Went to my first day of training at my new job, do I really need that much training working the desk of a chenistry library?

I am still getting used to being home from school, putting away unpacking, there is huge pile of clothing in my living room, it looks like a goth club exploded.

Jason is sick, I was just trying to be sweet, but somehow I think I made him feel worse, so now he is a sleep and I am home alone, and very bored and lonely.

I always feel this way when I get back home, I guess I am just used to having all my friends down the hall from me, and now they are all in other states.

Perhaps I will node more now...

My birds learned to mimic the modem sound, so now every time I sit down by my computer, they screech at me.

Sadly, that is the most exciting thing that happened to me today.

This last week has been quite surreal in its way. Far more has gone on than my average week..

Last Wednesday, Bek, the drummer from my band, returned from her month-long working holiday interstate. Pretty much the first thing she did upon getting back was head on into the studio where we're recording our LP, to finish some vocals for songs we'd started before she left. I turned up to the studio after work, five hours after the session had begun, to find a rapidly fatiguing Bek and a very stressed looking producer, working their way through endless vocal takes. Richard, our producer, is a rather stressed fellow at the best of times, mainly due to a mixture of having no money, being overworked, eating next to nothing and being a career smoker. He was on to his third packet of the day within an hour of me arriving at the studio.

Due to the rather bizarre mood in the studio I came home earlier than usual. I rang up my ex-girlfriend, and ended up on the phone to her for over two hours, in a phone call that ended in her deciding that the only way she could get over what happened between us was for us not to see each other at all anymore. Even now, I still don't know how I feel about that. I certainly don't feel nothing, but it's hard to see whether in the long term I'll think it was the right decision for her to make.

Thursday was a far better day. Earlier in the week I had taken one of the finished tracks for our LP to be mastered, and I had a few CDR copies of the song. I had organised with Bek to meet her at 3RRR, a Melbourne radio station, with the CDR so she could pass it on to a few DJs she knows there. The reason we were so keen to get it to radio at this time was that our song was a cover of a track by the Magnetic Fields, and they were touring Australia at the time. In fact they had their first Melbourne show that evening. As chance would have it, Stephin Merritt himself was at 3RRR at that very moment, doing a pre-recorded interview with 3RRR mainstay Karen Leng. I spent a bit of time hanging around and feeling very nervous indeed until the moment when I got to meet the great man, and give him a copy of our CDR with our version of his song. He was very, very shy, and so little, but he was also very polite and accepted the CD with grace. He even posed for a photograph with me. I felt like such a little groupie.

Friday, as well as being the 21st anniversary of Ian Curtis' death, was pretty crappy. Work was bordering on the unbearable. I was off to see the Magnetic Fields that night at the Continental cafe in Prahran, and while attempting a parallel park, there was an incident involving the power steering in my car and the kerb. Needless to say my car was going to require an urgent service. At that point I didn't really feel like the evening could get worse. The Magnetic Fields were wonderful live, but the crowd appeared to be less than interested, except for the one or two songs they knew, which they proceeded to sing along to at the top of their voice, when they weren't talking all the way through it. Why somebody would pay $45 a ticket for a show they don't really care about is beyond me. The biggest relief of the evening, which I didn't realise until the following night, was that I should have got a parking ticket for where I ended up parking, but didn't. The saving grace of the evening.

Saturday was a lot better. I called up a mobile mechanic quite early because I didn't much fancy the idea of my car being out of service for any length of time, in addition to the fact I was going to need it on Sunday. It managed to set me back a delightfully large sum, but I also discovered that what happened to the power steering could have happened at any time, so I found some consolation in the fact that it occurred at a time I wasn't far from home and didn't need the car the next day. I spent the day relaxing with a couple of beers in preparation for the second Magnetic Fields show.

An e-mail buddy of mine from Brisbane, Rachel, was down in Melbourne for the weekend for a work conference. She had arranged to come to the Magnetic Fields show on the Saturday night with her friend Mandy as well as myself. I hadn't actually met Rachel in person before and I found myself quite pleasantly surprised at how much like her online persona she was IRL. She told me she was quite shy and found it hard to talk to people but this certainly wasn't in evidence in the conversations we were having.

The Saturday MF show was heaps more enjoyable than the Friday show. The support act, Darren Hanlon, was far less irritating, and the crowd was heaps more attentive, and were even calling out for old songs (even though Stephin had stated that requests would not be honoured). The fact that I was not there by myself made the evening a lot more enjoyable as well. After the show I dropped Rachel and Mandy back to where they were staying, the Nunnery in Carlton.

