Happy Commonwealth Day

Yes, it's true. The Queen has ordained a day for celebration of the continuing creation of the Commonwealth of England. Over 1.6 billion people are contained in this, so I thought I would give it it's due.


Spoke to Chris, my best (male) friend late last night. He and his girlfriend, May Ling, are buying a house! Congrats and kudos to you my friend - hope you can afford it!

The conversation went something like this:

Chris: "Hey Kev, big news. Guess what May Ling and I are doing..."
Me: (laughter in my voice) "OH MY GOD - May Ling is pregnant! CONGRATULATIONS! Ha Ha Ha - oh wait - it's not true is it?"
Chris: "Hehe, no, she's not pregnant. But almost as big..."
Me: "You bought a house - that flat - the one in the city with the windows didn't you?!"
Chris: "Yep! We signed the documents an hour ago! We are going to own nice property in the middle of the CBD!"
Me: "Wow! That's great! How much, if I can ask...?"
Chris: "Title is for $345,000"


Ok, the thing is, Chris is 21. 21 years old. May Ling is 20. 20 years old! And they are buying a fucking house! Not renting one, not yet totally finished their university degrees, both living at home with their parents, never lived away from home, not really capable of managing a rental property and they ARE BUYING A BLOODY HOUSE!

Good luck to them!


Me: (in joking sexist voice, very unlike me and thus funny) "Wow! Hey Chris, let me put it this way - your 'duty' if she was pregnant lasts 9 months, but if you buy a house together it can last 10 or 20 years!"
Chris: "Hahahahahaha..." (relays the joke to May Ling) "She says that is pretty funny - and true."
The remainder of the conversation was based on how they are going to pay for the flat, where they are going to get the money, who is going to live there and how soon they can move in.

Basically, they already have a new tenant lined up - the old owner, a nice 40-ish woman, organised for it - and the rental management company has given them an 18 month guarantee of tenancy valued at $650 per week - basically if it isn't let, they get paid anyway. So after that 18 month period, they are probably going to move in there themselves. Just the two of them in a $1000 per week rental property.

The rub was that they want to get as much capital as possible to reduce the amount borrowed in the mortgage. They said "Can we borrow $5000 off your credit card, pay you the interest and repay you in a few weeks?" NO WAY

Decisions, decisions.


Budgets (see here) were scrutinised today. The accounts manager asked "Whats going to be capital expenditure, and what is general?" I explained that all of the equipment costs were capital and everything else was general. Then she turned around and said "No, you are wrong, since they are going in to existing projects." I explained to her there ARE NO existing projects, and we toussled verbally for 15 minutes. I was right, and she ignored me in the end. Ahh well.
I finally paid off an errant mobile phone bill - oh, just $250 or so. Nothing too big. It was the "We will cancel your credit cards and take your house and blacken your name and write rude words on your car with spray paint and laugh publically at you" letter that made me do it - maybe because I DON'T LIVE AT MY OLD ADDRESS AND YOU DIDN'T UPDATE MY DETAILS WHEN I TOLD YOU could they give me a little leverage and compassion? Blerg.

It also rained like all buggery today. And I forgot my umbrella. *sigh*

Things to do today:
  • Get a new driver's license - Apparently I am supposed to get a new driver's license within 10 days of moving. I've been here two years. Oops.
  • Set up an appointment to get new glasses - I finally got the paperwork to get my glasses, now I have to act and go get it done.
  • Drop off laundry - I am way overdue to have laundry done. It's probably going to be $30 and I'll probably need to use two sacks to take it all. I really need to weed through my laundry and find what I'm not going to wear anymore and send it to goodwill.
  • Go to work - bah.
We'll see how much of this I actually get done. Sometime this week I need to try to meet up with Sara if she is in town to give her this great CD I bought her. It's a very strange CD I found at The Nature Store in the mall. It's called "Grunt - Pigorian Chant" and is an album of ethereal pig latin all sung in a setting reminiscent of a monastery. While it sounds all serious and such, the CD comes with a book with the latin and pig latin translations which are hilarious. It includes such segments as:
Farmer: Soooo-ee. Soooooooooo-eee. Si non nunc venietis, cibum gallinis dabo. (Sooee, sooee. If you don't come now, I'll give your food to the chickens.)

Chickens: Sententia bona (Good idea!)

Pigs' Response: Op-stay, op-stay. E're-way oming-cay. (Stop, stop, we're coming!)

Keep in mind, this particular segment is stretched out in such a long way that it lasts over a minute. Think of slow, hollow, echoing religous type music. It's very odd, but cute and hilarious. You have to hear it to really get it. Sara likes collecting pig merchandise, so I think it'll be a great gift.


I only got half the things done on my list today.

TC was very sad today. Her boyfriend was leaving to move back up north today. I tried to find the right things to say to her, but there was just nothing to say. She left work early today, understandably.

