December 17, 2001

I've always wanted to do this; now I have.

Today I woke up to the electricity being out in my cabin... again. This time, however, it was not because someone in particular cut the juice. An auto accident about a mile away caused the power outage. Apparently, it was pretty nasty. I didn't see it, but was told about it by my landlord.

The last time the juice cut out was a doosy. I went off half-cocked at the person responsible, issuing threats of retribution. Some hours after that incident, I went back and apologized for my reaction, promising not to respond that way again. This time, for some reason, I just knew that no one was responsible- it was just a fluke. Even so, I wasn't bothered by it. At the most, I was just bemused. After all, the entire house was out, so who was I to complain?

I got dressed and prepared to go to the cafe to do some writing, since work on my computer was out of the question. Just as I opened the cabin door to leave, the power came back on. I literally had one foot out the door when I sensed the thrum of electricity course through the cabin's power lines. Of course, the computer, monitor, cable modem, alarm clock and network hub had been shut off- to prevent any power surges once the power eventually came back on- so I wasn't able to actually tell that the juice was on. I just felt it, the same way that some people can hear the high-pitched whine of a TV, even when it's muted. I turned on my computer, to check and make sure, and sure enough it whirred to life.

I decided to continue with my plans of writing at the cafe anyway, after checking my e-mail. Got a message from someone in the alt.startrek.creative newsgroup, telling me how much they're enjoying my "Time Heals All Wounds" series. It's a Heinlein / TNG crossover story that I've been sitting on for quite some time. The sender wanted to know which Heinlein books she should read so that she could become more familiar with the non-Trek characters. I replied to her gladly. Was it coincidence that I was actually headed to the cafe with the express intent of writing the next chapter in that series? Hmmm...

Got to the cafe and it was blissfully quiet. I don't like going to the cafe when it's crowded anymore. The fewer people and distractions, the better. I went to the back porch to do my writing, coffee and cigarettes in their usual spots on my table (coffee cup to the left of my laptop computer, cigarettes and lighter sitting next to the coffee, ashtray to my right). Many writers have tiny little rituals or organization patterns they employ while they're writing. It's that whole "A place for everything and everything in its place" syndrome that helps the writer to settle into a certain flow, where whatever they need is within arm's reach. I once met a writer who refused to listen to any kind of music other than Brahms while they work their craft. Personally, I like to mix things up a bit, but to each their own.

I donned my earphones, fired up the MP3 player on my laptop and immersed myself into a world that doesn't exist. This chapter would be told from Lazarus Long's perspective. I wondered where it would go, because I had utterly no idea, and decided to let Laz tell me, in his own words. It worked out well. Two hours later I had the chapter done, a first run with only 5 typos. I need to re-read my Heinlein books to get back into his style of writing again. The chapter was well-written, but I think there were some discrepencies in style. I hope the hardcore Heinlein fans who read the story are forgiving- either that, or insensitive to Bobby's writing style.

Hung around the cafe a little while longer, just because I had nothing else better to do. I didn't want to go home yet. Perhaps I was waiting to see if the writing bug would bite again, inspiring me to get back to work on Mystic Ghost, my personal pet project. It didn't; I left.

And, so, I'm home again. Food in my stomach, smokes in front of me and OJ ready to drink. I wonder what the night will bring?

Save often; lose less.

On the subject of node your homework, let me say that it is bloody difficult to think of 10 important things space probes have told us about the planets. By number 8 I was definately scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to thing of something to go after 'this is important'

Maybe I just have a lack of perspective or something...

For whatever reason, I just submitted this by email.


8 - Mapping of Venus

The distance of Venus, combined with the impenetrable nature of its atmosphere means that it cannot be mapped from earth. Nasa felt it necessary to launch the Magellan probe towards venus. It sucessfully mapped the surface of venus, which, like all the other planets, would be impossible to do with a telescope. The data sent back would be useful in planning missions to land on venus, and might help locate aliens. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/magellan/images.html Pretty pictures from magellan.
Oh dear.

