not falling down

I swallowed at least five distinct gnats today, running. I hate gnats. I wish a plague of giantflying gnat-eating spiders would descend on Danville. Granted, this would be horrifying, but atleast the gnats would be gone, and I could carry a wiffle bat or something to knock the spidersaway.

The Elvis show last nightwas totally sweet; as Jon put it, “He’sEIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD and STILL rocks harder than almost anyone I’ve seen.” A posse of drunkenassholes directly in front of us did their best to ruin the show, but we stubbornly enjoyed itanyway. And then there was some more rocking! (In that he did two really good encores.)

The thing I have with concerts is this: I really, really like going to them. Our trips to see BNL, Ben Folds and of course Angie have been some of the best parts ofthe past three years, for me, and even concerts at school (like Cowboy Mouth and homegrowns KincaidFamily Farm) usually rock me hard enough to give me whiplash for a few days.

Also, it may be like this for everyone, I don’t know, but still: I have really sensitive hearing.It’s like my secret super power. I had to learn to tune out conversations in other parts of thehouse when I was younger because I felt guilty about eavesdropping, and I still know whensomebody’s at the house before anyone else–I can hear the garage doors reverberate when a car doorslams.

So the upshot is that what most people seem to consider “wow, this is a loud concert but it’s okay”is actively painful for me. My ears make tearing noises and it’s usually a good half hour in beforeI’m numb enough to really enjoy the show.

I guess if I keep going to concerts long enough the problem will fix itself, but I don’t reallywant it to.

Tonight I’m going to a (recurring) party that I’ve been avoiding for three years. If I’m gone formore than a week, check Frankfort first. Bring some water or RC or something, because I still don’tplan on drinking and I don’t know how much other liquid will be available there.

she’s starting toyawn
she looks like she was born to it

Things I Hate About Running

• The way I look afterwards.

• Fucking gnats.
• My legs hurt all the time. It’s my own fault, obviously, for running five days a week. I’m building new muscle, too, which is kind of a novelty, but I think a lot of it is the fact that I’m running on concrete instead of grass. I wish there were something I could do about that. I am alone in my circle of acquaintances in that I’ve had good knees for most of my life, and I’d rather not lose them now.
• Uphills.
• Forgetting my towel for my shower afterwards. I’ve done it so frequently now that I finally taped a sign to the bathroom door to remind me. Running about naked is all well and good, but who wants to drip all over the linoleum?

Things I Love About Running

• The dachshunds in somebody’s back yard at my end-of-West Lexington turnaround. They’re always very excited and concerned to see me, even though I’ve been coming by almost daily for a month.They remind me of our dachshund, Fritzi, who died a couple years ago and who had one of the most expressive faces I’ve ever seen.

• Downhills. The dip between St. Mildreds and Fifth Street is awful on the way up, but on the way down coming back it’s like an obstacle course–a lot of head-level tree limbs and street signs to tap. Also, I’m one of a select group of people the world over who really understand how to run downhill, so I can really cut loose (the secret is to go ahead and start falling, and trust your legs to catch up).
• Showers afterwards, which I like to start pretty hot and end icy. I feel like I’m running on auto a lot lately, so the shock of awareness that comes with the cold water is a rare and beautiful thing.
• And speaking of cold water: running in the rain. I got to do that yesterday, and it ranks high on the list of Best Things There Is. It was hard rain, too, like of significantly higher humidity than your average pond. My clothes haven’t dried yet.

  Since yesterday I’ve been trying to quantify exactly what it is about running in the rain that’s so great, and I’ve yet to come up with anything concrete. It’s a certain I don’t know what.

  Partly it’s that you stay cool and your mouth doesn’t dry out, and partly it’s the feeling that you’re fighting something other than gravity and yourself, and partly it’s just the sense of abandon you get from realizing that it doesn’t matter how wet you are because you’re just going to get wetter. Maybe it’s the ozone. Or maybe it’s just that you get to look at the torrents of water and the mud and the clouds, and think “what kind of maniac would be out in this weather?” and then think “oh, yeah, me.”

Things I Love AND Hate About Running

• Schrodinger Point. There’s a day, about every couple weeks or so, when I realize I’ve just jogged almost my entire route without taking a break. It’s cool because, well, it means I’m stronger and faster and in better shape than I have been in a while. It’s simultaneously totally uncool, because it means I’m going to have to run longer or faster my next time out. Thus Schrodinger Point: it exists in both states at the same time! (This isn’t technically what Schrodinger was describing, but in this case accuracy is discarded in favor of sounding cool.)

