September 1, 2001

Today, I was at a rock concert I didn't neccesarily want to be at. But I went, because I was asked, and I'm afraid of losing the friendship that I used to have with the person who asked me to go. But I'm not hear to talk about waning friendships, as I've learned that it is just an inevitable part of life, and getting older.

It was the last set of the show, the headlining act was in peak form. And for some reason, I was distracted by a couple. I don't think I've ever seen such a public display of affection before, and I could not stop watching them. I knew that they wouldn't notice, so I didn't have the "Don't let them think you're the creep you probably are" feeling running through my head. It was a strange spectacle, and I think I was the only person in the entire place who noticed them. So in love. Completely oblivious to everything beyond that perfect moment that they found themselves in. Complete awe, until they broke their embrace, and our attentions turned back to the concert. But that horrible sense of lonliness, and self-pity that usually accompanies such things was strangely absent. A sign of getting older? Or just that I have deadend myself to one of the last few things that could make me feel any emotion at all?

Later that night, my friend and I were driving his friends home, and one of them said something that has struck me like a moving car...

"School is the biggest coast of your life"

It started me thinking, "Is he right? Am I completely turned around on the subject? What am I going to do after school?" Thus causing me to re-evaluate all the choices I am making, and will have to make. But still making me feel like I've failed, before I've even had a chance to begin.

Also bringing me to this self-depreciating state, Lisa came onto MSN Instant Messenger and told me she was sorry for not being a better friend, and hopes we can become what we once were.

I hope she's right.

i like lists.

i'm moving in two days
i'm starting school in, technically four days.
i'm getting my teeth painfully worked on in three days.
i will get a front tooth pulled.
my last shift at work is in eight days
i'm getting a little petrified at the idea of all this
my icbc lady told me i was refreshingly optimistic about my injuries. i wanted to tell her i was experienced at faking happiness
i can't even pack, i'm so frozen with overwhelmedness
i wish i was high.
i'm watching my life being packed away into brown boxes, disorganized as it is, and remembering how messed up i truly was
i don't think i've gotten better since then
my first beaver meeting is in twelve days.
i have ten beavers and no leaders
i'm pissing people off left and right by cancelling plans and not phoning when i said i would.
i haven't bought my books yet
i haven't sent in my loan application yet
i'm all out of socks
my ankle hurts.
i need to find a new job.
i need to do a lot of things. i can't do anything.

Edgy. Today is my last day of the summer after high school. While it's only midnight here, and lately I've been dropping at about 3 AM, I feel very tired. Emotionally exhausted. It is such a difficult thing for me, to figure out what trinkets and icons I want to bring with me, especially since I have a notoriously difficult time decorating most things and paying any attention to aesthetics. Actually, that's not true. I am just very uneven about my attention to aesthetics. I feel that my dorm room will sort of be my temple, and it needs to Fucking Rock or something in life will be missing.

So tomorrow I will move into Macalester College. I'm quite excited about it, all in all, but I have a lot of trouble letting go of things, and finally moving out of home is one of the greatest letting go's a person can experience (besides death, yeah) And I need to clean up the family computer, too, which is a fucking mess, much like most physical organizations in my life (though happily, not so much the mental end these days, Mmm Mmm good Paxil).

Mallrats: The pilgrimage. Today my very trusty friend Dave and I decided, as our last non-collegiate chance to hang out, we'd visit Eden Prairie Center, the filming location of 1995 Kevin Smith movie Mallrats. We were extremely disappointed to find that the entire mall has been gutted and is getting expanded about 80%. We searched in vain for any recognizable parts to the mall. Malls are such transient things, as are most things commercial in nature. However, this sucked a lot. The very railings, the floors, the ceilings, even the elevator that Brodie and Rene have sex in, all of it had been mutated into unrecognizeable forms. There was nowhere to get chocolate-covered pretzels, and from the exterior we couldn't figure out where Jay and Silent Bob had used his retractable cable to escape from Lafours. In short, don't go to Eden Prairie Center, because you can't cross the same river twice.

Geek I am. Of course, my beloved old Apple Macintosh 6100/60 kicked the bucket a few weeks ago when it acquired bad blocks, knocking my web server hongpong.com offline. Which means I should be trying to recover the news archives posted over the past 9 months, but it's just so difficult to try to do...

