things i am happy about:
jelly donut cupcakes frosted with confectioners powdered sugar,
learning to play the drums in rock band,
watching episodes of buffy the vampire slayer with my girlfriend on the phone watching the same thing a few hundred miles away.
(i thought i hated this show after the first season, but i've really enjoyed season two and beyond)

things i am unhappy about:
my laptop giving up the ghost today,
the feeling that no matter what happens in the primary tomorrow our politics will still suck,
waiting for my current employer to approve my contract while i'm still putting in hours.
(i really like my colleagues and the project, but i have growing resentment about the organization)

things i am neutral about (or just don't care):
microsoft/yahoo acquisition talk of any kind,
my inner curmudgeon growing stronger every day,
the super bowl now that it's over.
(watching with friends and making micro-bets while cheering against the patriots (just for the sake of spoiling the record season) was amusing though)

sigh.

its sunday night and i have no real idea where the weekend went. i don't have enough to show for it. im sitting here, on sunday night, drinking cuban rum (thanks kurt!) and wishing it wasn't sunday.

i think my mac mini has to go back to the shop. it has been coughing a lot, to the point of me re-installing tiger yesterday. and then today, it has had 4 kernal panics. yeah, i think it is safe to say that something isnt right. having never dealt with faulty apple hardware before, i am loathe to admit that it is having problems; i dont want to deal with it. but clearly something isn't right. i wanted to blame it on a specific program, but the last panic happened when only itunes was opened, so i dont think i can point at anything but some weird hardware issue at this point. (and software or hardware, a clean os and itunes shouldnt cause a fault — and it is certainly apples fault if it does have issue.)

otherwise the weekend seems to have consisted of me internalizing r's grad school app process, which can't be healthy for either of us. i have stayed away from it, but i think the unknown factors and fear of the future has really gotten the better of me now. there isn't an easy fix nor is there a point to worrying over things i cant control.

have i mentioned how much i hate my next door neighbor? i don't think i have. he plays his tv at all hours at excessive volumes. it really is awful and uncalled for. i want to believe the walls are thin. but i dont think this is the entire problem.

i can't wait to move into an apartment bigger than the one we have now. it is getting crowded. of course, that apartment could be anywhere in the united states almost so its certainly a give and take there.

i'm staring at the photos on the wall. i have plastic hangers that hold something like a dozen photos on the wall in long straight sleeves. most everyone i know has a place in these; i have 4 and i think almost every friend i know is hanging on my wall, albeit in a drunken pose. mike, andru, ben, petunia, me, eric, roxy, goose, ray, carter, my father, even goth robert all appear from where i am sitting and they make up less than 50% of the total. nostalgia is a powerful drug, kids.

the neighbors tv is so loud. its really annoying.

and hey, make that 5 kernal panics in a day, again with only itunes open. sonofabitch. guess i know what i am doing next weekend. arg.

and seriously, he needs to turn that tv way down. ass.

i guess its times to gulp the rum and escape to the bedroom. yeah, maybe being a homeowner isn't so bad after all.

so i am sitting in starbucks, editing writing. roxy has joined me, she is sitting across the room doing her own thing. a woman walks in wearing a william and mary sweatshirt.

on the west coast, out here, this is a rarity. people generally claim to know of w&m out here, but you don't often see actual articles of clothing. when she walks back through, i speak to her; i tell her i went there. this leads to a solid 10 minute conversation — she graduated there in 97. i finished in 98. we never get to the level of 'did you know this person' but mainly because it is clear early on that 1. she didnt know many people there and 2. she knows none of the groups i ran around with while there (see: wcwm, the radio station and psi u, the frat).

still, its pretty cool.

though i did feel a little awkward, what with this attractive woman talking to me while my gf sat across the room studying. i kept saying 'we' when talking about moving here and such. though i still felt like i was supposed to be asking this girl out or something. (no, not really. but i dont talk to strange girls often, so i felt all unsure what that experience is supposed to be like. i did wonder if she thought i was going to ask her out. again though, once r came over to talk to me, i think it became obvious that there would be no phone number trading. or whatever it is that people do now. numbers? emails?)

wow. this might have been the most notable thing about my day. that's saying something. i'm not sure its a positive thing.

ah, yes.

so monday's are a magical day where we all carry ourselves out to the local dive bar, ugly's, for the $1 pbr special. none of us (except for kurt) drink the pbr, but it has been a good tradition and it somehow makes the week a little easier to slip into.

sadly, most everyone who began coming week after week has slowly found other things to do on monday nights. usually now, its just r & i plus mike and kurt. john makes it sometimes too. beyond that, not so much.

monday night it didn't matter though. i realized it was almost certainly the anniversary of the routine, meaning we have been drinking there on monday nights for a solid year now. it also turns out that the bar has been sold and will be redecorated in the next week or so.

this redecoration involves: taking all the crap off the walls, painting said walls, cutting the bar off (wonderfully, in the same place we sit) and adding dart boards there. it was a huge bummer to hear all of this — this is the closest bar to us and the threat of it turning into something horrible and lame is terrifying.

