Sleep. Precious, sweet, sleep. Oh how thou hast eluded me...

I have been sleeping quite badly of late. Not a lack of sleep, just not satifying. I have been getting at least 6 hours a night, usually 7, but I still wake up feeling -tired and lately, run down. Just, well, clouded. Mentally.

I tried to resolve this issue by making sure I went to bed properly, doing all those things you should do to make sure you get a good nights sleep. I fall asleep straight away. I wake up at the prescribed time. But I feel like shyte.

Take Saturday for example. Saturday night, had an early night (for me) and kissed my girlfriend goodnight, and went to bed. All was in readiness for a great nights sleep. But then, the council workers decided to start lawnmowing at SIX BLOODY O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. Until 11. And they didn't even do a bloody good job. So that ruined it.

And last night, it was much the same - fell asleep, then woke up and felt like death warmed up.

ANYWAY, Monday brought it's usual delights - screaming customers (see here for the start of the saga, then move through my daylogs), shit fights (again refer to the daylog) and work. At least my lovely girlfriend and I had some "quality time" - I love er soooo much - and the gym was great - legs and back exercises.

Of note was the e-mail I received - offering me the world (you know the type). About 1/1,000,000th of a second before I hit the delete key, I saw that it was from a friend of mine - on closer inspection, I saw that they were using the dodgy "You can earn $$$$1 million in 2 weeks" as a title to the e-mail WARNING of the spam value of such mails. *sigh* How stupid can people get?. They received a severe reprimand via abusive e-mail from me.

Oh.   Mah.   Gawd.

I just got another* crossword puzzle accepted for publication. This one's called "Ill Communication", and more than that I can't tell you because I got paid for all the rights! Thank God, thank God, it wasn't just a fluke.

It only took a few hours for the editor to accept my puzzle. This fast turnaround is addictive. Can you believe that some major publications still only take submissions via snail mail?

I'm in touch with a buyer's agent who will help me through buying a condo in the next couple of months. There are really only two homes I'm looking at -- one is spartan but well-kept, near work, and quite affordable. The other is further from work, a bit more luxurious, and priced accordingly. It's within a mile of the Alafia River, so I'm going to look very carefully at flood zones and the historical flood lines. (Can you say "hurricanes"? I knew you could!)

I'm going to help the Alliance for Affordable Housing and the library by playing matchmaker. Buying a home is the single greatest investment of most people's lives. It is also, I think, the single greatest time of need for information. And yet the Alliance instructor wasn't talking about the library and the library hasn't told them what services they offer. So I'm gonna play Pimpin' Cupid and get their heads together. Hey, it's the least I can do -- they're probably going to help me with a forgivable loan to cover most closing costs.

Waking Dreams

this is now
this is me and mine
in time no time lost inside
looking for the jack of hearts
farscapes rolling by
people dumb with apathy
endless lines of faceless monks
lives untouched by the tears of god
so I go
following the black cat
evil eyed angel that knows
where it's at
source of the beat
swinging a hot engine out of the city lights
this pulse of life
lust and strife in the hearts of men
that watch me as I run
dark eyed by my side
running to die
running to lie
in warm mexican sands,
where the walls are thin
and the sun shines forever

I visited my son in child care, he was in beautiful sleep. He woke briefly then after nursing fell back into bliss.

Now, this afternoon, I feel a certain loss of place. The morning was busy. I frantically accomplished a list of tasks. I planned with a conspirator my home network. My hardware requirements have been ordered through E-store. A netgear network starter kit and Xircom RealPort2 ethernet 10/100 PC card. The network kit will help me turn my desktop into a server with a network card and 5 port hub with switcher - along with some handy software. The PC card will plug a laptop into this new network. Until the hardware arrives, its all hypothetical! However, without the network there may still be a BBQ.

My conspirator replies "Cool :)".

With the tasks complete, my certain loss of place is a feeling which has me drifting, waiting for something tactile to grasp. Even grasping for the right words to describe this feeling. Action beckons.

Well, I was unsure about whether or not I wanted to do this whole Day Log thing, but it seems like such a good idea. I've tried to keep a diary so many times, but I always forget and then feel like I have to play "catch-up" and write everything about all the days that I skipped. So, I'm not going to do that here. Here goes:

Today wasn't very exciting. I woke up late and went to play flute in pep band. In the Fall, I play for Carnegie Mellon University's Kiltie Band, and in the Spring, when it's not football season, we sometimes play for the basketball games. Today, we were playing Brandeis University. I left during the girl's game, so I don't know what happened, but we beat the guys pretty severely. Usually, the audience ignores the band, but they were all excited today and actually clapped along with us and stuff.

