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08/01/97 - August first. My roommate left at 6am for a week on Cape Cod... I wish I were there, too. I've been the last 3 years so it was time for me to take a break and let him vacation on his own. I still wish I were there. Anyway, I've the house to myself all week so I'll be watching dopey TV shows and singing outloud and sleeping with my bedroom door open... a sort of vacation for myself. Radical subject change: what I'd first thought was a big construction project to make the campus look more like NoVa (kidding) is actually a new entrance structure... brick and elaborate masonry. I'm waiting to see if they brick across the line of sight for cars at the intersection. It's looking like someone could have been very stupid. If this new wallish thingy is solid, visibility at a major intersection will be completely eliminated. I'm hoping someone with half a clue saw the problem and decided that maybe an iron fence type filling will look just as elegant as a solid brick wall. I can't possible be the only person with this idea.
08/04/97 - Whoa, what a mess. My entire department is playing musical offices. Unfortunately there is little real music accompanying the move... mostly it's just moving sounds and grumbling. Amazingly, I escaped the horror. My office remains in the same corner I've occupied for a year and a half now. My personal opinion is the moving designers saw all the things I've hung on the walls and said "Zowie, we'll have to mend these walls before we give this space to someone else... might as well keep Lee here." Of course my intimidating personality probably also lead them to bend their plans so as not to ruffle my feathers, right? "Egads, we can't make Lee angry. We don't like him when he's angry (green skin, bulging muscles and all)." I guess my experience in chemistry and nuclear physics does have value. I think I'll start making demands to improve the working condidtions over here, too. First thing we'll need is something to drain the standing stagnate water off the floor. The rats will be the second thing to go... I'd hoped the snakes would take care of them but snakes can eat rats only so quickly. I guess the smell will only leave if we replace the carpeting.
08/05/97 - Fun email flies all over the internet. I get good stuff every day. Yesterday I got Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address at MIT. Amongst other things he said "Do something that scares you every day." Like dive into the Great White tank at Sea World? How come a good writer couldn't think of a better way of saying what he meant? Actually, I think most people know what he meant so perhaps he did do a good job. He made me think. Am I going to get off my fat tookus and register for a class? Hopefully. Most people know fear keeps them from doing many valuable things. What Mr. V. implied was don't let this fear impede growth. My friend Brian (a history buff) once told me he hated the fear of asking girls out on dates (I think I'd told him this act scared me senseless). Brian said he overcame his fear by thinking of a painting entitled "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; The men in the painting rode their horses right into enemy fire (not unlike diving into the Great White tank). "If these men could overcome fear of death I can ask one person out for a cup of coffee." Is it really this easy?
08/06/97 - Ok, so Mr. V didn't write the work that inspired yesterday's entry. On to other things. I ran some errands this morning. I was greeted by smells I haven't smelled in a while. Plants in the humid, coll morning. Dad used to drag me to green houses early on weekends when I was young. Ukrops was next to the video store so I walked over this morning and got a cup of coffee. The plants reminded me of green house trips. The coffee... ahhh, the coffee. It's been a while since I've had good, light (not dark, like Starbucks) coffee; Ukrops makes a good cup. Back to the green house trips. Thinking about that now I've learned something. I used to kick and scream. "Come on, Dad; I don't want to go to the stinkin' green house." What I figured out was Dad was just trying to save some time. We probably had to go to a soccer game or something and putting the green house visit in the circuit saved him 30 minutes of driving time... for the low, low cost of... several minutes of my whining. Oops, sorry Dad. I didn't mean to be such a royal pain. I was good at it, though, wasn't I?
08/08/97 - Sorry I missed yesterday. I was smashed by a sickness like I've never known. I couldn't really get to sleep wednesday night. Then I started to see things; I may have been dreaming but I always ended up realizing my eyes were open. Then came the sweats and the chills and the burning hots and the pain in every limb and the nausea and finally the thought: "I wonder if I'm about to drop dead... I hear about healthy people dropping dead all the time." Luckily I made it to sun rise and the opening of my doctor's office. I was diagnosed with a condition brought on by extreme creativity... ok, so it isn't quite that cool. I was given drugs and sent home. After the pain relievers quelled all the aches and pains I got some sleep in the big green chair by the window. I awoke this morning a few minutes after 4am. As I couldn't get back to sleep I'm now in my office watching the first light brighten the parking lot. I did notice some weird stuff while sick: 2:45 when viewed upside down on a digital clock says "Sh: 2". The guy on the Major League Baseball logo was thrown a ball but couldn't make contact now even if he wanted to. I figure I'm not completely well... you should see the shirt I wore today... but it's Kings Dominion day so maybe I'll get away with it.
