Thursday, November 1, 2001
Largely a wasted day. Decided to take it easy at work and catch up on some things around the house. Instead, I slept most of the day. I dutifully watched both reruns of Buffy -- this TV orgy has to stop! Didn't practice the piano or dilate. Didn't do any reading or writing. Although, I did finally get to the health food store and bought some groceries. Good-bye Thursday!

Friday, November 2, 2001
Last night, I had dream after dream. Probably because I didn't need that much sleep. I went to bed pretty early, around 10pm, and slept until about 10pm. By my count that is 12 hours of sleep -- way more than even I need. It is too bad I didn't write down any of my dreams. Vaguely I recall that some were rather interesting, including one snake-dream inspired by Buffy. I began working in my "Some Say God is No Laughing Matter" book today and have had some pleasant insights. I've also practiced the piano already and stopped by the coffee shop. Debbie stopped in and asked if it was still okay to give Larry my number.

Saturday, November 3, 2001 through
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Didn't keep track of these days.

Wednesday, November 21, 2001
Pretty slow day at work. Everyone is gearing up for the holiday I suppose. I was able to finish rebuilding my desktop computer following the hard drive crash. I can't remember if anything else of interest happened. Apparently not.

Thursday, November 22, 2001
Slept too late. Got gas for the car and hurried off to Mom's house -- two hour drive. Gosh traffic was bad.

My brother was working on Mom's computer when I got there. They had a fight about it. Mom didn't want anything changed. Unfortunately, he forgot to back up her data before reformatting the drive. Lucky that I had done it a few months ago and also moved the data to a separate partition. But then the drivers for Mom's old laser printer didn't work. We tried everything and they had to buy a new printer. Poor Mom.

The food was good. I stayed with Tom working on the computer most of the evening. There are only a few in my family that I enjoy spending time with, so it was a good escape.

I left that evening. I would like to have stayed longer since my brother was there. But, I had my personal training session on Friday.

Friday, November 23 2001
Slept until it was time to get ready for my first session with the personal trainer. It turned out to be just an "evaluation session." For fifty bucks, I expected much more. Well, hopefully the actually training will be better. It's expensive as hell. But I have a "psychic" impression, if you will, or a feeling from my body that my heart is going to give soon if I don't get back in shape.

Thought to go to the old gym and cancel the membership there. Suddenly realized it was a holiday. In hopeful anticipation though to do some cardio at the apartment complex but couldn't remember the door code. Someone working out inside ignored me. Came home depressed suddenly, crashed again.

Off to the coffee shop. Did some writing. Shack and I are each writing a book, and keep each other encouraged. Except that I am behind right now. Holidays, don't you know; and depression I guess.

Saturday, November 24, 2001
In a sudden fit of depression and hopelessness, I played an old video game (Alpha Centauri" all night long. How is it that I can do that for twelve hours straight: no pee'n, no poop'n, no drinking, eating, blinking, and possibly no breathing. Why can't I do that with piano practice? Writing? Anything productive? I can't even site through a movie for two hours without getting up at least once.

My piano teacher called me at noon to see if I was still coming at three. I felt like hell warmed over. Said yes, killed the game, make a protein shake, took a shower, caught an hour nap, was almost late getting there at three. Worked on the computer until eleven in the evening. He seems to be real happy with it. And conveniently, I had a personal excuse not to go to that party -- must do a journal entry about that.

Came home, was famished-hungry, made a vegan pizza, and crashed on the couch.

Sunday, November 25, 2001
Would you look at that. Another month has flown by. In fact, the year is nearly over. And in January I'll be thirty. Death once told someone, "You get what anyone gets. You get a lifetime." It goes by so quickly though. I wonder if it that is the same for everyone. There may be unfairness yet.

I slept until noon today, on the couch. I was too tired to go to bed last night. Grabbed something to eat. Fell asleep for another hour or two. Friend called to see why I didn't go to the big party last night. I told I had a crisis -- didn't want to say I was loath to haul my single-ass into a sea of coupled used-to-be-friends. Mom called; we talked about this and that, also about meeting people.

Thought about "Bride of the Wind." How do I meet people like that? Decided to go out and browse the bookstore for fun and look for the DVD. Had a nice dinner. Very cute waiter. Didn't find the DVD, bought Mahler's 9th Symphony conducted by Simon Rattle instead. Went to a coffee shop. Had fun talking to two women working there tonight. Did a lot of reading in Jane Eyre. Chapter nine made me cry; I don't think anyone saw me.

Home. Watched "Earth Final Conflict" (for lack of anything better) while Dl'ing. Showered. Signed up for the Perl class I'm supposed to take for work tomorrow. Posted Shack's update. Feeling worthless for not having done any real writing this month or piano practice. I've been very depressed. Work has been suffering.