Of the essay, java, and '10 things about the planets', I'm looking at 0% for the essay, 28% for the java, and some indeterminate mark for the astronomy. I suspect he won't think too highly of a late submission that belittles his field. Oh well.

Off to Tokyo... Back for new year...

Jesse and I are in a "really good" period in the timeline that is us. I am home now which means that we can hang out, and Im supposed to do that tomorrow night. A little while, I swore that I would never talk to him again, let alone see him. But Ive learned how little my promises mean when it comes to him.

Jesse and I both have significant others currently, which is a first in our relationship. Maybe this is the only way that it can work. Im not actively pining over him anymore and I desperately want to remain faithful to the one Im with. But then I think about how I always will subconsciously want to be with Jesse and I start to cry. Jesse's best friend came up with a theory for why Jesse is always with someone else besides me, but he can never let me go. The girl Jesse is with is the most pure, innocent girl he could find (the fact that she is a bitch is besides the point), and he likes that part of her. But he also likes the "dirty part of me thats willing to go down on him at any given moment". Thats not true, and when he told me this it made me sad. But that's how he sees me. The only reason I did those things with him honestly was to make him see that I would do anything for him and that I loved him, and it ended up being the thing that prevented him from loving me.

I am fine when we are talking on the phone, I can joke around and reminisce about old times, bad or good, and it brings me back to the wonderful. But then I hang up the phone and I wonder why I ever try to by with anyone else when I know where my heart will always reluctantly be. Everytime I talk to him, it breaks my heart. But not talking to him at all would break it even more.

Shine on you crazy diamond
After 3+ month away from active noding this daylog is my first sign of life from my new life.

WHAT HAPPEN?
In fact, nobody set up us the bomb, i just changed my whole life into a way i hope that fits better to the person i am, or at least the person i want myself to be.

I left:
-Hamburg
-My heavily underpaid job as a Zope coder
-My SO for she was cheating on me
All in all i stopped being a jerk living only for computers and the net.

Instead, right now:
-I live in Würzburg, Bavaria
-I am a student of political science, philosophy and german language
-I have no SO (so far ;))
-I enjoy having computers as a hobby and being a professional thinker
-All in all i feel much better here.

Of course, not everything is perfect here, too. I have to pay my online time per minute, which sucks (at least for the next two weeks, i hope i'll get my DSL line before christmas). I had some quarrels with the US military stationed here, as some of the GIs, especially when drunk, behave like they are kinda overlords here in germany and can do whatever they feel like - i dont like this attitude, really. One of them wanted to beat me up for going out with his Ex-girlfriend. Are these guys too dumb to understand that a) after they left a girl, they have no rights on this girl anymore and b) men and women can be just friends. So, were together in a discotheque, it must be a date. ARGL.
Anyway, i like it here... i spent the whole sunday chatting with a girl from class, which is kinda ridiculous cause i can literally see her house when i look outside the window, but nevertheless it was great fun.

Oh, well, its fucking cold outside: -15° Celsius.

NODEVERTISING: I updated my Home Node to fit all the stuff above!

And in San Francisco it rains.

It’s been a while since I have noded anything on everything. I don’t know how many times I have read that in a persons daylog. I guess we all need our breaks, our undefined times, our whatever. During my break, I have consistently read nodes and up-voted most of what I have read. I have accidentally accumulated a large number of XP, for having such a random and crappy bunch of nodes. Hey, who cares about XP?

Anyway, this is a daylog, so I must do the daylog thing.

October 18, 2001

I lost my job as a Content/Metadata Manager for a B-B e-commerce hub. In other words, I got laid off from a stupid website.

October 20, 2001

My girlfriend threw a big party for my 29th birthday. All of my Cali friends showed and it was wonderful.

October 21 – December 12, 2001

Slipped in and out of consciousness. Rock climbed and/or Mountain Biked four or more days a week. All the while, taking in nodes.

