This is what it is like to be busy; this is how you have no time:

Thursday-Saturday, we were in Seattle for Ben's wedding. Pictures will follow, but the wedding was fun, though it seemed I got the surprise of having to help set-up and break down everything. That was the groomsmen's job. Saturday was spent with Chris Davis and Manijeh, wandering around Capitol Hill and then watching the Blue Angels perform while sitting on the roof of his friends' house. Random, but a lot of fun.

Yesterday, R started packing, so I took the time to finally do a tiny bit of home improvement — I bought fabric for our dining room chairs and recovered them, bought a little throw rug and hung curtains in the den*. Whew. Oh and repotted some plants. And helped R.

She's going to need a bigger bag.

Everyone also (understandably) wants to see her before she goes — it looks like the entire week is full already, leaving little time to actually get ready. She's going to be a stress-case in no time. I will follow; I imagine this week is going to be pretty turrible.

I'm hanging in, mostly. Everyone's reaction to all of this is pretty much on a spectrum — from 'you'll be fine' to 'wow, that will be tough.' (And for the record — I need far less sympathy and more just that you keep an eye on me in the coming weeks/months. Promising me trips to strip clubs and shady bars will be far more helpful than trying to make me feel better about futures that haven't arrived.) The reality is that I will be a mess and that it is going to be one of the toughest things I've gotten to wallow through. It's ok though; time doesn't stop and a change in circumstance is just a reason to find new ways of being content and happy.

But I'm so proud of R — for getting in, yes, but really for going. For doing something most other people never would consider. It's badass and something I haven't given her full props for until recently. When I moved to LA, I had her around. This is far tougher. It's totally amazing and I've got one more thing to throw back at her when she makes excuses for doing other shit. If you can do this, you can do anything.

And this morning, I realized a bunch of things I'll miss about having her around. Yes, the company, the sex, the goofiness. But shit like zipping up her dress or watching her put on makeup. Or sitting on the sofa and eating dinner while watching Daily Show. Or watching her sleep. It's going to be all these little moments that I won't get to store up anymore. Though I've got several years of them now, so maybe they can tide me over.

Nothing stays the same forever; so all-in-all, this is thrilling. The dress zipping and TV watching will be replaced with something new and different for a little while.

Yet another reason to treasure every moment.

* I'm convinced the apt manager will somehow find a way to fuss over this improvement, though I'm pretty sure she can't actually do anything. Except raise our rent. It's a shame 1. that I don't trust her and 2. that she's such an annoying control freak. I shouldn't be worried about hanging curtains, but I am. (Just as I shouldn't have been concerned about storing a bike on the balcony or a vacuum — for a couple of days — or suggesting a mixer for the complex; she acted like I was totally insane for suggesting that I might want to meet my neighbors.) The curtains make our window look different than everyone else's. Goodness knows that might be taboo.

Sure to put a little smile on my buddy Tripp's face, may I present–for your consideration–the following oscar-worthy film?

That's right: Donkey Punch: The Movie. Sorry, dude. I don't think Britney Spears is in it.

This is a long time in the making, but I am delighted to present to you a collection of 76 drawings, made during 1998 and 2007. This is a self-published volume through Blurb, selling there for 24.95. If it helps, only 3 dollars of that goes to me — printing 80 pages of images is not cheap. The up-side is that the book is fantastic — not just the content, but the actual book is very nice.

For those of you who don't like physical things, how about a pdf of the book for free? Ok. The dpi is screen resolution, not print, but you can look at the pretty pictures.

Enjoy it and please feel free to drop some feedback.

I'm not sure when I came to this conclusion in life or when I really got behind this belief, but there is one rule I've rocked for years:

You can't complain about something unless you have done everything in your power to change it.

It isn't an easy one to get through always. There is always more to be done with something, whatever the issue. But it's worked pretty well as a general rule of thumb and I would say that it has cut out a lot of wasted energy. It has helped me let go of quite a bit over the years.

Kottke linked to a couple of items about whining and complaining the other day. Those also reminded me of the quote by Henry Rollins about hate, which is another one of the things I try hard to avoid in life.

Hating someone is giving them too much, Just leave them alone. Its like when someone wants to hand you a big pile of horseshit, you don't have to take it.

I'm pretty sure he goes on to say that by hating someone, you're giving them too much energy — hating means you're still invested. That you still care. Which defeats the point of hating. That or you need to go back to step one and do something to change it.

