March 13, 2002 through
March 11, 2002

Monday -- two weeks. That long since my last piano lesson. I was going to have most of the Khachaturian Toccata done. That was two weeks ago.

Time would slow down for me if I had less to do. Even if I dropped everything, I could still spend endless days at work. And what would I drop? Writing? Piano? Career? Reading? Exercise? Friends? Family? I've already dropped chess, video games, Japanese language and all the little hobbies like autonomy and metaphysics. It might also slow down if I concentrated on it more -- was more aware of the seasons.

It was tempting to cancel the lesson tonight. Amy and Stephanie, who own the coffee shop I most frequent, invited me out tonight. One of the other regulars is back in town for Spring Break. I really need to focus on meeting more people down here, but I said I would call after the lesson to see if they were still doing anything.

Louis is just the greatest. It's worth it to sit and do nothing but talk for an hour and a half. We don't normally talk that much of course, but he's starting to take my word when I mention I haven't practiced very much. Besides, there was the concern last Tuesday to discuss. Tim used to say about chess that it was almost as important to notice the way masters approached chess -- their mindset and attitude -- as it was to learn to play. It's the same in music I think. There is a lifestyle there. A pattern of soul. And immersing one's self in that is just as important as mechanics. Right?

He would laugh at me and say, "What are we going to play next?" So we spent most of the learning in this lesson was based on things for which I didn't need to be prepared -- things I'm already screwing up just fine already, as it were. Posture. He's been working a lot on the Alexander Technique recently. I haven't read too much about it, but he's been correcting my body position while playing. It actually has helped quite a bit. And I think we're correcting bad habits before they become a real problem. Yea me.

Apparently there was a renown Opera singer at the school earlier. Louis stopped in for an hour to listen. Something this guy said was, "we are all born great singers." It is through the course of our life that we develop inhibitions and place create our own obstacles to hinder natural talents.

That sounds like wisdom to me. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done in developing ourselves; but, I know that I've created a lot of my own problems. With the piano, I think have a some self destructiveness. Every time someone compliments me, it makes me screw up -- which is why Louis mentioned it in the first place. He was complimenting and I reacted badly.

After the lesson was done, I got a phone call from Amy. Everyone was almost done bowling and heading out to dinner. "Are you hungry?" Um, I'm always hungry.

In a nutshell, dinner was nice. The restaurant turned out to be an Indian place. I could live on that you know. But I had a terrible realization. I used to give Chaz a hard time when he told me he was going to spend time with certain "friends" of his. It turns out that he was going to a little coffee shop by a movie theatre, and his friends were a couple of the kids who worked behind the counter.

Do you see these people outside the shop? "No." Um, are they really your friends? I mean, they're paid to be nice to you. And you're like, what? 35? Yes, yes… Physical age, mental age, emotional age. All true enough, but shouldn't you be trying to meet some other people?

Well, basically I've been doing the same damn thing. I go to the coffee shops and I know all the owners. I know a lot of the various regulars. But I never see these people outside the shop, with rare exception. Monday was one. The thing I realized though was that most of the other 10 people there, did know each other besides just from having coffee.

Always the outsider. I've always had this problem actually. Sometime I think that other people just have the weirdest ideas about me. Example: after dinner everyone decided to go their different ways for the night. Hugs were exchanged and some farewells. Amy comes up to me and says, "Since I hardly even get to see you outside the shop, I'm going to give you a hug."

Um. <blink> I'm either the most intimidating or the repulsive person ever. Here I am, wishing that whole world hugged each other more, and someone has to make an excuse to hug me? I was so shocked I don't remember if I even said anything -- kinda like when you get stage fright and don't remember your entire performance.

Probably I should just take the initiative, but it's a delicate thing, ya know? Not everyone wants to be hugged. Like Jen. She hates being touched -- except by her boyfriend, apparently. It's so fucking depressing. She's like the only friend-friend I have left in this pathetic city that hasn't moved or is married. I gave her a hug once, after having not seen here for quite awhile, away. I think she was pretty horrified.

Anyway, back to the terrible realization -- these people actually knew each other. And it just reminded me that I didn't.

