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Tag-teamed a bottle of scottish single malt whiskey last night, VERY hung over this morning.

had a meeting with my supervisor (that's advisor to you americans) which didn't go too badly, but he wants another one when i'm less hung over.

spent all evening dancing, both ceroc and samba.

Today was a good day.
  • 40% of my (few, yes, but still) nodes were deleted
  • Apparently there's a penelty for nodes being killed, as I now have -6 XP.
  • I was accused of being a troll
  • as a result, I'm afraid to post the writeups I wrote offline
I'm done whining now, I need to write some nodes worth keeping before the rest of my stuff goes. I hear that Dannye is killing the nodeless.

UPDATE:Yippie! someone upvoted everything I've written, and chinged me! A pity ching, people! I feel like such a whore.

I stopped to get gas on the way home tonight. I walked to the counter, got at the end of a very long line, paid for my gas and started to walk out the door when I realized that I had forgotten that I wanted to get a drink. By the time I chose my drink and got back to the counter to pay the store had cleared out. When I got the counter the man asked for a dollar fifty four and I quietly searched throught my wallet looking for 54 cents. While I was looking the man behind the counter asked, 'What's wrong?' I must have given him a really weird look but he didn't budge, he asked again, quite firmly this time, 'What's wrong?' He just knew that something was bugging me. At first I just said, 'nothing', but he looked at me like he knew I was full of it. So I told him 'Well, actually I'm a substitute teacher and I had a rough day.' I had no idea that it was obvious that something was bothering me and so I asked him how he knew. He said that I just wasn't my normal self today. I don't actually go to this particular gas station all that much and it really surprised me that he knew me so well. I don't think most people would have noticed that something was bothering me. And I don't think that most people would have thought that anything was up. And then I realized what it was. I am always a pleasant, friendly, happy person and today I just wasn't quite myself. And somehow, even though I was feeling poopy, just that thought made me feel a little better.

Decided to try writing a daily log here today, for the first time. That in itself is worthy of logging.

Getting ready to move to the new house. Ow. Arranged for power to be on there when we move in. A key feature. I mistakenly arranged for it to be turned off in the old place though; must fix that. We'll need it on for a while.

Got kid's hair cut. Also very important.

Put off working on Qo'noS QonoS. Really must get that finished. At least I'm finally starting.

More if I think of it; I'm new to this.

i'm sure this is old hat for all you noders living up north, but down here the heat wave finally broke. day after day after day of 100+ degrees, NO MORE! 80+days without rain, NO MORE!!!! i don't think i've ever been able to actually feel a cold front pass before, but saturday night, to cap off pirate night(i.e. me and a friend hang out wearing eye-patches, watching pirate movies, drinking rum and saying AAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!! a lot), anyway, as the finale to pirate night, we were heading to the inwood to see the princess bride. i was driving with my windows down like i always do, left arm hanging out, and then all of a sudden i could feel it, in a split second the air just got about 20 degrees cooler. and ever since then it's been grey and overcast, damp, chilly, perfect weather if you ask me. weather for clam chowder and hot jasmine tea. weather for low albums and fireplaces. weather for long lonely walks in the empty silent night. for blankets and snuggling and falling for cute girls in sweaters.

weather for being alone.

prev daylog next daylog

My car is in the garage now. Yesterday I got stuck because of my car battery. And I needed a checkup anyway. My mechanic was shocked and appalled at seeing my car. It has taken enough blows to take out Mike Tyson, all while parking. He said they could fix it, for about $720,567.32. I guess you could pretty much sum up the state of my car by assault and battery. Ha ha.

