It came to my attention that anyone reading Alex's recent comment may be confused by his use of pronouns. I would therefore like to direct you here. His use of pronouns is not a misspelling or batch of recurring typos; he is using the ze/hir variants of gender-neutral pronouns. Contrary to what the author of this article has to say, I find that ze/hir are the most aesthetically pleasing of the gender-neutral pronouns, and I don't particularly find them to correspond semantically to a non-binary classified third gender. These are my personal preference for non-gendered pronouns, but I somehow doubt that they've gained enough popular support to be acceptable in papers or reports. Really, though, I do think that they are much less cumbersome than a ridiculous string of "he/she" or "he or she" or even "(s)he". As a closing remark, I'd also like to point out that those strings I just mentioned retain a gender bias - the first two being biased towards "he" (as it comes first) and the second being biased towards "she" (as that's how I, for one, end up pronouncing it).
January 30, 2004
January 29, 2004
a host of reasons and a story
We could entertain the theory that perhaps God does not, in fact, hate me per se. God seems rather critical of my performance in relationships, but, then again, who wouldn't be, really. However, I do not agree with the assessment of the Christina (we've already established that God has issues with spelling, i.e., Soddom/Sodom - that's not really the point). Although I don't really think I need to justify anything about that relationship - or the ending thereof - I think it might be worth going through the main reasons that it just wasn't working out.
First, the timing. Sure, she came along over a year after the first time that Meghan and I separated, but that doesn't mean by a long-shot that I was over her. Now, you don't need to be God (or, hell, even Dr. Phil for that matter) to know that getting involved with someone new takes a great deal of emotional investment. Now, I knew as things were "progressing" over November 2002 that I certainly couldn't afford that kind of investment, and also that I definitely wasn't ready to pick up and move on. Sure, you could argue that sometimes you just need to stop looking behind you and get a bit of a push in a new direction. I agree with that, and sometimes that push can be just what the doctor ordered. But: I don't think it's particularly fair to a girl to be in a relationship with someone who still loves someone else. Can anyone see that ending well?
Next, the entire relationship-proper was founded on guilt. I don't remember any exact dates or anything like that, but, things were going at a rate that I was pretty comfortable with for a while, and I was pretty happy with the way things were. Then, there was the inciting incident of the motorcycle accident. For those of you who don't already know the story, let me take a moment to highlight it for you.
the tale of the motorcycle accident
It was a fairly warm winter in 'aught two, warm enough, in fact, that there was no snow on the ground and quite possible to drive a motorcycle well into December. Not only was it possible, but many people were making use of the unseaonally warm weather to get as much motorcycle riding in before it turned. Included in this category of people was your beloved narrator. Now, you might be asking yourself, "Self, don't you think that the roads would be rather dangerous, it being winter and all - even without the snow or ice?" Well, I assure you, the roads were fine. Perfectly fine, so I'm not even going to try blaming anything on that, because that would be an outright lie.
Regardless, Christina (hereafter C.) and I hopped on the motorcycle after a day of school, and went to the Sentry Box to kill a bit of time. I bought myself a nice D20 (that's a twenty-sided die for you non-gamers) and jokingly made a "saving throw" before we headed off. By this time, it was pretty much the middle of rush-hour and I really wasn't too thrilled with the prospect of driving through downtown to take C. home. Because of this, I suggested that we instead go back to my place for hot chocolate and a movie or some such thing. Anyone who knows me would know that getting a girl in my room is not synonymous with having sex, nor does it even really suggest such a thing. Well, she agreed to the plan and we set off to my house.
This is where everything changed. While on Crowchild over the Bow River, I looked over my shoulder to try to get from the middle lane to the right lane and completely failed to notice the car in front me slowing down. The consequence? My front wheel scuffed up against the bumper of the car, which is hardly even superficial to the car, but potentially fatal to a motorcycle. So, the motorcycle with me and C. on it flipped up and over, shattered the cheap plastic windshield, and layed itself down on its right side atop C and me. Keep in mind, here, that this right in the middle of the bridge on Crowchild Trail, right smack dab in the height of rush-hour. If I were a superstitious man, I might say that the saving throw I made saved our lives. If I were a religious man, I might say that God reached down and gave us His blessings. If I really believed in luck, I might say we were just really lucky. As it is, none of those explanations are really necessary - the point is that somehow the motorcycle put itself perfectly in the middle of the lane, the car behind us was paying attention and didn't run us over, nobody swerved and caused other accidents, nobody tried changing lanes to drive over us, and the impact of hitting the ground and subsequently being crushed by a motorcycle didn't result in a single broken bone or cut. Additionally, the laptop that I was carrying escaped completely unscathed. A list of the things that were damaged:
- our left knees, elbows, and hips were moderately bruised and sore for a couple days
- my windshield was broken
- my gear shifter was bent out of shape and required some hammering to repair
- my left mirror got turned around and needed to be realigned
- my clutch lever was damaged and required replacement
- my pride
Other than those things, we (and the motorcycle) escaped completely unscathed. I mean, we were pretty shaken up about the whole thing, and, while in shock we hoisted the bike up onto the walkway along the side of the bridge and spent some time thinking about how we could just hop right off that bridge. Within a couple minutes, a fire truck, ambulance, and police car had all magically apparated right beside us. The ambulance tried insisting that, despite our lack of injury, we come with him to the hospital. We insisted that we really didn't need to go see a doctor, and promised him that if anything seemed wrong in the next couple days we'd go see someone about it. Within about thirty seconds, the fire truck realized that he wasn't exactly needed. The police helped us see if the motorcycle would start, and it was discovered that it was impossible to get it out of first gear, so they escorted us off the highway and we pulled over on a side road and began the long process of filling out paperwork.
