What I did on May 18, 2000:

Finally got around to checking out the Big Finish Website, it looks like the one CD that is missing from my set is still available but just that Forbidden Planet didn't have any in stock. Looks like I will just have to get it by mail order.

Not so good, I received no less then three pieces of spam so I spent a few minutes at spamcop although if the replies do any good I can't tell.

Work today has been rather boring so far. We have had one or two people complaining about problems which have already explained by email which leads me to ask Why don't people read their email?.

BluePrintVert called our supplier to see why they still have not picked up the broken CD ROM unit (more on this on May 16, 2000 and May 17, 2000). First they failed to answer despite listening to music for half an hour. Second attempt he was transferred, the phone was picked up but nobody was actually listening to it (or if they were they suddenly took a vow of silence) and we could hear other conversations in the background. Third try he waited on hold for a while then went straight through to the room of voices. 4th (and finally) he waited on hold for another 10 minutes before talking to somebody who promised that it will be collected tomorrow - it had better be! :).

Cisco sent us a piece of cardboard that thanks to an elastic band turned into a rigid cube as it was removed from the envelope. It kept us amused for hours!


Called up the LEA about the forms, they really really want the Birth Certificate but there is no urgency and I can sent it later.

Made some progress on the database, but got an error I haven't cracked yet.

Warning: 0 is not a MySQL result index in \\
/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/cad/disciplines/addDisciplineCode.phtml \\
on line 33

I will crack that tomorrow (I hope). E wanted to change the style of her folders, I explained that we didn't install the Active Desktop but managed to avoid ranting on for hours.

College? In a word, dull.

What I meant to do:

• Replace To do with what I actually did on May 18, 2000; Decided to leave the Todo in but move it to the end, it is now what I meant to do.
• Finish the users and disciplines section of the PHP/HTML/MySQL database; Failed, did make some progress though.
• Apply for student finance; Made some progress, just need to send everything off.
• Solve lots of people's problems and post the amusing ones to Everything2 while keeping names out of it (because I am nice and don't want to be fired); Strangely there was a shortage of stupid people today.
• Call that idiot company who failed to pick up the external CD ROM drive for repair on Monday; BluePrintVert did it and it should be collected tomorrow.
• Get to at least hour 5 of Sam's Teach Yourself Perl in 24 hours; Not a hope, I forgot I had college tonight
• Do not each snacks - waist is too wide already; I did it! I actually went for a whole day without snacking!

I took the AP Physics B exam today. The multiple choice section was easier than expected. The Free response was ok, but I didn't get to do the last question. However, no one else I talked to got through it all either, so that's ok i guess. The woman who was adminstering our test had a perfume that smelled like kitty litter. Last test. Now at last I can breath easy for a few weeks, and I have a 90 minute do nothing period everyday. Whoo hoo!

Got another taste of my "Pattern Recognition" course - I saw my first unsupervised grouping algorithm today - it was so special.

Earlier in the day I found out that my Perl forks are poorly coded - I took a look at some perl software to find out how to coded it correctly and couldn't find a single good example.

Oh, I FINALLY understood how Dijkstra's Algorithm for SSSP problems work...

I contributed to Everywhere2 once again...

Finally I managed to whack some 50 Godlike bots in Unreal Tournament - mainly through head shots... Nothing like some gratuitous violence on a crisp May evening (it's mid-fall here in Brazil you know).

May 17, 2000 | May 18, 2000 | May 19, 2000

Everything Statistics

Statistics               stats   wa7   inc  l_stats l_wa7
Total Number of Nodes:  519381  1832  1481   517900  1890
Total Number of Users:   14613    43    55    14558    41
Total Number of Links: 1519771 18566 19495  1500276 18411
Current node_id:        555792  1938  1587   554205  1996

Everything's Best Users

Users                  XP wa7 inc   l_XP l_wa7
Pseudo_Intellectual 11027 149 284  10743 127
dem bones           10438  95 116  10322  91
jessicapierce       10284  81  29  10255  90
pukesick             7797 114 102   7695 116
DMan                 7583 154 157   7426 153
Saige                7215 144 129   7086 147

Server time: 02:31 Thu May 18 2000 
Your Fellow Noders(37)

l_ = last (previous) value
inc = increase in stats value
wa7 = ((stats + (6 * l_wa7))/7) = weighted average with denominator 7

---

To node ...
E2 other everythings clones, best feature ready html editor,
Malaysia Computimes, InTech
Others Deja, tracert

It's only just come to my attention, but for me, tomorrow is the last normal day of school. Ever.

