Fixing a Hole
(22-31 March 2006)

31 March 2006
-My Dad & I challenge Hollywood to make a good epic movie about the bombing of Hiroshima.  I wouldn't mind seeing a modern & honest film about the Native American Genocide either, but that seems even less likely.

30 March 2006
Happy Birthday to Matt McFeeley
-Feeling really good for the first time in a while.
-Went to dinner with Em, Fish, & Jacqueline at a shmancy place in Berkeley for Fish's birthday.  Then we came back & played Metro, with Gris & Anna coming over to join in the fun.  I have now been Fish's friend for as many birthdays as I haven't been.  We're crossing over the tipping point of half our lives, though I don't know if you can count the summer of '95.

29 March 2006
[from Clovis, California]
-Held my own at the poker night, winning back my buy-in with a 3rd place out of 9 buy-ins.  Like a very high-stakes sit-&-go.  The first 90 minutes held perhaps the coldest string of cards I've ever seen in my life... I went two or three rounds around the table without seeing a card higher than a 9.  Truly amazing stuff.  But better that than playable cards that don't flop.
-There are definitely things I will miss about this post, but overall I recognize it's a good time to move on.  I'm sure I'll still end up doing a lot of work & random spot-duties over the next few months, but no one could reasonably call this full-time anymore.  Free again.

28 March 2006
[from Clovis, California]
-Came down on the train for the last time as an RMI employee, as I've decided to move on & seek out a job where I can regularly work with people rather than at home with a free-floating schedule.  It's the right call for all parties.  Was another relaxing trip & I'm working on training the person who will take on my duties.  I hesitate to call her a "replacement".

27 March 2006
-Today was difficult.  I'm beginning to get bogged down in something that I actually don't feel okay about posting here & I hope is a wild & crazy break from reality.  I could get more vague & probably should.  It's seeping into everything & as I stand on the brink of the April/May season, I'm apprehensive at best.  Going to Fresno tomorrow morning, for 1.5-2.5 days.  Hopefully upon return, I can get everything sorted back out in my head.  There's a lot of work to do.

26 March 2006
-I just had one of those dreams that makes you think you're having a vision of something that's going on in Iowa or somewhere in the world at that time.  It was an extremely vivid & engrossing dream that was essentially about a 7- or 8-year-old girl gunning down her entirely family, which consisted of two older brothers, her parents, & (sometime earlier perhaps) the family dog.  It was one of those dreams that was terrifying & gruesome to witness, & kept being there despite waking me up in fear when I fell back asleep perhaps 4 times consecutively.  It was so vivid & inescapable as to make me want to Google families that just showed up dead in the Midwest.  Much of the dream was actually me being shown photographs of the family, before & after, being able to walk around the crime scene after the shootings, &, perhaps most strangely & distressingly, interviewing the dead brothers where they were only able to give me cryptic clues about their past.  I am, uh, feeling a little shaky about all this.
-Saw "Inside Man" with Em, Gris & Anna, which I enjoyed as a sucker for negotiator movies, but certainly was disappointed by its overall lack of depth.  Then went to Pub Quiz at the Albatross with Em, Fish, & his mom.  Was a great time, & the "Connect Foursome" jumped out to a great start as our teams usually do, before fading from 2nd to oblivion through the music & picture rounds.  We ended up spending a good deal of time trying to determine what our Dream Team would be to win the Pub Quiz, & realized that we know the right people, but would need a team of about 8 people (the limit is 5).

25 March 2006
-What a great day!  Went to Chipotle for brunch, got 2 new board games (Metro & Citadels), played board games with Em's co-workers (discovering that Metro is an excellent addition to the collection), & headed over to Isaac & Mo's for a party centered around Apples to Apples rather than just drinking & small talk.  An actually fun party!  Good good times.

24 March 2006
-This may be the worst I've ever done at the NCAA bracket.  Two of my Final Four were out in the first round, one in the second, & my champion in the third.  Trouble.  Now I can just root for someone ... I guess Georgetown, Washington, & Florida are the teams left that I like.
-Pando showing the first signs of being unsettled...

23 March 2006
-One of the only things that keeps me sane is the fact that I've found other people in life that are similar in their idiosyncrasies & weaknesses & challenges so that I can discuss such things & achieve some sort of understanding.  If I were the only person with an addictive personality or who couldn't find a job that I really wanted to stick with for very long, I'd feel even more alone.
-I want to reiterate the importance of having something to look forward to in staying afloat in life.

22 March 2006
-As Em was leaving for work this morning, I had a sense that BART was going to be shut down & she'd be back shortly.  She called about 20 minutes later to report that "police activity" on BART was going to prevent her from getting to SF.  There's another thing I've been having a feeling about, & this one I really hope I'm wrong about.  But if I'm right, I'm loathe to put it in writing here lest people come looking for me claiming I had a connection.  Interesting times we live in.
-I'm getting weary of people saying that the methods we use to conduct war now are so much worse than in the old days.  The latest "Boston Legal" I watched (Em's gotten me hooked on too much TV) discussed someone's grandfather who was in WWII & how he would weep over torture & lying to start a war.  Really?  People who conducted the firebombing of the open civilian city of Dresden & the only two nuclear bombings in history would weep over some basement torture?  Doubtful.  This is so much of what sickens me about making distinctions between methods of war... it's all just farce.  Is it better to be shot in the head while in combat, shot in the head after surrendering, shot in 47 places, blown apart, shot in front of your family?  Who can make these distinctions?  I can see some hair-splitting about civilians being more valuable than combatants in a moral framework, but it still doesn't mean it's okay to kill combatants.  "War crime" is ridiculous when war is innately a crime against humanity.  Yes, it's terrible what the American army is doing in Iraq now.  But don't kid yourself... the US has always been using awful methods of asserting its power in war.  Always.  & war itself is an awful method.  The outrage should have always been there, & it should still be there.  But our prime outrage should be that "our boys" are killing, not that they're dying.  When America gets that, there might be some hope.

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