Blowin' in the Wind
(28 September - 7 October 2004)

7 October 2004
-Today I decided to simply take the day off, after flirting with the idea of writing my notes in a timely fashion.  Ha!  It was fun & I don't regret it.  Now if I could resolve to be just as productive say, tomorrow, then I'd really be in good shape.  Again, I must say:  Ha!

6 October 2004
-Trainings & meetings are bound to drag once in a while & I really can't get hung up on it.  It's the weekend, after all.
-So there's a new poll (the first-ever poll at the Blue Pyramid) about what a possible fourth quiz might be from a list of things I feel qualified (to varying degrees, admittedly) to write quizzes on.  Everyone should vote & let me know what to do next!  You can find it on 5 different pages on-site, including the front page, each of the quiz pages, & the IA page.

5 October 2004
-I'm fiercely exhausted these days, but I can't really complain about the way things are going.  Work is hard, but just the right kind of hard, where it's challenging but not overwhelming.  I seem to be getting a little energy boost from the intensity of the season.  Everything seems to be falling just a tiny bit better into place.  & I seem to be sleeping less, which is almost always a good sign.
-A chill day, even getting home early!  Not too much to worry about.

4 October 2004
-Watching Mt. St. Helens spew steam on the TV brought back memories of being 3 months old; memories that I don't have.  Right.  Point is, it's one of those things that I associate with my earliest time on Earth because of my parents talking about it, though I of course have no actual memories before I was two or three years old.  Still makes me feel sentimental, which is an usual feat for volcanic activity.
-IntroSPOOKtion is back.  Not convinced about changing the background to black for a long time, but I probably will, though in the Archives it'll be back to the standard scheme.  What fun is the web if it can't be dynamic?  Everybody dresses up for Halloween.
-The new pic up top, by the way, is a snapshot from last year at the Berkeley place, with pumpkins carved by the 3 current Big Blue House residents.  Fish was in town then for a conference.  His pumpkin is center, with Em's left & mine right.

3 October 2004
-The day was almost perfect & then, as so often happens on Sunday, someone just couldn't handle going to bed.  Nonetheless, an hour of talking was all that was needed to turn things around.  Which made the day even better, since talking down a crisis is my vastly favorite part of my job.
-Came home to find Halloween decorations covering the Big Blue House.  How I love Halloween!  Makes me wonder if I started liking spooky things because of Halloween, or Halloween because of an innate affection for the spooky.

2 October 2004
-It's so hard to really put together how quickly time seems to be moving.  I may joke that my life is passing me by, but looking at the last few months while starting to archive is like a blur.  What felt like a week or so has comprised the past four months.  It's literally startling.  I know that this all gets faster as one gets older, but please can something slow it down?  Maybe some sort of accomplishment would help slow things down, or at least put them into perspective.  Curse my current isolated feeling of inability to effect real change!  I'm about to be forty, aren't I?
-Finally caught up with all that archiving, speaking of which.  By far, most of the time is spent in matching titles to 10-day periods.  It's like a little puzzle of the past, crafting the mosaic of how to remember.  Fitting.
-Gave "October Winter" a listen because, well, it's that time again.  A lot of it holds up remarkably well despite the fact that it was borne of one of my lowest times in my whole life & I'm now far from those days.  But I don't pretend to understand time today.

1 October 2004
-It is just so hard to be motivated today.  On that, I think we can all agree.
-October started a few days back, but you can really feel it now.  Of course I mean the October Season, which always seems to run from late September till who-knows-when in November.  But you know my relationship with October, or at least I do.
-"The Forgotten" was sorely disappointing.  It lacks the subtlety that's so essential to the genre it wants to be part of.

30 September 2004
-Well I couldn't look the opportunity to see history (or the M's again) in the mouth, so I went back to the Coliseum this afternoon to watch Ichiro hit #256, but no more.  One guy joked with me on the way out of the stadium about driving up to Seattle to see the weekend series in which he will almost undboutedly dispatch Sisler's record.  To make things worse, an extra-inning game (I love extra innings) was thwarted by Bobby Crosby (of the A's) hitting a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth.  Nonetheless, I have to admit it was a great game, being tied almost the whole time.  & Ichiro's at-bats were also tremendous to watch.
-Kerry didn't get his rear kicked nearly as badly as I thought he would in the first debate & in fact most folks seem to think he won slightly.  However, Bush could've made more of the line that truly summed up why Kerry has no better a plan for Iraq than Bush:  "What are you going to tell [these other countries], come join us for a grand diversion?"  More than anything, I came away from the debate realizing that not only will Kerry prolong the war in Iraq, but he very likely would start a war in North Korea as well.  Either way, we're getting 4 more years of war, folks.  Looks like Nader won the debate without even being there to me.

29 September 2004
-It's amazing what our program can do for those who just don't do well in other programs.  Maybe I'm just obsessed with each person's Table of Life Events.
-Well I've made several ultimate-denial claims of late about how no baseball has been played this year, a reaction to the combined horror of the Mariners' near-100-loss season & my fantasy baseball team being in the cellar by over 10 points.  But there is the Ichiro record-chasing as he seeks to break George Sisler's 84-year-old single-season hits record.  Tonight, I watched him get hit #255 (the record is 257, & there are 4 games left), helping the M's beat Oakland 4-2 in the Coliseum.  Paul IV & Em came along, & I spontaneously forgot where the MacArthur BART station is.  A great night overall.

28 September 2004
Happy Birthday to Jake Quicksall
-Trudge.  What an accurately descriptive word.
-Long days lately at work, but good ones.  & with the natural settling of routine come self-directed questions as to the nature of how long I can maintain at this job with it not feeling like a major challenge.  Am I destined to ping-pong between being to frustrated & too settled to want to continue as-is?  Is it time to take a leave-of-absence to write for 3 months?  At least I can be comfortable & unsure rather than angry & unsure these days.

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