Nothing much else today. I wore my new clothes and everyone thought they were cool. I'm feeling kind of left out of the loop on whatever's going on with CR, Ann and Sara tomorrow. I tried to show interest in getting involved, and I didn't get a bite. Sometimes I really wonder if these people are actually interested in having me around or if they're just tolerating me. Occasionally, I think they may be up to something that I probably am not supposed to know about. I don't know.


A note about daylogs

BTW, not that I really care about keeping score, but getting your daylog near the top of the list for a day seems to get you a much more positive rating, even though the content may be almost the same. I just thought some people might like to know that. I reguarly get -1 to 3 for my daylogs, since I live in the western hemisphere and I don't usually write them until the end of the day here (usually well after midnight UTC). The last two days I sort of got out of sync and wrote them early and both nodes are now over 20.

I assume this is vote dumping, but it really doesn't matter anyway since daylogs probably shouldn't be voted on.

This is my weekend log, involving a long and treacherous journey across the entire width of the great mitten-shaped state as well as various other amazing adventures. The story begins on this past Friday morning…

I woke up to the sound of my mother’s voice screaming at the top of her lungs. Well, actually she was barely speaking audibly, but to my unconscious and highly paranoid mind, it was a shriek of impeding death and destruction. I leaped out of bed, my heart in my throat, and stared around my dawn-lit room, empty of any dangerous creatures which might have cared to kill me on the spot. What a lovely way to start the day.

I got up, packed, showered, ate, and filled my car with homework and clothing to last the weekend. I left a note for my parents, who had left some couple of hours ago for work, saying I had remembered my pills and cell phone. Then I was on my way.

I first stopped at Citgo to fill up. I only needed five gallons or less, but I hate stopping in strange cities to get gas and avoid the probability at any cost. Was on 94 heading east in no time, and soon arrived in Albion in search of the elusive Pamathan. I found her dorm building after only turning around once, and called her room from the circle drive out front. She brought her stuff down to the car and we were once again on the road. By this time, it was only noon.

We sped along to Ann Arbor at the speed of light, at least. Unfortunately, the plethora of trucks forced us to continue past our darling exit 175 and get off at the next available one. We ended up on the wrong side of the city, but after driving down every street, we managed to find South Main and, from there, Aaron and Nick’s apartment.

By then, it was a little past one in the afternoon. We had made excellent time to Ann Arbor from Albion, but had spent a half hour or so wandering the streets looking for landmarks. Nick pointed us in the direction of a rare open parking spot on the street in front of their building. I even got to run over a bright yellow trash can lid.

We got settled in comfortably, and then most of us fell asleep. When I woke up, Nick’s parents and two siblings had arrived and were being entertained downstairs. We all went out to dinner at the famous Chi-Chi’s restaurant, having endless trays of Mexican food brought to out table until Nick finally threw a fajita at the window. After attempting to steal the tortilla holder pan type bowl thing, we made a hasty retreat.

That night, Aaron had to go to band practice while Nick and Pam took off for swing dancing lessons. This left me alone with copious amounts of homework and the remote control. You can guess which one called for my attention first.

Joey, Nick and Aaron’s Jewish roommate who is also brother to one of my best friends, came home shortly after I had given up reading about the history of the streets in Paris. While he ate a sandwich (after offering me one), I attempted to play his mini-travel guitar after removing it from the backpack it came with. We talked about things, mostly school and Adam (Joey’s younger brother). Soon Ross, a friend of Joey’s, came over. The tv was turned on once again, and we watched the beginning of Predator. Joey kept insisting Ross was gay due to his obvious admiration of Arnold’s muscles. There was another extremely buff guy in the movie who’s abs were being admired, but I cannot recall his name.

Aaron arrived home around 9:30. We went out in search of Mario Party, but returned home around two a.m. empty-handed. Everyone else (Pam and Nick, Joey and his girlfriend Nora, who had arrived around one in the morning) seemed to have gone to bed. Aaron and I watched Arlington Road before falling asleep ourselves.

Slept for most of the day on Saturday. The four of us went shopping at Meijers around 2:30, renewed the search for Mario Party, and returned home victorious. We played a couple games, then everyone fell asleep until dinner time. I had ice cream, Aaron cooked tater tots, and Nick and Pam made pasta. We then watched Deuce Bigalow, played another game of Mario Party, and called it quits. Aaron and I stayed up until almost five in the morning, talking and sitting and watching Comedy Central.

Sunday was spent driving home behind a bitch in a blue minivan. Pam and I managed to make fun of her nonstop for almost an hour. It was great entertainment, even though the woman who was our conversation topic was endangering lives with her driving skills (or lack thereof). We lost her somewhere past Lansing.

I dropped Pam off in Grand Rapids and somehow ended up in Borculo going west on M-45 instead of a more reasonable route. I made it back to Holland nonetheless, and just in time for spaghetti.

