(warning: particularly old content) I don't ask for it to make sense 
Lids down
I count sheep
I count heartbeats
The only thing that counts is that I won't sleep
I count down
Look around
Who needs sleep
(Well you're never gonna get it)
Who needs sleep
(Tell me what's that for)
Who needs sleep...
My hands are locked up tight in fists
My mind is racing
Filled with lists
Of things to do and things I've done
Another sleepless night's begun...
(laughing) I love this song. And then Poison by Bell Biv Devoe... Good god I get in strange moods when finals whip their ugly faces around. One leg thrown over my desk, I stare into the space defined by the reflection of my Christmas lights, run my tongue over a scrape inside my mouth, and simultaneously contemplate A) the fact that I've known Richard (who is 19 today) since before he hit the teens, B) the Chem homework that I've not really done yet (unless thinking the answers out in my head counts), C) whether or not to brush my teeth and whether or not doing so would actually make me sleepy, and D) the fact that my leg is asleep starting at approximately halfway down my calf.
I never realized how painful it would be to delete my bookmark for Josh's webpage. It's been dead for months, since not long after he graduated in spring, but it still hurt. New backtext. Fits almost perfectly on my screen, which means it won't on anyone elses'. Y'all lose. I'm going to bed.
11/29/99
I had the strangest dream last night—with people looking like other people and saying things that yet another person would say... It was odd, and I never really woke up from it. Melissa laughed at me when I blurred something about not being a morning person. Or at least that's what I meant to say—I was so out of it it could have come out just as garble, since I was still petting someone's hair in my dream, really.
I tried writing something today, and discovered that yes, my ability to write goes drastically downhill when I'm not either depressed or coasting on a roleplaying high. That's rather depressing in itself.
11/28/99
How I can pass a weekend so unstressed, and then selectively unleash it on myself in the last three hours I'm awake, is completely beyond me. That's probably intentional on the behalf of my subconscious—if I knew how it worked, I could figure out a way to subvert it so that I just never felt the stress, or something. There's something strangely soothing about carefully writing kanji on a piece of nice paper.
11/27/99
I've missed more days in the last week than I have in the last couple months... sigh. Holidays can be wonderful, but they can also be terribly busy. I have this intense desire to organize something, but I look at the time and know I don't really have the luxury of playing with HTML for a long while. Time just sort of slips by...
11/25/99
I was so busy getting a billion other things done yesterday that I forgot to write some little thing down here until I was in bed with a cat. And I think that was more important. I just got the second night in a row of 11 hours of sleep. Holidays kick ass.
There should be something, I think, outlawing falling asleep and dreaming of someone you love, and waking up crying. Some natural law that would prevent the specter of something you've been suceeding in not thinking about from writhing up from your subconscious. Something that made it so we truly forgot, rather than simply burying, painful experiences.
11/23/99
How do you describe the undescribable? Put words to sheer otherworldly beauty? A jam-packed bus, standing room only, and he got on behind me; I thought he was a girl until he spoke. His skin was pale and smooth and perfect, his face, delicately shaped with beautifully defined cheekbones. I had to bite my lip not to stare into those gorgeous chocolate eyes hiding behind slim silver frames. His dark, longish hair was caught under a backwards wool cap, and the loose shirt under his jacket gaped when he bent to show a silver chain gracing the most beautiful collarbone I've ever seen.
He made some comment about how full things were, and we joked and talked a little for the scant five minutes I was in his presence. He smiled at me, and I tried not to stare too obviously. He's haunted my thoughts for a week now—he got on at the HUB, but continued on the 75 towards Sandpoint, and I'll likely never see him again.
But I think I know, now, what an angel would look like.
11/22/99
I was going to write more, but my roommate left me a very rude note demanding that I be quiet tonight because she's "got a migraine." Yeah, whatever. I'm tempted to just make a shitload of noise (the mood I'm in, the notion is sounding better and better), but I won't... so the stream of consciousness that would have been tapped and clicked out can be dammed until later.
11/21/99
I awoke today at 11:00. I stretched, and looked around the darkened room, lamenting the imminent arisal. Then I realized that, despite my homework, despite my errands to be run, I really didn't have to get out of bed yet. And I smiled, wrapped myself up in the covers, and proceeded to not get up until 1:30. Sometimes it's nice to wake up "early" on the weekend; if only because it makes you so much more appreciateive of not having a class to go to right then.
