OK, today was just unnecessarily BAD.

Work ended at around 5:30am, at which time I took an Ambien and headed for the futon, fully expecting to be totally knocked out for the next 8 hours. But no, about two hours later my ceiling starts leaking. It starts leaking directly onto the top of the fridge, presumably caused by a similar problem in the apartment above mine. The water flow filled two five-gallon buckets with rust-colored water before it finally tapered off. The whole thing was of course accompanied by the attendant apartment workers tinkering with this and that.

Finally they declare the problem solved and depart. Great, I figure, now I can stop acting like such a weirdo due to my Ambien stupor, and go back to sleep. Wrong. UPS knocks on my door about half an hour later with a package from Annalisa, which was, apart from talking to her on the phone, the only bright spot of the day. The package contained a pair of Lip Service pinstripe trousers, which I will wear to our dinner date Friday evening.

If you'd think that was enough... no. At exactly 12:00am, shortly after I witnessed the blessed Detroit Red Wings win their tenth Stanley Cup, BellSouth shuts off my ADSL service because my payment is three days late. This means that I have to get dressed, drive to the office, and actually do work for the next five hours. Normally this wouldn't be a problem if I didn't need to stop by the office during normal business hours tomorrow to pick up a paycheck advance, go cash it, and then drive out to New Orleans International Airport to pick up Annalisa. All of this, as you can surely imagine, doesn't leave any room for sleep. I don't mind this as much as I normally would, however, because I won't be sleeping due to the fact that Annalisa and I will be together, and when that happens, things like sleep and food become unimportant. (The connection is there -- like a cluster of OC1024s, or even OC4096s, even though such things don't exist yet. You get the gist, I hope.)

I really, extremely, desperately do not want to be at work right now.

And goddamnit, I left my cigarettes at home. I think leaving a few hours early is in order tonight.

9:07a

What am I doing. This is an excellent question. Busy busy week. Well, I was sick, so for a while I was doing nothing aside from sleeping, taking lots of drugs, sleeping some more, more drugs, then bed for the night. Also lots of coughing and blowing my nose and eating pudding. But this is now over and I feel functional again.

I've started taking yoga class, clearly a very good thing for me. The teacher is a head shorter than I am and very good with verbal as well as physical description of the movements. And it's all very calm and quiet and muted in the actual room. The class is at the Quaker house which in itself is interesting. There are some kids' drawings/writings of the ten commandments in the stairwell; I like seeing "Thou shalt not commit adultery" with backward Ds and awkward sizing, falling off the edge of the page. First grade writing on rough paper.

I'm not very good at standing on one foot slowly. I can do it if I do it quickly but this seems not to be the point somehow. Hee.

Other. John and I are going to his boar-hunting uncle's wedding on Saturday. Family business. This should be interesting. I got to have that excuse to buy a dress, which is silly but it was still a nice thing to have. So now I have a red dress that actually touches the tops of my feet. I've never found one that was actually that long before (I'm too tall to buy clothes). It's very exciting.

Then Wednesday 19th I am leaving for PEI and the L.M. Montgomery conference. I get to stay in the dorm, woohoo. This means: bring a fan. It should be a good conference and I have lots of people I want to talk to. It was strange last time because there were two distinct groups there: the serious academics and the LMM fans. I was in this strange place between the groups, being an academic but not having done any real work on LMM at that point. Now I wonder where I'm going to fall. Probably slightly to the academic side, although this may be wishful thinking. I get back Monday night, and am fully expecting to collapse entirely and have issues going to work the next day.

I have to reread all my LMM books, and bring whatever I can't finish with me so I can read them at night. This is going to require some large head-wresting, since I've been hip-deep in Jane Austen for the last two weeks. Last week Pride and Prejudice and Emma, this week Persuasion, Mansfield Park and this biography of Austen by her 71-year-old Victorian nephew. That's a strange thing to get my head around as well. I have George Eliot Scenes of Clerical Life waiting for me in my bag as well, but she may just have to wait somehow.

Everybody's been freaking out over the Stanley Cup (this being Detroit). Personally I don't care about any sports but Cleveland baseball, but whatever.

If you live in Ann Arbor, you should go over to the Arb and see the peony garden. It's off the Washington Heights entrance. I went the other night at 9, when it was just starting to get dark, and it was all cool and nice. The peonies are very satisfying as well. Big double blooms the size of small cantaloupe, or tight fists of buds starting to unfold. The garden is right in the middle of blooming now, so you should go fairly soon.

Crazy last couple of days...

Since Wednesday I have: bleached my hair to a nice auburn, found out I owe rent for the month of June, had my phone service shut off by Sprint, got a 3rd job, got my first paycheck of the summer, missed a good opportunity to ask out a really cute girl, and made plans to escape Maryland for the first time in 3 months.