Sunday was another day in the studio. Bek and I had organised a cellist, Kirsty, to play on a couple of our songs. Kirsty had worked with Richard before so the day was quite relaxed. There were still a heap of takes and I could feel musician and producer fatigue approaching but we managed to get all the parts done and sounding very lovely indeed.

We had to finish earlier than normal because Tugboat were playing a gig that night, at the legendary Punters Club. We were second on the bill, which was a small step up from our usual bottom of the bill spot. Once I arrived at the pub with my gear I proceeded to drink myself confident, which I have to say worked rather well. The first band of the night was Cartwheel, who I had built up a bit of a rapport with. Later in the year I will be releasing a green vinyl 7" of theirs, as the first release on my new label! Their show, although a bit rough, was still very endearing, with lots of analogue bloops and bleeps and charming indie jangle.

I couldn't tell what the audience thought of our set because I was a bit too drunk and happy to care, but damn it felt good on stage. It had been six weeks since our previous gig and we hadn't rehearsed in that entire time so it could have been a shambles, but we got through our entire set without too many mistakes, and for once our vocals were almost totally in tune the entire time. I even relaxed sufficiently to banter with the audience and jump up and down (in a Bis stylee) during a couple of songs.

Royalchord, the headline act, who are also quite good friends of mine, didn't play their best show ever, but were still very appealing in their surf-pop-country way.

On Monday I organised with Rachel to go to the pictures in Carlton, near where she was staying. We went and saw this atrocious Australian film "The Monkey's Mask", which on first impressions felt like a lesbian porno film with a tacked-on plot about the murder of a teenage poetess. The film would have made me wince even if I was on my own, so seeing it with someone I didn't know that well made it exceptionally difficult to relax. After the film we went and had pasta in Lygon Street and I walked Rachel back to the hostel, chatting all the way. I received an email from her the next day, having arrived back in Brisbane, apologising for not being a great conversationalist, which I really have to say I saw no evidence of. Normally with someone shy, I go completely mute, but that just didn't occur.

Tuesday was nothing special, other than receiving a whole stack of records I'd ordered over the 'net, which I spent my evening working my way through, in between watching The Bill and Absolutely Fabulous. It's back off to the Punters' Club tonight to see Kirsty play a solo show, and have a few nice relaxing beers. I can't think of a better way to spend an evening.

10:31

Sorry to disappoint the systematically downvoting pussies, but I'm still here. Try harder, cowards.
I feel bad about my lack of daylogging in the past.. um, 6 months. It's not that I have an urge to write down every small detail of my life, but in a few years from now I'll wish I had written more than a few entries each month. I especially feel bad I didn't write anything on my birthday. Then again, I still have plenty of those ahead of me.
Regarding the nature of my day logs.. Since it's the trivial and mundane things one tends to forget, maybe I should sometimes concentrate on that instead of my shallow thoughts and pathetic attempts at using fancy words subconsciously trying to convince people I've got above-average language skills? (which I don't)
Well, that's some stuff to think about. Maybe I'll get around to my planned a-week-of-mundane-daylogging project soon. But maybe it would be best to get a few of my current 279 E2 projects out of the way first.

Ok, enough of this meta-noding already. :)

Life is sweet back here in HML. Like simonc mentioned in his day log a while back, I've been subjected to some changes at my workplace. But while the thing might look like something on paper, in reality it isn't a big deal at all. I'm on company Y:s payroll, but practically still doing work for company X and working under them. Believe me, any more info about the issue and your head would explode.

Apart from the plans for the trip to Japan being practically destroyed - a fact that still pisses me off - things are fine. A lot of the people are away at a training seminar today, which gives me the perfect time to catch up with my noding -- er, I mean: to catch up with work! A national holiday coming up tomorrow, and even the weather seems to be on my side (apart from some light rain).
Of course, there's the thing about my first entrance exam being in Oulu in two weeks, and I'm currently a poster child for the unprepaired. But I decided a long time ago to not stress too much over it. I'll do my best, and if it's not enough this year, it will be enough in 2002. One year here or there doesn't matter much, and it just gives me one more year to gather work experience and make a lot of FIM.
I wonder, why does the society make me feel like a complete loser if I'm not studying at the age of 22, although I am working my ass off and making good pay? One of those mysteries of life, I suppose.

Time to get some lunch.
I'm eating a bit less these days, and it feels great. Don't worry, I'm not turning into Ally any time soon. :)


22:01

Playing Amiga demos on a laptop and catching names of them to update The List in real time... Have I reached the higher state of geekdom yet?
At least I'm contributing to E2, and in the least XP-whoreish way possible - nodekeeping. And what else is there to do on a Wednesday night in Hämeenlinna? Um.. Any night?

