5:13 pacific time...and i am still awake! i'm going to give sleep another try soon. i haven't been able to sleep in a few days. ugh. it's the leftover sick feeling -- head stuffiness, etc -- from my annual xmas cold from hell. the two straight days of flying probably didn't help either!! happy new year, everyone!

check this out...as featured in this salon article. interesting...

ok, ok...so i haven't been here in a while. merry xmas and all that jazz. i'm at my parent's mill house right now and am sick as a dog (are dogs really that sick? i think i've made that joke before...still lame). i've been sick since i got home...i hope i'm not still sick when i go out to seattle.

in case you are wondering...i'll be here on new years eve. should be cool. or at least interesting.

11.15.01...go team!

harsh! salon isn't taking a liking to xbox...xbox squared. however, they spend most of the time comparing the xbox launch lineup with the current lineup of the -- now over one year old -- PS2...hmm...

it's launch day!!!!

i heard from brenda laurel...yes THE brenda laurel! she pointed me toward her new book, utopian entrepreneur, that i think you should all check out. talks about the lessons learned from the (now defunct) games for girls company, purple moon. yeah, there's not a TON of us doing research on video games but we are a fierce group!

check out this new stationary from designers snow and graham. cool. now if i could only find some of that badly translated but fun stationary that greg had...

everything's rather fucked up right now with my funding and i am supposed to fill out some loan default form on the most unusable university web site out there. forget the fact that i have no idea why i have to fill out a loan default form right now at all, especially since i have never had to before and i am certainly not in default now...i just would love to know where the fuck that form actually is on the site because after almost two hours i never did find the fucking thing. all i know is that this whole thing is really getting on my nerves.

are you out there amy? it's been almost nine years now...it's funny how the years go by. sitting in the ct office, trying to help with the ads for the station...that's where i saw your picture. and you had already gone away. the three of us never did say goodbye. i guess maybe rod and i never really thought that we'd ever not be here. but i think you knew. some day i'll return to the place where we were. and i'll walk down to the beach from the pension. and i'll remember the tears that had no place in the lives of the young. and i'll think of dolphins and discos and sweaters and silly phrases...all the things that remind me of you. thanks to you, i'm not simply an observer any more.

all alone as i walked by the banks of the river...hello jimmy. i think i always understood. i wish that i could have told you...but i never realized what exactly it was until i heard about the freedom that you had tried to find. but you're free now. that much i believe is true. i wish that things had not been so scripted so that you had to hide who you were...i wish that i could have reached out and told you that i knew, that it would be ok...i wish i had known to tell you that you would grow to be more brave than you ever realized that you could be. someday i'll return to the dusty stage. and i'll remember our talks after the shows and the talks about uncertain futures and unspoken paths. thanks to you, i'm no longer satisfied with not being who i am.

peace.

picked up the singles dvd today...makes me miss seattle. i looked up a few sites about the filming of the movie and found a long article at entertainment weekly online and another at cameron crowe's own web site in case you are interested. it's fun to be able to watch the movie and remember the set of keys on my keychain...

wow...this week's stranger has an article about microsoft's recent security concerns. makes me worry about all my friends there...

yeah, yeah...so i added a little box thingee to amazon and some xbox stuff. seemed like a good idea and all.

well, congratulate me -- i walked/ran on the treadmill at the gym for an hour...4.25 miles. ok, no record but it better than nothing, right? working out between 9 and 11am is weird there...lots of moms and strollers. creeps me out.

so my department wants me to start work on the department web site asap...only they are forgetting one small thing...THEY ARE NOT YET PAYING ME. and you remember my motto from a few years ago, right? no pay? no work! it's amazing how the faculty seem to forget that *small* issue as they are sitting fat and sassy. what can you do? oh i know! graduate and get the fuck out of here!

ok...so upon re-reading that last post, i suppose that the ghost world part could use some more explanation. what i was saying is that i feel like i am having trouble reconnecting to this town and this place. i think that's quite enough explanation. i wouldn't want to ruin it for you.

so i'm back now. i've been back for a week now. things are going well with my dissertation and i'm moving forward, which is good as you know. but i'm hating the midwest more than ever. you know what? i realized earlier that i feel a little bit like i'm in ghost world, part two...where she leaves on the bus, goes to graduate school, leaves, has an adventure, meets her great love but then has to return to graduate school in order to resolve the things left unfinished before she can return to that wonderful place. i dunno. something like that.

p.s....i'll be better about updating this thing when i get back to town and get settled. as you can imagine, it's been a stressful last week. and i greatly miss seattle...and a certain someone...

ok...so am i ever well lately? landed a nice kidney infection thingee when i got back to dc. face is puffy due to meds. ugh. anyway, i'm in zanesville, ohio...somewhere outside columbus at a cheesy holiday inn. still feel nauseous.

i'm gonna miss my morning coffee at victrola...better grab one in the morning before i go, eh?

well, it's my last night in seattle and i'm all packed. migraines for days, not sure what brought that up. probably the stress of everything i imagine.

anyway, i went out with the guys from work on friday. you know...i honestly think that they are going to miss me. isn't that funny? i mean i don't mean that in an egotistical way. not at all. it just took me by surprise, you know? i'm going to miss them too.

so...five months. how did it go by so quickly? less than 14 hours left and then i'll be on my way back to dc...and then back to school. but don't worry...i'll be back out here in no time. 5 weeks to be exact. and who ever would have guessed that when i left last may?

it's my birthday and i can cry if i want to...

yep...the big 3-1 everyone! greg just surprised me with a piece of chocolate cake complete with candles from coastal kitchen. now he's fast asleep while i finish up my final edits for work. tomorrow is my last day...and i get to pick the games!

three more work days until i leave and this one is now over half over...

for a place that is supposed to be gloomy and rainy all the time, seattle's been quite the sunny place this summer. we've got two fans blowing on high right now. i rather miss that place that reminded me so much of england when i first got here.

two weeks left.

so what i want to know is why did someone have not one, but TWO darth vader heads for sale at their yard sale off broadway today? did they have a few extra darth vader heads lying around their apartment that they decide to sell off? did they decide to keep their favorite darth vader head and sell the rest? greg reminds me that it is a recession economy, after all.

i played UT with the boys today at work. i'm gonna miss them when i leave.

i got word from loria and all is well, thank god. she said that all the sounds of the fighter pilots flying overhead are a bit alarming and yet a bit comforting as well. meanwhile, out in seattle, a plane is flying somewhere in the distance and i, too, cringe. and i wonder at how quickly everything has changed.

is it just me? or does that light on top of the space needle look like it's sending a signal to batman?

still no news from loria. getting gravely worried.

only 12 more work days until my time out here comes to an end. hard to believe isn't it? has it been five months already? i can't say that i feel like i'm returning home though. as jesse advises, i'll try to be brave.

great news everybody -- mary wasn't on the plane. so far, though, no news from loria.

fyi, the united number is 1-800-932-8555 if you know mary and want to get on the call list when they have finished verifying their information.

everywhere bloggers are posting their thoughts of today's events. greg and i are both sick from watching all the news and yet we cannot stop watching the news. i started crying a little bit ago when they told the story of yet another plane passenger with a cell phone who called his mother right before he died. how could that not get to anyone? i thought about how hard it was to call my own mother this morning due to all the phone line jams in dc and new york.

i'm gravely worried about mary and can't find out who was on the united flight. she's a flight attendent for united and flies to LA a lot. no one can find out any information yet...and i can't help but worry. i was telling greg on sunday about how she became part of our group all those years back in high school...i guess i can't help but have her on my mind right now. i hope that she's ok.

claire sent a note from new zealand to tell me how they were just waking up to the news and that, they too, were in a state of complete shock. i feel like i wrote her back for hours...i just had to tell someone who wasn't here about the whole thing.

it's eerie out...all day it was eerie. everywhere hushed talk of what had happened, who they knew in new york and dc...what happens next. tonight, the flag that they placed on the space needle is illuminated. it's a pretty powerful thing to look at. but when we were walking around this afternoon, getting bagels from a "new york style" bagel place (with the world trade center in the logo...very sad to look at)...it was hard not to notice how beautiful the weather was. and isn't that strange?

according to cnn: "there hasn't been an instance of congress being evacuated, not even during the war of 1812..."

yeah, because we can all really identify with the war of 1812. come on people...

