Monday, April 30, 2001

question: how am i going to get all that i have to get done finished before i leave next week??

answer: i'm not.

anyway, i think that jesse is going to be mad at me forever about not going to that party. i just didn't feel like it, i wasn't feeling well, and, dammit, why am i always the one who has to walk through 800 miles of snow? besides, i don't think that you should drive under the influence of that many pain killers. and if he wanted to go so badly, why didn't he just go? and really...was he really planning on hanging around with me at the party? of course not...just like the last time when i was forced to dance with THE drunkest guy at the party while jesse was walking around the outside of the house, pretending to be lee harvey oswald. of course the whole damn thing was a front for a G.E.O. rally. and you know how i feel about them.
carolyn sent me a thank you basket for depositing her dissertation the other day. that was so sweet of her! i was wondering who sent me something this weekend! now i have lots of snacks to eat as i pack.

Sunday, April 29, 2001

in the eerie category, today's winner is chip, who just sent an interesting bit by miguel de unamumo from his tragic sense of life...when the disillusionment of the mind and despair of the heart come together you finally have something to build on.

of course chip was referring to a paper that we, along with kevin, never wrote but should have written about the wildwood experiment. the web site now is a sad remnant of lives turned insanely chaotic for a semester but at least will never be part of the latest innovation in online learning...

but anyway, the eeriness of the quote, of course, has to do with it's timing and nothing to do with the context that it arrived in. but i think that you know that already.
kind of in a melancholy mood tonight...one of those nights where i would say that if i had to make a soundtrack selection...

    calvin: hi, mom. BUM BA DA BUM BUM -- what's cooking? HA HA HA HA HA HA!

    mom: what's with you?

    calvin: i thought my life would seem more interesting with a musical score and a soundtrack.

...it would probably be in a silent way. spellbinding the first time i ever heard it, back in the days of the woove.

Saturday, April 28, 2001

just saw jesus' son at ebert fest. if you have never been to the virginia theatre before, i must caution you...if you are in a claustrophobic mood, that is definitely not the place for you. i had to take off early before the film commentary...i just couldn't take it any more. i wasn't even intending to go to any of the films for the fest but steve and his friend, doug, had already bought the ticket for me and it was too late to back out even though i only found out that they had done so at 20 'til the show. i would have liked to have seen billy crudup but what can you do?
so i had a lot of dreams last night. no, not the fairy tale kind. just small little vignettes. some good, some bad. can't really say much about them though. they are the kind that leave you pretty quickly. not my usual full technicolor, ultra-detailed kind.
just got off the phone with paul (m.d. paul) who has been sleeping a lot this week, which is an interesting contrast to my sleeping very little.

i can't believe that i will be leaving for seattle two weeks from today. well, i'll be leaving here in less than that in order to get my cats home before i leave. but i will be starting at microsoft two weeks from this coming tuesday. it really doesn't seem real right now, you know?

and i still can't decide what to do with regard to next year. where will my funding come from? that's another story for another day.

Thursday, April 26, 2001

well, it was going to happen sooner or later...columbine victim families sue over violent games. while i symphathize with the families, does anyone really think that this never would have happened without the games? i mean, think back to the k-12 years...yeah, we all remember the shit that went on. don't you think that at some point someone, somewhere was gonna break down from all of that and just lose it?
i'm still awake. how is that? lucia and i went to OFSMSCB and i probably could have used about 78 more coffees. i really should just concentrate and get this assistantship work finished but i am so tired that i am zoning out completely. i should just go to bed.

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

everything's looking good with my human subjects forms. i picked up carolyn's dissertation today so that i can deposit it for her tomorrow...man is that thing HUGE. it about broke my back carrying the THREE copies to my car, which was 6 blocks away (why is there no parking on the south end of campus this week? what's going on?). oh, and i saw george who is sick of being TBA and finally told the college to cut that crap out. i don't blame him...who would want weekly reminders of being TBA? that's "to be announced" for those not reading the college announcements. and if you are not reading the announcements, i will spare you the pain of knowing what we know.

i am so damn tired today. but i guess that's what you get when you live a double life as...kathy holt, teaching assistant. seriously, though, i am tired to the core. oh...and will you be able to have your prelim defended before you go? i guess maybe kathy holt, teaching assistant, could have done it but then she's forever frozen in time at 28. ah, the stuff of legends.

...and miles to go before i sleep...

Tuesday, April 24, 2001

some have asked about the fairy tale so i will post something about that for everyone before long. however knowing me, "before long" will take a while.

this week has been insane so far. tomorrow i have illinois radio reader duties as well, which is something that i enjoy...but my week is so tight that i'll probably end up talking hyper fast! anyway, false alarm...i am still in human subject's hell. i can thank joan sieber for that...who actually doesn't directly have anything to do with my paperwork but psychologically she does. i think that they drugged us in ED 400 or something.
it's now past 4am but i have my draft of my human subjects proposal out finally. i just know that i have forgotten a whole bunch of things...keep your finger's crossed that the changes will be minor...