I am very happy that my family is springing for a new G4 for my dorm. Very very happy. I think I have earned it, working during the summer, and very hard during most of my high school career, and I hope I did not cross the line from kewl hardware to rich-fuck pretentiousness. I don't think I did, because I decided to get a Mitsubishi CRT display instead of a flat-screen, which was more than twice as expensive. With my parents already footing much of the bill at Mac, this'd be another straw for the camel.

In any case, the computer will not arrive at school for at least a week, probably more. HOW will Dan the Dork survive without his precious MP3 playing and all that stuff? I'm not sure, really. Conveniently, I am working somewhere in the school library, so I'll be nearby the computer labs and such. Ahhh... electron goodness... Of course, I think that it's really, really a good thing that a computer won't in my dorm, in some respects, because it will force me out of the room and keep me from being a recluse. The word from my friends already at college is that new freshmen are mostly quite friendly and excited... I'm counting on it.

Meta. Looking over this w/u, I feel it's quite tangential, unfocused, and parenthetical, which I believe reflects to some extent how my life has reached a junction point. It's not because I'm stoned right now, in case you're wondering. I have been known to do that before and the results tended to get nuked rapidly.

WEED! In fact, for the last few days here, I've sworn off getting THC-intoxicated until I get to school. I'm not sure why, exactly. My last experience buying pot was so truly unusual and unnerving that it's made me very edgy about drugs, I think. As I move onto college, I reflect on the people I know who've gotten pretty burned out. And I think about the people who don't smoke pot at all, or drink, but have no brains or ambition, which reminds me that drugs don't fuck you up if you're already a fuck-up. I think I have learned that you should not touch drugs until you've got your shit together. And additionally, don't smoke pot alone and When it's all about the weed, it's time to think. For the most part, I've held to these principles, and I think if I continue to do so, I will emerge from college a happy and healthy person who had a good amount of fun, without endangering myself in literally suicidal patterns of behavior.

P.S. The experience about buying weed was so bizarre I know I have to node about it, but I've had difficulty working up the reserve to do so. Also, I am now on E2 hiatus and I guess I will have to forgo most interaction with this fine community until I get the computer. However, as a human being, I think I will be better with friends and happiness than a little more XP.

11:48

Well, last night was something else.

Being the die-hard geek I am, I was playing Operation Flashpoint early in the evening, very concentrated at getting the mission finished.
Soon I started feeling like my eyes were crossed, I didn't seem to be able to focus properly. Soon I started to get a bit dizzy, and decided playing a 3D game might not be wise at this point.
I left my computer to the kitchen for preparing something to eat, but the dizzyness and disorientation started to get worse. All this is very hard to describe, but let's just say I felt totally fscking weird. My parents arrived along with my sister, but I didn't say anything not wanting to alarm them unnecessarily.

Then my left arm went numb.

Ok, this was clearly not an oncoming flu. The numbness shifted from my arms to my mouth, and all the while I was feeling like my brain was two seconds behind my body.

Time to visit the doctor.

I got my dad (the kind of guy who believes you have to at least have both of your arms and a leg cut off before swallowing your pride and visiting the doctor) to drive me to the health center. At this point I had already gone through all the worst case scenarios in my mind, thinking about the two people I knew who have recently passed away from sudden attacks.
During the 1.5 hour wait to see the doctor, the symptoms slowly disappeared, replaced by the oh-so-familiar headache making me suspect this had something to do with my migraines. Suddenly I remembered the exactly same crap had already happened to me when I was around 9. I had been watching a crappy movie late at night and got the exactly same symptoms, from the eye weidness to the numbing. Back then I didn't even consult a doctor, just slept it off. And I was completely fine afterwards, so this couldn't be that serious.

The doctors confirmed my suspicions - the thing I experienced was nothing more than a nasty migraine aura, most likely triggered by concentrating on a 60Hz* screen while being very tired. I got a prescription, and could finally relax knowing I wasn't experiencing anything life threatening.

10.5 hours of sleep never felt this good.

*  No, I do not usually use 60Hz. Some games simply refuse to work on a decent refresh rate. Blame Canada.

Ah, springtime!