December 13, 2001

Got dumped by my girlfriend.

Ok you might think that this is just another sad node. No, it’s not. I actually have good news. First of all, I will be going back to Austin in a couple of days, for the holidays. I will see all of my old friends, including suckapant. I will also see my family, including my one year old niece, whom I hardly know at all. I will have a great time, but that’s not the good news. I have decided to get back into school and I am determined to learn something other than computers. I plan on studying Geology. Volcanoes are neeto. Well, that’s my news.

And for all of those noders wondering if the Simulated Car Alarm worked. Yes it did!

Now back to my break.

There's a fly buzzing around in the lampshade of my bedside light. Its life seems pointless to me. My own life seems pointless in the same way sometimes, from certain perspectives...sometimes I lose track of how to make sense of my life, how to decide if it has meaning or not. Does it have meaning? What is meaning? I could be killed tomorrow. How would anyone go about deciding if my life had meaning, if it was worthwhile, what the purpose of my living here was?

The fly is going to be dead by morning, having never made it out of my room. I suppose I could try and make sense out of the fly's life. Isn't that what writers do? I could write a brief story about the life of the fly, called Flightpath, about how the flight of the fly was a dance in meditation on the laws of motion and rest underpinning the entire physical universe. I could use this meditation to think about our own lives, and the idea that no matter what we do, all our movements are necessarily an expression of these laws, be they mathematical or otherwise. If you are a physicist, they are mathematical. If you are religious, they are Divine. If there is a meaning, then whoever you are, you express the meaning. You are the meaning.

That would be a nice story. If I wrote it, would that make it true? I am a writer: I generate meaning. I choose perspectives. I create perspectives. But I know the delicacy of my act of creation. I know that the meaning I chose for the life of the fly would be arbitrary. I could have chosen another, in a different mood, on a different day. And I know that my story would have no significance to the fly itself. It buzzes, lives and dies, in its orbit around my lampshade, unaware of my need to give meaning to its life.

I have always had the feeling that there is something important that I am here to do, but I am not sure why I think that. It may simply be a way I have of making myself feel special - of giving meaning to my life. Being a writer leads sometimes to a sense of dizziness, because if I can choose to take any of these different perspectives in order to write about other things, then I begin to lose my certainty about my own perspective, my own meaning. I can't make any firm statements to people about my life, because I am too painfully aware of how I choose my own meanings from thin air. I am plagued by doubt, because I am never sure if the certainty of other people comes from wisdom, or ignorance. I try and listen to them. I try to form my own judgements. I try and live with my sense of confusion, my uncertainty about meaning, my loose grip on the story of my own life.

Sometimes all meanings slip away from me, and I am left with nothing. Then all there is for me is the feeling of my heart. It isn't a bottomless crash into darkness, when the mind lets go. All the way until it actually happens, it looks like everything is going to come to an end. The fly is going to burn out from the fire of the lightbulb, the deadly aura of the tungsten filament. Then, when the meanings fall down, when I have no perspectives left from which to see myself, I find that I'm still alive, I still love. I don't know why I can love in the absence of meaning. I don't even know what love is, except that I can't refuse it. In the ruin of my flightpath is the freedom of my heart.

The fly is still buzzing around my room. If it doesn't need meaning to be alive, maybe I don't either.

---

This was originally posted under flightpath which I requested to be nuked.

I spent a three-day weekend at my father’s in Birmingham, Alabama, which turned out fairly nice. I’m still healing, however, from an accident that occurred the first night we were there.

My boyfriend and I arrived on Friday while my father and step-mother were in the midst of preparing for their annual Christmas party. We chatted and helped them a bit, my boyfriend meeting my father for the first time. He made a good impression, which did not surprise me since such a task is not a difficult for him. The four children, who I’d been looking forward to seeing, were staying at their father’s that weekend, so Phil and I had the upstairs to ourselves. Caren is my Dad’s 3rd wife- she has a good sense of humor and makes my father happy, which is one thousand times better than the previous woman/thing he'd been married to. He and Caren have been together for 5 years now.