Tonight: Elvis Costello!

with all the will in the world
diving for dear life

Is it the tenth already? Hell.

It’s been something of a hellish week. Tuesday and Thursday mornings were particularly awful–notonly were they a review and a test, respectively, in Software Engineering, but then I had tohitchhike to a middle school for two Shakespeare performances already in progress. The first waseight pages of Hamlet, which I had almost entirely memorized, but the second was four pages ofMidsummer Night’s Dream and there wasn’t a chance of that. Nobody else except Ian (stupid Ian! Ianhere, not my brother) had them memorized either, so that wasn’t bad.

I cast my play for Directing yesterday, and even though I’m sharing three of my actors I’m quitehappy with them. It’s going to be interesting trying to fit rehearsals around my other play’srehearsals, plus Shakespeare rehearsals, plus band rehearsals. All I do is rehearse! (Notreally.)

I can’t believe I’m linking to a Tori Amos song.

tell mewhy I don’t like Mondays
I want to shoot the whole day down

I put in probably eighteen solid hours of work on the Centosite this weekend. I’d be alarmed by that, if I weren’t me, but I am and so I’m not. I’ve finallylearned to do schoolwork in a regular, paced fashion, but because of THAT I can’t do seriousfree-time work except in binges.

At any rate, the framework is even more industrial-strength than that of this site, and that’shardcore. The backend interface is negligent–that’s a project for next weekend–but I did write aPHP function that converts decimal numbers into Roman numerals, and I’m proud of that. (It probablyexists somewhere already, as PHP has predefined functions for about everything there is, but Iwanted to see if I could do it myself. This is a common problem.)

I’d like to include that in my PHP library, if I had a PHP library (or software map). I will one day, if Iever get around to writing all the code I want to–packaging the engines for Xorph and NFD, portingRobotfindskitten, and publishingSolBrowser, the quickie webcomic-display frame I wrote for next year’s Solitary Confinement. Ithink I could write an HTML-to-XHTML converter, too, but I’d probably have to do it in C++, becausea web interface for that would just be ugly.

That’s another thing–the Cento site is not only entirely in valid XHTML 1.0, it’s displayedentirely with CSS positioning. Adjusting to a lack of tables and typing all my markup in lower caseis strange, but I guess it’s a step forward. How you like me now, ALA?

only you
can cure dismality

There’s a part in The Perks of Being A Wallflower that describes riding in a truck at night withpeople you love, watching traffic lights and listening to “Asleep” by the Smiths. The narratorcalls it feeling infinite.

Coming back from dinner and the music store tonight, we took the back way around Danville. Jon hadjust bought the new Flaming Lips album, and it was playing, and he and Amanda were silhouetted byred and white lights and I was in the back and for a few minutes everything was right with theworld.

It’s a good feeling.

Idon’t know where the sunbeams end
and the starlight begins

From the Post School of Trial andError Spelling:

And, appearing only three lines above in my headline box:

CNN News Gettin’ Jiggy With da Jive Talkin’
The story’s all right, if fairly predictable, but the really funny part is there’s no byline. It’sA Washington Post Staff Writer. I wonder if they even know it’s showing up under headlines?

Today is my brother Ian’s birthday! Happy birthday, Ian! Ian is no longer a teenager, and if hewere predictable he’d probably stop stealing people’s lawn ornaments now. Ian is anything butpredictable, though, so he may or may not continue stealing lawn ornaments. He’s amadman!

(I’d link you to his website there, but he currently has a beautifully written and really sweetpiece about me on his front page and I’m too embarrassed. Remind me again another time. It’s a neatsite, and has dinosaurs and spacemen.)

More ways in which the world is a wonderful place: Ken blew me a new fishbowl! Out ofglass! Ken can do anything. The bowl is huge and perfect, and Idaho tends to get lost in itand do backflips. Were I to spontaneously develop gills, I think I’d move in next to him.

ALSO! As you may have noticed from the link above, Ken finally obeyed my command and got himself a LiveJournalor something. Hooray for you, Ken! Now make me a sandwich.

two guns, botharms
feelin’ like Fonzie