So today I woke up with my baby toe on my right foot throbbing in pain. Last night in a giddy alcohol induced state I ran it into the door jam in my bathroom. Thinking it was just a very painful stubbed toe I continued to drink away the pain. But this morning I was limping and it was tingling and kinda numb all at the same time. Then I thought back to a few months ago when my best friend claimed she broke her baby toe and got a nice prescription for Vicodin. As the day went on and I felt more ridiculous for limping around campus, I decided to go to the Urgent Care. I wasn't in that much pain I just wanted the Vicodin. Quite a hot item on college campuses, let me tell you. I waited in the waiting room for over an hour, trying not to watch but hearing this young boy throw up his intestines about 5 feet away from me. At this point all I wanted was my prescription to relieve the pain and go home. I had watched "The Simpson's" and an hour-long terrible TV show called "The World's Funniest." Finally get called into the next waiting room; also know as the doctor's office. After I get my blood pressure taken and all the other customary tests done that have nothing to do with my toe, a nurse practitioner comes in. She says, "Yeah it looks bad. Maybe it's broken." No kidding, that's why I am here. She makes me wait for another 20 minutes and then I get X-rays done. And indeed the baby toe is broken. I knew it was broken and I knew there was nothing that could really be done, I just wanted the Vicodin. So then the nurse gave me this medical walking shoe to wear. He told me that I am to wear this shoe for the next 6 weeks. Uh… 6 weeks? I am thinking, how about 6 minutes. This thing is about 5 inches bigger than my foot and I can barely walk with it on. It's worse than the broken toe. Then the nurse practitioner comes back and says "Ok so no running or dancing or anything strenuous for about 6 weeks. And I am going to give you something for the pain." Hell yes, finally this trip seems worthwhile. "I am going to give you prescription strength ibuprofen." What Advil? I want morphine, I want Vicodin. Oh well. I guess you can't win them all.

On my way home, I start to think about getting a second opinion and maybe another prescription. I decide to quickly swing by the Student Health Center on campus. They are notorious for prescribing Codeine for a paper cut. When the doctor there sees me, he tells me that it is probably broken and there is not much he can do for it, but he tells me to tape it to the toe next to it as a splint for about 5 weeks, and to just take some aspirin for the pain. What aspirin? That's even less powerful than the ibuprofen. Damn no prescription medicine. But at least I don't have to wear that damn shoe anymore.

As I limped back to my car, I realized that I am stuck with a broken toe and no good painkillers. Oh well, it's just a broken baby toe; it is probably going away along with the appendix in evolution anyway.

I have found a boy: sweet, wonderful, and kind, whose presence I long for and enjoy. But I wonder about him. He is just starting his exploration into this world, looking for his place in it all while I have found my groove and my happiness, here, in this place, with my friends.

I wonder what he seeks in me, what he seeks in any romance now. I am so happy for what he has offered.. but I think in terms of centuries... and he..... I don't think he is worrying too much about the future, just enjoying life in the present.

Oh boy; after smugly writing about suspending my son's driving privileges today, well yesterday considering the hour, I got ticketed too. And on the same road as him, just in a different state. So Stupid.I guess I should suspend my own driving privileges but of course I won't - read admission of hypocrisy and over weighted self-importance.

Maybe I can rationalize....
I was returning from a MISERABLE weekend with my step mother who I'm sure is clinically and situationally and probably seasonally depressed and my father who has advanced Parkinson's and I slept in their TORTURE bed, or rather did NOT sleep but lay for hours on end on the 30-year-old mattress.

I know it doesn't make sense. That's why it’s called rationalizing, not rational.

I'm so happy to be home. I stopped at a toy store and bought the boy a Slinky. That doesn't make any sense either but it made him happy and I guess I needed to do that without backing down on his life lesson because of my own guilt.

Oh, the neverending drama of Spring Break. Did I think I'd really be able to escape it? Hehe. Well, anyway, here I sit in Atlanta, at 1:22am, typing (decidedly not intoxicated) and bored out of my mind. I can hear drunken laughter coming from the other room, I know they're having a great time, and I certainly could be too...if I were drunk. But I just don't want to spend my whole Spring Break drunk.

I had my own drunken drama last night. Skipping the details, just the main events:
1. Put on shiny red pants, dressed up like Elvis and tap danced for everyone
2. Decided to profess to my friend's cousin (who we're staying with) all of my insecurities about my relationship, and basically my entire stream of consciousness, which mostly included my thoughts about how more and more lately, I've been noticing bisexual tendencies in myself. Yes, valuable information for people who don't know me, I'm sure.
3. At some point discuss all this with my boyfriend, get all emotional and talk his ear off about everything and nothing for about an hour and a half.
4. Throw up. Go to sleep.
5. Have a really fucked up dream in which my ex-boyfriend sent me this email saying basically that he'd given up on life, and for whatever reason, I was the only person he mentioned it to. He was quitting school and running off somewhere. I ended up finding him somehow and talking him out of it. The dream ended with us laying on his bed talking and hugging and all of a sudden we were kissing. I remember saying, "No, this is wrong...I have a boyfriend." But while I said it, I just kept kissing him, and what really disturbs me is that it didn't feel wrong at all...it felt great, really great...just like it used to.