It was a this point that I discovered that I only had the temporary insurance card in my motorcycle, which was long expired. Let this be a lesson to you folks out there to remember to put the insurance card in your vehicle as soon as you get it - don't say, "bah, later." Well, apparently I did a good job of being nice to the police, and I just got charged with some various traffic fine, more or less unrelated to the accident, despite not having real insurance-proof, and eventually they finished up and said we were free to go. C didn't want to go home at that point, and I kind of agreed with her about that, so I had her get on the bus to come to my house and I drove home in first gear.
Well, that's pretty much the story about the motorcycle accident, so now we come back to my relationship with C.
Alright, so the scene is as follows: C and I had just escaped what could have been a horrific accident and were sitting on my bed in my room half listening to "Dream Theater" and feeling pretty shook-up about the whole ordeal. Well, eventually, it got later, and one thing led to another, and eventually I thought to myself, "Well sure why not," and we kind of made out for a while. No sex, of course, and she stayed the night with me in my small squeaky bed.
The next day I realized, "Wait a minute, this isn't what I want!" I knew I wasn't ready for another relationship at that point, and if the situation was any different, it probably wouldn't have ended up that way. So, when C called me later that evening to ask what was going on between the two of us, I told her that I didn't really think that I was in a place where I could handle another relationship. She then suggested, quite angrily, that I was just a terrible person who was looking for a quick easy piece of action. I don't think that was really a fair analysis, but it served to make me feel even more guilty about everything than I did already. So, it could be argued, and I do argue, that everything that developed from that point was founded on a pillar of guilt.
Because I didn't want her to think I was really that horrible, I went and apologized to her the following day and we spent a few hours sitting in a dark corner of the university talking about stuff. She really put down a hell of a statement about how it didn't really matter how I treated her, but how I should keep in mind for future reference that I can't go around treating real people like that.
The next point I'd like to make is that, while we shared a lot of bitterness and disdain and cynicism (which made us look quite similar), we really had huge differences in our personalities, which just weren't proving to be compatible. For instance, she is a drug-user and I'm not. She tried to convince me that I should also use drugs, but I really didn't want to do so. Additionally, she really seemed interested in having sex. I, on the other hand, was rather interested in not having the sex, for several reasons with which we shall not concern ourselves at this time. The latter of these points really seems to have caused a tremendous rift between the two of us. There was one specific incident that I think I can pinpoint where things were getting somewhat intense, but I still didn't feel comfortable with the idea of having the sex - I mean, I didn't love her, for heaven's sake! - and she was almost begging for it, and all I could do was cry. After that , she always pulled back from all physical contact that I tried to initiate. It struck me that she didn't think there was any point to any of that if it wasn't leading towards the conclusion of sex.
The final argument that I am going to posit that the relationship wasn't God's gift is how she typically made me feel. Now, I obviously felt somewhat used and generally unloved after the incident I just mentioned above, but more importantly, she had this knack for making me feel stupid. I would frequently say things to which she expressed either indifference or disdain. I'd come up with opinions about various things, and I couldn't think of how to express my rationale, so I felt constantly shot down, incompetent, and like an idiot. My solution to this problem was to just start keeping my mouth shut, but that only resulted in being attacked for not being talkative enough. Nothing I could do seemed good enough - I was either anti-social, or stupid.
So, to conclude, if C was, in fact, God's gift to me, then that's really saddening. Sure, she wasn't a terrible person, and of course she had issues and quirks of her own, and I guess she was interesting and pretty unique, but it seriously didn't feel right. It was like trying to force feelings that just weren't there - at least on my end. I really don't think that I screwed up in parting with her anymore than I screwed up in getting involved with her in the first place. It was an experience, and I think I'm maybe somewhat better as a person as a result of it, but I don't believe that she was "the one" for me. Not by a long shot.
status.mood(forlorn);
status.music(try, try, try, Smashing Pumpkins);
January 28, 2004
god is right
So, yeah, I guess God is right. I don't deserve someone as good as Meghan. Not by a long shot. You think I treated her so well? No, I didn't. I was rash and clingy and I didn't respect her when she needed space and I expected her to be happy dealing with all my problems and I expected her to carry more of a burden than anyone is allowed to impose one someone. And when I didn't get my way, what did I do? I flew off the handle. The best I deserve is someone like "She-who-must-not-be-named," if I deserve even that much.
Oh, and I'm sorry about how all the posts are screwy now, with no line breaks. I just toggled the parameter to convert line breaks into <br> tags to "No". I did this because it's a lot easier to control the formatting and html style if it doesn't automatically throw in those line breaks all the time. If I cared more, I could go back and start hacking in billions of <p> tags, but right now I have better things to be doing with my time. If people start complaining about the state of the archives, then maybe I'll care more. Also, Steph is apparently opposed to the use of the <p> tag, so I'd like to hear some of your opinions or feelings regarding the <p> vs. <br> debate. Based on my penchant for CSS, I suspect that <p> would give me more control over stylistic elements.
Also, I'm officially sick of typing out the escape sequences for < and >.
I suppose in the interest of being at least somewhat more complete about my day yesterday, I should mention that I just turned my alarm clock off and slept through my first class of the day. It was a nine-thirty class, followed by a three-hour break. Moreover, I was certain (and correct) that we wouldn't be doing anything particularly important there. As it turns out, he just basically handed out a sheet and spent the class talking about the rather straight-forward examples thereon. So, okay. I suppose I should probably consider getting started on some of my projects and assignments for this semester, but I don't really feel like it.
status.mood(dejected);
status.music(0);
January 27, 2004
analogy to my day
#include limits.h
#include stdio.h
int main(void)
{
long int sulk = 0;
printf("Please enter your sulk level:");
scanf("%d", &sulk);
while (sulk < SULK_MAX)
sulk++;
return 0;
}status.mood(see above);
status.music(0);
January 25, 2004
BR23F5PD1T2
status.mood(alright);
status.music(0);
January 22, 2004
going to have to try harder than that, god
First, let me take a moment to make a personal address.