In the evening, I went to orchestra rehearsal. We're playing Lollapalooza by John Adams and Orchestra Suite From The Plow That Broke The Plains by Virgil Thompson. Both of them are fairly obscure, modern American pieces. We don't sound so good right now, since we just started rehearsal.

On my way out from rehearsal, the conductor asked me out. It was flattering, although I'm dating someone. I was really surprised, because I thought he was gay. Oops..

Other than that, my day has been spent engrossed in E2. But it's my second day, so it's not surprising that I'm a little obsessed. Maybe I'll actually accomplish something productive tomorrow.

Cops can be such assholes, sometimes.

*yawn* My day started at 6:00 PM yesterday.

6:00
I picked up Bob and headed off to the mall to gather supplies for the night's festivities. Hit up the dollar store and got the usual, 4 glowsticks, a couple packs of gum. We headed down to CVS to get some jolly ranchers. Mission accomplished. We drove around for an hour before we could pick up Mike, and head off to the party. Picked up Mike. Headed off to the party.

8:30
Reached the location of the rave, which is at Level, a new club in Pittsburgh. We park and walk down to the entrance to find 7 police cars, drug sniffing dogs, and a paddy wagon across the street. As we waited, we saw the cops collect the ID of the entire security team and the promoters. After that, they left. We got inside and danced our asses off. When inside, we found out that the party was split up. Half of the DJs (including who I really wanted to see, DJ Venom) were at the paintball arena on the other side of the city. Now let me tell you about the paintball arena. It is the last resort venue for parties in Pittsburgh. It's got walls covered in paint and a floor of dirt, so it's not really all that fun. We opted to stay in the nice, cool, well-lighted club.

12:36
A couple hours pass, along with some recrational pharmesuitcals, and we were partying like none other. The vibe was good and so was the music.

3:47
I was dancing to a really good set by Thomas Michael, and then the music fades out. Some pig stands in front, letting us know that the fire marshall was shutting the party down. Everyone groans and starts moving out. We, on the other hand, went upstairs where the party was still going on. We got a good five minutes of dancing in, before the music stopped as well. *sigh*. We collected some people, and started mozying on downstairs. One girl had one of those LED skywriter spinny things, and she made it say "LAME" and started spinning it around. Heheh. We decided to leave and we get outside and it's chaos.

The cops have the street blocked off, the drug sniffing dogs are going nuts and the cops are being real dicks. There was some serious police shoving which was really fuckin unneccsary. We left and went to someone's house. We were waiting for a friend to show up, and he shows up, and so does about 25 people which we didn't know. Oh well. Everyone was pretty cool and we chilled there. There is when we found out that the bust over at the paintball arena was alot worse.

Aparrently, some kid screamed "PIGS!" at the cops. Three cops chased this kid down, slammed him into the pavement, and arrested him. The cops also took their dogs around the parking lot. If the dogs started barking and they couldn't get into the car, the police impounded it right on the spot. The party over there also got busted at around 2:30.

At 8:00 this morning, Three Rivers Stadium was to be imploded to make way for the new PNC Park. We all decided to make our way over there to have the perfect end to the night. I fell asleep for all of 7 minutes, and in that time period, the extra 25 people left. That was wierd.

6:50
We drive back into the city and find a nice parking lot about 10 blocks away from Point State Park. Man oh man, it was cold. We got to the park, found a good viewing spot and chilled there. Literally. We stood there and played spot the raver. We took pictures of wierd shit like a dog coming out of some guy's ass.

8:00
Exactly on time, a series of booms sounding alot like fireworks started going off.

boom
BOOM
boom.
boom.
boom!
BOoM!

The stadium crumbled like a sandcastle and everyone was amazed. Cue mad dash to car.

Every mercedes-driving yuppie piece of shit was in the city. It took 45 minutes to get out of the parking garage. Sheet, man. I dropped off everyone at home.

10:00
My dad was the only person home. He was also the only member of my family who didn't have any idea where I was last night. I walk in, reeking of smoke, very cracked out, tired as hell and he's like, "Hey! I guess you went down to see the implosion. How was it?" I told him it was good and went to my room. In my head I laughed due to the fact that it's been 16 hours since I've last been home and he hasn't a clue.

10:15
SLEEEEEEEEEEP.