Eh, dammit. Enough for one night.
Okay, I'm back, but only for a few moments.

I've got lust in my fingers and poison on my mind.

I was standing out under my mother, you know, the Moon, and I got to thinking eh, for the briefest moment, about the conversation I had with MOM earlier.

She has a few glasses of wine and WAMMO, "Let's talk about your love life, Kir." Dangerous last words.

So I've been precarious, stubborn, dimwitted, and even, horrors, promiscuous. I'll be damned. Like I didn't know that. Like I don't run my track record back in my mind every morning I bother to open my eyes. I sit there and count on my fingers what I've had and what I haven't had, and what it is I plan to have in the future. And I'm thankful. Why? Because all in all, I've been lucky.

To whom do I owe all of this? I'd like to thank all the cancer females who raised me, first off, then I'd like to thank my mother-in-law for helping me sort through all her son's bullshit and any other mayhem that occured. Then I'd like to thank all the anorexics. What? Thank the anorexics?

Sure, thank them. If it were not for them being so tied up in hurting themselves, bless their souls, they would have noticed this Amazon (with a decent case of bulimia) was getting all the tail in high school and college. Thank you thank you, for blowing my standard of living and sense of self all to pieces. I'm sorry I could never live up to your standards, I am a product of excess after all, but you gave me pretty girls to admire, guilt to carry, and the knowledge that if I really wanted something, dammnit, I was going to have to talk myself into it. Pants falls under that category.

So there, I got my balls. I got my lust from living with at least sixty girls in a dorm by the time I was 13. I nearly got thrown out of prep school for being this 'ringleader' of sorts for the amount of porno they were finding in the girl's dorms. Yeah, that was meek little me. That's the same me who can't seem to get herself together. 'At age sixteen, she could talk herself out of anything, at twenty-two, she falters trying to tell a creep, enough is enough.'

Okay, so cancers, check, Deb, check, anorexics, check. And I'm not talking about the fake anorexics, no, no. Not the naturally skinny ones....they have the monopoly and I know it. (But you're still a bitch and your lips are already big anough, what do you wanna look like, Jagger? How about some calogen for those skinny hips? And your little sitey-witey's down. I tried to feel sorry....but I can't.)Um...lighter note, lighter note. I know there was a lighter note.

Ah! Sex, in all it's twisted tasty glory, was something that I waited for...but only a short while. And I quickly realized I was one of the few females who sex didn't mean, "Okay, now we can start forever right here". Sure, I did monogamy....for a while, here and there. And then I found that there were times that I could have been the founder of whore-mode. And each PERSON, and I do stress person, gave me a clearer and clearer view of what was attractive to me. And I realized brains were the only running theme throughout my history. And ugh! what I'd do for the brains!I'd tie you up if I thought for a moment you could get me off with your mind...and lock you in a room, and dedicate a shrine....and bring you offerings of hot tempting Catholic School Girls if I thought it meant I could keep the one I wanted.

No, I'm not drunk. I'm languishing in my own batter of 'what to do'. Please, please don't feel sorry for me in my situation. I can't stand the taste of your warnings and pity. I like you, all of you, but this I have to taste for myself. I like the taste of bitter if it makes the next taste all the more sweet. I'm not scared, never really have been, and that is probably my worst trait. I tried to hide behind the words, "I'm scared". But I'm not, and yeah, I won't believe it 'til I see it.

You guys didn't fail me. Monogamy failed me. But that's all right, 'cause monogamy and I were never close friends to begin with.

Trust me, your Kir is not nearly as defenseless and cute as she may seem. She's ravenous, and more than a bit tired of taking what she can just talk herself into. So please just wish me luck. Just a couple more sweaty tangled moments is all I'm really asking for.

I was coming home from a wonderful shopping experience at Wal-Mart, and decided to take the back roads home to Brookline. I ended up passing through this little podunk town called Lynn. Apparently I cut this other guy off. I was in the left lane, he was in the right. This isn't too surprising since I have a big vehicle (an extended cab).

Anyhow, the guy has to wait for the light like the rest of us, so what does he do?

He shoots me the bird.

I didn't have any reaction at the time, I just tried to pay attention to traffic and the light (I mean, after all, who knows if this guy was packing or not). I suppose this guy wanted some reaction, or was really excited, because he thumbed his gesture against the car window a few times at me. Finally, he started squirming around and rolled out the window, and energetically shot the finger at me again. Ever since I've been living in the city, I haven't driven nearly as much and it has been probably 4 or 5 years (when I lived in Maryland/DC area) since I've had to deal with extremely frustrating gridlock. Even then, I mainly pounded my steering wheel. I guess I don't want some nut crazier than me to pull out a gun, so I avoid flipping people off.