T God your Jedi mind tricks won't work on me, boy. Furthermore, anybody who knows me (or matters) would agree that buying girly things is what I do. Because it's fun, not that I need to justify myself to you. As for losing some weight, I've lost some weight, and besides, it's not like I'm morbidly obese, or even really that fat. Next, as for being a little less weird in general, who are you to judge that, exactly? My friends, and yes I have more than one of them now, appreciate who I am, even if you don't. My "weirdness" is one of my defining characteristics, and the people who like me would probably agree that one of the things that makes me an interesting person to spend time with is the fact that I'm not just like everyone else. Finally, regarding crying all the time, you of all people should know that I don't cry all the time, and that when I do cry it's because I'm really having trouble coping with the world. I suppose your solution is to "cheer up and be happy," but maybe, just maybe, I'll do that on my own time. That's all I have to say about that, I believe.
Moving right along, today was actually good. I didn't really find myself struggling to keep my head above water nearly as much as I have been as of late, and some of the big things that have really been adding to my leiden were somehow dampened. One of the big troubles that's been facing me these days is the fact that this one girl who is in a lot of my classes looks uncannily like Meghan. Seriously, it's kind of scary. So, on top of all the other skeletons and ghosts that are following me relentlessly, there's also that manifestation. But today it didn't seem to bother me so much, for some unknown reason.
But, I've basically been stalling for the whole post, because what really made today great was going to the Den with Cate and her friends. She suggested that I should come with them, and I kind of decided, despite the fact that "not enjoying going out" is typically one of my self-descriptions, I figured, what the hell, Cate's one of the few people who isn't hostile towards me these days. So I set up plans to get transportation to and from the University (thank-you parents) and at about eight, headed out to meet the folks out there. I had to wait around for a while for them to show up, and I was a little (read a lot) reserved and kind of feeling out of place for the first half hour or so. There were a little shy of a dozen of us altogether, I believe, and the only person there that I knew was Cate. Eventually, though, I started feeling more at ease, and had my double of gin (mmm, gin) and a few of those (vile) menthol cigarettes. Then I started really enjoying myself. The result of this is that, not only did I have a great time, but I also demonstrated to myself that it's possible for me to stop obsessing over Meghan and just go do my own thing. So, thank-you very much, Cate, for getting me out of the house and on my feet again.
status.mood(quite happy);
status.music(0);
January 21, 2004
as promised
 |
 |
| Here's all the loot I bought | What a horrible diary to keep. Also shown: my wristsweatbands and part of my armsocks (top) |
 |
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| I love this gay pirate candle holder | It's a ghost necklace that says "Friends". Alex has one too. |
 |
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| These glasses cases are just so cute | I had to scan it so you could actually see it. I think it may be an anklet, actually, but it fits on my wrist, so it's a bracelet now. |
So there you have it, with the exception of the girlsocks I bought. Those will be a special secret surprise for anyone who actually sees me, I think. Mostly because I don't feel like taking more pictures, and I'm not touching the table code again with a ten-foot pole. The thing is I like the convenience of not having to use <p> or <br> tags while I'm just writing the blog. But, the way blogger deals with that is by automatically adding a <br> tag to every newline. So that means that if I want to make a table that looks nice on my blog, I can't break it up over multiple lines. That means a table like the one above looks terrifying and is basically impossible to edit. It looks pretty, though, so that's the main thing. I guess I should get dressed and prepare to go to school now, though. Maybe track down something worth eating.
status.mood(slightly better, but not for long);
status.music(0);
January 20, 2004
to be announced
Well, apparently even though I haven't updated all weekend or yesterday or, really, since friday morning, people still come see what I have to say, which is good, I suppose. Saturday evening Alex came over (after a big ordeal with failing to get his car working) and we went on a big gay trip to the mall, where we stumbled across a 10 / $10 sale at Claire's. So we had to stop in there and gay ourselves up nicely. I'll post pictures of the loot when I get around to it. I don't really feel like writing anything else because whatever I end up writing will only make people feel bad, and it won't make me feel any better.
status.mood(don't even ask);
status.music(unter dem meer is currently stuck in my head);
January 16, 2004
random actions
Well, my computer has still been acting up, failing to start properly and instead hanging once it gets to the desktop but before it paints any icons, and randomly restarting itself when coming out of standby. Of course I have absolutely no idea what's causing the problem, but my guess is that some of my processes are fighting with each other. So I went and deleted a bunch of entries from the registry, and tricked "P2P Networking" from sticking itself back in there. Hah, the process can't restore itself if it's named p2pnetworking.old instead of p2pnetworking.exe. The computer's started itself properly the past three times in a row, now, but I still don't trust it. I hate how it's always a big ordeal to track down the problem, and half the time an even bigger ordeal to trick the computer into letting you fix the problem. Oh well.
I have to be into school an hour earlier today because I've got that appointment with the University Health Clinic to get my meds refilled. So I guess that means I'll probably have a good opportunity to sit around and see how my mp3 player operates "in the field". Because I use iTunes and have all my music stored in AAC format, it's a bit of a hassle to prepare the tracks for uploading onto the player. But I suppose it would probably be just as much of a hassle if I saved them as mp3s in the first place, on account of how I'd have to reduce the bitrate anyway. A couple things I kind of don't like about this player are the ridiculous necklace/earbuds contraption that they've designed. It's like a lanyard to hold the player around your neck, except it has the headphones built into it. It would be fine, and maybe even kind of clever, if it were long enough to let you put the player in the little clip-on belt holster thing. Instead, they provide you with an armband to clip the plastic holster thing on to. The necklace/lanyard/earbuds are barely long enough to reach that when it's on your arm, and it's almost entirely pointless anyhow, seeing as there's no locking mechanism of any sort to hold the player in the holster. That means that if you turn it sideways or upside down it just falls right out. Apparently Korea doesn't exactly know what they're doing.
