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30 March 02 Eep, I suddenly have too many things to do, and now I don't know what to work on first. I need to finish up the last couple of things on this Linux box, which I should have done already. I need to clean my apartment and put laundry away, which has been sitting out for a week. Dishes are dirty, my resume is only halfway updated, my painting isn't finished, I need to go to the gym, I'd like to go to Murray & Gnat's housecooling party, need to strip these non-working computers of good parts then get rid of them, finish watching the movie I'm in the middle of, shower, and go out tonight. Phew, I think that's it. Why do I procrastinate so much? I know I do it and really wish I wouldn't, but yet I keep thinking I'll stop procrastinating tomorrow. 28 March 02 My car has two headlights. One does not work and the other points upwards. I should get that fixed sometime. 23 March 02 My post from March 18 set me to thinking more about love, and I've been trying to figure out what I wanted to say here. I've got a bunch of thoughts of this topic but I'm not sure if I can put them together in a way that both makes sense and might interest a reader. But I suppose whatever I write here is as much for myself as it is for anyone else, so here goes. I think I've only been in love twice. (There may have been a third time, but I was only a teenager and you don't know anything at that age, and whatever I thought was love back then was probably just self-esteem issues anyway.) By 'being in love', I mean having an intense emotional and physical connection with another person, and feeling like there is no other person in the world with whom you would rather spend the rest of your life. The first time I felt this way I ended up marrying the other person; the second time was with Tim. I wonder about people who have been 'in love' numerous times, especially if they're young. How is that possible? Sure, you can *love* someone you are dating, but that's different from being *in love*. Knowing how difficult it is to find someone you feel so strongly about and who returns those feelings makes me think these other people are confusing the two. Maybe their standards are much lower than mine. Or maybe I'm just broken? During the past five years since I was last in love, I've dated several people but I haven't been in love with any of them. Why is that? Well, partially because I was making bad relationship choices. Not dating bad people, per se, but rather, choosing to date people who were too young and/or in a different place in their personal growth than I. After many failed relationships I have gotten a bit jaded, but I also wonder if I am still capable of love? When getting to know people in any sort of friendship it takes me a little while to let my guard down and open up. I need to get comfortable with someone and know I can trust them before I can really talk about deep-down feelings. With that in mind I suppose that it takes me proportionally as long to fall in love. It has to grow and develop, and it isn't there at first sight. Surely it's not a bad thing to move slowly in this respect? I guess I haven't yet been presented with the right opportunity to be in love. I can only hope that I'll be open to it when it comes around. 20 March 02 I got to play with an alligator today! About a month ago I started volunteering at the San Francisco Zoo. I work one day a week in the Animal Research Center, where we house the 80-odd mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians used in various education programs. Sure, I have to help with the grunt work, but I also get to play with the animals! So far I have worked with chinchillas, opossums, ferrets, a parrot, a variety of snakes, a legless lizard, frogs, salamanders, turtles and tortoises, two species of porcupine, two species of armadillo, a wallaby, a kinkajou, and the aforementioned alligator! Our mornings are spent cleaning the animal pens and cages, collecting and recording uneaten food from the night before, and feeding morning meals. By the time we're through with that it's about noon, and I usually go for a walk around the zoo visiting the other critters. During the afternoon we handle as many of the animals as possible - talking them for walks, bringing them outside to soak up some sunshine, and keeping them socialized and used to human contact. At the end of the day we feed evening meals and lock everyone up for the night. These animals are not only cared for better than most pets, they're cared for better than most humans. And to top off my day, I saw a dolphin swimming off Ocean Beach as I rode home up the Great Highway. It was the first wild dolphin I've seen in California waters! 