Quite possibly what I've been waiting 13 years for. It's still not quite clicked with me..

Next week, my exams start. I've got two unimportant ones in the first week, then a week free. On Tuesday 6th, I have two exams: Pure Maths, which I don't intend to make an effort for, and Technology, which I need to get a B in to get into the university course I've accepted. Then, a day off, and then another maths exam. And finally, on Friday, an easy but unimportant Computing exam.

Et puis... c'est fini.

I will be going into school for various other reasons after the exams finish - to get the yearbook and the ensuing autograph-fest, to work on the web site, and to do some work for this damn engineering thing.

So, despite the fact that I have only two classes today (both of them Technology, which is why I bother), I think I'll try and enjoy myself today, and tomorrow.

All in all, I think it's been worth it - although whether or not these have been the best years of my life remains to be seen.

I am getting my days mixed and muddled. Full nocturnality will do that to you.

No further on the text game front today (read today as: since my last sleep cycle), but I did node the entire anthology of Beatrix Potter, my most worthy etext-series noding job yet, in my own humble estimation, in an effort to get more three-to-eight-year-olds on Everything.

Much, much later, while covertly trying to observe a friend stick-fighting-training in the park next to my house, a number of my friends were suckered into playing ground tag on the playground with the band of local ten-year-old tykes who had been previously playing the shoe-chucking game (flip your shoe off at the zenith of a swing and see who gets it the furthest).

The kids won. Some see-sawery was had, then we returned to watch 200 Motels, the movie starring Ringo Starr as the dwarf dressed like Frank Zappa. Wow. And I thought Yellow Submarine was psychadelic.

Thanks to Napster, my MP3 collection is now fully stocked with Spike Jones and songs from Parappa the Rapper. This is good. Someday soon I shall become the LORD OF ESOTERICA!

Okay, then midnight turned over and it really became the date listed in this node's title.

About 3:30 am got antsy and went on a solo night bike ride.

After circling a couple of blocks aimlessly I stumbled across a streetsweeper-truck flushing out the Chinatown lanes. In escape (er, aversion) from its water-pressure predations I was provided a direction, if not a destination. When the hooker yelled "Hey, Sexy!" at me I realized I was riding the wrong way down a one-way street. (Why, what else could that utterance have indicated?) Correcting this navigational error took me past the offices of Small Potatoes and brought me to the inexplicable and obscure Portside Park, where the bird-noises put me at ease and provoked a brief bout of spontaneous spoken word art (about, ironically, a vow of silence, to be performed with the assistance of a tape recorder) when I noticed a homeless person sleeping on a nearby bench. Mortified at the notion that I might have disturbed the rest of one who assuredly had enough other disturbances in their life, I cat-like pedaled away and back into the heart of the city. En route to the bike paths I witnessed my second-ever mud-puddle on-the-street shooting-up episode (the first at Xmas 2 in front of the Theatre E) - a surprisingly low number given that I live a five-minute walk from Canada's injection-drug number one ground zero.

Having been to the north coast of Vancouver's Downtown and not yet ready to pack it in, I followed the routes to the south beaches, passing the Tower of Bauble and a curious artificial contained rainfall in the Plaza of Nations - sprinklers mounted in the tops of the potted trees themselves appearing to water themselves. I passed Europa Lake and caught a good gust of bracing sea air on my way to what I determined would be the furthest my wanderings would take me tonight - Concorde Pacific's Floating Phallus.

(The piece of public art in question is actually named something along the lines of Illuminated Stylus or somesuch nonsense, but its vertical lines and especially the two large spherical buoys at its base make its true nature unmistakable.)

Turning back, I am torn between making small talk with and zipping past a few restless security guards stiffly walking their round but having lived with one not so long ago I am wary of disturbing the zen state of the automaton achieved which makes their mind-numbingly tedious job tolerable, thus I opt for the latter.

Passing the old Expo grounds I ponder what nature of civil disobedience my Critical Mass bike-advocacy comrades will get up to to derail this year's Molson Indy race through the heart of downtown. With such sweet thoughts on my mind the sky melts from bruises to the first hint of flush at dawn's arousal.

I am returned flush myself with inspiration for two exploitative collaborative artworks I've shelved for quite a while and full of expectations for the indeterminate future.