Of course, there are options to take care of these problems. For instance, I could just use a regular pair of earbuds and then I could put the machine on my belt and everything would be fine. Maybe that's what I'll do, although I do appreciate the added security of having the lanyard attached to the player so if it falls out it'll still be attached to me. But, I mean, I can jury-rig some similar contraption to attach it to my beltloop or the belt holster thing. Or, you know, I could just put it in my pocket.
status.mood(skeptical);
status.music(0);
January 15, 2004
einsamkeit? doch immer.
Well, big news for today is that I bought myself an mp3 player from ::gasp:: Futureshop. Normally I refuse to shop there, but, seeing as Staples doesn't sell those machines, my choices became limited to there and Radio Shack, and I assumed the FS would have a somewhat better selection. It's an MPIO (a brand I'd never heard of before) and it has a 128 MB capacity, and it uses 1 AAA battery for power. I spent a hundred and fifty dollars on this machine, and it actually sounds pretty good. It took me a while to find a good balance between sound quality and minimal file size, but I think that, for all intents and purposes, 96kbps will suit me fine. I tried it at 64kbps and it seriously hurt to listen to, and between 96 and 160, I couldn't really hear any super big difference. As it stands, I have fifty tracks crammed onto there, three MB left over, and I'm all excited about it. Maybe tomorrow you'll get a picture or two of it, but not tonight. I realize I don't really need this device seeing as I could just CARRY MY DISCMAN and a couple CDs in my backpack, and it's not like the size factor is really that important, but, hey. It's a new gadget. I have fourteen days to decide whether I actually want to keep it, so that gives me a couple weeks of putting it through the motions at school and so forth. We'll see, I assume, pretty quickly whether this is something that is worth keeping. Of course, a part of me is hoping that I decide it's completely superfluous so that I can get my money back for it, but the other part of me is saying, "wheeee, I'm really excited about this machine !!!" We'll see who wins out. And besides, it's not like I spent seven hundred dollars getting myself an iPod that will end up dying after a year and a half.
Now, I could talk about school, but I'm sure you're all sick to death of hearing about that, whether it's because you're currently in school or because that's all I've been talking about since Monday or some combination of the two. More importantly, though, I don't particularly feel like talking about school. So I'm not going to. Hah. I'm also not going to talk about some other things, because it won't do anybody any good. I'm also not going to organize this post into paragraphs because it's more "stream of consciousness" this way, and also because I'm lazy. I really like these girls' socks that I've been wearing today. People actually noticed my socks today too, which I wasn't expecting at all. I want more girls' socks now.
status.mood(sleepy);
status.music(0);
January 14, 2004
another day dealt with
Well, I woke up this morning at about six, of my own accord. I guess that's what happens when you go to bed really early. So I took the opportunity to do all my homework and make myself some breakfast and play a couple hours of "Earth & Beyond" before heading off to school. When I got to school I picked up a copy of the readings package for German 469 - a big stack of expensive photocopies. German was actually pretty unpleasant today as we went over "articles" for the billionth time. It seemed particularly disorganized, and if I didn't already know all the articles, I doubt I would have learned anything. In the next week or so we'll be moving to the textbook, though, so things should be a little smoother then. My syntax class was also rather uninteresting and I had to fight for the fifty minutes to keep awake while we were talking about a brief history of Chomsky's syntactic theories and the like. Hooray for that - nobody cares. So then I came home and made a date with Alex to go get coffee at ten at night. This was a bit of a problem seeing as I feel asleep at seven. I had to struggle at nine to haul myself out of bed so I'd be awake when he got here. I succeeded, so it was all fine. I couldn't really hear anything he was talking about in the coffee shop, but whatever, I suppose.
Other than that, this really seems to sum things up right now, I think:
of saying that I'll miss you
of saying, "well, hey maybe you should stay."
sing "oh what force on earth could be
weaker than the feeble strength
of one like me remembering
the way it could have been."
status.mood(::sigh::);
status.music(pamphleteer, the weakerthans);
as promised
 |
| There comes a point in time where you just have to clean. |
Well, it happened again. I was tired at seven last night, so I decided I'd set my PDA to wake me up in an hour. Well, apparently I was really tired, because I think I slept right through it. Regardless, this means that I didn't get a chance to do any of the exciting things that I was looking forward to doing. Yesterday was a pretty long day at school for me, though, so I guess it makes sense that I was tired. At any rate, I think I was going to talk about my first day of school and all that exciting stuff. Oh, and because I have a lot of pictures in this update, I don't think I'm really going to bother to make much of an effort to line them up with their respective topics. Think of it as a sort of photo-essay concurrent with my journal entry. Use it for diversion, use it for whate'er you want, just remember that you can (almost) always click on my pictures to see the full-size pictures.
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| And the other side of my messy room. |
So I woke up Monday at about ten-thirty in the AM and did my requisite morning stuff and I believe I had something to eat as well. Father woke up and did his exercises about the same time that I was getting into the bathroom, so that worked out alright. After sitting around for a little while, I decided that we should probably take off to school. I wanted to stop off at Staples first, though, on account of how I wanted some new pens and a new notebook. Now, this is obviously just symbolic or habit or something, on account of how the last thing I probably need is another notebook and more pens. But what's the fun of going to school if you can't buy new stationary once in a while. That's the way I'm looking at it, at any rate.
I should mention that shortly before leaving, I found Kate on the MSN Messenger and she was complaining about being hungry and asked if I felt like buying her lunch. I asked her if she felt like waiting for a couple hours (i.e. until two in the PM). She said that's when she was off school anyhow, so it would all work out fine.
 |
| So I decided I'd clean my room |
Well, my German 303 class, which is my German language class, looks like it's going to be pretty interesting. It's my first German class with a native speaker teaching, so that will be a different approach to the whole subject, to some extent at least. The only thing that I'm not liking about how the course is looking is that she's already given us one word search and instructed us as homework to go to a website to make our own word search. I'm just hoping that this isn't too common, because I really don't think word searches are much more than pointless busywork, and they certainly don't teach anything. This could just be the sort of thing she's used to, though, because as I understand it, her previous teaching station was among younger children at the Bowness German Club.
