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

7/31/00

Email from Patrick today; both depressing and reassuring... at least I have keys, I suppose. I worry about existing crap work that Dylan is having him do now, but he comes up with his own things for me to do. That made me feel wonderful, even if it is just because I'm about the only person at work who uses Netscape, it seems. I missed Chris when he left at work... Heather tried to tell me he was getting distant lately, obviously wanting me to complain about it with her. I refused to do it... I understand why he's going, and do think it's for the best. Even if it means I'm going to have to listen to bagpipes or somesuch in the Hole starting in a few weeks.

7/30/00

Even though I know in an abstract sense that it doesn't matter at all in the greater scheme of things, and that I'm generally considered to be moderately attractive regardless, I can't deny how much better I feel about myself having discovered that I've lost that bit of extra weight I'd been carrying for a few months. Just a bit more to go to be where I'd personally like to be... but where I am, I'm actually content. Yay me.

7/28/00

Three puppies in a box, initially seperate; as they gain hours in life, they grow closer, and a sprawl of limbs tangled together is all the flickering light of a TV illuminates.

7/27/00

I still want to know why I have four of those particular little cables. The mystery remains from last summer, or whenever it was that I last wondered about their origin. I'm not certain whether I should be pissed that I discovered where my extra RCA cables were; I feel very stupid for having so completely lost track of them when they were right in my room, but at least I have them now. I am sitting on my floor, perpendicular to my computer, not looking at either the computer or the keyboard... in fact, Jeff's hair seems to be capturing what interest my rather exhausted brain is capable of producing in anything. Of course, there is the top shelf of my closet to look at; it's got a widely varying tableau of... stuff... but it depresses me to look at it (I've been meaning to clean it out for about three and a half weeks), so I don't think I'll do that. Christmas lights then. Christmas lights are good. They're pretty. And they put out light. And my cat's breath smells like cat food.

7/26/00

I find it so intensely disturbing that Kamal's new email address is otakuliuko@ivillage.com that I can't quite describe it. What it says about his psyche that he gets email addresses named after roleplaying characters that I developed just makes me shudder.

7/25/00

A long day, and I wanted to go to bed plural hours ago. Too much thinking, not enough of something productive, my eyes feel as if they want to fall out of my head and all I wish I could do is look up possible reasons why poor Ron's page might kill any machine unlucky enough to look at it in NS. Which reminds me once more that I should peek at what's the matter with my part of John's page... I never did answer the last question submitted, because I couldn't bear to upload it knowing that I'd not be able to view it. Stupid NS. It keeps me on my toes, but it's depressing, nonetheless, that the two major browsers should be so different in such frustrating ways.

7/24/00

Snippets of a dream : climbing up walls formed out of wedge-shaped puzzle pieces, scrabbling and gasping for breath as they shift beneath my hands and I fear that I will fall rather than make it in to where my parents are. Mother, trying to get father to listen to me, failing as I get upset and run out the door of the Indian restaraunt at the motel in Ashland. I hope that he'll follow, apologize. Follow he does, but instead of apologizing, he yells at me for something; orders me to pack my bags and leave... they don't want me there, anyway. I run into my motel room, packing bags, sobbing, trying to get him to listen to what I have to say; every time I open my mouth, he yells louder to drown me out. Upset, I throw something at a wall... he yells some more. I pick up a shopping bag loaded, heavy. I swing it at him as I cry and it strikes his head. My father falls to the floor as I continue to scream and cry and ask why he never listens to what I have to say. Waking with a start and a strangled cry, heart thumping at six in the morning, remembering my father unconscious on the floor of a motel room as I stand over him screaming and Jim walks in the door, looks at my father, and asks me what is going on.

7/23/00

Depressed again. Oh well; it's not as if it's anything much different than how I've felt for most of the last four weeks or so. Gaming : I'm striving for something that I'll never again attain—I am spoiled, as Jeff put it. Weight : I'm striving for something that I'll never attain and probably shouldn't anyway. School : I'm not striving enough. Work : ditto. I'd be happier if I didn't know any of that.

I'm curious as to who is reading these days, other than Jim and Chris. E-mail me and let me know? Or not. I suppose it really doesn't matter much, except in stroking my ego and letting me think that someone cares.

7/22/00

Ah, the wonders of caustic household chemicals; they'll take the skin right off. Or the calluses, at least. I had the pleasure of being the designated bathtub cleaner, and was awarded the joy of standing in the bathtub, wiping various cleaners over tile, tub, and glass. The implicit result of this was that I had said caustic cleaners running over my feet (including the heels) at great length. I was making sure to rinse my hands and feet well (what else has lab taught me if not that?), but noticed, when I was finally finished and emerged, that my heels were itching terribly. Lifting one to scratch at it, I was surprised to note that a huge chunk of old callus (the dreadful ones on my heels that developed as a result of bad shoe habits, and have been hanging around for the last nine or so months despite changing said habits) came off under my nail. Interested, I ran warm water over my foot and scrubbed at my heels, one after another. Well, I have no calluses anymore. Of course, my feet continued to itch dreadfully, so I had to sit with cool water running over them for several more minutes, but it was worth it. I no longer encounter a nasty ridge of built-up skin when I run my finger over my heel; having gotten used to that feeling for, oh, the last four or five years, it's as if I've been given new feet.

7/21/00

This email that I sent to a friend pretty much sums up my mood ever since I got the email that prompted it. And having my backpack walked off with by accident didn't help.

