Well, we delivered good on the "Give us Osama Bin Laden or we will send your women to college" threat - todays NYT showed women going back to the U of Balkh. Good. Now we just need to send over about 12k packs of epoxy to repair priceless religious artifacts.

Ugh - this night thing is killing me... I've managed to get about 6 quality hours of sleep - but I won't bitch - I'm off in 2 weeks. The upside (and something I should have acted on when i started this nightcrew stint) I am going to the gym tonight enroute to work... Thank god for 24 hr fitness (that is, if they are still 24)... I obviously hate working out with people around - so I'm praying it'll be dead at 9-10pm on a friday. Perhaps I might even use the pool? Longshot...
I think what working nights now is lacking that it didn't before was that there were usually people around to keep you awake. Now I am usually alone... This particular stint is very much like my TV days were I would literally be in this huge TV station completely alone. It felt like if you were on a huge cargo ship and running it alone - it could be done - but the feeling is very unsettling. Pacmed has a similar feel to it - even more so as it's this huge monstrous evil thing that is currently scaffolded and more gothic looking at nights. (Someone at work has this extremely bizarre sick doll thing that's supposed to resemble a toddler playing hide and seek. They propped it against a box at the end of the hall and I started having a "Bride of Chucky" moment at 2am and nearly tore the freaking thing apart because it scared the piss out of me.)
Oh well - if I start to crack up - you'll read it here first.

Getting ready for work. Drinking a pot o' hot and reading the Stranger and what do I see - but another week of staff meltdowns?! Last week was Rick Levin's article on his battles with Anger Mgt and having to attend classes, this week's is Kathleen Wilson's uncomfortable confessional about her battles with the sauce. Jeezus, what drama. Is the entire staff deciding to come clean at the first of the year as some sort of public atonement? (oh, wait - I'm keeping a blog, so I'll gladly shutup on this topic)...
In any case, I forgot what day it was. It seems it should be friday. After talking with my folks, I found out there's cheap airflights to Bend, so I am going to be getting a ticket and taking a 2-weeker in Feb where I do nothing but detox myself. Will probably spend the 2nd week back up here cleaning and figuring out what I am going to do for the next couple of years.
I'm trying to listen to the Shins cd on my mac - and somewhere, there's enhanced content. Odd. Can't find it. Oh Inverted CD.
Well, I better go. I've got to get ready for the ready...

Whoops! In addition to forgetting what day it was, I unplugged my phone and had completely forgotten about Beate and Irene's party this evening. After no attempts at getting ahold of me - Beate pyshically tracked me down and found me completely out of it (having just woken up from my wine-induced Wednesday nap before heading into work) and managed to coax me out of my lethargy. Sorry, girls (if you are reading this) - I can't believe how lame I was to have forgotten. In any case, I luckily got there for two drinks and a round of Bop-it and Scrabble, and still had a good time!
I've been editing the homepage somewhat - but it's raising some interesting questions, as I've been looking into other web-hosting sites as well and can't quite make my mind up. I've some space on the Mac site - but iTools are so clunky on 56k. Oh - and I found out that Nerve axed my old website! I am kinda irked that they didn't tell me... I had some great photoshop lunacy that I was doing - but oh well. Nerve was another one of those sites that also loads incredibly slow, has stale content... (but the magazine is still pretty interesting. It's kind of like a very egalitarian unisexual version of Playboy, but for all sexes.)
Also - I realize one reason I haven't been touting my blog so much as I am worried about this becoming another thing I start and do not finish. I might try to get a week's worth so you all can read at your leisure...

Transitional sleepy day. The kind of gray day that feels like it doesn't exist - but not in that creepy Muholland Drive kind of way, more like it's a nameless, numberless kind of day. Like you wouldn't seriously know the day if you were asked. Hump day. Wednesday. Where-day?
Oh, oops, I guess it's the 2nd day of the new year, so I shouldn't be so glum. It's probably because it's the day that I start my next round o' nights (i go in tonight at midnight), which actually will be good cos' if it's not too busy, I can finally link and clean up the blog space and launch it to the unsuspecting public as V1. This is more uhhh pre-launch.
In any case - the ads are finally gone from this space -- yippee!
They keep playing the Au Pairs on the radio... Odd, since they seldom played them until recently. I just got email confirmation that my Petula Clark cd is finally enroute. Not that I was seriously missing it - it's just a nice CD to clean the house to, that's all.

