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

1/31/02

Oh my god. I've just learned that the TJ classes are 8:00-9:20, MTWTh. I'm going to have to get up in the early morning for two years. No Friday classes in the TC department, but that's scant comfort to someone like me.

1/30/02

I can always tell how stressed out I am by how much I'm able to think to write here. I'm not refering to anger or depression here, I'm talking stressed. I've written some damn fine things when I was quite angry or sad—it's when I'm stressed that we get posts like "I'm tired" or "Blah." This is too much evaluation of my self-worth all at once, combined with too many projects and deadlines. In short, shit fucking sucks. I've never been easy about critism—while I'm relatively easy to talk to in a co-operative setting, this sort of laying myself out for external review just isn't easy on my mind.

1/29/02

I hate it when I'm forced by either time contstraints or paper topic (tonight it's the latter) to write multiple pages of absolute bullshit. It's downright degrading to put my name on some of the things that I get asked to write. Stupid college and stupid college professors who wouldn't know how to phrase a decent response question if it was handed to them on a platter. I might as well be handing in a paper full of tables of data. Sheesh.

1/28/02

Man, it's been a long while since I was up at 4 am on a school night without it having been academically related. Was fun to hang out with Seth and Jason and crew tonight—I'd missed that batch of friends.

1/27/02

Home alone again. It's really no wonder that I generally prefer to be over at Jim's place—when I'm here I'm usually alone. Even when Brandon's and my schedules coincide to have us here at the same time, I still feel pretty segregated from humanity at large. Not that Jim's is much much better anymore, Ian having a girlfriend now and not as much time to watch TV with me. But at least there's Dan to wander in and bug, so even when I'm over there and don't want to goof off with Jim, I have company. But here's alone alone alone—me and my uncanny ability to pick three roommates now who a good deal of the time might as well not exist. Blah.

1/26/02

I don't remember at this time that I didn't write anything yesterday, but I must not have. Ah well. 3rd time now. It's pretty amusing this time.

1/24/02

I wonder (as I have often before) if perhaps all of my "shit" really is only in my head. And in that case, how can I possibly convince myself to let it all go? And I really hate it when the people who I want to notice my problems have too many of their own at the time to do so. Ain't that a bitch?

1/23/02

It's very depressing to go by Ida Culver House (a retirement home) on the bus and see the "Retirement Apartments Available!" banner strung across the front. It was worse in high school, when my bus passed that place twice a day... to see an ambulance out front one afternoon, and the banner strung up a day or so later. Morbid morbid morbid. As Brandon said, at least they wait a day so that the family doesn't freak out...

1/22/02

I've been seized the last day or two by working on my page. This is probably due to my upcoming interview concerning the webdev position at work, but may just be due to mid-early quarter ebbing of desire to do anything class-related. I've become obsessed with the fact that I don't have Photoshop at home, gnawed by my lack of desire/ability to use css and Perl. Nibbling on my fingers about pictures not taken, images not created, pages not updated, and things left unwritten down in my brain... and all this when I really need to be studying up on my polite speech for my interview with the TJ department head on Thursday. Woe. I wish someone out there other than Kate would tell me everything's going to be alright—not that you don't matter dear, but that it'd be nice for even more confirmation (heh).

At 1:07 am, I should be asleep (failing that, at least in bed), but rather I find myself wishing with all my heart that I had some milk in the fridge to drink. Well, perhaps not all my heart. If it was that bad, I'd get dressed and drive up to the Safeway that's open over on Roosevelt. But still, pretty bad.

1/21/02

Yet another pleasant three-day weekend whiled away at Jim's parents' place down southish. Slept a lot, got fed like a queen, played a lot of pinochle... der usualen. I had maybe one or two inspired thoughts (to some degree), did some laundry (which was very necessary), and saw Black Hawk Down (which was quite good); managed to do none of my homework (yet), took one bubble bath (just now), and worried lots about my upcoming testing/application process for graduate admission (EEK). Overall, a very satisfactory weekend.

1/17/02

Blurry eyes—too much computer.

1/16/02

A good evening spent cooking dinner and cuddling with my honey over a movie. A life full of these ones, I wouldn't mind.

1/15/02

O fragile balance broken, O fount of sound, now forever silenced. Well, okay, silenced a couple weeks ago, but I'm still pissed about it. The stereo in "my" car has existed in a tender state for a long time now; ever since I used to use a tape adapter for my Discman in it in high school, it's been twiddling along the line of inoperancy. My mother and I had worked out a complex jury-rigged system involving keeping the machinery tricked into working by jamming it deleicately with a tape... a method leaving something to be desired, as it would grunt and whine repeatedly every time the system was turned on or a bump in the road upset its insides. But work the radio did, until my father. It adds insult to injury that it was that callow unappreciater of the sonic arts that should have shoved the tape all the way inside the machine, lost beyond all recovery, leaving the system in a permanent state of thinking that a tape is in there, but unable to play (I removed the tape-part of the tape years ago). If Mom or Bryce had done it, at least I could pretend it had been accidental, a result of trying to beat the whine into submission while retaining radio capability. But Dad... the "while" doesn't exist in that case. Grrr.

