life/death, pass/fail thing because all the assignments are sent in by email but I need a hard copy for myself. Oh well...we'll leave that for another day.

I'm a bit anxious. Tommorow I have an appointment with a psychiatrist. My mother is going with me. I am afraid they will think I am a danger to myself and make me go IP. My mother has a way of making me seem dangerous even when I'm not. And they always believe her. She tells them I hear voices and they automatically think everything I say is a lie from that point on. I'm not looking forward to tommorow at all.

I got an IM from a friend of mine a few hours ago. She is pregnant and despite the fact that she is not due till March she has gone into false labor twice. She said that she has been having severe pain for the last two days and her aunt was taking her to the hospital, despite her objections. I hope she's ok.

My DSL modem fell earlier. It wasn't damaged but is not sitting amongst the wires on the floor. Do some physical limitations on my part I can not get the modem out from behind the desk and back on the shelf. Somehow it's got the keyboard and mouse wires caught so that I can't pull the keyboard out all the way to the edge of the desk like I could before and the mouse wire is now a bit shorter than what I'd like as well. Oh well, we'll figure that out tommorow...

I finished the textbook chapter I had to have read by the end of this week. Now if I can just get the notes to print so I can study for the test that's coming up...

I had a fun conversation on AIM with two friends, and it became a dirty conversation. (Let's just say that the word "vacuum" was used and we didn't mean Hoover). hehehe.

I became an Acolyte!!! YAY!!! Now what is that little blab! button do exactly? and what else do I get that I didn't have before? I know I now get 20 votes a day instead of 10 which is cool. I thought I'd be level 2 forever but I was only a Novice for a few days or so.

Nodeing your homework does wonders for your XP.

Okay, so this is a pretty fucked up thing right here. I'm up at 1:35 this morning for the worst reason after having gone to bed three hours ago. A disturbing dream or waking dream or hallucination or mind-body flippy-do has seriously mindfucked me, and I want to write it down before I forget. Apologies if it doesn't sound pretty or polished or anything -- eye-boogers are still adhering my eyelids together and I'm tired and scared and all that at once.

So I'm having this dream that I'm an impossibly old man, laying in bed, waiting to die. My body's not responding to my will very much; I can twitch here or there, but for the most part I can feel my muscles straining (god, I can still feel my muscles straining), but the limbs just aren't moving. But then, something happens -- I don't know what -- and I realize that death is finally happening. My mind knows it and accepts that it's inevitable, but some deeper reptilian sense refuses; my body rebels and desperately tries to hold on to life, like a man doomed to fall into a chasm grasps on to a tree root, though all sense tells him it will not hold. Somehow, I regain enough movement to roll myself over so I'm laying on my left side, facing my wife. Somehow, this is vitally important. Somehow, I know I'm not dreaming anymore, that I'm not an old man, and that I'm standing on the knife edge between awake and asleep.

But then I feel myself falling. Not from the bed, but that strange sense of falling you get when lying down, as though you're "falling" asleep. I know with some strange certainty that it is finally happening; I'm either dying or falling asleep or waking up. Panic hits me then. I must wake up! I can't feel most of my body. My brain is sending out pings, but only my right leg, left hand, and lips are responding -- everywhere else is getting 90 to 100% packet loss. I somehow perceive the world around me, and it's desolate and broken. Everything is falling, and everyone is dead. I'd like to say that I could somehow read every being's life force and saw it was drained or something, but really I experienced it as if I was a character in a video game. Everything and everyone's life bar was at zero percent.

I couldn't say if my wife is there anymore, but I have to believe she is. My greater whole-me-sense still functions, and tells me that my body is tumbling through the same chasm as everything else. I realize that I'm not actually dying, but that the whole world is, and I and all the carcasses around me will fall forever. I perceive that this may be what death is like; forever falling, barely able to detect other dead-things around you, never able to match your velocity with another, never able to catch them and connect with them so you know for certain what's happening to you. I'm supremely frightened by this, and know that I must get out of this place or give myself to madness.