18 March 02 During the summer of 1996 I met a guy who embodied so many of the things I wanted in a significant other. Tim and I started off a bit shyly, but within several months we were in love with one another. While our relationship may not have been perfect, it was, to date, the most intense and passionate relationship I have ever been in. Friends who spent time with us commented they could feel the energy generated when we were together. After a year, things unfortunately changed and we split. The months after the breakup were the most difficult and painful time of my life (for reasons in addition to the breakup), and I spent the following three years in various stages of trying to be just friends with Tim, falling back into intimacy, and needing to have space and not wanting any contact with him. Finally, over a year ago, we had one last talk about "us" and we determined it wasn't going to work, and once we had that talk I was finally able to relax and treat this as a "normal" friendship. Tim and I continue to be friends, but there is something that frustrates me about the way he and I interact. I'm not sure if it is due to so much past emotional turmoil, if he no longer sees me as a close friend, or if it's just my self-esteem running away with its tail between its legs, but I feel like I should be a bigger part of his life, and that he should at least occasionally spend time with me. Am I wrong in thinking that two people who in the past have shared incredible energy between them should be able to keep up a close friendship? Maybe I should take a step backwards and ask myself why I want this attention. I do know we are not right for each other, so I'm not trying to get back together with him. Am I jealous that he spends time with his other friends and I think I deserve some of his time as well? The black and white of either dating someone or no longer speaking to them are easy. It's this grey area of continuing to be friends with someone for whom you've previously had intense feelings that is the difficult part. 17 March 02 I think I've figured out where my time goes. Or at least why it goes. Back when I was a productive member of the workforce I really valued my time off, and if I had no plans for a particular evening I would spend that time relaxing at home. Now that I have no job, I seem to have substituted exercising for work in my daily schedule. I wake up, eat breakfast, check email, then head out to the gym for a couple of hours. When I return home, I've fallen into the habit of pretending like I was at work all day and simply switch over into lazy mode. Now that I know why I am wasting so much time, maybe I can use that info to better change the way I spend my time. Funny how by default we all seem to fall into some sort of schedule. Living things in general feel more comfortable adhering to some sort of regular cycle. I assume this is a base instinct; all lifeforms, even non-sentinent ones, operate in cycles. Plants have daily, seasonal and annual cycles, and even homeless people display regular routines. Animal behaviour is quite fascinating. Speaking of fascinating, peoples' behaviour in general so intrigues me. As a rule, my friends aside, I think people suck. But I can't help but observe and study them, wondering why they do what they do, and waiting for their next move. And every once in awhile I meet some really amazing person who I like and want to include in my life and I am able to transfer them from the "sucky" category over to the "friends" pile, and that makes life just a little bit better. 11 March 02 I've done it! I've changed my hair! Friday afternoon I walked down to De Kroon's salon near Union Square where the wonderful Jeremiah snipped off six or eight inches and gave me the shortest hair I've had in over a dozen years! I love this new cut! It's light, layered and looks good messy, which is great when you wear a motorcycle helmet. I thought cutting off half of my hair would take several days to get used to, and possibly even be somewhat traumatic, but no! I instantly liked the style and never regretted it one bit. The tranformation was completed this evening after Susan dyed my hair. I chose a medium copper color, but due to the current conditions of my hair (bleached blonde roots, hot pink ends), it is now a copper gradation - rich reddish copper at the ends fading to a light copper at the roots. But I like it! It's going to take two or three colorings for the pigment to settle in my hair and for the color to even out, but that's okay. It's already turned out much better than I expected. Yay! 9 March 02 When you're unemployed, or otherwise have a lot of free time, you begin to be creative about filling up your days. One easy way to do this is to simply take a lot longer to do anything, thus stretching out your tasks so that they occupy more time. I fear that maybe I've learned to do this a little too well as I now never seem to have enough time to get anything done. I'm definitely more motivated now than when I first was laid off from work; I've sucessfully assimilated my new activities (gym, cooking, volunteering) into my everyday schedule but I tend to waste a lot of my additional time instead of working on projects and accomplishing things. Also, chat