my worst childhood nightmare came true today and it seems that dc is now under a state of emergency. remembering high school during the reagan years...all those fears about dying back then and there...finally beginning to feel safe many, many years later. now what? jesse said that his family was fine but was shaken...the world trade center is so close to where his dad lives. i called loria this morning to see if i could get through to anyone in the dc area since i couldn't connect at all to my parents. her brother-in-law works at the pentagon...no word yet...no word about whether they will be able to come out west. thinking of ian getting called for national guard duty. wondering who will sleep at all tonight.

the company encouraged us to work from home as we saw fit, depending on our personal situations. many of us did exactly that...i just couldn't handle listening to the sounds of gunfire from whatever video game we were testing today. didn't it seem weird to all of you watching the tv? hard to comprehend that it was even real? they are drawing parallels between today and pearl harbor...i wonder how many people then felt the same, felt like what they were hearing about was completely surreal? seems all the more so being out here on the west coast. the space needle has a flag flying on top...eerie seeing it down the hill, wondering if it would be targeted. i took a couple of pictures of it for fear that the next time i walked down to broadway, it, too, would no longer be there.

it looks like it didn't take a lot of time for people to fire up their racial statements on the web. stop the hate, people...stop the hate.

my thoughts go out to all of you.

diane's pregnant, fyi. i've hardly been able to talk to her all summer thanks to the whole time zone wackiness. by the time i've gotten home in the evening, it's way, way too late to call anyone east! i guess most of you know about this though...

i'm sitting on one huge tuition bill right now...that funding better come through for real in october like it's supposed to.

how is school, everyone? i know...i've been downright awful at keeping up with this and everyone lately. i guess that you know why...one month left...i don't even want to think about it.

r.i.p. world birthday web. wow...that was a super old school site! remember when the web had, like, 4 web sites on it? remember surfing the entire web in, like, 3 hours?

drumming, drumming, drumming...what is wrong with *drumming* up a little business for a yard sale? plenty if the area residents (and guests) are trying to sleep. apparently people in capitol hill will stop at nothing to attract a little business.

have you seen apocalypse now redux yet? some surprising new additions for sure. especially the french sequence and the second playboy bunnies sequence. anyway, that's all i say about that...other than bring a pillow for your ass. long film, long film.

well, it seems that august may not end up as much of a blog month either. i'm so behind on the *i* word...steve said that he had nearly forgotten about it too. boy, what were we all thinking with that? anyway, lots of interesting stuff going on at work but none of which i will post here. sorry!

i'm feeling kind of lonely tonight. i can't really say why. well i guess that i do know why...i guess reality always manages to creep into everything no matter how much we try to keep it at bay. and i guess that maybe we are never as immune to things as we thought that we had become.

the street dj was back in full force this morning apparently, although i wasn't on the westside this morning. steve was in town for the weekend and so we did some touristy stuff. finally went up to mt. ranier, although not very far in. and speaking of ranier...loria and michael are coming to town in a little less than a month. so this has been quite the visitor's summer it seems.

i've gotta get back to updating this thing more often i see. i guess that i started feeling weird about the whole blog and i can't quite figure out what to do about it. would anyone miss it if it were gone?

ok, so august didn't start out as much of a blog month. i was sick this past week...what can you do? all i can say is that the er in kirkland is pretty fucked up at 3am. talk of charcoal, pills, and headers down the hill...all while the security guards laughed and laughed. i *think* that i was the normal one in there that night. so there you go. context.

anyway, to catch everyone up...lucia and jesse were both in town and steve is coming into town next weekend. took lucia to dilettante's and jesse to coastal kitchen. it was good to see everyone but all the same kind of strange seeing everyone in a city other than chambana. so...talk of a new officemate starting next week are on the agenda now...ah...yikes.

one question: who exactly is that street dj on republican? like clockwork.

sick, sick, sick...

so something involving rose petals on saturday night led to a very *special* episode of cops in redmond and the next thing you know we are on the run, ending up at a taco bell in capitol hill talking to an off-duty cross dresser and a blind man named mark. but not before landing at a 7-eleven just outside the 520 exit and listening to the man about how the super sour watermelon slurpees will completely fuck you up. obviously that guy hadn't seen what we had seen that night. it's amazing how quickly the shock led to anger, which has now subsided into one hell of a funny story. but who to tell?

gotta get v! now on dvd WITH commentary! hear that, jesse?

ok, are you in the seattle area? what is UP with those damn empire glass ads? if i have to hear about those 24 free dinners at the cucina cucina italian cafe and diamond stud earrings with the purchase of a new windshield one more time...i mean, 24 free dinners?? what the fuck? how expensive are these windshields? or maybe, more importantly, how cheap are these dinners? the ads remind me of the old ginsu knife ads from the 70s.

flying saucers are everywhere...and medical problems? two words: alien abductions

well, my brother got infected with the latest email virus and i got a whole slew of virus messages from him. i knew that it was a virus right away...so far the auto text for virus messages gives it completely away that it is a virus. it's almost always too awkward and reads as if it was a bad translation. all your base. i was, however, worried that my dad or someone might open one of the attachments, which required some quick phone calls home.

sometimes i wonder if i've woken up from the dream. i wonder if maybe i've been living the whole thing the entire time and maybe the dream is just a summary of the patterns that my mind has found. suddenly i feel ok about it, though.

well, noon was a better time and it seemed that the whole day went much better than monday when all was said and done. yeah, ok, i still kind of feel like a fuck up...but maybe more of a minor fuck up than a major one.

anyway, guess whose house i was at this evening? yep, bill's house. and it was *that* bill. cool house, although i've gotta say...those people behind the movie antitrust must have seen the place because the house in the movie was pretty damn close to the real one. anyway, we didn't get to go into the house too much though...not too much at all, in fact. but it was still cool to see it.

i hope that you all have some love in your live right now.

i hate assholes. ask me about *my* week...could 5pm have been any more of a disaster? and, well, 4pm was pretty bad too.

yep...i'm just a misunderstood destroyer...

so this weekend ended up playing out much differently than i had originally thought...although it was such a back and forth week with regard to phone calls, reservations, etc that i wonder if i really had any concept of what was actually going to happen this weekend. not that we ever really know...but that's neither here nor there. my dad called today from national en route to reno via o'hare. i couldn't help feeling bad for him with regard to the whole thing.

anyway, i'm back in the loop now and i have another test to run at work this week. i had another amazing weekend despite all the oddness going into it. it's a really nice feeling. i should have known that "the emerald city" would bring such things...

one question before i sign off for the night...who is this aaron carter kid that they keep advertising on mtv? apparently he's the brother of a backstreet boy...but that means zero to me. it's the worst ad campaign that i have seen and they are giving away a ton of stuff when you order his cd. bad sign, kid...whoever you are.

well, it's been back and forth but it seems that i am definitely going to reno this weekend. to review, my grandfather broke his hip and things are a complete mess down there...i have no idea what's going on and neither does my dad. it's really, really bad timing, especially after a particularly frustrating week. but i'm glad i'm not going alone. and that i'm not going through this completely alone is quite surprising. but nice.

soooooo fellow babies...i'll be out of the loop for a few days since i'm not sure that i'll be able to post before i leave. hope that everything's well with all of you.

here's another good article on katharine graham in today's salon if you are interested.

spyder games is so, so, sooooooo bad. what's really funny, though, is that christina from high school is playing this character named taylor and in the last episode said that she grew up in alexandria, virginia. ok...that's only funny if you know that she really did grow up in alexandria, virginia...i mean in real life. ok, maybe that's only funny to me.

it seems that some things are changing...for the worse. when will this stop? and not just in south africa...but everywhere...

wow...the grand dame of the washington post has passed away. washington and print journalism will never be the same...the mayor ordered that the flags be flown at half staff in dc. yes, it's that big a deal. of the post, she once said:

"when my husband died, i had three choices. i could sell it. i could find somebody else to run it. or i could go to work. and that was no choice at all."

vrgirl salutes katharine graham and her extraordinary life and work.

hopefully this won't sound as bad as i am sure that it is...
all results will be lifeless and lead to an excuse...
to never try again, to never try at all...
staring up at the ground.

if you get a chance to see carissa's wierd [sic], go. they are the most amazing band ever. i've seen them twice this summer already.

going to a mariner's game tomorrow -- some work promo thing or something. as you know i hate the diamond sports. but hey. it's free. and it's a day away from work.