But then my body starts to respond a little. Parts of my body since deemed dead weight are starting to feel there again; I begin to think I might move my left arm or right leg; I detect that I've got my head propped up somehow in my left fist; I can feel the slightest sense of saliva pooling between my lips, enough to be felt, but not enough to fall to the bed. Somehow, it is very important that I not drool on the sheets. But then I think, the bed? the sheets? The man in my mind is shocked and staring agape at the revelation of such mundane things; the atrocious, insane falling-world evaporates, and I am lying on my bed, in the dark of my own room, facing my wife. I can't see her, though I know my eyes are open. I can feel her breath on my face; she is facing me. I can barely hear her breathing. I feel the comforter bunched up rather uncomfortably under me. I can't smell a thing. My skin is exposed, but I can't tell if it's very cold.

Almost there. If I can only move my body a little, I can wake up fully and escape this hell I've slipped into. If only the dog would jump up onto the bed, or if my wife would shake me awake; if only I could have some input, that would prime the pump for the rest of my senses to come online so I can wake up. I must wake up! I remember then that I have a voice, and that maybe it works. I try to call out, but my lips are sealed shut. I can hear myself call out with a closed mouth, and it sounds terrible. Nerves aren't firing correctly; the muffled moan is choppy, staccato, like how my cat sounds when she's chattering at a squirrel. I don't know if my sense of hearing wasn't picking up the sound correctly, or if my voice was just malfunctioning. But I sense my wife stirring at the noise. I hope that it will wake her up and she will see me staring sightlessly at her, frightened and broken, and that it will startle her enough to shake me awake.

Most of my body is still non-responsive, except to report that those parts are there. I strain and push, but the limbs that are more there still don't move. It's as if I'm doing isometric exercises pushing against nothing at all. But the dam breaks. It was probably just a matter of time. If I had only relaxed and let the sense of the "real world" come to me in small doses, I would have eventually woken up, or realized there was no need to do so and just fall back asleep. But I finally come awake; the limbs long surpressed come to life and jerk briefly; I inhale sharply and detect elevated heart rate; my mouth opens and my tongue becomes unglued from the roof of my mouth; sight returns to me, and I see my wife there, undisturbed, asleep, alive, and snoring softly, her eyes twitching in some dream she's having; cold sweat breaks out on my skin, but it's not terribly cold.

I sit up and run my hands through my hair, my waking-brain barely perceiving the world around me and faintly flashing a wtf? at whatever higher functions are available; I realize with relief that that is entirely consistent with me waking up in the morning, and that everything's going to be okay. I learn with dismay that it's nowhere near time to wake up. For some reason, it seems like a good idea to write about what kind of fucked up thing I just experienced.

Now that I'm done writing it down and feel myself come more and more awake, I realize that I've failed to accurately describe exactly what happened. I've failed to describe the enormous sense of hopelessness and madness I felt for that brief moment. I feel like I've made it less than what it was by writing it down. While I have brief and infrequent moments of brilliance when I write, I understand that between my own shortcomings as a writer and the inadequacy of language to describe things like love and madness, I could never fully document my experience tonight. But that's fine. Better to have an imperfect record, if only for myself, than to forget by lunchtime that it ever happened.

It's taken me an hour now to write this down and to look it over for any glaring spelling or grammar mistakes. There are still some there, I'm sure. It'll likely take me another 10 or 15 minutes to drop this in my journal and in Everything2. I've lost some sleep tonight between that fucked up waking-dream thing and me writing it down, but somehow it's worth it.

Addendum: Though I might receive feedback that this belongs in the Dream Log rather than the Day Log, I'm not entirely sure what happened was a dream, if you catch me.

digging in the dirt, find the places i got hurt

i went to class, i went to werk. i took a tech support call as i walked into my apartment. all i could think about was the little oupyr who had promised to take me to coffee. an hour later, i found myself in the latest incarnation of coffee hell, with said oupyr, and two girls i wouldn't fuck with your dick. yes, you. one was so plastered, you could finish a wall with her, and the other was a little gothic tramp with white panties. how do i know they were white? she wore a miniskirt and sat like a man. anyway, enough critique of the scenery...for the first time in a good many years, i found myself on the business end of an open mic. i panicked. i shouted about love, sam kinneson style; i told a pyrate joke; i said 'fuck' a whole lot; i made short jokes about myself...never again without my notebook, i tell you. and that opens up a whole new can of heartworms...

