Am I really creating the first day log of today? That's cool. And for some reason, I just assumed that all the day log nodes just existed and people added writeups to it. But, hey, you learn something new every day.

So, this has been the beginning of what promises to be a completely unproductive weekend. I woke up around 1:30 today, didn't actually get up and get dressed until after 3, and didn't start doing anything until 5:30. Then, I made some phone calls, bought airplane tickets to Atlanta, ate dinner and then played poker with some people from my boyfriend's fraternity.

I've never played poker for money before. In fact, I would have to say that I've never really played very much poker in the past. Needless to say, I lost pretty quickly, which is why I am upstairs writing this node, instead of downstairs, taking people's money away. But, I did learn a bunch of new games. Did you know that there are about a hundred million variants of poker? So, we played Seven Card Stud, Baseball (which is like Seven Card Stud except 3s and 9s are wild and you get an extra card for every 4, and you have to pay a quarter for every 3 you are dealt), Challenge (a terrible, excruciatingly boring game, but one where I won most of the money that I eventually lost), My Guts (a good game because it moves pretty quickly), something about Queens that I don't remember the full name of, and probably a few others. They play pretty low stakes here, so I only lost 5 dollars, and it wasn't my money to begin with. All the same, I've had enough. Too many people downstairs, being too loud and making me claustrophobic by hovering over my shoulder.

I didn't write a day log yesterday, so I'll say a few words about it. I gave my first lecture ever yesterday. It was for the class that I am a TA for. I don't know the full title of the course, but it has something to do with Data Structures, and it's in Java. The professor was out of town, so I gave a lecture about word search puzzles. The class is 50 minutes long, and I ran out of material to talk about after 25 minutes, but no one ever minds if class ends early... :-)

It got sunny in the afternoon so I tried to take te Robobuggy out to take pictures of shadows, but as I was pushing it up the hill, the program crashed. I noticed because it stopped responding to the remote control. Since there's no video output, I had to take it all the way back up to the lab to figure out what was wrong with it. I still don't know what the exact problem was, but the program had frozen, not crashed. Hmm..

By far the most exciting part of yesterday was that I got an email from Maja Mataric. She's the director of the Robotics Labs at University of Southern California, and her research is primarily about multi-robot controlm which I'm very interested in. I read a bunch of her papers last semester and her work seemed awesome. Anyways, she sent me email saying that she's intersted in my joining her group if I decide to go to USC, and she would provide funding for me and she wants to call so we can talk about it over the phone. She's so hardcore, and she sent me email!!!!!!!!

On a totally unrelated note, I've noticed a trend in the things I node about. Most of my writeups are about:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
feminism
Judaism or Israel
I just think it's interesting beause if you asked me what things characterize my life, I guess I would have answered "Judaism" and maybe"feminism", but Buffy was kind of a surprise. Well, at least E2 is helping me to learn about myself. :-)

Stoning while node. "To he who looks askance at Jesse Jackson's fathering a love child: Have you seen a woman?"

  • Dude, yer baggin' on the Rev, but let me ask you: have you seen a woman, dude?
    Check it out. They're like men, but totally, totally different. You put your nose on a woman, it's just warm and different. They have a lot of parts. There's a part on the front, where their neck meets the collarbone, there's a little dip there below where the adams apple is on a man. Mmmm. Unbelievable.
    There's a part behind the ear. It's just behind the earlobe. Incredible! Their backs are smooth, totally without hair--some vestigial little sprouts, just protohairs, just enough to buzz your lips if you run your lips just a few millimeters above the skin, from say the bottom to the top of the spine.
    Their heads are different from ours. The nose is smaller, the temples are just--just something else. Their eyes have a magnetic dimension that ours lack: you peek at one, it's almost commanding your attention to return. At the same time, it's kind of a fearful experience: on some cellular level, your body knows that it's a trap to look in there, an endpoint, a motion towards the day your genetic destiny is achieved and nature passes you by.
    The skin is of a totally different quality. I'm not going to go into it here. Just believe me. Women are incredible. Check it out.

Dad fell. This ALWAYS scares me. Yup, the day before mom's 63rd birthday. Needless to say, I spent the weekend in Daytona in a not so pleasant situation. Hairline fractured hip.