What I hope (er, intend) to accomplish in the remainder of the day (presently 5:16 am):

Am looking forward to some good food, collaboration and face-time with a friend accidentally hurt by another friend, an independent media discussion panel and a reading by Adeena Karasick (yay!) and bill bissett (??) at Chapters (boo!).

What I hope (grr, intend) to avoid accomplishing:

Sleeping like a big loutish log just when the world wakes up and interesting things start happening, snoozing through engagements and appointments and awakening just as everything shuts down again.

in our last episode... | p_i-logs | and then, all of a sudden...

12:44 EET

I stayed up until 2AM playing Klax. While in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I could still see those colourful blocks coming at me. This would probably qualify as a Klax overdose.

Needless to say, I'm quite tired now. Luckily the matrerials for my next work project haven't arrived yet, so I can keep my brain offline and concentrate on IRCing, listening to hard electronic music and, of course, noding.
Too tired to node? Never!


15:40 EET

Starting to wake up a little.
I had a nice junk food lunch, and I've been enjoying great music by Luke Slater, Oliver Ho, The Advent and others. The weekend is approaching fast! Keeping my mind on work-related crap is really difficult on a thursday afternoon.

My mother's 50th birthday is only a few days. I've discussed on getting a present with my dad, but at the moment both of us are out of ideas.
Maybe I should set up a node for all the imaginative fellow noders to give their suggestions? Nah, that would make the gift too unpersonal. But then again, it might point my thoughts to the right direction...

I have nineteen days to find a summer job. And not just any summer job; a job that will make me enough money to eat next year when I move to Toronto. This is no small feat! Speaking of eating, I also have ten days to become a scraggly waif for a play I'm performing in. I love the play (Spring Awakening) and I love the character, but if only she weren't a starving whore...

From this experience, I've realized that I hate being hungry. It's against every survival instinct known to man (and woman) to willingly progress from a happy, healthy body to an weak, unhappy one when there is nothing psychologically wrong with me. It's frustrating, really. Next week people wil be whispering about me being anorexic or something. Well, if you'll excuse me, I have to go stare at some breakfast. If I'm lucky it'll get scared and run away before I eat it.

I got a new iguana yesterday! As much as I do not believe in the replacement of old pets with new ones of the same kind, I'm pretty happy about this. Plus it was a gift from my girlfriend, Erin. I'm not quite sure what I'll name him yet but I must figure it out soon because if I don't, she'll kill me. He's also probably the most chill iguana ever in addition to being the tiniest and cutest. Suggestions for names may be noted in the Everything2 Iguana Name Project node.

This is the first day in a while that I have been in a truly good mood. I don't get to see Erin very often, as we both have very busy schedules, but when I do it seems to change my mood drastically.

Things to do today:

• Taste test last batch of homebrew
• Send out email concerning this evening's network maintenance
• Take new web designer to lunch
• Purchase some sort of shelving

Once again I shamelessly abuse my lack of supervision and the abundant resources of the Federal Government. While my wallet grows fat on your tax dollars.

I am searching for information put out by the National Center for Alternative Medicine, in an attempt to uncripple myself.

This morning I found my Lucky Monkey in my old bedroom at my parents' house. I pulled him out of a dresser drawer. When he saw me, he began to cry but his tear-ducts were choked with dust. I had to assure him that I didn't abandon him for a new monkey-love. Then he insisted on riding the bus to work with me. He made faces and obscene gestures at the other passengers and they stared at me, cock-eyed.

The spider mites cover the stone-work in front of the Library. The steps are stained red with their juices. All over my pants, too.

The cardigan-drones buzz and click their fingers, and the heels of their sensible shoes.

Boredom exhausts me, but I sit quietly, twitching, carpet-staring, trading insults with imaginary friends...

Way hey !!

Last night was Number One Son's graduation from High School. So proud of him! I don't know how many times he told me he loved me. He said he was going "Wherever the night takes him." Saw so many kids all grown up now. Knew the names called, but I couldn't recognize the kids they had changed so much!
"Jonathon K________" I recalled him chewing nervously on the neckline of his t-shirt the first week of Kindergarten.
"Beau C_______" husband yawns, " That name sounds familiar." me, He was the kid who smashed the mailbox with a bat and his parents made him buy us a new one."
"Ryan W_______, Gold Diploma," Yay!! I cheer and remember him studying late nights with my son......forever having to borrow a math book because he forgot his at school.