Yesterday was a good humour day, for some reason. My flatty (is to flatmate as roomy is to roommate) and myself had a really good amount of jokes, including a discussion of bass amplifiers (I play the bass), and the putting of women on top of, theoreof. We were discussing the connection of a microphone, and speaking into it with a low voice, saying words of (literally) endearment. And then when she says "Lower, lower", you speak with a more bass voice. Well, we found it hilarious. Also included in yesterday's fun-packed day was the following joke, which didn't leave a dry eye in the house:
q: What has 100 balls and fucks rabbits?
a: a shotgun
And then we went to a restaurant for a friend's birhday. My flatty decided he can only say the word "Gorgonzola". He actually did for several hours. It pissed everybody off, but I tried to still have a proper conversation with him, by asking him questions like "What is your favourite cheese?" (which really pleased him), "What fo you like on your pizza?", "What did you find on your testicles this morning?" and "What do you say when you come?" It was a very inspiring conversation.

I'm going to buy a stereo today. Actually a receiver, CD player & 2 speakers. And it's going to be rather expensive (14,000 NIS). And this is a great time to buy this, as I am not in the rich, so to speak. In fact, yesterday my bank called. How good can it be when your bank calls you? I'm sure it's not to say 'Happy New Year'.

On that topic, the new year is starting on Friday, for us Jews, anyway. It's annoying for more ways that I can count, but let me try a few anyway:

  • My parents are divorced. Meaning I have to choose whom to be with on the holidays. This year mom got Passover, so dad gets New Year. Equality for parents.
  • My grandfather is 92. Instead of doing a small dinner at his house, he has to drive (be driven, anyway), to Tel Aviv and back (from Jerusalem). He really doesn't need all this, but wants to be with his family (understandably). However, I wish his family was more considerate (my mom's side).
  • The calendars in Israel are all messed up. They go from September to September instead of Jan-Dec. How annoying.

1540
New fiscal year begins Sunday, meaning more funding and hopefully relief from the monetary malaise that we have been suffering from for the three days.
Walked into work today and was greeted with the news that we're out of money for gas. Go figure. All I can think of is the bumper sticker I saw on the way to work today was nothing more than Irony's fickle hand again playing with perception:

WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT IF SCHOOLS GOT ALL THE MONEY THEY NEEDED AND THE AIR FORCE HAD TO HOLD A BAKE SALE?"

Change the service and it fits nicely.

1622
"Hey, Yurei." The Chief is walking up the hallway toward me and gesturing slightly. "Got a second?"
"Yeah. What's up?" This is one of those things that I can tell is either going to be very bad or very good, and all of that is again wrapped up in the interpretation of the moment.
"Need to talk to you." We walk down to his office and take the usual seats. I have sat in this office and been applauded by other men, been berated by others and had my motivations questioned by a fool. The last conversation that I had here was with a different man altogether. I was fighting to keep one of the people that worked for me out of trouble. I was losing, bad. In the end I lost, it was a political game to soothe the nerves of someone soon to be retired and looking for that last taste of the screw. I felt desperate and for the next month I wondered if there was something else I could have done or said, that would have changed things. I know now that I could have sooner reversed the rotation of the planet than done anything. "It's nothing bad, don't worry. When do you get out?"
"EAOS or PRD?" EAOS is End of Active Obligated Service and is the date you are separated from the military. PRD means Projected Rotation Date and basically is when you transfer from your current command to the next. This is significant because the dates rarely match, you actually have to manually request that they match using large volumes of paper which are lost and discarded promptly upon completion.
"EAOS." He knows this, he wants me to say it for some semantic reason.
"Late February, still not sure. The date's sixty days out from my actual, taking the two month vacation option." I run down the possible angles, this is probably one of those 'Why Are You Getting Out, You Don't Like Us Anymore?' pep talks. Grand. The conversation that I had come from when I was in the hallway had been a discussion on gaffling flight hours from another squadron so that we could fly. That, did not make me happy. I am trying to move from one apartment to the next this week and a 0100 to 0200 flight schedule will not make things easier. "Something wrong?"
"Well, you know Rhodes?" "Yeah." I am thinking to myself of a fairly large individual who is known for shuffling off work, irritating the people that work for him and someone that I do not like in the slightest. "He's on det 3, I think."
"He's going to have to come home early, he's got school in late October."
...probably flying to Bahrain, maybe Singapore...
...mid to late October...
...three month underway back to San Diego.

