(warning: particularly old content) I don't ask for it to make sense 
5/31/01
In lieu of coherent thought tonight, a testament to Reid.
5/30/01
Woo. 3:22 am, and the big nasty paper is at the point where it just needs to be gone over to be done. Halfway into the 9th page I ran out of steam... ah well, that can be padded out tomorrow. So. Um. Now I have to write a Japanese presentation. Go me. The depressing thing is that while I don't have to have that actual paper turned in tomorrow, I need to either write it now or have to stay here beastly late after work tomorrow night to do it. I don't think I've ever despised Linux more than I do tonight.
4:34 am update—it's pretty sad when you're so tweaked out that you're sending yourself email just for amusement value.
5/29/01
Fuck me, tomorrow's going to suck.
5/28/01
I hate it when I have plenty of time to get a project done (months even, in one case), and I let it languish all until the very last minute, and I spend two days at the last minute on the verge of tears and incapable of doing anything productive because I'm so intimidated by the task ahead of me. Now, I wouldn't be so upset if I only had one paper due, or if the one in Japanese was due on Friday or at our final on Saturday. But no, I have both due on Thursday, with accompanying presentations on both days. I haven't been able to get a meaningful start on either one; I've got some stuff jumbled down for the Japanese one, but I really don't know where to go with it. On the 10 page one for my sociolinguistics class... nothing, nada, nanimo, zip. I just need to sit down and write that mother, and I can't seem to concentrate on it at all. So it's going to end up being all getting done at work tomorrow night and the long haul on Wednesday afternoon. I really hope that someone is looking over me for the next few days—25% of my grade in socling is tied up in that paper, and a second 25% in that class' final... AUGH. I've been doing so well up until now—it's so -FRUSTRATING- to have my grade be possibly ruined because I was a dumbass. Sigh. Yes, I fully understand that if I hadn't waited until the last minute, life would be much better. That doesn't mean I can't complain about my idiocy.
And in other news, I was reminded again just now how truly skank my keyboard is. I touch this thing every day?
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
5/27/01
Backrub good.
5/26/01
It's my little brother's 20th birthday today, and because he's in Texas, I've not even gotten him a birthday present yet. I feel somewhat bad about that. In other news, there's very little that's as depressing as driving alone on the freeway at night. Music is all there is to really mark the time that flows by, and while music can make me fly, it's not always, or even usually, in a happy way. It's a dark flight with my emotions weighing me down, farther and farther—it's a miracle I keep my car on the road.
5/25/01
I am sometime-Miyazawa and always-Arima. Perhaps that's why I get so depressed at the showings... it's discomfiting, having your emotions and thoughts stripped bare and placed on a 16-foot-tall screen. Even if no one knows that it's you.
5/24/01
I really hate being a petty person with petty problems.
It's nice when you're in a bad mood and you're obliged by Armitage's Terraforming track.
I remember, the night that Jim broke up with me, that I calmed him down and shooed him out the door... then I sat, and stared at the wall in complete silence, for ten minutes. And then I screamed. It was a piercing, Ophelia-over-the-balcony, gut-wrenching scream, and it went on and on and on until I had no breath left to give it. And then I was quiet again; I couldn't cry then, and I haven't much since. That is, until tonight, when I found the Leatherman he gave me missing. Funny, that a simple object could cause me to cry this badly; I excused myself from work early, and the tears started in the elevator. The wails began ripping out as soon as I stepped outside; and so I've cried and cried and do nothing but cry for half an hour now. I can't do anything but remember how happy I was when I opened the present to find that he'd paid attention to something I'd said months before. And now it's gone—I'm pretty sure it got left at the Commons or the CRC last week; it wasn't in the Lost and Found at the Commons, however. It would be too melodramatic for me to say that I think I'll never find it again—perhaps someone at work picked it up and will return it. But that doesn't salve the wrenching pain ofall that that small metal mechanism represents to me being gone.
*Poof*
5/23/01
I had a good time talking to Nathan tonight, as we sat on the deck and watched the evening go dark. It was so calming to not have to be the one in charge of the conversation—it really threw into sharp relief how much of a contrast there is between my friends and I. Even around Monika and Kate, I feel that I'm the one with burden of responsibility to a great extent. Nathan's personality, on the other hand, is so much more dominant than mine that I found myself perfectly able to sit and listen without feeling like I had to say anything back. It was... soothing. Like the non-sexual equivilent of being submissive—you're not the one in control, you don't have to say or do anything, and can just let the other person carry you along with them. It was an experience that I'd been missing for a long time.
