Melancholy

This time of year is always interesting for me... being reborn again and again. Somehow though, as time passes it becomes harder and harder to find my root. Perhaps its because each year I either stray farther and farther away, or I stay so close that I don't even realize it for what it is anymore.

Swainson

Coming down to Scripps on the shuttle, we almost ran over what I think was a young Swainson's Hawk. It was struggling to get off the ground with a fresh squirrel when our van came barreling down on it. It made the wise choice to drop its lunch for a faster get away.

The driver was like "crazy bird" and the girl in the passenger seat was like "aww its nature in action", and I was like "its probably endangered" thinking it was a young (and really freaking small) golden eagle...

The girl looked at me as if I were a freak. Whatever... The bird was probably 2.5~4ft wing span... I love Swainson's hawks... they are so freaking cool looking.

23

Sigh... haven't had too much time to think... the whole getting older contemplations will have to wait until Wednesday...

L. B.

You entered my dreams again last night.
Its been awhile since the last time.
Funny enough, I was dreaming about something else
but I pulled us back to my apartment
back to my time.
You were surprised.

I had been in the warehouse
of my childhood with people
of my most recent growth.
When you came I knew something
had changed.
You had died.

We talked. We caught up.
Sitting in the living room
whispering to keep from waking
him up. In the water, of your house
for some ridiculous reason
your whole family had passed.

Mitch woke up,
and he could see you too.
You lied and said your "physical
manifestation had been completed".
You were always different.
Others may not have noticed it,
but you were always special.

~

A new year

It's funny how I count my years in the number of Novembers that have passed... here's the 17th... and this year seems to be special. It looks like my first task will be to face a demon that I have never really had the reason or courage to face. Next time... a list of thank yous for thanksgiving... maybe. It will definitely show how I objectify different parts of my relationships with people into lessons... a lot of them were not necessarily meant to be that way, and I'm not sure if I should share that kind of information yet.

Screen Resolution

Just found out that I skimped on a higher resolution screen for my new thinkpad... sigh... the day isn't getting any better...

Wednesday

It's just one of those days where everything has to go wrong at the same time. You can go ahead and skip this post, I'm just going to bitch for a bit. It all started with water seeping into the holes of my shoes. Figured it was going to be a miserable day, but I didn't expect to get bombarded by things I have to fix. The moment I walk into work I find that my experiment isn't calibrating like it should. Easy enough fix, I thought. 30 minutes later and its up and running as it should. Within the 1.5 hours I hadn't looked at my email, I get one from France with the "URGENT PROBLEM" of getting null data out of two of our drifters. 3 phone calls later after fixing some faulty code and reviewing current and past data, it seems likely that the way we sealed the drifters might have disconnected some things. This would suck immensely. We'll see what happened with the other 5 drifters. Sometime during this fiasco I feel the very distinct sensation of an infection landing in my sinus cavity. Looks like the buggers are ready to fight for a piece of my sanity. Meanwhile, I get an email from the group that owns the calibration system that we're borrowing for our experiment saying that they're returning on Monday and need the system to test their devices. Wonderful. They could have let us know just a little sooner. It didn't help that the machine was broken for two weeks. Tack on the fact that I still need to settle billing with the company that fixed it. Sigh... I think that gray hair is going to pop up a little earlier than my genetic predisposition might suggest it should. Lastly I find the laptop that was supposed to get delivered to me today actually got delivered to my boss, who just so happens to be in South Korea, so I had to make an angry phone call to lenovo and get them to rectify their mistake, AGAIN. This all happened in a matter of 3 hours... how shitty is that? I'm not really looking forward to what the rest of today is going to entail, if its going to continue being bad news. There are a few other minor issues, but its no big deal...

heh... and I just left this post up in the Asayake journal for a good 10 minutes before I realized... wonderful...