Teacher's, (friends) there all asking 'How are you doing?'......I'm good ! I tell them. The pastor and his wife are there looking for him. It's a mad scramble of grabbing up and hugging for that one last time. His third grade teacher tells me that he's 'So handsome it nearly took her breath away!' My son's cocky response.....what makes you think that would surprise me? It was fun! On his card I write:

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My mother-in-law tells me I'm looking good, much better than when she saw me last, but so fragile she says.....funny, I think how that word keeps coming up.

No Words Necessary

Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
- Psalm 139:4 (NRSV)
The time I spend in God's presence each day builds a relationship of wordless communication. Simply being with God is enough to assure me of so close a relationship that nothing can ever break it.

Devotion

Also today in history, in different years my uncle Mike and dog were born. Two years ago my friend Keith flipped his Volkswagen and died. So May 18 should be important to me. I'll ride my bike to Safeway and purchase some candles, which are contraband in my house.

I rolled out of bed just in time to shower and go to my HHP lab. Weight lifting and relaxation, during which I almost went insane trying to figure out how I knew the voice on the man on tape, and thinking about the fact that I had not eaten breakfast this morning.

Met with my advisor to talk about fall-term classes.

I bought myself some Chinese food and wandered around the campus bookstore looking at travel books and thinking about things I should have bought my brother for his birthday.

Right now my leg keeps twitching and skipping.

Thursday. Spent most of the day with Katie Fowler. We've never talked much and I was missing how bright she is. Ian joined us and we ended up talking about sex, which was odd, but I let them guide the conversation and it went well. I let them swear; usually I at least say "watch your mouth" but to hell with it, who am I to be the language police. They tested me cautiously, then went completely foul, then dropped it.

Got to talk to Zach again. He says he's training his baby sister (Olivia, he calls her "Livvy") to like all his favorite foods, so when she gets big enough, her dinner requests will be the same as his. He sneaks her mac and cheese when mom turns her back. He listens to opera while he does his homework, and loves it. He was in an awful Hawaiian shirt and traffic-cone orange shorts and wrestled Patrick H. to the ground, both of them hollering and laughing.

An hour walking in the park. Getting hot, not too much more of this before summer won't let up. A stranger asked me to join a game of baseball; I smiled and shook my head no; he waved and ran off.

---

Three good messages come to me.

1. A page I copied from Amy Hempel's Tumble Home, for edebroux, but haven't mailed it yet. It's important.

2. I read twenty pages of John Welter's Night of the Avenging Blowfish and have to stop because it's so good I want it to last longer. I've had it for a year and haven't read it because of the lame title, because I am stupid. John Welter is someone who knows what it is to have a wave of chemicals flood you, swamp you, push out the things you need to get through a day without falling into pieces. He knows what it's like to lose your grip. He has beautiful words.

3. NPR is always a risk and today is a good one. A man is talking calmly and quietly. I let him talk to me about communion and community and the three basic pieces of advice offered by all religions. He talks about learning to listen to "the wisest and most compassionate people who have ever lived," and to ourselves. He says that atheism is often just childishness if it can be reduced to an inability to find wonder and delight. He talks about a place we can all reach inside ourselves where we are at home, calm, right. Here is a meditation he suggests:

Lord, I'm yours. I don't have the foggiest ideas of what your mysteries are. Please guide me. I submit myself.

Five minutes of his voice and I still don't know his name but I am crying and scrabbling for a pen in traffic and I know I will be buying his book (please have a book, I can't stop thinking, and he does). It's a Meaningful Life is the book. The man's name is Bo Lozoff. I think I will forgive him that. I might even like it.

I paint my nails green. I have some pie. I watch Blind Date and am glad I don't have to have dinner with anyone terrible. I think good thoughts and go to bed.

Today I packed my books--all of them. Many boxes. My ganglion cyst may be going away--miracle! I still miss my geek boyfriend. Naturally. Last night I dreamed we had an awful fight. We've had some heated arguments, which I view as a good thing, but no fighting, and I'd like to keep it that way...I had an awful feeling when I woke up, before I realized it was a dream.

I keep thinking about the other almost-love and lost love of my life so far, who have both been very present in my everyday life and in my thoughts recently. What's the word for this emotion I feel for them?

I have a strange desire to see a rainbow.

I noded a few okay things today despite not being too inspired, including three factual nodes: Lalique, Alphonse Mucha, and nobless oblige. Now I feel like drawing a little; we'll see if that's going to happen. The muse is fickle. Speaking of, want to join the secret Starrynight fan club? Hee. ... I'm rambling. Good night!