This is my weekend log
We had a company dinner on friday. My boss and our project manager got ridiculously drunk, it was quite funny to see this 30+ women making dirty jokes and proclaiming the female revolution (or, free love, they weren't too sure 'bout this point), it weas a funny evening. After the dinner i met with my friend Erik, who moved to Berlin on sunday to start an new job as a label manager for the label of a quite popular german band. We talked quite a time about music, women and the rest of the world, i showed him a web page a scripted for a friend of mine, who is a quite good photograper. (http://natur.exit.de/zornja, she would surely appreiate it if she knew i posted the link here), we had a graet time.
Came home around 5:30 in the morning.

The quest for a workstation
My notebook broke down a few days ago. No problem, it's still under warranty. I need a pc at home anyways, and i decided i wanted to run OS/2 on it.
Well, i got a 486/66 SCSI system from a friend of mine, so i thought it would be no big deal.
First of all, the power supply broke down. Got another one, put it on a box beside the big tower case, retried. Next thing dying was the floppy disk drive. OK, got one out of a old 386, put it on top of the case (everything external as i was too lazy for building out the old one), re-started the installation. No big deal so far, but as Warp requested me to put in Disk 2, the keyboard controller on the mainboard decided to stop cooperation.
I threw away the big tower, grabbed an old board with a NCR SCSI controller onboard, put it onto a computer magazine, plugged the cards in and re-started installation. After trashing the original boot floppy by plugging in the fdd connector the wrong way round, creating a new one on my flatmate's linux box using dd i had to find out that OS/2 lacks driver support for the onboard SCSI controller. So far, no good.
I got the ISA Adaptec from the Big Tower, plugged it in, deactivated the onboard chip in the [BIOS and, today at 3 o'clock in the morning, the second installation attempt finally worked.
So, all that's left is to make the board recognize my 64 MB EDO RAM modules to get voice recognition working. It's on my to do list for today, i'll let you know ;).

I did an hour and a half of yoga yesterday. Not because I am so damn cool - I opened up a book and did each exercise very slowly. I only skipped two of the 26 poses. I kept closing the book and saying that is too damn hard, it sucks, I'm hungry, I'm quitting - I hadn't had breakfast yet - and then I would fix something and put it down and go back and do some more. Cause my body would start feeling really, really, excellent.

The author of the book strongly urged students to do an hour a day for two months, eight weeks, and the results would be amazing. So I'm going to try very hard to do it. I like the feeling, I was full of energy and happiness when I was done.

I went shopping with my daughter and one of her roommates yesterday and spent too much money but - I got an extremely cool brass koi which weighs about 20 pounds and is almost 18" long. You can put a votive candle in it and hang it from something. I am going to find something to hang it from, cause it is beautiful. I also got a huge brass cowbell with a deep melodic bong and a brass chime that is big and a medium bong sound. I love chimes, but never get them for myself cause they are usually $20. These were like $5.

I want my house to be beautiful. I guess I need to work on my kitchen floor and walls some more but it is daunting. I think I will follow my friend's advice and get a damn sander and just do that on the kitchen floor. Nothing seems to really work. I've never cared about my space, except for putting up posters of bands, art that I like, and anything that looks cool.

I did no studying at all today. And A. couldn't get the belly ring (she tried, owww!) back in either. It's healed up in the middle somewhere. I just have to get it repierced, that's all.

Based on a node I read this morning (I forget which), I decided to ask my manager a question.

My question was: "If a man, let's say me, were to wear a skirt to work, what do you think would happen?"

He thought about it for a bit, and answered something to effect of "He woud be sent home, and asked to change." I asked why.

"Because it's not professional attire."

"Okay, so if I were to take a skirt that a woman can wear to work, and wear it, it becomes unprofessional?"

"Yes."

"So what should I wear instead?"

"Not a Skirt!"

"I know that, but what would you ask me to wear instead of the skirt?"

"I don't know. Pants, I guess."

"Women wear pants. Why is that not considered unprofessional?"

"It just isn't."

"Okay, here's another example. What about a man who has always worn female attire, and comes to work. What then?"

"He wouldn't be working here."

I was amazed at his incredibly narrow point of view on this issue. He is convinced that the company would ask the person to go home and change. If they continued to dress in female attire, they would be terminated. I'm forced to disagree, because the employer isn't about to get into such a sticky situation. Terminating an employee because of the clothing they choose to wear (as long as it's professional) is not something they can easily do - especially if they don't specify any such technicalities in the documented dress code.

It would be a different story if a man came to work in a dress for one day just to provoke a reaction. That is certainly disruptive. (But funny. Personally, I wouldn't be disrupted. Just amused.)

Anyway, back to my day. Busy morning, as Mondays usually are. I had to catch up on the weekend's traffic. I'm caught up now, though. Yay!

My vacation is next week. I'm not really looking forward to it, as it will be a week with nothing to do. Maybe I'll take a road trip.

Lunch Log: Tostidos with home-made salsa. Damn, this stuff is good.

I am so sad.