Another problem that I have with school this semester is the fact that whenever I have classes right after one another, I have to jog all the way across campus. Otherwise, all my courses are in the Science Theatres. So, considering my German class let out a little bit late, I had a definite need to jog. This is where my day started becoming really clumsy. I kind of tripped a bit going down the stairs, and then when I got outside I thought I saw someone I knew, so I ran up beside them and said, "well hello you." She said, "Hello, but I don't think I know who you are." Of course she didn't, on account of how she was not in fact the person I thought she was. So I replied, "I'm sorry, you just reminded me of..." and ran away.
 |
| Doesn't it look much better now? |
Then, I got to my second (read last) class of the day, namely Linguistics 401, Syntax. I sat down and it was a bit noisy in the hall, so, seeing as I was the one right beside the door, I figured I'd give it a bit of a push and try to close it. Now, you know how usually you can just grab the door on the side by the hinges and give it a bit of a push and it'll swing shut? Well, that didn't work and I just ended up getting my hand stuck in the door. So I had to get out of my chair, open the door, get my fingers out, and close it properly. Now, I didn't realize that my chair was one of those chairs that's attached to the desk and pulls itself back in when you turn your back on it. So I went to sit down and fell flat on my ass and made a big "fwappy" noise as I clawed at my non-existent chair. What a clumsy oaf I am. Embarassing, but funny all the same, I guess.
Well, class let out a little early, so I went with Mandy to the Bookstore to see if I could find my German Phonology textbook. I figured that, seeing as our school hadn't taught that course before, there wouldn't be much sense even looking for it at the Used Bookstore first. So I picked it up, and then remembered that previously in the day I'd changed my mind about buying books on Monday. I gave the cash I was carrying to father to hold on to, on account of how I hate carrying more than about forty dollars with me at any point in time. Besides, I didn't really have time to wait in a big huge long lineup because of the meeting with Kate that I had scheduled. Mandy said that she'd be willing to wait in the line and buy my book for me and I could just give her money the next day when I saw her. It was then that we discovered that there were checkouts at the back of the bookstore and the line for those were really short. Apparently the hundred and fifty people at the front of the store didn't realize that they could just go to the back and be out in a hundredth the time. Oh well, works out better for me, I guess.
 |
| Here's a picture of the Lollypop Lockbox that I installed in my room. I promised a picture of it some time ago, so here it is. |
Well, I bought my book and waited by the Blind Dog for a while for Kate to show up. Then we went to the Kilkenny and had ourselves some lunch. Afterwards I phoned my father for a ride home, and we went to Blockbuster to browse around while waiting. I was going to buy a couple DVDs but then decided I should probably just go to HMV to see if they were any cheaper before I filled my arms with a hundred dollars worth of movies I'll watch once and ne'er look at again. Father showed up and Kate and I parted ways and I went home, and that's when I fell asleep.
So now we cut to yesterday morning. I woke up at half past six and decided that I may as well try to get a bit of a start on the stuff I wanted to do the previous night. So I worked on cleaning my room for an hour and a half, made the word search for German, and had some banana bread with peanut butter. I didn't quite get a chance to finish cleaning my room before I had to get ready for school, so I looked up when the buses were running, and headed out. Now, here's another thing I hate about school: it seems to really encourage my smoking habit that I'm really trying to get rid of. So, I had a couple extra minutes before my bus arrived, so very angrily I ran into the Mohawk and bought a 20-pack of smokes. Believe me, I wasn't really happy about this, but to be fair, I wasn't very happy about having a three hour break in the middle of the day either. Regardless, I bought the smokes and got on the bus and came to school and went to my first class of the day, Linguistics 403, Optimality Theory in Phonology. This is basically about a theory that goes something like, "All languages are based on the same set of violable constraints and differ only in the order in which these constraints are ranked." He made an analogy to Asimov's three laws of robotics, and the course seems like it could be interesting. But that could just be because he mentioned robots. Man alive, I love robots.
 |
| Here's me with that Mandy girl I'm always talking about. |
Well, after that class I had a few hours to kill, so Mandy and I wandered off to the used bookstore to see if I could find anything for my other classes. Apparently they decided they'd spew the linguistics books all over the store, completely disorganized-like, so I couldn't find anything and gave up. Mandy waited in the line to sell her textbooks while I went to the real bookstore and just bought my books new. I like it when textbooks are less than fifty dollars each. It's definitely a nice change of pace from Engineering. Regardless, I went to the back line-up again and was out of there in about two minutes. This was a bit of a saddening for me because I was hoping to be waiting in a line for a couple hours so I'd have something to do today. This didn't happen, so I went and waited in line with Mandy until she got rid of her books. Then we went and sat outside for a bit and I invited her to the next Risk Night.
She didn't want to come with me to get food, so I went by myself and discovered the fellow in the student center was back selling movies and video games and music. Well, apparently every time he's here I have to buy a Super Nintendo game from him. So I looked at one that was about robots, and it was just a fighting game a la Mortal Kombat, so I veto'd it and just bought Super Mario All-Stars. I've always wanted to own Super Mario 3, but he was selling the NES cartridge of that game for the same price as the SNES cartidge that I bought. It's handier having it on the SNES anyhow. So I was all excited about that and went to buy my rice.