11/20/99
I should get into the habit of writing stuff on Friday morning, rather than naively assuming that I'll be conscious enough to do it whenever I finally arrive home Friday night/Saturday morning. My back is killing me... I, who was so ready for school to start so that I'd have something to take up my time, am very ready for Christmas break.
11/18/99
Good god, I'm going to bed at 1 am... So very tired. It smells nice on my side of the room—rose and gardenia and faint traces of vanilla. I will ignore what it smells like on her side of the room, along with ignoring whatever it is that she's left out on her desk, and the sounds of her dying fish. Rose, gardenia, vanilla, and sleep.
11/17/99
To see a movie like that—with that blood, that fighting, those eyes looking at her and those arms shaking her... To go to work right after, to not sit down for a few hours, to not know the answers, to deal with so many problems... I feel like a spooked horse, eyes rolling wide, starting at noises and skittering through space uneasily. I had a daydream on the way home from work, where a man attacked me. I screamed and kicked and punched and scratched, but no one came to help me... and my mind wandered to a grey void before I knew what happened next. I walked down the middle of the street, weaving a little, eyes focused on nothing in particular, and suddenly remembered why I don't like movies where characters are portrayed going insane. Too close to comfort, too close to a walk with Ethan, to a conversation with Matt, to a dark night in the middle of a sophmore winter. Too close to the edge that I dance along every now and then, and don't like to be reminded of. I bit my tongue when she burned.
11/16/99
I bit my lip on the way home from work tonight. It was accidental, but hard, and blood just flowed into my mouth. That was a little freaky... not to mention coppery-tasting.
11/15/99
I am changing. Though I can't exactly verbalize it, it's been reflected outwardly by my dress. These days, I'm as prone to be found in black cords, black boots, dark shirts, and my trenchcoat as in my old customary attire of jeans, hiking boots, flannels, and Ethan's leather jacket. I look down at myself as I walk and I think... what does Kevin think? He and I used to dress so alike. I look down at myself as I walk and I think... what would Brian think? He said to me once, "don't become one of those people who wears all black! I'd hate that!" I have to smile softly at the memory, flip golden hair sadly over a black-drenched shoulder, and acknowledge that neither they nor anyone else but me probably cares. I asked Richard the other day what he'd label me as. He looked at me and considered... "You're not a goth, and you're not a... you're just... Jen." I get my own category, which I suppose is a nice thing. At the same time, it doesn't give me any of that information about myself that I find so valuable coming from other people.
11/14/99
It was foggy tonight. My roommate's come home, and turned on all the lights—at the same time, the fog started thinning. It was as if that misty view outside my window could only be maintained and admired by the dim light of Christmas lights. The haze meandered in all evening... it even got to the point where the building across the parking lot was blurred. It made everything seem soft and winterlike, tinted orange by the streetlights as it wisped quietly by. It seems like a night to curl up and read, not to stress about my labs due Thursday, or the fact that I just found out that the Chem lab I wanted to take next quarter might be full by the time I can register, putting me more and more behind... I love going to school, but I dreadfully hate having to be put in little boxes by what quarters classes are offered. (sigh) And so Jen loses another peaceful space of time to stress....
11/13/99
I feel like there's a great darkness gnawing at my soul sometimes. A cold despair that I can shove into a corner and ignore temporarily, but each time the tide brings it back, each time stronger. Sometimes it's triggered by something—a story, a chance remark, an expression on someone's face or an event I witness. Other times, I'm folding my laundry and humming tunelessly, when my hands suddenly still and silent winds rush behind my eyes. Just for a moment, and then gone, with no release, no resolution, and no forgetting.
11/12/99
Time speeds by so fast these days, even when it seems as if it should be slowly crawling just to be respectful. It seems like the midterm I took last week was just yesterday; as if my memory of candles in Mac's room is maybe a month old, rather than two years. Time flows, in fits and spurts, drifting through my fingers like so much sand, and I just lose more the harder I try to hold on to things. And in my memory, Kenshin screams.
11/11/99
I lost the entire day to bed today. Got up, worked, came back, and now I'm going to bed again... it's a very strange feeling—holidays in the middle of the week are just odd.
