silent nights

i'm excited. and feeling good. i was feeling exhausted and horrible until i left campus, but when i plugged in my earphones and pumped up the volume on my house collection my spirits rose and things have been smooth since. i had a good, productive day in the (new) office*, had a very positive chat with mmf on my way to the old office, and life feels like it's on track.

* aside from tax issues: the fact that i work two jobs means that both my employers have to pay more taxes for me, and i get paid less to boot. i'm "fortunate" enough to be earning below the next tax bracket, and if i earned more than that such a large percentage would go to tax that it would reduce the incentive to work more hours to zero. what an intelligent system we live with.

---thursday night:

this thing about letting people know how much petrol it takes to start a car... it's like the starfish story.

intimacy on the bus: i was standing reading from my iphone in the middle of the practically empty bus when a man walked in, stood on my left and put his arm across to the pole on my right, leaving me approximately an inch of breathing space. after glaring at him for a minute, i asked him to let me out and stood on his left. i don't think he got the hint.

i wrapped pg's birthday present while she got started with pitch black: a movie that you just *know* came out of an rpg. it's awesome.

---friday:

at midnight, i presented the gifts - a nordstrom snow globe (why are decent snow globes so hard to find? and the shipping made this expensive) and a cute snow-globe keyring with santa claus inside - then we ate cake, i drank whiskey, we watched one piece (my legs got super-stiff again, it's very frustrating) and then passed out.

we woke up comfortably, made good pancakes, argued about the value of judaism and then went on a shopping spree. i can't stand shopping, but i figure that only going once a year on a birthday trip is acceptable. it was tough, but i survived. in the last shop we went to i overheard some old lady talking about a "one piece" and wondered if the manga could be interpreted as some sort of fashion metaphor, where the king of pirates is... yeah, it's a bit much :P

i bought something for myself on the way; two pairs of strap-on pockets. only i forgot to try on both for size, and one of them's too small :S

we had japanese for lunch, which was pretty good - although both of us suspect it had something to do with our not feeling quite well for the remainder of the afternoon.

...

---saturday:

it's weird having constant munchies. and distracting. i spent saturday working. aside from a strange hassle accessing my apache server which resulted in my reinstalling it, only to discover that it was a problem with chrome redirecting my queries to www.localhost.com (good grief!). i was treated to the new version of internet explorer when the auto-updater kicked in. WOW. it's now chrome. it's like microsoft just gave up. yes, i know i'm behind the times, but still...

i took a long walk in the middle of the day to meet with a guy from the completion course so that he could hand-deliver a wedding invitation... i took the opportunity to shop for meat and beers for the evening. those beers turned out to be pretty heavy going on rollerblades, in addition to all the other gear i took with. the spot co-conspirator had found wasn't bad, until the huge function next door put on loud, crappy music* and not even our megaphone could save us.

* a pretentious, emotionally dyslexic child in rishikesh drove me nuts one day playing a song repeatedly on his cellphone, and when i heard it last night i immediately asked what it was.
justin bieber, i hate you.

the barbecue was alright, but i was upset that during the first round of poetry readings barely anybody volunteered and the march hare had joined us. he felt bad because he thought he'd ruined the party, and in the end it turned out that all that was missing was alcoholic lubrication. next time, i'm going to request that everyone starts drinking before they arrive.

the evening was mostly fun, although i was really tired and i'm glad that wr's cocktails weren't particularly strong. the most upsetting part of it all was the end, when i replaced the mat i'd brought and discovered that i hadn't taken out the meat. it had defrosted, so we gave it to some revellers close by and i felt silly.

on the way back home i went past the spot that we'd originally thought to sit at (that wasn't sanctioned by the authorities) and saw that nobody had a problem with barbecuing there, the lighting was better and everywhere was more or less quiet.

dammit :(

i was absolutely exhausted when i got home. pg and i had a number of miscommunications in a row and i went to bed broken and unhappy. at least things were better in the morning.

---today:

i got some work done before heading out... i'd planned on starting my antibiotics courses today, but the pharmacist hadn't put stickers on the pills and i appear to have lost the script. that's quite annoying.

first class was cool - i enjoyed the material and amused myself with the list of common misconceptions. one of the girls gave me a copy of the second gabriel knight game, and pg and i had lunch together before i left campus.

...

now i've got to get some work done.