Entries this day: Labor_Day brain_brew wende zzz

Labor Day

1:26pm CDT Monday 2 September 2002

Haven't worked too much today, unless sleeping, eating cookies, and watching Simpsons is work. Saw episode where Lisa falls in love with the new neighbor girl ("You're going to be rich! There's your mansion, there's your porsche, and (spit) there's your pool!"), and the one with Mr Bergstrom, Lisa's substitute teacher ("More asbestos!! More asbestos!!" and "You are Lisa Simpson"), and Bart falls in love with Jessica the preacher's daughter ("You're turning me into a criminal, and I only wanted to be a petty thug." and "It's amazing what some chumps will do for a girl. Wait until she sees the second rate job I do on the steps!"), and Milhouse fell in love with Samantha Stanky ("Please welcome Samantha Stinky" "Stanky" "Oh, that must be terribly embarassing." and "It's not just the kissing, it's the waiting. Like when you open an eskimo pie and wait just a second until it starts to melt." "She doesn't melt." "Oh yes she does..")

2:01pm

We're going to Marta's parents' house to do laundry and be internet connected.

9:14pm

Couldn't figure out how to get my computer connected, but while checking my yahoo email, I got a surprising pop up add in a window that seemed to have no border. It looked like a border, but the mouse icon turned to the web-link-click shape even when hovering over the apparent border. And it wasn't an image on a bigger window. It was actually its own window. I didn't think to view the sourcecode of the bigger screen to see how they did it.

We watched Empire of the Sun on video and the last part of There's something about Mary on TV.

9:50pm

Something interesting is brewing in my brain maybe since I've been reading a book about Prague.

brain brew

9:51pm CDT Monday 2 September 2002

In approximately 1991 or so I was in school at University of Houston.

Bored maybe, or restless or otherwise longing for something, I spent a Saturday afternoon reading from my high school yearbooks. I noticed that the kids who had been popular were no longer scary or untouchable; they were just kids and I could have been equally amazing and done all the things they had done. I could have been president of the spanish club; I could have gotten straight A's, been the class favorite, everything. I literally thought, "if I could go back to high school, I would have done everything" or something like that.

"If I could go back to high school, I would have done everything."

Then I thought, "you idiot, you can't go back to high school so just forget it."

Then I thought, "hey, but you're in college so you can do everything now."

"But college is different, way different, harder, scarier."

"You're just scared. It's the same."

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"Grrr. shut up brain!"

"Prove that you're not scared and go do it."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine."

So I called Cyndi, an RA that I knew from the residence halls. (I was living in my apartment on West Gray near Montrose at the time). As I write this, I have a recollection of being nervous about how she might react. "Hey Cyndi, I want to get involved on campus. What do I do?"

She was quite supportive and suggested that I visit the Student Program Board, located in the University Underground, part of the University Center. Cool.

Monday morning I put on my best outgoing flirtatious personality and walked right in to the SPB. "HI, I'm Rob, and I'd like to get involved." A girl named Tanya happened to be there. "Do you want to help with Homecoming?"

I knew nothing of SPB, none of its committees nor activities nor any of the students who made it all happen.

"Yes," I smiled.

"Excellent!" and Tanya told me when the next meeting would be etc and I showed up.

This was in early summer that year, and we met several times and I ended up organizing Recycling Day, an outrageously successful event at which we collected 18,000 pounds of recyclables, mostly newspaper (we had a goal of 3000 pounds), and that was after Marcel and I were featured on the SPB campus TV station as our Hans and Frans knock-off characters, Kristof and Kristof:

Wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts with little round balloons all blown up and stuffed into our sleeves and legs, we looked like hugely pumped up muscle bound guys with bad German accents.

"I'm Kristof!"

"Und I'm Kristof!"

"And if you don't recycle," clap!! "we'll be pissed off!"

It was all fantastic and is one of the biggest coolest things I've done in my life (egad!)

- - - -

So it's been ten fucking years since then and I've been just working at a dumb computer job (until June 2002) and I've done fantastic good with YRUU in Southest District, but I haven't done something big. Something big like Recycling Day, or ride my bike across the US, or become fluent in five different languages (1 per 2 years, easy)....

Okay, so the point.. I have just been reading a book about Prague, and about kings and princes who shaped it and created castles and all this cool ultra long lasting stuff still being talked about 1000 years later.

I'm not sure that I want to build a castle just yet, but I do want to know more about the world - learn more languages and meet more people and learn more cultures. I'm embarassed for myself and my culture that I don't know more about other continents and stuff; I've never been to most of Europe, none of Asia, Japan, Tasmania, Africa, Antartica, South America, New Zealand, never climbed an Egyptian pyramid, nor seen the Great Wall of China...

Why not? Why don't I just get on my bike and go fuckin' ride around the world? Now would be a good time to begin such a trek. Or at least start planning it.

wende

12:20am CDT Tuesday 3 September 2002

I just chatted with Wende on the phone. She's in San Francisco now in a building super close to a sushi restaurant. She's paying $1600 in rent and has no place near her residence to park her truck. She starts work tomorrow as the POS trainer of a Container Store. Email me if you want her contact information.

She drove from Houston to SF, and had her mom and 2 cats with her in the truck. They had to replace the alternator in some city with a funny name like Longview in New Mexico. Then just Saturday she had to replace the battery on her truck. Wow. But she sounds like she's in good spirits and she gave me blanket permission to say HI to anyone she knows.

I told her that Jackie Purdy bought the naming rights to the game Wende and I invented while we were together.

(soon as Jackie pays me the dollar, I'll give fifty cents to Wende)

zzz

12:59am CDT Tuesday 3 September 2002

Watching the simpsons again.

Episode where Marge is afraid of flying ("I just realized that we haven't given a proper wedding to the cat and the dog; they've been living in sin!")