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Apr. 21st, 2002 03:03 amI really shouldn't be updating right now. It's 3 in the morning and I *still* don't have definite plans from anyone about gaming tomorrow, which means I get to drag myself up immensely early and start desperately calling cell phones. But whenever I go a couple of days without updating I end up with monstrously long entries (yes, even more so than usual), and I tend to forget things, so they're monstrously long *boring* entries, more a grocery list of "I did this and this and this" rather than "I did this which made me feel this way which reminded me of this", and recording thoughts and feelings is the main reason I keep this.
I think.
I actually haven't quite figured out why I'm keeping this. I've been a pretty outspoken anti-online journaling partisan for a long time, mainly because I've been directly or indirectly hurt as a result of them on multiple occasions, but I noticed that no one had grabbed my favorite username on livejournal yet, and it really offends me whenever someone else gets to it on online services before I do. I'm sure none of them appreciate it nearly as much as I do (one of these days I'll probably mention the story about how I started using it, but I'm just not in the mood right now), so Hep gave me a code, and I was planning on just sitting on it and never doing anything with it, and that lasted almost a day, then whoosh! So many words. After a bit of reflection, I think I'm doing this for two reasons.
1) In a spat of horrible boredom, I actually tried logging on to my old UC Berkeley account a couple of months ago, and lo and behold it was still there (even more surprising, I actually remembered my password (I'm one of those people who actually *DOES* keep separate passwords for everything)). I didn't have any interesting new mail (from the past 4 years or so), but I still had old sent mail folders, and I'll be damned, but I barely recognized myself in the email I had written back then. I used to write a lot of email back in college, mainly because it usually takes me a long time to become comfortable with new people, so keeping in touch with friends from high school was immensely important to me when I was feeling lost and lonely. Recently, I barely write at all. I'm not particularly active on any of my mailing lists, and most of my personal correspondence consists of pretty short blurbs, as I see my friends frequently and can converse with them in meatspace, as opposed to email. As a result, the quality of my writing has nosedived more than a little. If you don't use your brain, it starts to atrophy, and unfortunately, I don't do much of anything that requires me to think at all. Back when I had money I'd buy textbooks, and work problem sets to keep my neurons slightly limber, but that only buffs up the math and sciences parts of my head. So, while I was fairly cognizant that I'm not nearly as bright as I used to be, actually seeing examples of how much I've declined was pretty galling, and I decided that I should probably do something about that.
2) I find that it's occasionally hard for me to recall how I felt during certain parts of my life. Hrm, I'm probably going to do a lousy job explaining this. I can retrieve stories and anecdotes from my memory relatively easily, going all the way back to very, very early childhood, and I can give you sort of blanket descriptions of my relative mindset at various times. I remember being really miserable through almost all of high school for example. But, other than either very specific instances, or very vague emotions, most of the day to day is a bit of a blur for me. What really got me though is that I realized that I don't really remember what being with Lily was like. I certainly recall the aftermath, but it seems so ludicrous that I hold on to the feelings of anguish and loss, and I can't even remember what it was I lost. Dumb. So, clearly, I need some way to record nuances of day to day life.
So, in short, this journal is a place for me to blither for the sake of blithering, because otherwise I won't, and a place for me to store memorabilia, so somewhere down the line I can remember who I used to be, even if it is through a keyboard darkly. Right then. Gee, I'm sure glad that this isn't going to be one of those long entries. *eyeroll*
Anyway, today my mom came to visit for Nadja's birthday get together. Parental visits are generally a movie and dinner and random meandering about and talking, but Nadja decided that she wanted to do something more funnish for her bday, so off to the California Academy of Sciences we trekked with Nadja's boy Will and mutual friend Rachel in tow. Day started off somewhat tragically with us completely failing to see a two toed sloth. Apparently *everyone* wants to see two toed sloths (and who can blame them?), so the auditorium filled up. Curses. Poked around the african animals exhibit for a bit (Will regaled us with the tale that this is a planned collection, which basically means that someone wandered off into the veldt with a shopping list and a shotgun. Slightly disgruntling). Went through a native american art collection relatively quickly. Only exciting thing in there was a wedding vase apparently designed by aliens. It had two necks, and looked pretty nice actually, but it had a design on it that looked like a three eyed happy face, so I failed completely to take it seriously. Didn't even pay any attention to the Gary Larson exhibit. Years of Far Side day calendars means I've seen it all. So, on to the skull exhibit. Things of note:
1) The museum owns way, way, way, way too many californian sea lion skulls. A walls worth. And when I say a walls worth, I mean it quite literally. And this wasn't a small room
2) A collection of skull related art had a poster that said "Life is good. Death is not bad". I approve
3) Deer (or some other horned ruminant, I don't really remember) skull with bone cancer. I hope someone got a picture. This looked horribly disturbing, in a fascinating gigeresque sort of way. The horns had gone crazy. Almost like they were thorned.
4) All kinds of skulls from animals I like. Koalas. Turtles. SLOTHS. Bears! Prehensile tailed porcupines (I had no idea there were prehensile tailed porcupines. In my magical fantasy land they go swinging through the trees spraying quills upon unsuspecting prey below!) No panda skulls. Nor a megatherion skull, but their absence isn't surprising at all.