Caren's kids are 9, 13, 15 and 19. I might mention that their father was in a horrible accident at a plant he worked at years ago. He was crushed by a machine, which took both of his arms and a leg. The settlement was huge and he’s a millionaire and he keeps the kids and their mother set up well- he’s a good man and it is truly awful what he’s suffered.

Once people arrived for the party, we did our best to make polite conversation considering we knew virtually no one. We took our fair share of the spiked punch and occasionally went upstairs to play Nintendo. As the evening was winding down, Phil and I had made one last trip upstairs for the game, and were about to head back down to the party. I began down the stairs before Phil left the room, but slippery heels on a slick wooden staircase do not mix. I slipped and preceded to fall all the way down the stairs. The music of Jimmy Buffet seranaded my descent; chatter had ceased in the massive home. I sat at the bottom, wincing in pain as people ran to see the damage. I limped to a chair with the aid of my boyfriend and tried to laugh instead of cry. Nothing broken, nothing sprained, just a terrific sharp pain- which grew stronger as the shock receded- up and down my right side and leg.

Father retrieved some heavy-duty motrin and a heat pack, and Phil and I lay upstairs watching TV as the swelling began. Luckily I was still able to walk, a bit. Caren came up to chat with us. The party was a success- although her goofy older brother, while she wasn’t looking, managed to switch around all the paintings in the house, placed random objects under and in their bed, and moved the donkey and the cow in the nativity scene to naughty positions with each other.

The next day the swelling had decreased, and the four of us went to see “Vanilla Sky.” (Decent- not Cameron Crowe’s best, but it was worth one viewing.) We wandered by a relative’s home decor store. In the store window a stitched pillow read: “Raising children is like being pecked to death by a duck.” That night the kids dropped by to have dinner with us. We gave them Blockbuster certificates and I received a pair of Berkenstocks and a set of martini plates and napkins from Pottery Barn, which were wonderful gifts. We had a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant, the kids rather amusing in their loud, excited behavior.

The next day we headed out after a quick brunch, and Phil and I enjoyed a Sunday afternoon together on the silent Georgia Tech campus. He leaves this morning for Mobile. I miss him already.

<< - Backstory

§4. To Here Knows When:

