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

7/31/02

Cramped neck; I've not done my pinched nerve any favors in the last few days. No hot baths, very few rubs, and lots of hunching over, cross-legged in front of my computer. Working steadily on the update to the fonts section (it shall finally conform... oh yes, it shall). Aaron asked me the other day, when he saw me doing it at work, why I do it. Why I bust my ass maintaining a font gallery, a roleplaying game reference, an above-average movie quotes section... When it comes down to it, the question applies to everything I do here. I have the most extensive online presence (that I know of), of any of my friends. It may not be the best quality material (though I like to think it's somewhat up there), but be damned if I haven't got a lot of it. I told him that it made me feel good to be putting something out into the world. But more than that, I feel, in some way, that having a couple decent services to provide in some way counterbalances the incredible ego and vanity that the rest of this site represents. Three years straight of "I'm tired, not writing tonight," for example, needs to be made up for in some fashion. Then again, on nights like tonight, where I get email from a person who knows where in the world, thanking me for the L5R site, I think maybe it's for gratitude. In one way, it is to do it just to do it—no one has ever asked me to do any of this... it's all been because I wanted to, for general purposes, because I thought it'd be cool. But every thank-you or appreciative comment I get feeds the black hole of despair, and I welcome any that I get. Self-serving, as always, in the end. I'm depressingly predictable.

7/30/02

There's a strange, if not entirely unpleasant, smell lingering around my desk. If I didn't know better I'd say it was incense, but there's no incense to be found in my room, nor any candles sitting on my desk that smell other than a mild lavender. I dn't really object, but it is slightly weirding me out. Upon much further sniffing around, I found it to be the candle that's OUTSIDE my room. As to why the smell just started drifting in the last day or two (it's been on the small table in the hallway corner for a few months at least) and why the only place I can smell it is at my desk... who knows.

7/29/02

Law & Order night, tonight, naught else but far too much reading. Is it any wonder I can't stop, when the subject is so tantalizingly close? What can I say—I am a sucker for certain things, and this book contains many of them, in appropriately, if maddeningly, small doses. Perhaps I shall go discreetly book hunting... after I finally get myself to put the damn thing down for the night. Heh.

7/28/02

I haven't felt that I wasted a day this much in a long time. Not that I didn't do anything... just that I didn't do anything worth anything. It didn't help that it was dark enough to be october all day today—the library was so dreary that eight hours felt more like twelve.

7/27/02

I ripped more pieces off of my body today than my nerves are happy with. Stupid nervous habits.

7/26/02

The logging road. Snicker.

7/25/02

My honey's home safe from Europe, and I'm a happy girl.

7/24/02

I didn't write anything yesterday. This was because I forgot to until after I'd already shut down my computer, and it was too hot to actually stand up and go back over, turn it on, and... um... type. Yep. Way too hot. Not near as hot as it will be on vacation in a week or two; if Jim doesn't get the AC working in his car again, I'm not sure what we're going to do. Speaking of Jim, he gets back from Europe tomorrow!!! I've missed him the last three weeks. Not that I'm going to see him tomorrow, most likely... but hopefully in the next day or two. Not that I'm needy or anything. No, not that.

7/22/02

Gross muggy nights are bad enough without my blood pressure getting all fooed up. I'd very happily not have to deal with nearly fainting every time I stand up. I left my PHP book in the lab today by accident—I'm pretty bothered about it. I really hope it made it in to the lost and found, because that was an expensive book. My finances aren't happy enough right now for me to be at all pleased with any investment, no matter how small, going down the drain. Now, the People magazine I wasted four bucks on tonight, that's my own fault. Heh. I don't give in to that vice very often, but some days it just feels necessary to do a particular type of escapism. The brainless kind.

7/21/02

Today, I went to work. I wrote lots of code. I procured a bed for Brandon. I watched Law & Order. There is little left of my brain other than mush on Sundays.

