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

9/30/00

A throroughly (sp?) disappointing start to the day... a few hours spent in utter misery... but made up with loving care, a nice dinner at a hole in the wall Italian place, and a movie. Chicken Run is worth seeing, and eminently quoteable, but most importantly, it made me smile, which I truly needed today.

9/29/00

I love to read about gaming. To think about gaming and all its infinite varieties and subtleties. To imagine myself in games of years past, at good moments and bad, remembering decisions made and avoided, conversations with Kevin and Jason and Seth and Joe and Mark and others. I remember when I've drawn a character up out of some core of myself, molded it with action and in the paradigm of a particular situation into something that is special, full-fledged, and alive. I remember those times with a sense of pride; I remember with a wince of embarassment times when I've been, bluntly, a dumbass about a game. And I wonder how to apply my not-so-long history and experience into a new game with new people and new dynamics.

9/28/00

Wow. My teacher in Japanese today asked me if I'd like to move up to 312 directly. She was worried, for some reason, that I'd get bored in 311. o_O I was so blown away (and flattered, I might add). But I wouldn't want to spend a quarter twiddling my thumbs, and I feel like I need a hell of a lot more practice speaking... so I turned it down. She offered like four times, and told me that she thought my writing was sugoku ii—very good. Wow.

I'm not as scared of Erik as I was. He still beat the living shit out of our characters (Saxea spent the entire time cowering in a corner as the fighters got ripped to shreds), but he was being much more human and friendly in his demeanor towards me. I felt much less like he was being an asshole, and after absorbing his reasons aftergame for why he's kicking our asses, I don't even feel too bad about that. He did have the djinn retreat, at least. Sheeeeesh.

(hehe) 2:30 am internal brain quote : "no, you don't understand! To a student of my caliber, getting up at 9:30 when my first class isn't until 11:30 is like getting up in the middle of the fucking night!"

9/27/00

I is so very tired. I covered 2 hours of shift earlier... got an hour and a half break, and showed up for another 4 hours of shift. I like it and all, to be sure, but I feel like a lot fewer people ask questions at the desk now that we're at the top of the stairs and a little farther away from where the action be. Sigh. Oh well. Got new posters... perhaps I'll deign to take new pictures of my room once it's prettier.

9/25/00

This should have gone up yesterday, but the server was being screwy.

I saw Brian today.

I was walking up 15th, wondering if the UBookstore would have all my books, when someone waving at me from a bus-stop caught my attention. He was wearing that green shirt I always liked, and a pair of khakis... of course. He never was anything if not nicely dressed. The most ridiculous sunglasses I've ever seen anyone wear seriously framed his face, and my heart felt as if it was trying to fall out of my knees. At least four people later asked me variations on the question "so, did you kick his ass?" I couldn't satisfactorily explain about why I hugged him hello and spent a mostly pleasant half-hour chatting with him about such-and-so. He was obviously jealous of Richard and Jeff and Jim; it was rather funny to watch, in a sad sort of way. I kept on talking to him pleasantly, wanting to shake him when he apologized for being such an asshole last year, and scream YES, you were an asshole! What were you you thinking? You absolute fucking jerk, if you are so sorry and think I'm such a great catch and are so jealous of my boyfriend, you should have fucking thought about that when you DUMPED me from Japan over ICQ because you didn't respect me enough to do it in person.

I bade him a nice goodbye, with a smile, and went upon my way. None of it matters, in the long run. Even looking back at it later in the day, I realized that those emotions aren't all that strong anymore. It's just that in all the time I had to get over the experience, Brian was never physically around, looking me in the face. Maybe I won't run into him again. Maybe the next time, I won't mind; I'll be able to remember that in a lot of ways, I forgave him for it months ago. Who knows; maybe I need to scream at him once. It wouldn't be constructive at all, but you never know. Sigh.

9/24/00

I find myself nervous to go game again. Not full of dread, as I used to be when I gamed with Franklin and Andrea, but defintely nervous. I don't feel like I've done my part to soak up the rules in the last week, so I feel like a slacker. In addition, I find myself unnerved by Erik. His offhand comment to Joel, "she's a combat wizard!" really upset me for some reason. I guess I was just embarrassed, having admitted to him that I have a hard time making non-combat characters, and then proving it right. I didn't really intend for her to end up that way... I was making an air/water elementalist, and I guess I was unconsciously picking those spells that fit in that paradigm and could also be used offensively. Sigh. I suppose my biggest problem is that having had him make that judgement about my character, I feel as if he was waiting all last week for my character to step in and kick some ass—when I've rather built her to not do that, or at least not in the situation we were in. She's not a freaking combat mage... she could learn how to be, but she isn't. Anyway, I feel inadequate. Blah.

9/23/00

I feel like I have so much to say... it's been a long day, though, and I dislike taking up too much time on Pat and Jim's phone. So I'll cut it short tonight with a reminder to self—it was tonight that I first really thought about it and considered it. Remember that in a few years.