i'm your superhero. it seems like this has been the summer of just that. every day brings more references to superheros. gotta wonder what kind of crowd that i'm running with now, eh?

anyway, i may be going on an overnight trip to reno this weekend. why you say? the grandparents. they had disappeared off the face of the earth...vanished without a trace. turns out that my grandfather broke his hip a few weeks ago and they didn't call a soul. so since reno is about an hour's flight away, i'm going to be headed down for a day. at least i know the city, right?

the capitol hill block party was yesterday. of course there's always one giant asshole that can completely fuck up a good time. how could anyone piss off 4 people in less than one minute? i mean it just wasn't one statement that got us all but FOUR separate statements, each targeted to us individually. what the fuck, right? anyway, we made it through, lost the asshole, and went on our way. but with regard to other things...i have to tell you fellow babies...the cat is out of the bag. i think that you know what i mean. i mean exactly how long could it be kept a secret? exactly.

going to disneyland. oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

i often wonder who visits here and why. i mean not just web stat kind of stuff but i wonder who exactly the people are who find my blog by accident or whatnot who have never actually met me. what were they looking for when they arrived at my page? and what the hell do they think once they get here? my friends know that i'm quirky in real life...what about the people who only know me digitally? i wonder...

this would be kind of funny if it weren't so terrifying.

bye-bye disneyquest chicago. what went so, so wrong with all the LBE (location-based entertainment) venues?

nice...webvan haiku. i saw webvan just the day before they departed from this world. one thing about being on the west coast? i have at least been able to observe some of the high tech loved ones before they left us.

oh -- and before i forget? claire's boxes finally arrived in new zealand. so that company really wasn't a scam after all it seems.

ok...big project going on at work right now and i feel like absolute death. wait...do i feel like death or am i feeling like i am dead? or dying? what exactly is it that i am feeling? if i feel like death does that mean that i feel like i am taking life away from other people? no...that's not quite right. or at least i don't think that it's quite right.

anyway, what a funding snafu back at the ranch, eh? the picture is starting to look a lot less bleak though. and btw, if anyone is wondering if the offer has been made for me to stay out here on a more permanent basis...it has been.

and i said no. there are, after all, promises to keep. and miles to go. but besides all that...i think that at the beginning of the summer i was feeling so burned out that perhaps the thought of leaving c-u for good was very, very, VERY appealing. but now i think that i have gotten what i need out of this whole experience...the light at the end of the tunnel. and now i know that it is not only there but it is much brighter than i thought.

and isn't that something.

every now and again you run across a web log that is so desperate that you wish you could grab ahold of them and somehow make it better. it never quite works that way does it? i know, i know...you are all saying kaycee nicole. but there's something uncomfortable about this blog...perhaps because it leaves you with the fear that because it's so dark that maybe it really is true...whereas *kaycee's* was too good to be true, especially in these mediocre times...

you know a web trend that i really don't understand? those web sites that spawn a pop up window and the entire web site is contained in that pop up window...and the main windown only has a single line of text or something that says if a window hasn't popped up, click here. you see this in movie web sites all the time. i mean, first off...i really hate pop up windows. i hate that stupid pop up window that comes up every fucking time you go to amazon (which i finally saw the hq of the other day...it's in an old veteran's hospital building and it shows!), all those pop up ads that are appearing everywhere, etc. i swear to god that all it does is completely piss me off and NOT make me want to buy that product (you hear that marketing geniuses?). so where the hell did this "website in a pop up window" idea come from? it's not like the pop up window is a floating menu either...the ENTIRE site is contained in that window. ugh. stupid web tricks.

when i first read this years ago, i thought that it was one of the most well written articles that i have ever read on the subject. it seems that the author, jenn shreve, was a bit of a local celeb of sorts...when she was a student at uw she wrote quite a few articles that caused quite a lot of controversy. good stuff!

i love this! sushi generation...did you hear that jesse?

my latest big project starts on monday and i have so much to do tomorrow. right now i'm watching a re-run of a show called almost live, which was a regional comedy show for the seattle area that got cancelled a few years ago. it's quite brilliant and it's a shame that it was canned. lots of poking fun at redmond, etc. bill nye, the science guy, got his start on the show interestingly enough.

so i was in kind of a funky mood all day today. too much to think about...

wow....unbelievable.

got a phone call earlier...it seems that a mutual friend is in more trouble than he ever has been in the past. most of you don't know who this is. but those of you from undergrad definitely do. nothing is ever quite good enough...and i wish i knew what to do. i have the feeling you're sinking further but i don't know how to find you. i'm not sure that any of us really ever did.

listening to the remainder of the fireworks...thinking about the 4th in year's past. i've never really been a fan of the 4th. for some reason the 4th was always such a stressful time. we were always running late, we could never find a place that was good enough to watch the fireworks, they always lasted for much less time than they should have for the effort put forth, and it was always hours before we could get home when they were over. there was always something sad about the 4th though...i remember crying on the 4th quite a bit. it's kind of like that same sadness that i used to get as a kid on sunday nights after the wonderful world of disney, that same inexplicable sadness that my dad says that he felt. but i feel ok today...probably best to ignore the whole thing, right?

how are you, aj?

well, i really have screwed up my shoulder/upper back again. time for physical therapy again it seems. maybe i'll try to get my ass up in the morning and go to the pro club and do some of those exercises that i am supposed to do. then again, maybe i should lay off it for a few more days. i just remembered that tahoe is coming up in a few months...ugh...i really, really, really need to get back on the gym plan soon. and i really, really, really need to go to bed now! but before i go to bed, i'd just like to say how excited i am that i am going to see some of you soon. it's gonna be a kick ass time!

and one more thing...doesn't that new levi's low rise jean commercial with the talking belly buttons creep you out??? ew...

happy 225 america. i wonder why 225 wasn't such a big deal -- remember 1976? it seems like we were much more into the 1776 scene then than we are today. maybe greg's right...maybe this has to do with burnout from all the millennium crap.

what's your glam rock star name? mine is rebel doll.

ok, so i've been ignoring my blog. life interrupted. went to port townsend this weekend. the trip was fun. the town wasn't all that. i really want to see something outside of seattle that screams *pacific northwest* but i have yet to figure out where that is. anyway, i'm reading stephen king's "on writing" right now and am taking his advice about reading, reading, reading if you plan to be a writer. he says that if you don't have time to read, then you don't have the tools to write. and so i'm following that because as you know, i've got a novel to write. what's on my reading list now? choke (by fight club and survivor author, chuck palahniuk), jemima j, and the big u by neal stephenson.

tip for cell phone users:

if you call someone up in a bar and leave a message for someone, remember to hit "end call." particularly if you are planning on taking a trip to the restroom right after placing the call. we don't need to hear all that on our answering machines. thanks.

the scariest thing is not knowing your place in the world...

yeah, unbreakable is out. i know that a lot of critics didn't like the movie...i think that you have to look more darkly into the film to really appreciate it. what is so sinister? the way the movie ends? or is it the fact that we aren't sure that there's anything to believe in during these "mediocre times?"

all i can say about certain events through this medium is that things continue to go extremely well.

anyway, i know that i haven't been posting a whole lot lately. it's been a work hard/play hard week, which is actually quite a typical week all in all. we are all going to a special screening of AI tomorrow night on the westside. and of course tomorrow will be another long day.

one thing that i will say, however, before i sign off is that it seems that i may be on my way to ending what i need to end. perhaps i'm finally beginning to break free of the pattern.

well, people and places aren't always what they seem...and i don't mean that in a bad way. seattle's seemed more like a home than any other place in recent memory has seemed. and the people constantly surprise me. especially today.

one word: brazen.

am i really?

ok, i'm still trying to catch up on my email.

big weekend. last night i went with a few people to the i-spy where six parts seven, poor rich ones, and carissa's wierd were playing. so we were all out WAY too late but at least the 520 bridge wasn't backed up on the way back to the eastside. today, however, was a much different story. the westside was totally jammed due to the pride parade and i had to circle for a half hour before finding parking so that i could meet up with a friend and head down to the market. so after wandering around the market and checking out the aquarium (don't bother), we saw anniversary party. wow...that's a MUST see and i am not kidding. go SEE it. NOW.

and if you haven't yet realized the brilliance of ok computer, give it a whirl in your cd player. great, great stuff. sure, it's been out for a few years but i listened to it again the other day and remembered how truely great it was.

on my way to work (i know...) but i thought that i would say that they have plenty of festivals out this way, such as this river days festival next month in renton.

