i · know

Last year Daniela was working at the nanotech office and took me as her +1 to the holiday party. When she went abroad the following semester I took her job and have been at it since. This year she went as my +1.

I came to her dorm to wait for our cab to the restaurant. The outfit she chose was a little revealing considering that most of my coworkers are middle aged; I suggested she put on a cardigan or something but she refused.

At the reception we made what awkward banter we could over antipasto and drinks. We had been talking to this guy Dave, who was probably in his early thirties, when we realized there were only 10 minutes of open bar left. I wanted a fancy mixed drink so I asked Dave what fancy mixed drinks he could recommend.

"Whiskey sour?"

"No that's gross."

"Aw. Rum and coke?"

"Boring."

Dave turns to Daniela, who is a redhead. "How about a redheaded slut?"




I burst out laughing. Daniela just kind of stood there speechless. Dave was apparently oblivious to how inappropriate that was, or was really pleased with himself because he was smiling and still talking. Hours later, I am still confused by what happened. Did Dave say that on purpose? What was going through his mind? It was impossible to read him. He seemed like such a normal guy before this. I have no idea what to think.

What's more, Daniela came home to find an invitation for facebook friendship with him in her inbox. Like some kind of weird cherry on top of the crass sundae.

I'm somewhere between a pantheist and a panentheist. When I'm not studying or busy working, most of my thoughts revolve around these topics. I'm pretty sure my ego is an illusion. I'm afraid that if I take acid or mushrooms the intensity of that realization will cause me to dissolve and be gone forever and/or I will go completely insane. At the same time, I believe this will happen eventually no matter what I do.

I'm tired of the culture I live in. I want to leave everything and go to a monastery somewhere.

Does anyone else suffer from this problem?

do you believe you have a soul?

no more sleeping until 3pm! or even 1:30pm!
minimal browsing of useless internets!
gym visits will increase in frequency!
will know own sexual orientation!
more risks!
less meat!
more reading of worthwhile material (do you have any recommendations?)!
no being late!
way better at playing guitar!
will tell it like it is!

stay tuned.

reason #80

if you look hard enough you can find a party that isn't full of asshole frat brothers. there will be marimbas and bongos and plentiful amounts of beer. then after the cops come, you can go swimming in the gorge in your underpants with strangers from said party.

reason #81

on the way to the gorge when campus police pulls over next to you to say "i hope that is a soda", you can say "well it's a beer but it's not mine, seriously. you can have it. do you want it?" the cop will reply "no thnx just throw it away ^-^" and bounce.

A while ago Vincent told me about his luck theory. He says we all have luck in discrete amounts, and that we are more or less free to apply it however we want. As a specific example he told me how in high school one day he didn't use his luck to catch the bus on time, missed his train, missed his stop and when he got to school the teacher was absent (luck was used on making the teacher absent). I actually remember probably two or three occasions in elementary school where I didn't feel like doing my homework and hoped (prayed?) really hard before I went to sleep for the teacher to be absent, and the next day she was. Maybe I just did that every night, though.

I think today I had used up a lot of luck that I had on layaway. I had my organic chem final tonight. I have been dreading this day for weeks. I've done below average on every test so far, and expected the final to be no different. I didn't learn much in high school in the way of study habits. I still do most of my work the night before. While this may have been a good strategy for say, Ms. Kelly's government class, it is less effective for organic chemistry. I had been frantically cramming, and going on facebook, for a few days, and planned to get a substantial amount of material learned during the last 5 hours before the test. It was not helping that my professor expected the class to memorize about 80 reactions. It was better than the second test, though, where he wanted us to memorize over a hundred. When the time finally came to take the test, the TA's announced that most of the reactions that we thought we had to memorize would be given. People were letting out cries of joy all over the auditorium. There was hope. I don't remember being that happy since my 7th birthday, when I got a huge Lego set and ate dinner at Sizzler's with my mom. Do you remember Sizzler's?

I guess it would have been better if he had actually told us before the test, but it was much better than having nothing at all. Though this means that the mean would be higher, I prefer knowing I got at least half the test right to not knowing if I got more than 10 points.

The weather today was the best it's been all year. I spent most of the day inside but I did take a good walk in the evening after my exam. Also, my mega-sweet earphones came in the mail today. And I won another movie ticket.

Of course, luck can't last forever. I have to start and finish studying for my physics final, which is tomorrow at 2pm. And then I have a nutrition final 24 hours after that.

Here is a song for you. YES, YOU!

With all this panic over disappearing bees, I think it's time we get back to work on the Beeness project. My interest in the project was actually renewed a little earlier this semester, when my physics TA mentioned something about how bees' dances are representative of the 6th dimension. I'm still not quite clear on the theory behind that. The original paper doesn't seem to be published anywhere. The only thing I could find were some some magazine articles and useless commentaries people wrote in their blogs. This shouldn't stop us, though. If we use the concept it will probably be according to our own crackpot theory that would be most congruent with the story. We can easily draw on recent events and this 6th dimension stuff to make the plot 8000x more awesome. We could probably even make it relevant to the current crisis.

All this and more can be yours... as soon as Arkady gets the website running again.