9/22/00

So very tired. Getting up at 7:00 to go into classes for work has not been something I'm thriving on. Time to go to bed now.

9/21/00

I stopped into the Roma today, not to pay $2.10 for a single tall mint mocha, but rather to pay 90 cents for a smile on a friendly face and a touch of interesting conversation. It's funny to think about it that way, but that's rather how it is most of the time that I go in there. I find the people there to be the most pleasant at any of the coffee shops on the Ave; perhaps that's why I found it so offensive that the Daily's welcome edition didn't list it at all in their "coffee shops of the U-district"—I mean, come on! They mentioned the freaking Starbucks, and some place in Wallingford that I'd never heard of, for Christ's sake! Sigh. It just goes to show that which we all knew; the Daily is produced by a bunch of morons. It just slips my mind once in a while.

9/20/00

I'm too tired and crampy to write anything now. But here's those pictures.

9/19/00

Oh, the hilarity that ensues when Jeff, Richard, and I all get in the same... stairwell. What started out with Richard tugging on my hair turned into a series of pictures involving my hair in pigtails, and culminated in a set of three pictures that Jim won't approve of but that the three of us found exceeding humorous to set up and take. Our only regret was that I didn't actually have the outfit, so we had to cobble it together out of various bits of all of our wardrobes. Richard's trusty little digital camera recorded the amusement for posterity (as well as being drafted by me for the traditional pictures of my living quarters); however, the glories of the digital age in providing said amusements to the public failed dreadfully this evening, as the only computer that's set up to snag the pictures down is involved in a huge download (and we're nothing if not too lazy to make my computer do it now). (snicker) They're wonderfully glorious though, as Jeff would say. More Jeffisms to round out the night—he's possessed of manly armular and stomackal musckles, and believes that "out of a new beginning will come GLORY!"

9/18/00

There is a particular man that frequents my area of existence. He appears to be homeless, or at least I suppose. I wonder who he notices in his life, for it is he who I notice in mine. Always relatively neat of appearance, he sports a hat, sunglasses, a long beard, and a tweed coat on any given day. His belongings are neatly packed into various bags and boxes, strapped onto a dolly and festooned with an American flag. He never asks for money; indeed, he never seems to speak at all. He sleeps or reads the paper in the Roma, a paper cup of water or cheap coffee at his elbow, or fiddles with a red laser-pen, shining it into passerby's eyes and watching for their reaction. He sleeps stretched out on the grass of Parrington lawn, surrounded by what seems to be all of his worldly possessions, ignoring the squirrels that chatter about him. Every time I pass him I wonder if he recognizes me, or any other of the myriads of college students that ignore him or stare curiously at the neat patches at his elbows. I wonder if he speaks to order his drinks at the Roma, or if they just know who he is and what he wants. Most of all, I wonder why he is what he is, and how he came to be so.

9/17/00

I watched a mouse scuttle across the street today, a faint dark outline moving against the orangy glow of the street light, and decided to put to complete sentences several bits of thought that had made it into my Visor since before Summer Quarter. Brain dump:

I have a great mistrust of the number two. Any number that equals the same thing when either squared or added to itself seems wrong somehow, and that dividing by itself after one has added it to itself comes back with it is just downright disturbing. As such, i've never used it when I'm running through some sort of test calculation—the low primes, 3, 5, 7 have always seemed so much more trustworthy, lying more in the mathmatical paradigm that I am accustomed to. While in Colorado over the first summer break, I had a dream about Kamal. I don't remember much about it now, other than it took place in a high school, and he kept following me up and down the stairs. I woke up, panic in my chest, as I tried to explain to the security guard that he wasn't supposed to be there. My grandparent's neighbors, the Shueulers, own a radio tower high in the foothills above Boulder. I just tried to look it up, but couldn't find it. Regardless, you can see for miles back into the Rockies from there, or turn around and see all the way to Wyoming (well, you could if one's eyes and the curvature of the earth didn't conspire against one). I leaned way out over the rail on top of the building Bill built, and squinted to see the smoke of fires on the horizon. My grandfather took some pictures... perhaps he'd mail me some. I had a dream some months later, about a dragon. It must have been vivid for me to scribble down only the cryptic note "dragon dream" in my Visor, but those two words are all that remain, now. Pity, that. The scent of incense is coming through my window, unmuffled by my headphones as the rumble and hiss of the freeway is. I wonder who talks about me in life, and to who. Does Mark tell as grand stories about Joe and Drory and I to others as he used to tell us about his buds at MIT? And lastly, one more small note... "weird clients." Whatever I meant by that, who knows. There's plenty of them, to be sure.

9/16/00

The aggravating part out being on a modem is that if the modem pool drops off the face of the planet, there's not another system to fall back on. Sigh. DSL doesn't even have an ETA yet, apparently, which is quite depressing. But I had a good evening, and the next time I go there, I'll wear something more appropriate for dancing than jeans, flannel, and birks... I didn't want to go out among the pretty people.