I was under the impression that Anne would be waiting around in the student centre because I thought she had a three hour break on tuesdays too. Apparently that wasn't actually the case, so I just had my rice and then went a-wandering. I eventually found myself at the Atrium, where I discovered Caitlin. That was really exciting because I've been chatting with her over the intarweb for the past couple months or two, and never actually seen her in person. Apparently she has a two hour break concurrent with part of mine on Tuesday. So that's exciting. Maybe next week we'll go to Starbucks for something to do.
Regardless, we chatted and then went to see if we could see any engineers making fools of themselves, it being ENGG-week and all. We didn't find any engineers, but we did find a tire that we rolled down a hill. Yes, folks, rolling a tire down the hill is the highlight of being at school. Well, eventually we had to go to class, so I followed her to hers and then made my way to Scurfield Hall to take my Linguistics 431, Child Language Acquisition: Syntax and Morphology class. It looks like it's going to be pretty interesting, and afterwards I had to run across campus to take German 469.09, German Phonetics and Phonology, which looks extremely thrilling. I'm excited about looking at spectrographs of speech and analyzing formants and stuff. Apparently the final project for the course is to use spectrograph analysis to write a report on our own German pronounciation progress. This actually sounds like fun. I think it's funny how I only have one exam this semester, and the rest of the courses have term papers and the like.
 |
| Here's all the stuff I bought yesterday. |
Well, after class it was five in the PM and I phoned for a ride and mother and father came to get me with the truck and we went to Market Mall. We went to the food court and had chicken and waffle-cones of ice cream. Then I went to HMV and bought a few DVDs and Clerks on VHS. I was excited because the Matrix was on for "two for forty dollars", and I paired it up with "Antz" and "Chicken Run", which were shrinkwrapped together and priced in kind. And "Clerks" was about twenty dollars cheaper than it was at Blockbuster, so I think I win.
Well, I came home after that and made sure all the DVDs worked in my computer, and played my new video game for about twenty minutes, and then set my PDA to wake me up an hour later and went to take a "nap". As I said, I completely slept through that, and, for the second day in a row I've missed out on my evening of fun. I really want to play "Earth & Beyond", but I can't seem to stay awake for long enough to have a chance to do that.
Oh well, I've made an appointment to see my university doctor on friday to refill my meds, and I've got an appointment with the family doctor next wednesday to make sure that I'm not dying. I finished cleaning my room this morning and now my plan is to find some breakfast - probably a fried egg sandwich or something - and then do the rest of the German homework that I have. I suppose I'd better make a note to go buy the readings package for my German 469 class today, seeing as that's our homework for Thursday.
status.mood(decent);
status.music(4 the tears in your eyes, prince);
dewey color system
Well, this seems to be the quiz of the moment, so without further adieu, here are my results from it.
You understand what people need to do to be more practical in their lives. By keeping your distance, you are able to identify the best available resources. You're constantly conducting an investigation of how to better use money and cultivate talent.
The passionate you believes in yourself and others. You actively listen and give diplomatic feedback. With astonishing empathy, you see others' dreams. Magically, your strong belief makes wishes come true.
The centered you determines how to develop empowering possibilities. When all is quiet within, you grasp the reality and potential of each situation or relationship.
The emotional you avoids asking what's missing. Novel adventures seem to appear. Honor your forbidden thoughts. They are merely signposts to exciting new paths you need to follow.
update: it would appear that no matter what I do, I can't seem to trick this crazy webpage into using the edge of the sidebar as the right edge of the field. I've tried various variants of <blockquote> and several manners of CSS to try to get it working, but nothing seems to be quite right. Maybe this has something to do with an extension of the problem inherent to CSS when used to create two columns on a webpage. Apparently you have to assume that one column is always going to be longer than the other one and never vice versa, otherwise the whole formatting scheme falls apart. It probably actually doesn't have anything to do with that, but it was fun to say.
status.mood(rested);
status.music(0);
January 13, 2004
ridiculous machine
What I need is a computer that actually works properly, if such a thing exists. I'm kind of tired of the random system errors, crashes, and the dialog box that pops up about one in every five times I start this machine claiming that it's just recovered from a SERIOUS PROBLEM. It's like the machine that cried wolf, or whatever. At any rate, it completely refused to finish booting properly the last few times, so I decided I'd ask it to run a system recovery. Apparently it didn't like the idea of doing that, so it pleaded with me to try a system restore instead. So I said to the computer, "fine, computer" and agreed to do a system restore. Apparently all I needed to do was threaten to wipe the data on the machine, because once I suggested that it might have to do a restore/recovery for me it started working just fine. I should just go get my axe and give it a reprogramming it's not soon to forget. Or, at least I would if it wouldn't cost me a great deal of money to replace it. Stupid machine anyhow.
In other news, I think I might make an effort to keep from just going back to bed right away and instead try to do all those things I wanted to do yesterday. If nothing else, it would be a good idea to get the German homework for tomorrow finished, seeing as it's only a half dozen sentences that I need to write. But I'm so tired, you know.
status.mood(somewhat confused);
status.music(0);
damn it
Well, so much for that plan, I guess. I'd hoped that I'd just nap for an hour or so, and then get started on the rest of the stuff. Well, here it is, half past ONE IN THE MORNING and, wheee, look at me. I've just woken up. I probably should have asked mother to actually come and wake me up after an hour, but, as it stands, I have to think for a couple minutes about what I'm going to do. I have class in eight hours, so I'm thinking I might want to just go back to bed and see if I can get at least a few more hours sleep. I'm thinking of sticking my camera in my backpack so that I have it with me when I go out. I'm really kind of sad that I didn't get a chance to do all the fun things I'd planned on doing this evening. Maybe I'll be up early this morning or something... but I'd better go back to bed before the drowsiness wears off and I actually end up being awake. I should brush my teeth first, though.