ok, three things for tonight...

first, you have all heard all your base are belong to us ad nauseum by now (right??? please don't tell me that you have no idea what i am talking about). so anyway, i was thinking earlier -- i mean really, really thinking about this -- that the line that i like the best is "you have no chance to survive make your time." it's much more cool.

second, have you seen those new "got chocolate milk" ads? brilliant. i love those bad ass little kids making chocolate milk. sure, i'll be ranting about how sick i am of the ads in no time. but for right now they get two thumbs up. in a related note, we drink a TON of chocolate milk at work.

finally, i was watching one of those half hour stand up comedy routines on comedy central earlier this evening and there was a mention of friday night videos. remember that show?? apparently it went off the air in 1991 (at least in it's original format) but i had stopped watching it right before i left for undergrad (when i finally had cable for the first time!!). that show was kick ass. and yeah, what the fuck was up with the name FRIDAY night videos? the damn show came on in the wee hours of saturday morning.

ok, wait...one more thing...while i am remembering the "no cable" years, any washingtonians remember super tv (early 80s...a.k.a. the betamax years)?? the same signal is now the WB channel from baltimore. so anyway, i'm looking for a link to some nostalgic recollections about the station and i run into this link. what the hell is that? channel listings from 1994 and back? people put anything on the web...even blogs like this. ;)

ok, the battlebots exhibition was lame but hell...beer and sunshine so how can anyone complain? and after all...it's not that anyone's ass is sitting in a bowl of jello, it's that they have...ok...sorry...inside joke. if you want the whole story, then you'll have to email me on that one.

the weekend is gearing up...tomorrow we have a battlebots exhibition in the parking lot outside of my building, which will truely be a beer and lawnchairs moment.

my fucking email has been totally screwed up for two days...i finally got some direction from campus that allowed me to straighten that out. unfortunately now i have about 800,000 emails so i am completely buried under it right now. patience.

check out indiebride, "...a place for would-be brides who have more on their minds than planning a reception, women who never for a second believed in prince charming and who have not, despite all of the cultural cues, been breathlessly awaiting their wedding day for their whole life." right on. reclaiming and reinventing the fairy tale! there's a great article about being single at a wedding shower. i've gotta say...been there, done that!

i just remembered wearing black to laura's wedding (ok...i was one of the musicians), therefore serving as the wedding's anti-bride. someone had to do it, right?

...if you want the fairy tale, you have to end it... (english)

...si usted desea el cuento de hadas, usted tiene que terminarlo... (spanish)

...si vous voulez le conte de fées, vous devez le terminer... (french)

...wenn sie die fairy geschichte wünschen, müssen sie es beenden... (german)

...se desiderate il racconto fairy, dovete concluderli... (italian)

god i love babelfish. probably the most fun is translating their translations back to english. for instance, their translation of my fairy tale line into italian is "se desiderate il racconto fairy, dovete concluderli." if i translate the italian phrase back into english, i now have "if wished the story fairy, you must concluderli." concluderli? from the german? "if they require fairy history, they must terminate it." wow...sounds harsh! french was pretty close with "if you want the fairy tale, you must it finish." spanish wasn't far off either with "if you wish the fairy tale, you must finish it."

can you believe it? mcfalafel in egyptian mcdonald's. why the hell don't we have those here? speaking of...why the hell don't we have any middle eastern restaurants in this town? we have about 4 billion teriyaki restaurants per block but not much else...then again, that's the eastside for you. the westside is decidedly more diverse.

hmm...you know, you really should make sure that you include some context when you send a link to a satirical article or you may be misunderstood. yep, the mistake came from me this time. i forwarded an article that was a satire on efforts to market games to women that was trying to make the point that our efforts to cluster gender differences into "all girls like..." and "all boys like..." is overly simplistic. anyway, the article was a pretty outrageous satire and i forwarded it without including some context other than "this is an interesting satire." soooooo...i ruffled a few feathers with that one. hopefully i've cleared things up a bit. i was really only trying to show the diversity of approaches that online gamer sites have applied to the "games for girls" question...only i forgot to add that part.

anyway, it's interesting what a dangerous issue that gender is at work. i guess it stems largely from the fact that it *is* a male dominated field. according to a recent survey by the IGDA, women represent only 6% of the industry...and that included the marketing divisions, which have much higher numbers of women in them. i suspect that the percentage is really closer to about 3% when you remove marketing from the picture. just my thought anyway...

ok...for some reason my uiuc email inbox is appearing as a message within telnet...this is the second time in a week that this has happened. this must be the same voodoo magic that had me fighting with our survey software at work all day.

i am in control of my destiny.

i am empowered.

ok, forgive me...i am losing it!

read the latest review that tells all about why we're gonna win the console race! your eternal soul is at stake here!

ok...this can't be true, right? it's like tarzan...only with dogs...and in chile...

keep us bloggers in business...help blogger win a webby award! vote for blogger in the "personal site" category! vote now, now, NOW!

thank god this guy was found guilty. it makes me sick just to think about it...like that story about those kids in iowa that killed all those cats at an animal shelter a few years back...what the hell is going through people's minds?

ever wonder what happens to old loves? i mean the ones that ended years and years ago in the most painful ways. there's that excruciating period of time after you first break up when you see them all the time or your friends report back news to you. and part of you hopes that at least one single day will pass when someone doesn't mention them or that something doesn't remind you of them. and part of you just refuses to let go and keeps some glimmer of hope alive that maybe they will change their minds if only your heart remains true to them. you replay and replay and replay the end, thinking that maybe you could have done something different, said something different...been someone different. then you move backwards in the relationship...remembering the time before the end, remembering the time before the hatred. you keep moving backwards...remembering, reliving...forgetting. and then you realize that you have been moving forward despite all your best efforts. and you no longer hope to rejoin the path not taken and instead hope to find a path not yet discovered.

you have to end it...

wow...where has the summer gone? how do i only have six weeks left out here? do i really have to go back?

at lunch today we were talking about writers. so i was telling people that i have been wanting to write a book for years and how i just need to just set aside time and just write. of course several others brought up the state of their unfinished dissertations, thinking that what i was talking about was the same thing. i couldn't get anyone back on track enough to get them to understand that i was talking about writing a NOVEL not just a dissertation (which in some circles could be the same thing...). mine certainly will be a great work of fiction...

we get to keep our name...we had totally forgotten about that. i bet our marketing and legal people didn't though.

god...i can't even fathom how some things come to pass. apparently the media has picked up on a certain piece of (vi-)shit from illinois that i think that several of you know about. could someone please tell me why this is??? do they really think that this is a UI that people WANT? what i can't believe is why headline news picked it up. must be a slow news...CENTURY.

here's a great article on weblogs in case you are interested in reading more about why so many of us post so much online...

my back is up to its usual tricks again. god...i don't want to do physical therapy again. what a drag that was. i went hiking with laura and a few others from you know what company! it was interesting hearing the differences between divisions and how unique my division really is. i'm meeting a few people from the research division on tuesday because they want to talk to me about my dissertation research. so that should be interesting...

anyway, i forgot to mention that after the film festival last night i went out to eat at this place called "flowers" in the u district -- the "campustown" of the university of washington. actually, to say that it was anywhere close to the campustown at illinois doesn't do the u district justice. the u district is much more hip...but then again seattle is an actual city unlike chambana.

well, i finally caught a few films at the end of the seattle film festival. i saw the irish film disco pigs and the thai film tears of the black tiger. of the two, disco pigs was my favorite. it was interesting listening to the director, why she took on this project (which was a popular play) and what the film meant to her. she said that a lot of her interest in the film was that it centered around the issue of how girls often have no choice in their destiny and how the female lead has the chance to make choices...not knowing what choices to make but at least she finally has the change to choose. at first i was like "what?" but then thinking back on the film, yeah, i can see what she means. hopefully you can all see it at some point. it was really quite powerful and the music was amazingly haunting.

as for tears of the black tiger...it was interesting. miramax has picked it up and has a load of changes to make in it. and that's probably good...it was a bit too long and they should have left some things out to add to the element of surprise. very interesting art direction though...it was like a black and white film that had been oversaturated in color in very unusual ways. the film on a whole had an "old western meets thailand" theme. whatever that means!!

so i stayed on the east side tonight. i was just too tired to do anything else and everyone at work seemed to be in the same mode today. it was pretty much a worthless friday. i think that it's post-e3 depression or something. who knows? going to bed now...too tired to write anything else.

