(warning: particularly old content) I don't ask for it to make sense

1/31/01

Sigh. I finally decided to bow to practicality. I'm going to drop my socio-linguistics class; ironic, as it's my absolutely favorite one. But I'm going to go slowly insane if I have to keep up with the workload I've been trying to juggle, and I just don't like going insane as much as I occasionally make out. Thermo and Japanese I need for classes next quarter, and Inorganic Lab is necessary for the chem degree—socling just fills a generic upper division Japanese credit. Sigh. I'm going to be going down to 11 credits with this move. The last time I did this was when I dropped Organic Lab a few springs ago; I was depressed for weeks about the decision. The only thing that lightens my heart is that when I re-took it, I 4.0'd it. Slight comfort for me, this time around... I'll continue to audit, but it's not the same. Argh... futsuu no eloquence completely failing me, as I find myself reduced to lab-partnerish subject-object-verb-period statements. I find myself so numbed by my distasteful decision (and the chill draft across my keyboard) that I can't seem to say anything remotely flowing about it. Bah humbug. I is not a happy camper. I have a random desire to invite people I know to a dinner, but it'd be for a different reason than I admit, so I won't. I think this is quite possibly the most. Disjointed. Paragraph that. I've written. Almost. Ever.

1/30/01

I'm not really done with my homework. I'm going to go to bed now anyway.

1/29/01

I'm tempted to just do my reading and go to bed. Get rested for once, on a school night no less! But if I don't get started on some of the stuff that's due Wednesday and Thursday, it's never going to get done before 5 am the previous nights. Of course, I'm still not sure what I'm writing for my paper on Thursday... I rather think I'll ensconce myself at the lab on Wednesday night and see what happens. Two pages didn't come that slowly this evening in the MGH hole... perhaps five/six won't come too dreadfully slow at OUGL. Maybe. That doesn't address the arene lab due Wednesday, though.

Sigh. My soul and body feel so leaden, my candle is inexorably tilting sideways, wax dripping down in the reflection, slowly going to a puddle of goo.

1/28/01

There's some days when I really wish someone from high school would see me striding across Red Square, confident and sure of myself. And there's some nights when I realize that I'm not going to do well on my thermo test the next day, that I'm not sure if my interviewee will give me anything to write my paper on for Tuesday, that I've not solidified my paper topic for Thursday, and that I don't know how to properly revise my huge lab report due Friday... not to mention the incidental things in between... and I cry and think that perhaps I should drop out after all.

1/25/01

In lieu of an actual comment, here's what I've been working on tonight : Doped Zinc Sulfide for Chem 317. It's supposed to be written in the style of a newspaper article or somesuch. I'm not sure if I like how it turned out, but it's done, and I'm going to go study for Japanese now.

1/23/01

Well, I got dinner, chocolate milk, my homework mostly done, and the pictures shrunk, and I felt like I was going to go bed at a respectable 1:30 and be good for the count... until I remembered that I made an appointment with my chem advisor for a hand holding session in the EARLY morning tomorrow. Why, I do believe I shall skip it. It wouldn't be the first time, and this would be in the most sacred name of sleep rather than simple forgetfulness. In other news, I'm heartily tired of "I don't want to ..." and "I can't ..." statements. I want to hear some "I'd like to but I can't ..."s right about now. And more sleep. To think, I actually composed a poem on my melancholy walk home today, and now I can't remember it. More's the pity.

1/22/01

Sigh. Jen's homework : 0, Jen's obsession with her kittens : 1. Ah well. Time to do my stupid sakubun (what the hell do I know about parties? I sure can't write an essay on one in Japanese any more than I could in English), and settle down with my soc-ling reading for the night. I was going to get my thermo homework done early... I suppose it can be seen what happened to that particular plan. I'll be a busy girl tomorrow night, that's for sure... The question is asked, as it is every other month or so... why am I doing this, again?