status.mood(a tad displeased);
status.music(0);
January 12, 2004
my schedule
Here's my schedule for this semester. I like how I didn't feel like just copying and pasting the code from the university page to show it to you, so I sat down and wrote my own HTML. My code is nicer than their code anyhow. But, I guess to be fair, I don't have to write server scripts to generate these tables for twenty thousand students. Regardless, go take a look if you want to see when I'm free or the like. I'll stick a link to it over on the sidebar somewhere shortly, then go to the bathroom and have a bit of a lay-down. Afterwards, my plan is to take some pictures of my messy room, clean up, take some pictures of my clean room, take some pictures of the stuff I bought at the Sentry Box, post all that, and then write a bit of an entry about how my first day of school was. I bet you're all excited as can be.
status.mood(sleepy);
status.music(0);
first day of school
Alright, in keeping with Steph's strain of thought, I'll provide you lovely intarweb users with the calendar descriptions of what courses I'm currently taking. I may also post my new schedule while I'm at it, but that's yet to be seen. My "plan" is to include a link to my schedule on the sidebar when I get home from school today. I've got a lot of stuff planned for after school - it would appear that I require something like classes to attend to motivate myself to do other things. Probably because those "other things" give me an opportunity to neglect school. Time off is a better opportunity to neglect school, so perhaps that's why nothing gets done. Or maybe I'm just lazy.
ALRIGHT, apparently the calendar descriptions of the courses I'm taking are really vague, and frequently non-existent. For example, my German phonetics course's description is something to the effect of "topics in German culture and history", and the description for my German language class is that it's a continuation of the previous course, which also has the description "continuation of the previous course". So, what I guess I'll do, probably Tuesday after I get home from school, is post excerpts from the course description handouts that they give me. Lazy university anyhow. Alright, apparently I still have quite a bit of time before my first class (read an hour) so I'll hack out as much of my timetable as I can, and post it in the next update.
status.mood(slightly apathetic);
status.music(0);
January 11, 2004
whoops
It would seem that, no matter what I try to do, my schedule keeps turning itself upside down! I just woke up again about half an hour ago, which is a bit of a problem, considering it's school time tomorrow. I'm hoping that I can somehow manage to fall asleep again in a few hours to straighten this out. I figure I'm probably mostly ready for the first day of school anyhow. I've got my schedule uploaded to the PDA, along with the textbooks I need to track down. Apparently I only need to buy three this semester, and they should only cost me about a hundred and fifty dollars, new, for the lot. I'm hoping that a couple, at least, of them will appear in the Used Bookstore. Unfortunately, I probably won't end up saving much money by buying them used, but whatever.
I suppose I should probably get around to grooming my beard thing, so I guess I'll deal with that after I finish up here. Next update I'll probably have a few pictures for you to look at, seeing as it's been a while. I'll try to get a picture or two of how messy my room's gotten over the Christmas drink. This is what happens when I don't have any reason to clean it. As we speak, I'm watching a fruitfly crawl over the box for my new board game. I've only ever seen one of them at a time, so I'll assume that's all there are. There's also a spider living somewhere in here. I have no idea where it is, but I'm hoping for peaceful co-existence. I have no intention of killing it because that would involve going somewhere near it. I need a girl to kill my spiders for me. Yes, I am that pathetic.
Let's see. So, yesterday I got up early and was under the impression that we were going to Gramma's to pick up Gramma and head up to Walmart and the mall to go shopping for a bit. As it turned out, the plan was actually to go visit at Gramma's house for a couple hours, then just have mother run in and return something at Walmart. After an hour and a bit I got bored and went to the Sentry Box, which is basically right across the street, and bought a button that reads "Life? Don't talk to me about life.", this really ridiculous looking miniature of a "marsh demon" for Alex to paint, and this completely insane used historical board game from 1974 about the Third Reich. It has a fifty page long manual, and lots of little pieces. So there'll be lots of pictures to show you in the next post, I believe - heck, I might even throw in a picture of myself.
Regardless, while playing some Earth & Beyond, Alex came over and then Anne arrived and we bought some nerd-food (I have another twenty dollars of candy sitting here now) and went down to play some Future Risk. After that, Alex took Anne out for coffee while I went back to my computer games.
Today was uneventful, seeing as I spent most of it in bed. If anyone cares, I had a couple fried egg sandwiches while I was up, and a grape.
status.mood(slightly worried);
status.music(i'll never find another you, seekers);
January 09, 2004
hooray hooray hooray
Yippie! My Big Book of Jerkcity arrived in the mail this morning. I wasn't expecting it for another month, if, indeed, it were to arrive at all! But hooray it's here and I'm all excited because I just got my first package ordered off of the internet! So, yay yay yay. Yay!
In other (good) news, these wonderful antibiotics that I'm on seem to have gotten rid of my symptoms entirely, so I feel about as healthy as ever. I didn't go out with Anne and company to the Mortal Coil last night because I slept in until nine PM and, being on these antibiotics, I'm not allowed to drink booze anyhow. Furthermore, I've apparently decided to try quitting smoking (again) for a while.
What else... oh, tomorrow night has been set up, tentatively, for the first Risk night in quite some time. It may just be Alex and Anne and me, and that would be QUITE ALRIGHT, I think. I'm looking forward to going to Denny's afterwards, because, to be honest, I'm really hungry. I think I've lost twenty-five pounds in the last month and a bit, despite not eating properly or exercising.