7/20/02

I did mean to write yesterday, but I was so incoherently tired by the time I came into my room for the night that I forgot. Anyway, here is what I would have written:

Sitting in Red Square in the afternoon, eating a strawberry crepe, I watched a young, attractive, black man at a table. He was mouthing something and moving his hand, as if to a beat. I assumed he was listening to something on headphones. Eventually he collected his things and made as if to go, but instead, he came towards me and sat down next to me. "Hey, can I ask you a favor?" he questioned, with a shy smile. I nodded, curious, he took out a pad of paper, took a deep breath, and launched into a rap, a rhyme, a song, a chant... it was incredible. I sat, a forgotten fork in my hand, and listened as he sang about racism and injustice and the question of whose "god" this nation is under. When he finished, it was all I could do to whisper "VERY nice" and blink at him. He grinned at me. "... And that," he said, "was the writing of the day." Before I could say another word, he swung his bag on his shoulder and walked off.

7/18/02

I got Japanese working, I got Japanese working! Happy happy happy happy.

7/17/02

I always get a little peeved at myself when I stay up way too late to late to finish reading a book. It's not so bad if I can sleep in as late as I want the following day, but even that gratification has faded as I've gotten older. I used to relish sleeping in until some late hour in the afternoon, and goodness knows I still do, physically speaking. But mentally, I've grown to feel embarrassed about my sleeping habits. It's not to the point of normality, certainly—I'm still quite fine with getting up at noon... but time was I'd happily get up at three in the afternoon and not think a thing of it.

7/16/02

I wrote so much yesterday that today... "I'm tired."

7/15/02

What to write about today... On July 15th, 1999, I'd watched Tora, Tora, Tora on Chiyo when she was still a Windows box and had a TV card in her in the dorm... I was living on the right-hand side of my Terry room, having decided to try sleeping on that side for the summer while I had a temporary summer roommate. Brian and I fought the next night—I remember making him go home after dropping me off at my parents house. I've thought a bunch about him in the last couple weeks, having seen him around on campus. I wonder if I'll ever stop being angry at him. I can't rightly call him an asshole (well, except for the end part). It's more that I marvel at myself for how I fell for him. Such a flake. I never told Max that the biggest reason I didn't want to date him was that I saw Brian in him. On July 15th, 2000 I was down in Winlock with Jim—I didn't write anything that night, but I think it was the night I played Shadowrun with Loren and Kelly and that group. I remember being really annoyed all that weekend with Eric; it's kind of funny to sit back and look at how much his treating of me as a weird city girl has lessened over the last two years and yet not smoothed out all of the way. That was the night that he made comments about my locking the doors of the car. I must have been primed by something else to get mad... I remember being pretty unreasonably angry at him. It's not like he can help it (it's just the way he is... no one else from down there does it), but it still bothers me quite a bit. I guess I feel like he's judging me unsuitable for his brother every time he blurts out things like that. On July 15, 2001, I woke up in the morning with terrible pain in my back. The day before, I'd injured it playing Ultimate with my friends in Japan... if I'd known then that it wasn't going to be until Christmas that it'd heal, I'd have just watched in the shade at the picnic, sheesh. On that day, I'd been broken up with Jim for three months and a week, and I dreamed about him every night and thought about him every day. That summer was so fantastic—and I don't mean that in the complementary way, but rather in the strange way. I remember how I talked to Mary and Stephanie and Amanda and Massey and hell, anyone who would listen, all about Jim at any opportunity. Here I was, living in a foreign country for the first time, taking some of the most intense classes of my life, having issues with my host family, and 95% of my brain time was still devoted to him. I don't like thinking about that. I don't like putting forward how strongly I feel about him. I don't like the fact that I just wrote that all down, even. It seems dangerous, somehow. Maybe a jinx, I don't know. I've always wanted to see Jacob again, and let him know that Jim and I did get back together, just like he predicted as he made me coffee the morning after we'd broken up. I don't know where to go with what I've written, so I think I'll just stop here.

7/14/02

Sundays wipe me.

7/13/02

I saw Pearl Harbor tonight... I thought it was a pretty atrocious movie. I enjoyed the Japanese admiral, and drooled over Josh Hartnett like a good little demographic, and that was about it. And my man didn't even get the girl, which would have made me feel a little bit better about the whole thing. Oh yeah, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s totally pointless bit part was nice, but should have been edited out, because the movie was wayyyyy too long and it needed all the snipping it could get.