Feb 29th, 2008: bacon bowls for salad, obsolete skills, obama, train delays, everything is my new bicycle, email as a communication device with older people, "read Gödel, Escher, Bach, then come back and argue in favor of enforcing draconian error handling everywhere", "keep checking twitter in hopes that someone has taken over my identity", code checkins, mask of evil.

April 10th, 2008: mask of evil, musicblog playlist, emoticons at work, problem spotting as bullet #1, 2 miles on the treadmill, the dentist, robins at the library, craigslist, redecorating the apartment, clenched jaw, shadow of the colossus, miracle fruit.

The other day, Becca suggested that I was having my mid-life crisis early. As in, right now. She saw it as me asking big questions about life, flailing around, trying to make sure I have a place. Then she suggested that maybe all I needed was babies.

It could be a thrisis. But I think I know the real reason, partially pointed out to me by reading 'Stumbling on Happiness' (more on this later):

I have lost an extraordinary amount of control in my life in the last 6 weeks. And, unsurprisingly, that's about the time that the notion of happiness began to consume me so completely.

There is more to this fact but: it is looking likely that Rachael will be spending two years on the Easy Coast in school. I will be here.

About 6 weeks ago, there was a not insignificant re-architecting of code at work and the code and knowledge that was mine became not mine. It had nothing to do with me, the quality of my work nor anything like that. It was what needed to happen for the application. My tour of duty ended.

Boom.

Suddenly, I find myself obsessed with re-decorating our apartment. And it's taken me a week to figure out why: it's an easy place/way for me to regain some control in my life.

Figuring this out, seeing it all connected like this should mean something? It's that first step, right? Well, yes. I've scheduled a meeting today at work to see how I can better get some focus, some control back there. Rachael will have a decision soon, so that can at least be dealt with. And I will keep decorating the apartment.

Still, what a pisser, eh?

Ray mentioned how the game changes throughout life. So I'm taking that cue and running with it for a moment.

Being sick is my best example of game changing. Of the game changing. I was last in the hospital 3 February's ago. The real illness, the real blech, was almost 4 years ago now. 4 years the end of this month.

I don't count the days, the months, the years like I used to. I have stopped worrying about complications for the most part. But I still feel guilty, as I always have, when I bring up my emotions, my behavior as being influenced by the experience. By almost dying, by spending so much time wasting away, the month spent without eating, without getting out of a bed, without an undrugged mind. It's heady shit, just typing these things is making my eyes wince. I usually coat it all, dismiss it all. And when my parents say, 'You almost died,' I wave my hand dismissivly and say, 'But I didn't. And I wasn't going to.' But the truth is that I almost did, I easily could have and, in some parallel Earth, I probably did. It's easy to dismiss it because there wasn't a single 'oh shit' moment where everything was make or break. This was far more subtle, spread not into seconds or minutes or hours or even days, but into weeks. My body almost killed me. If my large intestine had been a little weaker, if the surgery was a few days later, if my doctors had been a little less talented…

But this is the what-if game. It isn't why I'm writing this.

There are a lot of emotions wrapped up in this experience. It opened my eyes to feelings and passions that resonate with me still today — an acute knowledge that I will be gone one day. That I will not be able to learn from things 200 years from now. That I will never see the future.

This is all I get.

And, though it is sometimes selfish, I have to do every single thing I can while I'm here. I have to find the balance between the 15 year old me, the 24 one, the 31 year old and the 72 year old. This is difficult. Not in the 'life is hard' way. But in the way that is is difficult to explain how prolonged illness with the threat of death looming changes one's outlook. There are many times that I simply shrug, I simply clam up because the person, the situation, can't relate to this viewpoint.

But that's a negative. The positive is that being sick has changed my life, changed everything about me. Game changing doesn't frighten me, as it does other people I know. I'm not scared of rules changing, of new circumstances, of change. I've been there, I've been through it and I've walked out the other side — in many ways, better for it. And in the worse ways — well, it can always be worse, right? "You take the good, you take the bad…" (That's right. I'm doling out life advice using "The Fact of Life" theme song.)

Worse is just a state of mind. Just as there is no ceiling to the glories of life, there is no floor either.

We can't be scared of the future. We can't look at change as a negative, as a stress maker, as a fear. Life is about change. And we are made of stronger stuff than to succumb to paralyzation.