Update: According to the local news, the owner of the club will be fined $430,000. The club had 1,100 people over its rated capacity. The paintball arena had 400 people over it's rated capacity. Both buildings are shut down until further notice.

well let's try this again... weekend come and gone back in the saddle again.

Saw Khalil last night... he says he found a job making 10,000 lire an hour in some factory. If you want to know how the other half lives come to Italy in a Morrocan's skin and you might be able to infer what it's like to be Messicano or African in the states. Anyways I told him we were going to make some $$$ together. He said the market was open, chocolato is pretty damn cheap here (about $2 a gram) and we sould be a good team. He can open the door while I know all the smoking Americans in town.

March looks like there's gonna be some good music to see in Italy for a change. Tortoise,Dandy Wharhols, John Ambercrombie, Dave Douglas and PJ Harvey. I saw PJ here a few years ago in Bologna, it was outdoors at some fairground. She's playing in Milano in a club.

Kristi saw Ani Difranco in Germany last Friday, so I'm sending her Living in Clip today. The last two days have been beautifu and sunny, about 55 degrees during the day, yesterday I went to Parco Valentino with some Americans i know and we played frisbee, while the Italians gawked and stared. They just don't have a clue.

Oh, PS I also recieved another 70,000 lire multa for riding the tram without a ticket. I pasted it into my scrapbook with all the rest and this morning I was back on the tram agin with out a ticket.

My boss just told me I get a week's vacation in Hanover, Germany when we pack up this road-show and head of to the Cbit tech trade show!!! Yaya company payed travel!!!

13:18

Hello!

I was away for the weekend in Kuhmo, where I did nothing specific. I just slept. (A weekend almost without computers. I'm probably getting insane. Or maybe I'm becoming a Bad Example.)

I released XMMS InfoPipe 1.1 last night. It probably rocks. (At least the much-requested file permission thing is there...)

Today... well, today another period started in the university. Coding environments, UIs, and stuff like that. (And I'm not making through the couple of courses that started before Christmas. Three-period system leads to exhaustion. Exhaustion leads to procrastination. And excessive procrastination... leads to suffering. =)

(Not that many sane people consider it possible to get through the institution in 4-5 years. I probably won't. =)

::sigh::

Today's other program to do: I need to go and buy MechWarrior 4 (it fii-ii-iiinally came to the stores here!) and go pick up my copy of the book I ordered (if it has come).

I'm sort of hungry now...

18:49

Okay, I bought MW4, and it, indeed, rocks. I was like a fish in the water, but button configuration needs to be checked out...

I have a headache of sorts...

20:33

Ah HA! As I said (but not in this daylog), the book I got was Applied Cryptography. I took a quick look at it. And almost immediately I figured out an effective data-hiding mechanism:

  1. Write the plaintext on paper.
  2. Place the paper on a flat surface.
  3. Place the book on top of it.

Now, no one can guess where the heck you're keeping the sensitive information, and once they figure out, they'll be unable to move the book because it's so damn huge.

For maximum security, place the paper on the surface text-side down and cover the book title (less smart people might figure out you're up to something!)

20:51

Slashdot sez Deja got bought by Google. My favorite search engine + my favorite news archive = my dream come true! =) (I just rejoice here. Didn't felt like posting a worthless yap of joy to Slashdot...)

00:42

(Philosophical way to end the day?)

I ate some noodles, and noticed one chicken-related oddishness. Why the word "kana" (chicken) is always emphasised in every food package I've seen recently?

I also tried video capture under Linux, cursed at crashing QuickTime->MPEG converters, and so on.


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today & recently by y.t.: Safari Zone Warden Markus Kajo Naurun Paikka Dingo Engine movie

14:15

I'm sorry if this writeup is incoherent, the explanation for that is forthcoming...

Last night I went to bed promising to myself I was going to enjoy this week as much as possible. My workdays are usually spent thinking "I wish it would be weekend already" and when Friday comes it turns into Monday way too fast. Lately I've begun to think about the all-too-short duration of life and how I shouldn't spend 4 out of 7 days hoping they would be over soon.

So, this morning I got up feeling enthusiastic and ready to both work hard and do lots of constructive and fun things in the evening.
While rushing to catch the bus, I remember I forgot my ibuprofein at home. Well, I only need them once every few weeks, so statistically i'd be safe.

Oh yes, you can guess what I'm experiencing at the moment.

Migraine.

The one day I forgot my pills from my backpack. Dear old Mr. Murphy never sleeps on the job. A young geek ready to take on the world is once again crushed by those damn capillaries.

