Can't Keep It In
(18-27 November 2002)

27 November 2002
-Amy & Aaron were in town earlier today, so we took them to what's rapidly becoming the default non-dinner locale (Sconehenge).  It's a cool place & we had a good time catching up with the old New Yorkers.
-The day before Thanksgiving's not such a busy time at Chapman, or much of anywhere else work-oriented or school-oriented, I'd imagine.  The road home, I hear, will be a different story.
-In a meta note, this is the 81st consecutive entry from one location, which I'm pretty sure has to be a record.  I should double-check some streaks from Summer 2001, but I'm awfully certain that with debate tournaments & everything else, that's a high water mark.  Even though I drive 66 miles a day every day I come to work in Fairfield, I've slept in Berkeley for 81 straight nights (if I've slept, but you get the point).
-& now we have your meta-historical follow-up.  The previous record for consecutive days Introspected in one place was 51 days, in Albuquerque, from late June till early August 2001, bracketed by visits to Elephant Butte with Fish & the Grand Canyon with Ariela.  The brackets for these 81 days will both be Clovis, as we're headed there late tonight for the ol' giving of thanks.

26 November 2002
-The referring thing at the bottom of this page is reminding me that most people come from their own bookmarks or by re-typing the address of the page in themselves.  & most of my Google-search hits are not based on this page, but in the (now 98) archives of this page, or the Waltham Weekly, or the old EDPOP.  So be it.
-It would seem that my workplace is much more conservative than my old school.  Not something one notices until certain small discussions.
-Quiet.  I feel like things are almost too quiet.
-Okay, so the surficial quiet is explained by 4 of the 7 classes tonight being cancelled.  Tomorrow's going to be even more absurd I'm sure.  But there's a deeper calm-before-storm quiet underlying that somehow it seems.

25 November 2002
-It's two for the price of one time!  The Search of the Week for the past 2 weeks has finally been updated.  Sorry about the delay.
-So I get to work to find that my boss isn't here (& may not be here all day) & there's a message on my phone for me.  Likely that tells me what to do today if there's anything important to take care of.  Trouble is, my password doesn't work for my voicemail anymore.  Maybe Mesco & Lisha hacked it again like long ago & far away (after all, it's the same 4-digit password as it was back then), but who would change my work voicemail password of all things?  It seems like an utterly random thing to have not function.  So now I'll just sit & wonder & hope she doesn't ask me why x wasn't done while she was out.
-To echo a posting from Em's page, please send me your physical mailing address if you think I might not have it & you like the idea of getting "snail" mail from Emily &/or me.  More I cannot say.  For now, just e-mail the addresses please.
-More junk now adorns the bottom of this page.  For now.  It's trendy, but I kinda like the results on Kate's & Amy's pages.  May be for a limited time, so refer while it's hot!

24 November 2002
-2:30 am dialogue in front of the TV 'round here... Me:  "Did you relate to that commercial?"  Emily:  "No, but I'm not stupid!"

23 November 2002
-The heater in our apartment, when on, periodically makes this single sound that's exactly the noise a ping-pong ball makes when it hits the ground.  Most of the times I heard it from the computer early this morn, I was instantly struck by a vision of the cat playing with a ping-pong ball.  I kept having to remind myself that we don't have any ping-pong balls.  Why the vision of Pandora with said item is so vivid eludes me.  Just proof of how sound can convey something.

22 November 2002
-I'm starting to believe there's something seriously wrong with my eating.  Not what I eat, but how I eat.  My whole life, I've pretty much been either full or starving.  It's taken me a long time to discover that this is abnormal in humans.  But more & more, my 2 stomach settings are becoming nauseated & starving, & sometimes both.  This is a lot like the "food allergies" I used to get back in HS, but it's hard to pinpoint a causal category.  Is it time to go vegan?  To stop eating altogether?  Right now, it's just time to be frustrated with food.
-Lots of people take this page more seriously than necessary from time to time.
-More support for the theory that Loosely Based is the fastest read ever.