I've moved to several cities by myself -- no family or friends. The feeling there was similar, except from a fresh and scary perspective instead of a stale and depressing one. Usually I could meet people through work and school. But now I work from home and my class at school is one-on-one. Hmm.

The answer is obvious. And it's something I've been meaning to do anyway. My sense of political activism has all but died in the last few years. (Let's add another thing to that to-do list!) I need to get involved again. Activism. Volunteering. There are some yoga classes I want to go back to also. The best place to meet compatible people is while doing some you love. (Ah, the dating wisdoms of a chronically single person.)

I've been meaning to check out a local Polyamory meeting too. I'm just afraid that is not going to be what I hope it is. Whenever you tell most guys that you're into Polyamory (especially married ones), they get real excited. "Oh yes! Polyamory!" But they're all thinking the same basic thing… You know the "S" word.

"Polyamory is all that squishy stuff you hate." The crying on the shoulder. The emotional support. More money on flowers. And yes, it means your wife might meet a guy she likes -- not necessary another woman for hot lesbo-sex. "Oh, well… I'm not into that."

Not that all guys are like that. And maybe they wouldn't be at the poly group. I'm just worried anyway. The idea is really appealing to me. I actually get attracted to couples. When Eros finally met the girl of his dreams, I had little poly fantasies for a while. Even with Amy and Steph, interestingly enough. But, I've no idea how that would work, or even start. And I'm not even good at meeting single people.

Eirr-Eirr- Eirr- Eirr- Eirr- Eirr! I feel asleep on the couch? God, I feel terrible, and now it's Tuesday .

So today I decided that I just really needed some more books on Windows 2000. Not that I don't already have like five -- clustering, application center, performance tuning, etc. But now I have this security project and I have to really know all the AD and group policy stuff, which I really don't. So I bought like four more. IIS, security, general, and Inside Microsoft Windows 2000 -- which I'll probably never actually use. And the .Net server is going to come out, so I'm going to need new books then away...

Doesn't matter. I love books too much. If I were rich, I'd buy Amazon and then keep all the books for myself. I'd strip off all my cloths and roll… um, never mind.

Anyway, so I hit two different Borders and then decided to donate blood on the way home. Mental note: never donate blood on a work day. I don't know if this happens to everyone, but donating just wipes me out. And now I'm just way too far behind at work…

Three flights of stairs to my apartment doesn't help. After an impromtu nap, which I didn't mean to take, I semi-worked all the way up to Buffy; but, I didn't get much done. Cabell got me to do my astrology chart and then watch Smallville -- which I enjoyed. The chart is frighten-ly accurate with only a couple glaring errors. So I guess the jury is still out with me on Astrology. Every time I think about it, I hear Shack's voice, "What if people actually did what their horoscopes told them to do? 'Hard-working Capricorns deserve a break!' What if one day, every Capricorn in the world decided to take the day off and relax..."

That's what I did Wednesday . Actually, I wouldn't have -- except that I really overslept. I missed my morning conference call, and I was still a bit tired from the bloodletting. A friend of mine once said, "It's better not to show up at all, than to show up late." I don't necessarily believe that is always true. But I would rather burn a vacation day at work than to get tagged with the slacker label. So, I called all the appropriate people and fortunately was able to take a vacation day to recoup.

It's a good thing too. Because, my workout was today and after that, I was wiped again. I swear this is the hardest workout he's ever made me do, and I told him why I wanted to take it a little easier today. On the bright side though, I can tell I'm actually making progress, and it's helping my overall energy level. I could really get addicted to this healthy living stuff.

I had planned to actually catch up on some work, despite the vacation day -- but I didn't. What I did do though was sleep some more after the workout, clean the apartment, do some of my hand washing, the dishes and all my bills. Something I discovered from working at home is that my apartment and my mind/emotions are directly linked. If I let the apartment get trashed, I start letting my life fall apart. It's a terrible downward spiral.

So, hopefully tomorrow I'll be in a good place to get all caught up at work. Besides, it's my on-call day anyway. OMG, that means it will be Thursday already! THURSDAY. F***ing Thursday. Technically, it already is Thursday. I suppose I should wrap this up for now...

