Monthly Archives: April 2003

Talking To Cats

I had the plea­sure of tak­ing care of Nala while Trolley and Wheaties were home for the long week­end. She greet­ed me with loud protes­ta­tions, angry that her care­tak­er had left her alone in the house for two days so far. Alas, it was only me who had arrived, a stranger she had­n’t got­ten com­fort­able with yet. She fol­lowed me around at first, and watched as I filled up her food and water dish­es. After a while she real­ized that I was the only one com­ing. “Where is my slave?”, she demand­ed, and ran off to sleep under the kitchen table.

I tried to talk to her, to let her know that her com­pa­ny would be back in two more days. I asked if she was alright, if she was bored or sleepy or ener­getic.

It felt…a lit­tle odd…to be so ver­bose with a cat. I con­sid­er myself to be a sane per­son. At the same time, I real­ize that cats can­not answer back. A strange lit­tle para­dox.

I find myself in the same sit­u­a­tion around chil­dren. When a kid asks me a ques­tion to which the answer is beyond his com­pre­hen­sion, I don’t know what to say. I become rather embar­rassed that I’ve been placed in such a sit­u­a­tion. Do I tell this child the truth, or do I give a sac­cha­rine answer? Do I attempt to shed some con­scious­ness on a child’s life, or do I let him/her remain in a bliss­ful child­hood igno­rance?

Any deci­sion can be thought of in a bad way. I nev­er know what to say, so I gen­er­al­ly don’t answer back.

I still talk to Dolores though.

For there can be no judge­ment there.

Lamplust, Formatting, Basic

Studying has not been going well. I find it dif­fi­cult to get moti­vat­ed, both exams being a week away. I’d much rather be try­ing to improve my win ratio or work­ing on my book, than learn­ing about orthog­o­nal view math­e­mat­ics or mesother­mal vein deposits. I might just write off the rest of the after­noon as relax­ation.

Using my tax return as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, I bought a set of Candela’s a few days ago. After see­ing a movie in which a restau­rant dis­plays a beau­ti­ful set of mood light­ing, I was inspired to give some more per­son­al­i­ty to my rather drably room. My Christmas lights do add a bit of mood, but they are too bright to feel com­fort­able. I also bought a blue sin­gle, in case one of them burns out, and so that I can have a bit of colour at my dis­pos­al. I don’t like the fact that they run on NiCads though, mak­ing them have the trou­ble­some char­ac­ter­is­tic of mem­o­ry. I’d like to just leave it on until I go to bed, but I’m afraid I’d have to let them “burn out”, although I’m sure that lithi­um ion bat­ter­ies would have dou­bled the price as well as the weight, and halved the lifes­pan of each Candela.

My com­put­er des­per­ate­ly needs a for­mat­ting.

I caught Basic this after­noon with Aaron and Chris. It was­n’t very good; the plot had way too many twists to it. I spent the entire time try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell was going on and admir­ing Connie Nielson’s dis­tin­guished and weath­ered face (oh my).

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.

Quixotic

People who know me know that I gen­er­al­ly tend not to get my hopes up. I nev­er see the point. If I get my hopes up and things work out in my favour, then I would have expect­ed such an out­come, and I become unap­pre­cia­tive. If things don’t work out, then I feel even worse than had noth­ing hap­pened. On the oth­er hand, if I don’t get my hopes up, I’ll feel great when I get my way, or I’ll feel fine when noth­ing works out.

Yet I can’t help but get my hopes up for what the future may hold. Lately, things have been going well in such a way that I feel com­fort­ed. Jonathan has made a great attempt at try­ing to get me a com­put­er relat­ed job with a decent salary. I applied to a beau­ti­ful apart­ment with Nick which, I was told, I should have no trou­ble obtain­ing occu­pan­cy. I will be grad­u­at­ing soon, and free to live my life with a free­dom only matched from the sum­mer days of my child­hood.

But most bright to me seems to be the future with my friends. I’ve met a great bunch of peo­ple, of which I immense­ly enjoy hang­ing out with. They have offered to help me move. They enjoy the same things I do. They are peo­ple I can con­fide in. They have got­ten excit­ed about my ten­an­cy with Nick. Who else do I know is inter­est­ed in my hap­pi­ness? What oth­er friends that I’ve had are so keen in spend­ing time with me?

My friends make the future seem warm and bear­able. Even when I admit to myself the way the future may work out, the fact that I may not get this job and indus­try con­nec­tion, the fact that my rental appli­ca­tion may be denied, I can’t imag­ine any­thing going wrong with these won­der­ful peo­ple. Sometimes I wish that I did­n’t feel this way, that I could keep my mind in check. But I can’t.

And I don’t care.