Sitting at work (suprise, I scheduled myself...), still a bit queezy from last night's fun festivities at Rachel and Lyle's. Quite a few people showed up, including Beate!! As usual, Rachel's food-n-booz spread was terrific, and again - I mixed one to many (kaluha+rum+spiced egg nog+chai+vodka...) and was inevitably pretty silly by the time it rang midnight. (Oh yeah - and the cake turned out pretty good - but was undercooked in the interior a little...)

So, Palindrome year, 2002. It's a very neatly layed out year - resembles a B&BItalia couch that demands simplicity, tidying things up, cleaning up the crap from the asymmetrical and disasterous 2001. With that, my resolutions are as follows:

1. Lose or Redistribute the Excess Weight from 00 and 01 - fit back into my 32" Helmut Lang lowriders. (involves x3 gym visits a week, and cutting 500grams of calories out of my erratic diet. See also, drink less at no. #10).
   
2. Manage my expenses and pay bills on time - do not skate on grace-periods and last minute payments by phone.
   
3. Go back to School in the Fall of 02 - whether it's full speed ahead into some big program (although too late to apply for that now) or just go back and get prerequisites out of the way...
   
4. Call old friends and parents back.
   
5. Write Grandparents more frequently.
   
6. Buy Less Crap.
   
7. Cook at home more.
   
8. Read the paper.
   
9. Clean more.
   
10. Drink Less.
    
11. Volunteer.
    
12. Sing.
    

Yeah - Sadly predictable - but pratical, and practicalityhas been in short supply lately. Give me crap for not adhering to any of the 12 above...
(should also put a resolution about not being so emphatic about bullet points and ordered lists and to learn better html...)

I've been in a work coma so much, and having my phone currently borrowed at work, I discovered that my friend base got alienated over the past weekend (TRULY SORRY FOLKS! I didn't think to tell you that I had leant my cellphone out and was working throughout the weekend.) In any case, I am currently going over Rachel and Lyle's for their end-of-01 get-together (not so much party, I think this is more eat and sit and watch reruns, which is something that alot of people have been doing it... as opposed to doing it up.)

Oh sure - There were a few parties tonight like -

1. the Conworks 'Heaven and Hell Ball' - but any time I am at an IQU show (the band who is playing, I feel like they have this great disdain for their audience. Also, I am sure the $30 pays for a whole slew of great shows and certain unsaid artists crashing there, but I just don't have it in me to force a good time because it doesn't include bartabs...
   
2. the Shins are playing at Graceland. I would love to see them, but alas - Graceland is a breadbox when it's over 40 people.
   
3. Faux Bang - It's like a moon cycle with them. It has to be a) on a Thursday and b) I have to be already really drunk to enjoy it and c) I need to forget it's not at Foxes. Last time I went was when I was stone cold sober and semi-bored, and I fear that I am slowly losing interest in screaming drag queens and spastic, elecrto-art-punk bands.
   

Obviously... none of them really appeal to me, which is why I am going for the low-key, no-cover, get-fat mode. I am going to bring my George Foreman Grill over to Rachel and Lyle's - OH! And possibly bake a cake (something I haven't done since I was... well, never)... So, I had better get crackin. A very happy New Year to you all!!

Today was semi-productive, semi-useless... I got home and woke up around 2pm, got into a cleaning fit after drinking my much-needed 16oz Americano and proceeded to work counterclockwise around my studio, clearing some of the holiday fallout (ie, the christmas cards I was making, my various projects from Bedrock, etc) and organizing.
Unfortunately, I also found myself playing the 'Sims' between these cleaning fits, taking up much time and energy. I'm at a loss to find why this game is so compelling - I seriously hate it. Mostly for the time-suckage factor, partially because not one of my sims is happy enough to work at getting a new job, and the underlaying deep-seated fear that this game resembles our own lives is quite the shocker. I am trying to swear off this game. I would gladly give it to someone, but no one I know has a mac presently.
Aside from that - I'd also made a few photocards which I hope to send in the New Year (that is if I get ambitious enough to photoshop out the zits and wrinkles), made a tamale pie and watched "Night of the Iguana" (still marvelling at all the inuenndo's for drugs and sex in the 50's film. Tennessee Williams really had to wordplay around such controversies as lesbians and heroin back then.) The place is still a mess, with a mountain of recycling - but I'll take it out tomorrow... Yeah right.