I don't know how this came about, but I'm back to my old state of sadness and nostalgia and longing. I guess He will always be a part of my life that I can't get rid of and don't want to, yet I need to. He didn't call all weekend. I sat by the phone, and sighed as I fell asleep. I think things got weird again, and I think I know why. He got what He wanted from me, and now He doesn't need me anymore. What a sad and dejected state I am in now because of this! I am torn between calling Him up, telling Him that I love Him, and accepting the consequences. Or never speaking to Him again because as much as it hurts, its best in the long run. Or using Him for sex. This is something I need to work out. It just pains me to have to look at Him hugging His girlfriend (or whatever the hell she is now) and wishing it was me. It's been like this for six months, we've been through everything and every emotion and state of relatonships imaginable, and yet nothing has changed.

I still love Him and He doesn't love me.

Yay, spring break is over! I actually get to interact with other non-imaginary people. (Like several, ok few, college students I spent my spring break at home watching Iron Chef).

When I took my Japanese 110 oral mid term this morning, my professor whipped out this tape recorder to record us as we spoke. She was evaluating us a we spoke to her, so I belive she must be using the tape recorder to amuse herself after class "Uhmm, Smith-san shika kimasendeshita, right?

Saw a squirrel that had no hair on its tail. Seems as though either someone put a pair of clippers to that poor rodent's tail, or perhaps it escaped an attack from some predator (haven't seen too many foxes or bobcats running around on campus latley). It looked exactly like a tall, slim muskrat. Freaky.

Addendum - I remembered that certain animals, mammals and birds most notably, are known to mutilate themselves if they become really sick or distressed. I don't suppose they have depression relief hotlines for cute sylvian rodents do they?
The Frozen North was graced with another beautiful day. temperatures above the all-encompassing 32 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, and no skin-peeling wind to contend with. This doesn't happen much up here, so I'm resisting the urge to pontificate on how the lovely sky looks like a freshly squeegeed windshield, etc. etc. blah blah blah.

Had a rather good day. Uncommonly good, actually. Woke from a good night's sleep (a rarity), ran errands, cleaned up my domicile a bit; I am no longer wading through a high tide of books, papers, and pointy little things. Dinner with friends, and too much coffee made for an enjoyable evening.

This was all before I broke my glasses. Snapped is a better word I suppose; the fuckers just snapped like they were made out of so much sun-baked balsa. I took my specs off to wash them on my shirt, to wash them like I have countless times before without even thinking about it, when they uttered a little *snk* and I was suddenly holding two distinct objects instead of one.

My glasses snapped right below where the bridge connects with the frame for the left lens. I have no idea why the powers that be decided to have them snap in that particular place as my left eye is essentially the only one that works (the right is strictly for decoration, and to see if anyone is about to hit me) and it is nearly impossible to fix a break there. I really liked these frames, too.

I'm currently writing this through generous amounts of scotch tape; it was the only way I was able to keep them together. While I can see without them, extended periods gone without glasses always result in pounding headaches and other skeevy feelings in the eyes and brain (if you wear specs you know what I'm talking about). I really do not have the money to buy a new pair, and I'm also in the North Country. Where am I going to find a good selection of frames? Where am I gonna find some moolah?

Enough bitching about my busted eyewear. I'm off to bed soon, I suppose.

I was having such a good day, too...

My bosses are going out of town on Wednesday, so they want me to work for "around 12 hours" tomorrow.
I don't really mind the idea of working this long, I mean, I love my job (making jewelery), and it's a good working environment, my bosses listen to decent music in the studio, they both are cool folks.
But twelve hours?
I don't even spend twelve hours in any given place if I'm having fun. The only place I spend twelve hours is at home, and that's only if I sleep in before work.
So I'm going to work alot tomorrow, which means I should get alot of sleep tonight.

Let me just let you in on my philosophy on sleep: I hate sleeping.
I feel like sleeping is a waste of time. I could be reading, I could be noding, I could be jacking off, I could be watching fucking television, it's more productive than sleeping.
Sure, my body needs it, and it's necessary, but I'd rather sleep from 4 AM till Noon than from 11PM or Midnight untill 9.
I'm just a night person, and I don't mind working 12 hours once in a while, I just hate the idea of having to get a "decent nights sleep" before hand.

Today Was a Mixed Day

Please let me not take for granted the freedoms provided by America and the Internet and allow me to begin this daylog node by saying...

FUCK YOU Taleban, You Budda-Blasting Pigs!

In case you weren't aware, the Taleban decided to go ahead an blow up two ancient statues of Budda carved into cliffs in the middle of the desert because their existance evidently violated Islamic law. I poop on your laws in the name of freedom, art, and history.

At least the soldiers that were responsible for the actual blowing tried to delay. I guess even the people of Afganistan did not want it done.

People who blow up art because it offends them, scare me.

Precious is Back in Town

My girlfriend came back from NYC today. She was glad to see me. I took her for dinner at one of my local favorites, Pane Vino Dolce. She has loved that resturant in the past, but the Duck she ordered tonight made her gag.