March 10, 2002 through
March 2, 2002

And other week. The last two months or so flew by even faster than others. I have a theory about that. When we are young, everything is new. We play a lot. Ever year in school is a major event, a new milestone. We date for the first time. We have best friends. And we look forward to everything which is still before us.

Once we get up to speed on the highway of life, so to say, we go into cruise control. At first, the scenery is interesting. We enjoy driving for the sake of driving and life is good. But, continuing with the analogy, if you don't get off to visit a new town every now again, driving becomes quite tedious. And boring. And, I need to pee!

After you start working, it's all the same. Yesterday (Friday), I worked. Today, actually, I worked. Since I'm on-call this weekend, I'll work tomorrow. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on -- it will all be the same. Even my weekends are getting predictable. I might go to the wine bar. Every now and again I see a movie. I'll, definitely hit at least one coffee shop. I might see a concert. On a good weekend I do some cleaning. And once in a while, I go to Orlando.

My chosen hobbies don't help. Writing journal entries can be pretty monotonous. Writing on the whole is a rather solitary occasion to begin with. Maybe if I were to finish that book, I could point to it as a defining event -- or just publish a story. But I haven't yet. And lets not event talk about piano practice. There are pieces learned and other milestones. But it can't mark my life by them. "Oh last February? Yes, that's when I finished that Chopin prelude."

As one gets older, the sense of time changes. Everyone agrees -- at least so far. The only thing that was ever made time go more slowly for me, is having a shit job and knowing that I would be off on Friday. That was a sure way to make sure Friday never came.

So maybe I have it all backwards. I remember as a child often being bored out of my mind. In high school sometimes I thought I was as busy as I could ever be. Note that MTV (like Buffy) was a valid daily task. In college, I new that I was as busy as I could ever be. Of course, now I really am that busy. Although, I don't have children…

Could the rapid passing of time be the hallmark of an interesting and full life? One can hope, I suppose. Maybe it is both things. We experience the lack of enough hours in the day, as we have more and more to do. But we lose track of that time as well, as our lives become more monotonous. Great Maker help us all if the corporations find a way to make days 35 hours instead of 24 hours. We'd all get pay cuts, but take home the same paycheck because we could work longer hours...

Have I mentioned how strongly I feel about campaign finance reform?

All of that being said, here's the daily (and shouldn't I change this to weekly?) log.

Monday I met with my new financial planner. He rescheduled on me though -- because he was doing my paperwork at the last minute. I mean, I do that sort of thing often enough. But he's my financial planner. It's my money. Shouldn't he be spending long hours at night to help me out? He did call and ask me what kind of coffee I wanted, though. Then he even brought it to me. A double soy latté with honey and almond syrup delivered straight to my doorstep. (Nobody has ever said I'm easy.) Yum -- I'm not used to being pampered, but I could get used to this.

He didn't actually have my plan done though. Instead we spent a couple hours talking about insurance -- additional disability insurance and maybe some life insurance. Supposedly he wanted to pitch said "products" to me before finishing the plan. Can you say boring? Boredom is a sales tactic; I'm sure of it. And it was all the more tortuous because I couldn't fall asleep with all that caffeine in my system. Evil.

So I applied; we'll see if I get approved. I wouldn't have gone with the life insurance, but Mom is going to be somewhat dependent on me financially when she retired, I think. It's funny to get life insurance to protect your parents. And who knows? Maybe I'll even have a family one day and they might need it too. Although, I've really hoping for the I-Get-To-Stay-Home-And-Write-And-Play-Piano type of long term partnership.

I'll be single forever. I wonder if I can designate a charity as a beneficiary. Hmm, I need to ask that.

The cleaning person came and left. There was no piano lesson . And I worked most of the night -- until Angel came on. Shack and I discussed the episode at length, and then I crashed into my bed.

Tuesday, I saw Olga Kern perform. I knew that she was a Van Cliburn gold medalist, but I didn't know she has such a following. The performance was quite good, she received several standing ovations and gave two encores. Sadly, I wasn't very familiar with the repertoire. I always mean to hear them before a live performance, but seldom do.

Susan (who started the music group) met me there. It was nice going with another person -- having someone to talk with. Louis and his wife were also there. We all chatted a bit before the concert. And after, he said that it was the best solo performance he'd attended in a long time. I'm glad to have his opinion, since I was not familiar with the pieces. I also don't always trust the reaction of local audiences -- sometimes it seems to me they go wild only for anything loud and passionate.