So currently I'm sitting at my desk, patiently waiting for the clock to hit 16, battling with the pain and trying to get my thoughts organized. No, The Company™ doesn't offer any free medication to its employees.
Then again, my migraine attacks aren't nearly as severe as they are with some people: I don't puke or pass out, although there are times when it has been close. But today ocular migraine is involved, and that is downright nasty. Pain in the eyes feels.. alien.

Despite my cheese'n'whine, the day hasn't been all that bad. I will do my best to regain some of my initial enthusiasm once I've annihilated this condition. There's so much to do and so damn little hours of spare time in a day...


23:44

Got home, took drugs (ibuprofein that is) and slept the damn migraine off. It was the hardest attack I've had in a long while, most likely because I couldn't take the medication early enough. I still feel like I've been hit by a truck but a good night's sleep has never failed to make me feel 100% operational again.
And to think most of the people who have never experienced this think migraine is "just a headache"...

Friday - played hooky from work. Did nothing all day, read a book, Terry Goodkind's Stone of Tears, a Sword of Truth novel. I had been fighting some germs inside my body all week so figured what the hell. Plus, I had gone to a Face to Face show the night before, and didn't feel like being responsible and being tired all day. That night I went to a dance (lame!) with some friends. Bad 80's music for most of the night, then when we asked for something a little more current, got treated to one of Madonna's new songs from her new cowboy CD. Bleah.

Saturday was much better. Made a booty call on M. that was completely yummy and delicious. I brought my dinner over there cause I hadn't eaten in hours and I'm being really picky about food right now - I only want brown rice and vegetables. And maybe cheesecake. Anyway, started nuking it as we were chatting and then I looked in his eyes and kissed him. I have missed him so damn much. I stopped long enough to turn off the microwave. After I left his house, I went dancing at Orpheus. I had a good time.

Sunday was one of those days. I had no energy to spare. I wanted to do nothing. My house needs cleaning, my car needs to go into the shop, I had no idea where my ATM card is, and what did I do? Nothing. I didn't answer the phone, I didn't call anyone, and I just read the rest of my book. I hate these days. I can't tell if I'm doing something destructive or something necessary for my emotional well being. If I really think about it, I'd say it's destructive. But on the other hand, maybe I just need to be alone sometimes. I think the next time I'm having one of these days, even if the weather is bad, I will take the dog on a really long walk.

I never thought it would be quite like this.

I ate my last bowl of macaroni and cheese early this morning. I looked in my cupboards, I dont have anything else left to eat. I got a phone call around midnight from a close friend, who apparently got tired of watching (or hearing about) me starving to death, so it looks like I'm going to have some groceries.

In the past 24 hours, I have logged over 8 hours of non-stop practice on my turntables. I am trying to pioneer two new genre's. In the process of going through my record box tonight, I realized that most of my music dosen't really fall into traditional "House, Trance, Breakbeat, Jungle" constraints... There's allways a cute twist to the music I play.

So I retrieved my mental fishing pole, and brainstormed and fished for nouns until I caught enough of them to munge together the name of a genre or two.

And then it made sense! What I had before me in my box could either be classified as Nintendo Breakbeat, for the obvious video-game sounding loops and hip hop style breaks, almost "Hard" (ie: hard trance, hard house), but not quite.

For the second genre, I seemed to mix quite a lot between what would be considered disco house, and... here's the quirk, jungle. Yeah! Jungle. It actually sounds really cool! So for this second genre, I decided to name it Boom Boom Narcotic Disco House, and with that, I guess I created two genre's that no one had ever heard of before. And I had a head start.

Every time I've mentioned Nintendo Breakbeat to someone today to explain the concept and my style, I'd see someone's eyes brighten and open up, and look at me and say "Wow! That's way cool!" or something of that extent. So I definitely think that if I could release a 4-5 CD set of music under this style that I could attempt to annex this corner of music kinda like how Anabolic Frolic did with the Happy to be Hardcore series.

In my time of trouble, of not having enough money for food, at least i've had musical inspiration. I can get lost in the music. I can become invisible, I can hide from the world, and I can live in that finite moment. Time slows for the duration of while I am spinning. I become one with the music. I feel so passionate about this.. I should book an event sometime soon.

I hung out with a guy named Joe from Sendmail into the wee hours of the night along with my buddy Corey. We rambled and ranted about sendmail as a potential employer, some of the things that Joe had done, some of the things that I had done (I allways love talking about the days when I worked at Hotmail and Napster.. those were the days.. *sigh*) and basicly geeked out.