tends to eat of large portions of my day, and, not coincidentally, my brain. I want to set a new goal for myself - to better manage my time, to get more done, to accomplish things. I should be able to do this without sacrificing the wonderful relaxation and laziness which unemployment affords me. 2 March 02 Addendum: I've just gotten the Linux box up and working (with a little bit of help, since you apparently can't do this yourself the first time) and I feel so much better now. Tomorrow, I will try configuring different things on it for a whole new kind of headache! ;) 2 March 02 I am so full of self-doubt right now. I feel like I'm not capable of things I should be, and that's frustrating. Yesterday was spent skiing at Sugar Bowl, and maybe thinking too much about why I'm not better at it. On February 17, I wrote about my concerns as a scuba diver; yesterday I was being overly critical of my skiing. I don't think I would call myself a perfectionist, but I do want to be good at whatever it is that I do, so I try to determine what is wrong and correct that. So what *is* wrong? Why am I not a better skier? Two reasons I can think of, 1) I'm not yet in shape, and 2) I don't practice enough. I am working on both of these things, so you'd think I'd be satisfied that I am working to some sort of goal. But then I began to wonder if I'm not seeing the forest for the trees? Am I missing out on the fun of these sports (and possibly other things in my life) because I'm too busy thinking about why I'm not better? This past week I've been working on setting up a Linux server for a friend. I volunteered to do this because I've never actually set up a Unix/Linux box before, and I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to learn. Sure, I guess I am learning, but the curve is steep and I've run into so many different problems along the way. I try one thing and it doesn't work so I try a different thing, but before I can do that I have to fix this other thing which requires another thing which I don't have, etc. So I return to step one and start over again, only to be thwarted at the next turn. I'm ready to give everything back and throw up my hands in defeat just so I no longer have to deal with this headache. But that's not right. If I do that, I will have proved myself incapable and will have lost the battle. So I trudge on - I am the blind person trying to connect the dots. And on a related tangent, why am I not concerned about finding a job? I plan on beginning to look in April and ideally I will start a new job at the end of May. That sounds like plenty of time for me to find something, right? Maybe not, and that's why I think I should be concerned. I know many people who have looked for four, six, eight months before finding a job for themselves, and others who still haven't been able to find anything after that long. So why don't I start looking now? Because I am not ready to go back to work; I have so many things taking up my time (including sleep and relaxation!), and again, self-doubt. I've seen so many of my very intelligent, hard-working friends come up empty-handed in the job market, and I just assume that will happen to me. I assume I will not be able to find a job so I forego the entire worry/depression/frustration/panic phase by not looking and just enjoying my time off while I can. Sigh. 25 February 02 Things I learned about myself today: 1. I need to become a better (inline) skater. 2. I am indeed made of flesh, blood and nerve endings. 3. It is weird to cut off a large piece of your own skin, even if it's about to fall off and you can't feel it. 4. I need to learn more about configuring *n*x systems, and quick. 23 February 02 More and more often now, I am getting the urge to change my look. I shouldn't be afraid of it, really. If I end up with something I don't like, I can always change it back. And better to make occasional changes to your appearance than to make none at all. For too many years I've had pretty much the same haircut. The length varies from kinda long to really long, and the bangs come and go, but I'm starting to think it's time for something more drastic. So what's holding me back? Well, I think my hair is one of my best qualities and to suddenly cut a bunch of it off and lose that, well, that scares me! I need to gather more courage. I'd like to know how differently I'd be treated with "normal" colored hair - would I then be indistinguishable from 'everyone else'? If so, would I want that? What if it is only my hair color that makes me different from other people? Is that what I'm scared of finding out? I wish a was a chameleon person with a dozen different looks and styles. I'd put up my hair and throw on a disguise before going out, then quietly sit back and observe the reactions of others. 