Entries this day: Snow! silent_football state_of_my_life weird_phonecards

Snow!

11:25am CST Sunday 12 January 2003

It's flat *snowing* here in Dallas! Big huge flakes that I was actually able to see from bed with my glasses off, and I though "meh, big rain drops dripping..." but it's snow!

It's not reeeally accumulating, but there's about a 1/4 inch on the grass. None on the streets or sidewalks; it just melts. But there's plenty on Scott. I'm glad I don't have to drive him today.

I think I'll go ride my bike out in it. Just to go see the lake and stuff.

Am I crazy???? Brrrrrr!!!!

2:49pm

I got well-bundled with long johns (couldn't find my long top), jeans, socks, shoes, long sleeve sweat shirt, hoodie, bicycle gloves, leather gloves, then headed out.

Snow stingingly in my face if I looked up to see where I was going, so I rode looking down most of the way, looking forward just enough to verify safe travels to the lake.

I expected to see almost no one, but found some people on razor scooters on the way there, and some little kids with parents at the playground by the lake. Most things were covered in snow, like a layer an inch thick.

Kept inadvertantly stalking a woman who was running with her dog. I'd keep passing her, going someplace random and then back to the trail just before or after she had gone by. I hope she didn't feel stalked.

I rode back behind the waterworks building, and chose not to ride with Sean's bike on top of the 3 foot wall overlooking the lake. I almost rode down the steep hill facing the other direction, but chose not to. But I'm closer to doing it than when I first saw this slope. Saw the dog woman again.

Rode back into the island area that is pretty easily accessible now that the water is way way lower than it was that night. It's almost back to normal levels. Or maybe this is normal, and it's been lower than normal before. Whatever. About a 1/2 inch is flowing over the entire spillway. Saw the dog woman again.

Rode over the walking bridge, out onto a dock thing and made a design with my wheels in the snow. Saw the dog woman again.

Headed back home, leaving the dog woman behind. I'd started to worry that Sean might want his bike to ride around in the snow.

Just exactly as I rode up to the house, Sean pulled up to the house. Perfect timing. I expressed thanks for his bike and he was all, "no problem; just throw it in the back of the truck; I'm coming to pick up my stuff."

Chatted with him a bit as he loaded up a box of stuff to take back to college today. He was all, "bye room," as he left his room.

Big hugs and he headed out.

silent football

11:33pm CST Sunday 12 January 2003

I've finished the description of wormholes and parallel universes for Silent Football.

Going to get dishwashin' detergent for the dishes and soymilk for me and go to bed, or maybe work documenting the rules for Silent Football foot motions.

