not falling down

I can’t stand it anymore. I usually try to wait until songs are at least no longer purchasablebefore I post them, but in this case the song hasn’t even been released yet. I’m weak. I’ve beenlistening to it an average of eight times an hour since Jon sent it to me, though, to the point where I’m apologizing to anybody in theroom for their having to hear it again. I’m insatiable.

At any rate, I’m going to post it now, on the condition that you promise to buy or at least burnthe next album whenever it comes out. Yes, it does sound a lot like Beautiful,chords-wise, but I like them both anyway. The high parts on this one are part of All That Is RightAnd Good With The World©.

And then there wasn’t.

First: Hooray, a boring fish entry!

Idaho is… well, pretty fishlike, intelligence-wise. He’s beginning to learn that when I sprinklesomething in his water he can probably eat it, but I’m not sure whether he’s actually made anyconnection or just goes up for air at regular intervals.

It’s been a long time since I had to take care of anything (even if such care is really minimal),and he’s a gorgeous animal. I wish I could get him to flare up and show off his green undercolorsmore, but when I do the “look there’s another fish” trick with a mirror, he tries to run away asoften as not. His bowl is maybe five inches in diameter, so that’s a tough trick to pull off.

So he’s stupid but lovable, occasionally spastic and a bit of a wuss. Either he’s already pickingup my personality or I’m picking out the bits of behavior I want to see, but he’s still a greatcomfort to me. I almost named him Hope, but I think that would have been a little too obvious.Idaho suits him much better anyway.

Next: Hooray, a boring running entry!

Jon kindly pointed out today that I’m not sweating as much when I get back as I used to. It’s true,though I’m inclined to attribute it to cooler weather, but I am going farther and faster than Iused to. The increase is a lot more noticeable than it was last fall. You’d think I was running twoand a half times as often, or something.

I’ve picked out a route that takes me down to Danville High–through most of downtown, but on aside road–and then back up probably another third of a mile the other way. The hills are fairlypainful in places, and I have to run on the “wrong” side a lot if I want a sidewalk, but at least Idon’t get smiled at as often. I stillhave no idea how far I’m running, but it’s farther than it used to be.

I realized as I finished this up that running and fish are two things that cause my body to becomequite upset with me, though the latter comes more from eating them than feeding them. I’mincreasingly convinced that I’m fish-intolerant. I like fish, and even if I didn’t I’d stilltry to do the Catholic thing during Lent, so that kind of sucks. Add my cat allergies and you’vegot a regular collection of Things I Like That My Body Hates. Which isn’t a bad name for analbum.

Meta-journal! My entries are a lot longer when I’ve already run and feel warmed up and loose, andthey tend to contain fewer italics too. I should take up yoga.

I kickit root down
I put my root down

Whoops. I put together the entry just before this, about an hour ago, thinking that I didn’t have much besides internet stuff to talk about. I completely forgot that yesterday was the one-yearanniversary of my very first online journal entry.

That does make it by far the longest-running journal of any kind I’ve had, but then the next longest was about four months, so it’s been that for a while. And of course I can’t say it was the first NFD entry, because it wasn’t NFD then, just the journal I put together for kicks and hid behind my webcam pic. The interface was pretty awful, but then I was modeling it almost exactly on Emma’s. Also, I was young.

Anyway, yeah, wow, a year. One hundred forty-six entries, for just over four tenths of an entry per day. Since I was trying for one every other day (five tenths), that’s not too bad.

I’ve fallen down a few times recently, but at least now it’s for different reasons. Maybe running is the art of not slowing down, and walking is the art of just getting up. I haven’t kept anything going this long before, and I’m still going now, and there’s something to be said for that.

Here’s to a year.

Weirdly, Electrologicahas become my comfortable music lately. I first listened to the tracks at least nine months ago,and I always liked Nine to Nine and Difficult, but now I really enjoy just walking around with my Discman andplaying Quantum Mechanic or The Year3040.

I said “weirdly” above not because it’s not good music–obviously it is–but because a lot of it isvery ELO-style lonely and lost. I’m not sure exactly what associations I’ve formed that have turnedit into my audio equivalent of Cheetos, but they’re there.

Anyway, you should listen to it, but you probably knew that. I like everything on both “albums,”but Strangely Familiar gets my nod for closest thing to a single; Digital Nothing is a close second.

