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

9/30/02

I went to bed at 10:30 last night, in a vain effort to make this morning not quite so horrible. But no, it's 6:45 am and I woke up from a dream about a baby-selling operation with Suzanne by Weezer in my head and feeling like crap. The next two years plus are going to SUCK.

9/28/02

My family and I went to a memorial service for a family friend tonight, John Hedges. I'd rather forgotten that he was a professor at the UW until tonight... I thought it very touching that the barista from Agua Verde came to honor a man she'd served coffee to every morning for years. Bryce and I found it very peculiar to look around at the people there and see so many that we thought looked familiar. John and Dad hadn't worked together since I was about five, but several of their collegues' faces must have made an impression. We would point to a person that we thought we knew, and Dad would confirm, yes, that person worked in their lab. Yes, that person did too. And that one. Perhaps I remember more than the topographical map on the wall in the Oceanography building after all.

9/27/02

There's few things more disorienting than sleeping on the couch for four hours and waking up in the dark.

9/26/02

I am extremely tired.

9/25/02

There are few things worse than being assigned to teach a bunch of intelligent, easily bored, social-skill lacking people material that they already know for an hour. Argh.

9/24/02

I shot a gun for the first time in my life today. Multiple guns, even. A couple of .22's, a .45, and Jim's 9mm Beretta (which was by far the coolest, I decided). Still not really sure what the overweening attraction is for people like Jim, but hey, at least I can say I've done it now.

9/23/02

Huh. I guess I just went to bed last nihgt. Well, I'm going to do it again, because it's 11 pm and I got up at 5:45 am and I'm tired. Wah.

9/21/02

"And I think it's kind of funny/I think it's kind of sad/the dreams where I am dying/are the best I've ever had..." Took Brandon out to see Donnie Darko at the Egyptian tonight. I was gratified at his response; I knew he'd like it, but I wasn't expecting a declaration of "better than American Beauty" from him. I dunno... I've never had a dream where I was dying, but I doubt it'd be better than certain other ones I've had.

9/20/02

Silly not having Internet accesibility at Jim's new place... I lose track of what day is what. Today was largely unremarkable so far as work goes, with perhaps a slight overabundance of annoying things. I left early. Spent the afternoon enjoying Monty Python and playing Civ III... feels like I hadn't had a day to myself in a very long time. Took my mother to see Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (English title : Spirited Away) tonight. I'd seen it when I was in Japan last summer, though I thought at the time I didn't understand a lot of it. Turns out that the parts I thought I was having linguistic trouble with were pretty confusing even in English, so I'm pretty happy with myself for how much I picked up, belatedly. Mom liked it a lot, as I knew she would - she agreed with me that the characters and story were a lot more engaging in Mononoke Hime, but she said she was rather glad that she wasn't as involved with the story this time, as it let her pay more attention to the animation than she'd been able to last time. And what animation... beautiful stuff. I don't really understand my friends who claim that Miyazaki's old stuff is his best; to my mind, his storytelling has gotten no worse over the years and his animation has much improved.

9/18/02

It's just clicked over to be 11 pm. I pulled myself up from the couch about 10 minutes ago, forced myself to turn off the TV and the lights, and to brush my teeth. I feel cheated of my evening, robbed of my free time, all because I have to get up at 7 am tomorrow. I don't have to, I suppose... I could take this last precious week and sleep in, work late, all of that jazz. But next week I do have to be at work no later than 9 on any given day, and the week after, the dreaded 8 am classes begin. I know that I'm spoiled. I know that in the Real World, people quite regularly get up at 6:30 or 7 and get to work by 8:30 or 9. Goodness, I used to get up between 5:30 and 6 to be at school by 7:45 in middle and high school. I guess that I knew those things in the way that you know that there's about a billion people living in the country of India - you just don't really let it press on your mind. Perhaps I thought that I'd get myself some job where I'd not have to keep a so-called normal schedule; more likely, I wasn't really thinking. I was delaying the inevitable. It's sad to think, given that next summer shall be given over to an internship and that the summer after that I need to have a permanent job, that these last two or three months were really the last time, unless I find some fantastic job, that I'd ever have the luxury of accomodating my natural sleep schedule. I never really appreciated the flexibility I had in scheduling classes these past few years until I learned that the TJ ones are so set in place (well, in time). Sure, there'll be vacations, but it's just not quite the same. And I'd never really thought about that until today.

9/17/02

Much annoyance... I was to have been home tonight somewhat earlyish, having run some errands and gotten shit done. But no... I ended up dragging my ass in at a little past midnight, with errands unrun and shit not done, thanks to being attached to silly movie-filming for orientation. Tomorrow will not be happiness as a result.