state of my life

11:58pm CST Sunday 12 January 2003

State of My Life Address

• ~ I've been living at Bibby's house in Dallas for the past some months.
• ! I've driven on my eastern state trek, as far east as western West Virginia, and as far north as southern Michigan.
• @ I've driven on my western state trek, as far west as western California (Santa Monica, LA, Newport Beach) and as far north as Eugene Oregon to see Dude and Veronica.
• # I wasn't allowed to attend San Antonio Rally since I'm not an official advisor at a church. This reason seems fishy, and I feel like I've been individually targetted, but I'm pretty much over it. Shit that was back in October so I oughta be over it.
• $ My final planned Rally is Houston, which will be over in less than one week!!!! Holy shit that is amazing, exciting, scary, tragic. YRUUers are still in my dreams every night; I'm going to miss advising a lot.
• % I've been "invited" to the last half of Houston Rally. I'm thankful for this; I'm glad I was able to negotiate my way into attending the best part of the rally (Saturday night to closing circle) which will certainly include hella Silent Football!
• ^ But the wizack thing is that it's like there's a big deal being made about when I get to attend the rally. The rally is for the youth, and to only allow me to attend 1/2 of it kinda puts a limelight on me that shouldn't be there. Just let me attend the whole operation and allow the youth to just be themselves and do whatever they do.
• & I've officially been offered a job to teach in Japan! I called Brian at the San Francisco office a couple days ago and he confirmed it. They had sent an acceptance thing to my old address on 9 December. It apparently was not forwarded to my dad; ohhhhh.. is it only a 90 day forwarding thing? 180 days? It's close to that now. Anyway, whatever. They are sending it to me here in Dallas and I should get it this coming week and I plan to send it back before Houston Rally.
• * Because of the delay, I won't be able to go in February; March is the earliest I can make.
• ( Janette and i are tossing around ideas of traveling in February; maybe a quick jaunt to Hawaii!!!!! but I'm not 100% sure on finances. A big part of me is like fuckit and just go and pay it all back when I start bling blingin' again from Japan.
• ) I also wanna go see family in West Virgina again, specifically to see Sarah (I've felt bad for never coming back to play with Shane between when I saw him at like 9 years old and then bam he's suddenly 17 or some shit.) Sarah is little, and she's still little, and I'd love to go for walks with her again. Plus get to see Barbie and her cute friend Elizabeth and go for longer walks with her.
• - Maggie has been planning my 12000th day party. I've sent emails to some people to tell them to clear their calendar, but we don't know where the party will be yet. Looks like Jillian's will be it.
• ~= I'm basically inviting all my friends and all YRUUers who have graduated. If you wanna be on the invite list, email me 12000@robnugen.com
• ~! I've almost finished typing up the rules to Silent Football.
• ~@ I looked into ways of using CSS to create an ol.jackie class, but this will have to do.
• ~# I haven't worked for money since before my western state trek. I've talked with Johnny to see if he has work for me. He said he may have some at his house, which I assume is not his farm way out near Crawford, though that might be cool in a way to see what kind of hick town the President came from.
• ~$ I don't know where I'll be in Japan; I don't know what my life will be like in two months. How wiggidy wack to think how different it may be than right now, where everything is comfortable. Where I know the language, where the street addresses are in numerical instead of chronilogical order, where my old friends are close. What marvelous marvels will I encounter? Will I be placed in Tokyo? Will I be able to easily connect my computer to hi-bandwidth internet, free of charge? Will I have an international cell phone? (I do know I plan to have a cell phone only and not a landline, even if a landline is the only way to have internet access close by) (I also know that Japanese cell phones are miles ahead of ours in coolness and technology, at least according to lots of stuff I've read)
• ~% I still have Scott and plan to give him to Janette as a thank you for letting me sponge in her house for so long.
• ~^ I need to get Scott's oil changed.
• ~& I haven't heard from Kim Sawyer in a while, not since I finished his website, except for an email he sent out to a bunch of cats inviting them to attend one of his coaching classes. I can see therefore he's been busy, which explains why he hasn't really checked out the site updater.
• ~* I need to start thinking about what I'm going to take to Japan. I wanna take my bike, but I might have it sent over after I'm settled. I apparently need to have some suits (!) to wear. I've got two pair of fly shoes, and two suits (though I can only think of where one of my suits is). Not really enough white shirts, and I think I have a cache of ties somewhere. Maybe my suits are at Ma's in Austin. That would make sense. I think I gave them to Fred to take to her house just before SWUUSI
• ~( I'm not sure if I'll be able (allowed) to go to SWUUSI next year. I'll request the time off and apply; but overall I release this to my higher power.
• ~) I've been keeping up with YRUUers Live Journals for some time now. Also with world news via Google. I wonder how that might change when I'm overseas.
• ~- I wonder who (from my current life) will visit me while I'm in Japan. (This makes me wonder if I'm going to Japan to see some of my peeps from past lives; it makes sense that I am, but by "current life" above I meant the people that I've hung out with in the past five years.)
• != I wonder if I will or will not write a lot of letters out of lonliness or excitement at so much great stuff.
• !~ I can rap the lyrics to Eminem's "Rabbit Run" with or without the music playing. Without the music I can rap through it almost perfectly faster than he does on the album.
• !! I wonder if I'll be able to watch current movies in English overseas.
• !@ I wonder how many women I'll get crushes on. I'm not attracted to Japanese women per se, but I may just possibly find some other cool world travelers there.
• !# I wonder how easily I'll be able to learn Japanese: reading, writing, speaking, listening.
• !$ I have a goal of becoming fluent in three more languages (starting with Japanese) within 10 years.
• !% I look forward to coming back to US culture and having the experience of not being able to remember the English word for something. Not an unrecoverable memory failure, but just that a different language is on top of my brain for once.
• !^
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weird phonecards

12:41am CST Monday 13 January 2003

Woah.

I just went to Kroger and saw a display sporting no fewer than six (?) different communications companies, all with little prepaid cards hanging from the display. All the hanger things were the same size, same shape, same basic look about them. From companies AT&T Wireless, Verizon, Cingular, something else, and some prepaid internet company. The internet company had some hangies that included a mini CD with software and 60 "bonus" minutes, and some hangies that were just recharge minutes with unique user/passwords.

So why not just scratch off the hidden username/password thing on the card? They have to be activated at the register. Since when did all these companies start talking? Do they all have the same activation process? Kroger certainly wouldn't carry them unless they made a pile of cash on each sale if they aren't super quick to activate at the register. So if it's a quick activation process, it must be simple for the cashiers, and therefore I imagine not a different process for each company, which means that somewhere, the companies are all in bed together, or all talking to some common distribution point or some shit like that. So weird.

It's like a whole ton of companies (ton = six) are all teaming up to make one big monopoly that officially isn't a monopoly.

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