08/11/97 - The status of things: I'm don't feel sick, but I feel funny... do you understand the difference? Sick is bad; funny is different. I'm definitely hotter than I should be. A man shouldn't sweat at his desk when the most exertion he's applied all morning was to the cap of that lousy 2 liter bottle of Pepsi. My roommate returns today from almost 10 days of vacation. I've found I really like living alone... scary, isn't it? I found I clean better in when I tackle many jobs at once... well, back to back. I did the yard, the bathroom and the kitchen saturday afternoon. I've been thinking about work all weekend, too. How freaky is that? Well, it's monday morning which means I have a brand new, clean, white week fresh out of the celaphane with which I can be me. I'd better get started. Later.
08/13/97 - Sometimes I think the world is actually against me but then I see how incredibly vain and stupid that thought is so I chalk my bad vibes up to the law of averages. I know I had an incredible thought last night but dammit if I can remember what the heck it was. I invented a new guitar pickup... cool idea but not the one I've forgotten. I remember sitting around watching people and thinking about what made me different from everyone else. I know my monumental thought occurred around this time, but I don't remember if it was tied loosely or tightly to the personal difference thing. I remember thinking if my band ever makes it big I'm not going to pierce my ear like I've always said I would. For some reason I thought a pierced ear would be cool if I were playing in a professional band, but then I realized it's just not me. How silly is it for me to not be me? Pretty silly. I wish I could remember what I realized last night. I remember how good it made me feel, like the end of a cross country race... comfort after agony... now it's back to agony.
08/14/97 - Some things are just natural "Feel Good" things... like a jaw full of candy. I picked up 4 gob stoppers and came back to my desk at which point I realized "This is pretty cool. I haven't done this since... yesterday. BUT most people only jam their mouths full of candy when their little kids and it's sunny and warm and the beach is 200 feet away and... well, maybe they do it at Halloween or Christmas or any other time of the year. But candy is good and it makes me feel like a kid so heck with what time of year it is and heck with the beach being 100 miles away! I feel good... except for this headache and upset stomach and aching in my joints... I feel old." But I still feel good about eating candy as my breakfast dessert. What goes better after a bowl of Cheerios and a glass of Orange juice than gob stoppers? Maybe a day off and a bottle of tequila but that's beside the point because I can't easily get a day off and a bottle of tequila after breakfast every day. Off to brush my teeth and drink some water in hopes of canning this headache... that doesn't make much sense, does it?
08/15/97 - I don't know for how long I've been sick now... 9 days I think (with a couple during which I felt fine). Ok, I'll stop whining. I'm wearing a shirt I washed a few days ago. I left it in the basement for too long after washing it. I'm noticing, as I sit here, how much this shirt smells like my basement... yummy. I borrowed my roommates new Herbie Hancock disc... smooth. I think I'll listen to this disc all morning. Today is my Mom's birthday. I buried that factoid in the middle of this because she might not want me to tell... oh well. Elvis dies 20 years ago yesterday. I didn't even know who Elvis was until 20 years ago yesterday. I was playing in the Hoppensteadt's backyard when some little kid (older than I was at the time) informed me Elvis is dead. I don't think I cared too much... There were sliding boards to climb and sand needed sculpting... plus "Mom, can we go see Star Wars, again? Pleeeaaasssee?" I had important things to do.