Our seats for the performance were amazing. Row E. The concert wasn't as heavily attended as I thought it should have been - probably because of the terrible advertising. Everywhere the event was listed as "Van Cliburn gold medallist" instead of "Olga Kern -- Van Cliburn gold medallist." Her name wasn't even on the tickets. Louis' wife said she would be insulted if the same happened to her. I agree.

The best thing about being so close to the piano is being able to see the pedal mechanism. Sitting further back, like I normally do, you can usually see the pedal, but not the mechanism beneath the sound board. I could see exactly how far she was depressing the pedal -- all her subtle nuances. When I play, I do try to use just the right amount of pedal and I've been paying more attention to this. Watching her pedaling though was a revelation.

When I got home I should have gone to bed. But exactly how could I do that before watching the new Buffy episode? I got out the dilation stuff, and then marveled that Xander walked out on Anya. Nobody ever believed in that relationship anyway... And Xander does have big family problems… And it must be very scary, but... It was sad. Oh well, it made me feel emotion. That's the point of art I suppose.

Crash. Wake. Morning. It's Wednesday. Wouldn't it be nice to have a wakko-meter when you wake up in the morning? We need something that will prepare you for the day ahead -- an early warning system. It could even built into the alarm clock. "Ring! Ring! Good morning. Warning. Today's wakko-rating is... eight."

Not that Wednesday really had an eight wakko-rating. But I realized that I'm lovesick again. I spent the better part of my day, after working out, depressed. Then I realized -- I've got a crush on Kat at the gym. Aren't crushes the best? I still think Sex Sucks. But sex is not human companionship. And the need for human contact is quite real.

My brief relationship with Deb made me immune to lovesickness for a while. But once the effects of a bad relationship wear off, you're exposed again. Anyway, I'm writing a whole entry about my lovesickness, so enough of that.

I was working late, again, and my manager saw me online. There was a conference call that needed coverage and he asked me to join. Network problem. I love those -- at least I feel mildly competent. And he was on too, which was good. I've been doing a lot of server admin stuff and feel like I haven't had enough exposure recently.

Then Thursday. My on-call night. This week was particularly bad. I worked late and then was bombarded endlessly with pages all night. I got paged at four in the morning for a forty-five minute conference call that they didn't need anybody on. "Process." Argh! And it didn't end there. And where was the other person that shares on-call duty with me? I never heard him on once. Yawn; whatever.

Much more interesting was Friday. Got to see Bitch and Animal in concert. All-in-all I'd say it was... f***ing awesome! If these two goddesses come into your town, definitely go see them. I haven't bought their albums yet (though I plan to), but I have a feeling that their magic is best experienced live. I saw P-Funk a few years ago, and didn't have as much fun, feel as empowered or as energized as I did Friday night. (And, yes, the P-Funk concert was fabulous.)

Anyway, today is Saturday and I've been singing PUSSY MANIFESTO! all day long. I want to shout it at people as they walk by. In Ybor, I actually did a couple times. (The beer helped a little bit with that…)

How many different ways can you say PUSSY MANIFESTO! In a high voice? In a booming voice? With a giddy tone? An aggressive feel? Say it really sexy. Say it 'cause it makes you angry. Does it make you feel embarrassed? Empowered? Say at work and sing it in the shower, "PUSSY MANIFESTO! PUSSY MANIFESTO! Pus-sy, Pus-sy, Puss---y Manifesto!" I've been singing it all day long.

Holy Fire. (ref: Sterling) They're burning with it. People start to lose it in their twenties. Really -- that soon, I think, though some seem never lose it at all. Holy Fire makes a person alive and beautiful. Call it what you will: passion, inspiration, motivation, genius or Holy Fire. It's gushing out their pores.

After the show they were hanging around to sign CDs and talk to fans. Add a thousand Whose-Line-is-it-Anyway points for being so friendly. But the suck-thing about meeting people who inspire you is that there isn't much to say. "Thanks for the music." "Thanks" is the best and most sincere I've come up with. But you're just another face in a very large crowd saying the same thing.