Oh right, the firm handed me a Dell laptop. I don't really have any use for one, but since I had a chance to get one to my use for free.. why not?
A portable computer is nice for a person who has to do a lot of work-related (or personal) travelling, but I still fail to understand people who switch from a regular PC to a laptop although they have no need whatsoever for one. Call me an old-fashioned nerd, but I prefer a big monitor with a decent resolution to a tiny screen and 1024x768, no matter what it is I'm doing. And while some of the current machines have a usable keyboard, IMHO they don't come close to the good old Keytronic. And I don't even need to mention expanding and upgrading..
Although I'm one of the people with no need for a compact PC, I'll enjoy it for what it is - a cool toy. You'll most likely hear much more positive comments from me in two weeks from now, as I'm travelling on a train for hours and hours to reach a city half-way to the North Pole. :)

There is this guy that I work with, lets call him Randy, (because that is his name). He seems like a nice enough guy. He talks quite a bit. He also has the habit of staying at work for several hours after his shift is over. But over time I began to realize that he never mentioned any other people in any of his stories. Then during a discussion about girls he mentioned that the reason he never meets any girls is because he never really talks to anyone except at work.

And then years later I did not care.

Today I feel a bit dazed, as I'm settling in at work but my immediate boss is out, and I have had real work to do. On the other hand, I got said real work done before lunch, so later on I'm going to be receiving a little training as well. I was sufficiently inspired by my arrival this morning at Westminster tube station to node it, and the surrounding area. I love working here. As tomorrow is Ascencion Day, I probably shan't be noding much, if at all, because my lunch hour will be spent haring down to the church and back for my fix of the old-style religion.

Here's the News for the day as of 2:23pm Central European Time:
________________________________________________________________________________

International Hearld Tribune (www.iht.com)

U.S. Envoys Renew Mideast Shuttling

International envoys, led by the American diplomats based here, began shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian leaders Tuesday in a renewed push for a halt to violent hostilities, based on the recommendations of an international fact-finding committee.

Leak Strains Germany's Relations With U.S.
A leaked diplomatic cable from the German Embassy in Washington has strained German-American relations, raised questions about Germany's relationship with the Libyan leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, and prompted a furious fight between the top officials who shape foreign policy.

Taleban Plans Identity Tags for Hindus
Hindus will be required to wear an identity label on their clothing in Islamic Afghanistan to distinguish them from Muslims, a Taleban minister said Tuesday.

German Confidence Plunges While Inflation Surges
Germany's economic prospects darkened Tuesday as a raft of reports showed waning business confidence, slowing growth and rising inflation - a gloomy combination that knocked the European single currency to its lowest level in six months.

A New Poke in the Eye: China Bristles Over Tibet
A Chinese government spokesman urged American leaders to "stop interfering in China's internal affairs" by permitting official meetings with the Dalai Lama and warned of "harm to Chinese-American relations."

Ford Prepares to Recall 13 Million Firestone Tires
Ford Motor Co. was set late Tuesday to announce the recall of as many as 13 million more Firestone tires at a cost of $3 billion.

Business Warns on Indonesia Unrest
Indonesia's economy is still growing despite a deepening political crisis, but investors and business executives warned Tuesday that continued instability would create a serious slowdown, pushing unemployment and inflation to levels that could fuel widespread social unrest.
________________________________________________________________________________

BBC (www.news.bbc.co.uk)

Israel halts 'offensive action'

Israeli troops are ordered not to open fire on Palestinians unless there is a threat to life, but the Palestinians describe the move as a "trick".

Corruption report stuns cricket world
A report into match-fixing in cricket says a conspiracy of silence is allowing corrupt practices to continue.

Parties battle over Europe
The Tories reveal an EU document on harmonising taxes, but Labour says it is against it too.

Vets tackle disease cluster
Efforts to stamp out a new cluster of UK foot-and-mouth cases are increased, as the government is accused of letting down rural businesses.

Party switch could swing US Senate
Jim Jeffords could be about to leave the Republicans in a dramatic switch that would hand Democrats control of the upper house.
________________________________________________________________________________

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)

Israel Tells Army Not to Fire Unless Lives Are Endangered

In a step toward a cease-fire in the Middle East, the Israeli military has ordered its troops to open fire only in self-defense.