"I'm just extremely angry that I didn't hear anything about this until I asked about the gaming time for this week. I would have appreciated knowing that the GM was considering dropping the game. I doubt that this is something that he just decided today, and I consider it very unprofessional and rude to make a decision like this that affects five people on one's own, and not tell people that it is even being considered until the last minute. I'm even more angry at the fact that I suspect that he had spoken to you (and perhaps <the other players>) about this, but I never heard a word about it until now. That speaks to me of very little respect for me.
"I'll probably cool down in a bit, but right now "pissed" is far too mild of a word for what I am feeling. Thus, while I may eventually be interested in gaming with you fellows at another time, I would suggest that now is not the best time to bring it up; I feel quite used and abused at the moment."

I think one of the things that upset me the most was this line in the original email—"I bought over $200 worth of books for it so there's noone this disappoints more than me." I understand that this is being oversensitive, but this makes me feel very guilty, as if I am to blame for getting the GM all excited for a game so that he "wasted" a shitload of money on books. So not only am I pissed off, I feel as if I'm getting guilt-tripped to boot. AUGH. I'm still so angry about this that I want to simultaneously puke and cry. It's not the substance of the action; I've had games canceled before, for far less reason than this. It's the goddamned method of doing it. You just fucking don't treat people like this.

On the good side, I did finally get to see the Terminator movies tonight. Yay.

7/20/00

I'm so glad to find out it isn't just a gender thing.

7/19/00

I am such a bad awake-at-3-am kid.

7/18/00

Blah. There's not much that can be said for a day so uniformly bad that even coming home and munching on cookie dough can't make me feel better. I think I'm going to bed.

7/17/00

(sigh) (face in hands) I can't believe I just did that. I just spent upwards of five hours playing Civ2. I'd had a dreadful urge to play the stupid game for days, and right no my neck aches, my fingers are twitchy, my eyes are dry, and I'm pissed that it's been so long since I played that it's 1920 and I just now got Space Flight. Augh. And I have to get up in the morning, too. BAH.

7/16/00

I wanted to write something the last few days, but by the time I could have on Friday night, it was rather sixish on a Saturday morning, and I crashed into bed as soon as I could that night. Oh well. It's a good thing that A) Jim was there, B) I really like Loren, and C) Kelly made me laugh, because if not, I think the weekend would have put me into something resembling a rage.

7/13/00

I feel physically ill at the prospect of the future. Tears squeezed from my eyes at the news, and my heart plummeted to some location below where it was naturally meant to be. Decisions may not affect me personally, but my sense of justice and right is offended, and the long-reaching implications are absolutely not friendly for optimism. Sigh.

7/12/00

A bright light; I hold up mental arms to ward it off, tears streaming down my imagined face as I am asked questions that I do not want to answer. Again and again and again the questions are posed; answers are known but hidden away, far from normal consciousness. I draw a face of mournful sanity over what feels like a raging chaos, and stroke the wheel of a machine. Lights whip past the dark in pairs, orange glow fading in and out and off. Would I a psychic razorblade, and a delicate surgeon to locate and slice out a particular portion of my mind. The self-preservation instinct, accomplice to the questioner, maintainer of torture. Without, the fingers locked around the controls of a metal monstrosity could twitch and turn, losing track of where society's streets and lines predict it should go. Into another lane, down a black road, somewhere where there are no lights in my eyes or on the edge of perceptions. Somewhere quiet, where there is no thought, no recognition of self and motivation. No knowledge of a dark titanium mirror, reflecting only a portion of what it was intended to. No knowledge of the bright side of the mirror, a shatter and a tinkling of glass and a wish away; no knowledge of the substance of the surface, of the impossibilities of the dimness falling away to reveal anything other than the only thing that is there.

7/11/00

Was going to write something, but won't until tomorrow. Too stressed and depressed right now.

7/9/00

Gaming again. Loss of myself to a drawn-over persona; ironic that I tend to play truer to myself than I am. A succession of stylized I; the identical dummy at the center of the scarecrow each time, but with different layers of clothing wrapping around, obscuring some parts and highlighting others. One of the outfits is myself, accessories ever-changing, theme remaining constant. Each layer of clothing reveals another bit of the greater work; perhaps eventually the entire thing will make some sort of sense. End thought; too much caffeine.

7/8/00

I meant to write this yesterday, but by the time I would have gotten it into permanent form, it was today anyway. It was very depressing to really realize that I'm incapable in complaining in a mature fashion. No matter what, I end up being bitter, bratty, obnoxious, or some other adjective with negative connotations. Sigh.

7/6/00

Freaky crazy Korean client. What the hell am I supposed to do when the batty old dude starts hugging me in thanks for helping him? (shudder) That was too weird. I don't like dealing with him; a lot of it may be because he doesn't speak English well, but I'm usually able to deal with that issue. I think he's just slightly nuts. Or at least way way overly anxious. And I really did not need to feel like he was groping me across the lab.

7/5/00

As I rode my bike home (slowly) today, I watched blackberry bushes wind by; they were mostly full of flowers and small, hard, green berries, but a few here and there were ripening towards a pre-black red. So much of my mental summer is wrapped up in the blackberries along the Burke-Gilman Trail. Every summer I find myself along that path, watching berries ripen at the same slow pace each year. Last year I watched them with Brian, thought about them when my knee was bad, and jogged or biked past them every now and then. The year before, my dad chattered as we ran past them three days a week, and I'd upset my stomach trying out the early ones. Three years ago I was contemplating college, and I'd go down and pick them in the late afternoons of August with Matt or Angela, staining our fingers purple while we laughed and talked about nothing. For years before that, Bryce and Amelia and I would gather them, and cajole my mother into making ice cream. This year, I ride home alone with the sun in my eyes, thinking of past summers, and wishing that I could will those flowers and unripened berries into full-blown, sweet blackness, so that I could stop and eat them, to take away the memories of eating them.

7/4/00

Back. Late. Should write something. Won't. Bedtime.