| 25 sep 2001 so after watching the ads for the "new and improved" chicken quesadillas at taco bell, i got two of them for lunch today. they're not any better. *sigh* AND, since i got them in mountain view and only started to eat them when i got back to the office, they were kinda cold, too, so that was a big detractor in their cheesy goodness as well. i feel guilty. basically last night, i went to taiko practice and asked to bail out of the performance today. megan, the coordinator, ok'ed my wishes, and they got visra to be added to the performer's list, and chris replaced me at backbeat. the worst thing is... megan baked me BROWNIES to thank me for my time and effort! and i'm not even playing anymore! that was a sad sad day, when i actually backed out of a chance to play taiko again. oh well. i did stay for most of the performance and gave some critiques and stuff. it looked pretty good. weird weather yesterday. i don't remember it raining as early as september. and, there was a beautiful lightning storm all night... as i drove up the 101 back home, i kept staring at the sky at the brilliant bolts that kept flashing. silent lightning. back home in dallas, thunder usually accompanies lightning, so there was lots of rumbling and crackles and stuff, but last night was just lightning, without thunder. kind of made it more beautiful and less scary, i guess. it got dark really early last night because of the cloud cover. kinda depressing. i hate winter because it gets dark so early. i swear i'm a plant or something, and i need the sunlight to photosynthesize and be happy. ever since i came back from japan, it takes me forever to fall asleep. i swear, i think and worry too much for my own good. i'm getting a lot of gray hairs. maybe it's genetic. when i was a little tyke, and my parents were not even 30, they used to pay me a dime (later it went down to a nickel) for each gray hair that i pulled from their heads. i earned a decent amount of change from my hair-plucking endeavors, and i also stored all the hair, too! i put them in this little plastic ufo container that came with a mcdonald's happy meal or something. now, i pluck my own gray hair; it's a little frustrating because i have to do it in front of a mirror, and my mirror coordination is a little off. but yeah, it takes me over an hour and a half to fall asleep. i get under the covers nice and early (like at 11 or 12), but i just lie in bed with my brain running at full speed. lately, my thoughts are slowly taken over by work. i got assigned a nontrivial block to design, and today, raghavan came in and bombed me with some added packed FIFO functionality that may kick my ass. oh well. i guess i'm being paid a nice salary to do some actual work (instead of writing in this journal and chatting with people on AIM), so now it's about time i buckled down and earned my money for real. yesterday, i checked my return flights on the united airlines webpage, and they came up "flight not found." i had this sinking feeling that those flights no longer existed due to the schedule cutbacks that the airlines have been implementing. soon enough, i got an e-mail from travelocity saying that my itinerary had changed. and my two flights back got replaced with a TRIPLE flight schedule! good god. damn. but things got worse when i glanced at the times, and i noticed that my third flight left denver BEFORE my 2nd flight arrived into denver! what kind of fucked up itinerary was this? so i called up travelocity, and was on hold for a total of SEVENTY MINUTES before i finally got it fixed... so now i have a two-flight trip on the way back, stopping in dulles. damn. dulles. in the nation's capital. kinda scary, i must say. something about flying into washington d.c. makes me a little shivery... i bet security is hella tight there. i think i'm ok about flying now. but now my big worry is that my flight will either be cancelled or arrive HELLA late, causing me to miss the next legs of my trip. what a fucking headache. i swear, i TRIED to find a direct flight from the bay area to la guardia. but i couldn't! what is a poor boy like me supposed to do? *sob* i can't get in touch with karen. she must be cramming her ass off for her exams. i got an e-mail back from jason today. (he was kristie's boyfriend after me.) nothing much to report, except that it doesn't weird me out at all to be corresponding to him. he's in new york, and he mentioned how if i wanted to do something "really weird," i should meet up with him for a drink. i don't think it's so weird. i dunno. i have no problem talking to people who are/used to be romantically linked to my women. he did say something about kristie and how she may have shed her silliness in return for professionalism. and i think that would be sad if it's true. people who are genuinely brilliantly silly and witty and smart in that way are really rare to find. and in a way, trading that in for a more generically-appreciated mature and "evolved" side is kind of like selling out to the mass public. it's a shame. jason mentioned how he thinks he knew kristie at her best time, and i think it's true... i think both of us should feel fortunate that we knew her back when she was just plain amazing, and not caught up with image and stuff like that. i grant the fact that realization of self in a societal context is important... we all have to grow up and become responsible and mature some time in our lives... if anything, we have to be capable of functioning properly in a family and in our workplaces and stuff. but that period in between childhood and adulthood is when we're at our most interesting, i think... where we start adding more adult capabilities and possibilities in our lives to our innocent outlooks; it's a good blend. i don't know if i'm making any sense. but it all just boils down to the fact that i think college is the coolest times of our lives. i'm chatting with rita now. she's bored. but she was extolling the virtues of stability. and that reminded me about jason and what he said about kristie... that she was searching for stability in herself. that even though she was off kilter and stuff, and that's what made her so alluring, it wasn't something she wanted in the end. la de da. i was also thinking (during the chat) about how life was two months ago... just two months ago. how i was mad about amms, and i was so engrossed with these new online acquaintances... wow! my, life does change really quickly, huh? my friend jack once made a point to say that my heart was fickle... that i develop crushes very easily. and i admit that. hm. (while chatting with rita) i have seem to have lost my train of thought. but yeah, life was much more interesting and exciting two months ago... it seems that ever since i came back from japan, my life changed or something. i haven't quite felt like myself ever since. i guess i have high expectations for my life. although i can't imagine why. i want life to be constantly stimulating, fun, and meaningful. but i guess that's a lot to ask for. yes, i am a greedy son of a bitch, heh. |