19 February 02 Well, whaddya know? It's raining outside. AGAIN. Aren't we about to be washed out to sea or something? (I probably wouldn't mind it so much if my primary mode of transport wasn't a bleedin' motorcycle.) But these storms are dumping more snow on the ski slopes, so I'll shut up now. Over the past couple of months I've set several goals for myself. One was to get a job by April. Well, that's now been changed. I really enjoy not having to work, and my days are filled with getting enough sleep, going to the gym, painting, working on little projects, watching movies, spending time with friends, and more. I don't have enough time in my schedule to fit in a job, and tell you the truth, I'm not yet ready to make the time. When I accepted the volunteer position at the Zoo I committed to working there one day a week until Memorial Day, so I have changed my target date of employment to after Memorial Day. My unemployment benefits will be running out about then so that will give me additional impetus to get a job. Another goal was to lose ten pounds by my birthday, also in April. I've lost six in the past four weeks and I am having absolutely no problem continuing to eat healthy and exercise regularly. In fact, since I spend so much time at home, I've been cooking my own meals and I've been eating so much really yummy, yet low-fat food that's very good for me. And not coincidentally, that means I've accomplished a different goal - to pay attention to what I am eating, and eat healthier! Heh, the only bad thing about that is that I'm generating quite a few dirty dishes. 17 February 02 Wow, that was a lot of work. I've just returned from a weekend in Monterey, where I assisted with two dive certification classes. Lately I've been religious about keeping up with my gym schedule, and I was a little worried about not exercising on both Saturday and Sunday. What was I thinking?! First off, to offset the buoyancy of my Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man-style wetsuit, I am wearing 30 lbs. of lead around my waist. Then because I would like to breathe while I'm underwater, I have a ~30 lb. tank of air strapped to my back. I have to walk down a flight of stairs and across the sand wearing the aforementioned wetsuit and gear to reach the water where I proceed to swim for 30 minutes. Don't forget the trek back across the sand and up the stairs when the dive is complete. And I did four dives on Saturday and two earlier today. I think I got my weekend workout! I realized today that I am not completely mentally comfortable diving in cold water, and that bothers me. To date, I've racked up over 120 dives, and at least 30 of those have been in the Monterey area. Additionally, not only am I trained to assist and rescue students (and other divers) in distress, but I am liable for their well-being when we're working together in a class. Yet I have identified times when I start to feel nervous or uneasy underwater - times when conditions are rough, visibility is poor, or I am having slight difficulties with my dive. (It's kinda spooky when you can only see 20 feet ahead of you and there are huge shadows, which end up being kelp or rocks, looming on the periphery.) I feel this coming on and I deal with it - I don't let it affect my diving, nor do I let anyone in on this dirty little secret of mine. But there have been times where, for instance, I am in a hurry to get to shore and get out of the water when I realize what I'm doing and stop; I need to make sure the students are okay and more importantly, I have to be attentive and able to react immediately if someone is having a problem. There's a big possibility that this may be related to physical comfortableness. Big, thick wetsuits aren't the most comfy things to wear, I can barely move on land when toting 60-70 lbs. of gear on my back, and frankly, I do not like being cold. I'm thinking and hoping that wearing a drysuit while diving will lessen or even eliminate the physical difficulties I'm having, and then that would all translate to a calmer mental state and right now, I am this far |__| from splurging on a good drysuit. I feel bad that I'm not as at ease as I believe I should be. I hope I'm handling things right, the way I'm trying to conquer the nervousness I sometimes have. I hope I'm not in over my head. 15 February 02 A lazy Friday night. I had a good workout and just finished a yummy dinner of pasta primavera with turkey, and now I'm relaxing for another hour or so before I go to bed. I need to get up at waytoofreakingearly in the morning tomorrow, so that I can drive to Monterey to assist with a dive class. This is the first class I am working with in a professional capacity (vs. an internship), yay! V-Day, aka "Singles Awareness Day", was spent DJing at the DNA Lounge. A bunch of friends came out to support me (which I thought was wonderful), everyone in attendance seemed to be in a great mood, and I really had a blast! I spun two sets - the first was a mix of at least four different genres of music and ranged from about 80 to nearly 150 bpm. I put hard, grinding industrial next to thumping psy-trance and pounding thrash metal, and all of that was spun alongside