i just realized that the new people who are starting here at work will always know me wearing glasses. they don’t know to say “wow, nice specs!” because they’re new. they will not be able to imagine me not wearing them, as opposed to having to get used to seeing me with them.
interesting how perspective works, huh?

last night in my dream, i (being a man in middle of my life) looked contemplatively into the salt-encrusted frying pan which was baking in our fire. i had made a desicion, but broaching it with my partner was going to be delicate. i got up to fill the pan with sea water so i might attempt to clean off the scales which were baked into the cast iron. as i sat down again on the sand, i looked at my emaciated companion, regarding his skeletal appearance, recalling how robust he had been just a few months before.
“tom,” i said, looking into his hollow eye sockets, “i think it’s time we made my film.”
tom’s head slowly rose, the set of his jaw defiant as he formulated his response.
before he could reply, i interjected, “you know it’s time. look around. we’ve done all we can here.”
tom’s ribcage expanded grotesquely as he took a deep breath and straightened up. at that moment, i couldn’t see anything of the man i’d known for two decades. i could see nothing but bone and muscle and tendon. an animated corpse. i didn’t know him any longer. i didn’t know what his answer would be.
at the very moment i thought tom would break from the strain of it, he slumped back into his weak and defeated pose. “okay, roger,” he said quietly, “but only if i get a volleyball.”

so, we didn’t have sushi. instead of cold rice and seaweed, i ate stirfried vegetables with so much heat, my lips tingled for an hour afterwards (not unlike a good kiss…). i returned to work and tried anything to make the afternoon speed away so i could hurry home and go to the post office to send off my secret cricket package for june and pick up some sort of parcel which wouldn’t fit in my mailbox. i don’t know who would have sent me something. i haven’t ordered anything (besides my cafepress merchandise) which could be here yet. hmm…
it’s another beautiful day. maybe i’ll try finding some strappy shoes on the way home. hopefully, i’ll get some stuff accomplished tonight, too. it’s all very much in doubt, though. i mean, it is tuesday — which means that i have to watch jack & jill. it’s all about the priorities.

i had a dress rehersal for my saturday night outfit last night. i looked, if i do say so myself, okay. i didn’t find any cute strappy shoes, so i’ve decided to wear my heels. this could be interesting as i have a serious deficiency in the heels department. if i report that i’m in a cast when i return you’ll know why.
after playing dress up, i spent a part of the evening flirting with… superpaige! we compared secret cricket notes and i’ve decided she’s a much more creative secret cricket than i.
i’m all geared up to have sushi for lunch today. i’ll be so disappointed if it’s not as good as the last sushi i had, which was beyond excellent. maybe i should have brought a backup lunch, just in case.

i would be rather pleased at all the positive feedback my new specs are garnering, if it weren’t for the amused smirks my father keeps getting whenever he walks into the room. i’m fairly sure he thinks i’m insane.

preface: my glasses are just the tiniest bit crooked and it’s driving me nuts.
i spent four hours saturday night wearing a reflextive vest trying to keep spectators out of the path of the relay runners. first, people are stupid. second, people don’t listen. third, people are stupid. a few select examples:
– i yell “watch out for the runners, please!” man stops dead in the middle of the path and looks behind him (i’m in front). a runner nearly collides with him. he looks surprised.
– i yell “watch out for the runners, please!” woman is halfway across the path, when she hears me she starts backing up, right into a runner. she looks surprised.
– i yell “watch out for the runners, please!” man, with two women, stops and looks around. his female friends stop him from hitting a runner. he looks at me and says, “all i heard was ‘swish swish swish swish’!” he smiles like this is funny.
one scary example of the state of youth:
– i put my arm out to stop a young boy from running head-long into a runner. he immediately spins round at me with his fists raised, ready to strike.
at the beginning of the evening, when someone successfully crossed in time to avoid runners i’d say “thank you”, and i actually meant “thank you”. by ten o’clock, my saying “thank you” actually meant more like “fuck off you cocksucking motherfucking assholes!”
i hate people.
epilogue: my feet and lower legs were so bloody sore from standing there for four hours. it’s a lot harder than it looks, especially for someone who works a desk job.

well, right now, this very second, i am bespeckled! no, i’m not dotty. i’m wearing my new glasses. it is very, very weird. but, i look very, very cool… if i do say so myself. if only you could see me.
i also managed to do all my secret cricket shopping on my way home. yay! now, if i can talk meg & mark into going out for dinner, then this will be the day to beat all days.