there's too much blood in my alcohol

i can't sleep lately. there's this tail-chasing ouroborus of pain in my chest that tightens every time i try. i woke up this morning, after finally getting some goddamn sleep, and discovered that i'd had a rather severe nosebleed in my sleep. the pillow and my face looked fresh from the abbatoir. the dreams are too vivid; the pain is too real. and now i'm losing blood over it. kinda-shoulda-sorta-woulda...all around me, i see beauty. i see it, i feel it in my bones...there's a kind of overwhelming love of the world that tears your chest open and leaves you crumpled and gasping as it shows you the beauty in all things. oh, don't get me wrong, i'm just as curmudgeonly as ever, but somehow it's more lighthearted now...i spit the same old bitter acid, but now it comes out like soap bubbles of scalding spirit instead. i feel sick.

rose clouds of holocaust...

salem and i have discordant dreams for the future...shocking the complacent denizens of coffee hell so badly that we have time to start running before they start throwing stones. "hey," he says to me, "as long as i don't get lynched..." yelling at the top of my lungs about the two beautiful boys in the band; howling in despair under the too-intense spotlight. listening to him read the vivisectionist's wet dream, and almost feeling the blood-slicked skin against my thigh...hands to my heart, grinning ecstatically at the ceiling...i remember laughing, late one night...a simple kiss sending rose-red cinnamon swirls to my head...fighting thermostasis, one heart attack at a time.

we are lost, we are freaks; we are crippled, we are weak; we are the true heirs to all the world

p.s.: smooches to starrynight for coming by my office and making my whole afternoon worthwhile. you know i love you, sweetie!

Shaking my life...literally

This evening, I'll be off to the local chapter of SIGCHI, spending a couple of hours listening to someone talking about DSL technology. A welcome change to the past several months of events.

My life as it stand nows, has been literally shaking me up!

Yesterday, on my way to a squash game around noon-time, I had a pretty bad mishap on the road. I was rounding a curving road (going left) while accelerating. In first gear, I felt my car wheelhop a bit. So to rectify this, I shifted into second where I accelerated more. By this time, I am near 60km/h and shift into 3rd gear. a second afterwards, I feel the front tires slide a little bit, so I ease off the gas. But as I hit the apex of the turn, the rear of my car loses grip and I begin to fishtail to the right. I correct the steering immediately as fast as the WRC Rally-car drivers. The rear of the car then swings the other way into oncoming traffic!

Ford F-150 pickup truck!!!

I recorrected the steering just in time and miss hitting it by a mere inches! But I fishtail even worse a few times, after three or four vehicles going the opposite direction pass by. At one point, I had thought I almost had the car stabilized, only to lose it again instantly.

My car screeches sideway across the road onto the other side. At this point, I was certain that my front-end would be totalled! Luckily there was no traffic. The rear of the car swung so hard due to steering overcorrection and the slippery road surface, that the passenger-side rear wheel hits the curb hard and swings me around the other way, mounting over the curb into the air. My front-end then hits a wire fence, stopping my chaotic momentum and landing on some grass.

Still and silent, I see the engine light appear on the guage cluster. The engine had stalled after the hit. I then get out of the car, only to find a few scratches and a broken front lip of my body kit. Restarting the engine, I slowly reverse and drive away onto the gym to my squash game.

As I entered the parking lot, I could here the flip-flopping of my rear tire. It had nearly come off the rim. No use in fixing it at that time - so I found a parking spot. Later, I found out that I was actually driving on three wheels. That was why my front alignment seemed "off".

Of course, I experienced most of the shock afterwards, still in disbelief - this occurred to me while I was playing the squash game. When I told my friend what had happened, he was surprised to still find me able to come for the game. BTW, I lost.

After the game, we changed the tire and I headed towards my next destination - meeting my friends to China Garden. I tell them the news as well, and they were also shocked that I was so calm and casual about the whole ordeal.

So after lunch, it was only natural to show them the damages on the car. Minimal, which was good. The ugly part was showing them the wheel - all wet and salted and the tire deformed almost to a disasterous point.