        The waves lapping against the hull of the boat below them, the whine of turbines far below deck, the roar of the bow cutting up the ocean swells before them, the sale in the air and the gulls circling as they pulled away from port were all conspiring to put a wildly Cheshire cat smile on Zoe's face as they headed away from Angie's home and towards her own. The wide water was pure slate gray ahead of them as far as the eye could see, the peaks of the Highlands behind them beginning to burst into frenetic shades of yellow and red as autumn stepped up its program of decaying pageantry. Angie raised the mug of red wine in gloved hand and tink-tink two went under the sound of the wind.
        "Zivjeli."
        "What the hell's that?"
        "Croat. Means, to living."
        "That's nice, rather pleasant for Eastern Europe."
        "Well, literally I think its more like, here’s to not dying."
        "Right, that's more like it. Roommate teach you that?"
        "That and how to curse the entire Serb peoples. It's a big theme with them."
        The rusting ferry pulled out of the rusting town just after noon, would sail eight hours to Placentia Bay on the south-east part of the island, from which point they'd be picked up, according to Zoe, by one of her 22 cousins who were all apparently so excited, after five years, that she was finally coming back home that there had been a fairly large-scale to-do about who was going to fetch her around the dinner-table of her nanny's place, to the point where Nan had actually needed to step in, bash a few fingers over all the cursing that was going on her kitchen, right under the face of the Blessed Jesus. There was going to be a wedding in a few weeks, her cousin Jerry on her father's side, and in fact Zoe said if the two of them wanted to stick around for a bit they'd probably end up at half-a-dozen weddings, baby showers, stags, or wakes, which in Newfoundland, in case you've not heard, all seem to bleed together some months as the whole cycle of love, birth and loss runs its course.
        Since their card-game confessions, the two of them seem more inclined to let the matters rest, and the implications sink in, about what they knew, or maybe had thought they'd known about one another. They certainly seemed at first floored, then after a little consideration the surprise gave way to wider sense, and now it was like a last curtain had been pulled back. Angie had cried and cried when she'd heard it was her botched, confused letter that had given Zoe the idea to scrape together some extra cabbage. Zoe never actually said that, never in so many words, didn't address the reasons why at all, but Angie still knew, but didn't want to say she knew. So instead she pretended to by crying apologetically over thinking that Zoe had somehow embezzled the money from Death Co. She really was crying with apology, and with shame, and with a great many other emotions all true and painful, but Zoe eventually made her stop. She said she'd been toying with the idea for a while, that there was one charmer at the office, VP of Investor Relations who Zoe knew for a fact had just been handed a very hefty 'retention bonus' to ensure he didn't get any ideas about jumping ship at the dark time in the Company's history. He'd always seemed quite keen on listening, or pretending to listen to what Zoe had to say, and he was in decent shape for his age, wasn't even balding, and managed to actually look somewhat fetching and dignified in a one particular charcoal-grey Armani.
        Angie could just imagine the poor sop once Zoe had made her mind up. Zoe said with the place in the shape it was, he had ready-made excuses to be away from home, so what started out with some late-afternoon questions about share holdings by school trustees in Oklahoma turned into a 'working dinner' and that was pretty much that. She let him buy her some PVC and some schoolgirl skirts very similar to the ones she'd donned for class at St. Pius X everyday of her grade-school life. In other words, complete kids play. Within a few short weeks of some very, late nights, he got very guilty, or very exhausted, or both. She played it to the hilt, got very despondent, very depressed, played up how far away from home she was, how much she needed him, how impossible it would be for her to manage at the office now, just seeing him there and wanting desperately to come across the desk at him. This seemed to clinch it.
        He needed to do what was right for everyone he said, for himself, his family but for Zoe too, and confessed that from what he'd been told and surmised, the Company was going down in a ball of flames anyway, might not even last the year. Given that, wasn't this a perfect time for Zoe to return to her distant island home, be with her family, before things at the office went from bad to worse? He could make it very easy, she would be sacrificing nothing, would get the best references for whatever she eventually decided to do next, and he didn't want her to have to worry about money until she was sure, wanted her to have time to think about it all she wanted back home. All the time she could possibly want- back home. She grinned and called Angie the moment he'd kissed her on the forehead, turned away, let out a sigh of relief and closed the door. Everyone wants to move on, all the time anyway- this way everyone's happy, everyone's a winner, she said.

…I am most myself in the place where I am not. I read that line not long ago, so French I thought, but couldn't quite grasp it, even as it stuck. I've been in your arms for hours at a time, they feel like seconds. I trace the line of your spine and time stops, the pounding of my heart the only clock. I think to myself how much I want to be engulfed in you, and I catch myself. I think how I want you on top of me, or beneath me, forever, and I catch myself. It's that phrase, and I realize now why it rings in my ears. Too long I've been only able to be me in places, or people, where I'm eclipsed. I find those situations or personalities, I seek them out, and bask in the shadow. Already I want the negation of devotion, because I can feel the overwhelming lust to affix to you and never release. Assertion, not absence, from self is what I need mosy. But my Christ its hurting right now, after peeling off your clothes in the moonlight, running hands across skin, coming down, after holding you to me, after holding you down, after being able to make you half-laugh, half-cry. With you I've turned into someone better, at exactly the moment I was fleeing the person I'd been before. And still, I have to go. But without having met you I would have left here someone else, someone who wouldn't have even known where to start. I know now.