Monday, April 23, 2001

dammit...my last post got wiped out by blogger. anyway, i am in human subjects hell right now, as you well know!

so as i was saying...cece and i are gonna run. well, not that kind of running. it's too late for that...we are WAY past last day. but we did sign up for the lake tahoe marathon (half) the the walt disney world marathon (whole). what are we thinking??? our combined racing experience is limited to the chevy's cinco de mayo 5k in st. louis (both of us) and the 4 mile niketown ultimate off-road challenge at kualoa ranch in hawaii (just me). first comes failure, then comes despair, then comes...what???
i think that there's some serious weather happening outside. maybe i should turn on the tv???
more flashbacks of jimmy, at the locker banks, with a cast on...after godspell, talking to me after my stint in the pit orchestra...where are you jimmy? where did you go? maybe you have found amy? i think that you would have a lot in common. someone yesterday said that there was no such thing as a soul. i think that there is. at least that's where i have to place my hope anyway.
med school paul and i were talking about the imposter syndrome where you feel like someone's gonna catch on that you shouldn't be in grad school/med school/law school and that this was all a big mistake. of course, at least for grad students, the fun doesn't end once you get out of here. according to salon, adjunct professors have some homicidal tendencies. but don't worry about me...i'm planning on leaving the ivory tower when i get done.
i have a whole damn jar (2 pounds worth!!) of olives from dean & deluca in my 'fridge...but that's more in the condiment category than the regular food category, now isn't it? i was just thinking about those tiny sandwiches that they serve with tea. don't know what i am talking about? yeah, well...they do serve them with tea...just take my word for it.

i wish i had some fun sodas right now.

Sunday, April 22, 2001

once again it's the middle of the night. i feel like i'm just killing time right now. i'm busy yet nothing seems ultra shattering if it just doesn't get done. well, maybe some of it is but definitely not all of it. i'm sooooo abd now. just classic stuff. how do we get ourselves into this kind of mess? i feel like i did when i left blacksburg for the first time eight years ago (has it been that long?). so what would that make the gig in peoria? that's right...you know where. i can't let that happen twice in a lifetime. so fuck it. fuck that idea.

anyway, remember when i came back to tech and was all charged up. of course remember all the angst and remember what prompted me to go back? do you see where i am coming from? maybe that's what i'm supposed to end. remember the first time i ended things and moved out to reno? wow...that's what i was remembering last week. remember last saturday night when the air felt so strange and not of this place when i was out on the balcony while paul was smoking? i think that it was the air in tahoe that i was remembering, my weekend retreat. god i drove for hours that summer in that red neon. remember how you could see the lights on the strip from my room and it was somehow comforting in a way that could only be comforting in that place? how somehow everything seemed to make sense after two years where nothing seemed to make sense at all?

so what will seattle be like? will i have similar adventures? like the doctor said...follow your own heart.

Saturday, April 21, 2001

making more coffee. you know what that means. so let me in on it then, ok?

just got back from seeing memento with steve, which was ok. i don't know...apparently they were blown away by it at sundance but i just wasn't taken by it. according to this it's supposed to stay in your mind for days. not sure about that. i may be suffering from memory loss from the movie...
it's 3:32am. what's going on? why can i not get on a normal sleep schedule? gee...i have an idea about how tonight *happened* but last night? just doesn't make sense.

so i am leaving on may 8th. for dc, that is. i leave for seattle from national on may 12th. that leaves me two full weeks after this. more to the point, that leaves me two more weekends after this. what do i do? what do i do about next year? do i apply for the job that i made fun of just the night before? do i stay and hope that the unknown gig, the one that pays me to finish my dissertation comes through? i just don't know.

Friday, April 20, 2001

baby, if you've ever wondered...

i thought that was as good of a beginning to this thing as anything else, esp. since it *is* my favorite show of all time. sad, eh?

so here it is...my web log that begins with my final weeks before i head out to redmond from ol' chambana (ok, yeah, that was a shameless plug for the local music scene but what can you do?). that's right. i'm heading out for a summer graduate internship with microsoft. looks like i am heading out there just in time for the seattle film festival for indy films. so you'll get a chance to keep up with my happenings this summer and beyond.

anyway, it's now past 2am and i am finally coming off my java buzz. cece'll be thankful...she unfortunately had to witness my manic excitement over filling out my human subjects research forms, particularly my anal retentive behavior over the consent letters. you'd think that i was going to be working with infectious diseases and gaming...but christ...this is just about video games, isn't it? i guess all of this was much better than my crazed behavior of last evening over the now VERY long gone jason and the whole mess with that crazy idea about taking that job in that armpit of a city, not far from here. that is until i realized exactly how much help those people needed and then realizing that they needed more miracles than i could possibly provide...this is a call for web pages that SUCK. not that mine's that great...but DAMN!!!

fav site of the day...hmm...well, there's always FuckedCompany. it's all full of squishy goodness about the carefree dot coms.