I found my stone today. It had been missing for over a week. My stone is small, perhaps a little larger than a piece of Werther's toffee candies, and exactly the same color. It is silky smooth, with only a small, lighter colored, chipped area at one end breaking the surface; a dimple serving to make the stone prettier by marring its perfection. I've had my stone for over four years. I found it on the beach while at camp in the San Juan Islands, and its texture and color entranced me. For four years it's been in my left back pocket, forgotten far less often than my keys or wallet. Every now and then it gets slid into my mouth—it's clean, and smoothing it with my tongue is soothing in a strange way. But it doesn't really have any special signficance to me other than its beauty—I've never felt as if it were a good luck charm, or anything. It was simply there, a part of me. I've missed it, this last week. It had fallen out of my jeans, and been hidden behind a post of my bed. Not having it had made me short tempered, and I'd realized how often I pass my fingers over it lightly during the day, catching myself time and time again sliding my hands over the pocket and feeling nothing. It's funny to think I've been carrying a simple butterscotch colored rock around for longer than I've had any of my friends that I associate with these days. Perhaps I place more significance on it than I thought.
11/8/99
I am floating at the interface between a lazily turning blue planet and a velvety spread of black. I feel no motion, I hear no sound. I have an aura, cold flames of blue tinged with silver. It flickers, whirling around my body as I spread my arms and watch the stars, quietly. Suddenly I am aware of a presence, but I am not disturbed. An angel forms beside me, wings of white framing a silver body shaded with purple. The wings cradle us as the angel runs fingers gently through my aura, purple fire enveloping his arms and sliding down his hands to kiss my blue and silver. He runs his hand above my face, and the planet and stars are only dimly visible through a dancing haze of emerald and amethyst. The green and purple follows his hand, dissipating like a wake into my colors, as he passes his hand down my throat and stills it above my breasts. The green is stronger now, wisps of flames flowing between my heart and his fingers. His hand flows down, turning warm and the purple is tinged now with red, orange, and yellow as he dabbles in the space above my stomach. The heat and colors ripple out into my aura, growing fainter as they distance from his circling hand. He reaches higher once more, warm colors bleeding to green and then to lighter shades, his palm coming to rest above my forehead, fingers spread to encompass my head. The flames lose even their purple, turning to the same liquid silver as he, arcing down from his fingers, spreading, cool, into me. I draw in a deep breath of nothing, and close my eyes.
11/7/99
I got dressed up today. Long velvet skirt, microfiber long sleeved shirt, gloves, steel-toed boots, a gauzy scarf around my neck. All very very black, save silver cross earrings. It was kind of fun. The murder mystery dinner thing that Andrea and Franklin had invited my AD&D group to was... well, it was more enjoyable than I thought it'd be. But I'll admit that the big fun for me was in the fact that I got more hit on just last night than I've really been before, ever. Perhaps I should wear a long black velvet skirt around guys that have been drinking more often. Perhaps not. Regardless, I won't deny that the ego-boost was therapeutic and welcome.
11/6/99
I can't think of anything other than I was in a bad mood today, and it pissed me off. I hate having too many players at a game... well, I shouldn't say too many people. I should say too many of the people who are digressing all the hell the way over the place, especially when I was already in kind of a grumpy mood with a headache. Sigh.
11/5/99
Went to see Les Miserables at the 5th Ave Theatre with Ken tonight... I hadn't listened to the lyrics in the music to LM before. I almost started crying during Eponine's "On My Own" (I'll admit it, I did pretty much lose it when Jean Valjean died).
11/4/99
Ugh, coffee at 8:30 pm and caffeinated tea at 1 am don't combine to make me feel good in the morning. I didn't stay up late, but I felt like I had a delayed reaction to all that caffeine... I had to restrain myself from skipping and running through lab today, and my hands were shaking all over the place. I think I figured out what my second unknown is, so that makes me feel better... But I messed up on my kanji quiz today, I have an inorganic chem midterm tomorrow that I don't really have the time to study for, and I'm getting more and more worried about my idea of taking 15 credits of differential equations, 2nd year Japanese, inorganic chem lab, and programming next quarter, and I just feel like bitching.
11/2/99
Okay, I either spilled something really bad on my hands during lab today, or I'm getting sick. Headache and vaguely naseous and crabby as hell... And my roommate's dinner is making me even more sick. I think I'll go lie on my bed and face the wall with that goddamn flourescent light she won't turn off shining on me and brood.
11/1/99
This morning's clue into Jen: "What has occured when Jen apparently is taking a criticism wayyyyy out of proportion."
On those occasions where you criticize Jen and she appears to be reacting far out of proportion to what you would normally expect, the following has most likely occurred: due to her zero confidence in self and freak timing, you happened to criticize her at a point when she was convinced the world hated her. As an unfortunate by-product, she is now convinced that your criticism of her choice of clothes/HTML code/Japanese phrase, opinion, or way of doing things means that you have begun to see what the rest of the world sees, and that your small criticism is an indication that you have begun to hate her also.