September 1st. Definately one of my top ten days across the year: the first day of Spring in this hemisphere. It didn't really show, what with being 18C and raining all day, but you've got to ignore these things and just go for the Zen of it all. It's spring.
I went out for a drive around the coast of Sydney tonight, stopping at a little park in Coogee, overlooking Wedding Cake Island: the sole purpose of this was to get a look at the storm front heading our way, and watch the lightning flashing out over the sea. I haven't seen anything like that since I moved away from Queensland, where most storms come from the ocean during summer.

Current music picks for those so inclined:
Androgyny by Garbage.
Days go by :- Dirty Vegas.

I cannot recall a time when I did not consider September first to be the beginning of a year, perhaps the end of summer signifies an ending better than the middle of winter, while most things are already in progress.

I've developed an at least extreme fondness of the Beatles, specifically Abbey Road, and Rubber Soul, but definitely not excluding others. This is due mainly, of course, to Marc, who exposed me to them in the first place. Quite silly that I'd been alive so long before really listening to them.

A confusing situation of sorts.. my dog has turned rather owl'y and angry at the outside world in his old age, moreso than he'd been previously. I don't want to put him down, but am not sure what other option there is.. waiting until someone gets really hurt doesn't seem like a good idea. The hesitation points are first of all that he is not hostile towards me or the rest of my family, people he's familiar with, the second being morally based. I don't feel it should be my decision when anything lives or dies.

Marc is off travelling across the universe and I miss him, it's only been a few days since I was with him (physically), and I am having trouble registering with reality at present. It seems as if I've been slightly dazed all week, and as much as I'd like to be more real again, I hesitate slightly at the thought of 'real' feelings. That means pain and hurting, at least to a point.

I guess I am sort of shut off right now.. I've cried a few times, briefly but intensely, somehow it managed not to stay on the surface for too long. I think it was mostly spurred by exhaustion, anyway.

So here I am, some would say (the optimists) I've so much opportunity and chance, a clean slate perhaps.. personally, despite my want to edge away from pessimism, I am not really sure what's going on at all. Jared suggests a car and a job will make it all go away, but I'm not entirely sure of that, either. I think everyone has a place in the universe, and I think, this just isn't mine, it does not suit me to any degree, aside from perhaps its proximity to nature and trees and non-human life.

I think it's slightly amusing, the crossroads that so very very many people are currently at.. so many new beginnings, all unfolding today. We're all so very alone, participating in the creation of this 'life' business.

I am reading, and nearly finished "Life After God" by Douglas Coupland and it's got me to thinking that perhaps I should write a book, because I am thoroughly enjoying reading the words that are simply thought, random thought, recorded. And I can do that, I think. We'll see.

I sit in a quirky Cambridge cafe, sipping my green tea and watching the foreign guy in the corner writing in an A4 notebook. He hasn't stopped since he sat down - just put down the book, two pens (one black and one red), turned the page, picked up the black pen and just started writing. Writing and writing and writing. He hasn't even paused to read over it or ponder what to commit to paper next.

This guy must have some serious inspiration.

And this worries me. I want to be able to write like that. I don't want to spend my life working in some generic programming job - I want to be able to quit, go live in Tuscany and devise fabulously cool and zeitgeisty novels a la Microserfs.

Truth is, I've been banking on it.
But how can I compete with the man in the cafe who writes and writes - I bet it's good too.
Truth is, I'm jealous.

I had to go to work today, the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend. Not because I was behind, or because we are doing anything important, but because my project leader was. I need the money, and had nothing better to do, so it wasn't a big deal.

Instead of typing, like I should have been, I started to read some of everything. Specifically the noders that I enjoy reading. I spent several hours reading various things by several people, growing more and more certain that some of you are very special.

This, naturally, got me thinking... I wish panamaus wrote more daylogs. And not just him, either. There are many of you that I want to know more about. I want to be involved in your lives, in your happiness and pain. I am interested in you, but you just don't write enough to satisfy me.

I thought about this some more... this means that I am wholly in favor of GTKYnodes. I love daylogs. I think searches should default to a user's homenode. We are, like it or not, a community, and these things solidify us more than the noder gatherings ever could.

Obviously, this lead me to a simple conclusion: someone may like reading my write ups. I know it is unlikely, but there you have it. If someone does enjoy reading what I write, for whatever reason, I owe it to them to write more often, about me, and about the things that happen in my world.

The same goes for you. Don't node for numbers, no one likes that. Don't post crap, or it is pointless and counter productive. DO tell me as much about yourself as you can... I have such an amazing crush on you, and I love the way you think.