I just had one of those weird deja vu flashes. Bleh! Anyway, after that we went to the planetarium. Pretty typical "Space is big. No, no, bigger than that. You really can't possibly understand how big it is, so just stop trying, it's even bigger!" voice over, but I had forgotten just how pretty the night sky from way outside the city is. Last time I saw the night sky was at a meteor shower watching outing a couple of months back, but I was around lots of strangers, which tends to make me uncomfortable, and in a horrible mood to begin with, so I couldn't really enjoy it. Plus there was still an awful lot of light pollution, as we were just a little off of 280 down the peninsula. The best view of the night sky I ever remember getting was one time in Ukiah, I must have been 19 and back from college for the summer. It was around midnight and there was a whole group of immensely bored people sitting around my parents house. So, on a whim we up and headed for the Mendocino coastline. Drove around randomly, and finally came across a beach in the middle of nowhere, way off the road, no lights at all as far as the eye could see, but all you had to do was look up and you could actually see the band of the milky way, and hundreds upon hundreds of stars. I've meant to go back ever since. Almost 7 years later now. Oof. I am clearly no good with to do lists.
Blargh. This entry is going to take forever. Trying to pick up the pace now. Got out of planetarium, wandered about the aquarium area. Became immensely confused when I realized that this was the same place that I came with Hep and the kids a couple of times. Guess we came in another entrance and just never worked our way around. Anyway, I have a new favorite fish. Engineerfish. They're long and thin, slightly eel-like, and they can swim both forwards and backwards, which is pretty keen all on it's own. I thought that swimming backwards did horrible things to gills, or maybe that's only true of sharks. Anyway, the neat thing about engineerfish is that they burrow, so you'd see a fish poke it's head out of a hole and vomit a mouthful of pebbles out, back into the hole again, and repeat. And there were maybe 8 of them all working in unison to create an escarpement in an attempt to hide their burrows from nosy humans. And I'm sure that it's somebody's job to level out the gravel so nosy humans (like me) have something to watch again the next day. Tangent: I don't care that I know it's also correct, but the plural fishes will never stop looking wrong to me. 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish blue fish. Doctor Seuss wouldn't lie!
Ok, super fast forward motion now, because I'm sleepy! Left museum, drove to Spettro. Spettro is a restaurant in Oakland. It is yummy. I had pesto and cream sauce vegetarian lasagne. It was very good. Too full for dessert. Dropped everyone off with my mom. Got dropped off at Aaron and Melissa's for the remnants of Aaron's birthday barbeque. Hung about while everyone got ready for club. Went to Ain't Dead Yet. Saw many people. Talked with many people. Did not shake my booty very much. Left club. Came back to House of 13 Doors. Sleeping now!
I think.
I actually haven't quite figured out why I'm keeping this. I've been a pretty outspoken anti-online journaling partisan for a long time, mainly because I've been directly or indirectly hurt as a result of them on multiple occasions, but I noticed that no one had grabbed my favorite username on livejournal yet, and it really offends me whenever someone else gets to it on online services before I do. I'm sure none of them appreciate it nearly as much as I do (one of these days I'll probably mention the story about how I started using it, but I'm just not in the mood right now), so Hep gave me a code, and I was planning on just sitting on it and never doing anything with it, and that lasted almost a day, then whoosh! So many words. After a bit of reflection, I think I'm doing this for two reasons.
1) In a spat of horrible boredom, I actually tried logging on to my old UC Berkeley account a couple of months ago, and lo and behold it was still there (even more surprising, I actually remembered my password (I'm one of those people who actually *DOES* keep separate passwords for everything)). I didn't have any interesting new mail (from the past 4 years or so), but I still had old sent mail folders, and I'll be damned, but I barely recognized myself in the email I had written back then. I used to write a lot of email back in college, mainly because it usually takes me a long time to become comfortable with new people, so keeping in touch with friends from high school was immensely important to me when I was feeling lost and lonely. Recently, I barely write at all. I'm not particularly active on any of my mailing lists, and most of my personal correspondence consists of pretty short blurbs, as I see my friends frequently and can converse with them in meatspace, as opposed to email. As a result, the quality of my writing has nosedived more than a little. If you don't use your brain, it starts to atrophy, and unfortunately, I don't do much of anything that requires me to think at all. Back when I had money I'd buy textbooks, and work problem sets to keep my neurons slightly limber, but that only buffs up the math and sciences parts of my head. So, while I was fairly cognizant that I'm not nearly as bright as I used to be, actually seeing examples of how much I've declined was pretty galling, and I decided that I should probably do something about that.
2) I find that it's occasionally hard for me to recall how I felt during certain parts of my life. Hrm, I'm probably going to do a lousy job explaining this. I can retrieve stories and anecdotes from my memory relatively easily, going all the way back to very, very early childhood, and I can give you sort of blanket descriptions of my relative mindset at various times. I remember being really miserable through almost all of high school for example. But, other than either very specific instances, or very vague emotions, most of the day to day is a bit of a blur for me. What really got me though is that I realized that I don't really remember what being with Lily was like. I certainly recall the aftermath, but it seems so ludicrous that I hold on to the feelings of anguish and loss, and I can't even remember what it was I lost. Dumb. So, clearly, I need some way to record nuances of day to day life.
