July 25, 2001

Next

Why is it that when you're sitting at home at night, being totally fucked over again by the person you love more than anyone, and feeling guilty about being angry at him because of it, that you go and take your nightly six capsules of multi-vitamin, and your soy, and your beta glucans, and your green tea anti-oxidants, which are all going to make you live long and stay healthy (a statement that has not been evaluated by the FDA), when you really just wish you were dead.

Goddamned survival instincts.

Goddamned Nolan.

10:35

The two medical checkups didn't provide any huge surprises. My weight has remained more or less the same for the last two years, but then again I haven't really taken serious measures to lose it. I am eating healthier than I was 12 months ago, but then again I was the health fanatic's worst nightmare back then. Going cold turkey off all my habits is something I most likely couldn't do even if I tried, so I'm dropping lethal stuff off my menu gradually.
In other "news", my blood pressure is still a bit high, but nothing too alarming. Thankfully the best doctor in the house wasn't on vacation, and she even got me an appointment for my left knee I busted up over an year ago playing badminton. The line for getting it examined - without handing all your € over to a private practice - is only 18 months for non-emergency cases. So, kids.. When you wreck a part of your body, bust it up good.

More after lunch...

12:13

Hell has apparently frozen over, because Max Payne has actually hit the shelves. This is a product people have joked more about than Pyramid 3D and Glaze 3D put together, and I seriously douted it would get released in my lifetime.
After "quickly testing" it for 5 hours straight last night, my verdict is that the game is exactly what I excepted. Your basic Guage™ with a few gimmicks thrown in to make it look new and exciting. Still, with all the cliches and lack of big new innovations it has proven to be quite an enjoyable experience so far. It's also top-notch technically, but what else can you expect from a Finnish software house? :) More variation to the repetitive levels and a plot which wouldn't seem as it was written by a 10-year-old, and you'd have a winner.
Financially speaking, Max already is one. Apparently pre-orders alone sold twice as many copies Remedy & 3D Realms needed to sell in order to break even. Go Finland!
I was originally intending to write something in the Max Payne -node, but this is where subjective crap belongs in.

I met somebody today who was familiar looking.

I don't mean he was familiar to me. I mean that he was familiar-looking, as an attribute. He has one of those faces which almost forces you to say: "Don't I know you?"

I hadn't known people like that existed, until today. Isn't it a funny world? I suppose they either like it (and use it), or come to really hate it.

So I stopped the guy, and asked him about it. Turned out I was right, and for the greater part of his life, people have been mistakenly thinking he was an acquaintance. He seemed to have accepted it, and cracked a few jokes about it. Stuff like this really makes me doubt I'll ever understand the purpose of the universe, even if it tried to bite my butt.

Don't watch Nightwatch if you can avoid it. Now I know why this movie was put in the "action" section instead of the "horror" section of Blockbuster. Despite the fact the serial killer in the movie has sex with prostitutes he has recently killed AND cuts out their eyes afterward as a macabre calling card, it wasn't horrifying. You've got Patricia Arquette, Ewen McGregor, and Nick Nolte. Not a bad cast, huh? Sadly it wasn't enough to save this action film.

We had watched it early last night, so there was a lot of night left. He had to run some money and I figured we'd kill two birds and I'd return the tapes we rented 2 days before. Movies, beer, and wine. It's all we can do these days, and it's getting like ramen, it's getting me down.

I talk a lot. He knows this, but he likes to hear me talk, which is good and helpful, if he wants to be stuck with me much longer. My car smells like feet because last week I was driving and eating some fast food when the drink spilled into my footwell. It smells even worse than my smoke.

We talk about being broke, or rather, I talk about it. Talk about how, every morning on the drive to work, I'm expecting some freak accident. My luck would have it that the one obese hotel maid waiting for the bus would walk out in front of my car, of all days and weeks. I count to him on my fingers, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 seven more days until I can breathe, until I get paid and give my landlord all my earnings, only to turn around and tell him I am not renewing my lease. "If I get this apartment," I tell him, "everything will work out, I think." I don't know why I believe this but I do.

