not falling down

Casey: It’s a vicious circle.

Dan: Yep. Just keeps going around and around.

Casey: Never stops.

Dan: That’s what makes it vicious.

Casey: And a circle.

I’ve watched about fifteen episodes of Sports Night in the last two days, and I think my sister still has me beat.Caitlan tends to like a lot of the same things as me, but only after a long trial period in whichshe professes to find them boring. It’s held true for Sports Night, Tamora Pierce and Daredevil, so I stillhave hopes for Diana Wynne Jones andBone. (No, it’s not a two-way thing. Ipossess a great fear and loathing for many things Caitlan likes. For example, she is an Olsen Twins fan.)

Also, even though I don’t drink, I was going to write a Sports Night drinking game, but it turnsout there already is one. You haveto admire their thoroughness, but I’d strip it down a lot; for example, they put “any time acharacter restates a question just posed to them” practically at the bottom, whereas I would havemade such circular dialogue the main engine of drink consumption. It was like two years ago when Jon first pointed out to me how often theydo it, and it still makes me laugh. I readily admit to having simple tastes.

I’ve really missed Sports Night, and if I could now somehow acquire collections of Cupid and Mr. &Mrs. Smith I could die a happy man. The lure of access to network vaults is still one of myprimary motivations for being famous on TV, but I guess it’s a good a motivation as any.

In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I still wish I’d had the six hundred bucks or whatever tobuy every episode of Highlanderwhen they offered them a few years ago. Maybe they still do, I don’t know. It hurts a little totype that for display on a page that I know could be read by people I respect, but man, I lovedthat show.

I wimped out on the Christmas lights this year–I got them on the tree, on the front hedge, and onthe giant mutant tree next to the driveway, but there they stop. Nothing like the usual electricity’n’ frustricity extravaganza, which involves between eight and twelve trees, lots of long extensioncords and lots of short tempers. I don’t miss the aggravation, even if I do miss the look of theplace.

But the lights are up, the oyster stew is downed, the comic is done and it’s only an hour and a half until midnightMass. Christmas snuck up on me this year; I did all my shopping in two days, but that actuallyworked out pretty well. I’ve even conditioned myself well enough so that spending as much money asI did, even on other people, made me vaguely sick. Three cheers for my misguided conscience! If allgoes well (and by “well” I mean “to gradschool“), this time next year I won’t have a penny to my name, so I guess I should enjoy itnow.

Audrey made me a quilt. Like a real quilt, and it’s incredibly warm and comfy. For therecord, I’m in love.

You know, most dogs grow out of chasing their tails by the time they’re a couple years old. Ourbrilliant shih tzu, Pookie, is nearly eight and just learning.

I’m approaching my 200th entry and the end of the year at roughly the same rate, which means I’llfinally be able to stuff this year’s IdiotCams© and these last hundred entries into archivefolders. Ah, the file system! How it sucks.

And yes, for the record, I do keep a copy of every cam shot. I’ll convert them back to jpegs andput them up in a navigable archive here someday, but I’m going to have to sort out all the oneswith me putting stuff in my nose first.

My brother and I need haircuts. We have both nearly attained mullet status. I feel like I should be playing hockey.

Two new (old) experiences last night, courtesy of Audrey: dinner at Miyako, a hibachi grill, and the first time I’ve seen The Blues Brothers. I say new (old) because I feel like everyone and her duck has already had these experiences and there’s little I could rave about that hasn’t already been raved about a million times. All the same, they were totally sweet. Audrey and I are going to write a buddy cop movie about hibachi chefs–the old, grizzled chef who’s losing his edge, and the young, flashy chef who’s a “loose cannon.” They’ll have to have a final showdown with the rival chef from across town, which they will win because of the value of teamwork. Also, the old chef should be played by AlPacino.

It’s going to take me a little while to snap out of this writing style because I just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower again,and it’s one of those books that does that to you. I started reading it at around 4:00, when we picked Ian up in Louisville, and again it surprised me how much content it goes through for such ashort book. I think I’m going to loan it to Emily R tomorrow (I’m going to start mentioning her name now, because I’m probably going to link her like mad if I can manage to get a Keenspace account for her).

Speaking of people of whom I’ve spoken, Summer and I don’t really talk anymore, but I guess that’s a good thing because she’s really honestly happy where she is. I put a quote from Perks on the inside cover of her mix CD, and I was going to make her read it too, if she ever came back to Centre.

She won’t, but Katie K will, starting with the winter term in a few weeks, which is also when I start my internship. I’m really looking forward to that, even if it does mean more work than I’d normally be doing. And I’m looking forwardto the internship too.

Update 2317 hrs: I just found out that it’s actually supposed to be teppanyaki, not hibachi,but that the two are now pretty much interchangeable. Also, I know somebody who’s gonna be famous!