Senator From Vermont Says He May Leave G.O.P.
Republicans worked to dissuade Senator James M. Jeffords, a Vermont Republican, from changing parties and giving control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Dogged Fight by Democrats Delays Tax Bill
The Senate grappled with the tax cut legislation as Democrats, lacking the votes to block it, argued against the plan.

Lobbying Puts Nuclear Power Back Into the Political Arena
The Bush administration has breathed new life into the nuclear power industry, declaring nuclear technology much safer than it was 20 years ago.

Devils to Face Colorado in Stanley Cup Finals
________________________________________________________________________________

Panapress (www.panapress.com/english)

Tunisian peacekeepers arrive in Kinshasa

Kinshasa, DR Congo - A contingent of 250 Tunisian soldiers, who are among the first armed peacekeepers in the UN Observer Mission to Congo (MONUC), have arrived in Kinshasa where they would take up positions at the airport and surrounding areas.

University of Pretoria launches Desmond Tutu Chair
Johannesburg, South Africa - Archbishop Desmond Tutu received a rousing welcome from University of Pretoria students and staff when he launched the Desmond Tutu Chair in Leadership Development and Future Studies at the campus on Tuesday.

Senegalese, Moroccan leaders worry over Middle East
Dakar, Senegal - The Senegalese and Moroccan Heads of State have expressed concern about the escalation of violence in the West Bank and Gaza, which President Abdoulaye Wade blamed on "the warfarist policy of the Israeli government."

Ethiopian medics urge for better access to essential drugs
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Against the backdrop of increasing deaths from malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, the Ethiopian medical association meeting in its 37th annual conference, has called for better access of the population to essential medicines.

Researcher decries imballances in trade regulations
Paris, France - Despite calls for a new round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks critical issues of concern for developing countries in the existing world trade agreements signed in Marrakech, Morocco have yet to be addressed, notes Oxfam (Belgium) researcher Raoul Marc Jenner.

Foreign troops to begin DR Congo pull out next February
Lusaka, Zambia - Defence and Foreign Affairs ministers from countries involved in the DR Congo conflict, have agreed to begin the withdrawal of their troops by 22 February next year.
________________________________________________________________________________

China Daily (http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn/news/index.html)

Bush positive on China ties -- US official

US President George W. Bush was "positive" on ties with China, a top US official said Tuesday, despite tension over the visit of Daila Lama and Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian's stopover in New York.

NGOs back Beijing's Olympic bid
Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games has not only aroused awareness across the country but also gained support from abroad.

Greater security in securities
China's securities authority vowed to strengthen management of securities clearance funds Tuesday to avoid embezzlement of the funds by brokerages.

Chinese-Americans and students studying in the United States stage a protest
Chinese-Americans and students studying in the United States stage a protestin New York against US playing host to Taiwan pro-independence leader Chen Shui-bian. Chen is making a two-day stopover in New York on his way to a Central America visit.
________________________________________________________________________________

Moscow Times (www.themoscowtimes.com)

Putin Shrugs Off Reports of Aid Cuts

The president has dismissed reports that the United States and Germany had agreed to withhold aid.

President Backs Broad Court Reforms
The prosecutor general has stepped up his criticism of the plans to curb his office's powers.

OMON Attack Trial Hits a Snag
The trial of seven men accused in the attack on an OMON unit in Chechnya last year hit a snag Tuesday.

Sakharov's Ideals Can Save Russia
Andrei Sakharov would have turned 80 this week, giving us reason to think about the ideals he championed.

Ex-KGB, CIA Spooks Join to Fight Cyber-Spies
A former head of KGB code-scrambling and an ex-director of the CIA rolled out Monday what they called a revolutionary way of hiding Internet communications from prying eyes.
________________________________________________________________________________

Happy Birthday to
mblase

Whoohooo two daylogs in a row. Could this be a trend for me? I don't know, but here it goes again.

Work finished up yesterday without a hitch at least for me. My project manager just will NOT do his job at times. At least I have a paper trail.

My 5 year old is having trouble at school. She says that the kids will not play with her. This could be her perception but several people including her school and myself have noticed that she is so far behind in development. Our family doctor is sending us to CHOP. He said that they may put he on drugs to help her concentrate. Yes the terrible R word came up. Not that I don't believe in drug therapy but its just tough. It's tough to come to grips with a child with a possible learning disability. ESPECIALLY since it may have been prevented.

I had a fun class last night for BDSM. Yah wouldn't think there would be classes but they want to make sure that Doms don't kill their subs and learn new fun things to do. The overall theme was safety. Things such as preparation and communication were key.