I got to take a shower with my girlfriend re tonight =) She's so wonderful. I really couldn't ask for more in a girlfriend, life partner, or whatever she truely may be. I think she's an angel. She's kind, loving, sweet, adorable, open minded, a divergent thinker, passive like me, she's... she's... She's a Cancer! Enough said! It was meant to be. I am so happy that she has been staying with me lately. I need her here. She is my guardian angel. Waking up next to her is reinstilling my will to live, I feel happy, safe, reassured. I feel satisfied. That's a pleasant change. So what if the road underneath my feet is crumbling away one dirt clod at time, because re taught me something special-- without having to say or do anything. She taught me how to fly.

Anyways, it's 3:09am, I really should be getting some sleep.
I have a lot of stuff to do today, namely freaking out about not having a job. Gotta pay the bills eventually. I need to follow up with all of those people I wrote emails to last thursday. That and follow up all of my friendly employment leads. I am crossing my fingers and betting the farm on this one. I must acquire a job by wednesday, or else. I can do it. I really think I can do it. *grin* Maybe I'm not so sure on that. I have my doubts, but affirming that I can do it at least will get me in the right direction. =)

Oh, and another thing, I've been wondering... if PepsiCo had an everything2 account, and said "Be Young. Have Fun. Drink Pepsi." into the chatterbox, wouldn't that really be the literal definition of nodevertising?

I can't believe I just spent 2 hours writing 3 nodes. The crazy links this writeup should explain that.
Wow.
Sleep. Sleep now. I node in my dreams.

Ok, so I haven't slept yet... I was busy writing ghetto nostalgia... i wrote one for the homeys. Now I'm going to try sleeping for real. It's 7:12am. I can see the sun. Ugh.


Afternoon Update:
5:53pm: I was contacted via ICQ by a random stranger, after some chit chat, probing, and inquiry it turned out that he was a frequent visitor to my journal (see my homenode for more information) and that he wanted to help out with my food problems.

He lives in another state, far, far, far away, but he bought and ordered pizza for me, to be delivered to my door. Wow. When it arrived, I signed as if I was him as instructed, and took the food inside and ate.

Free pizza tastes yummy.
Pizza purchased by complete random strangers off the internet for you, delivered to your door, tastes even better.

Compassion. The chaos surrounding my life might possibly be pulling a 180, for the better-- back in the right direction. I still am unemployed, but I have leads. Is it luck?

I still haven't slept yet, so that brings my total time awake and concious (concious! ha! i am me but i am not complete) to 35 hours. I need to get sleep soon. I'm visually hallucinating out of the corner of my eyes. My stomach hurt pretty bad this morning, but after smoking two bowls of White Rhino Jr. (vitamins t, h, and c) and that solved my stomach pains.

I searched around my apartment, and managed to find my checkbook. What a relief. See, things are looking better by the minute.

Now if I could only convince my brain that getting a goods night sleep is just as important as noding, I'd be set.

Sleep. More like full body shutdown.
my office is in shambles! the MIS guy said he would be coming in this weekend to move my furniture so the wiring guys can get to my wallplate. i guess i assumed incorrectly (ass, u, me) that the work would be done over the weekend and my furniture would be back in place. alas, no. my file cabinet is on the wrong wall, my desk is pulled out, and between the two i have about one foot of room to sit. fortunately i'm thin.

today i think i may try to finish up the Rosette-forming Crassulaceae project (with Orostachys). i may be the only person who cares about the minutiae of the Crassulaceae family, but oh well. perhaps i'll create a succulent geek.

the man finally comes home this weekend. he says he'll not be gone so much lately, but i will believe it when i see it. it's not that i don't believe him... i don't believe his employer.

for now, i must work. more later...
YAY! it's done! the Rosette-forming Crassulaceae is done enough to be noded. All the primarily rosette-forming genera are included.

Work... feh, I'll catch up on that later.
When your love life is in ruins, the weekends just suck. My children were at grandma's this weekend, so my wife and I had the weekend to ourselves. Of course we argued, about nothing of course, and the weekend was shot.

I wish I could move away, to a different state, to another place, without doing even more harm than staying does. I told my wife last night that I would stay, that I wouldn't move to Austin, TX this weekend. Why? There is no marriage left, no intimacy, no emotional involvement.

Yet another day. I love my job, and I dread going home in the evenings.
Are there any Washington, D.C. Everythiningians out there?