        The legion hall was decked out in every manner of light and flowers, the tables had been pushed back after the cold-plate ham dinner to make space for the dance, the strobes were on, kids in their Sunday best ran everywhere around your legs, the crowd around the tiny bar ran five thick. The cigarette smoke was unreal, like it had been pouring out of a machine, and Angie was having trouble enough as it was remembering everyone's name, as Zoe's family here this evening went four long generations into permutations too elaborate to plot on paper, let alone keep straight in her head, so she found herself going largely on age and mode of dress when trying to distinguish cousins from uncles from nephews. For a populace in a the throes of an eight-year economic catastrophe, for people hanging on by their fingernails, the Grady clan certainly knew how to get it together and host a proper blow-out. The best man had already macaranaed with Nan twice, while just about all of the wedding party seated at the head table did little cage-dances or faux strip-teases at the behest of the whopping, howling, nearly in tears crowd. Angie had witnessed toasts to the wedded while standing on chairs, toasts from atop the bar, toasts from under tables, even a toast sung out in acapella from the lavatory while a string of the suited boys did their business.
        Zoe was of course the guest of honor, and the center of the lion's share of the attention from males both familial or otherwise, and so in sleek silver evening dress, with a succession of gins in one hand and a long sequence of cigarettes that twelve men would consistently lunge forward to light in the other, she laid down stories from her exploits abroad that made the most seasoned and world weary of the bunch alternately pitch over laughing or blush to their bones. When she finally broke into the DJ booth and sweet-talked some truly pulsing techno onto the play-list, she not long after found herself barefoot and kicking it up with about ten guys just struggling, as usual, to keep up.
        Angie had initially not felt herself up to the challenge, having already spent some fantastically late-nights bopping from bar to bar along George Street in St. John's. She's fallen in love with the city immediately, the mis-matched colors of the houses, the twisty sloping, pot-holed streets, the deep smell of salt, the long banks of dense fog you could just stand and watch from Signal Hill as they rolled in off the Atlantic. With so much to see, and so much to drink it really was getting exhausting keeping up with the Bacchic pace Zoe seemed intent on maintaining. Again, Angie half-expected her friend was doing this for her own benefit, taking a medicinal holistic approach to the psychological benefits of impending kidney failure. She was trying to keep her moving, keep her entertained, keep her laughing and basically buying her time to let things slowly settle and stitch. All this was still on her mind as Angie sat with 'cuzin' Charlotte, all of nine, who seemed deeply intrigued by the whole notion of body modification once Angie had unwisely mentioned that she's lived with someone who made their living at it. The girl with a tangle of red hair, sitting there in her flower-print Sunday dress, now wanted to hear, in anthropological detail, everything there was to know about the styles of puncture, inking, branding and amputation back there on the Mainland. So it was not with some relief to Angie when Zoe finally plunked down on the chair beside them.
        "Hey, isn't it past your bed-time?"
        Charlotte didn't look very impressed, just narrowed her eyes.
        "I'm going to get a root-beer and you're going to pay for it Zoe."
        "Oh am I now?"
        "Yes. Or I'll tell Angie about Tommy Buttle."
        "Right, Angie, give this girl some money, my purse is in the car."
        "Who's this Tommy character?"
        "Never you mind."
        Angie handed over some change to Charlotte who ran off chanting Tommy Buttle's name, and Zoe just rolled her eyes and shook her head while rubbing the sweat off the back of her neck. They were playing 'I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll' for what was possibly the tenth time that evening, and everyone was still loving it. At this point, much to everyone's amusement and to cat-calls from all the present ladies, even cousin Gerald's parole officer seemed to be kicking it up, having set his Mountie jacket aside while keeping the hat, doing a kind of barn-dance shimmy with the blushing bride. Angie knew she never would have believed any of this if she'd heard Zoe tell to people later and was a bit shaken to see reality itself seemingly bending itself to her friend's hyperbolic demands. This subsequently led her to re-examine her skepticism towards all those other tales of wonder and frenzy and weirdness she'd heard.
        "Great, innit?"
        "I was just thinking that. I'm glad you dragged me out here, because I wouldn't have believed you for a second otherwise?"
        "Are you saying I tell stories?"
        "You most certainly do. And up until now that's what I thought they were."
        "So help me god, that's gratitude for you."
        "Zoe I've never been so thankful for someone in all my life."
        "Sure, you're just trying to get on me good side now."
        "Okay, maybe just a little."
        They sat and watched Nan Grady wheel again around the dance floor, eighty-five and zipping about under blue and green streamers and throwing her head back in peals of laughter. They watched Uncle Jared take bets from all collected him around him, finish his Blue Star, set the bottle down then set the back of a chair on his considerable square chin, and proceed to balance it there while the crowd slowly screamed to a count of ten. Angie had her braids tied in a topknot and was bouncing her hair from one side of her head to the other along to the beat. Her skin had oddly cleared up since they'd left Sydney, which she could only attribute to the air given what she'd been inflicting on her body for almost three weeks running now, but whatever the cause she's wanted to show it off. Her dress was a full-length crushed velvet that would've been murderously hot anywhere else this time of year, but seemed perfectly apt for a down-home outport September wedding out here at the edge of the world. She felt perfectly apt for it too, somehow.
        "How do you think your boy would react to all this devil's business?"
        "Zoe, he's not my boy. He was a boy, a very sweet one at that, but I think its fair to say he'll most likely be moving on."
        "I don't know Angie, sounded pretty hot and heavy there. All that pitched, go here, do this, harder, slower stuff. Sounds like he had an appetite for you."
        "Stop it. It wasn't all like that. I knew I shouldn't have told you."
        "Hey, I'm not poking fun here, you of all people ought to know that. I'm just bursting with pride that you finally came out of that shell and thought to do what you wanted to do. Have a little of the fun like the rest of us. And I want you to be comfortable with that. So no, I'm not going to stop it. All indecency's in restriction sweetie, not freedom. You just remember that next time you decide to chastise yourself. Take a look around, you're a paragon of virtue."
        "And you are completely loaded."
        "You're some right. But you look like you could use another, some come on."