1/14/02

Today was one of those ho-hum days where I went to class, did some work, spent some entertaining time with Kate (where the white women at?!?), but with the overall result being rather blah. A day where I did little to no heavy thinking, where I absorbed something about the virial theorem, a couple vocabulary words, the consonant system of English, and a couple facts regarding the kana/kanji systems of Japanese, but nothing about the greater reality. One of those prosaic days of which lives are made—the sort of day that makes me wince ever so slightly about the idea of being alive for another forty years or so.

1/13/02

I had a relevation today, thanks to the CD that John gave me. I'd never realized before that the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song Higher Ground was a cover of a Stevie Wonder song until driving today with Jim... whereas I suddenly yelled out, "My god, this is a COVER!" The weird thing was that I later saw the video on MTV2's "Covered" cover-videos show. If I hadn't been listening to the Missing Me soundtrack (and its 2nd track) so much, I never would have noticed. Not that the world as a whole has been changed by this relevation, but I found it interesting nonetheless. Or at least something to talk about at 1 am on the night of a Sunday spent largely on the couch, doing homework. That and Blender by Yello is quite possibly one of the most amusing songs in the world, unfortunately on the SINGLE Yello album I don't own (my mother having made sure to supply me with all eight or so of the others) which of course would be the best one... sigh.

1/12/02

I've stayed up too late. Stupid school. Stupid weekends.

1/11/02

Still pretty fucking bleh.

1/10/02

I find the most displeasing thing about being ill to be how listless I get. I can't get up the energy to smile, to turn my head, barely even to blink. All of my emotions flatten out, so that interest, joy, annoyance, depression, all get blended together into one big grey blob oozing around my head. Bleh.

1/09/02

Well, I figured out that I was so sleepy because I was onthe verge of being sick. And now that I am sick, I'm still very sleepy.

1/08/02

I am very very sleepy.

1/07/02

I'm really only still awake at this point out of sheer stubborness. It's not as if I have any reason to still be up, and several reasons to not be (the nausea-fonting-from-the-back-of-my-head feeling that arises from too much squinting at kanji on root beer and a PopTart being the numero uno). Even if it could be explained to me why I set myself a schedule with four classes on Mondays and Wednesdays for a total of 5.5 hours of 300 and 400 level "absorption," I'm not sure if I'd really buy it. I feel rather like a wrung out sponge and in dire need of a hug. But (heh) at least now anyone who wants to may peruse my CD collection, thanks to my insomnia. I am also relatively sure now that my foot is slightly sprained, and wishing that I had something other than frozen beef to do something about it.

1/06/02

I watched A Beautiful Mind tonight, and I don't know what to say about it. It was extremely well done and of course I think it's an incredible movie, but it made me cry—I held on to Jim's arm during the credits and just cried. I don't even really know why, which was rather embarrassing, but mostly I think it was just the similarities in mannerism and articulation to my own personal experience's schizophrenic. My throat's still all tight. Having a character that looked very much like Brian appear near the end wasn't particularly comforting either, nor Jennifer Connelly's similarity in appearance to my long-gone friend Katrina (the similarity which made me cry after watching Requiem For A Dream). Sigh.

1/05/02

One of the irritating things about being amongst early risers is the commonly held misconception that just because I prefer to sleep in, I'm incapable of getting up early. THere are few things more annoying than some early-bird cooing over me because me got up at 8—it's like they think it's some sort of fucking miracle. And I'm like... it's not that big of a thing. Can't you take a cold shower if you're really dirty, even though you'd prefer a nice warm one?

1/04/02

I don't know what it was about today, but something just seized my mind the whole day about bringing Jim out here. I guess, with my loose connection to my family at home, I have this desire to show him that I'm not entirely rootless—that there is a place where pictures of me in all walks of life adorn the walls and where I'm welcomed and appreciated. Not to mention how spectacularly gorgeous Colorado can be. Mostly, though, the former. I just feel like so much less of a person without the family backing that all of my friends, but most distinctly Jim, have. Like I'm not worth as much because my folks don't care as much. Sigh.

1/03/02

It's funny how, when you go to meet someone that you haven't seen in a while, you lay out the conversation long before you ever actually see them face to face. Certain things have to be discussed, and if you can't turn the conversation that way, things feel somehow unfinished or hanging. That event has to be mentioned, that achievement has to be bragged about; those things have to be asked and that other person needs to be inquired about. It leaves the conversation feeling empty, really—there's none of the true flow of normal conversation, as both members jockey to reveal their necessary bits.

1/02/02

Another day spent finishing a book, starting another—at least I went for a walk this morning in the new snow from yesterday.

1/01/02

I always find it interesting how an afternoon or evening spent doing nothing but reading can twiddle my mind inside out and send my thoughts skittering all over. I become quiet, withdrawn, downright out of it; I get caught up for minutes at a time staring at walls, just as I used to in that cramped room in Mercer, tracing the mortar between the bricks while I tied my shoes before class. I finished the latter half of one book today and the totality of another—I feel almost as if I don't really exist, or as if all the hullabaloo around me as my relatives cheered their football team on and munched on hotwings was as much in my imagination as the doings of characters in my books.