i’m bored and i still have two-and-a-half hours left in my day. i’m currently waiting for my boss to give me access to an application to do the last bit of work in my in-tray. after that, i’m back to converting documents into pdf format. whee! not to mention, it’s boiling in here since they turned the a/c off during this phase of construction. that’ll teach me to complain about it being too cold.
one week until i go to seattle. wow. it seems like yesterday it was 146 days left to go. i have to do some last minute shopping this weekend AND volunteer at the 24 hour relay tomorrow night (pray it doesn’t rain) AND find time to see my dad on sunday AND get something for my secret cricket AND pick up my glasses tonight. argh. btw, i got my train ticket home yesterday. yay! i can’t wait for that.
i’m wearing mascara. my new mascara. which is actually the brand i first wore when i started wearing mascara. for some reason i began buying other brands. i was never as happy with them as i was with my original, but i kept trying new ones, hoping that i’d find some miracle mascara. all i did was waste my money and my time. now i’m back to my tried and true marathon waterproof mascara and i can’t figure out why i ever thought i’d find anything better. the grass is always greener, i suppose.

i’m picking up my glasses on the way home! just call me hessie four-eyes! if i had a webcam i could take pictures. but, i don’t. although, maybe i’ll buy one!

it was the summer of ’94 and i had just bought my first modem. all a-flutter, i drove home from the store with the shiny, shrink-wrapped box on the passenger seat. i couldn’t wait to install it into my screaming-fast 486sx33. i didn’t know what it would bring into my life, but i had the feeling it would be something big. something important. but at that moment i was just suffused with the pre-geek glee of new stuff for my computer.
once it was installed and the phone line was plugged in, i started by dabbling in bbses where i filled my 200mb hard drive with useless downloads (and where i found a photograph of the concept design for the new beetle. in ’94!). i was even lured over to the dark side of compuserve for the duration of a free 30-day trial. i was content to search for games to fill my time and occasionally message the sysop concerning modem settings. it wasn’t until a conversation with my boss’s wife when she recommended i get an internet account with a fledgling isp in nanaimo, because she thought i’d find it interesting, that i knew there was more out there to discover.
after debating it for a few weeks, i finally gave in. i drove to the office and actually sat down with the owner of the isp to set up my account. herb ran it out of the basement of an old house on the edge of the business district. i remember driving home after picking my userid and password… once again, i could almost feel something on the horizon.
the ‘net was a completely different creature in 1994. text-based. white-on-black. unix-ruled. slip. shell accounts. usenet. gopher. archie. trn. pine. tin. finger. plans. ytalk. mosaic. you didn’t instant message, you emailed or logged onto irc or a talker. if you wanted to see what someone looked like, they mailed you a photograph of themselves – no one had a picture of themselves scanned. i met my first net.crush through an ad in soc.penpals.
i was overwhelmed but still curious, eager to see what was around the next virtual corner. that’s when i found talkers and delved into online communication in a real-time conversation. i was instantly hooked. the story of my time on telnet chat programs (aka talkers) is far too long and convoluted to even begin to describe here. i’ve experienced just about every high and every low one can possibly experience via the medium. it makes me weary just thinking about it. that doesn’t mean i’d trade a second of it for anything, though.
the internet used to be my sole means of communication with the outside world. i hated living in a little one-horse town. i hated being fat and shy and unable to make friends of strangers. the ‘net gave me a window through which to form relationships with actual human beings who were not co-workers or family members. people of types i’d never have the opportunity to talk with through any other means. i would spend almost every spare moment online, searching for a connection with someone, anyone. that desperation led me into situations which have scarred me beyond reconstruction; but, they’ve also taught me lessons and opened me up to experiences i couldn’t ever have encountered in the day-to-day life i was living.
that’s changed. i don’t make those kinds bonds as easily over the fibre. i’m more jaded, more cynical; less trusting, less naive. that’s not to say i don’t still meet amazing people with whom there is an almost instant connection. god knows that’s not case. it’s just that now, i’m not logging on solely to find an answer to my loneliness, a voice from the ether to cling to. i have other interests and obsessions. i’m still a part of online communities and i’m sure i always will be, for as long as i have a dialup account.
now i have my own life, in the big blue box. all this, which used to be all i had, is now a supplement to everything else which goes on in my life. for the first time in a long, long while i’m happy to be me when i’m away from this whirring contraption of blinking lights. it feels good.