"Do you mind going?" The words echo through hollow space, reverberating off dead walls until they fade to nothing.
"No."

1627
What did I just get myself into? Geez.

Mornin'

11:20

::big yawn::

Well, I hope the day will continue better than it started... Nothing massively bad, I'm just... bored or something.

Good dreams. Too bad I never remember them...

Need to go the university. Again a long day....

16:52

Boooooring lectures. As I've said, the digital media lectures are cool. Just that today, the topic was "content creation industry" and New Media. /me is not interested about business...

19:13

I'm downloading the 1.08 patch for Falcon 4.0. Again. =(

Why not feeling well? Well, take a look at this, from Falcon4.com support page:

Version 1.08 U.S. and UK released on December 7, 1999. File size: 18,036,804 Bytes (DOS) or 18 MB (Windows)

Gigantic patch file, pain for ISDN. Dammit, I remember when I downloaded the first patch for Warcraft: Orcs and Humans... it fitted on a single floppy...

(BTW, do you notice the absurdity of the above comment from the tech support page? File sizes seem to be different in Windows and DOS... =)

00:59

Notes to self: Any BattleTech metanodes out there?

01:46

I updated fake-e2-linker.pl so that the URL quote function works in a functional way. Finally a less iterative and less obvious way. =)

BTW, TIMTOWTDI can be translated to Finnish as "On Olemassa Useampi Tapa Tehdä Se", or OOUTTS (pronounced like "ouch"). I hope this won't become The Python zealot's war cry...

Well hell, I was supposed to make that BattleTech node instead of reinventing the wheel... Screw it, I'm going to bed and will work on it later.


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: Jaws CASE iBeta MASC
Updated: killfile Falcon 4.0 Small helpful scripts for noders

Previously

Meanwhile...

Running out of water now.. bloody everywhere, the stuff.. saw a boat yesterday, but it turned out to be a horse, trotting away... might be starting to hallucinate...

So last night I went straight from work up to Belsize Park to meet my girlfriend (who I am not allowed to node about), her sister and their mum. She's over from NY for a while, you see. Well, when you get the three of them together some sort of political legacy gets drawn in. You can feel it sitting there with you, looking over your shoulder and just waiting to pounce. So we made it through the meal, but for some reason my girlfriend and me had to cover the bill. That's cool, but it was 140 quid. Normally that'd cover us for about two weeks. Anyway, what I wanted to put down here is that it's crazy the way people make an issue out of paying for the bill after a meal. There seems to be some sense in it being considered polite and even kind to offer to pay the bill and treat your companion to a free meal. There even seems to be politeness in saying, "Oh no, let me", but to then spend five minutes arguing over who gets to pay is ludicrous. What started off as a nice gesture soon ends up looking like a political manouevre or worse still, one-up-manship (spell that).

I prefer it with my friends... say at the weekend when I went to Brum to see old mates, they got the beer in and cooked and stuff ready for me to arrive. I offered them some money and they declined. Cool. No bargaining, nobody worrying about whether that means there's a debt involved. Someone pays and next time someone else might. It's not a case of taking turns, just paying now and then and having it feel like it's fair. Ah well.

So this morning I got up, bathed, dropped the kids off at the pool and caught the tube. I sat among a bunch of jewish schoolkids and caught the eye of a young lady as she yawned like a braying donkey. Realising she had not covered her mouth, she blushed and I chuckled at her. The dirty freak.

Work, work, work.

I am happy today, though, because my girlfriend (who I am not allowed to node about) and me have agreed that tonight we are not going to go out or even do the shopping. We're going to eat and then slob out in front of the TV... maybe we'll watch a movie or have a beer. She'll have a nice long soak in the bath and I'll offload a few albums to CD.