...............

        Eventually even Zoe looked like she was ready for bed, her eyes gone all sort of sleepy-wandering around as she moved about the room, and Angie had to catch her once as she made her way out of the washroom, something she could never once remember doing before, and after the straightened up in the hallway, under the blue lightbulb and against the fake wood paneling, there was a split-second of sobriety as they looked back and forth at each other, instantaneously seeing everything for what it was. Then they just laughed and went arm-in-arm to try to flag down a taxi ride back to Nan's place, and when they burst through the fire-doors out into the pre-dawn air, crossing the gravel parking lot as the sky above went into less-and-less drastic shades before the sun broke across the water, Angie couldn't ever remember air, just simple fresh open air ever tasting so good.
        They sat on the bumper of Jared's pick-up, sharing the last cigarette they had between them, while Zoe explained how great the home-made bread, and raspberry jam, and sugary tea was going to be when they finally got back home. There were still a few stars left over head, Angie could pick out Cassiopeia down near the west horizon, like it was hiding away from the rising sun, and she fixed her gaze there, holding it steady, wondering if these were the same stars she watched out her bedroom window. To Angie's eye, the positions didn't look the same, their brightness didn't even feel the same, and she guessed that meant they probably weren't the same. No, she thought, these are most certainly not the same stars as before, and she made to say as much until she held the cigarette out to be taken from her only to find Zoe snoozing nosily against her shoulder.

End.

My first office Christmas party

As the title above suggests, I just returned from my first office Christmas party. The bar tab reached $4,500 and a good night was had by all. But something disturbed me. All the young ladies there were exceptionally attractive. There's one thing I want to know.

Where did they all come from?