I then brought one of my friends to see the site where it all occurred. Tire marks were strewn all over the place. By the looks of it, I was lucky to have survived and not get hurt.

The irony/coincidence of it all, was that, the night before this happened, I was on my Playstation 2 playing Colin McRae Rally 2.0. I was practicing in the Sweden snow course. I probably would not have done as well in real-life had I not practiced the night before. (The physics engine in this game was deadly accurate!)

So now, I am driving a rental car, a 2002 Ford Taurus, waiting for my car to be fixed.

The only good part to all of this:
I really felt like a rally-car driver!

Well, met my first noder yesterday. And the winner is? GangstaFeelsGood, who was very nice to show me around Princeton, which I'd never been to, and bought me a beer. I wish I'd been more interesting, but when I first meet someone, I tend to be a little quiet and reserved. Bad habit I hope to fix. So I hope I wasn't too boring, GFG, 'cause it was fun. :)

In my opinion, it's asked too lightly and too often. It loses most of it's meaning, and we are expected to respond pleasantly so that the asker can feel like they bonded with you in a positive way.

"Hey Sam! Whats up? How was your break?"

Well, my dad's company is going bankrupt which means that our move across the country to Utah might be moot point. He has to fight everyday to keep him and his coworkers employed. My mom hates her new boss, who doesn't know how to do things. She has to fight everyday to get the things done that she knows need to be done. My grandma died to days ago and I have to miss hard classes to go to a funeral. Emotionally it hit me harder than I thought, not of sadness, but of a bout of uncontrolled anger towards myself for being selfish by thinking of the money we would inherit. The University Program Board wants me to miss most of a week of classes to go to a useless convention in Middle of Nowhere, USA. People are leaving all around me, and I have no idea what to do. I'm lonely, I'm tired, and I'm looking for something I can't find.

"Nothing much Ann, I got some good skiing done. There are some great ski areas in Utah."

Anita wasn't expecting it, but when she asked me, I gave up. I talked to her for over an hour, staring into her caring eyes . . . a good friend is someone who is willing to listen to your woes, and asks because they care, not because they want to feel connected.
Things that suck include girls who stand you up.

I returned to my second semster feeling very good about being me. I tore up the first semester of CMU pulling almost straight A's with absolutely no effort. Over break I had an awesome time with my friends. I was feeling so good I decided to take a risk and ask this girl out.

We both love jazz. I figured let's go out and listen to some live jazz. There was a show that lasted four hours. She told me that she would meet me there as she had to say goodbye to her parents. I thought that seemed fair enough. This turn of events led me to feeling better than I had felt in a while.

I went to see the show when it began. I sat for two hours before she showed up. She had just finished eating dinner with her mother. That was perfectly acceptable to me. However, she told me that she would be back later. Law & Order was more important to her than I was. I thought that after she finished watching the show she would be down for the final hour of the jazz set.

I sat for the hour of the TV show. Then I sat for the hour of the jazz set. She still did not show up. I walked home all alone.

Being that she was with her mom, I figured that her family had just held her up. With this in mind I invited her to watch the movie Office Space in my friends dorm room. She told me she would be there. However, she did not show up.

Things that suck include girls who stand you up.

Today's my 24th birthday, yay, I feel old in a college town. :) My twenty-year-old friend just told me I could buy him booze. What an honor.

I'm spending it with friends. It's a good thing. About six people sent me cards already, online cards, which is kinda cool. What's weird is they're all from my family. My mom sent me one, my dad sent me an e-mail apologizing for not being more personal and needing my address so he can sent me money . . . several other absent-minded people promising me a rain check.

I really don't need people to get me stuff. It's enough that they remembered.

Its wierd, I have been at home almost all week, haven't gotten a job teaching except for Monday. Well let me correct that, today should have been a teaching job for me, but the school i was signed up to substitute at had a snow day today. It must have snowed there worse than where I live or some other reason. It was the only school in the area that had a snow day. I wonder if that is because this school, was the only school that was doen with exams.

It has also been awhile since I have created a node, even a daylog here. I don't know why... I guess I don't have the drive or the creativity that nodding usually requires. I sit and read various nodes about various subjects over and over without coming up with anything I want to comment or correct or just plain create. Is it possible to get burned-out on nodding?

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