Staid up till 2 am playing FFIX. Not any sooner, 'cause it's way past cool, but not any later, because I do like to wake up occasionally. So hey if you get spoilered by this daylog, sosumi.

I spent forever getting the fight scene right. Queen Brahne was most impressed. Then I found out about her unpleasant personality, so there goes time wasted. ;p

Before I came to work today I got as far as Lindblum Grand Castle. In Dali when I saw the conveyor belts I was all like, "Oh, hey, it's the golem problem!" and it was really neat to see Garnet saying the same thing later.

When I get out of work I'm going to hope the foundry is ready for bronze casting yet. Grr-bah!

Update: Constarnation! Teacher's gone for the whole week. Ah well. I put that extra hour to use getting as far as Gizamaluke's Grotto, or whatever it's called. Yeah, sure I have reports for Biblical Literature to write, but... ;p

Even as I sat down to write this daylog I am told, “I want apple juice Mommy.” So perhaps I will not have much time, as usual. Can’t…seem…to…rub…two…words…together…without…interruption.

I have been meaning to node but not able to manage the time. I have a ton of wedding gifts I was supposed to wrap and have sent out. I am supposed to be wrapping a gift for a friend who is about give birth (any second). I am supposed to be wrapping housewarming gifts for my sister who moved to Chicago a few days ago and must be standing in her very own apartment right now. Thinking of this reminds me of the first place that was ever really my own, and the giddy lightheaded feeling I had when I flicked on the light to behold the miracle of electricity. Somehow, getting an electric bill in my own name made me feel more like an adult than buying the house did. I was twenty-one. So is my sister. I miss her already but now I have a great excuse to actually make it to Chicago.

I celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday on the 29th of January. It was not really anything too amazing, though I don’t know what I keep expecting. Brass band, sunlight, Godiva chocolate, a private, romantic dinner with my husband… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I really don’t expect that. But I would not turn it down either. I got money instead, which is not bad. It isn’t a lot of money, but somehow, having folding bills in my wallet makes me feel more at ease. I hate having that conversation that goes, ”Honey, can I have a small sum of money which I pledge to spend on something important and perhaps even beneficial to you.” It is not his fault that I don’t have a paying job. I have chosen to stay home and mother my children. I remember the suffocated feeling I had when I was working. I remember looking out the window in the middle of a shift and forcing myself to stay in the chair and not bolt right out the door to frolic with the squirrels. And my husband is not really the cash ogre I just made him out to be. I will not deny that we are on a very tight budget. Fortunately I am not enamored with shiny new things. I dream of art supplies, canvas and paints, wire and batting, floss and needle. I dream good speakers, a CD burner, a coffeepot, fantastic kitchen knives and pots that don’t stick. (Wait, that stuff is shiny…)

I am waiting to move. This waiting takes up a lot of energy. It feels like Hans will never be ready with his house. I am very used to waiting. Waiting to turn eighteen so I could move out of the house. Waiting to see Jay, sometimes six months, sometimes nine months, each of us in a different state, writing frantic love letters and breathing heavy into the phone. Waiting for the babies to come, each of them way over due. Waiting to move.

Looking at all these books (forty boxes moved in and about sixty will move out). I jokingly told Jay last time we moved that I would not haul his Iron Maiden up one more flight of stairs. So now, where we had seven crates of albums, we have whittled to four, mainly jazz and blues, children’s and classical with some David Bowie, B52’s and Kate Bush.

I chopped off a foot and a half from my hair. Another thing I have to do is get it in the mail. I am donating it to Locks of Love an organization that makes wigs for kids who have lost their hair to chemotherapy. My head is much lighter. I kept some of the hair for myself, with the intention of making a doll. It is the hair I grew through two pregnancies, thick and strong and smelling of lavender. Now it is in a box. Katie was in the bathroom with me when I cut off the big braid. When it came off in my hand I made a sort of involuntary gasp and Katie said, “Mommy, you broke your hair.” She was rather alarmed. I can not say if I like it or not. I forgot that under all this weight my hair is pretty wavy, so I am not used to it yet.

I went snowboarding yesterday.

Unfortunately, my tailbone fell off.

Then I went skiing.

Adam, Sheena, Mike, and Stacey somehow convinced me to give up my trusted skis and take up an evil snowboard for the day. After taking many minutes of my precious time to carefully bungee cord my skis to the roof of Mike’s car, when we arrived at the ski resort I was talked into renting a snowboard and taking my chances on the bunny hill.