Also, I think I live with some people like this. Props to PeeGee for codifying it so well!

and if you lied I didn’t wonder why
I wondered when

P.S. I just realized that since the infamous Switch ad hasalready drained so much of Nightlight’s bandwidth, this may not be the best month to send people (both ofyou) over there to get lots of mp3s. I’ve mirrored all the files on my own student space, butthey’re definitely the property of Kristofer Straub. Ph34r. (Also, sorry if the downloads areslow.)

Update 6.28.03: Okay, switched them back.

I was wrong, incidentally.

Scent memories still freak me out a little sometimes. I know it’s really because long-term storageis next to the nose’s part of the hypothalamus, or whatever, but in practice it just works out sothat even weak smells bring back really vivid scenes.

As it rained all night (during Homecoming! bastard rain!), and as we were dolled up for theoccasion, Caitlan and I were sent with the rest of the candidates to wait in the library. As thelibrary was locked, we hung out in the rear lobby of the Industrial Arts building downstairs.

The doors there were locked, too, but on the other side of one of them was the original MCHS CADlab, the site of the first programming class I ever took. I’d messed around in BASIC since I wasabout ten, but that room was where I learned about Pascal, and about having a weird knack for it.Six years later I’m about to graduate with a BS in Comp Sci. The room still smells the same.

I wasn’t expecting much of a real homecoming, and in fact I only saw two other people from theclass of 1999, one of whom recognized me. Instead I got memories of the game two years ago, when mybrother was on court. I watched him and his friends stride around like giants who were stilllearning to shave. I was so proud and awed I thought my heart would burst. I had a girl on my armwith the biggest smile in the world.

I thought about Erika for the first time in a while tonight, and it was sharper than I thought it’dbe. I thought about my brother, and how he’s felt lately. I wish I’d really known how to shavemyself, so I could have shown him.

I’m going home tonight to escort my sister out onto the field at Homecoming. I guess technically Icould be there to actually come home too, especially since my own (ill-fated) appearance onthe Court four years ago was the only football game I ever went to. But I’m not real big intothat.

I don’t have much else to say. We did a lot of work on the play this week, and it’s going to begood, but right now the payoff is mostly exhaustion. Really I just wanted an excuse to update thecam. There ain’t much better than a reluctant girlwearin’ a plastic mullet! Well, actually there is.

Okay, this is pretty stupid. I just got one of the Crushlink (scroll to “… Instant Loser”) emails, “someone has a crush on youblah blah blah.” The thing is, it was at the alice@xorph.com address, which I’ve had for about eversince I created the site but never used. It was intended to be a joke, so I could registerAlice at the forums and have her post once in a while ha ha, but I never really got around toit.

Actually, I take that back. There is one place I used the address, and it’s–you guessedit–Crushlink. While trying to figure out which of my friends would have been stupid enough to sendme one of their stupid things (suuure I was), I used a bunch of my own addresses to get more clues.One of them was alice@xorph.com. I removed it later, after I did figure out who’d sent me the thingin the first place. (In all fairness, I’m pretty sure she was only using me to find out whohad sent hers. And so forth.)

I’d sue them for address harvesting, but they’ve probably already got their butts covered in theEULA or whatever. Also I’m kind of tired.

she looks likeheaven
maybe this is hell

Amanda and Jon got me a betta! Like the fish! They just about made my year. I haven’t decided whatto name it yet. They inform me it’s a boy, but I think it’s going to get some kind of proper nounanyway, so that may not matter. (Does it ever, with fish?)

I’ll put up pictures soon, but right now I’m enjoying Amanda’s mullet too much. After that I think the fish may just take overeverything.

“The Fish Take Over Everything” is a great name for a band.

Update 1614 hrs: Idaho! (is the name of the fish!)

Oh man. Gerbiltea.com isn’t taken, and that could well be my favorite domain name ever. If I ever get a second domain for this thing, that discovery could well lead to a title change.

This was brought to mind by a thread in the Checkboard Nightmare forums,duplicated here, on which Stephen posted his and his lady friend’s audio rendering of a story book, with voices. Blue Fish sounds a lot like this gerbil in an old Riders in the Sky fake commercial for gerbil tea, which was one of the longest-running in-jokes in my family before we forgot about it entirely.

The question this brings to mind, of course, is was Stephen a gerbil voice actor nine years ago?, but I don’t think the answer would be as interesting.