I was supposed to take Eric out. Couldn't. Griffin was there, though, as was Kash....so the moral support was astounding. I want sleep. No sleep since nap on Friday. Drove 5 hours to get there and five back....in case you didn't know, the middle of Florida is burning to smithereens again. You'd figure we wouldn't have that problem since the state's surrounded 3/4ths by water. Stupid crackers. Need something....maybe wine.

Rest
Today was a day for resting. I spent most of the day getting caught up on some sleep and reading a book between naps. I think this might be a good compromise for me to accomplish getting some stuff read. I just need to take a short 20 minute nap every few chapters :)

Work

My boss called and decided we'd meet at work at around 8pm. I went in for only about a half an hour. After work I went to the university library for a couple of hours to study my Japanese studies and get caught up on some homework.

Happiness

I got home and checked my email, even though all I usually get is spam. I guess I've been checking my email more than once per day now, just in the rare chance that Sara might email me. I usually don't get emails from her without first starting the conversation, so I wasn't expecting anything today. I was so suprised. I got a long email from her just telling me all about her weekend and things. I'm so happy to hear from her. :) I feel just like the character in the song "Thank You" by Dido. She cheers me up so much just by writing me, that my whole day becomes great. She's been so friendly since valentine's day; I have been a much happier person since then.

"Although you don't believe me you are strong
And darkness always turns into the dawn
And you won't even remember this for long."
- Yo La Tengo, "Tears Are in Your Eyes"

If you were going to drive through my mind right now, I think it would look like flat, grey terrain. I talk to my therapist in circles and analogies and it puzzles her.

Yeah: I got a therapist. I used to use E2 to vent about the men in my life, even knowing that some of them would read it. I still keep a paper diary but it's full of cross-outs and angry words. I miss that every time I heard a new song, I used to film a little video in my head. I got ideas for stories and movies that way. I haven't written anything fictional in ages. Over break I had a couple of dreams in color, with lots of sound and people. I miss it.

I waste all my creative energies thinking of ways to humiliate myself for poetic effect. I am not making this up.

A couple of nights ago, or maybe it was last night, I stood on the front porch with a handful of boys. It hit me that each of them had either kissed me or tried at some point within the last three or four months. It's something. I wasn't that kind of girl in high school. That is, I couldn't meet the eyes of boys, and I couldn't flirt with them. Now I flirt with everyone; I think my vocabulary is limited. In my ethics class we talked about asceticism. I have always been obsessive, but lately, my obsessions are things like my ego and self-hatred - both at the same time. Thoughts that are very small and evil and circular. Words that don't transform but instead distort the truth. I'm very, very alienated. I'm also very, very self-centered. These are not unrelated phenomena. I keep meaning to look for volunteer work in the community. I am really, really tired of looking at my life so often and with the same dull vision.

One of those boys bought me ice cream on Friday and a movie ticket on Saturday. He assured me that if it weren't for those things he would only spend the money on alcohol. I make a better mistress than Lady Liquor, I know. Mistress indeed: He has a girlfriend. I'm older and I've been down this road before. I don't know why I don't know better.

I don't ever do my homework. I wish I were intellectually exhausted like everyone else seems to be this time of year. I don't even know how to begin to get that way; I just can't see.

I have all these fantasies of running away.

I run into my ex's ex every now and again and this sends me into spirals of thought and guilt. It hit me that when I'm in these spirals, I never worry about the fact that I hurt her; I worry about being that kind of person - the kind who runs around with other girls' boyfriends. I worry about what people think, not about what they feel.

I worry about my body. I am somebody's grandmother already. Bitter and self-pitying and nostalgic and talking all the time about food and pain and pissing. I went in for a blood-sugar test the other day. My mother was talking me down from my terror that I am hypoglycemic or even diabetic. (Terror, because I've never had health insurace in my life.)

I wrote to my ex this afternoon about some of the things I want to let go of, including my obsessive, selfish attachment to him. I'm even OK (I think I wrote this) with not being friends with him, if that would make him happier. So. Since then I've checked my e-mail even more obsessively than normal and gotten nothing. I hate it that this bothers me; that would defeat all I said and all I genuinely feel. I am trying not to hear too much in his silence. I know what it means when I retreat, however.

Spent most of the sunny weekend indoors, knowing I was wasting my life and my youth.

I pray. I meditate. It takes a lot of work, once you've forgotten, to learn to live in the now.

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