Rest.

things to do:
  • try and sketch shiny baby dolphins.
  • spill words for most dreamy leetle human.
  • write up and node life story (not mine).
  • ponder moving more plants downstairs.
  • get dressed for work before you end up holding the work train up.
oh wait, that last one was now. he-he. woops. :)

i'll slap some text in here later.
Woke up to my alarm (unlike yesterday when i woke up to my roommate asking me why i wasn't going to my first class... *sigh*. i was late for that one...)

Had breakfast today for a change. Cereal, Ham, French Toast

Gonna have to do much homework today... But at least i only have two classes. (One is two hours long, but three hours of classes is rather light)

I am up to episode 22 in "Kenshin" and am searching for other good anime series to watch when i amprocrastinating in order to avoid work.
What's goin on?
Hell I don't know. I had a friend stay over at my place Friday night, now keep in mind I live in a very strict high class neighborhood. At about 5:30 Saturday morning according to my friend, a man knocked on the door and told him to put his truck in the garage.

When my friend said it want' his house, the man got angry at him and said, "We have rules here ya know! I can't allow that!"

WTF? Who the hell is this old bastard to tell me I can't do something to a house that is paid for, is not his, and has no direct bearing on his life.

This infuriated me, but not near as much as when he called my mother. I'm almost 24 years old, I haven't lived under mommy and daddy's supervision in years. The old man, however called my mom to tell her that I was being beligerant and deserved to be punished.

He also fussed at her because my father parked his boat there the night my grandmother died. Fuck him ya know.

6:12 a.m.

The moon rose this morning, in the east, about an hour ahead of the sun. Why?

It was grey and stood out against the dark blue/almost orange sky. Grey except for one sliver of white, an eighth more than a quarter, really. A preview of lunar attraction.

I hope when I am older I need sleep less so I can rise early and appreciate quiet mornings, unhurried. I don't have that luxury now. Just a quick glance on the way out to get the paper, then gone.

Fall has come to Texas. It's beautiful, 65 degrees and perfectly clear, with nice wind to keep everything cool. ahhh, thank god summer is finally over. how can I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this? (ob. Ferris Bueller reference). I really should be studying for my economics midterm now, but I'm noding on E2 instead. I wonder if the prof would consider that a valid excuse...

I watched another session of aggieme last night. (aggie anime fan club). I'm really starting to get into "Cowboy Bebop".

BTW: I'm now Level 5! kick ass, dude!!
...Wayback...Red Dwarf...

7:30 AM EST -- Ice Cream is TECHNICALLY a dairy product

How else should I avoid going to Burger King more than I need to for breakfast? Of course... I'll use the age-old wisdom of identifying various dairy products around the house.

Today should be "exciting"... My folks have found me what they believe to be a good new car for me. A 1993 Ford Escort Stationwagon, sky blue color. They seem hell-bent on getting rid of my happy 1980 Ford Pinto Stationwagon, black/rusty color. I'm gonna miss it. But, that's later.

1:00 PM EST -- GIVE ME $1,513! FROM MY CHECKING ACCOUNT!

I'll bet the teller behind the counter at the credit union probably never expected a small (well... large) person to walk in with $74 of change, rolled, and come asking for $1,513 for half the cost of a car. Ah, well, that's life.

2:35 PM EST -- We need insurance for our insurance

Well, that's spiffing. With $1,513 in my pocket, my dad comes home to find E-Mail in his box from Geico (The people we decided to get insurance for me from) saying that he left out a bit of important info from the insurance application for me. Information such as the driver's liscence numbers of everyone in the house besides me. This'll delay us from getting my car.

But, at least now I can do my homework. If I don't doze off.

5:15 PM EST -- Car

Well, I DID doze off, thank you very much. But not before finishing two -- yes, two -- more Economics problems. Hah.

What awoke me was the fact that my bro finally came home, providing my dad with the driver's liscence information he desired. When the insurance certificate came via fax, I was awoken and told to hop in the truck, as I was going to get the car.