The rope tow was the biggest challenge. After a lifetime of skiing, trying to face forward while the rest of me is facing sideways just felt wonky, and I was prone to try and correct my twisted stance and, for my trouble, landing on my afore mentioned tailbone. In the midst of tiny children wearing crash helmets speeding down an almost flat hill, I was heard squeaking such lines as “Ah! My bum!” and “Fuck me, that hurt!”

About a half hour after the pain began, I enrolled in a beginner’s lesson for snowboarders from the Pfizer party. There was a class of about ten or so. Sheena and Stacey joined me. As we were heading up the hill for our first practice run, another instructor took us three aside and said he’d give us some personal help. I thought ”wow, we must be pretty bad.” But as it turned out, he was just a horny teenager who wanted to talk about smoking weed and having sex. We indulged him in most of his questions, exchanging amused looks over his head. It was interesting.

I later switched to my skis, reveling in the familiar tightness of the boots and the sure handhold on each pole as opposed to thin air. Took a few runs with Mike while Adam and Sheena fought in the lodge. Stacey was spent, so she volunteered to be the audience for Mike and I. We left around 7:30pm and made the long trip to the nearest McDonalds to refuel after a day’s worth of strenuous, painful exercise.

The ride home went fast. Mike smoked two bowls by his lonesome self - everyone else had had enough by that point of the day. Sheena and I were the only two who withheld from that particular activity throughout the adventure. I don’t trust my brain to function properly in a life and death situation such as snowboarding on ice and skiing down black diamonds. No thanks.

I called Aaron as soon as I got home. We talked for a bit, and then I went to bed. I slept with an ice pack on my ass. It was cold, but numbness is better than pain.

Today was uneventful. Went to Subway for lunch and had my usual six inch-turkey on-wheat-with-just-tomatoes-and-lettuce, yes-I’m positive-I don’t want anything else Mrs. Sandwich-Maker-lady.

Now I am home with a tremendous craving for Milk Duds or chocolate covered something. I was too lazy to stop at the gas station and pick some up. Now I am paying the price. My stomach shall not be satisfied with anything less than gratuitous sugar and never-ending fat. I’m surprised I can still fit into my clothes these days.

I'm thinking of making a One man's journey to keep his country out of recession node.

Today I ordered the three Pain CDs (note that I already had all the MP3s, I just want to support the band- and rip them in 160kbps). When we ordered pizza last night I tipped the Pizza Dude THREE DOLLARS when one was standard. At fast food places I've started to only take what I need- if I'm eating there I won't put a plastic top on my drink or use a straw. Also I've been growing braver and braver torwards bargaining prices with store managers (I usually keep the economic rant to a minimum).

REMEMBER: EVERY LAST DOLLAR COUNTS


On another note someone has been crazy enough to relaunch ScourExchange (aka one of the most notorious pirating file sharing systems). Let the good times roll!

My luck. On the day I decide I need to talk to the VP of my division of the company, he's out of town. This would mean I'm forced to wait until he returns before I can voice my concerns.

Don't you hate it when you have your thoughts all well placed, and you find you have to wait to deliver them? They always seem to scatter during that time. Damn.

I remember when I used to like working here. I worked with a really great team, and we got stuff done. Now that two of my supervisors have left, I'm stuck with a lot of frustration, a bit too much sarcasm directed at me, and thoughts on how to escape to a better place. I feel like I'm losing the love I once had for my job. And that's a shame, because I truly like what I do.

Anyway, today is another fairly quiet day, and I'm recovering from this past weekend's Whiz-Bang fun. That weekend was one of the most fun I have had in my entire life. We even have evidence to prove it. Nyah.

Lunch Log: I skipped lunch today. I'm not hungry. Too pissed off.

Talk about being invisible...

I might as well have hibernated in a hole and stayed there for the entire winter. Such "blahness" in a person cannot sustain the motivation required to live on and attempt to enjoy the day. It only hinders it. The day will end, and the waves will only flood my blood vessels - it won't bring me anything.

I now welcome being stranded on an island. I speak on this part of the world, but no one hears me. My protests, arguments and rationale are invisible even to intelligent beings.

I'm drowning in an ocean of self-pity and personal inadequacies.

I might as well burn my bridges, bury myself and just die already.

Talk about a very bad day, indeed.

Oh.....does the suffering ever end?

It's that time again! Time for lambda68's "pity me, my life is awful" writeups. I was so close, I thought, to going out with the Girl of my dreams, it was great. But lo! Today I discover that the high point of her day was hearing that I didn't like her anymore! The high point! Ahhh...the heady feeling of failure..again. And to add insult to injury, she actually never was interested in me at all! Whoopee!