grooving, danceable downtempo. Even though this was supposed to be an "industrial lounge", I had people dancing to music from each genre which only served to reinforce the point of that set - labels are arbitrary and these other genres which you may lash out against are just a riff away from what you normally listen to. My second set was originally slated to be a lot of old, very obscure industrial music, but ended up being at least 50% psy-trance! People seemed to really enjoy it, and I took that opportunity to practice my beatmatching. This was my first club gig in just over two years! Many times people have asked if I miss it, and up until last night, my answer was always no. After six years of DJing one to three times per week, spinning had come to be all work and no play, and I could never do anything else on Saturday nights. But I had a good time last night playing only songs *I* wanted to play (no more catering to lame requests!) that I realized I wouldn't mind playing out every few months. But (there's always a 'but') I would want to spin psy-trance, which means I need to get a lot better at beatmatching and segues, and do I have the patience for that, and do I want to try to break into a new scene as a DJ? I guess I'll wait and see what happens. 12 February 02 I am stealing this idea because I thought it was cool. A good way to see how things have changed in my life. About 10 years ago I... 1. Was living in Mtn View. 2. Was about to get married. 3. Had never been outside the US or Canada. 4. Worked at Stanford University in an adminstrative-type job. 5. Fell in love with the Internet. About 5 years ago I... 1. Was living in my current apartment in S.F. 2. Had been unmarried for about 3 years. 3. Had been to Europe twice and Mexico 4 times. 4. Unhappily worked at a PR agency doing desktop support. 5. Was still recovering from the worst time of my life. About 2 years ago I... 1. Quit being a club DJ. 2. Worked for Ziff-Davis/ZDNet. 3. Just returned from my tenth trip outside the US/Canada. 4. Was seriously thinking of moving to Fiji for 6 months. 5. Started keeping an online journal. About 1 year ago I... 1. Was working towards my Divemaster certification. 2. Loved my job working for IT/Ops at TechTV and was making a decent amount of money. 3. Was about to embark on my fourth trip to Europe. 4. Felt sad and lonely, in regards to relationship issues. 5. Got involved with a new (to me) IRC channel and made a bunch of new friends. Today I... 1. Am happily unemployed, but poor. 2. Feel like so much of a deeper person than ever before. 3. Look forward to tomorrow, my first day volunteering at the zoo. 4. Struggle to lose the weight I've gained in the past year. 5. Share my apartment with a friend of the feline persuasion. 8 February 02 Got home from the gym not long ago, and now I'm sitting here forcing food down my throat. A side effect of eating a lot of healthy foods means I'm eating a lot of low-calorie foods - vegetables, lean meats, etc. Because I'm training myself to eat right, watching portion sizes and the like, I started keeping track of everything I eat, and in doing so I've come across this interesting situation - I am not eating enough calories! I am full, yet I've only eaten 1300 calories for the day, plus I spent 1.5 hours at the gym. I want to make sure my body doesn't go into "starvation mode" if I don't eat enough, but at the same time, I have to be very careful to not fall back into bad eating habits, so even though I'm not hungry, I'm forcing down healthy food. Weird. I wonder how long this will last. 6 February 02 I would really like a new computer. A nice G4 - it doesn't even have to be top of the line. But in the meantime what I really want is to resurrect my G3 Powerbook. I soaked the keyboard in distilled water for a day, hoping to dissolve any of the Diet Coke gook that may have dried inside. I *hope* that's all that's wrong, but unfortunately I think there may also be power supply issues. Hrmpf. Back on January 20 I posted three goals that I set for myself. (I post things like that because if I talk about it, then I have to do it!) And I have been keeping to my goals - in the past 2.5 weeks I've been eating very healthy, I've been going to the gym regularly and I'm already making noticible progress in both my cardio and weight workouts, and I've lost three pounds. The latter doesn't sound like much, but that simple fact leads me to believe that I'm losing fat and not water weight. Plus, I'm right on schedule to lose those ten pounds by April. Tomorrow I go to the zoo for a volunteer orientation and I get to see what sort of opportunities and hours are available. I'm excited about that! After orientation I go to the gym for a nice 1.5 hour workout, and then to the dive shop where I continue to divemaster and assist with a class. A busy day, but busy with good, interesting things. 