I had my $1,513 of the $3,013 total handy. I got in the truck with all needed materials. (I, BTW, am the ONLY one in the house who drives a vehicle which is NOT a truck) It was then that I nearly cracked. No matter how much my dad tried to reassure me that it was a better car, and that the Pinto would be in storage until it's remade, the only thought that stuck out in my head was:

This car will be the replacement.
I'm taking my poor Pinto to the slaughterhouse.

I couldn't talk for nearly the whole ride there. I was fighting back tears (Failing miserably, I might add), afraid that I was losing the Pinto. I couldn't help it. I was NOT feeling good about this. Sure, the Pinto was rusting away, and maybe it's not the safest car out there, but it's survived me two and a half years on the road -- the highway, at that -- every day. One and a half of those years involved a 35 mile drive, each way, to Oakland University. And that thing kept on chugging away, not showing any signs of stopping.

I'd mention that the only time I took my dad's Thunderbird to OU, the brakes failed, but that's besides the point.

My dad was telling me that after he gets the Pinto reworked, he might give it back to me in exchange for the Escort I just got. We'll see.

*Sniff*

10:00 PM EST -- Still need help

My dad said he'd rather look over the Escort before I use it daily. I still have use of the Pinto. I am happy.

Well, almost. I just arrived back from Math Modelling, and damn, I'm still lost. Add to that the fact I've got homework in other classes due, and, well...

Let's just say it ain't pretty.

i come back home to the news of another week without you. i put my trust in higher powers: you will come home to me. but i am still sad -- a vacation while you were away on business seemed convenient. you would be gone anyway, vacation would keep my mind off that, and i could come home to you. but you won't be home until one week from today, the day before my birthday. no worries my love, i don't hold it against you. i hold it against your employers.

i know i am selfish, but so far you have not seemed to mind my overwhelming desire for your presence.



that said, here is a summary of my trip to mom's. i couldn't sleep friday night until 4:30am and was woken up at 7:30 by my sister pounding on my door. i got dressed in record time and we grabbed drive-through breakfast and hit the road. we hit heavy fog in the mountains, but made good time, arriving at mother's in four and a half hours. mom was not home when we got there, her friend's husband was in the hospital, violent with alzheimer's disease and she had decided she could no longer care for him at home. mom came home shortly, after comforting her friend. we made dinner reservations, and went to see the house that my grandmother is building. it's huge with fabulous views to the south and east. we met two of mom's sisters for dinner, and got news that one of them, melanie, was moving to rhode island to attend the naval war college to get another master's degree, and has made the rank of captain. i expect that she will attain the rank of admiral within her career. dinner was excellent (teriyaki swordfish), uncle bill talked of his recent visits to washington to work on litigation surrounding the new war memorial.

sunday, we went shopping all over montrose just for grins. it was a lazy drizzly day, and we stayed in the warm watching movies. monday we unpacked the last of mom's stored boxes and helped her sort through their contents. we threw away a lot of stuff. in the afternoon we grilled kabobs and mushroom caps for dinner. we packed the car up as much as we could and settled in to bed early after playing some scrabble. we left this morning round 9:45.

and that was that.

I worked the night shift last night. I'm working the night shift tonight as well.

But today is the blood drive here in Rhinelander, so I decided to stay up all day and go donate some of mine, as I have done 41 times before.

When I arrived, the huge parking lot had many cars in. But it had no disabled parking spaces. I drove around the lot trying to find a spot close to the building, but did not find one.

Several Red Cross people were out there, leaning against a wall and smoking. They did not seem a least bit concerned about the car with a disabled license plate not finding a spot. So, I returned home.

I called 1-800-GIVE-LIFE, and was essentially told What do you want me to do about it?

Well, the next time they call me and complain about the shortage of blood. I'll just ask them the same question.

