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?

thinking about that night at kopi and then boltinis in downtown champaign...wishing i was there, with you.

it's actually an hour later...east coast time, you know. got home to virginia around 4:30pm. driving through west virginia...remembering more than a few pointless road trips back in undergrad, exclusively comprised of driving aimlessly around that state...sometimes alone...sometimes with other like minded friends just looking to get the hell away from the scene even for only a few hours.

coming home always brings about mixed feelings. the great migration, of course, came about years ago. fallout from growing up off of a military base. but now it seems that the neighborhood has changed much more than a little...reminds me a bit of all that death from all of that cancer years ago.

my parents and i went to the neighborhood bar and grill, the mount vernon inn. am being drowned in colonial shit, as per usual. do you ever feel that home is nothing that you recognize? i lived here for 18 years and yet it seems so hard to remember so much. i was telling my mom earlier that i can't remember my graduation from high school, although i certainly remember other points of high school. why have i blocked it so much? my theory? that i really couldn't give a shit about it. and that's probably not far from the truth.

so as you can probably tell, i am very, very exhausted right now. i am sitting on a ton of email but forgive me if i don't answer right away. i am reading the email...i'm just too tired to reply. besides...i'm sitting here at my parent's kitchen table, with baseball on the tv...which i hate.

did you get it? thank god for telnet. and thank god for the fact that i don't use outlook (sorry bill...).

somewhere in wtc (white trash city), west virginia...cross lanes...middle cross...cluster fuck...i don't know...i can't remember. somewhere just outside of charleston. maybe about 6 hours from home but i am wiped out so here i am at a comfort inn on a public access terminal in the lobby. so i can't say much but i wanted to check in at least. i forgot the scooper for the cat's litter so i went to the only store here, walmart, which as you know i hate. anyway, there was a hilarious episode involving the search for such an item that culminated in one of the salespeople yelling four aisles over "i've got your pooper scooper!" well, at least she was a stand up girl and i was able to get the hell out of there without getting shot by all the NRA members in the store. eeeeekkk...get me outta here!

well, it seems that blogger is going down for maintenance in a few so this will be my last post for maybe a day or so. i'm about to dismantle the computer...which means that my time here in champaign is coming to a close. at least for the summer anyway. i'll be on the road for the next two days -- i'll try to check in tomorrow night when i stop at a hotel for the evening. ciao my little babies. and speaking of...the blake babies have a new cd out. ah...memories of cat's cradle in chapel hill...

i'm remembering reno. remembering that drive down the highway for 9 hours to get to vegas, remembering how everyone thought that jason was going to ask me to marry him and how eventually he did propose...but not to me. and i am remembering the driving, all the driving that summer. and i remember stepping out onto the street outside the flamingo, feeling the energy of that neon city. and the heat of the desert. and twirling, twirling so fast. in that skirt. laughing. happy.

still waiting for the latest revisions on the paper...wondering when exactly that will be? i have soooo many overdue bills. and i have literally just shoved shit into my suitcases without rhyme or reason. it's going to be a long, long night.

feeling a little sad right now. i think that you know why. but it's not just that. there's such a large contingent of people who really expect that i will not come back, like they just assume that i'm just gonna say "fuck it" and "forget" to finish the degree. but they don't realize that i am too far in to turn back now. then there's the bit with my advisor...i really think that he wouldn't really care if i came back or not. so many people leaving town. christine had a point earlier when we were talking about how many years comprised of "one more year." next year has to be my one last year though. although it scares the shit out of me when i think about where next might be. i can hardly keep up with now.

so you ask what it is that i need to end? the simplest answer is that it's a pattern...but which one? and how? and what is the fairy tale exactly?

in honor of steve? bitches.