Today, I overslept.

I was rudely awakened by my manager at work calling when I was an hour late. It took me about another half hour to get ready and get there. I was kinda spaced out the whole morning. I'd set one of my clocks wrong the day before because of the power outage, and even though the alarm was set right, the clock thought it was 8 PM, so it was waiting for the sunrise to wake me. Oh well. It's only the second time I've done that in well over a year, so no problem.

My sister in Japan sent me a postcard from the hundred-yen store (kinda like the Japanese equivalent of the dollar store here). Yes, they sell crap. And this postcard . . . AHH! The crap! It has bunnies on it, and on the top, it says, in Engrish: "A MASS RABBIT!" Below, two cute identical bunnies are clothed in bedsheets, with the word "Twin" written above them. Beside them, it says, "Have a feeling of familiarity." Then below, a gray bunny, a white bunny, and a brown bunny nuzzle each other; above them, it simply says "3 Color." And then, two cute orangey bunnies sit on a grass lawn, with a sign next to them saying "Theyenjoy their daily life" (yes, with "theyenjoy" as one word). One of the bunnies has one ear sloping down. The maker of the postcard decided it'd be cute to put the word "Hang?" next to the ear. It is hilarious.

My sister's doing fine too. But I am more amused by the front of the postcard.

My printer is still being a bastard! Now it says "printing started!" really loud, prints, feeds out a totally blank sheet of paper, and says, "printing complete." THE HELL IT IS (again), you moron! I'm annoyed that I cannot print out new stuff I have written down for my Book of Shadows, which is fast approaching 350 pages in a three-ring binder (oh, how traditional is that?). Maybe someday soon I'll have a working printer . . . but this is my second one that hates me. Maybe it's a curse.

Today I rapped about diets to my friend Mike P. He comes into the store every Saturday and talks to me about anime, good literature, and other fun stuff, follows me around while I work. Today he stayed for my ENTIRE SHIFT and even took my break with me. (That's when we talked about diets.) He seemed appalled that I could be full after eating a piece of pita bread, an apple, and some Wheat Thins, but that's all it takes if you're as tiny as I am. Regular-size portions are big to me, and big portions are . . . well, I'm sure you can do the math. Speaking of which, here is today's 1,000-calorie diet ration menu:

Breakfast:
1 granola bar: 110 calories

Lunch:
1 apple: 80 calories
1 loaf pita bread: 140 calories
16 Wheat Thins crackers: 130 calories

Snack:
1½ cup salad: 15 calories
2 tablespoons lite Miracle Whip: 70 calories
1 tablespoon Heinz Ketchup: 40 calories

Dinner:
¼ cup egg substitute: 30 calories
2 strips Morningstar Farms fake bacon: 60 calories
1 oatmeal packet: 100 calories
½ cup skim milk: 45 calories
¼ cup lite syrup: 30 calories
2/3 cup mixed vegetables: 60 calories

That makes a total of 910 calories for today, so that leaves 90 to play with. I might have a popsicle or some Coke. Yay.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Arwen Maria Fluit-Canino

Born at 9:30pm EST in Butterworth Hospital, Grand Rapids, MI
7lb 4oz
Looks like her grandmother
Look at pictures at http://www.voidptr.net/arwen/

no, this isn't my kid, it's my sister's. :)

September 1 is my birthday.

Someone pointed out to me that terrorists killed thousands of people on 9/11.

911

The emergency hotline number.

So maybe it was natural for me to think of 9/1/01 My birthday a little over a week ago. That seems more like 911 to me. 9/11/01 seems like 9111. Granted if you dial either you'll go to the same place.

So I thought about how I would have felt had it been on my birthday and not ten days later. Then I thought it happened on a lot of people's birthdays, and I wondered how they felt.

Then I remembered when I was 14 and I was in a head on collision with an oncoming car.My older brother was driving and we both survived, but needless to say it wasn't what my father wanted on his birthday.

Being new to E2 I decide to check out September 1, 2001 and see what it has there already. It's renderer's birthday too. Only he turned 16, I turned 28.

Reminds me of turning 16 myself...a year and a couple weeks after the crash on my fathers birthday.

I don't believe in God or fate, but I do really like the movie Magnolia. Sometimes little things get connected in your life in interesting ways.