Speaking of other things I miss... I miss Jim I miss Jim I miss Jim I miss Jim I miss Jim I miss Jim I miss JIm I miss Jim I miss Jim. I feel like a huge piece of me is fading into a black hole of wrongness, attached on the other side to something that drags on me with its non-existence. I can't concentrate on schoolwork for a damn—sure, it's for multiple reasons, and I don't in any way BLAME him for it, of course... but... I walk down the street, the same time and feel to the darkness as that night, and remember walking behind him, watching that distinctive silhouette, my precious one... and I remember how I could feel the wrongness, even there, a block away.
I despise taking showers. I hate the time that they take out of my day—I find myself resenting greatly the sleep that I lose to them, and how many times have I been nearly late because of having to shampoo my damn hair? I dislike the half-wet half-dry feeling all throughout and certainly after I'm finished. Or how about long hair that stays wet, damp and hanging on my neck, for so long afterwards? I can wrap a towel around it, only to feel like it's slipping off constantly. I hate having to wring out my hair, and shaving is right out. I like the warmth, but it all fades as soon as I have to get out, so what's the point? If I weren't so attached to not reeking with oil, I'd be tempted to let the practice go completely. When someone invents a cubicle that I can stand inside for 30 seconds and come out clean, I'll offer them my first born child.
Bits of my mind today:
Two months later, it feels incredibly wrong to eat at Nasai without Jim.
I got hugged and given candy by some cute sorority girls today. It would have been a much more exciting experience had I been one of my sex-starved male co-workers, but I wasn't going to complain, by any means. And Patrick, I'll brag about it all I want—there's not a whole lot that I can hold over all y'all's heads, so I plan to milk this one for all it's worth.
Something about walking in the dark on warm nights triggers my morbidity switch. I was walking along, humming tunelessly, minding my own business, when suddenly my subconscious decided to have one of its involved fantasies where I get mugged and am screaming for help down an alley, but no one will come and help me. I'm surprised I didn't trip for the three blocks that I was thinking about that; I certainly wasn't paying attention to where I was placing my feet.
There was something else, but it's forgotten now. I looked up Luke today. It was rather bold of me, but I emailed a co-worker (or maybe friend, I couldn't tell from the page) and asked him to have Luke email me. Not that I have the faintest idea what I'd say to him, really... it was just on a whim. Just one of those moods where I decided to look up the few people I felt a connection to during high school. It was quite surreal to read his (girl)friend's journal, talking about him as a real, immediate person, when to me he's a gangly, grey-clad and greasy-haired memory. He seems to have turned out as goth as we always thought... which, to bring things back to myself, as I am so wont to do, has me wondering who still thinks of me, and what they thought I'd turn out as.
5/21/01
It's a postcard day today—sunny and so clear that I could pick out features on Rainer-san perfectly. I do so love Seattle spring and summer; not too hot to bear, and gorgeous.
5/20/01
Isn't it funny how one can be perfectly fine, collected, driving along enjoying a sunny day, when one passes a high school football field while Creed is playing, and suddenly bursts into frantic, lonely tears?
5/19/01
I've been feeling incredibly non-communicative the last week or so. Couldn't tell, huh? It's really due to just staying up way too late lately; even when I'm technically going to bed at a decent time, it doesn't make up for the night before. And how can I convince myself to sit down and compose anything meaningful about my thought processes when every fiber of my being is screaming S L E E P you crazy FOOL? It just doesn't work, I propose. Bits of things from the eddying backwaters of my brain:
A month belated on wishing Happy Birthday to my stream of consciousness. Terrible twos, indeed.
I really need to stop hoping that he's going to come to the showings.
5/18/01
I sleepy.
5/17/01
2:21 am : Stupid homework.
5/16/01
I am such a happy camper. Not a very interesting thing to say, I know, but sometimes it's the truth. Oh, and I'm the "PDT's web coordinator"! W00t!
5/15/01
Some days I just wish I'd have been hit by a car on my way home. And it didn't even do me the courtesy of raining on me.
5/14/01
I had a grand evening tonight. I actually went out, with friends, and enjoyed myself. I let Kate give me sips of her drinks (I didn't like them), which would have Franklin frothing at the mouth had he known. Still puts a half-scowl-half-smile on my face whenever I think about him telling Mark I was "too inhibited," and that he wanted desperately to get me drunk. Just like so many of my acquaintances in times past... but not Kate. Who knows what she's thinking, but even if it was well-concealed maliciousness, I wouldn't care. I trust her... such a funny statement to precede that pronoun. Hasn't for quite some time... been so long since I liked another girl as much as I enjoy her company. Hooray for Kate! I may be a human female after all!
5/13/01
I really really really hate going home.
5/12/01
It's really hard to say anything very coherent when one is as tired as I am right now, so I think I'll go to bed instead.