I'm sure there is a feel good factor there. I know I get big warm fuzzies when someone says they like the site. But when I meet people like that, I want to get to know them. I want to talk. Exchange ideas. Inspiration.

My persistent "dying in Florida" problem just makes matters worse. I need to meet people here that have that Holy Fire, but they're hard to find. I need to meet people that are so alive that they light up the room with their energy. People that are contagious. I need more people, locally, that inspire me.

Back to the "Friday Night in Review," and speaking of inspiring people, Doria Roberts opened up the show. Jen and I were late getting there, so we only got to hear the last few songs. Add to that the sound was pretty low until the end, so we didn't even catch much until we made our way down into the crowd.

But finally we were standing there, waiting for Bitch and Animal to come up, and listening. Waiting and listening until there was this sudden realization like a sunrise. On the stage was this amazing, beautiful woman. I think it hit Jen and I at the same moment. It was like walking up to a piece of art for the first time in a gallery.

Her voice is amazing. Her lyrics are moving, her presence empowering. Good people, as my friend Louie used to say -- it's something you can feel. And then I actually saw her at a coffee shop tonight! (Saturday) I was there to start writing this log and to look for some CDs, since I didn't bring enough cash with me Friday night. How funny to meet the actual person instead! Life is really great sometimes.

I said "hi" as I was leaving, and we talked for a minute -- same "nothing to say" problem. She's coming back to town in June apparently. Whoot! I guess this makes me a groupie. Or just a fan? If I go see Bitch and Animal in Orlando or Gainesville, I guess I'll be their groupie too. lol  I've never seen anyone in concert twice on purpose. Anyway, I'm pretty self conscious about taking up other people's space, so I said goodbye and hurried off to coffee shop number two...

Can you guess what everyone was talking about? The show. I did a brief "Pussy Manifesto" rendition for Steph since she's never heard it. And so this has been my Saturday. With the two coffee shops and stopping by the wine bar earlier, I'm quite the socialite! Well, without too much of the "social." But this geekier version of bar hopping is more conducive to writing -- without too many of the stay-at-home disadvantages.

Everything to this point was written Saturday night. Now, is the late Sunday addendum. Technically it's really Monday morning, but I took a nap from 6pm to midnight so this is still Sunday for me. Blame it on the person that was supposed to do on-call with me. This is four days in a row that I'm soloing. Not that I mind so much -- but if I'm going to be on-call by myself, I want to know that I'm doing it by myself. Thank you very much.

Chaz helped me for several hours with some Unix weirdness (kudos and major happy karma points!) and then we got to talking again. "Half-kidding" he said that he might think about moving back here. Am I the only one who's emotions and brain are completely detached? A little fuzzy feeling in my chest cheered "whoopie!" and what's up with that? I'm still supposed to be upset with him.

Anyway, I reminded him how much he was stagnating down here -- which is true. And the whole thing just confuses me anyway. I was telling Cabell about his moving without saying goodbye. And how he later said he might be moving again, in a year so, and would think about going to Portland if I did. I'm glad to not be the only one who thinks that's a little weird.

"Brain…! Emotions…! You two get back here and quit running around like that!"

So that was Sunday. I was supposed to have this log done early in the morning, and (with some help from work) I procrastinated the whole day. Piano practice? None.

The only other thing I did was spend a lot of time listening to the radio and bouncing up and down. If I wasn't worried about torturing my downstairs neighbor I would have danced around all day long. Naked and happy.

March 3, 2002 through
Monday, February 25, 2002

Wow. Another week. At the moment, it's Saturday night. Tomorrow is the writer's group, and I have terrible writer's block. That's what I get for not updating the journal, maybe.

And, I'm in a foul mood. As I sit here at the coffee shop, everyone is irritating me. Not that they are doing anything terribly wrong. Two guys came into the room I was using and started coughing. No big deal. Except for my germ phobia and my bad mood. Two other guys sitting by the wall are pretending that they know something about chemistry, psychology and military black ops. Oh, and here comes the "freedom of information act." That has something to do with the Mars probes supposedly. Quit listening to them! "Shut up!" Quit listening! Sometimes I hate coffee shops. I'm in a foul mood.