We talked about politics briefly, since I am very ignorant (for a while there I thought it was the Japanese who we spied on in the big plane, but he corrected me that it was the Chinese), and we talked about debt. Maggie and Dale, who go to my church, are indeed broke as vagrants, but they have no debt. They didn't go to college, don't own a car, and owe no one, nothing. He reminded me of something I already knew, that in the end, we will not be asked if we paid back all our debts, if we were financially secure. We will be asked if we clothed the naked, housed the poor, fed the hungry. And then he said, "I might say, then, that I was the poor, the naked and the hungry, but when I could help others, I did."

Dale said that while he had a hard time dealing with people, that being broke helped him work through that. Instead of being able to blow his money however he wanted, he hung out with people. Talking to people when you're at this stage is helpful. Hanging out with people pulls you out of your self-centered view and forces you to pay attention to other people for a change. It is easier to be poor among others than poor alone. Being poor alone is what causes elderly women to crawl into freezers, or younger people to cut themselves off from the world (other things do this too, of course, but...). The world doesn't seem to want you, or need you. I even told him that I get those thoughts, because it wears me out to keep fighting, but they are only thoughts, I stress, and he understands.

I wake up this morning and it's raining, and I am one more day closer to a goal.

I updated my People Registry entry to reflect my new city and address. I'll also have a new e-mail address soon, at stanford.edu, but I won't post that till I know it's working. I will need to get a reliable ISP. If someone has a recommendation for a local one that won't go out of business soon, let me know; otherwise it'll be Earthlink or the like. Stanford dial-up is long-distance for me, seeing as I'm not willing to pay the still-ridiculous rents that prevail closer to Palo Alto. The whole moving out thing is weird; I'm finally on my own (more than I've ever been, anyway). My cat is taking it pretty well. She started crying when I put her in the box and closed the lid, so I gave in and opened it partially as soon as I got in the car, hoping that she wouldn't burst into a frenzy of claws streaking for the back seat. She cautiously peeked out once we were moving, and promptly decided she was better off not looking out the windows. Smart kitty, she is. At the new place, with some canned cat food and catnip, she was a happy camper. Maybe I need to find the human equivalent...curl up with some really good cuisine and some dark chocolate. I don't have the time...the stress is really starting to catch up with me, though.

Watched some more KareKano last night 'cause I had to have some kind of a break. It's really good, both in artistic direction and in storyline. Thanks, Starrynight.

Even though I am noding this a day later, this was the one year anniversary of my divorce. If you asked me a year ago, I still had no inkling that I would be here in Boston. I figured I would be happy, and I am, and I am MUCH happier than, say, 1 1/2 years ago, when I was still with my ex.

I wouldn't say I'm complete yet, but that doesn't have anything to do with anyone else, that is, any other person other than me. In any case, I would say I'm fairly content with what's going on in my life (okay, I would like to lose some weight and work less, but other than that...)

Life goes on. That is what I have observed this last year... Even if things suck now and then, it still keeps going.

Today I wake up at a decent time, and I call up my health insurance company to check on my insurance claim. They assure me that it is being processed and that if I just wait a few weeks I'll get my money. The surgery was on November 22, 2000. I think I've waited long enough. I try to call up the judge about a ticket I got. But he has decided to go to lunch early yet again. Twice now I've tried to get ahold of him, twice to no avail.

So I head into work, stopping by the store first to buy a pack of cigarettes. There's a girl there, with short gelled blonde hair. She is tall and slender, and not very svelte but certainly cute. Other then her hair, (short is unusual for this area) there is nothing bizarre about her. But I wouldn't be surprised if she was harboring a nipple piercing or some neurotic disorder, a closet basketcase of some sort. I could dig her. She doesn't say much, and seems shy. She speaks Spanish fluently, something that you need in a town where 70% of the population are illegal Mexican immigrants working on the various ranches and dairies.