7/12/02

In my short history of playing pinochle, tonight takes the cake for really shitty hands. Whew. It feels kind of funny to be down visiting Jim's folks while he's not even here, but I'm glad I came down. I enjoy hanging out here a lot more than I enjoy staying at my parents' house, that's for sure. Pretty drive down in the sunset grass-and-dew smelling evening, good good dinner, kitties... I wish this was my family.

7/11/02

Weird wonky took-a-long-hot-bath lethargy.

7/10/02

About three hours ago, I had something I was going to say. But now it's 2:45 am and I'm so tired I'm practically horizontal in my chair and I've been having to wedge my eyes open for the last 30 minutes of work. You'd think that I'd learn to, you know, go to sleep when I'm tired, but noooooo..... I've heard that the eating habits that parents teach their children stick with them for life; in my case, I seem to have inherited my dad's sleeping habits. It's not that we don't get tired, because we do (oh god, we do). We just can't seem to force ourselves to get around to going and getting into bed. It's as if that little bit of motive effort is just more than we can stand—even though we've forced ourselves to be awake for two extra hours and have been working on the computer for that entire time (or watching TV, but at least then we can fall asleep on the couch), getting less and less productive and more and more tired... but we won't go to bed. Nope. Bed is for pansies.

7/09/02

Today, the Internet taught me that my (frequent) canker sores and (infrequent) cold sores are two separate and distinct disorders... I'd always thought that canker sores (small white HURT HURT HURT ones inside the mouth) were small, internal versions of the herpes (icky nasty GROSS obnoxious scabby ones on the lip) ones that I can thank anyone who kissed me as a baby for. I'm not sure what this information is good for other than a lessening of guilt when I kiss Jim when I have a canker sore, but I found it interesting nonetheless, along with the information that while no cause has been pinpointed for canker sores, citrus fruits, spices, chocolate, nuts and tomatoes have all been observed to set them off. Yay. This is small comfort for my poor mouth, currently afflicted with two, along the gumlines. You know, the places that get rubbed when you BREATHE and TALK. Blah.

Oh for fucking CHRIST'S SAKE. I just took a gander at what the new tuition hike means for me as a grad student in the fall... FOUR FUCKING HUNDRED DOLLARS MORE! FUCK!

7/08/02

Nummy nummy okonomiyaki in my tummy. Okonomiyaki is one of those foods that doesn't sound good, but when you try it (particularly with mayo), it's delish. It was nice to see Yumi today; what with Jim in Europe, Brandon hanging with Susan and crew all the time, Kate working off-campus and living farther away, Ryan needing to study, and Patrick being Patrick (heh), I've been feeling a little down in the dumps. Funny how when I'm down and angry, I write really cool stuff. When I'm down and bored, I get just as blah at this as I do in everything else.

7/07/02

An icky, muggy, clammy, 7.5 hours at work type of day. Blah. And it's raining now.

7/06/02

Today, I did stuff. There's not a whole lot more that can be said, in any deep and meaningful way. Nothing particularly bad happened, and I didn't win the lottery. Just a decent, simple day.

7/05/02

It's a nice thought to know that I can feed myself and even be pleased with the taste. A damn sight more than I could say a couple years ago.

7/04/02

Boom shakka lakka shakka lakka shakka lakka shakka boom... I do love me some fireworks—even though I got to see a couple gorgeous displays in Japan last summer, there's still nothing quite like the 4th of July. I don't care if our fireworks are slightly crappier; they're still our fireworks, and I love seeing them. Particularly from the vantage point of Damien's apartment—two blocks up from the water, basically eye-level with the explosion point of the Lake Union fireworks. The walls were rattling, and it was beautiful. Fireworks displays should happen more often in the States.

7/03/02

I kicked a pigeon yesterday. It was an accident; I was talking to Ryan as we walked down the Ave, and suddenly there was a squawk and a flutter of pigeon wings as I made contact. It's not that I didn't know the pigeon was there, of course—I was just expecting it to move out of the way, as pigeons are wont to do. How could I have known that apparently this pigeon was a slow bastard? It felt exactly like kicking a heavy pillow. With steel-toed boots.

7/02/02

I am feeling distinctly and unhappily not the queen of my castle.

7/01/02

An honest-to-god flaming hippie is sleeping out on my couch.