1/21/01

Back at home, munching on a nicely spicy second dish of dinner, musing on Richard. On a friend that I once would have called my dearest, but now barely speak to. Is it his fault? Is it mine? I wish I could pin it on him and let my ego slowly down, but I know it's not true. The truth is that there's a part of me missing, and I was the one to cut it off, out of insecurity and doubts. Problems there were aplenty, that I do not deny, and perhaps he could have handled his side better in some ways. But nothing can block from me the fact that I should have tried harder, tried to make him understand me, tried to understand him better, rather than withdrawing into a little world of pain surrounded only by my own reflections of self-hatred. I shouldn't have left it all up to him to make every move; I fooled myself into believing that that was the only way that I could prove to myself that he really cared, but there are other ways of caring, and perhaps if I hadn't been blind to all that wasn't what I wanted to see, I may have noticed something. Instead, here I am at home, alone, staring at a keychain whose dearest fob has been mysteriously lost. I remember the night that I got it, so very clearly. Richard laughed at me for wanting it; I told him at the time that I just wanted something to make my keychain a little heavier. I couldn't admit to him, all those years ago, that I wanted something to touch to remind me of him in those long months when he was gone and not thinking of me. And now it's gone, finally fallen off the chain at some unknown point in the last two weeks. I didn't notice it slipping loose; for the first time in all the years that I've carried it with me, I didn't find it in my pocket when it fell off. And I wonder if, in some sad, ironic little way, my Richard is as lost to me now as that little silver bit emblazoned with the first letter of his name.

1/20/01

It's amazing how drawn into fictional characters lives we can be. Or perhaps I should restrict that comment to myself, and only in the last few years, at that. Once upon a time, I prided myself on the fact that I didn't cry at movies, or get scared during them. But these days I find myself sniffling at the slightest thing, and watching Chow Yun Fat die and the beautiful barbarian not get the girl just plain out depressed me. Blah.

1/18/01

It's 5:20 and I'm just now getting ready to go to bed. Somehow I think that thermodynamics is going to be missing a warm body tomorrow morning; I'd skip Japanese too but for that we have a quiz (that I will fail, considering that I've had no time to study). A note from my Visor this morn on the way to school : "I gazed at 2102 65th St. and wondered who lived in that once-grand house as wings of music, that long-absent music, raced me past into an entriely unremarkable neighborhood." I don't have any idea what I was thinking about, now that I look back at it. The headache that plagued me all day was already begun by that time.

1/17/01

I must have been very tired yesterday... I got both the day and the year wrong. Twitch twitch twitch... Mission Statement(tm) done and turned in, references hopefully gotten, ideas begun on lab report due Thursday, passably informative paper on dialects sort of done, but nary a smaller homework to have been initiated, and here it be 1:34 in the morning. I'm going to ignore it in favor of assuming that I'll be able to do the damn grammar practice on the bus in the morning, and thermo isn't due until Friday anyway... Dune calls.

1/16/01

Shane and his browser cache kick ass. I'd tried to do the same thing, but Jim's computer had barfed on it. So a couple more entries are located... in fact, now that I check, the 11th was the day that I discovered TWU was inexplicably down, so I think those are it! Now perhaps, as Jim put it, "TWU can just go fuck themselves."

1/15/01

Sigh. Maybe I should just give up on the idea that TWU will give me back my data. :( I had some decent stuff written in those days, too. And now it's 1:25 in the morning, I haven't written my statement of purpose that I promised Takeda sensei I would write, and I didn't really get much done other than write my "My Winter Vacation" essay for Japanese on my crappy family relationships and how dad tried to take me on a trip to make me love him. Blah.

1/10/01

Both yesterday and today I wanted to talk about allergies and fears, but not being able to get schoolwork done until 1:30 am and having to get up early is just absolutely sapping my ability to communicate by the time I sit down to try to express myself. I vaguely remember, approximately a year ago, promising myself that I would not take four classes at once ever again. Oh, how I wish that could be true.

1/09/01

Why, when you're crying in the rain at a bustop and people are staring at you, does eight and a half minutes go so slowly? Why, when you're cold and wet and hungry and tired and upset, does a hill look so much longer and steeper than normal? Why, when you've got significant coursework for 3.5 classes to do in one evening, does a perfectly reasonable amount of time fly so fast without anything getting done? Some irritations of life are just frustrating.

1/07/01

Nothing to really talk about today other than boring-to-anyone-but-us kitten stuff, so I'll refrain.

1/06/01

Jim and I are now the proud owners (well, I'm proud, anyway) of two beautiful boy kittens. If I had a digicam here there'd be pictures of them, but for now, I'm just content playing with them. They're awfully skittish around people, and don't seem to have been very well taken care of by their former humans, but they warmed up to us slowly (they still run away like mad from feet, though they're extremely enamored of Ian's sandals). Their names are Liam and Lars; Liam is grey and white with green/brown eyes, and quite a bit more sociable, while Lars looks very similar to Niko—a beige cat with light Siamese-style points (his are more rosy while Niko's are greyer) and blue eyes... he's a real scaredey cat, though a little bit more playful when string is involved. Ohhhhh I love them to death!