9/16/02

Well... what all happened the last couple days? Many things, but I'm a little too removed from them today to be able to put any of it in a nice coherent package with a message. Jim and I went down to Winlock on Friday night and he gave me a wonderful birthday present : a complete set of small dice carved out of jade. Saturday, we ran errands in the mornng and Jim ended up getting me to go to a gun show. It was... interesting. I got Bryce's Christmas gift there, even without violating my vow to never buy him a knife or a gun, so that's something. That afternoon, though, we went over to see his grandmother in the nursing home, and to try to cheer up his grandfather. I was going to write something expressive about that night on that night, but I ended up getting too depressed to do so... and then Jim/Eric/I stayed up late playing Magic, of all things. It'd been a while. Sunday morning we picked apples, and that afternoon we made SIXTEEN quarts of apple butter. Yummy stuff, but the amount of apple goo I helped process was absolutely obscene. Came back up to town with the last of Jim's gear... went out to dinner with friends, which was fun, but then Ian was a dick later and upset me. I guess I just never thought he'd be that rude... took me by surprise. Got up today and went to work; not much happened but I wasn't in a good mood anyway. Had fun watching Evil Dead tonight with Brandon (super-cool Patrick gave me the limited-edition latex-covered DVD for my birthday), and at least I got laundry done. May the next days be emotionally better.

9/12/02

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear me... happy birthday to me. Only two more years, according to John's timeline, left for me to blame my parents for my problems. Would I that I were happier on this birthday of mine.

9/11/02

What can I say today? I got my teeth cleaned today. I'm glad, in a depressingly abstract way, that no one decided to pull any shit towards my country today. I find it sad that that's all I can do to reflect upon today... sad because I'm too tired to refelct, and sad because I don't have that much internal impetus to reflect on it anyway. It's not that I dislike my country, don't get me wrong... nor is it that I think in some sick way that last year's events were justified. I guess I'm just too self-centered to give it much thought given how little it -directly- impacted my life. And that is a very depressing thing.

9/10/02

I walked through Red Square today, watching a flight of pigeons wheel around the three pillars endlessly, wings glittering in the sun, and thought about regret. There are few things in my life that I truly regret... I think it odd that one of them should be that I never got my senior year yearbook back from Angela.

9/09/02

Stayed late at work today and came home to an empty house with no desire to make dinner. Law & Order was all re-runs and there was NOTHING... ELSE... ON. Not that my day's been super shitty, mind you, but suffice to say that it's nearing midnight and I'm not in an entirely pleasant mood.

9/08/02

Jim and I drove up from Winlock with the cats tonight. It never ceases to amaze me how well behaved Lars and Liam are in the car; the cats that I had when I was younger went nuts and had to be boxed up. Lars, in comparison, nestles between driver and passenger and sleeps the whole way, while Liam alternates between sitting in laps and watching out the side windows, and sitting in the back and looking out the rear window. Very quietly. It's nice to have all the hassle of cats in the car reduced to the single allergen argument.

9/07/02

I find it interesting that without fail, every night that I've gotten roaring drunk, I wake up the next morning after exactly 6 hours of sleep feeling completely rested (the occasional hangoverish headache notwithstanding... I'm talking about feeling like I got a good night's sleep here). It's totally bizarre. You'd think, if anything, these would be the mornings I'd wake up most groggy after doing my best imitation of a hibernating bear for the previous 15 hours. I wonder if alcohol is the secret key to normal sleep behavior. In other weird behavioral news, I also find it funny that every Thursday I neatly set my just-read Stranger on top of the pile of Strangers in the Roma for someone else to read, even though every Thursday, I routinely lift aside all of the other neatly set just-read Strangers to get at a fresh copy myself.

9/06/02

Whee!

9/05/02

It's actually after midnight, so here goes:

Happy birthday to Brandon, happy birthday to Brandon, happy birthday dear Brandon.... you're the best roommate I could have!

9/04/02

What to say.. not much. I've been working 7-8 hour days, slaving on interviews and errands and general office stuff. I'm not relishing giving up my evenings in another month or two to school thoughts, but I think I'll be glad to go back to classes during the day - I feel like I'm doing so much more when I'm hopping between school and work (even if I'm not getting more done... heh). Working up in the EPLT Hive again... but at least now, I get to share Brandon's old office with David (it's something). But yes... nothing to offer up into the ether. The drone of work seems to have invaded my creative centers with styrofoam packing.

9/03/02

Life is really incredibly boring right now, with the exception of a couple things I'm currently too sleepy to write about (they aren't really that much).

9/01/02

Heh. What an amusing joke-within-a-joke... to have rented and watched Navy Seals and then Clerks in the same sitting.