The only other thing worth mentioning is that my dreams just keep getting more and more vivid, and more and more crazy. Just ask Alex, if you don't believe me; I gave him a breakdown of the main plot points of last night's big long dream sequence. Highlights included flying around the school by holding 8 1/2 X 11 sheets of paper in my hands and flapping them like wings, getting yelled at for being lazy because I was flying instead of walking, being hired to exterminate invisible flying termitespiders in Anne's house while her father cooked something in a pot on the stove and Alex's little sister supervised, and following in Mozart's footsteps by composing a sonata by driving a race car in the right manner and hitting all the correct dotted lines. I scored extra points in the last category because I came to a stop at some red lights and got passed by some cars. Apparently that was a metaphor for how the judges thought Mozart was cheating to get his popularity, so he held back for a bit, but everyone loved him anyhow. Regardless, I didn't get the part because I couldn't play the clarinet as well as Meghan could. She didn't get the part either. Which is funny because I was auditioning for the flute.
status.mood(thrilled);
status.music(0);
January 07, 2004
ritz crackers
So, I had my doctor's appointment at ten in the morning yesterday and he looked in my mouth and stepped back and said, "wow". That's always a good sign. So, he decided that, given my history, he'd just prescribe the Amoxi for me and we'd proceed assuming it is the strep. He took an (apparently fairly inaccurate) swab and sent me on my way, and I spent the rest of the day being completely miserable. Oh, I suppose I should update that, seeing as we never managed to round up Alex, on account of how he was at school, we never did end up going to Madisons like I suggested we might. My throat hurt too much anyhow. I do like how I capitalized cheesecake, though.
Anyhow, where was I. Right, sick. Well, basically I just spent the day dazed with a headache from the chinook, drooling into a yogurt cup while trying to get some sleep. In the evening yesterday I had my one and only meal of the day, which was some instant cream of potato soup that I'd gotten from Safeway earlier in the day. It was a miserable ordeal trying to eat that. But I did discover that, despite all logic, Ritz crackers apparently help sore throats a lot.
This morning my throat was decidedly better, although still rather sore. More Ritz crackers seemed to have taken off the edge, and I spent most of my time just sleeping. I went to bed at eleven last night and woke up at six. Then I went back to bed at nine and apparently I've slept, more or less, until about now.
Well, I guess I'll listen to "Show Me Love" one more time and then go get some breakfast.
Not the kind where sirens sound
Never even noticed
We're suddenly crumbling
Tell me how you've never felt
Delicate or innocent
Do you still have doubts that
Us having faith makes any sense
Tell me nothing ever counts
Lashing out or breaking down
Still somebody loses 'cause
There's no way to turn around
Staring at your photograph
Everything now in the past
Never felt so lonely I
Wish that you could show me love
/
status.mood(exhausted);
status.music(Show Me Love, T.A.T.u.);
January 05, 2004
not funny
Just thought I'd update to say that apparently my throat was only better for a little while - just long enough to trick me into not calling the doctor this morning. So, now it's back in spades, and I have an appointment tomorrow morning at ten. I kind of want to get out of the house for a bit tonight, though, so maybe we'll round up Alex and Anne and I will go to Madisons and have some Cheesecake.
status.mood(sick);
status.music(Don't Cry, Boy George);
it's been a while, i know
Yes, I know it's been a while since I've updated, and there really isn't that much of an excuse, but, to be fair, it's not like I've really been doing anything too exciting. Since the last post, I've been playing Earth & Beyond pretty much exclusively. I'm playing it right now, in fact. I've pretty much just woken up, started playing, and gone back to bed twelve hours later. That's it. That's the last four days. I haven't even been outside. The only other thing worth noting is that my schedule has been sort of turned upside down and inside out over the past week. This is the problem with running 32 hour days. Yesterday I woke up at 10 PM and went to bed at noon. At least I think it was yesterday - there's really no way of knowing for sure. Regardless, I broke my sleep up yesterday into two sessions so that I'd be able to wake up early this morning. My body decided to get itself out of bed at half past five in the morning, and I figured, what the hell I may as well stay up now. The thing is, I've been sick. Diseased. Ugh. We were worried that it might be strep, seeing as that's potentially what mother has, but, seeing as my throat seems somewhat better this morning, there's a good chance it might just be Lindsay's disease.
Apparently I'm just God's joke anyhow. This time, the big joke is how I stayed home on New Year's because I didn't think I could handle seeing Meghan all pretty for the second night in a row, and I wasn't looking forward to the let-down that the changing of the years would bring. So, God decided he'd go and hide Meghan's ID so that she couldn't go out to the Night Gallery, and then not tell me about it. Har har, sir, you really got me there, you did indeed. This is the sort of thing that happens in bad television, not real life. Oh well, it was the ideal nerd's New Year's celebration anyhow. Quiet. Relaxed. Completely stress-free, with no expectations. We were chatty for the first couple hours, then eventually we just died down and did our own things, as nerds are wont to do.
I should have thought to do this earlier, though. Blogging while playing that game, that is. As I'd mentioned, there's a lot of waiting for your ship to travel, and the life of a starship captain is a lonely one. Blogging could be a good way to wile away the hours while making the trade run to Fenris. It's a 25 minute trip each way, with very little to do during the trip except click on the map a couple times to plot a new local course.
I suppose I forgot to update you all on the results of the 30
status.mood(could be better);
status.music(the hum of my warp engines, Earth & Beyond);
January 01, 2004
happy new years, everyone
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Well, instead of going out to the Night Gallery with the girls, or to Jasmine's with the girls, I decided, instead, that I'd probably just go to bed and sleep through new years, seeing as I didn't get to bed until 1 PM last night. Yes, as in an hour after noon. Ugh. So, at any rate, after about four hours of sleep, Anne phoned me and I got up and then I couldn't get back to sleep so I figured that I'd just stay awake at that point. Eventually, Lindsay came on the intarweb and messaged me to see if I was, in fact going to be coming out with them. I said I wouldn't because my poor little heart probably couldn't handle it. So, she brought her brother, Jamie, over and we played computer games all night. We mentioned New Year's in passing as it happened, then mostly went back to what we were doing. Ah, the New Year's celebration of nerds. Could anything be so sweet? Regardless, at one point in time during the course of the evening, Jamie drew the above picture in paint, and I figured I may as well post it for something to do. Merry New Year's all. May it be better than last one. I sure hope it is.
status.mood(fine);
status.music(the whirring of two computers);