The week thus far:

Monday

Back to work for the first day this summer. I had been rather apprehensive about it, since so much has changed since I left last August. Things were cool though. There's a few new people working there, including this one girl-- Muy Bonita. Work consisted of setting up a new Win98 box*, and installing MS Office and stuff.

*They're all running Windows 98, unfortunately. I don't even have NT to play around with anymore. I take comfort that our mail server is running Linux, though.

Tuesday

More of the same at work; I'm now writing some SMX code to allow only those visitors to our site who don't have a login cookie to access a special offer, along with some other stuff. Whee.

After work, I head out to BW-3 with some friends for an evening of 25 cent wings and electronic trivia games. It's always fun hanging out with Eric and Christine; Eric and I annoy Christine by talking about Achaea, this MUD that we play, and they annoy me by being cute, thus drawing attention to the fact that I'm terminally single. Fortunately, we stopped at T. J. Maxx on the way over, and convinced Melissa to come by after she finished working. An older (and slightly wasted) friend of Eric's came by and conversed with us for a while. Very amusing. Afterward, we went to Malley's. All in all, a good day.

Side note: I learned today that Nikki's engaged. This is something of a shocker, since she's only 2 years older than I am. She'll be the first person in my age group that I know well to get married. I'm happy for her, of course, but I feel old.

Wednesday

Work continues. I'm pretty much done now, and it's all very slick. Quite a shocker. Usually these things turn out to be much harder than I initially expect.

Go to the Band concert at my former high school. Pretty nifty. Some nostalgia, especially when the Jazz Band played.

I hang around and say "hi" to people afterward, though Jason blew me off when I tried to talk to him. We used to not get along, but I thought things had improved senior year. I start to wonder if perhaps he was just being nice to me because of my friendship with his (now-ex) girlfriend Carey. *sigh*. I haven't talked to Carey in forever, either.

Now I'm standing with Eric, Christine, Nikki, and Melissa. I'm the youngest of that group, a year behind Christine, and 2 behind the others. And yet, I look around me, and see the crowds of high schoolers, and I feel too young and too old at the same time.

The crowds disperse, and I talk Eric into coming up to Lakeland with me to catch the end of the Rotary Awards. Unfortunately, we're too late. We catch the RHS contingent, along with some fellow alumni, on their way out. They head over to the local Burger King to hang out and commiserate over not winning any awards this year, but Eric and I have had enough nostalgia for one night, and head home.

At least I remembered to tape Buffy and Angel this week. I rewind the tape, and press play, knowing full well that I really ought to be heading to bed... Good episodes, though.

Thursday

I have a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning, for obvious reasons, and I'm an hour late to work. Nobody cares, though. I can pretty much come and go as I please.

My boss changes my assignment, making things much tougher, but then he buys us pizza, so the day's not a total loss.

By now, I've installed vim, lynx, Mozilla, and the Borland version of grep on my machine. I wonder if I can seriptitiously install Linux while I'm at it....

Another band concert tonight, this time the Junior High. I'm less enthusiastic about this one, and I'm only going because my sister's in it. It turns out to be all right though.

To be continued on Friday, when our hero goes to see the one act plays, among other adventures.

Today I registered for my courses (Second year Computer Science) at Malaspina University-College. I got all but one that I needed. The one course I didn't get was a buisness and technical writing course in which all of the seats in all three sections were reserved for Hospitality and Buisness Management Majors.

Aren't thrift stores cool?

I showed up at the local Salvation Army store at a few minutes after 5, and there was a small crowd of people there waiting for the doors to open. Inside they had clothes and books and furniture (25% off all furniture this week, y'all), but I was there to scrounge for computer stuff. I caved in and bought a PS/2 (it was under a buck! it was made by "IBM de Mexico"! it has a Property of NASA barcode!)

There was a lanky guy, gone a bit grey, with not much more than ten teeth in his head, who was telling people about stuff in the store. Seeing me check out the machines, he commented to one of the other coustomens, "He sure looks like he knows how to get that thing running." He walked over to me with a big, warm smile on his face.

"You sure look like you know what to look for."

"Yep."

"What's that thing got in it, a 30meg hard drive?"

"Twenty." I poked around to see the proceesor. "I really want a 386, though."

"You want one? I got two piles of them this high." Motioned with hands.

"Yeah?"

"Sure. You come by here next Thursday, and I'll have one for you for $15. I'll make sure it runs real well."

"Sure."

"Heck, you want two of 'em?"

I laughed. "No, thank you." Pause. "Be here Thursday, then?"