guess what? i pinched a nerve in my back again. i hate that...the same thing happened last summer too. fucking technology. anyway, am finally watching requiem for a dream. damn...depressing and extremely difficult to watch. without a doubt it's in the same category as dancer in the dark, only requiem is much more relentless. the kronos quartet did a great job with the soundtrack too.

woo hoo! i have my first official product now!

anyway, it's super late but i have to read through a report. maybe i'll just do it tomorrow morning. blech. yes, it's that time of the month. are you sick of hearing about it? i'm sick of DEALING with it! :)

star wars...nothing but star wars...

just got back from seeing the blake babies in seattle. remembering chapel hill and cat's cradle back when juliana had her solo career, road tripping and crashing at the mammoth records party, the hard floors, and those donuts that we never did get. not quite like this summer but not without similarities.

the 520 bridge sucks. another hour spent on the bridge as they *inspected* it at 1:05 am. lots of people walking around, unsure of exactly what to do as we just waited.

happy birthday, nerd! um...jerry? what the hell are those plastic things around everyone's neck?

does anyone remember that show vegetable soup? it seems like it was pretty much an exclusively an east coast thing...but feel free to refute. i haven't yet found anyone from outside new york or dc who has even heard of it. the thing that i didn't realize about the show? two of the character voices were done by bette midler and james earl jones. anyway, if you never saw it...it was pretty much a super "must see" show. it was a much more urban and hip sesame street. and much, much darker. what other show could be described on the yesterdayland message boards as invoking a "sickening fear yet love for the show?"

good times.

want to see what we are up to? check out our ULTRA SECRET active death (tm) technology. shhhhhh...

before i forget, i saw moulin rouge today. i really liked it. you kind of have to check your sense of reality at the door in order to fully appreciate everything that the film is...it's worth it though. it's a gorgeous film.

every go to the movies by yourself? i highly recommend it. it's like going to a restaurant alone. there's a sense of boldness about it. yeah, you could look at it as pathetic but i think it's a good idea to do. people shouldn't be afraid of doing things by themselves. if you want to do something? do it. life is way too short to let it pass by because you were too afraid to go through it alone.

and speaking of being an easterner...i forget how sometimes my mouth runs away with me. apparently i called someone an asshole the other night but they didn't get that i was joking. yeah, ok...why on earth would i call anyone an asshole as a joke? regardless, i did...and they thought that i was serious. what's wrong with me? why do i put on this tough exterior? to avoid being seen as weak? to avoid letting anyone close? to avoid the inevitable pain? tell me what i have to end...

here's a tip for all you east coasters transplanted to the pacific northwest: when you see a pizza place advertising new york style pizza in the greater seattle area, run far away. the same, i imagine, would apply to chicago-style pizza but you know that i don't eat that "rock in the stomach for 2 days/heart attack on a plate" stuff so what do i know?

i ran across an old favorite web site...the thumbs up around the world project. this was around the time that i was trying to get my web page at tech listed in useless web pages.

have you been watching all the mcveigh stuff today? just a few more hours now. it was interesting hearing the pre-execution interviews with the victim's families...all the reasons for being for and against the execution. i've said it before, but i truely think that we can believe what we want about the big moral issues like the death penalty, abortion, right to die...but we will never really know what our real stance is until we are faced with the awful reality of such issues. the families of the bombing victims and the family of mcveigh know.

be careful what you want...interesting article about my fav composer, philip glass. happy, happy, happy...

apparently we had an earthquake sunday morning at 6:19 am. you know...i *did* wake up sometime in the six zone but didn't know what was up with that. now i guess i do. it wasn't a big quake but it was a 5.0 (the one in february was 6.8) and it's not an aftershock either...totally independent. freaky. remember that one in reno? it was so lightweight but it did knock out the lights in my building. i note that it did NOT knock out the power to the casinos...they have generators that could keep california in business for decades...

in my cd player now? girls can tell by spoon. it's one of those rare albums that you can listen to from beginning to end, a totally well put together collection...unlike most cds these days where maybe one tune is decent and the rest stink up the joint at unbelievable levels.

who exactly were the critics who acclaimed that's my bush according to the ads on comedy central?

just wondering...

this cd is quite possibly one of the weirdest things that i have seen. i'm thinking about getting it to add to my collection of ridiculous cds, which includes classics like hooked on classics (the first edition only...not as good as the original vinyl but what can you do?), transformed man, spaced out, music from outer space, stairways to heaven, and if i were a carpenter. i need to get in a metal mood and the annoying music show cd too. i don't know why i don't have them already.

i'm completely exhausted right now. yeah, it's getting close to that time of the month again. i should go to the gym but i just feel like vegging out today. am watching less than zero on the tv now and remembering how i can never decide if ellis is a genius or not. today i'm feeling that he is. the critics really hate him ("a literary poseur"). i think he's a love/hate author. i don't think that you can be in between when it comes to ellis. he's on the extreme and so are people's feelings about him. it *is* really interesting that robert downey jr, who plays julian in the movie, has lived a life that mirrors the book/movie. art imitating life or life imitating art? it's a chicken and the egg argument.

maybe i'll go to barnes and noble now...look for something to read.

computer games for cats...cool.

i've made it onto a weblog portal so it seems like i should go through this thing this weekend. brigitte talks about the censoring of weblogs while telling her own story about taking a break from work. i seem to know a lot of people who have been taking work breaks lately.

i haven't decided exactly what to change about this or how to go about it so it's staying as is for the moment.

just got back from seattle (if you are wondering what that means...i live in redmond, which on the other side of lake washington). it's only about 15-20 minutes to downtown though, provided that there's not a lot of crazy traffic on the 520 bridge. like tonight. on the way home at 2am, i got stuck on the bridge for 45 minutes and it took me an hour to get home. frickin' annoying.

seattle's a strange city. there are just a ton of homeless and the number of teenage runaways is extremely high. i wonder how seattle got to this point. i hear portland is a lot of the same. i thought that it would be a good idea to go out a blow off a bit of steam after the stress of the day but i think that it only ended up making me feel a bit lonely. i miss everyone. i'm constantly wondering what you would think of the place.

well...it's come to my attention that i should do a bit of editing on this thing and do a better job to disguise a few things here and there...such as where i work, what i do, and other identifying features that could get me into a load of trouble. unfortunately, the search engines have finally picked up on this and it's been cached so it's a bit too late to do some major revocation but regardless i will have to do some editing this weekend. yeah, i don't nearly put everything that's going on in this thing...not even close. but i have been putting enough here that it could cause some problems and so i have had to reconsider my approach. and, no, this hasn't been prompted by any incident...just some gentle suggestions by a few friends. i'm not sure how much i'll go back and actually edit though. probably not enough for me to get a new job at the ministry of truth but enough.

2+2=5

oooohhhh...the stranger...

so anyway...remember how carl used to hate when people would say "so anyway..."? so anyway...one of the guys burst into my office this morning and said "did you grow up with a brother?" um, yeah. so then he says "good, because we were saying that if you didn't then you would probably be thinking we were psycho by now." well, now what does that have to do with anything? do they act like a brother would? sure. do i think that they are psycho? sure. are these the same thing? not necessarily...

and for the nostalgia lovers out there, my real brother (not my gang of work brothers) sends along a link to yesterdayland dedicated to all things related to "the childhood experience of the 20th century."

still at work...am trying to get things settled with this study but it's fucking huge already. the best news of the day was when i beat a few people at doa 2. whoo hoo! victory dance!

am dragging a bit today though. i guess it's the crazy schedule...i have so much going on right now. it's funny how quickly you can forget the way life was back in chambana. there are the pros and cons of that, of course. more pros than cons, though. the pros especially being the fact that you start to forget all the depression. some people say that seattle brings out depression. no...that would be champaign-urbana.

well, it's always interesting when you get situated and start figuring out where the alliances are. wait...what the fuck am i talking about? is work like survivor? well, maybe. but i hope that no one's getting kicked off the island. anyway, what i meant was it's always interesting when you figure out who you are the most comfortable with at work, who you click with.

