February 2, 2001 — In our own way

I set my alarm so that I'd be able to make it to breakfast this morning, and for the first time this semester, I made it to breakfast twice in one week. I don't know about it being the most important meal of the day, but damn do I feel nourished. Especially when dinner was hamburgers and really bad french fries, leading me to eat only a peanut butter sandwich and chocolate ice cream. If not for the local Pizza Pizza, I'd've lost at least five pounds (that I don't really need to lose) since arriving back in residence in January, and I would more than likely be even more malnourished than I am. Phew.

Meanwhile, I've begun the task of transcribing the lyrics for Bran Van 3000's new album, which will no doubt drive Johnston insane by the end of next week. Given that I will be listening to each song over and over again while trying to figure out what certain words are, I think even I'll be sick of it for a few days. But certainly not yet. I don't have the full album at the moment, so I'm starting with the songs I've had since the summer, and listening to one of them, "Loop Me," definitely took me back to the last weeks of August. Listening to it brought me back to when I was happy and had a bit more to hope for the future. It was a good feeling. I hope I can get it back one day.

Before leaving for Oshawa, Jeff visited and used Johnston's computer to take a gander at schwarzenegger.com, Arnold's official Web site. I wonder if the site's popularity has increased along with that of the "Kindergarden Cop" prank calls. (Just search for "Arnold" and "prank" on Napster and you should find them without much trouble if you don't know what I'm talking about. Summary: someone took Arnold's voice from "Kindergarden Cop" and used it to harrass people over the phone. Hilarity ensued.) What the official site lacked in prank calls it made up for in Arnold's version of "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon." And to save you the trouble of checking yourself, yes, even Rick Rodney (the ex-lead singer of Strife -- y'know, the hardcore band) is within a couple of degrees of separation from our good friend Ahnold. After our "Planet of the Apes" revival is over here at Burwash, we've plans to move on to the entire "Conan" series. I can't hardly wait.

I got a call from Gillian in Luxembourg today. She'd been stuck surrounded by people speaking another language for most of the evening, so I can definitely understand wanting to call someone from home. Today was also the first day that she mentioned our breaking up in her journal, five days after the fact. I don't know how either of us is going to take to hearing the details of the other's future relationships through our respective journals, especially since we did break up on rather good terms. I think I'll just plan to be single for awhile and hope that these feelings have numbed a bit by then. Given that it took 19 years to find my first girlfriend, I doubt the second will be right around the corner. So it's not like waiting's going to take a lot of effort on my behalf.

And I'd just like to say once again that I still have no idea about this AOL Instant Messenger business. Using it is an entirely different experience (as opposed to ICQ). You don't know when people add you to their lists, so I guess people are more prone to adding "buddies" even if they've little in the way of expectations as far as talking to the person goes. I was on AIM for a couple of hours today hoping that a person I work with would come on so I could ask him a question, and a couple of people I didn't know messaged me, explaining that they found me through my BME page. Compared to ICQ, where I can be selectively invisible and where I know when people add me to their contact list, AIM makes me feel rather naked.

But all in all I think it's most important to realize how much of a complete and utter loser I am for taking the time to debate the ins and outs of AIM versus ICQ as if it's an important life decision. Now that I've actually fixed up most of the site and am vaguely happy with the way things are organized, I should really get back to trying to write interesting content, dontcha think?