I'm definitely pleased with the hair, even though I spent $10 on red hair dye which I can't use till another bleach job. It's not as bright as I'd hoped, but there's a first time for everything... And of course, I consulted e2 for hours (namely So, you want to change your hair color? Read this first! and similar)

Rent thing is uninteresting. Loss of cell phone service is just annoying... But with 4 bleary-eyed tries at punching in my credit card number, I finally got it. Back in business there. Landline is still up in the air. I need to get a regular phone (i.e. non-cordless) to test. My cordless is just plain not working. Why do I smell popcorn?

I will work ~2 hours this morning. Then my new roommate and I drive the 7+ hours from Baltimore to Boston. We'll see Leah, my dear friend and confidante. Then I'll have a rockin' good time with my brother and his buds and droogs. (Puns abound). Sunday, we'll come back in time for me to get a Greyhound to Penn State -- more debauchery with my best friends from home.

Ah, summer.

And I spilt half my roomie's espresso all over the fridge. :(

Here I am. I am officially unemployed. I just have finished my studies.
Once again I feel in control of my destiny. I could go anywhere, I already crossed a border, why not another? I have no strong ties, no girlfriend (sigh) to keep me back. The options are numerous indeed.

I looked at the business cards we gave each other and I am already missing this lot. The funny thing is that I profoundly hate the city in wich I was stranded for four long years with them. Yet, despite myself, it is now meaningful to me. It is not the place but the people that you met and the things you have done there. It has become part of my history. The black and white photographs on these cards already look dated and old, smiles from a distant past. Nostalgia takes me. That's how it is I believe: I may spend time in the most horrid hole in the ground and yet, because of everything else, I sort of get a sympathy for this place.

Oh, and:

My love is gone

Maybe.


I hate saying goodbye in cars. Especially somebody else's. It's cramped, you have no privacy, you always seem in a hurry, even when it is the last time you will ever see that person.

I miss her already.

Greatness? What is greatness? Is it consistent achievement? Or is it a long stretch of great success? Let us consider the Detroit hockey franchise...

The Red Wings won the Presidents' Trophy for the 1994-95 ,1995-96 and 2001-2002 seasons. And, they have won the Stanley Cup in 1936, 1937, 1943, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1997, 1998 and now they have just defeated the Carolina Hurricanes for the cup in 2002. Ten, that makes TEN Stanley Cups in the franchise history. Wow. I am almost speechless.

I am so sorry to have doubted the greatest of Detroit's hockey dynasty. I bow low before the speed, the agility, the sheer awesome level of play put forth by each of the most excellent players from Detroit. The sharp talent honed to a point by the great Scotty Bowman, a coach like no other. He had the wherewithal to pull together the boundless talent on his team to forge it into one awe inspiring firepower unit. Sadly he retires after winning his ninth Stanley Cup championship, a feat that puts him at the top of the great coaches of NHL history. He is without a doubt, a great hockey master.

The Red Wings have some of the best players the game has ever known.Yzerman, Lidstrom, Shanahan, Federov, Hull, Robitaille, Larionov, Devereaux. All names that will be remembered by Red Wing fans for a long time to come. Hasek, the goalie that with grace and finesse stretched out across the net making save after save after save will long be cheered. This is a team with a deep well of skill and much playoff experience. I say now that I was wrong in questioning that this team would in the end prevail. I felt the Hurricanes had the gut in the stomach raw eye of the tiger want to pull off a win, but I was mistaken. Underdog desire is not enough to make champions. The Detroit Red Wings last night proved that they were indeed the best team in the league. Congratulations oh great and mighty Red Wings. I am humbled by your greatness. I kiss your skates.

I am happy.

I have just created my first writeup. It is probably very foolish of me to feel such joy, considering that by the standards of the very wise people here, my writeup is probably complete trash. However, I hope to learn on my mistakes, and progress.

sigh, another day at work. It was only the second day, and it pretty much gave me a new perspective on what i will be doing for the rest of the summer. Instead of boxing things ALL day, i made some deliveries to different schools around the county. Not that bad, much less harsh on the knees.

Some one actually reads these things! I had a few misspellings in my last daylog and i got a message telling me so. That is what i get for noding at bumfuck o'clock. So i have devised a new game. The first person to msg me my secret word of the day will be vote dumped on, in the UP way. the word of the day is bumfuck. If you node it, ill cool it too! Yes, i will increase your merit and devotion and other crap like that. For some of you, my 45 votes a day means very little. But for people with 50 or less, thats a total merit booster. Alas, trolls will also be eligible for this. Oh, and the second person to tell me my magic word will get the remaining votes. If the first person is a lvl one noder or something, the 2nd place person could still get a decent buzz of XP. Okee, well, have fun!

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