I got up early to go into school and take an Anatomy test at seven this morning. Getting out of bed when it’s cold enough to see your breath is unbearable. My elbows nearly fell off. I was freezing. Piled on the layers, added some mittens and a turtle fur hat from Old Navy, and was out the door with three minutes to spare. As I was driving down the deserted streets, it was still dark. The moon was nothing but a tiny bottom sliver surrounded by a misty halo of light. I’ve never seen the moon lit up in such a way. I could see the entire outline, but there was only light on the edges. Perhaps there was some sort of lunar eclipse? Maybe I was just too tired to be out driving. The test went well, though.

Went to Stacy’s house for lunch, as always. When I got there, her car was already in the garage. I was happy to see she had remembered me today. I knocked quickly before opening the door, which is better than just walking in as usual, and what did I see? Dennis. And Stacy. In the kitchen. They pulled apart before I could so much as stare in surprise. Things were awkward after the apologizing and blushing. I hadn’t thought they were doing much other than the obvious, but no one blushes that way out of innocence.

Had a vocab quiz in French class, sur les mots du métro. It was easy. We then discussed the differences between the book and the movie of Cyrano de Bergerac. This, of course, turned into a conversation about love, attraction, and marriage between cousins. Interesting, but a waste of time. I’m not sure what we would have done otherwise. Probably nothing important.

I think I shall take a nap. I have pancakes and Advil in my stomach, and I have noded for the day - my conscience is clear. Goodnight.

Just as someone else over there, this is my first day log. Nothing really exciting, started my fourth year of Computer Science at UAB, meet some folks I hadn't seen for months... yer usual fare.

This year is different. I'm not working now, so I am a bit skint; had a real deep thought at the bar for choosing my meal (hamburger w/bacon'n'cheese). It's really worrying how I'm getting used to spending cash lately. I even had to borrow some for the trip back (I've made today the payment for my annual train ticket, but I won't have it 'till friday; it's awfully expensive, but individual trips are even more pricey).

We have been moved to Medicine, where the classes are very, very uncomfortable, and we are very far away from all the interesting places.

I bought a defective dvd for my brother (Pink Floyd's The Wall), and I was going to return it today, but I have found out that I have lost the receipt, so this probably means that I will buy it again. Aw!!! Dvd's are so overpriced!! (about 20 dollars).

On a lighter note, my soccer team, F.C. Barcelona lost 0-2 with AC Milan on the UEFA Champions Cup; that makes it a lot harder to clinch for the next round, but it's not hopeless yet. We had a very good coach last year (Louis Van Gaal), but the press didn't like him, so he didn't have much future. We now have got one which is liked by the press guys, but I guess we won't get the same results from him.

I'm a bit tired now, so chances are I won't write the nodes I was expecting to write today (about some female friends who are important in my life...

Today, because I'm home schooled, I went to get the work, that I completed over the last year, evaluated and to prepare for the coming year.

My mom drove me there. We were a few minutes late because of road work and some rain. After we reached our destination, we started to chat with my evaluator. We already knew her because she also evaluated my older brothers.

Once we got to the evaluation of my work, we started to get the good news -- I was farther along than I thought. She was very pleased with my work. I had done a lot of work over the past year, so I'm a lot closer to graduation than I had earlier anticipated.

The future looks bright.

Came to work today, went to a 3 hour meeting, walked out and a coworker grabbed me for lunch -- he wouldn't tell me where we were going. Next thing I know, I'm walking into a Chucky Cheese's where 20 of my coworkers are yelling "Happy Birthday." I didn't even know these places still existed.

They had rented the birthday room, full of balloons, pizza, cake, and a big dancing mouse with clothes on. With the package came hundreds of tokens for the arcade. Wow. A scary vision to see a room full of programmers challenging each other to beat the game.

We ended up with 4110 tickets. It was very sad to be standing in line next to these little kids who had worked so hard for their 10 or 12 tickets ...