My neighbor was kind enough to provide my subject matter for today -- and to start off my foul mood. Toward the end of a two or three hour conversation with one of my best girlfriends, my call waiting started to go crazy. For some reason, I thought it was Paul's number. "That fucker," I said. It persisted. Eventually we ended our conversation so I could check my voicemail. It was my neighbor.

His voicemail starts off, "This isn't Paul." What a strange thing to say. The voicemail continues to say that my phone is bleeding into his phone, and possibly every other cordless phone in the complex. And as proof, he notes several of our conversation topics over the last hour or so. Holy shit.

So, this isn't the worst thing that has ever happened me, or any one else for that matter. But for lack of any other immediate personal disasters, it will have to do. There is a feeling of shock and powerlessness that comes with catastrophe. It's a fluttering of reality: But that can't happen! / How did this happen? / That couldn't actually happen! / Could it? / Oh my god!

[[Coffee conversation update. Here's the deal. You either know what the fuck you're talking about and you're damn good, or you don't and you're not. If you do, then you can have a normal conversation it will be apparent that you know what you're saying. If you don't though, of course you can even still have a normal conversation -- most people do. But it is a crime against humanity to sit in a public place, talking loudly, in an authoritative tone, when you are a fucking idiot.]]

So this is my life on parade. It's one thing to have an online journal site -- as far as I know, this one is anonymous; and that works for me. If I knew family and friends were reading, there are things I just couldn't publish. It's another thing, to confide in a friend and have an intimate conversation the way that close friends do. It's still another thing to do accidentally leave your journal in a restaurant you frequent, like I did on Tuesday, and pick it up there a couple days later. But it is something else entirely to have a neighbor eavesdrop on a personal phone conversation -- especially one where I can't remember what we didn't talk about.

[[Coffee conversation update. If you are too refined for cable TV, aren't you also too refined to be a gun enthusiast? Maybe not. But me? If it was a choice between Animal Planet and a P33-K532 limited edition super smasher with life-muncher bullets, I'd take Animal Planet every time... I'm just say'n]].

Any way, I can only hope my neighbor was sufficiently amused. I mean, he lives next door; he could have walked his ass over and knocked on my door. But that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. (Edit: I didn't think it was possible for my 2.4Ghz phone to bleed into his 900Mhz phone -- until Sunday. That's when I did some research and found out that it transmits back to the base unit at 900Mhz. So not only was he hearing my personal conversation. It was a monologue. I can't imagine what that must have sounded like.)

[[Coffee conversation update: McCarthy wasn't looking for communists. He was looking for attention, because he was gay. Just like King James? Apparently?]]

Friday was pretty uneventful. I slacked the entire day at work -- just in a funk and burnt out from a hard week. Sadly though, I have catch up all the work I put off tomorrow. Slack doesn't pay! Oh well -- nothing I can do about it until I put some more skill points into Willpower.

There isn't much to report for Thursday either. I had my weekly session with Tim, my trainer, and blushed when people gaped at my leg curling ability. Kat was there too -- another trainer; the one I saw at the wine bar a couple weeks ago. They are both too yummy. "Everybody loves you when your bi." That's how the song goes. But it also makes it a bit more depressing when you're single.

So the three of us spent a while chatting about scary movies while I suffered through my leg presses. Being distracted, my foot started raising up in a way that it shouldn't have been. Bad form, I guess. Kat put her hand on one foot and looked in my eyes in a way that made it hard to do any more exercises at all. I can still feel her hand.

I mean, I'm sure it was nothing. Or maybe it was. Just another "I'm pretty dumb that way," example of me. But I had just been thinking how great those two were; the timing was good.

Human contact good. Need more. A friend commented on an edited version my "Why Sex Sucks" entry wishing me luck in my pursuit of a sex-less relationship. I responded something to the effect of "I said sex sucks; I didn't say I didn't want any." Just not all the time -- or even much of the time, in my case. And certainly not to the exclusion of other friendships.

People also confuse sex with physical contact, I think. Humans need physical contact, and that has nothing to do with sex. I wish everyone hugged more. But hug the wrong person and just watch them get the wrong idea. Kinda like me at the gym. HEY! I hate when I write myself into a corner. Damn journal.

