Author: cheerfulchaotic

A lot of people start their lj off with a declaration of purpose or intent. I didn’t really. I started it off with a loudly opinionated, stunningly inarticulate [for me] post about a political topic that I fell quite passionate about. I never really said why I’m bothering.

Unsurprisingly, for those who know me well, it’s a little complicated.

I’m writing about my life, about my beliefs, about the occasional thing that catches my attention for a few reasons.

1. To examine my life, and to have others include their observations. I’m all for a more examined life, and others can bring a more complete (if not necessarily more accurate) perspective. Through the examination and perspectives, I hope to build a better life for myself.
2. To practice my writing skills. I am articulate, at the sentence-paragraph level. But in the construction of larger parts, I lose place and sense of what I’m doing. So, I’m practicing.
3. To keep up with people far away. I have friends who are not in town (and for that matter, friends nearby who are pretty busy), and I would like to know what’s going on in their lives. If the feeling is mutual, they can know what’s going on in mine.
4. To share and to vent. To provide a forum for emotional expression that would otherwise get squashed or whatever. Several of these posts will be private or targeted to specific audiences (I realize this is far from a perfect medium for that).
5. To meet interesting new people. I’m listing this goal more as an observation (I tend to go out, find the journals of interesting strangers, and start reading them) than as a purpose or mission statement.

Love my coworkers, like the office, iffy on the job itself. Whachya gonna do?

I felt out of sync with the world. Trapped amid the swirling flotsam that is my life. My officemate cinyras moved off into her own office, recently vacated by a swell guy who managed to find a much better job. I managed to catch up the email client support work, more or less. None of my typical friends to talk/hang out with were around or available online. ACLU people were less than entirely happy with the changes I made to the database, so more rounds of revision, but hopefully only to the data entry forms, not the underlying tables, at this point.

Much slaying in halo, a bit of a revisit to slaying in starcraft broodwars. Found myself being a little snipey in my lj comments. Bad me. No tagalongs. Must prepare for party tomorrow. James made other plans for this evening. =(

Very tired. Ended up eating indian truck food. Was good.

Also ended up going on a walk past all 5 of my former residences in squirrel hill. Kinda roundabout, but it suited my mood, helped me get a bit more perspective on myself and life. Lots of memories for each place.

Chatted with Tom and Dion for a bit. Dion knows my ex steve remarkably well. Lots of history there, very interesting. Tom is good to talk to. I should hang out with him more.

Blah.

Sleep.

Later.

Designing a database is a royal pain in the ass. Especially when the other parties involved insist on changing the specs after you’re done. But, I am done with the aclu database, barring spec changes and excepting the querying & reports. Note, my impression is this is kinda like saying “I’m done with my bachelor’s degree, except for all those upperclassmen courses”.

Finally!

This week has totally sucked, timewise. Between spanish (5-7:30pm, m-w & 2:30-5pm r), work, spanish homework, cleaning the apartment, and cooking my first meal in ages, not to mention finishing the first source for my research paper take 2, I’ve had just about no time to work out, or eat right. I did both today, it felt good.

I just wish the full body elliptical aerobic machine had been available at some point. The body heat from lifting followed by 20 minutes of that thing is just incredible, and turns a cold shower into something adjacent to heaven.

Now onto more aclu database hacking

Have any of you seen spiderman slash? After a couple of scenes from the movie, I could so totally see someone doing green goblin/spiderman slash.

Pardon me whilst I enter preachy and verbose mode.

I have a friend who never fails to help me keep attractiveness in perspective. How? He likes fat, really fat, hairy guys. All attempts to rationalize a compromise between this and the norm have failed. He’s different, he doesn’t find gym bunnies at all attractive, and never has. Why do I think this is so cool? He’s a living example of the complexity of sexual attraction. It isn’t a linear scale of hotness. It’s all about what turns one person on. And as we grow and change, our desires grow and change.

When I was a closeted kid in high school, we went on a trip to Stratford Ontario, to see some Shakespeare. At the hotel, we got totally out of control (the chaperones didn’t chaperone). There was another set of students there from some Canadian high school. At some point in the evening, there was a girl, and I was using all my charm and persuasive ability to get her to come in to my hotel room, never expecting her to do so. She did, it felt all wrong, I semi-ignored her, and she left in short order (I still feel a little bad about it). When I have succeeded with the poster children of modern day, gay-culture-fetishized attractiveness (not often, but it’s happened), I sometimes feel a little like that dorky kid in hs who wanted to prove I was attractive by attracting someone that was _supposed_ to be attractive to me into his hotel room. My point being, are gym bunnies really what do it for you?

The second thought relates to a point regarding body image read in “Eat More, Weigh Less”. Don’t let the title fool you, though the majority of its pages are devoted to low-caloric-density recipies, it’s about alot more than food. Think not of how your body looks. Think of how your body works. Can you climb trees? Swim? Defend yourself or others? Run fast? Take stairs 2 at a time? Turn cartwheels? Hit what you aim at? Dance? Fit through narrow openings? etc. The idea is to think of what you can do, instead of how you look. And furthermore, what you can do is something that you can more easily improve, no matter what your level of ability, than how you look. This positivism inspires confidence and self-worth, which, as a side note, probably does more to improve attractiveness than hours at the gym.

Woke up, stayed in bed for awhile <whistle innocently> biked down to campus. Witnessed the commencement ceremony (avoiding Tom Ridge, to the extent possible), and the scs diploma ceremony, ate all sorts of bad food. Wished Aaron farewell by introducing him to Udipi (they’re now serving their [excellent] food on plastic and metal rather than styrofoam. I was shocked. At least the spoons, forks, and knives ares still plastic.) Made arrangements for a party next weekend.

Still having the early summer blues, as several of my undergrad friends flee to the far corners of the map, some not to return.

Will be working on mood enhancement through exercise and good eatin’ over the upcoming week.

I just spent two hours adding new fields to tables in access. Tomorrow I will be laying them out into a user friendly form. But for now, I hunger.

Discussing negative aspects of other parties in a public forum: bad.

Mea culpa.

“Praise in public, scold in private”, I heard that one in 95. How quickly I forgot.