June 18-24, 2001 — Every hour wounds; the last one kills

It hasn't been much of a week. And I hate writing journals that are supposed to encompass so much, so I'm not even going to pretend that this is an accurate summary of the week's events.

I worked every day this week except for Wednesday. The theory was that I would stay home that day to read American Gods. It was the day after the book was released (as well as the name of one of the major characters in the book), so Wednesday seemed like a good choice. And it would have been if my allergies hadn't decided to flare up to the point that I just wanted to lie down and sleep until I felt better. My allergies had been difficult to deal with from the moment I arrived home on Tuesday night straight through to Thursday morning.

I was too exhausted on Thursday and Friday to get much done. So I slept.

On Saturday, I read for most of the evening. Then I took a (forced) break to drive my sister to her dance recital, after which I read until 2:30 am, finishing the book. I doubt that there's much of a point in reviewing it since I'm pretty biased going into this, but I did enjoy it. My one complaint would be that, after a point, the vague descriptions of gods walking the streets became tiresome since I could never figure out who they were (unless it was more or less spelled out for me). I think much of it was too clever for me, with my lack of education in the fields of mythology and of gods shining through. Hopefully this lack of education will not be enough to cause me permanent difficulties as far as an afterlife is concerned. Rest assured that I'll do my best to let you know how that one turns out, though.

And on Sunday, today, I got a sunburn. Which'll teach me for letting my father drag me to an Ottawa Lynx game without sunscreen or a baseball cap. The Lynx lost and I had a pretzel and the mascot waved to me as I left. Not the mascot for the Lynx, though -- it was the garbage monster, a little dragon-like fellow with a pouch containing a garbage bag who walks around collecting trash, encouraging people to keep the stadium clean. We're tight, the trash monster and I.

So now. My face is reddish and my room is dark because I'm too lazy to turn on the lights and my bedtime is ten minutes from now.

All in all, I don't think it was a very good week. My favourite line in American Gods was the quoting of the saying, "Every hour wounds. The last one kills." The protagonist goes on to agree with another character's theory that America would be a lot better off if people would just suffer in silence. He also thinks that if you bottle up emotions for long enough, you eventually won't feel anything at all. I'm going to stop short of saying that I feel like that, but I do think that hiding from human contact for as long as I did still makes it hard to go back to it, to form any sort of lasting friendship or relationship with a person. It occurred to me today that, not counting the two girls on the bus that I went to elementary school with, I haven't really spoken with anyone my age in two weeks. It hadn't bothered me much until I thought about it. I kind of wish it bothered me more now.

All (or at least most of) this to say that keeping in touch with Erika since I returned to Ottawa has not been easy and has not gone well. And I feel like a rather horrible person for it.

And so instead of talking to people, I've read and programmed and (tried to) write. I redesigned my journal, although I probably won't show it to you for awhile. I'm learning more about SQL databases and Cascading Style Sheets. I'm trying to write my first short story since before I started antigreg, while I was still using the National Capital FreeNet. I'm also, probably, slowly losing any chance of leading an emotionally healthy life.

This journal is badly written and likely to make people think that I want them to feel sorry for me or that I'm trying to reach out. I'll therefore make every effort to post another journal tomorrow, hiding this one in the archives where people will be less and less likely to read it until no one ever looks at it again. It seems a brilliant plan.