Will update the Log of the last few days, as I can remember them, and go to sleep.

Monday, November 26, 2001 (remembered)
First day of Perl class. Markus and Amit are in the class too. Amit gave me shit for not being at his party last night. I told I had a crisis, but I don't think he believed me. He gave me all the juicy details though. So it was almost like I got all the good without having to go through any of the bad. He also told me that Dick was there and was acting like a... Well, you get the idea. I'm even more happy with myself that I didn't go.

There wasn't too much to say about Eros and his joy toy. Amit mentioned that he finally got to meet here, but didn't have much else to say.

Apparently Markus didn't go either. I think he was avoiding me today. I sat in the middle row in class and he took the front -- away from Amit and myself. Then when I had to change computers and moved to the front, he font an excuse to move to the middle. Truly, I don't like him. Or more accurately, I like him but don't trust him and feel that he has some problem with me suddenly. Possibly because he was hitting on me and I didn't reciprocate? Maybe his wife found out? I have so many good dating choices. It really is my own fault that I'm single.

Class was good. I'm actually really enjoying the programming! Meant to do studying when I got home but immediately fell asleep and didn't wake up until Tuesday morning.

Tuesday, November 27th, 2001 (remembered)
Somehow I managed to be on time for class at 8:30 this morning. And somehow I didn't hear yesterday that it was moved to 9:00. No matter. Just more time to study.

Class went relatively smooth until we began talking about multidimensional arrays and hashes. Why do they spend so long on the easy stuff and blow right through the hard stuff? The instructor worked with me after class and I think I have a better handle on it.

But if that was hard, tonight was my first night of personal training. Wow. I'm really going to get a lot out of this, if I can keep it up financially. Fifty bucks a class. It's completely beyond my means. But I've the feeling that my heart is going to give me major problems if I don't start getting into shape. Sometimes, I can feel it racing and beating irregularly. That and a general sensation that I need to exercise -- a combination not to be ignored.

When I got home, I meant to do some much needed studying. But I immediately fell asleep.

Wednesday, November 28th, 2001 (remembered)
Oops; late for class. Working out really took it out of me. Class today was wicked hard. I'm officially hopelessly behind. Some of the material was so foreign, that I spent the time studying material from yesterday.

I didn't do lunch with Amit and Markus today. Instead, I used the time to pick up my prescription from the pharmacy. But it wasn't easy! Apparently the refills expired, and so when I called it in this morning they advised me that they would contact the doctor for approval. No worries. When I called during lunch though, they said the doctors office hadn't called back. When I called the doctor, they said they sent right back this morning. Called the pharmacy -- they won't call the doctor again, but they doctor can call them. Called the doctor -- they won't call the pharmacy, but will re-fax the authorization. Called the pharmacy -- didn't receive the fax, but I can... Completely blow up and go ballistic on the cell phone. Arrive and the pharmacy -- prescription is waiting for me. Have and awkward moment with the person I spoke with on the phone and then back to class.

Oh yes, that's right. Completely lost. I was right next to the coffee shop at lunch. I could have just stayed there.

Second night of training -- lower body... and CARDIO. Way too much cardio. I love cardio; er, I used to love cardio. That and the lower body work make me almost pass out. Had to sit down and recover. Went home and called Mom and then Shack.

At the end of the conversation with Mom, she asked me if I was staying in this city because of her. Her ESP working as always. I really need to write about this. Two weeks of vacation coming up, starting on Saturday -- that should give me lots of time. I'm looking forward to cleaning up a thousand little loose ends that have been hanging over me too.

Thursday, November 29, 2001
Oh my God. I can't believe it is Thursday since I've updated the log (Sunday the 26th). That's why this is so important. I'll fill in the blanks for this week -- should be pretty easy to remember.

This morning? Late for class again. Some of the things from yesterday clicked -- but not much, unfortunately. Although, there were several topics in class that didn't depend so much on previous material. At the very least, this class will give me a great starting point for learning Perl. I really needed something else to do with my time. Sigh. Lots of fun though, and powerful. It will be a great addition to my tech-life.

In the here and now? I'm updating this log page. Now I've got all that studying I said I was going to do this week.

Friday, November 30, 2001
This last day of Perl class has been a snoozer. The instructor wasn't really familiar with the material and so it became a "look what perl can do!" class. But, I got to ask some questions from the earlier material and from my studying -- which I actually did last night. So it was a good class for me. I know enough now to go out and start learning it on my own now.

Tonight sucks. I picked up an on-call shift so that I could cover the two days during my vacation -- which starts tomorrow. But god forbid it be a quiet night. Over twenty pages! TWENTY! It's unheard of. It only happened because tomorrow my vacation starts, or because it is a full moon. I'm not sure which.

And worse? I was supposed to go to a piano concert tonight. Oh well. Tomorrow...