I wasn’t going to write today, but the gentle light from the setting sun, along with the mild, windless chill, has affected me in such a manner that I wish only to speak of the boundless beauty that the weather can provide. I’m reminded of the spring walks home from Ashley’s house, feeling the cool air through my hair with the pale orange sky above my head. Pure contentment.

Progress on my essays has not been going well. I have spent the last half week on geology, and still have less than two pages done. I wish the terminology wasn’t so market based. Fuck.

I was able to go rock climbing for a second time with Trolley, Cristina, Aaron, Wheaties, Nick, Greg, Amanda, and Simon. It was great to have so many people go at once, so that we could just wonder around and see how other people were doing. I was able to scale three more walls that I wasn’t able to last time, which were all 5.6’s. The tips of my fingers were raw at the end from belaying so much. My forearm strength is currently the first thing to give, so I wasn’t very sore the next day. We headed out to Perkins after and pigged out on good food. What a great fucking time.

I was able to ask Simon about his tongue stud, and he told me that out of all the piercings he’s had (ears and eyebrow), the tongue was the least painful by far, due to the fact that the nerve endings are all on the surface of the tongue. Once the spike goes through the tongue, nothing is felt afterwards. New information that I’ll have to consider.

Tuesday. Brideshead Revisited. Jeremy Irons is one sexy, sexy man.

Dolores has been extra cuddly these last few days, and I’ve been woken up by her turning a few times, before nestling on my legs or stomach. I feel bad that I feel so constricted every time she settles down, causing me to toss and turn. It’s as if itches only come once a cat has found a pillow in your lap.

So…

I just finished my graphics presentation. I presented to a group of nosy people in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The people who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accomplish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more interesting ideas out of the class, being dynamic as well as mathematically stimulating, as opposed to some of the static animations or cheap games that other projects consisted of. I think I had one of the lesser ambitious ideas though, since making a game look nice would be much harder than a simple simulation such as the game of life. The TA’s congratulated me afterwards, and the prof, who’s infamous for being so soft-spoken that people mistake him as coming out of a funeral, actually clapped at the end. It made me fairly proud of my presentation, although the praise of Charity, the resident CS eye candy in a faculty of the aesthetically challenged, made me even more content. It’s as if physical attractiveness gives someones opinion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glowing seductively next to my keyboard, a purchase I made over the weekend. I’m currently using it as a volume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom function for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript viewer. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After having one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves provided to me by the medicine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very distinct difference now; the latter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weaker body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apartment complex across from mine, and we were extremely impressed. It’s 200 square feet bigger than the one I’m currently in, yet $50 cheaper. I will even have my own bathroom. It lacks a balcony, but a balcony is something I’m willing to sacrifice for a larger living room. We have the arrangements made, and we will try to sign something on Wednesday, to reserve an apartment on the penthouse for July. I’m a little worried that there may be some problems that only pop up after inhabiting the same living space, but I’m sure that it will be nothing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imagine leaving this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiving a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.

I feel like talking, but I doubt anyone would understand. Sometimes, I feel like speaking to someone, and having them listen. Other times, I would rather have them strengthen my convictions, to tell me what I need to hear back. Tonight, I need someone who understands, who can make sense of what I’m feeling, who can provide not only support, but guidance as well.

Scary Movie Night 3 went well yesterday. It ended up that Aaron, Cristina, Nick, Jacques, Ngan, Trolley, and Wheaties came over to watch Signs, which I thought was only moderately scary, and had an inspiring, but rather cheap ending. The former three people stayed over to hang out, and I think I scared them off with some overtly disgusting Southpark episodes. Everyone was wasted by the end of the night, so talking seemed to take a secondary role.

I had a good phone call with John the other day.

There hasn’t been much progress on my geology essay. It seems like there’s a great lack of material on the internet about gold value fluctuations, from a geological perspective; everything is from a financial view. I’m a little worried that I’ll have half the length I’m supposed to. It’s due at the end of the month, so I’ll still have time. The only problem is that time will most likely not help any.

The weather has been beautiful lately. I’ve always found the briskness of early spring to be indefinably nostalgic. The grey pavement seems to be freshly laid, from the absent snow which so recently covered it. The yellow grass, the cloudless skies, it all seems to be such a poignant sign of the change in season.

I was sitting on Trolley’s sex lounger yesterday in his hot apartment, and I felt a slight draft coming from his window. Trolley’s apartment always seems toasty to me, so it was refreshing to feel a breeze from the outside. It reminded me of this great quote from Moby Dick:

Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.

I happened to tune into CHUO FM on Sunday at around 11:30 pm when I was testing my alarm clock, and I was fascinated at what I heard. I generally don’t like the radio at all, but this programme had me hooked. A male voice, apparently a co-host, whose host had not showed up, had the show to himself for the hour. The programme was terrible. This person had a decent radio voice, but the things he was talking about, the tricks he used to avoid dead air, everything he did made the show interestingly bad. I had to listen until the end, because of how rarely I experience something so poorly done, yet so public at the same time.

I was lucky enough to discover a group called E.S. Posthumus, and there doesn’t seem to be an official website, or any website for that matter, in which I can find out more information. They seem to be doing well, with songs on soundtracks like Spiderman, Minority Report, and Unfaithful. One of my current favourites is Tikal. I recommended them to Jeff and Nick, since I remember how Jeff was getting into the instrumental stuff right now. He told me that he had a four tier system of knowing whether to keep a song. I should probably try doing that, since I currently have over a gig of songs I haven’t decided whether to keep or not.

I woke up at 3:33 ante meridian and, unable to sleep, decided to write.

I’ve been busy. I spent the last three days at Trolley’s, sleeping on his couch, and generally staying up late playing Wind Waker. It’s been an amazing game so far, and even though it seems to be too short, it’s been an unparalleled experience. I met Adam and Matt on Friday, so we went out to Minglewoods and sat out on the patio, even though it wasn’t quite patio weather yet.

Dolly and Nala didn’t get along together well. When they saw each other, they tried to stare each other down. Nala’s tail doubled in size as she made a low growl. Dolly just hissed back. Apparently, cats introduced to the same living environment are supposed to spend around the first two weeks without face-to-face contact. Dolly stayed for a few hours at Trolley’s anyway.

My trip to Hong Kong has been canceled, due to the lung virus that’s been going around. Yet another time that my trip has been canceled. Visiting Hong Kong at least once more has become one of my goals in life now, something I feel the need to do before I die.

I am now official in one of my typical “Jeff” phases, where I start to freak out near the end of the term. Progress on my final project has been difficult, not something which is not completely (or at all) my fault. I found out that I was too late in requesting a marks shift in my graphics course, so my 35% midterm now counts. This means that I will need roughly an 80% to pass the course. Since this is my final term, I may not be graduating until I can make up the three credits. I believe I have a back-up plan, which involves taking a softwarre engineering course during the summer that I can use towards my total credits. I think that means that I won’t be attending the graduation in July. Things seem very fucked up for me academically right now, and I’m worried, one of the many reasons I can’t sleep.

I tried rock climbing on Tuesday, and even though my left forearm was dead from hitting the L trigger too much, I was still able to scale a few walls. It was a great time, something that I could definitely see myself getting into. Even the act of belaying is fun, in the sense of a trust exercise. It’s just not something that I can get into right now without a job, or any convenient way of getting to the rock climbing studio.