'Who were these grown-ups and why were they playing with our games?'

3 hours later, I came back to work with my brand new disco ball for my desk.

Not a bad day of work at all. Not a bad birthday, either.
Fresher's Week begins. As the folks at the QMU put it, a week of debauchery.

Well, after an afternoon of double vodka and cokes, tom spewed in the GUU beer bar. About an hour later, we sent him home in a taxi to the halls of residence. About the, the other guys i was with decided to go to another bar in order to get some free beer, but so did everyone else, and i didn't manage to actually get anywhere near the bar for another few hours.

I was sticking around for the traffic light/popcorn party at ten.. everyone wears a badge, green for hop on baby, yellow for i see you baby (shakin' that ass) or red for don't call me baby. They occasionally fired popcorn over the room, all the while playing loud music. (my ears are still ringing).

i thought that wearing green looked too desperate, and yellow got me nowhere, so i tried both as a kind of i like you but i'm too shy gesture. it didn't work either.

bah.

 

But I'll have other chances, i guess..

I was asked at registration if I was any relation to Alastair - they'd seen my name next to mine on the list, and we have a somewhat unusual surname. And I'd completely forgotten about the fact that my cousin also started uni today. Didn't see him anywhere, though..

I cut class for no good reason. Well, actually, the weather was rather nasty and I really didn't feel like making the commute. However, I had to go to campus for other things, so I ended up making the commute anyway. I needed to print the notes for my digital image processing class, and I spent some time trying to figure out how to log into the computer at the computer lab. For some reason, it wouldn't accept my login info. I just waited until someone left their machine without logging out and appropriated it.

After I obtained the powerpoint files, I spied the queue for the printer. The funniest thing about the computer lab are the people stalking the printer for their printouts. They hover around, anxiously awaiting their printout, when it is obvious it will not come for some time. Sure, the HP 8000N can pump out 24 pages per minute, but people like to print out 200-page manuals. No need to look at each page coming out to make sure your print job has started.

Anyway, there are several printers in the lab, but everyone prints to the default printer. I just print to the lonely 5si, which is slower than the 8000N, but has no queue. I print out a good 100 pages, pick them up, and leave, passing by the 8000N crowd.

I had also printed out a graduation application form and now needed it signed. I head across campus to the InfoTech building, where the computer science offices are. I was going to set an appointment to see the CS undergraduate advisor, but the secretary informed me graduation applicants can go right in. Woohoo! The advisor quickly skimmed my transcripts and signed. I submitted the application to the registrar and now await approval. Although I'm very sure I have all the requirements, there's still a bit of anxiety until I get the official approval in writing. That should come by the end of next month.

Today I was feeling better. The fog was lifting, it wasnt quite as dark, my "hater" wasnt going full blast. Dancing in the tiny kitchen after dinner, listening to Aretha Franklin. Afterwards, we sat on the porch with some mulled cider, just talking about our day. All was well.

Along staggers this dog. It looked well fed and cared for, so it was obviously either a pet that had gotten loose or a dog someone had turned out into the street. It was wheezing and walking slowing, limping and obviously in pain. Immediately it brought to mind the time my dog got out and we searched for him for 9 hours. Every time we would catch sight of him, call out to him, he would keep running - so terrified from all the noise, the strangers, that he couldnt stop himself. He finally stopped when he was hit by a car half a mile down the road. It was heartbreaking to see him unconcious and bleeding, and the next day with all his injuries...he suffered so much. He's keeping my feet warm as I write this. He's alright now, but anytime I see a stray dog it gives me a lump in my throat thinking that someone is as scared and upset as I was that night.

We tried to get the dog to come to us but it looked frightened and kept going. I watched it until it was gone from sight, and looked a while longer.

Color me overly emotional. Call me what you will. This ruined my good feeling. Its always something, isnt it? And yet I hate sympathy when I feel this way. It seems so damned patronizing.

Enough emotional crap for one day. Hrumph.

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