Work
During overtime today, the brilliant nurses in a particular ward (which shall remain nameless) managed to give me extra work. They managed to record one patient's blood sugar level in the wrong patient's notes ... which led, of course, to that patient being given insulin as per his sliding scale insulin orders. They managed to realize this mistake but not before the insulin was given. They did notice that his real BSL was closer to 9.3 rather than 29.8 ...

So I had to go down to that ward and insert an IV cannula and run a glucose drip in so that the patient did not drop into hypoglycaemia.

Finance
Looks like a sad day for US stock bulls today as the major indexes turn down against what most technical chartists would have called short term bullish. Looks like Alan Greenspan's injection of $11 billion into the banking system might not be enough.

Gold might make a comeback later today. For the sake of my remaining expiring call options in some gold mining companies, I hope so.

The US Dollar index might be making a significant top soon. Now currently in bubble blow off period (I think).

It's only 8:50am. I've been awake for an hour and a half, and my day's already been shot to hell.

I woke up and remembered I had a mammal physiology midterm tonight - that I need oh so desperately to study for. I get on e2 and see that one of my cooled writeups got nuked for no apparent reason. :( Why couldn't the SOB that nuked my WU at least send me a /msg telling me why? Is that too much to ask for?

Next, catastrophe hits. I read over my internship professor's email and realize that my daddy had forced me to book tickets for an extra month. So, I get to curl up with a nice piece of newspaper in downtown Omaha for the month of August. At least I won't freeze to death in August.

To add insult to injury, daddy tells me it's all my fault. I'm not saying 90% of it wasn't my own fault, but I wasn't the eager beaver one that insisted on booking non-refundable plane tickets to an indefinitely long event.

Well, whatever. I do my morning thing and check my email -- some stupid idiot sent me another "you have a secret admirer!" CrushLink email. (See my thoughts on CrushLink.)

My boyfriend wants to "talk". I'm scared.

There's no phone in my house that I can use. We redid our carpet yesterday. All my belonging except for my darling computer is all packed away in the garage. "Call me", he says. I don't have a phone and I don't know where it's packed away at. She said, through gritted teeth.

Let's see how the rest of my day goes...

Another day of the grind. I am missing school. Its been out about two weeks and I have started working 40 hour weeks instead of my normal 25. I dislike having a normal 8am to 5pm schedule. Its starting to wear on me mentally, I get home and don't even want to think.

I've been kind of lonely lately because my girlfriend is out of town. I didn't realize just how much of my time I usually spend with her. Its only because she is so much fun. ;-). She is visiting her friend Elizabeth in L.A.. Elizabeth is a student at USC and is majoring in screenwriting. Both of them are weird in similiar ways. I posted a node the other day on screenplay format as kind of a "I'm thinking of you" type of thing. I hope the gf doesn't spot any errors. We took a film class together this semester and her film script was perfect and mine had formatting errors until the day before we turned it in.

(And last night she watched the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without me. It was a great episode.)

I'm trying to figure out some stuff for my website. I want to write a chatroom that doesn't constantly ping the server. Ideally when a new message is posted the server gets notified by the client that posted it. Then the server notifies all the other clients that a new message has been posted. This is much more efficient than the meta refresh nonsense. Polling is soooo inefficient. Oh well guess I better get back to what I was doing... bye.

Being a parent is so god-damned hard, and so wonderful, and so scarey....and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world...and I do mean anything. My 9 year old son had his fourth grade concert last night. He plays the recorder. God...going to school concerts and programs has to be the coolest thing ever. Seeing those kids go up on the stage, and search the audience for their families, and then seeing their face light up when they see us. Now thats cool. One of the best parts about it is now that my son is 9, it's not all that accepted for him to like mom...so it's great fun to watch his face light up, then watch him try to put on his "I'm too cool and old to really care if mom is there or not" face.

Watching my kids grow..and grow up. It's the best. Watching those little blobs grow into personalities and form opinions and lives....it's the most humbling, educational, wonderful thing I've ever seen. And I can take so little credit for the incredible people that they're growing into. My 7 year old daughter is already a fearless, stubborn, beautiful person who will probably break mine and dozen's of other hearts. My son is a nerd...he's always been one, and he always will be. And I love it. I was sooo into popularity and cliches in school. Later, in college I realized that the ones who really had it going were the nerds, the unconventional people who dared to be themselves. That is my son completely..and my daughter in her totally UN-nerdlike way.

Today I'm taking them out of school early to go see A Knight's Tale. I think it's based on William Thackery. I'm very excited about it, and so are they, probably more because of getting out of school, but hey...part of being a parent is learning how to take what you get and be happy. My son is into medival stuff...and fantasy stuff. My daughter is into princesses and romance. I'm hoping the movie will have plenty of both.

