Somebody actually read something

As I prepared to send it to Lindsay with the carefully worded request asking her read it and give me her opinion last night, it became another one of those mixed-feeling moments.  Pride in what I'd written and wanting to learn if others thought it was as good.  But also immense amounts of trepidation at the almost certain utter lack of any form of response, as the object of pride was completely ignored and disregarded.  Mouse hovering over the 'send' button, I stared at the monitor for nearly twenty minutes as the conflicting emotions warred within.  In the end, pride and optimism once again won out over experience and I sent it.

It was just a little two-page vignette, but it's still a thrill that Lindsay actually was willing to read it and what's more, give me real feed-back.  Never mind the short story that's been sitting in her inbox for the past two months.  Of course, another difference was that this one wasn't fantastic in any way.  It may be that Lindsay's even less of a fan of sf/f than she's willing to admit.

The bit of me that watches the rest of me

I felt it Monday while I was leaving Denver.  I was reluctant to leave my friends behind and go back to Summit.  Not that I don't have friends in Summit, but they aren't as weird and crazy and fun as Lindsay and Cris.  While preparing to reenter my day-to-day reality again, that little separate bit of my mind whispered, "Pay attention."  Already, I was putting the mental blocks back in place and assuming the mask that I wear in everyday life.  Language history and word etymologies aren't that interesting.  Awful scifi movies aren't that funny.  Intellectual and existential books, movies, and music are at best only vaguely interesting and boring/confusing the rest of the time.  It's a little disheartening, but this is how I've learned to avoid the glassy-eyed stares and poorly-hidden disdain that I know so well.

It's the little part of my mind that knows what's going on in my dreams and keeps me from panicking in my nightmares.  If someone is acting like a complete bitch or asshole, even as I'm raging I'll feel it wondering, "What's really going on here?"  When the rest of me is on top of the world with elation or being crushed by sadness, it calmly reminds me to watch what's happening and asks, "If you were writing this, how would you describe it?"

Mandatory vacation

I hate trying to sleep late when I've got the day off.  All that ever happens is I end up staring at the ceiling thinking, "I'm bored."  And I end up getting up at about the same time I would have normally.

Discounting the first day, wherein I had to make several phone calls and deal with missing deliveries, crashing computers, and alarms going off at 1:00am, it's been an awsome vacation so far.  Cris, Lindsay and Melissa came up from Denver and we all went on up to Glenwood Springs for the day.  We wandered around town for a while and then found a trail and spent a couple of hours hiking.  The next day I followed them back down to Denver and went to see Melissa's show of Macbeth (set in 1920's New York).  I highly recommend it.  Today, I hung out with Cris for a while before heading up to Wyoming.  I helped her clean up a little, then we ate left-over chinese and watched an Armenian movie, Big Story in the City.

These are my awsome crazy friends, who get drunk and read the dictionary out loud, think nothing of walking into the third bookstore in a day, and laugh ourselves silly watching terrible sci-fi movies.  I just wish they didn't live seventy-five miles away.

Invasion of the over-friendly roommates

Kiso, Lindsay and Melissa are visiting for the weekend.  They survived the Friday traffic and the snow and got here about 9ish.  We proceeded to break out the alcohol and joke and goof off as we usually do, and it was awesome like always as we looked up strange words in the dictionary and swapped complaints about our various unrewarding jobs.  Then the roommates started getting friendly.  They were loathe to leave in the first place, forcing me to actually kick them out (not quite physically).  But each time they came upstairs to get more drinks for themselves, they stayed a little bit longer and cracked a couple more unfunny or downright incomprehensible jokes.  Until finally they came over and sat down to talk.  And talk.  And continue talking, until we were all sitting silently for several minutes at a time, listening to them interrupt each other as they tried to tell unrelated stories.