This kind of set the scene for her to get sick and tired. It took awhile to defrost her, but everything turned out alright in the end.

Mono no Hito?

On the way back from the airport my girl and I stopped at Boyton Health Services on the U of MN campus so I could get my health checked. You see, my mother reported to me the other day that she had contracted Mononucleosis; and since she often cooks for us and we share food a lot it is quite possible that I have it too.

In fact, I highly suspected that I may have got it first from my girlfriend because she seemed to have the symptoms far ahead of anyone else. Well, she got checked too but the doctors thought she was negative and instead gave her some stool sample containers to return. They think she may have some strange asian parasite.

I don't care what the Koreans say, you must refridgerate meat! Yes, especially pork!!

To make a short story told long shorter, they ran my blood and found I was negative for mono...but it can take awhile to gestate so I made a doctor's appointment to come back in a couple weeks before I go on spring break to Chicago. This will have been four week of feeling like crap.

Feeling like crap seems to enhance my noding libido, I have found.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I can't even get her to acknowledge that I exist anymore. She won't even let me talk to her. She never talks to me. I just go through life constantly wishing she'd for once reach out to me, and be my friend. Just forgive the fact that I don't act like some super dynamic, alpha male sort of guy. And perhaps appreciate the fact that I just have this huge and uncontrollable desire to be a part of her life, to give her support when she's sad, and to help her out of her lonely existence. I don't know how she sits in her room alone with her computer all the time. It's driving me insane not hearing her sweet voice. Just a late night phone call to just talk. Anything. It brings such peace to my heart when she lets me do that. But everytime, I just can't help it. I just have to keep trying to get a little more than just hearing her voice. I have to ask her to see me, to jump all the way from hating me to being my friend. I don't know how to naturally get there. I don't know how to get the patience to do that.

Is it so disgusting to a girl to have someone in her life who likes her, whether she likes them back or not, but just to have someone to talk to? To hang out with? To spend time with out on the town and live life with? To just take the risk that maybe I am a good friend?

This hurts more than anything, that I can't even say hello to her. And she never says hello to me, either. I wish I could just erase the last 6 months from my mind. Because then I might not feel so incredibly broken.

On a Spring Break trip to Montreal. What a great city, cold though.

Some friends from school and my brother all drove up this morning. We stayed over night at the Holiday Inn Montreal- Midtown. After we got our room, we walked around and had lunch at a good Vietnamese restaurant called “Ann Ma” I think.

After that we visited some large shopping mall on Rue Sherbrooke. Interesting. After exploring some underground tunnels we ended up at McLeans Pub on Peel. Not a lot of business being a weekday but there were a fair amount of people. After a few drinks we stayed for dinner.

I had the, “007” which tasted like it came off the BBQ at my parent’s house. In other words, it was excellent. The one draw back of McLeans is that they do not have darts. Pool, yes. Darts, no.

We all wanted to play darts so the busboy was nice enough to direct us down the street to a Pub which had darts. It turned out to be below “Ann Ma” the place where we had lunch! Small world. We played a few rounds of darts and drank a few rounds of beer. We each won a round so everyone went back to the hotel happy.

Day Two:March 13, 2001

Trip Report - Mt St Helens - May 12, 2001

As referred to elsewhere in my Ski Down Mt St Helens In a Skirt On Mothers Day Node, it fun to ski down St Helens. I decided to skip the mothers day thing this year, as the Melvins were playing in Seattle at 6 pm (!) at night. Which meant for a rather rigerous schedule to squeeze St Helens in.

We left after work friday, trying to dodge I-5 as the traffic built up. We stopped off in Olympia to have a beer and stock up on noodles, then continued to to Woodland, where you take road 503 to Cougar, and then onto Marble Mountain Snowpark.

There is a permit system in place at Mt St Helens now, such as after April 1 and before May 15, permits are $15 per person per day, and $30 for a year. After May 15th, there is additionally a maximum of 50 permits a day issued. The place to get permits is at Jacks Resturant, west of Cougar. Jack is actually a 300lb+ man named Dennis. Who sits on a stool all day and doles out pithy wisdom about climbing St Helens. The two works of advice I heard from him was "wear sunscreen", and to a dazed traveller also heading up the mountain "eat a corn dog".

To my horror, Dennis had sold to the tune of 250 permits that day. Folks, 250 people is a lot of people to have on a mountain, even a (now) tame little mountain like St Helens.We continued on up the road, pulled into the parking lot and bivied under a tree. Sure enough, there were tons of people. All night, in fact, small fleets of subarus roamed in and out of the park. This give us a sum total of about 5 hours of sleep, as we arose with a handful of others at 5 am to try to beat the rush.