AAARRRRGGGGHHH. This morning I spent an hour and a half in a Telephone Labyrinth trying to have my internet service reconnected. This was a problem since I make my $ via the internet. So after having corrected the situation I ate breakfast on the deck I made yesterday from the remains of the old fence.

Oh yes, the old fence, you know, the one that used to surround our backyard? What backyard you say? Well let me tell you, you see our landlady owns three houses in a row which appearently are adjacent to a vacant lot. Trouble is she built fences onto this land (owned by the city) and called them yards for her houses. So you can see where this is going eh?

Well Mr. Neighbor wants to tear down his old house and build a new one, so guess what? he measures the property line and (big surprise) discovers that one of these fences is 3 inches onto his property. Not only that but he also discovers that those three yards are actually a vacant lot owned by the city, whom he immediately informs.

THEN THE BULLDOZER ARRIVED.

Good-bye yard, Good-bye three yards! And one with such an exquisit garden too. Ofcourse none of the tenants of these houses realised when they moved in that their yards were on the cities land, but hey tough do do.

End result: Mr. Neighbor gets a brand new driveway up to his garage through our (virtual) backyards. Ah, the joys of planet Earth.

However I am still a Happy noder:

Ole Worm

Elias Ashmole

Wunderkammern

gee gaws

Telephone Labyrinth

Prophetic Intoxication

I have two anniversaries today. One is my two year anniversary of dating my boyfriend. The other is the five year anniversary of the death of my father. Sort of an odd couple when you consider the fact I treat them both as celebrations, one terribly bitter and the other just peachy.

I have moved into my boyfriend's rental house, and he has left on a motorcycle journey across the country. He's going just to go, and I miss him, but I don't cry myself to sleep at night. It's as if that whole wrenching stabbing pain of being away from someone that I used to have before being medicated has been lifted away. I feel less dysfunctional. Instead of moping around the house, I have been constructive. Balancing the checkbook, figuring out how many quilts I'll have to make for the explosion of births that is about to happen around me, hanging laundry out on the clothesline since the dryer doesn't work right. I don't feel terrible about anything right now, but I don't feel particularly good either.
It has been a strange week... and it's only Wednesday.

Two things today:

First thing: I was walking from my apartment to the bus stop to go quit my job. (See third paragraph for no details whatsoever). There was this woman, walking the opposite direction on the other side of the street. She was looking at me, and just before we passed each other, she stopped and said, "Mam?" So I stopped and looked her way, because there was no one else she could possibly be talking to. "Are you a social worker?" she asked.

I have no idea what prompted that question. I was just walking by, with by book bag over my shoulder, wearing baggy cargo pants, a polo shirt, and my Birkenstocks. At this point I'm kind of wishing I had said yes, just to find out why she wanted to know. However, I was rather dumbfounded by the question, and answered simply, "no." She said, "oh, okay," and continued walking.

Second thing: I quit my job. I hadn't even started really, but it's a long story, mostly boring, so I'll spare you. I got a call from Staples yesterday; they want to interview me. I'm excited about that, because it's my favourite store. I've been a retail slave a lot before, and even though the money sucks, I've always enjoyed the work.


I got my marks this week too! Woo! My report card was sent to my parents' house, and my dad scanned it and emailed it to me with this message: "Congratulations! Great marks. Love Daddy." He's such a sweetheart. This is how I fared:

I'm very pleased with these marks. Especially considering what a slacker I am. I'm particularly happy with the two Cs, probably because E2 has brainwashed my into thinking a C! is as good as it gets. No, actually it's because I was failing Critical Thinking at midterm, and brought it up to a C by working my ass off. As for Psychology, I didn't ever go to class, or study, and still managed a C. I went to the first half of the first lecture, and never went again. Now I realise that isn't anything to boast about, but I'm not a psych major, so I don't care. WoO! I RULE! FEAR ME!

Uh... yeah... I'll just go now...

Today my boss asked me to count passengers boarding flights to Vancouver. It was a boring job. While waiting for a flight to board, from the gate, I swear to god, came one hundred and fifty uniformed japanese schoolgirls marching two by two. Like a vision, a dream, or a scene from bad hentai.

They had the plaid skirts, the white shirts and jackets with school crests on the outside. Honestly I thought this was just an anime stereotype, but aparently it is not. They marched with military accuracy through the concourse, through the airport, and out the doors, probably heading to Lake Louise if the stereotype holds up.

Oh yes, and a mother called me at work and informed that she recieved a call claiming I had won a free cocktail party from the frabjuous Metro Nightclub. Woop-dee-do.