After nearly a year of living together, one of them has learned to recognize my evil eye and tried to begin the trek back downstairs a couple of times.  The other hasn't though, and continued to blather on, oblivious to all else.  And since the former wouldn't leave without the latter, we were stuck for almost half an hour as they dominated the room, until I finally declared it was time to go to sleep.  Undaunted, the roommates kept suggesting "one more shot" and "could I just play these two songs for you?"  No, no, no, no, NO.  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE GO AWAY.  I came severely close to losing my cool, which would have been unfortunate for everyone.

On a side note, I'm not being deliberately vague about that.  I really don't know what would happen if I lost my cool.  It's extremely rare that my anger actually boils over and most of the time I'm unprepared for the sudden loss of control.  It sounds worse than it is.  The last time it happened, I shouted numbers.  Seriously.  The


Ah, sorry about that.  It's now about 45 minutes since the previous paragraph.  Speaking of unrewarding jobs, my phone just rang to notify me that the motion detectors were going off at the theater.  Both assistant managers were unavailable, so it fell to me to go meet the police and do a quick once-over of the building.  Did I mention I'd been drinking?  I brushed my teeth and did my best to dispel the smell of whiskey before meeting the police officer.  Fortunately I hadn't drunk so much as to impair my driving and if he smelled it, he didn't say anything.

[sigh] Where was I?  Drinking, annoyingly over-friendly roommates, loosing my cool... I don't know.  I think that my body's gone ahead and absorbed the remaining alcohol.  I feel significantly less literate.  Maybe I should just stop now while I'm possibly slightly ahead.  Except for the shouting numbers thing.  That really sounds a lot more messed up when I say it out loud.  Which is especially weird since I'm not speaking, but typing.  Meh.  Still a good time to stop.

Multiple media

Well, I finally decided to give in and sign up for Facebook the other day.  The truth is that there was an obituary for Kirstin and it really bothered me that I had to use someone else's account to look at it.  The problem is that now I've got two different outlets for my various ramblings (three if you count the other blog) and I'm not sure if I can keep the rambling levels high enough for all of them.  Oh well, I'm already learning that Facebook is mostly just a bunch of blurbs anyway.  I'll probably start hungering for something more substantial soon, and that's what this blog is for.

Yesterday I got a call from Cris.  She said that Kirstin's mom was going through all her stuff and wanted to know if we wanted any of it.  Um, yes?  Any or all of it would be fine.  Not really, but it felt terrible to be discussing it.  Like scavengers picking around for anything useful.

Reasons not to cook while drunk

Just one, really:  Food Poisoning.

I didn't do anything incredibly stupid like forget to cook the meat or anything.  If I had been sober though, I probably would have stopped to wonder why the ground beef, once opened, was pink on the outside and a little bit browned on the inside.  Just one of those harsher lessons of life I guess, where the universe gives you the equivilant of a slap upside the head and a "What were you thinking?"

So, write off one weekend, where I was too ill to even read.  I just spent most of it on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep.  Now, I daresay I feel better than ever.  Probably my body's just thrilled to be getting solid food again.

Still going

Kirstin died last Saturday.  Her sister was going through all the contacts in Kirstin's phone and called me with the news that night.  She tried to tell me what had happened, but my brain had kind of shut down and I didn't catch most of it.  It wasn't until I got home from work and saw Kirstin's name on my phone and realized that we wouldn't ever be able to talk again that I realized she was really gone.  I was just able to stumble into my room and close the door before I completely lost it.

I went to the service with Cris, Lindsay and Melissa, driving up to Wyoming from Denver.  It seems like the most unfair thing is coming back and having life resume as normal.  A big chunk of my soul is missing.  Something should be different to reflect that, but it's still all the same crap I was dealing with before.

It hurts the most at night, when I can't stop myself from wanting to give Kirstin a call.  We leaned on each other for support so often that I feel like I'm stumbling every time I turn around.  Actually, I guess that really is what I'm doing, since I've spent most of the time since coming back alternating between drunk and hung over.  It's slightly worrying on some level that I've drunk more in the past three days than I have in the last three months.  But it's the only way I can endure the memories.  The other option would be to forget, and I won't do that.