I continue my journey into work, stopping by the local Subway. The regular there is a girl with twenty-two piercings in her ear. I feel slightly intimidated by this because I only have five. At least my hair is much longer and prettier. She gives me a discount each day, and has my order prepared for me as I walk up to the door. She likes me, this much is apparent. Her voice is too butch and she's too much of a social butterfly.

Finally I get to work. I start lugging the computer I rebuilt over the weekend in, when my boss decides to jump all over my case because he hasn't received a package from FedEx. I tell him I have the tracking numbers and will get on it as soon as I finish with the computer. I lug the computer in, have a hell of a time configuring our UPS thermal 2442 printer. All the while he's behind my back jumping on my ass about this package. It's his birthday today so I try not to rip his throat out. The package he wants is on the truck, which hasn't been by yet. I tell him this, yet he isn't placated.

The package comes eventually, the computer gets together eventually, the day seems to come together eventually. Eventually takes forever. The boss is buzzing off the walls more then usual today. Too much cake for him maybe.

So I leave that job and head up to my second job. The gate guards stop me and decide to do a full search of my vehicle. They seemed amused by the McDonald's toys and Rubik's cube. They leave me be, not without first questioning what a drugged out looking, long haired hippy, with candy colored bracelets is doing on a military installation. I tell them I work for the college. They raise an eyebrow and tell me to carry on. I putter on down the block, and the parking lot is full. In thirty minutes the lot will be empty, and when I go to leave, there my car will sit alone in the furthest parking space from the door. Seems fitting.

Things look slow at work, but looks are deceiving. The regulars come in. Pam is back from her vacation. She showers me with animal cookies and money to buy a book she wants me to read. She's also bought me another bracelet from New Mexico to add to my eclectic collection, although she's forgotten it. Sigh, if only she was 20 years younger and single. Unfortunately her daughter isn't old enough. I teach Pam all about lines and graphs, what an even or odd function is. I'm bored while I'm rambling the same thing to yet another student. At a few given times in my life Algebra actually sparked my interest. Since I've had this job it has ceased to do anything for me. I can now figure out factors of trinomials in my head, although while I'm tutoring I'm watching the screen savers on the computers. Pam leaves, and another regular comes in. I made the mistake a week ago of asking her how her day went. She answered me, and hasn't stopped yet. I stare through her as she rambles, grunting recognition now and then. I'm really balancing my checkbook in my head. For those who are interested I have $146.56 in the bank.

I answer a few more questions and watch as the clock ticks to 7pm. I quickly buy the book online that Pam wants me to read and has paid for. I tell Joe my boss I'm out and I'll see him tomorrow. Joe thinks my first boss is on speed. He might be right on that one. I'm glad I didn't have any cake.

I come home, and call up this guy who wants me to try out for his band tomorrow. Answering machine. I'm not thinking this is going to pan out. So I call up my ex-girlfriend who has been bugging me for the past week. We get caught up on past events. And I try to tell her that running off to Houston with a 26 year old military male who 'seems nice' is probably not a good idea. Sometimes she just doesn't get it. Part of me is hoping she'll screw up her life in that way, just so she won't call me anymore.

Grandfather is on the computer, which angers me to no avail. I'm not home that often and when I am I'd like to have my time on it. I decide I must build a computer for myself. I guess now I know what I'll spend that $146.56 on. I go to bed at 9pm, something that I didn't want to do but other then the computer I have nothing to keep me awake. I'm too skittish to play guitar for three hours. So I sleep. I wake up at 11pm. Which is why I didn't want to go to bed at 9pm. I wasn't exhausted enough to actually stay asleep.

The computer is free now, and the house is desolate. But for some reason I can't connect to the Internet. I'm noding in notepad. Which is probably a good practice. It still angers me that I can't go online.