The first 2 miles of the hike are on a trail/old logging road, until finally you hit treeline and wander up the Worm Flows ridges. It was a beautiful morning, 60 degrees at 6 AM, with luckily everybody pretty groggy and unwilling to chatter. After the ridge begins, the climb is nothing more than pure drudgery. The views are beautiful, but there is nothing more complicated to do than just putting one foot in front of the other, for about 5,000 feet of elevation gain. The main problem was that when you wanted to stop, as you do, your role changed from one of focused hiking, to one traffic cop for yourself, as you steped out of the way to let the next gung-ho person stomp past you. yuck.

But despite that, I wound up at the top in about 3 1/4 hours, and proceeded to wait for my climbing buddy. The Crater is actually fucking awesome. It is surreal to really see the scope of the explosion, what with the breach on the North side almost level with the surrounding lakes. On the south side, where the only really climbs are, the crater rim is 8,365 feet. On the other side, the rim is something like 4,200 feet. This means that on the North side, the mountain blew out close to a vertical mile of rock. And buried Spirit Lake, which is going to be clogged with trees for 50 more years at least.

So I sat on the ridge and got mildly drunk from my little flask, eating cookies and waiting. There were rows and rows of people doing much the same. Finally my partner arrived, and we got to do the cool part, the boarding down like Gods part.

What took 3+ hours to climb took 15 minutes to descend. The bowls of worm flows are enormous, and there is endless variation. Just glorious fast, complicated snow, with the odd mini-avalanche and random rocks.

The hike out was uneventful, the number of people around having dropped off to almost zero, as we made up so much time in the descent. So we zapped back to Seattle and I took the Vespa down to see Hank Williams III and the Melvins. There is nothing better than going from zillions of people to pure mountain snowboarding to the heaviest band in the world. To red bull and vodka and almost hallucinations, but that's another story.

Hi, Devon. I decided I'd node from the future to let you in on a few things that are going to change once you get to where I (you) am (are) now (then). Today is your first day at E2, and you still haven't read either the Everything FAQ or Everything University. But you will. I was there.

Firstly, don't worry about getting nodes nuked, man. You'll do just fine. As a matter of fact, you will end up asking for the nukes yourself. Weird how that works, eh? I just wanted to tell you about a few things that will happen in the future. In no order of importance:

Gritchka (who will be your first C!, I believe) will be made a god. You will approve of this much. He's a good writer, capable of making you flounder for words and making your own meagre writings seem like dried, crusty dogshit by comparison. But still, you will be impressed by HOW BADLY HE CAN FUCK YOUR HEAD UP BY USING WORDS THAT DON'T REALLY EXIST IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, JUST IN HIS STRANGE HEAD. As far as other noders go, you will get to know panamaus, and even talk to him on the telephone. He will be made an editor, and then a god, and you will approve of both these choices as well. About a month ago (your time) a noder named jaubertmoniker showed up, but you don't know that. You will become close friends with him, call him by his real name, and laugh at his AOL humour. You'll even invite people you know and love to this place. They won't pull an Asamoth, but they won't stay--and that's fine. At least they're part of something, like you are.

You will never know, meet, or speak to sensei, but you will wish you had.

I know you're impressed now by Pseudo_Intellectual, but don't let it go to your head too much: later, you'll meet him in person, share a meal with him, and allow him to pass out on your loveseat. Also, he will play the Bubble Bobble theme on the piano, causing you to laugh a genuinely happy laugh.

About seven months from now, the world trade center will fall. When you see it on the news, shortly after waking up, you will laugh a crazy laugh, and think it's fake. Then you will join your fellows in #everything and cry. But you won't tell anyone. You don't tell them because you're not sure why you're crying. This will happen one day after a friend, someone you knew, will die. You don't know why you cry for that, either. It will take you a long, long time to figure it all out.

You will eventually become confident in your writing skills, and noders will notice you. They will pepper you with praise and kill you with criticism. After a time, you will forget how it hurts to have your incredibly amazing writings ragged on, and you will--after a time--be able to realize that you are a good writer, but not the world's best. Slowly, it will dawn on you that you are getting better at writing.

Despite your loneliness right now--in the next few weeks you'll receive advice from people who just don't seem to care about you, because they don't--you will make fine friends, people who, while you probably wouldn't take a bullet for them, you would most definitely drink malt liquor with. You will learn that nothing is more important than laughter in this place.

You'll get to know dannye just enough to know that he enjoys this place, doesn't fear change and doesn't want anyone to shit on the floor.

You will learn that everything is a family. You will learn that everything is a community. You will fall in love with words and text and screens and bits and bytes. Don't let it get you down; I know you're not there yet, but you will be.

You will open your life up for the people here and they may not love you for it. Maybe they will. But you will love yourself for it.

You will nuke your own XP and your own writeups. You will replace your XP and writeups with worthy copies. You'll see the whole site change with every week that passes. New features will be added, and you will love them all. Controversial writeups will come and go. great noders will leave and the youth will take their place.

Anyway, I was just writing to set your mind at ease a little bit. Take care of yourself, man. You've got a long way to go, but you'll get there.

I'll see you soon.

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