Kira Simone, if you read this, may you roast in the lowest cess-pit of Hades for all of this.
'Course, I don't think she even knows what e2 is.

Other than that my weekend was painfully dull, and I think it's probably a foreshadow of the week. Soujirou is at an artsy camp thing, along with many of my other non-e2 friends.

Things better get better. They've got nowhere to go but up.

I just finished The Longest Journey. It was so great. I missed classes because of it, and may fail a test. It was worth it though. I got so involved in it that I kind of lost track of the rest of my life.

Some instances of my obsessive game playing: Ben didn't want to call because he knew I would be playing while he was talking; D said that I don't react to things the way I normally do when I am playing, so he didn't want to joke around with me; I was supposed to be writing a paper and a case and studying for two tests this weekend but all I did was play the game. Damn. Lucky I did not grow up in an environment where crack was readily available.

Now I am very busy... I have to catch up on all the things I put off while playing. I have to clean up my room, it is covered with clean and dirty laundry , papers, a bunch of cups and mugs, photos disks, pens, shopping bags and books. I just ignored everything while playing; Now I can see it all and it looks like a madhouse. I have a long, long night ahead of me.

No regrets. It was fun. Now I have to pay for that fun.

It happened again...

I talked to my best friend from highschool, Ronny, yesterday.
He's going to be a father in 5 months. The woman to which he has planted his seed, already had 4 children.
His twin, Randy, is getting married in September.
I've been out of touch with them for a year and this hits me all at once.

I will soon be the last single person I know.
*sigh*

1:13am

Today was a long day. First a quiz in Japanese, then we spent the rest of the class doing the same thing over and over again (introductions). I still don't remember the words. I won't remember them until I sit down and write them out 20 times. That's just the way I learn that kind of stuff.

Work was exhausting as well. I had to get something critical done as soon as I showed up, which was frustrating. Then my boss inquired about another project I've been working on, thinking that it was already done. So I told him that it wasn't done, but it would probably be in a couple of days. I doubt that will happen, but it's what I've been telling him for the past week anyway. So I worked on that the rest of the day.

At least staying busy makes the day go by quick. Then right about time to go home, the boss decides to do a software upgrade on one of our core applications in a production environment. So I was there an extra two hours. We hit a snag with an interface that was written by one of the other programmers, and since he wasn't there we decided to revert the system back, and go home. That's not the first time we've wasted time on a spontaneous decision to upgrade.

I was reading a writeup under depression today by GirlsDontLikeMe and it had a good message. It basically says what I've been reading and hearing about all along. You have to have a positive attitude to be attractive and open to meeting new people. Being depressed sounds like a good idea to get sympathy and attention, but it just won't work. Nobody wants to deal with someone who's depressed.

On another note, I was having fun burning CD-R's to clear some space off of my drive. It's a 60G drive and I still managed to fill it with stuff. I was burning some episodes of Jackass and the CD took 35 minutes when the software was telling me it was burning at 4x. That's not right. So I take the CD out of the CD-R drive, put it in my DVD drive to test it and it won't read. I'm frustrated, but just for kicks I put it back in the CD-R drive to see if it will read it, and it pukes. I hate it when this stupid CD-R drive does this. It goes into an infinite loop in the firmware trying to figure out what kind of CD it is. It sits there blinking it's light incessantly until I reboot. I have to reboot because pressing the eject button does nothing and this disc has now monopolized the drive.

I wanted to try to get more data moved off tonight, but it's getting late and I need to get up at around 9am tomorrow to go to work.

Thought for the day:

Why doesn't someone make CD-R software that writes the CD, then upon completion of the burning process, verifies that it can read the data back? That way, I can safely delete the data from my hard drive when the process completes.

The rain is tap-tapping on the roof of my camper

It's been raining for four days now. I've only really noticed it at night when the rhythm lulls me to restful slumber. I listen to the drops dancing to the music of the night. ra-ta-ta-ta, ra-ta-ta-ta The wet percussionists drown out the harsh sounds of the highway close by. I can almost hear paradiddles, the larger drops providing the accents.
The beat is calling to me, beckoning me to come outside and join in the song. ra-ta-ta-ta, ra-ta-ta-ta
Alas, I must not follow my whim this night. The family waits for me to turn out the light so they may go to sleep.

I will content myself with dancing in my dreams as the steady beat of the rain keeps time.

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