That was about the high point of my day.

So much going on in my RL right now! I had another (yes, the third date) with her last night. We had dinner and talked. I can tell that she (ok, I am too) is falling in love with me. That heady, infatuational/crush/intense heart-soul connection thing is racing full speed ahead. It was very interesting last night, because I could really feel my fear of closeness overcoming my infatuation, overtaking it and subduing it.

I know I don't want to have feelings I can't control. And at the same time, what else is love if not controllable? There is so much going on - this is the first woman I've ever kissed, the first woman I've had serious sexual fantasies and longings for, and I don't even know if I'll like it! (I think I will.)

And I still love Michael, I don't want to be with him in terms of a relationship, but I love him. And I'm not ready for a dating relationship that is only one person, and involves sex. I can feel that I'm not emotionally ready. Because once sex gets involved, my feelings will skyrocket. And they are already pretty intense.

I walked my dog this morning and tried to really feel everything and not shut it up. I felt fear, fear of being hurt by her. It isn't a reality based fear, but one based on my childhood. I really felt it though, and it feels old. I feel a little less intense about her today, however, that may be partially due to the very bad news I got today from my doctor.

My uterus is enlarged. I have fibroids, and apparently they're so big, it's pressing on other organs in my abdomen. My doctor couldn't even feel my ovaries. I wasn't scared, just kind of upset at first, now I am starting to feel a little scared. I've basically been in shock all day. And not willing at all to deal with all this emotional stuff.

I've just been calling all my friends, my mom, my sister asking for support and advice. Which I have gotten. I am having the ultrasound done next week - the doctor did a quick one in the office and said, "See that? There it is." Uh - no, doc, actually: I can't make out anything except shadows and shapes.

A very very strange day...

Went through a basically typical day, all while wearing a screaming orange Dispatch T-Shirt (which, in and of itself, made the day weird.)

Then around 2:05-ish (P.M), I decided to go work out, but was quickly stopped by a friend who needed a ride home. As it were, he lived five minutes away. I dropped off a note for someone in the workroom before leaving (at which point I was hassled about proper mailroom protocol). This hassling took up 10 minutes of my life. 5 minutes later, I finally got into the car with my friend and proceeded to drive him home. Another 5 minutes of peaceful driving pass, and I realize that my gas tank is within milliliters of empty. This was a bad thing.

Rushed to a gas station and hit construction mere feet from the station. Road Construction. Argh! 10 minutes later we finally were able to fill up the gas tank and did so. 5 minutes later I was finally able to drop my poor friend off at his house. Decided it would be faster to get back to the weightroom by taking the back roads, and wound up ten miles north of where I wanted to be. After 15 minutes of useless driving, I finally got back on the main road. It took me an additional 10 minutes to get back.

I then proceeded to tell the story of how it took me an hour to go to and from what should have only five minutes away, only it involved more space aliens, goblins, and getting naked.
And that's my story.

it was a day today.

a couple of days ago i started to convert an old computer we had lying around at work to Linux in order to set up three domains on it: one for my family, one for someone else's family, and a third for my "band".

setting up multiple domains is a pain. don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

first, i delved into the intricacies of BIND in order to try and figure out how to get the domain names to propagate. a few hours of that convinced me that it wasn't worth it. so instead, i called the company that hosts our company's web site and conned them into entering the A records and MX records into their master database.

Then, the fun of Apache. At least setting up virtual hosts on that was relatively painless.

After some IP address problems were worked out, i got to spend today beating sendmail into submission. That was not relatively painless.

After hours of searching and more hours of bug testing, i finally got it to work, sort of. for every user i have to add specific information saying what mail goes where and comes from where.

but it works, and i'm thrilled.

and what the hell. it's 23/5. hail eris.

although if anyone has a better way, let me know...

I had a profound interaction with Mr. F today. I like the fact that his name sounds like profound...

His paintings were gone from the gallery, so I assumed that I would never see him again. I figured I’d never get to. I knew he’d come back to get them the afternoon I wasn’t there. I knew it. A sobering thought, albeit a surprisingly quick one to get over once I faced it; I’d been facing it down so long it was good finally get it eye to eye.

I started painting. Painting hard.

I finally took a potty break around two, and passed a professor who muttered something about it suddenly being crowded around here crowded? I’m the only one here? and there he was. Of course. Trying to get into the print studio and waiting for somebody else and there was me.

I tried to make small talk. Tried to get some sympathy for my poor old gimpy knee and refrained from telling him my grandpa died (baby, i’d tell you all about it if i thought you’d care) and tried to get some reaction any reaction out of the boy I would have loved and did.