08/18/97 - Was this weekend hot or what? I attempted to escape yestersdays heat by fleeing to the movies. I saw Event Horizon; I hated it. This is everything I hate in a movie... violence, gore, suspense, almost no humor (there was one funny character with about 30 seconds of funny dialog) and the movie's end (like the rest of the movie) brings no comfort. 2 hours of discomfort was all I got for my $4. Let's talk about something good. I was shown another worthwhile band last week... Luscious Jackson. There slightly hip hopish with an easy to like quality. My first hint they were a quality band came upon seeing them perform live. Their vocals (several singers) were good and there songs seem strong. The album (there 2nd Fever In Fever Out) doesn't play show vocals as strong as I'd hoped, but the songs are good without being cheap sounding. The band's range is not great but I'll give them time.
08/19/97 - Once again it's hotter than heck in my office. I called the AC control room and, hopefully, they'll come take a look at things. Ok, I got up this morning and found a small army of ants had invaded my kitchen. Normally I'm not a hateful person but this invasion really steamed me off (perhaps it had something to do with the dryer full of shirts I knew I had to fold... a sucky task if there ever was one). I washed every dish in the sink then scrubbed the wall above the sink and washed all the grime off the window by the sink. I must have scrubbed a years worth of ant food (and 50 ants) down the drain. When I came back from folding shirts (yes, it was a sucky task) there were more ants. I went bonkers. I picked up a gun and blasted a .45" hole where each ant had perched on the wall. Then I got out my flame thrower and burnt the walls; Gook started oozing onto the floor so I brought out the liquid nitrogen tanks and cooled everything down. This, of course, made the floor brittle and the combined weight of the cabinets and appliances broke the support beams crashing the whole mess into the basement dirtying the stack of folded shirts sitting on the dryer. As I started to cry at the mess I'd made I noticed more ants crawling from the rubble... crap.
08/20/97 - Once again I'm sick. I crawled into work this morning (up hill in the rain). I'm late thus I don't feel right spending too much time on my journal (and I have no good ideas so less time is probably a good thing). Off to get a soda! Viva La Dulce Vita.
08/21/97 - Lee's sickness enters day 15. To celebrate I had Cheerios. chocolate milk, Aleve and antibiotics for breakfast. The sore throat wasn't too happy about any of it so I squashed some ants to distract myself from the discomfort. Let's talk about something funny. I have a friend who used to have 555-1703 as his work number. He works for a large Richmond compnay that has need to call Northern Virginia during the day... frequently. Well, it turns out many stupid people work with my friend. These people could quite grasp the "dial 9 for an outside line" concept. See, to save time on internal calls the 555 prefix could be dropped from my friends number... 1703 would ring his phone. Unforntunately 703 is NoVa's area code. Thus anytime a stupid person tried to call NoVa my friend's phone rang... "Oh, I'm sorry; I was trying to call NoVa." I understand it was loads of fun when stupid people tried to fax something to NoVa. "SSSKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK!!!!". The moral of this story is: Killing ants doesn't remove your attention from a sore throat.
08/22/97 - I just had the weirdest memory of cold weather. I say memory but I remembered it like you remember a scene from Star Wars... like it never happened. I'm sitting here telling myself it'll be cold soon enough but I only half believe it. Funny how truth works sometimes... no matter how hard you try you can't fully convince yourself it's actually true. At least that's how it works for me. Mainly I'm not convinced I'm stuck living the rest of my life as a "grown up". There must be a way to get time working backwards for a while so I can redo high school and college. I don't think I'd do it too differently I just want to go back to the most free and fun time of my life. If I could take the 27 year old mind with me I'd have an even better time as a 17 year old. Geez, I'm salvating just thinking about it. I certainly wouldn't be evil with my knowledge I'd be a role model type high school and college student who... ok, so maybe I would do things differently. Ok, Lee, back to the real world for a while... I just can't quite convince myself anything is impossible.
08/25/97 - Ok, I was going to talk about the neat electric guitar I built this weekend or maybe the BUZZ Birthday Bash I attended on saturday or maybe even the Stevie Wonder album I bought yesterday, but I was distracted by garbage. I drove to work this morning as I do almost every morning. This time my eyes were hooked up differently than usually. I saw so much trash on the road side. I drive through neighborhoods; I cross major roads, but 99% of my drive is on roads lined with nice houses. There was garbage everywhere. Coffee cups, fast food bags, Quik cartoons, cans, bottles; who tosses this stuff on the roadside? I don't. I litter the crap out of my car; Every month or so I'll scrape the fries off the floor and pull all the paper from under the seats and I put the crap in a trash can which is then halled to a big hole in the ground and left to sit until the big hole in the ground takes a big percentage of the whole ground so maybe I'm as bad as the jokers leaving stuff for me to see as I drive my CO2 spitting car to work. Ok, so there's no escape from hypocracy... drat, this sucks.