9/14/00

It's always the question when I'm tired, isn't it. Do I muse on those things that I intended to muse on (birthday, jury duty, blows to self-esteem, roleplaying tonight), or do I go to bed? I'm thinking the latter, as so often I do... such a hedonist I.

9/13/00

More on the birthday another time. Right now, it's after midnight and I have to catch a bus at about 8:30 am. But it should be the last day of jury day. Thank goodness. My ass can only take so much sitting around.

9/11/00

(making a face) I have to get up wayyyy too early tomorrow to go sit at the Municipal building and read my book. Go me.

9/10/00

I took the pictures that were handed to me; I stroked a fondly-remembered face with the flat of my fingernail, as a lump formed in my throat. The two images, so recent in comparison to my last memory, captured two aspects of him perfectly. The glaring face that terrified me for months; the charming grin that warmed me for far to short a time. My brother, my dear friend, my protector and comforter; I lost those and so much more when he left. When I thought I was worthless academically, he touched my chin and told me I would have fit right in at MIT. When I felt small and unnoticed, he told me that he recognized me at night on the Ave from a bus just by my walk. When I couldn't protect myself, he told Franklin to let me be. When I felt like the world was out to get me, he wrapped his arms around me to let me rest. And when I thought that no one could love me, he did. I remember helping him pack up his things, lifting his life away into a van to disappear from mine. I loved him too late, and cheated him of what he deserved from me. But he belonged elsewhere, telling his stories and gestulating wildly and scratching his beard and wrapping his bathrobe around him in the morning somehwere else. I know he's happier there, and so I hand the pictures back, locking them away in that little corner of my mind that belongs to him, for rememberance, saving the tears for later.

9/9/00

HAHA! By complaining about my phone, it jinxed it in our favor! We may only have a 28.8 line out, but we've got an OpenBSD box acting as a gateway and the internet once again exists in our world. Whoohoo!

Argh. Wouldn't you know it; the one night I was able to peacefully and quickly get to sleep in this place was the one night that I got woken up an hour or so later. And now I can't get back to sleep to save my life. Perhaps a change of locale will work.... Maybe the couch will lull me to sleep.

9/8/00

I feel guilty, at the lack of updates. I could have updated at work, I suppose, but I never felt the urge in the middle of the day to write. Whenever I've wanted to pour out my inner mind, it's been when I'm at home, blocks (or at least floors) away from any sort of internet connection. I'm pissed... we should have had a phone line today, "by five." Uh huh. So not until Monday morning at the earliest will we likely have a phone, as USWest (oh, excuse me, "Qwest") hides in their holes on the weekends. Ah, well. Perhaps I'll get together with Erik tomorrow, to work on my Ars character. He scares me, but then again, so did Kevin and Mark when I first met them; in fact, Mark seemed much less personable. I miss. I miss Jim. I miss a routine. I want school to start, to give me a steady cycle of school/work/play/sleep/rinse/gargle/repeat. Work is too variable right now to be comforting, and the server room just isn't the same without Chris there. I'm trying to not be too grumpy with Richard... I don't always succeed. I try to not be too much of a bother to Jeff... I don't think I'm succeeding there, either. I've been too scared to go look at my grade from this last quarter... I know I didn't succeed there. And I'm worried about serving on a jury next week. It'll be interesting, to say the least. I'm turning 21 next Tuesday; I remember years ago Brian and Kent and Warren threatening to drag me all around Seattle that night, from bar to bar. I wonder if they ever think of me. Kent does, perhaps. I hope Warren doesn't. I think. Brian, who knows. He was always a little bit of a scatterbrain. I read The Stranger yesterday, and wanted to write afterwards. Something about reading, regardless of the quality of writing, always makes me want to gush words out of my own. But there was no computer around, and I long ago got tired of scrawling words out on paper. So it was left to be bottled up and eventually die away, leaving only a pitiful residue of half-completed thoughts and ideas left unsaid to grace this page today, too hurried to be smoothed to coherency, as I listen to Grant brush his teeth and figure I should probably get out of their apartment.

9/3/00

I'm back; I'm also moving. My clothes, computer and stereo are all that remain to be boxed up and then the relaying to the van begins. I'm trying very hard to have everything that I'm bringing be in boxes this time, labeled even. My ambition gets ahead of myself, sometimes. Many of the boxes are small or ackwardly shaped... as always, the cd case my brother gave me will present a challenge. I've toned down my collection of "things," though I'm sure it'll swell again over the next year. I went through the top shelf of my closet... I threw away the bandana Luke gave me, so long ago. I have wondered occasionally what was in his mind when he gave the silly thing to me as a joke (and ended up getting me in trouble with school security... but that's another story), but I doubt he remembers it or me well these days, and he probably doesn't really want a salmon-pink bandana any more than I do. It makes me smile nonetheless, though. Anyway... on to breaking down the computer, and being totally without internet access on my own computer for the next few days. Whoo hoo!