but anyway, a certain very argumentative person in my life right now has been becoming more and more annoying by the minute. take tonight's phone conversation. i was getting ready to call back my brother when the phone rings. guess who? yeah, it was sleepless. for some reason he has to frickin' talk to me. not knowing hat the hell to say to him, i mention a lunch time conversation that took place today where this one guy caught me saying that i didn't like team games like soccer. well, i'm on his team for UT. so he says "that's IT -- you don't play ANY team games...that explains it!" so after telling sleepless this, he says "yeah, but you played in bands and such where you competed as a sort of team." so i said, yeah but that was different, that's a TURN-based game. so he says that i just committed a beer foul for talking about work outside of work. well, what the fuck? i am out here to get immersed in this whole world, right? so i referred to music competitions as turn-based...they are! last time i checked, there weren't a lot of head-to-head marching band X-TREME competitions. although that would be kind of cool, wouldn't it? the closest that i think i've seen is that scene in xanadu where the swing band and the *rock* band converge. damn. where the hell did that reference come from?

keep me suspended in time with you...

what's your nerd sign? i'm the slide rule.

news flash: microsoft employee actually a nice guy. and if you are so inclined...check out your geek horoscope for the week. even the sports info is hilarious on bbspot, particularly this bit on chris weinke heading for the little league.

i was laughing earlier tonight because my study participant just didn't want to leave. and i was remembering jesse's story about how people do exchange pleasantries in nyc but that they don't really expect you to continue the conversation past that. so there i was telling the guy "have a nice evening." and then the guy would say some more. so i would say more forcefully "have a NICE evening." and then the guy would say some more again. so there i was at the door practically shouting "i said 'HAVE A NICE EVENING!' what the fuck don't you understand about that?"

all i know is that i hope that we do get some people together to go see a band or so this weekend and/or hang out at the cha cha lounge in capitol hill. and remember: just because one guy is wearing a dirty white bodysuit with 6 foot long claws for nails, doesn't mean that reflects all of america. btw, check out one of my new favorite sites: seattle stories -- are we characters in seattle's story or is seattle a character in ours? it's part of the city stories network. so...am i fleeing something or looking for something?

god...i did clean out my fridge before i left didn't i? i mean i *did* throw out the things that would be extremely scary to discover when i get back to chambana, right?? this is like an even more freaky version of the "i did turn off the coffeepot, right?" scenario. i *did* turn off the coffeepot, too, right?

it's june and i have the heat on.

btw, congrats to cece for successfully defending her prelim! wish i could be there for the official k.a.c. super blowout bash festival!

from psych central...more on the kaycee hoax! god, i can't get enough of this!

just got back from work. i got my tapes transcribed for the project that dan and i are working on so i'll be able to spend at least some of tomorrow on my work. thank god. but speaking of work...here's something for the GEO fans out there: read all about the strike by your counterparts at the university of washington and the aftermath. then if you can't get enough, you can read the editorial that talks about how union's alliance with the united auto workers may make things even more sucky than before. i'm sorry but my opinion still stands on the ridiculousness of the alliance with labor unions...as if our situation even begins to compare.

you know...you can't call yourself a gossip if you can't gossip about people you don't know. here's the situation: i was talking to someone who *says* that they are a gossip and explaining the situation from last night. and they were like "big deal -- i don't know who you are talking about" and that wasn't the point. the point was the thrill of the story, the thrill of the situation that lets us talk about the situation in general. surely this person had something to add from other scenarios of people that they did know, right? you don't have to know the people in question to know people like the people or to recognize some part of yourself in the story. and that's the main point of gossip anyway...or at least i think it is. it's all about the human condition -- what would we do or what have we done in that situation and how does that compare to what other people have done and what can we learn from what other people have done. it's social benchmarking if you want a term for it. yuck...that's a shitty term. let me re-think that one a bit...

i am sooo exhausted...i have been doing double time set up crap all week and today was the worst of all. at least i'm getting better at unreal. still, someone had to blast my performance on it afterward. i think that he was just mad that i killed him. hehe.

finally the new york times has posted an article on the kaycee hoax. thanks to jesse for pointing that one out!

ugh. well, the last two days have been absolutely exhausting. this week has gone much better though. i'm starting to appreciate the abd phenomenon a little bit more now...nothing like stepping out of the cult of academia for a little bit to give you a fresh perspective on things. i ate lunch with laura today over at the mac business unit and we talked about the famous warning from the ivory tower: "once you leave the academy, you'll never be let back in." it would be laughable if it weren't sooooo sad. it's like a prisoner who has spent most of their life in jail warning their fellow prisoners about the "outside world." remember that joke that we all had about the only reason that people were still in iowa being because no one told them that they could leave? well even if you don't know what i am talking about...the point is that you CAN leave academia when you are finished. and the world won't end. i swear. i've seen happy people, free on the outside.

psst...start checking out next gen mag...you may see a picture of me in there soon...i'll let you know!

ok, so my game play from friday wasn't totally forgotten. i had several meetings today (one-on-one, thank god) where it was mentioned. sorry...i just don't play that many first person shooters! get over it already! other issues that seem like they will never be forgotten include my first usability session where my participant felt like discussing pornography at great length during my intro script.

remember the day after? it's on the sci-fi channel now. remember all that controversy when it came on tv in 1983? did your parents let you watch it? mine didn't! amazon even has the nightline episode that aired later that night after the movie. what the hell happened to all those movies and mini-series that were the talk of the town? remember v? how about v: the final battle? god...i remember that stupid skit in 8th grade french class where shaconna and i made up some crap about v...what happened to that? how come we never did do the skit? now that i think about it...wasn't that around the time that our teacher got mysteriously "ill" and took a 2 month vacation, leaving us with that sub from hell who showed us all those movies about that illness in haiti?

but i digress. the guys had it right...i think that the power outage was the company's excuse to force us into the hallway where we had to talk with one another rather than shout at each other over the din of the game du jour.

wonder why salmon is part of the word salmonella...just had salmon for dinner, by the way. not that i think that i have salmonella. i just feel like complete crap. but i felt like that all day. for some reason i just now came up with the funny salmon/salmonella connection. it's actually not that funny. it's actually not funny at all. ok, ignore me.

well, today was odd to say the least. we started out the day with a power outage. all of redmond had a brief outage. however, at our buildings we had a 2 hour outage. that's because no one at the company knew that we were still having a power outage. so a lot of people went home for the day. then 20 minutes later the power came back on. i was in a meeting so naturally when the power came back on, i was stuck at work.

damn this is a boring ass entry! let me try again in a few...

i for one cannot WAIT to see moulin rouge.

btw, did you watch the buffy finale last week? salon has a great write up of it. i have to say...i just started watching it this past season, after hearing about how realistic they made the death of buffy's mother. but damn...salon is right...that was one hell of a season finale. wonder what will happen when buffy moves to the hardly watched upn next season? what was the wb thinking???

ok, there's something extremely weird about this gang of 5 year olds that run around this neighborhood. i was driving back from the grocery, and they were frantically trying to get me to stop my car. so i stop, roll down the window...and they are holding all kinds of oddball things in the air, telling me that they are trying to sell stuff to earn money for "poor people." i wonder if these kids have parents. i mean, maybe they really were trying to raise some cash...but it seemed a bit fishy to me, especially when the girl who seems to be the leader of the pack told me "whatever, that's what they all say" when i told her that i didn't have any money on me because i just got back from the grocery. hello? i did just get back from the grocery! the very fancy toy cash register that they had with them added to the oddity of it all. i guess i'll never know if they found "across the street" but i know that they have mastered "middle of the street" without too much of a problem.

raining big time here...no beach for me, although today would have been a perfect day for just that if you take the fact that it probably would not be crowded. i am really tired today though...god...i just hope that i am not getting the mystery disease. i slept for 14 hours yesterday and 12 hours today. yikes! anyway, i am going to try and get together some people from work who might be interested in checking out the seattle scene a bit next weekend.

must have coffee now...

thinking about going to alki beach tomorrow, although that might be a mistake depending on the holiday traffic...

saw the worst accident on 148th earlier...although i guess you could say that it was pretty good as far as worst accidents go in the fact that the driver survived. the driver of a truck filled with firewood drove right into a utility pole. let's just say that it looked really, really bad. the wood in the truck bed flew through the back window and right through the front window. somehow the driver was ok and was on the side of the road, crying. his family had arrived on the scene and they were all on their knees, crying...and praying i imagine.

thoughts of amy who died that october after that summer nine years ago. remembering that summer when i started work at the emporium, the clinic where i saw dennis and leigh, and the woove. remembering how similar the start seems to be with this one. and remembering how everything ended up being ok. sort of. knowing for the first time that this next year really will be the last one and then i will finish. and how that doesn't quite seems as scary as before.