08/26/97 - One thing I've noticed in years of running is more than I've noticed in years of driving. Did that make sense? You see more running down a street than driving down the street. Last night I went for a walk. I've been ill and am afraid to run as it may make me feel crappy again. I noticed so much more walking over the same roads upon which I normally run. I guess when it takes you 30 minutes to cover the distance you can run in 10 you have 20 more minutes to notice things PLUS you're not sucking wind like an Electrolux (very distracting). I feel safer running than walking. I thought about that for a while. I'm moving quicker and I'm less a part of the surroundings and more an invisible observer while I'm running. I don't know if I can justify this weird belief with a plausible reason... so I won't try. When I was walking I heard more sounds... like people following me. I actually turned around to look... I started to get the creeps. I can only remember the creeps once while running; I was running on an unlit road, thick with trees, at the very back of a neighborhood. On one side, way up a hill, were houses and on the other side was a golf course through a copse. The wind shifted and blew dried leaves all around me... creepy and quite startling. I hauled butt to get out of there.
08/27/97 - Boom. Ahhh! Oops, sorry; I scared myself. While I had my hands covering my eyes I noticed my hands still smell like the onions I chopped last night. I've washed my hands at least 5 times plus showered since then... what gives? Little onion scented sickness clinging to my fingers in a survival story rivaling anything written by that Call of the Wild guy. I guess onion oil really doesn't fight for survival but it's still funny to think of my hands as the stage for an epic type, life and death struggle. I've watched the Learning Channel when they run those shows about the disgusting dust mites that live as densely on human skin as Indians live in New Delhi. Maybe my hands are the stage for life and death struggles between really small insects. Insect street gangs draw out their turf boundaries... where do you suppose the bad neighborhoods are? Where are the vacation spots? "Hey, we're heading to the thumb nail for a while; would you mind picking up our mail?" Silly, isn't it?
08/28/97 - General consensus after yesterday is: Lee is nutty, oh, and lemon oil will remove nasty, clingy onion scents. I got a postcard from the mite family vacationing at the thumb nail. What surprises me is I didn't see it until it got to my mail box. But heck the impossible happens everyday, right? I was hoping Dad won the lottery last night but since I haven't heard from him I guess he didn't... but then it would take most of the morning for him to get to the Caribbean and I can't expect the call until he gets there... there's hope. I hope for all sorts of things and that's probably why I don't get more work done. I just sit here and dream about sail boats and mountains and boat loads of money and band tour buses and running when I want to run (not when I can) and eating ice cream with peaches and I could go further but I think you've probably grasped my point which is: dreamers are not efficient workers. I think I need a partner that jolts life into some of my better dreams. We'll both be happy. I'll be the perpetual creative source and they'll be the one that can actually direct the energy. Perhaps I'm selling myself too strongly... Heck, if I don't, who will?
08/29/97 - Hmm, I thought today was the 28th... oops. I guess that's a minor thing about which to be wrong. I've had 6 bowls of Cap'n Crunch since yesterday morning; As if you'll care or react... next subject. I hate to admit this, but I've never been west of the Mississippi River... guess where I'm going this evening? If you said Colorado you're correct. I'm more fat and in the worse shape that I've been in 2 years and I'm going hiking in the Rocky mountains... idiot. I forgot what I was going to say next. Do you want to here about my lint/key dilemma? Of course not, but your only way out is to stop reading now. I have a strange bike key on my key ring. As my keys sit in my pocket this strange key (sort of shaped like a bullet's shell casing) beckons pocket lint hither. I try to remove the lint sans tools. It's stupid but weirdly fun and frustrating. Not unlike those silly games where you jump pegs on a small board. I guess there's no scoring, though; you either get the lint or you don't.