A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
(31 May - 9 June 2004)

9 June 2004
-I know the Search of the Week is a thing of the past that I couldn't keep up, but I just have to share this one from last week:  how to convince my superior of the legitimacy of my needs.  Remarkably there are 12,600 sites that contain these words, & Introspection is currently #1.
-Worked a Wednesday, but didn't get the crazy ASP schedule because of a goodbye party for one of our kids.  Ultimately things went quite well, despite being totally exhausting.

8 June 2004
-One really does build up attachments to these kids.  I'm really going to miss the one leaving at the week's end.

7 June 2004
-It is actually worrisome to me how deep into 2004 we are.  The routine I'm in just makes time zing by.  Noooooo! I call out, reaching to catch it.
-That tire is flat.
-A couple days ago, I got summoned for jury duty!  I guess it's not tied to voting in our society after all, an interesting dilemma for my social contract theory.  Despite social contract complications, I think it would be an interesting challenge to try to get on the jury.  Given how hard it seems to be for debaters (& probably long-haired guys) to get on juries, I think I would really enjoy getting onto it.  Granted that finances would be more difficult, but I also think I would really enjoy the process of being on a jury.  The timing (early July) even seems feasible.

6 June 2004
Happy Birthday to Paul Garin III
-The whole Garin clan (15 strong these days) piled into San Francisco today for a great time of hanging out on the piers & then the birthday surprise (it's Dad-in-law's 60th) of taking everyone on an open-air old-school fire engine ride, replete with fire-fighter coats for all on board.  It crossed the Golden Gate Bridge twice & would've been perfect had the tour guide's target audience not been about 4 years old.  Of course, we had 4 passengers around that age, so I guess it worked out.  In the next few days, we find out whether Holly's fiance Aaron's dream of becoming a professional baseball player will come true.
-Well shortly after everyone split up, we recongregated at the Big Blue House as news was spread that Emily's maternal grandmother fell.  She's fairly okay it seems; broken arm but still thinking clearly & in positive spirits.  A tense hour or so was passed, but fortunately things seem to be all right.  Attentive calendar-checkers can observe further conclusions from this event.

5 June 2004
-Coming home last night from Rachel's celebration at a bar in Berkeley, I was waved down by the only car I could see for a good while in either direction.  The woman therein started pointing at my back tire, though it took me a while to realize that this was what she was indicating.  Turned out that my back right tire is dying.  It is, once again, extremely fortuitous that it didn't blow out completely because, once again, I was saved by a good-willed person in the city of Berkeley.  For reference to why all these once agains appear in this entry, check out 16 December 2002.  The only key difference is that this was the right rear tire as opposed to the left rear.  Given that I was about to get on a freeway overpass with a 2-foot shoulder (at 2:30 in the morning on a Friday night), I consider myself blessed by humanity's goodwill.
-I forget how different I am sometimes.

4 June 2004
Happy Birthday to Rachel Simonelli
-At 12:01 this morning, we (Em, Fish, Sarah, Stina, & myself) saw the joy that is the new "Harry Potter" film.  Emily was totally beyond exhausted, but was a great sport about it & even stayed up for the whole movie!  While I was disappointed with the pacing of the film... it would've been a classic had it been 3.5 hours & had more of the ambient down-time of the last 2 movies... the overall experience was still stellar.  & the final theme of the movie was truly excellent.  I came home almost wanting to start reading the books before remembering that I would read nothing else from now till 2008 if I started doing that.  Really.
-Starting to consistently win some money on PokerStars.  This is a potentially dangerous trend.

3 June 2004
Happy Birthday to Nikki Hay
-It seems that whenever I get too comfortable in my job situation, which isn't that comfortable given my general instability & day-to-day outlook on the world, my job makes sure to remind me how uncomfortable I can feel.  Usually, it has nothing to do with the kids & everything to do with some of the folks I work with who are pretty sure that we do an incredibly hard job that pays $11/hour for the money & so we can slack off.  Frankly, I'm fed up with it.
-On the brighter side, though, I did make $100 go a long way in buying gifts, cake, & ice cream for one of their birthdays.  I got a half-sheet cake, decorated, for $20 & seemed similarly charmed when making the rest of my purchases.
-In kickball, I dropped the ball.  In so many ways.  I have never felt so solely responsible for a sports team's loss.

2 June 2004
-Yesterday wound up hectic as all heck, with me picking up the van at one house, working for a while at another house, & finally ending up at a third house for most of the night.  As usual, even my long-seeming days pale when I realize what Emily does on any one of the 6.5 days she works a week.
-Cool.  I finally won something on PokerStars.
-The Taiwanese traffic is still coming in full force, by the way.  An actual majority of my unique visitors in the past 3 days are from .tw servers.
-It is useful to remember that, as Adam Duritz might say, some people are simply unpleasant people.  & perhaps more importantly, not everyone is meant to be friends with &/or like everyone else.  The planet finding peace & harmony does not require us all being best buds.  On the contrary, people recognizing that they don't have to get along is often useful for avoiding more major conflicts.  Sometimes it's nobody's fault, personalities can just be poison to each other.

1 June 2004
-Man, do I have an addictive personality!
-Driving south on 580 today, I saw a car with foam paint in the back window that said 2500 Dead, 9-11-2002, 53 Countries.  This sign seemed emblematic of the USA's whole perspective on the phenomenon of September 11th.  At first I thought there might be something clever or ironic to the sign (this is the Bay Area, after all), but with the obligatory antenna-bound American flag getting beaten up by the wind, I realized I was face-to-face with the emblem of American misunderstanding.  Careful readers may already have noticed that September 11th actually took place in 2001, not the year indicated by my lovely co-roadster.  But already people have found themselves unable to distinguish between the last 4 years.  September 11th is such a presence in everyday American perception that gung-ho patriots simply can't fathom that it was actually more than 2 & a half years ago.  We stand here in 2004, realizing that the American world-view is a stuck record saying that these four plane crashes changed the world forever.  While the only proof for that idea is found in the unending overreaction of America to the event & its infliction of this reaction upon the globe.  September 11th was less than 2 years ago, September 11th was always less than 2 years ago...

31 May 2004
-The Country Quiz has done something absurdly major in Taiwan, but I have no real idea what it is.  Internet addresses ending in .tw, the Taiwanese symbol, have been responsible for over half my hits in the last 36 hours, & responsible for giving me more hits lately than I've seen since the initial surge in the wake of the Book Quiz.  Yet there is no major referring website for any of these hits.  So strange.  I want to know what's going on in Taiwan!
-A Monday that eats like a Sunday.  Stellar.

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