i just got back from the pro club where i did the patented *mission of fitness* workout, sans the founding (and only other) member who is proposing to his girlfriend in cincy this weekend. when i finally woke up this morning, my throat was killing me...which really, really makes me nervous given the oddballness (is that a word?) of my officemate's mono. i'm trying to ignore it, thinking that it's probably just my mind going into overdrive.

the interesting thing is that last night i had *the dream* again. this time the scenario was a mini-version of that movie, my best friend's wedding. the really freaky thing? ok, besides the whole dream cycle itself. the really freaky thing had to do with where the famous tagline ended up -- in the middle of the dream!! so, i find out that an ex-boyfriend (does anyone use that term *lover* anymore? i mean besides that stupid virginia is for lovers -- which is 31 years old -- slogan?) is marrying someone ten years younger and i'm going through all that ridiculous stuff that julia roberts goes through during the movie and then some. then, yes, the *nameless, faceless person* comes on the scene and says the tagline...only this time the dream doesn't end. just like in the movie, the wedding goes through and i end up dancing with the nameless, faceless person...only the nameless, faceless person isn't gay like in the movie. but i don't know who he is...and the dream ends with my trying to figure that out. but i have the feeling that i do know who he is, only i don't know if he's a friend, an ex-boyfriend, or just an acquaintance.

so what did i end? i'm not really sure. maybe it was the pattern? maybe i did indeed forgive the great trespass?

any idea why my body is completely covered with bruises?

and one final thing before i sign off for the evening (i am currently about to zonk out watching a rerun of SNL)...i completely forgot to bring my copy of the denzin and lincoln handbook. so i checked the holdings of the microsoft library. well, they didn't have it but they had a link to email them if you couldn't find what you needed. so i heard back from them right away and they confirmed that they didn't have it but that they would forward it to the head librarian to see if it is something that they should purchase. figuring that i would never hear anything more about that, i started trying to figure out who out here might have a copy of it. a day later i get an email from the receptionist in our building saying that i had a delivery from the microsoft library. guess what? it was a brand spanking new copy of the book ordered especially for me. damn!

oh yeah -- i was at the pro club earlier today and i signed up for a monday/wednesday/friday yoga class for june. i've been wanting to take a yoga class for something like forever so now i am. the funny thing was when i signed up and the girl at the counter said "oh let me know how that class is." hello? there are like 180 people that work there...and this time it's not one of my patented exaggerations. there are seriously 180 people that work there. they call themselves cast members like they do at the disney company (no affiliation though).

anyway, she pulled up my record and said "oh, you work at microsoft! it's been my lifelong dream to work at microsoft." and this gets me to one of the most bizarre things about this area...it seems that it's EVERYONE'S lifelong dream out here to work at microsoft. for some reason you'd think that they wouldn't, that it would be like wanting to work at AOL if you are from the DC area. no one from home wants to work at AOL, the evil empire of the metro area (besides the military and the government). but out here, everyone wants to work at microsoft. i guess that it can't be that evil an empire, can it?

yow. my officemate called this afternoon. he's been really sick since we started two weeks ago...and here's why: he has mono. so...he's not going to be in on tuesday, and possibly wednesday. i felt bad for him because he had no way of getting to a drug store or the grocery so we spent a whole lot of time driving from closed pharmacy to closed pharmacy, finally finding a walgreens in kirkland with a 24 hour pharmacy thank god. oh and i bought doa2 today so i'll be practicing this weekend for next week's battle.

in other media news...if you haven't yet seen dancer in the dark with bjork, watch it. it WILL put you in a crappy mood, however. which means that it really didn't change my mood at all! anyway, i watched it again tonight. it's such a frustrating film.

well, it's the 3-day weekend. guess what i'll be doing? yep...you guessed it. work. i tried to get together a group of people to do something over the weekend but guess what? they all have things to do. one of the guys told me to try crossing the bridge at least once over the weekend. we'll see.

anyway, earlier this afternoon a bunch of guys were playing games and asked me to join in. and i didn't totally suck at DOA, the game of the moment. but then came the moment that i had been fearing...the friday evening UT session...

now at some workplaces you might be worried about a big meeting with the boss. here at gaming central, you worry about completely humiliating yourself in front of your co-workers during a videogame tournament. so after playing DOA, we start the tournament...oh my god. let's just say, for the sake of simplicity, that i completely sucked. and let's just say, for the sake of brevity, that i lost the whole thing for my team because i was completely and utterly useless. finally, let's just say that no one was talking to me by the end of it.

fuck.

i'm just going to stop giving updates with regard to how better or worse things are going...it's soooo roller coaster right now. tip for all you: if you drink a lot of grape juice at work? make sure that you always have a spare shirt around. especially if you plan on setting down the can on the corner of the keyboard and then crushing the half full can in your hand as you scramble to catch it. also, don't allow the juice to sit on the wall too long before cleaning it or it *will* look like a crime scene in no time.

now msnbc has picked up on the kaycee hoax...and so has about.com...what a crazy ride! i'm hooked!

well, today was a little bit better overall. tomorrow's going to be a long one though...two meetings that are sure to be rather intense. one's my division meeting and the other has to do with our project from last week. it's now just past midnight so i should be hitting the bed in a few. going to the gym this evening sort of wired me a bit...but as you know i CANNOT go to the gym in the morning. but it *is* nice to be able to take a sauna and whirlpool bath after the workouts...very, very nice.

did i tell you that we have a new sign on our door? when we got there, the office door sign read "storage" because they were converting the storage office into our office...well, someone got *funny* and now our sign reads "intern-ment."

a great article on salon about the booth babe factor at e3. my mission of fitness partner and i were talking about that at the pro club earlier this eve. in this industry about fantasy, why is it always the darkest side that we present first?

we've hardly moved an inch, baby.

more on the kaycee hoax is here and here...this is really, really a fascinating story. a cruel hoax? very much so. in a world where there's not a lot of positive energy, *her* blog was a source of inspiration. but now that we know that the whole story was fiction? is it still inspirational as a fiction or is it just a reminder that we are living in empty times?

i really don't know the answer to that yet.

whoa...freaky. the news of kaycee's life has been highly exaggerated. did i think that she was real? yep, along with thousands and thousands of others. it is *the* web hoax of the year! if you missed it, you really, really missed it. it's totally gone now. the lies went on for sooooo long too...that's the truely amazing part about it. hell, it's war of the worlds of the net generation! meg asks if she is even real. well, i don't know about that, meg, but i do thank god for hoaxes like this because while there are lies, we continue to fight categorization. think someone's not holding anything back? that's when you should wonder about the truth.

lesbian prom king causes turmoil. apparently this girl got herself elected as her school's prom king and a whole town is upset about it. apparently her election "...imposes something on society that, if truth be known, our society is not yet ready to accept," said parent tina mauler. "these types of things ultimately will lead to chaos." prom? they think that messing with the "rules" of prom is going to cause the downfall of society? the fact that prom exists at all is something of a chaos-causing activity...

rock on, girl! be the king if you want to be...just be what YOU want to be.

oh! i can't believe that i forgot this -- i finally got to the actual city of seattle on friday night where i went with a group of the guys to the cha cha lounge and the bad juju lounge. what's my microsoft name? furry sturgeon. don't ask. i hate bowling.

just where is across the street? a gang of 5 years olds demanded this of me yesterday on my way back from the mailbox, which i finally did find. apparently a friend of theirs lived across the street but they didn't know where exactly across the street was. when i asked where they were coming from they said that they had come from across the street. then there was something to do with sticks that somehow confounded the issue, but i didn't really follow that part. later, the ice cream truck would make another saturday appearance, making me wonder if those kids ever did find across the street. probably like trying to get to tomorrow from today.

ok....i can't resist. more on the bathroom issue. i finished up my playtest session and hung out with the guys in lab one, who were chatting and eating some pizza. anyway, they started talking about some building survey and how at some point they all complained about the bathrooms. so i said "what's wrong with the bathrooms?" they said "haven't you seen the lines? sometimes we have to use the bathroom in the lobby because all the bathrooms are completely full!" and then i laughed and laughed and laughed. yes, i work in the ONLY building in the UNIVERSE where there are no lines for the women's room and lines down the hall for the men's room. classic.