So, in short, this journal is a place for me to blither for the sake of blithering, because otherwise I won't, and a place for me to store memorabilia, so somewhere down the line I can remember who I used to be, even if it is through a keyboard darkly. Right then. Gee, I'm sure glad that this isn't going to be one of those long entries. *eyeroll*
Anyway, today my mom came to visit for Nadja's birthday get together. Parental visits are generally a movie and dinner and random meandering about and talking, but Nadja decided that she wanted to do something more funnish for her bday, so off to the California Academy of Sciences we trekked with Nadja's boy Will and mutual friend Rachel in tow. Day started off somewhat tragically with us completely failing to see a two toed sloth. Apparently *everyone* wants to see two toed sloths (and who can blame them?), so the auditorium filled up. Curses. Poked around the african animals exhibit for a bit (Will regaled us with the tale that this is a planned collection, which basically means that someone wandered off into the veldt with a shopping list and a shotgun. Slightly disgruntling). Went through a native american art collection relatively quickly. Only exciting thing in there was a wedding vase apparently designed by aliens. It had two necks, and looked pretty nice actually, but it had a design on it that looked like a three eyed happy face, so I failed completely to take it seriously. Didn't even pay any attention to the Gary Larson exhibit. Years of Far Side day calendars means I've seen it all. So, on to the skull exhibit. Things of note:
1) The museum owns way, way, way, way too many californian sea lion skulls. A walls worth. And when I say a walls worth, I mean it quite literally. And this wasn't a small room
2) A collection of skull related art had a poster that said "Life is good. Death is not bad". I approve
3) Deer (or some other horned ruminant, I don't really remember) skull with bone cancer. I hope someone got a picture. This looked horribly disturbing, in a fascinating gigeresque sort of way. The horns had gone crazy. Almost like they were thorned.
4) All kinds of skulls from animals I like. Koalas. Turtles. SLOTHS. Bears! Prehensile tailed porcupines (I had no idea there were prehensile tailed porcupines. In my magical fantasy land they go swinging through the trees spraying quills upon unsuspecting prey below!) No panda skulls. Nor a megatherion skull, but their absence isn't surprising at all.
I just had one of those weird deja vu flashes. Bleh! Anyway, after that we went to the planetarium. Pretty typical "Space is big. No, no, bigger than that. You really can't possibly understand how big it is, so just stop trying, it's even bigger!" voice over, but I had forgotten just how pretty the night sky from way outside the city is. Last time I saw the night sky was at a meteor shower watching outing a couple of months back, but I was around lots of strangers, which tends to make me uncomfortable, and in a horrible mood to begin with, so I couldn't really enjoy it. Plus there was still an awful lot of light pollution, as we were just a little off of 280 down the peninsula. The best view of the night sky I ever remember getting was one time in Ukiah, I must have been 19 and back from college for the summer. It was around midnight and there was a whole group of immensely bored people sitting around my parents house. So, on a whim we up and headed for the Mendocino coastline. Drove around randomly, and finally came across a beach in the middle of nowhere, way off the road, no lights at all as far as the eye could see, but all you had to do was look up and you could actually see the band of the milky way, and hundreds upon hundreds of stars. I've meant to go back ever since. Almost 7 years later now. Oof. I am clearly no good with to do lists.
Blargh. This entry is going to take forever. Trying to pick up the pace now. Got out of planetarium, wandered about the aquarium area. Became immensely confused when I realized that this was the same place that I came with Hep and the kids a couple of times. Guess we came in another entrance and just never worked our way around. Anyway, I have a new favorite fish. Engineerfish. They're long and thin, slightly eel-like, and they can swim both forwards and backwards, which is pretty keen all on it's own. I thought that swimming backwards did horrible things to gills, or maybe that's only true of sharks. Anyway, the neat thing about engineerfish is that they burrow, so you'd see a fish poke it's head out of a hole and vomit a mouthful of pebbles out, back into the hole again, and repeat. And there were maybe 8 of them all working in unison to create an escarpement in an attempt to hide their burrows from nosy humans. And I'm sure that it's somebody's job to level out the gravel so nosy humans (like me) have something to watch again the next day. Tangent: I don't care that I know it's also correct, but the plural fishes will never stop looking wrong to me. 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish blue fish. Doctor Seuss wouldn't lie!
Ok, super fast forward motion now, because I'm sleepy! Left museum, drove to Spettro. Spettro is a restaurant in Oakland. It is yummy. I had pesto and cream sauce vegetarian lasagne. It was very good. Too full for dessert. Dropped everyone off with my mom. Got dropped off at Aaron and Melissa's for the remnants of Aaron's birthday barbeque. Hung about while everyone got ready for club. Went to Ain't Dead Yet. Saw many people. Talked with many people. Did not shake my booty very much. Left club. Came back to House of 13 Doors. Sleeping now!