I went downstairs and by the time I came back somebody else had shown up –- not a good friend of either of ours. I started right in again, and Mr. F nodded and smiled and smiled and nodded and looked down the way and nodded and turned in a certain way... And then I gave up. I was mid-babble when I realized it, and just stopped and told him I was full of shit and was going to go away now and limped off down the hall and away.

The person he’d come to meet was silent all that while and they maintained that silence to humor me halfway down the corridor before they began chattering like old pals.

I was sad he didn’t come see me later. Sad and disappointed, but ...

I have nothing left to say to you. You could never have been who I thought you might, my dear. I started writing on my canvas and made a self-portrait of myself sinking into paint this is me underneath underneath so far under so that there is no difference between me and the work. As maybe it should be sometimes.

I feel like the further I get into art and into work and into all of these things the less capable I am of carrying on basic social interactions with human beings. I wonder if I’ll never find that SOMEONE -- not because there’s no one out there but because I am too quiet in this shroud. I like the feel of the shroud though. I feel like I have become a caricature of myself because it’s the only part I know how to play.

Goodbye.

My girlfriend woke me up at 8:30 this morning. ): I've gotten used to waking up at 3 in the afternoon, so I was needless to say a little grouchy, I feel kinda bad about that. I went back to sleep and got up around noon and we hung out until about 3:30. At which point she left and my friends came over and we went to Gold's Gym to lift weights. We worked on chest today. Later, I go to my Tae Kwon Do school and find out it is closed today due to energy problems(whatever that means). After that I went to watch one of my friend's hockey games. Had a few beers with him afterwards and here I am now getting ready for bed.

After The Event

My last day at secondary school. Any education from this point onwards is in my hands and under my control. From now on, I learn for myself and for myself only.
Exams start on the 6th of June. I'm unworried. I plan to sit them again next year, and I expect to score much higher. School has been getting in the way of my studies. A set of subjects chosen on MY terms, and the knowledge that I'm doing this for myself. Not for my parents, not for some pleasant suburban life in twenty years' time.
I haven't dared tell my parents. I have a suspicion they'd send me on a cross-country guilt trip and convince me it was for my own good. Meanwhile, I've lost all connection with what "my own good" would be. Recently it's become clear to me that if my future is regular employment and a comfortable living, something will have to change.

Everyone came to school. Shirts were signed, pockets were forcibly removed. The water guns were broken out. The seventy-seven of us were thrown out of class, the vice-principal came and told us to go back. The balance of power tipped in our favour.

Nine of us went to the beach. I held my Danish Postal shorts up with a keyring and a tie. As I was hacking the legs off with blunt scissors, Ifa walks up to myself, John and Paul, carrying a bowl of fruity snacks and wearing, for the first time in her life, a bikini.

"I've got melons!", she proudly exclaims.

As we fall about laughing, she looks blank for a moment, and then-

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." She walks away, shaking her head. We steal her melons and eat them.

There's a large, rectangular rock pool further along the beach. The water is gloriously warm. We sit there for some time, then go back to the cove where we left our bags and food for the barbecue. Burgers and sausages all round, and considerable consternation about the lack of any vegetarian food, as the meat-eaters have stolen all the fruit, due to their added aggression and protein-fuelled strength.

Half the people leave in one car. Me, John, Paul and Caen are left around the barbecue. Half-naked men, eating meat off the fire. One by one, each of us gets up to relieve ourself. Nobody mentions exactly where they went. Caen, the last to go, cries out piteously as he puts a bare foot in a wet, warm patch of grass.

Eventually, we decide it's time we got back into our civilian clothes and left. The graduation ceremony's in an hour, and we're about an hour's drive away from the school. I pick up my pants and throw them onto the rocks.
I'm looking for my underpants. I was sure they were in my pants when I put them down, but now they're nowhere to be seen. I'm going to have to wear the skanky pair in my bag. As I'm putting my pants on, though, from the left leg there issues a pair of boxer shorts. They land three feet away, perfectly folded, upon the rocks. Why? Nobody can answer this. The underpants are obviously enchanted.

I arrive at the school just in time for the ceremony, still wearing salty, crumpled casual apparel and carrying a bodyboard. The rest of the school have chosen their best clothes for the occasion. Speeches, presentations. Light refreshments afterwards. Apart from that, it's over. We say goodbye later, over exams. Few enough people in my year have given me cause to form an attachment to them, in any case.


Yes, it's late. I only found it floating around as a text file today.

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