30 January 02 Last night, for the first time during this current bout of unemployment, I felt bored. It was too early to go to bed, I didn't feel like doing anything, and then I started getting lonely, which is depressing. But today! Today was just wonderful! Riding my motorcyle down Sloat Blvd. on my way out to the zoo, I looked towards the ocean - calm and dark blue, topped with a clear, blue sky, it was just spectacular this afternoon! Looking due West, you could even see the Farallon Islands plain as day. (When I was a little kid growing up in Daly City, I would look out the windows of our house on clear days and see the Farallons. I thought they were Hawaii. It seemed like so far away back then!) My visit to the zoo was just as nice. It is about 2/3 of the way towards being completely renovated, and is really looking like a quality habitat, in stark contrast to the small wire and cement cages which housed the animals as I was growing up. Everytime I go there, they've done something new and the animals look happier. Being a weekday, there weren't very many people about. I wandered through the new Children's Zoo where I was almost spat upon by a llama, watched river otters, lions and tigers being fed, and then talked to their keeper afterwards. We talked a little about working at the zoo and volunteer opportunities and then it struck me - why don't I work at the zoo?! I don't know why I'm not a zoologist or a marine biologist right now. I love animals more than anything else in the world, and I have been studying them since I could first read. I've kept lizards, snakes, birds, cats, dogs, and even a pot-bellied pig as pets. I would absolutely love to work with animals! So, next week I go to the zoo for a volunteer orientation, and see where that lands me. Of course, volunteering at the zoo isn't going to pay my bills and I would have to work my way up the ladder before I could even get a (low) paying job, so I have no idea if this would ever become a primary career. But there's no reason why I can't enjoy myself, get some real experience caring for critters, and most importantly, contribute towards the quality of life of some of my non-human friends. After making the decision to work there as a volunteer, I got on my bike and rode home via the Great Highway and through Golden Gate Park. It's days like this that make me so happy that I live in San Francisco. 29 January 02 It's about three in the afternoon as I begin to write this, and I am feeling great! I just returned from my gym workout and a bit of grocery shopping, and am now eating a tasty, healthy lunch. I still have most of the day ahead of me, and I'll probably spend it relaxing and working on projects around the house; continuing the alone time I had all day yesterday. It's amazing how simply taking good care of yourself can make you feel so good, and in addition to that there's the snowball effect - the more you do it the better you feel, and it makes you feel so good you keep doing more. Yay! Now I am going to go take a nice, hot bath. 27 January 02 This entry is being typed on my old, s l o w , 603e machine as I seemed to have ruined my G3 Powerbook :( Yesterday, I tipped over a Diet Coke, which spilled everywhere, including into the keyboard of the laptop. I dried off what I could, powered the machine off, and turned it upside-down so that any remaining droplets wouldn't find their way deeper into the machine. Upon powering ol' "Anteater" up once again, I discovered that the HD, motherboard and trackpad are fine, but the keyboard does not work. <insert appropriate profanity here> I just finished watching The Thin Red Line. Yet another after-effect of my trip to Auschwitz is that I have become very interested in war movies. Not simply movies depicting a battle, but rather, movies describing the psychological aspects of war. War is not a good thing, and I may even go so far as to say that in most cases it isn't even necessary; I don't consider shows of power, bullying, or egotism to be "necessary", nor is it necessary to try and make other countries conform to your standards, but I digress. As much as I think people in general are stupid and on a path of self-destruction, at the same time I am fascinated by their behaviour and I just want to know more about why they would do the things they do. There is a psychology to war, an art and a science to strategy and leadership, that is astounding. To be able to get people to give up their own lives for something so ridculous, that's amazing. It seems like such a better solution to have everyone set their guns down, go home, and relax. On a more cheerful note, this past week I've been able to go diving in Monterey, skiing in Tahoe, I finished another painting, and I am continuing to go to the gym! In fact, I've been so busy outside the house these past two weeks that it's time for me to spend some time alone; I've dedicated this coming Monday (and maybe even Tuesday) to relaxing at home and not going out at all. Mmmmm. 20 January 02 Right now i am trying to retain the motivation I had yesterday after Susan convinced me to go to the gym! It was my first visit in months. I have no reason for not going for so long, other than being lazy. But it's time for me to stop being lazy, and I am going to create some goals to help with my motivation. I will be working towards the following:
Today consisted of a different sort of motivation. Indra wanted to be around a group of girls this afternoon, so she, Molly, Susan and I met up for brunch in the Haight, then made our way to Ocean Beach where we walked along the water for an hour, bundled up against the wind and the cold, and were rewarded with a beautiful yellowy-pinky-orange sunset (in addition to each others' company!). Standing there on the sand, I would look around and stare at the water. I felt so lucky to be living in California, in a city where if you felt like it, in a few minutes you could be there next to (or in) THE OCEAN! I love the ocean so much. Such a dichotomy - calm and serene, or turbulent and deadly. The place from where all life has come, yet it can kill you in an instant. So amazing, unexplored, and misunderstood. I was born in a seaside city. For the first nine years of my life, I could look out our front window and see the Pacific, and since then I have always lived no futher than a 30-45 minute drive from the ocean. In fact, I don't think I could ever live far from it for any extended amount of time. And tomorrow I go diving and be part of the ocean, if only for an hour :) 17 January 02 It's only mid-January, and I've already accomplished one of my annual goals - to leave the US at least once per year. This trip was a drive to Rosarito, Mexico, where I spent Tuesday afternoon, and then back through Tijuana where I picked up a couple of friends who were wrapping up a three-month holiday. It was just a quick, two-day jaunt, but it made me happy, nevertheless. Seeing as I'm unemployed right now and I don't expect to have both the time and the money to take a decent vacation once I become re-employed, this little trip will have to suffice. Well, I will be going to Burning Man this year, as a member of the newly-formed Black Rock City Coast Guard! I am really happy with our camp theme, and it coincidentally fits perfectly with the overall BM theme of "The Floating World". Gak, I shouldn't be watching TV while I write; I keep getting distracted. Huh, what was I talking about? I've been doing more painting and loving it! I finished a small painting of Kisa, I'm almost done with an English cottage, and I'm about to start on a picture of Kalita as a puppy. I'm so excited, and now i want to paint pictures for all of my friends! 9 January 02 Today I felt like seeing part of the City, so I packed up my camera and walked over to Chinatown. I decided that I didn't care if people thought I was a tourist, and wandered around taking a bunch of photos, ducking into the occasional shop to see if I could find anything interesting. And I did! I ended up buying a decorative dagger with a curvy, notched 18" blade and a dragon on the handle. From there I walked to Union Square and bought a new pie plate, then to the art store where I picked up a nice box full of acrylic paints and brushes. After coming back home, I went into cleaning mode and gave the kitchen a once-over. All this is part of the renewed motivation I began experiencing last month. Since then I have: thoroughly cleaned my living room and kitchen, painted my living room, gotten rid of a bunch of clutter, created myself a new website design, done a bit of acrylic painting, and more. And I still have a slew of things I want to do in the next couple of weeks. I'd better be careful or with all of this motivation, I'm going to end up with a job! But what's really important is that it feels so good to do all of these things; it even feels better than just sitting around and relaxing *all* the time. 8 January 02 Wouldn't it be cool if people had pouches, like a kangaroo? You wouldn't need to have pockets or carry a purse because you could put your keys and wallet into your pouch. And it would be better than a purse because you would never accidentally forget it. Some people, of course, would want to decorate their pouches with tattoos or piercings. But then there would be the others - the folks with poor hygiene would most likely be the ones with linty pouches, and sticky candy bits lost in the deep corners. You'd see ads touting pouch deodorant and "PouchMaster" exercise equipment. I think about things like this. I think about a lot of things, maybe even too many. I've been thinking about work lately. Or rather, I've been trying to not think about work, yet it has begun to start eating away at the back of my brain. I'd like to take another couple of months off before going back to work, but with the way the job market's been lately I have a feeling it's going to take me a couple of months to find a job, so I'd better start looking soon. I wish I was independently wealthy and didn't have to worry about this work stuff. | |||
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