1/05/01

Very very tired. And I think I wrote enough yesterday to excuse not waxing loquacious tonight.

1/04/01

For once, I made a note to myself of something that was rattling through my mind through the walk home. Thus did I, for once, not forget it once an hour or so was past. And that thing was the issue of names, and when I do and don't use them. I don't think I ever really thought about this before I took Japanese for a while; you get very accustomed to saying people's names in Japanese (seeing as they don't have a pronoun like "you"), and the contrast made me notice how infrequently I use people's names to their faces. It depends, of course. I'll holler out someone's name to get their attention, of course, and I'm very prone to using Bryce's name to him (when I'm not calling him Fool, I suppose); meanwhile, I'd be mortified if Sarah and Dave even knew that I knew their names, and I can't seem to replace "honey" with "Jim" these days lest I feel as uncomfortable as I would calling "Mom" "Elaine" or "Dad" "Rob." Funny result of the English language possessing pronouns.

In other news... I've wandered into the "R's" on TWU, and found Mandy's page. The girl has been keeping some fashion of a web log since '97, when she was a sophomore in high school, and I just wasted several hours reading through it rather than indulging in Japanese reading or thermodynamics. Sometimes she wrote things that one or the other of us may have psychically copied and pasted from each other's mind, and sometimes, I was reminded that no matter how closely someone else's emotions may mirror your own, there is never any guarantee or likelihood that they will deal with it the same way you would, and they end up developing later into someone so alien that you don't understand how you ever could have felt so close to them. For instance, I still cannot honestly explain, from my present point of view, Kurtis.

An additional thing that Miss Mandy made me think about was my readership (or lack thereof). Her log is peppered with references to how hard she tried to get people to read her writings, how she advertised it around and posted the link in innumerable webrings, and basically pimped it out like crazy. She watches her hits and sulks when her 62 person long AIM list isn't gabbing at her. And then there's me... I get a few wanderers in from various places, and I dearly love it when I get a random email from one of those people, but generally speaking, very few people read this, I think. And I don't mind it that way. I read all the way through all the entries a few weeks ago, and I can't decide what I would think about myself did I not know myself... I can't imagine aggressively trying to get more people I've never met to read this. I'd be much happier if this was only found by people who I already knew, who used it as a tool to better understand Jen, rather than being vicariously read by total strangers (John, you don't count there... kiss the pups for me) just for the sake of reading about "someone else's" life.

Special PS to Zach, who I don't think reads this : you greatly brightened my evening. Thanks for talking.

1/03/01

I can't seem to come up with anything to say again tonight. I don't know why... perhaps it's because Jim's around and I have him to babble to constantly (and believe me, I do), as well as having work people around to constantly annoy with whatever is on my mind. Really, when thought about that way, it's not surprising at all... my several day stint with no one to talk to ended, and suddenly my personal outlet dries up... glory be.

1/02/01

I just now (at about 10:30 pm) noticed that I'd written in 1/01/00 down below. Just when I get used to writing "00" on things... ah, well. I'm trying to think if I have anything profound to say. Anything that just screams out to be written down (there was something, around 2 pm, but I forgot it), something that'd stroke my ego or make the world a little bit of a better place. Instead, I ramble about rambling, more watching the reflections of candles in the dark spots of my screen than what I'm actually typing (remarkably few backspaces, too). What is there of import to impart about my day? Uhhh... my shoulders hurt (hunching over a keyboard, sneezing, while coding badly fubar ADP HTML does that to me) and my nose is runny. How is that for more stupid information than really should be out in the world? It's funny, because I've spent a good portion of the last three days investigating the human condition by going through all of twu's user pages, alphabetically, and I've seen a lot of weblogs (so sad... back in April of '99, I thought I was doing something original... how little I knew). Anyway, point being that most of them just aren't worth reading. Atayah was interesting, JonD's artwork was lovely... but overall, it's been kind of depressing. I wonder if I, too, sound like all those little tinny voices in the ether, or if I possess some timbre to help stand out from all of us pouring our hearts and minds out into nothingness. Not really. Which is depressing in itself.

1/01/01

I'll flip it sometime else. I gotta get to bed... early classes all this quarter. SIGH.