i still have no fucking idea where my mailbox is. maybe i'll be able to find it tomorrow morning before i go in.

anyway, i am completely exhausted. i got in around 10:15 tonight...so that means that today was a 14 hour day. we did get a short break in order to drive back to main campus to pick up our keycards. dan's was completely screwed up though...his card had him down as nicholas!?! so we had to go back to building 8.

but the big question that i know you are all wondering about? yes, i AM the only woman in my entire group. which makes things really funny sometimes. the bathroom issue is one such example. sure, there's a woman's restroom but it's all the way down the hall. but there is one that is a co-ed bathroom (no, not like ally mcbeal...just a regular one room thing) that is much closer to us. in fact, it's right in our office. but a lot of people on the hall use it for convenience sake. so as you can imagine...we have a bit of the "seat up or down?" conflict going on right now. i think that i had to say "i'm gonna have to kick your ass" far too much today.

well, day one of my time at microsoft and it was a TWELVE HOUR DAY!!!! yikes. of course a lot of the day was orientation, which was huge. around 200 people with more people coming in over the next few weeks. only me and one other person are interning with the gaming group though. am i the only girl? of course. i'll have to keep this short because i am exhausted and i have to get in early tomorrow to view a usability test session. the funniest part of the day? when we had to go to building 8 (b-b-b-b-b-b-ill!!!!) to get our key cards and saw the coveted, "no filming allowed" parking spots. "we need you to move the line to the right, away from the cars." feel the love. feel the love.

wow...kaycee passed away yesterday...if you never saw her web log, she was only 19 and she was one of the most positive bloggers out there. so young. cancer is such a cruel mistress.

oh yeah...my seattle times subscription starts tomorrow morning! wish that i could figure out where the hell my mailbox was though...

well, i tried to adjust the time zone on this to pacific but you can't just change it to reflect "this point forward" but rather it converts ALL of your posts, including those from weeks ago when i was still in central time. oh well. so, yes, lucia...my blog will be remaining in central time it seems, making people wonder if i really was up at those hours or not, which really wouldn't make most people that i know think twice about it.

so anyway...it is just around 10:30 as i am writing this. getting ready for bed since it will be an early morning and undoubtedly a long day. i hope that i get my health club membership tomorrow at NEO (new employees orientation). i'm planning to go every day. no time for a jog tomorrow morning though. i think that i overdid it a bit today...4.16 miles...largely uphill. ouch.

sleepless called during roswell, which made me really, really miss my tivo. it's just so nice to be able to pause live tv because undoubtedly if you have been looking forward to a show someone WILL call during the last few minutes of it. and they will not pick up the on the clues that you are trying to give them about how they should really call you back in a few.

oh -- congrats, steve, on graduating!

so apparently kevin and a slew of others in my group at microsoft are going to e3 from wednesday through saturday. big surprise there...so i will be doing some kind of validation stuff while they are gone.

i start tomorrow...wish me luck.

medical marijuana use struck down by the supreme court...you know...as if marijuana was worse than half of the *legal* drugs for pain like morphine or vicodin...at least marijuana allows people who need drugs for pain to be a bit more functional...bad move supreme court...bad move.

blogger's still having some problems. evan was out of town this weekend. i know how he feels...reminds me of when i was teaching that online class and how everytime i had to leave town or, oh say, SLEEP, complete chaos would develop...

guess what? i saw an ice cream truck in my neighborhood yesterday with full ragtime music and everything. i had no idea those things still existed...

btw, all my posts are in central time for some reason so subtract two hours to find out my real posting time. guess that i should look into that.

cece will be happy to hear that the local stores have that vitamin water so now i believe her that it does indeed exist. i went on a super shop (as jesse calls it) and bought a ton of groceries. i forgot how nice it was to be in an actual city area where you can get items other than the plain old crap that we have in champaign. i went to both safeway and a fresh fields-like store called qfc. i got all kinds of interesting things including some seattle cookies and some interesting juices from, yes, south africa that i couldn't resist because they were in those same juice containers that they have in england. oh -- and i tried to tip the qfc worker who helped me out with my groceries and they wouldn't accept...this is definitely not the east coast.

oh...and i just subscribed to the seattle times. while on my jog this morning i thought that it would be a good idea to, as jesse said, get "clean and sober" from the grad school dependency...maybe actually live a bit of a life while out here. so i am trying to embrace all that is seattle...and the surrounding areas!

am about to check out the grocery store scene...went for a jog for about an hour and discovered all these mini-pine tree plants on the trail behind my place. and there was this weird hammering sound coming from a hollowed out tree that i couldn't quite figure out...woodpeckers!!

woke up around 8:30am...guess it's the time change getting to me...i just couldn't sleep any longer. am drinking some of the free coffee that they put in the welcome basket for me. planning on taking a bit of a jog in a bit to check out the local area. still raining. not sure that's supposed to change anytime soon though! the pacific northwest kind of reminds me of england a bit...something about the damp, cool air is bringing me back to that summer over a decade ago where, unlike the summer spent there six years ago, we wondered if we would ever feel warm or dry again. and that, of course, led the three of us to go to greece despite what everyone else said about saving that for a honeymoon spot instead. and how years later, rod and i would run into each other after the memorial service, awestruck by the implication of what we had all done that summer when we chose to follow our own hearts...how for one of us there wouldn't be another chance to realize a dream, comforted by the fact that it had indeed been realized...forever changed by harsh reality...forever changed by a creature much more complex, much more burdened than anyone would have ever believed.

blogger's been having a few technical difficulties so i am just now able to update my web log! anyway...

i'm in redmond now! my suitcases were sooooo heavy! then there was the matter of all those boxes. but everything's in my apartment now. i'll take some pictures tomorrow and post them for you guys after i get everything unpacked. i have THE ugliest car EVER. not exactly my style. it supposed to be *red* but it's more like *rust* and it's some oldsmobile midrange. alero or something. puke. at least it has a cd player though.

kind of weird being here...i have my comfortor (yes...i shipped it...) because i thought that it would make me feel a bit more at home if i had it. but what makes me feel even more at home? that's right...they have 7-eleven's out here!! apparently the one down the street on 148th? it's THE busiest 7-eleven in the world. why? it's on the edge of microsoft and is right in front of nintendo...go figure! champaign-urbana will never be a true geek town without a source of big gulps and slurpees.

btw...urban decay's having a sale...i recommend asphyxia and area 51 lip gunk, which unfortunately is not on sale...

and speaking of asphyxia...they haven't quite worked out the air supply issue for the cube (a.k.a. ALICE) yet...40-60 minutes worth of air? 20 minutes is a hell of a gap when we are taking about, oh...AIR!!!! this could lead to a few problems with regard to human subjects paperwork...they don't like to see one of the risks of participating in research being death from suffocation...not so good for the kids...not so good...

hilary and jackie was on earlier. that movie always, always moves me to tears. thoughts of summers at catholic. memories of sitting in front of the performing arts building at tech, wondering if i could become something else because the music had gotten far too painful. dreams of running, constant running. feeling beautiful only when behind the veil of the music, that maybe by playing something beautiful, by being the creator of something so lovely that could captivate and charm an audience that might not have paid me much notice otherwise...that maybe i would somehow be transformed as well...

i'm getting close to critical email mass too, evan...and speaking of email, the peoria people want me to call them on monday...from seattle. honestly? i'm nervous about next year...i have no (zero, nada) funding yet. but do i really want to deal with that kind of a commute for an assistantship? the funding situation is definitely a sign that it's time to go, it's time to move on after next year. but where? my dad asked me tonight what the deal was with my generation having no real vision of where they want to go and what they want to do with their lives. i've told you my theory, right? at least my theory about those of us who grew around here...that we never really made goals for the future because (1) we watched all our parents get divorced (note: mine are still together, which makes me an unusual case) thus we never really believed in the permanence of anything and (2) we grew up in the midst of all that cold war, "who wants to live after the nuclear blast anyway" mumbo-jumbo, which definitely had to have some kind of impact on how we viewed the future...or the possibility of a complete lack of one. i don't really know what it is really but that's my theory. feel free to refute.

i keep coming back to the latest version of the fairy tale dream...the part where i am asked to stay but i feel that i can't. but unlike real life, i know that there's a goal that i am trying to get to, something that i am trying to find...only i don't know what it is. and more importantly i don't know what it is that i am supposed to end in order to get there, to find it. but i know that something must change...but what is it?