21 November 2002
-Early in the writing process, when a plot is first making the arduous trip from idea to paper (or in this case, Works screen), the whole project is nagging.  It has its joys, but mostly when one thinks of the need to write, it's a duty, an obligation, one must bring justice to the original idea, breathe some life into it, make it whole.  But there comes a certain stage (at least in novels) when a corner is turned... the groundwork is suddenly finished & one has developing characters & the steel mainframe of a plot & the hardest parts of translation are done.  Usually this is pretty early on in the writing, even though getting to that corner can take forever.  Then, the fun suddenly begins, & the real pleasure part of writing kicks in.  It's when the characters start talking back to the author, take on minds & lives of their own, start driving the plot themselves like a hijacked car.  & the ride can be wild & exhilirating, because the less planned stage is the best part.  I used to think, quite a while back, that the less planned stage was all of writing.  That I could just live there forever, letting stories & books drive madcap, Mr. Toad's wild ride style, all over pages, without a care in the world.  But the planning is pivotal, it makes sure that the 50 snippets of idea I come up with every year get strained down into 3 or 5 or 10 workable plot aspects.  But once that's done, & written, it sure can be fun to write!  Whee!
-There are a very few small ants in the Chapman Fairfield campus, but they all love to hang out on & in the water fountain.  Sure, I guess these ants are living la vida dehydration & thus their attraction, but it's a dangerous game.  Every time a human relieves their thirst, half the fledgling colony gets washed away.  For a species that's been around so long, ants are pretty dumb.
-In a metablogging note, boo to Beth for taking down her rambly rant that I may have been one of the only people to read.  I thought it was a beautiful portrayal of how horrific & confusing it can be to be a thinking/caring person in the world & get all caught up in it.  Sure, not the most uplifting writing of the new century, but it was honest.  I'm always against alterations of these types of pages though, it's nothing personal.  Just the historian in me.
-The day is always better with a cup of coffee in hand.
-Today I will gross $120.00 in income, setting an all-time one-day record for me.  Though that would put me on an amazing 40-hour-a-week income pace, the Marin job continues to give me only nickels & dimes worth of work.  So it goes.
-I realized this afternoon how much I'd love to start a literary magazine.  Y'know, something really small-time, mostly by friends for friends to start out with.  Problem is, I don't really have the money to do it well & it would be no fun to do it poorly.  I could have it online, but then it's just giving up work to the whims of copy-n-paste from around the world.  I could do it in e-mail, but that just doesn't look cool.  I still think there's a good plan under there somewhere though.

20 November 2002
-Ah, the laws of Berkeley.  The rights we may have may be amazing.  More to follow, methinks.
-Lots of pages I read these days make me wonder how anyone ever thought I was that cryptic.  Veritable hieroglyphs on some of these byte-based wonders.
-2.5k bagged tonight for just shy of 8k total on ADO.  Yes, I'm still under 10% of LB & it's been slow, but over half of what I've got so far has been written this week.  Somebody say auspicious.

19 November 2002
-Getting the ol' bank statement is not good for collective confidence about making it financially.  No panic buttons yet, but it's amazing how easy it is to spend money without even trying.  Even when trying specifically TO NOT spend money.  Guess it's back to a lockdown on outside activities for a small bit.  At least until Marin wants to start giving me more than 3 hours a week of their estimated 200 hours over 3 months.
-Need to revamp the Exports page soon, including taking out Bragin, Sep, & (I guess) Pat.  I'd imagine a senior year at MIT takes more energy than one has spare for maintaining a webpage.
-Positively unreal is that Thanksgiving is in 9 days.  Certainly no lack of things to be thankful for, but I swear it was Halloween yesterday.  Man alive, etc.
-BASF, a random company that does something (I suppose), who brought you the phrase "we don't make a lot of the things you use, we make a lot of the things you use better"... the latest company in my Why-Do-THEY-Advertise? queries.

18 November 2002
-The Masters Myth about me at work appears to be spreading.  Dubious.
-I hear some vaguely good rumors from the team about Middlebury.  A tourney that's always been good to us.  My missing of debate is almost never-ending.
-Life throws people funky situations.  Sometimes extremely funky.  I guess the best advice is to get down, get funky.

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