$1.73...please...your diss was worth AT LEAST two and a quarter.

haven't started packing yet. i guess that now's the time. oh but before you do that could you make some changes on the web site? just a few small changes?

i took a chance and forwarded my regular mail to my new redmond address...i hope to god nothing changes there. and i got my new passport (number three). so now i can flee the country at any time. you know...because i am always doing that. what?

so let me get going for now -- i have a roswell ep on the tivo as a bonus. i have sooooo many overdue bills...

so what can i not forget to pack? that's right...the magic 8-ball!

i never really thought about how so much of this web log can apply to so many different situations, including ones that i hadn't intended but that could easily fit. maybe my subconscious is up to something.

if you want the fairy tale...you have to end it.

gato just ran across my keyboard. anyway, i know that i need to get back to finishing up that web site that i got conned into making at the last minute. time? 1 hour, 25 minutes. a new world record.

wow...now that the book is in print (well, not according to amazon), we are really starting to get some major attention (well, not according to amazon). my department head just wrote and was raving on and on about it...that was probably the biggest surprise of the bunch. gee...who hasn't commented at all? that's right! the man who said "keep in touch" at the dinner party last night. and there i was saying that my advisor doesn't give a shit about me...tisk tisk.

remember the whole deal with vr boy and the gang at siggraph in new orleans last summer? i was laughing my ass off earlier tonight thinking about it. that night where we drank all those hand grenades...and that guy on the balcony who knew someone in the group (who??) that kept saying "beads please?" to the prostitutes on the street. and how we all felt sorry for the guy and was trying to tell him what to say and to whom? and remember how i almost got sick the next day at the maya booth and how we all took turns heading back to the hotel because we were too sick to do anything else? oh my god. if you ever get a chance to go to siggraph, go. if you ever get a chance to go to siggraph in new orleans and you don't go? i'll kick your ass.

what the hell happened to shannon? has anyone heard from her in 3000 years? i finally did hear from vr boy (a.k.a. angst boy...pronounced ankh-st) today when he wished me luck on my trip and god knows what insanity he's gotten himself into this time in the city.

so the boxes are gone and i have even less of a good feeling about the whole thing than before. all damn day to get those boxes out and i thought that the guy was going to end up completely ripping up the apartment while he was at it. now claire owes me $415 and i am so, so, so broke. one of my cats (gato surprisingly enough) is still traumatized over the whole thing and is sleeping between two pillows.

if you ask someone a direct question and you don't get an answer, does that mean that the truth is what you fear is true?

ok, all you ladies out there...what's up with this: how can we feel like we have to work so much harder sometimes to convince people that we are good at what we do...while at the same time when our work is recognized we feel that the only reason is because someone has ulterior motives? you know what i am saying? i mean take the situation tonight at the party...now i am wondering if my work a few years back was actually good or not. and we've had this discussion before where you find out that the person on the other side of the compliment may not have been 100% referring to your work...kind of cheapens the accomplishment, doesn't it? especially when it's coming from a so-called higher up...

god...i totally forgot about the dinner party at my advisor's house tonight. wow, i must look like a terrible mess...but i guess that i don't care. i'm really not in the mood to go and i just got off the phone with my dad who, for some reason, was in a completely foul mood, which is something else that i really didn't need to deal with. i think that this whole redmond thing really has him pissed off, although he won't say what's on his mind. i think that he finds my research area to be a bit embarrassing. after all, i didn't go into the career that he was always pushing me to go in, right?

my heart really hurts. how am i supposed to go to this dinner party? luckily steve, who is also in a non-social mood, said that he'd go with me as a buffer. we've already come up with our story...how that at any point in time one of us could just say "oh, we have to run to that thing that we are late for" and leave the scene of the crime. i have a feeling that we won't be there long before i say just that.

because i am a huge geek and of course have nothing else to do...here i am posting something else after 1am on a saturday night...well, sunday morning.

watched the thirteenth floor earlier and it wasn't too bad. some friends of mine in the vr world had really trashed it but it wasn't all that bad. but i think that they were mad at the fact that it was yet another movie that made vr look much, much, much more "realistic" than it actually is...at least by today's standards. no wonder they had so many supercomputers in that room...the sheer computational power needed to produce real time graphics with that fidelity...staggering. i did appreciate the "end of the world" portrayal with the non-rendered scene. nice touch...although it kind of reminded me of the simpsons episode that they reused in cyberworld 3d...

fin.

in case you are interested...check out my book that just went into print. i wish it was that novel that i have been talking about doing but, hey, it's still kind of cool.