5/11/01
I watched a girl at the bus stop today. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail and her shoulders were hunched forward, arching away from the post she leaned against. Her face was downcast, but the wind-shifting pattern of light and shadow showed a glint of her glasses every now and then as she moved with her breathing. Her hands were thrust into her pockets, her arms stiff with tension, and she was talking. Mumbling, rather, quietly, under her breath, and though I couldn't make out what she was saying exactly at first, it wasn't hard to get an idea. I watched her on the bus, as she laid her head against the window with a hand draped across her backpack; her lips moved every now and again. She didn't cry, though I half-expected her to. Her blue eyes were very sad, and focused, if at all, on something far beyond the reflections that she leaned against; she ignored the stray hairs that blew into her face occasionally. She turned once, and looked around at the other passengers for a moment before pressing her cheek dejectedly to the window once more. I wondered, when I got off the bus, whether she got off as well, or if she continued away, repeating quietly to herself, "sabishikute, kanashiyo... doushite inaika? Itaiyo, itaiyo; kite kuretara... iina..."
5/10/01
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,
All dressed in black, black, black,
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,
All down her back, back, back...
Laughter and slapping hands on a lawn in the sun this afternoon; blatant guy-watching (especially the German) and broken Japanese—when I'm not scared that Ursula's mad at me, she's awfully fun to spend time with. It made me happy, to hear her compare me to Ahna... I do miss her. I got dreadfully sunburnt, though as always I didn't notice until it was far to late to take back two and a half hours in the big blue room. I didn't feel like going home directly after work tonight, so I sat on the stump on the Padelford lawn and watched students slowly trickle off campus. Singly and in pairs they drifted towards 45th, arms drawn around themselves while my hands cupped my chin and I felt my sunburn radiating heat into my sleeves. It was peaceful, night noises only occasionally disturbed by the electric crackle of a busline; and when I knew it was time to get up and go, for once, something felt right.
5/09/01
I originally intended to get a lot more done this afternoon and evening, but a nap and cooking/watching TV with Patrick kinda excluded all else. Not that I minded, exactly, but I still have to do the stupid yomimono homework and I really don't want to... bah humbug on school. I don't mean it, really, of course, but still. I'm allowed, I figure, to be petulant on occasion.
5/08/01
You know, if I'd not wait until right before I go to bed, or if I were doing so much earlier, I'd probably write a lot more nteresting and pertinent things.
Funny things, associations are. For days after we broke up, the stuffed kitten that Jim gave me so long ago was thrust behind a pillow, hidden from view. And while I often still throw him in the corner in fits of depression, sometimes it's strangely soothing to curl up around him and rub my cheek against his silky fur and find myself a melancholy sort of peace.
5/07/01
Warm, red curtains, tacked over a window that they could be hung over if not for the imminent leaving and the pain that looking at those rails would induce.
5/06/01
A few hours ago I was going to write something glowing about my wonderful day. But now I'm pissed at Richard for being an ass, sad about Jim being himself, and shaking my foot because it's uncomfortably asleep, and finding that there's nothing I feel like talking about other than this sort of meta-thought. I don't feel like writing about a lovely day when I'm in a rotten mood, I don't feel like complaining about Richard because it won't do any good, and I think I'd probably start crying if I thought too hard about Jim. And I'm really rather tired of crying.
5/05/01
I should write something, but I'm too tired to. So there.
5/04/01
Oh, the irony of the location.
5/03/01
Foxes were getting married in the sunlit rain as I lied to the fortune teller and went to work because I didn't know what else to do with myself. An assembly line, labor for no purpose, no pay, no gratitude, and then the desk. Thought to be better than manual labor, but lonely and upsetting as time passes and client after rude client passes alongside; four angry clients lined up and printers raging and ten co-workers chatting together across the lab. I predicted it before she threw them at me, of course—"I'm going to burst into tears after the next one," I'd said, and no sooner did they clink against my glasses than I had to bite my lip and unfocus my eyes to avoid wailing as I sat huddled underneath the desk. It would have done no good, of course, so I kept my face turned away and checked the Griffen and cleaned the desk just like old times. Clean, straighten, monotone and by no means look anyone in the eyes lest it all come out... no satisfaction for you.
"I get knocked down, but I get up again; ain't never gonna keep me down!"—a smile as I close the window to go to sleep.
5/02/01
Ugh; 2 am but the speech is all done, and I may be able to pull it off without fumbling too much.
5/01/01
No damn snappy service for anyone this month. I feel like I should say something... but what? Who knows... and doing something in Perl when you can do it perfectly fine with shell commands is for dumbheads.