Now, I've been with this company for about six months now, and I swear I've never seen any of them before. I'm sure I would have remembered. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm in a very happy, stable, loving relationship, but my eyes tend to get distracted when there are pretty girls around dressed up as fairies.

I propose the theory that they are manufactured in a plant somewhere. There is a company that rents them out. They probably have a Christmas catalogue. Now, all I want to know is, what's their website's URL? Anyone with information, please /msg me.

Two Words: Vroom Vroom

There's nothing better than a caffine rush in the morning.
I had a really good day yesterday, one of those lazy days where you do nothing say nothing, hell, I didn't even go outside until 6pm. It was great. I watched Heat, Wow, that's an amazing film, and at 9pm I discovered I had homework, two papers, and a 7 page Journal for Algebra 3-4. Oh shit.

I go to sleep at 11:47, tired as Huck (which is what I'm reading in English BTW) And I'm kept up all night due to a massive storm outside. I wake up several times. I remember seeing the red blinking 3:45am on my clock as I writhe yet again in my bed seeking sleep.

Monday mornings are always the worst. Every day I get up at 6am, which is hell if you're 15 years old. Breakfast is burnt, but what the hell, it's food. Or it was... - I fall asleep in the car as my mum kindly drives me to school and almost fall down the stairs as I enter the classroom. We took a test on the Network layer of the OSI model, I received 72%, which isn't bad for someone who is comatose. After a bus ride, I arrive at school, go to my locker and find my secret bounty. A Rockstar. If you haven't heard of Rockstar yet, you will. These things are 16fl/oz of pure energy. I pop the ring and smile at the "Not recommended for Children or those sensitive to caffine" sign.

Vroom Vroom

It's 1 AM of my local time. I rub my eyes and squint at the screen. Several hours earlier, I've decided to check my mail. And then it happened. I came across the link saying Everything2. I've realized my addiction when I saw some thirty browser windows open, all of them E2. Let's see if something (hinted at in writeups, but scarcely named) comes after me and eats me.

(an adjoining thought...it might be possible for some kind of self-awareness to evolve in a sufficiently complicated computer system. Makes me wonder - late at night, especially.

I've felt worn out most of the day.

The post office makes me tired. I just go there to get my mail most of the time, but its still tiring. Long lines... confused people.. angry people. Its a time bomb waiting to go off in there. I had to wait in a short line to get my package. There was a little girl standing there waiting for her mother. She was probably about 4 or 5 years old. She was acting innocently lewd, squatting down and spreading her legs so everyone could see up her skirt in a pose one usually sees only in strip clubs. It was strange and I wanted to run up to her and tell her to close her legs, but I didn't.

I feel old.

I went to Fred Meyer and instantly regretted it as I tried to make my way through the aisles. It must have been senior discount day again, like it was the last time I was there. People blocking the aisles with carts, pausing for 15 minutes in front of the brown sugar. People hard of hearing who don't hear you saying "excuse me m'am" when you try to get past them. People standing in front of the cocoa staring dumbly at it and wondering which one is sugar-free. I was glad to leave and hope I don't have to go back until after the holidays.

I want to avoid all the stores, but it seems that I keep having to go back for something. This time the trip was mostly for plastic containers to put the dog biscuits in. I'm baking this week. I'm making cookies to take to my dad's house for Christmas and making dog biscuits to give as presents to my mother-in-law and sister. Everyone seems to have dogs except us. This is a good thing. My husband and I really can't stand dogs.

It gets dark so early in the winter. I wanted to do some things outside, but I can't see in the dark. I can't hold a flashlight and clean out my old car at the same time. It just doesn't work. Tomorrow I must call and get someone to haul away this old beast.

Tomorrow is the dentist... ick.

I want to try to write at least two nodes a day. At that rate, I can reach level 6 in 33.5 days. Its an easy goal I suppose, but one that I doubt I'll be able to keep up with. I guess we'll see.

I love this place. I'm looking forward to sending a gift to a noder I don't know and receiving one from someone else.