"O.K."

Work. Read. 1-hour nap. Smoke. TV. Smoke smoke smoke. Bedtime, trouble falling asleep.
The Landscaping Police leave a note, "mow the lawn or we will appoint a lawnmowing agent and put a lien on the property". Hello, isn't that a bit, let's see, FASCIST?

-/+

I am now my boss

A while back I complained that I wasn't so sure anymore that I wanted my boss' job. Unfortunately, this is no longer an option. I have fleeted up to assume his position (legs spread, hands against the wall) because he is no longer medically fit for sea duty. He had a couple of strange seizure things in the last six months, and the Navy worries about that sort of thing. So anyway, now I am in charge of over one hundred people, and everything that has an electric current running through it on all thousand feet of this ship. Yikes.

The ship is pulling back in today.

We are staying lit off though, which means I have to come back for watch from midnight until six in the morning. Ughh.

But I go home, and the kids are crazy, and the boy is good.

I bathe him, and he is not sick and seemingly has no permanent damage from his high fever. Half way through his bath, he tells me he needs to go potty in his potty chair, and I pull him from the bath, slippery and dripping warm water and bubbles. He sits on the chair and pees!! This is a momentous occasion. If you were two, and sitting in a nice warm tub full of bubbles, would you get out in the cold to pee? I wouldn't have. He, however, is getting the hang of this whole potty training thing. Too cool.

If you don't get it, go out, procreate, and come see me in a couple of years. When they're babies, even their sour-milk-smelling vomit is cute.
"Look, he puked on the rug!"
"I know, isn't he cute?"

And then we play trivial pursuit while I rub lotion on my wife's legs

I suppose in all reality it is for evenings like this that I got married. We quiz each other, her with her legs in my lap, while I work silky moisturizing lotion into her muscular calves and smooth thighs. I even rub lotion on her feet and her cute purple painted nail polished toes. I enjoy myself (Although I think I annoy my wife a little by taking too many unauthorized forays up her thighs), and the night that ends with me tucking her in and speeding off to work.

Work sucks.

So many lives here, and I love the way some of you live, not so much in lifestyle, but more in the way that you observe and note the smallest things.

Today my little brother turned sixteen and I can't say he has changed tremendously at any given point but wow, he is growing up and yet not at all. He is a boy of boys. So car-fire-girls-trouble and no one is surprised. Kids aren't the same, anymore, they just aren't.

Reliving last summer we decided to form our spying trio and binoculars in hand we stumbled through darkness giggling and reminiscing and being positively sure they would hear us, their own trio, perched on the hill around a blazing fire with a bottle of vodka. Rebellious but none of them can stand hard liquor anyway so mostly, more for us to chuckle at and we can make out a figure holding a bottle and wiping his face with his sleeve. So little boy dripping popsicle.

Somehow they did not hear us and so we made it fairly close but stopped when we realized they were going to wander back. I was sitting curled up by the fence in not so tall grass and they walked within feet of me but still, they did not see my white running shoes clashing with the night. We waited until we couldn't hear them and then made our way to the campfire, sparklers in hand. We lit them and ran around, giggling slightly and being so little girl. We heard them wandering back and so hid in the trees. They never seemed to come back to the fire and so we assumed they were gone again... a few minutes later, after deciding spying wasn't worth possible ticks or snakes, we crawled out of the trees and walked back to the house.

Laughing at them we joked about how they must be blind or deaf or just boys (as if sex played any part in the oblivious nature of it all). And then we realized that despite not hearing any juicy boy gossip or catching them doing anything humorous, we had actually accomplished one thing... they had thought they'd started a forest fire when we ran with our sparklers and they had run at least half a mile back to the camp site from the house after seeing it, thinking they'd put it out however they could. Of course, the sparklers had fizzled out quickly and were long gone before they made it back. We laughed. Oh how we laughed and congratulated ourselves on being possibly the best accidental tricksters around. And we are, we really, really are.. really.

I've been gathering myself, the little scattered pieces and trying to create order in the chaos that fills my head so often. Sometimes I think I am doing a decent job, other times, I am broken. Still, content sighs of having accomplished something with our spy mission seem to make it all fade for a time.

I miss the city but I remember the things that kept me here for so long. Mostly, I miss you, and it is hard not to be at least a little sad knowing that this cycle won't be complete for quite some time. You seem so far away tonight, so, so far. Gathering myself and holding, holding and keeping everything as close as possible because I am never sure how far the next fall will take me.