sometimes when i work on the computer too long, my entire world becomes forshortened and when i look at my keyboard it seems to be an inch from my nose and my hands have sprouted from the sides of my neck. i like it. it makes me feel like i’m on drugs.

i just got a tomb raider tattoo from mark! he went to a preview last night. i’m ignoring his telling me it’s boring and bad because i’ve been waiting six months for it to come out and i will love it. i WILL love it.
of course, that’s probably only because i seriously lust after angelina jolie.

compounding yesterday’s feeling like friday, i went to meg’s last night and we did all our normal friday night stuff (had dinner, played cards). i got home and was mercifully in bed by eleven, but it was a fucking nightmare trying to get up this morning. when my eyes first opened, my body felt so heavy and relaxed i just did not want to move a millimetre, let alone get up and come to work. i had some strange dreams, too.
we discussed the whole seattle experience, as well. we’re going to leave here early saturday morning and go to the aquarium and visit the list of pubs billy sent me yesterday. then they’ll drop me off at the airport where i will meet mr. monkey’s plane. oh, and dean is probably coming with us. whee!
watch my worlds collide! *kaboom*

ideal woman movie
sex-dream child fuck bbs

nothing sucks more than a wednesday which feels like a friday. well, except maybe a monday which feels like a friday.

i can’t concentrate on anything lately. i have a story i want to tell you about what could have been my first lesbian experience, but i just can’t wrap my head around the language needed to express it in a coherent manner. i re-read the last week’s posts and i was appalled. i start out on one tangent and end somewhere completely different, neither truly resolved. i’m focused on small things right now. glasses. travel arrangements. money. landlords. volunteering. tomb raider. it frustrates me that i seem incapable of lucid prose. i know i’m better than what i’ve been producing. at least i like to believe so.

hairy scrotums [no thanks]
pearl harbour soundtrack [look! they spelled it with a ‘u’]
leave it to beaver dirty [“don’t forget to wash behind your ears, beaver!”]
“pubic shaving” [thanks for the reminder]
cherry coke in calgary [hey, ruzz…]

– i’ve been sleeping in the buff a lot lately.
– a moving truck ran over the stop sign on the corner last night.
– i saw this ’cause i had to move my car so it could finish getting around the corner.
– billy likes my design.
– i had a bad dream about my mother and grandmother last night.
– paige rocks beyond anything which has rocked before or shall rock forthwith.
– meghan & mark are going to drive me to seattle next week.
– i’m wearing sparkly eye shadow today.
– said eye shadow is making my eyes itch.
– my hair is really soft today.
– i made soup & did laundry last night.
– i totally pigged out, too.
– but it was just massive quantities of healthy food.
– i want my glasses NOW.
– ten days until seattle
– i still need shoes to go with my posh frock.
– have i mentioned how fucking great paige is? ;)
– my bra feels really uncomfortable today.

finally having some sort of a logo + cafepress account sitting around gathering dust + some time on my hands + a creative urge last night = my very own store.
i didn’t mark these up at all, so if you buy them you’re just buying them for you. not that i expect anyone to buy them except for me, but i’m a dork like that. they look crappy in the small views, so click to zoom in on the pictures to see what they’ll really look like.
yadda yadda.

i left work an hour early yesterday to go pick out my glasses. i got ’em! well, i picked out my frames and paid my deposit and, hopefully, i’ll have them in my hot little hands by the end of the week. yay!
i was standing there, trying on different frames, for an hour. i think i’d found the pair, and then i’d try on a different set and be absolutely sure i’d not find anything better. this went on and on and on. finally, the technician/saleswoman pointed out a pair she thought would look good and bingo! i’d found my specs. they’re nothing at all like i thought i wanted, but they’re cute and funky, which is pretty much what i was going for.
i asked what my prescription was and when she told me i felt kind of dumb for spending so much money on a pair of glasses i could have bought just as easily at the pharmacy. oh well. i couldn’t have gotten my super-spiffy frames at walmart! when i start to think about the waste of money, i’ll just remind myself that i get most of it back from the insurance company. she also told me i have a slight astigmatism in my left eye. i’m not sure what that is, so i’m going to go look it up.