so i drank away my woes. the bartender, rachel, played a ton of metal. mike played a few songs. kurt debated whether he could tell bartender rachel that her nickname needed to be 'ugly rachel' so that we could tell rachel and rachael apart. i told him he might as well ask if her nickname could be something like 'fat ass rachel.' (bartender rachel is neither fat nor ugly, for the record. kurt tried to explain how it was ok since it would be ironic. or sarcastic. or something.)

there were 2 older women there who were batshit insane. one went into a tirade about the lack of people in the bar. kurt, from across the room, raised his hand and said 'im a person'. then she started talking about men. and asked him to come sit by her. he got frightened. of course, then he had to play pool with her a bit later. and kept running back to us, shivering because she had touched him.

during bartender rachel's songs, she played ozzy — 'no more tears'. as the song began, my rachael says 'who is this? is this the pet shop boys?'

if i hadn't been drunk, i might have been less upset. or more. i don't know. it hurt me on the inside though, badly. so much so that once we got home, i drunkenly exclaimed 'if you had asked me hours ago if i would marry a girl who didn't know the difference between ozzy osborne and pet shop boys, i would have said no!' and i meant it.

yeah, that went over well.
at least, i think it did(n't). because i don't remember a ton after leaving the bar. i know we sat on the curb near our apartment and talked for a while. and i said a lot of things i think i meant in theory but lacked the tact or intelligence to temper at the time. and then said that before sleeping.

of course, when i was reminded of this statement in the morning, i stood by it. i think i do now even.

all in all, a really fun evening and it def got me out of the tfb mood i was in prior in the day. did i miss anything guys?

i would apologize for the slight radio silence, but we all know how life is. and moreso once you find yourself all growns up.

when we moved to mountain view, a year and a half ago, i had a job that i walked to. i had a job that did not require me to set an alarm clock. life was less complicated.

but that was a long time ago and now i find myself with a commute, several different workplaces and various stresses and complications. i recall having convos with people prior to now: people don't like turning on a machine after a day at work. i fear that i am becoming one of those. strange thing to fear? not if you know me.

back in the dark ages of 2000, when i started really writing on here, blogging wasn't really a word. people were doing it, but it was novel and new. it isn't anymore. and while i love this site with all my heart, it isn't the same as it used to be. so there has been a lot of crunching and thinking in my mind the last few months about how these things intersect.

i don't have a good answer yet. i might not for a while. but you can look at how often the 23 authors on here have written. and, for the most of them, it isn't recently. granted, some of them have stated to me or publicly on here that they won't be continuing — david, ben, bridget, matt and chrispy come to mind. but others have, for their own reasons, just gotten out of the habit, for lack of a better word.

wow, i really went off on a tangent, with no real goal. sorry about that. i suppose my point is that i am in the process of figuring out how the site functions and fits into my life (and, by extension) everyone else's lives. that might mean some sort of focus to my writings on here — or at least a conscious effort to provide significant value. i've been dealing with too many business people, perhaps.

i'm going to wrap this up now, so my next post can be more grounded.

rawk.

the other night in art class, someone was painting with oils. and i'm not sure what it was, but something, some combination of items created a smell that was instantly recognizable. and i wish i knew what it was — what caused it, what the smell was. because i instantly and positively knew it was a smell i associate with hospitals now. its something i smelled a lot of when i was hospitalized.

but i have no idea what it is. i imagine it is disinfectant of some sort, but i dont know. i do know that simply smelling it bubbled up all sorts of weird anxious feelings that come with any memory of being sick.

i didn't like it.

and now, as i sit outside at starbucks, writing documents for work, surrounded by an ipod, a coffee, a moleskine and the gang of four's 'design patterns' book, i am smelling cloves. someone out here is smoking clove cigarettes.

and suddenly, i'm on the back porch of psi-u on a friday night. there must be some coffeeshop kids hanging out, smoking them. i can almost see julie hill holding one. (she is a post for another day, most certainly.) but my ipod plays 'bittersweet symphony' and i know, i know, its 2.30am and we are sitting out back, waiting for the cops to show and kill the party, waiting for the lights to get thrown on and everyone to stumble home, dropping the half empty can as we move. i'm leaning on the wall, foisy is within earshot. no one is watching the back door and we ran out of beer an hour ago and i'm drinking one of the last brother beers (the secret stash of beer at any given party saved for the people who actually paid for the entire thing). and i blink.

and its 9 years later and i'm on the other side of the country, living in silicon valley and i am missing everyone i have ever known.

it's one of those moments where i want to climb up on top of a huge mountain, a mountain so tall that everyone can hear me and i scream the names of all the people i love, i call them all out, i make every one of you raise your heads and know that you are missed, that you are still loved and that i want to be near every single one of you. always.

i haven't found that mountain yet. this site is the best i've been able to manage.

and no one is smoking cloves now.

when you finally take the time to find out that there is an open life drawing class on tuesday nights in palo alto. this is something i have meant to do since i finished at vcu…5 years ago? wow.

im beyond thrilled. i would go so far as to say that i am giddy like a schoolgirl.

(thanks for spurring me on, ashley.)