I just finished putting up the lightson the Christmas tree. I always end up doing most of the Christmas lights, because I kind of alwayshave done the Christmas lights, because I kind of always had done the Christmas lights, because[this function is infinitely recursive]

This morning I took my last test, the Comp Sci GRE, which was a bit like facing the Ghost ofChristmas Future’s evil twin. Every question I’d ever marked down as an acceptable loss came backto haunt me, along with entirely new areas of terror I probably won’t even learn about untilFundamental Theory in the spring. The worst part is that even if I could afford it, there won’t beanother chance to take the test, as they’re only offering it once this year thanks to cheaters inChina. Thanks a lot, cheaters!

At any rate, fall term is done. I worked for probably twenty-four hours total, between Thursday andFriday, on my Software Engineering final project; it was a four-person group effort that boileddown to a one-person last-ditch effort. It’s not really their fault–I’m the only one with any PHPexperience, even if I did teach myself–but then none of them actually offered to help until theday before it was due.

That’s spilled milk, though, and it’s finished now. It’s web-based, and the code is tight andsweet, and I’d love to link you to it, except that ITS lied about which servers do what and I hadto borrow a certain account I really shouldn’t have borrowed to put it together. I’d like to put anadministrative side on it and add a real account system, because it is pretty useful, but then I’dlike to do a lot of things.

So yeah. Fall term. It was interesting, and I’m still not sure whether I liked that, but I thinkthings are going to change in January.

First subject heading in my Programming Languages textbook:

Programming Is Difficult

Second subject heading in my Programming Languages textbook:

Programming Early Computers Was Especially Difficult

Test in an hour and a half. I’m going to miss this thing. (All the same, I should really startstudying.)

Yes, I may be in fourth grade, but there are still no words for this headline.

Finals. Also, it’s cold and dry, and I’ve been busily growing new lips.

I got another secret admirer letter yesterday. It’s only my third in four years, and it stillweirds me out severely. I’m not talking about a Crushlink.com thing–I know people who don’t evenexist who get those–this was a for real honest letter, or at least a letter written on theinside of a card in very small girl’s handwriting.

I’ve contemplated writing secret admirer letters of my own before, and may even have gone throughwith one or two–it’s been a while if I did–so I understand the motivation. Even so, I reallydon’t get why they’d be sent to me. I’m not fishing for compliments when I say that I’m not reallythe swoon-inducing type. This person (I’ll say “girl” for now, as he or she claims to be) sayswe’ve met but that I have no idea who she is, and that I should thus “talk to girls you think arecute, and if fate exists you’ll find me.” A trusting point of view, I guess.

She also says that she decided to send the letter after seeing Joe Egg, which is somewhat moreunderstandable. Even I look larger than life onstage, and that’s the same thing that coerced Annainto writing her anonymous SA post on the old Centre message boards.

1. Yes, I got asked out over an internet message board.

2. Don’t ever try to date someone because you think you like them onstage.

My curiosity is piqued, of course, but not in a particularly urgent way; I’d like to know who thisperson is, but really just to talk to her–I’m still very happily taken. This girl has taken stepsto make sure I can’t contact her back short of renting a billboard, so I guess I’ll just see whathappens. The other two were both internet-based, so at least I had a route back to them even if Ididn’t know who they were.

Yeah, my first SA letter was an email from a pizza girl who thought I was cute in the ten secondswe met, as it would later turn out. She searched for my own email address from the name on thepizza box–nothing if not resourceful–and wrote me rhyming poetry in all caps.

This latest one called me “attractive in a heroin-chic kind of way.” I mean, neat turn of phrase,but still: what?

Update 12.10.02 1318 hrs: I knew it was “piqued” and not “peaked.” See, I even caught itlater. It was… I… I’d been up for a long time! Shut up!

This is the first year I’ve actually known how to blow my nose. I mean, yeah, I always did it whenI was a kid and had a tissue pressed to my face, but it never really worked, and I didn’tunderstand the process. When I got older I just kind of sniffed along.

What with the allergy madness in fall term and my current vaguely flulike thing, though, I’vefinally become adept at it. I’m a nose-blowing adept! I’m just going to stop there.

More importantly, I just finished my LAST DR. SHANNON CLASS EVER, and now I’m uploading this entryvia command-line ftp in the CS lab. I’ve been baptized by fire, and yea, I thusly claim the titlesof hard and core.

“Sometimeswhen I’m drifting off to sleep or when I actually am asleep, I experience this weird jerk. HarlanEllison comes into my room and starts berating me.”

Too many entries in too few days! It’s entry madness! I know I’m in too deep, but I just can’tstop! (Make sure you don’t miss thisone.)

Actually, I just wanted to post that quote, and this story, which… well, it had to happensomeday.