rant of the day? does kinkos actually want customers? i just got back from there after an unsuccessful attempt at trying to copy some chapters out of a book. could they maybe stock some copy machines that you could lay a book on an actually get a readible print from? and don't even THINK of asking them for help. i did a search on google for "kinkos sucks" and came up with a few gems including the story of how kinkos has has the "worst service of any service oriented company on the planet earth in all the history of humankind." stinkos.

got an email from my relocation coordinator at microsoft and it looks like i'll be living at some apartment complex called shadowbrook in redmond. wow. so now i have an actual abode. kick ass!

and i really, really have a bad feeling about claire's boxes...

university's squirrels left out of ranking...wow...people are really passionate about the squirrels around here, at least according to this article in the daily illini from last week. what's weirder is the web site that spawned all this. you know...people buy bags of old corn and corn feeders for the squirrels out here. i finally broke down one year and started doing the same. then there's jesse's squirrel tunnel that broke in the storm...what happens to people when they move out here???

i'm a little scared. i called this company called "america on the move" (no link...hmm...) to see about claire's boxes that have been taking up more than too much room in my kitchen for a little more than too much time. anyway, it was like some weird mafia production talking to them. actually, more like some kind of bush league mafia. but anyway, they didn't exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence that these boxes would actually get out to new zealand. the price was right. but you know how sometimes you get what you pay for? exactly.

anyway, jesse's no longer mad at me -- or more specifically, we agreed that there is a possibility that we were both mad at each other and so it's a draw. and steve? you were right. that salad did have WAY too much garlic. i know that some people (harlan) say that you can never have too much garlic in a recipe. well let me tell you...the salad that steve and i ate? whoa. and why exactly was garlic in the salad??? i guess that they were wrong...sure, we *are* pale...but they got the vampire part wrong. oh what will i do without my research buddies for the summer? i know what you are thinking...what research??

boy...things are absolutely insane right now. i just got back from the eye doctors to pick up my updated glasses prescription and by the time i got home there was this panicked message on my phone from mcKILLme and another panicked message from chip about that paper. apparently they gave me the wrong prescription and then to top it off, we have three days to get that paper done. ahhhhhhhh!!!!

how on earth did i get this huge bruise on my right leg??? anyway, i was listening to sarge very loudly on my way to the store earlier. dammit...why did they break up? ah the end of july and clearer...classic, classic stuff.

women are geeky people, too...no shit...

why do i like that show roswell so much? it just doesn't make sense. i mean maybe it's the quirky overdramatic plots and the fact that it takes place in a desert state. i don't know. i started watching it last summer and now i watch it week after week. however, i do like the fact that one of the actors on the show loves the krispy kreme. right on.

so i was thinking about other shows that i have watched that were just plain silly and i remembered that awful soap, sunset beach, which had christina from high school in it. what the hell happened to her? she was supposed to be in some show on mtv called spyder web, which has apparently been renamed spyder games. oh wait...apparently it has been delayed until may. remember when mtv showed music videos?

are we really the way we represent ourselves? that's the thread of the day. think about how salon covered the publication of the unedited version of sylvia plath's journals and how we feel like we might now know her a little bit better. i wonder if she thought that her journals would someday be read? when we write in personal ways, we often do so as a way to extend ourselves, to become who we think we might want to be. we leave clues about the things we do, the way we act, the people we love, and the people we hate. and we also leave things out, the things that are too painful, the things that we feel are too ordinary, the things that are probably much more revealing than the things that we include. maybe we leave things out depending on who we think may be reading. or maybe we put things in depending on who we think may be reading. am i really the person that you think i am when you read this? am i the same person in this web log that you know in real life? does the representation of who i am in this web log match up to your perceptions about who i am? or is this all just a big red herring?

just after 10am and the sirens are going off. and it's just dawned on me that if my luck holds for one more week, that i won't be hearing them again for at least another three months. and how in a way that makes me kind of sad? and i think that 12 weeks sounds better when i say "12 weeks" than "three months" because weeks have a way of just blinking by so quickly whereas months...now we are talking about a larger chunk of a year.

btw, did you ever wonder about what happened to the emergency broadcast system? you know...the two-tone attention signals that caused us too much trouble at the woove?