Let's not talk about Thursday anymore. Wednesday was more interesting. I worked all day...

....

....Well, that wasn't interesting at all. Tuesday, though, I had dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in years -- Colin. Really, I have missed him. We lost contact when he had several back-to-back family problems. His wife thought that he and I were hooking up, and I felt like my presence in his life was causing more harm that good.

We used to play chess quite a bit -- with him always causing me great consternation and making me loathe 1.d4 even more than I already did. And then there was that time we built a self-watering hydroponics system.

Any way, he sent me an email, and I finally replied to it. The me of today is bitter enough not care what the fuck his wife thinks. We're friends and that's that. So we had a great dinner, caught up on things and made plans to get together again in the next couple weeks.

Before dinner, I had another hair appointment. I love how David is cutting my hair, but he did something sneaky, and I didn't even see it coming. He gave me high maintenance hair. If I had to come up with more names for a journal site, one of my ideas would be "High Maintenance Hair and a Hat."

Actually I hadn't even realized until I woke up Wednesday morning and saw myself in the mirror. I immediately started to work on my hair -- that's when it hit me. I don't do that. I wake up and go. Something's wrong!

Really, I'm not complaining too much. It's so hard to find a good stylist. Maybe that's why I develop crushes on mine. Before David it was Mandy. She was even gay and with someone who she described as being very much like me. That figures, I thought. And last month I found out that Dave was getting married. "Yea! He's straight," I though. "Boo! He's getting married."

When I got home, it was a double latte and an all-nighter for work.

Mondaywas my piano lesson. It was refreshing and intense as usual. And that's it. This log entry is very hard to finish. Today it is Sunday. It was Saturday when I began. I spent the better part of today researching how my neighbor was able to eavesdrop on my phone conversation last night.

It turns out that my phone (a Panasonic KX-TG2560B) is not exactly what I thought it was. I will never buy a Panasonic phone again. I have two of these phones; one is for work and the other for my home line. They are Giga Extreme! They are Spread Spectrum! They are super-secure! Right?

Wrong-o. They are only 2.4Ghz in one direction -- from the base station to the portable until. From the until back to the base station, it's 900Mhz. That's a feature not a bug, by the way. Except that all their newer phones are 2.4 both ways. Go figure. And the highly secure spread spectrum technology? Well, it wasn't digital spread spectrum. "So it's not quite as secure as it could be. Well, okay, it's not really secure at all. But thanks for buying our phones! We care about you're business!"

Buyer beware. Today I had a $400 wake up call. Spending that much money on a new phone made me sick. Really. I almost puked. But I spend all day, and sometimes all night, on the phone. It's nice, if not essential, to be able to move around while I'm on the phone. The only catch is that it needs to be secure. So now I have a Siemens Gigaset 8825. <sigh>

Would it be wrong to smash my two Panasonic phones and put them on my neighbor's doorstep? The funny thing is, I'm not entirely convinced it was Panasonic's fault -- though I'm never going to buy they equipment again because I feel like I was mislead and taken advantage of. My neighbor has a scanner. There is a part of me that wonders if he was using it. I don't want to think so, but he is that kind of person.

Four hundred dollars. That's a hell of a lot of money for a phone. That's like rent. That's like enough money to fly to New Mexico and have a vacation -- which I was thinking about doing.

To any readers who are considering purchasing a cordless phone: If security is a concern for you, I recommend a phone that transmits 2.4GHz in both directions. Most today should, but you never know I guess. Shared 2.4Ghz/900Mhz is a bug, not a feature. And make sure you get digital spread spectrum technology. Spread spectrum technology isn't necessarily digtial, and that's now good enough. And if you can get a frequency hopping phone, that's even better -- though you shouldn't need that.

I suppose the best idea though is to share your most intimate secrets in person or on a standard headset. Or at least out of range of any neighbors with a scanner. Unless of course you are really paranoid, in which case you should only take in code and in random locations...

And I was the only to show up for the writer's group today, besides Amy -- one of the shop owners and the person who organized the group. That's okay because neither of us had anything prepared anyway and I like talking with her. But, what a pathetic Sunday. Now I need to go home and finish some work. Depressing? Oh yes.