Author: Teel

So Friday morning around 3:30 or so Angela and I are leaving for the airport. A couple of hours later our flight leaves, but I’d like to have plenty of time to be harrassed by security before we’re allowed to get on the plane. Then we fly 2.5 hours East to Dallas, wait an hour, and fly nearly 9 hours West to Hawaii. Because … somehow that’s cheaper for American Airlines… I guess. We will be getting back into town Wednesday morning via a more direct flight that stops in LA (for 2.5hrs) instead of Dallas. In the meantime, I am not sure what the status of my internet access will be, and am likely not to post at all. In the event that there is internet access in our hotel (it is a six star hotel (I didn’t even know there WERE six star hotels!)), I will be sure to post some sort of updates when I get a chance (such as right before I pass out at night).

Between Angela and I we don’t have a whole lot of money to spend on the trip, so we may not end up doing very many of the exciting things to do in Maui, but we shall certainly do our best. I may end up spending every last spare dollar I have, even though it will mean being tight-budgeted for a couple extra months, if it means the difference between sitting around in our pre-paid hotel room and going out and having a good time. Luckily I’ve got an extra-large bonus coming on the paycheck that will be direct-deposited into my checking account Friday morning at 00:00:01, which will be paying for things like the exciting extra $25/day we have to pay for the rental car (on top of the $21/day for the rental itself & the $45 in fees and taxes) because I’m not 25 yet. Legally, Angela isn’t allowed to drive the car at all, though I doubt I will ever get behind the wheel.

We’ll see how it goes. Everything seems to be coming together okay. We’ll even have confirmed room reservations sometime today. (Hooray Orbitz, for being so on the ball with that, and only taking until the very last minute to reserve the room!) I think we’ll have appropriate bags to handle enough clothes &ct for the both of us. I think I’m going to have to bring all 3 pair of my shoes (Tennis, Dress, and Hiking Boot) for various activities we may be involved in, and that’s not small. My hope is to check everything but my backpack, which should just contain my computer, some DVDs, my towel, and a small paper journal. That way if security needs to look at everything I’m carrying it’ll be no problem. Unfortunately, I may also end up needing to carry my camera case, if it doesn’t fit in something I’m checking, which would more than double the number of items to be pored over by security goons. We’ll see how much clothes I need to pack, and how big my bag(s) for checking are.

Well, you won’t see. I will. Angela may. You won’t. But I may write about it later. Oh, and I think Edison will be journeying with us, so he may have something to say about everything himself. I’ve just noticed that he appears to be playing Photoshop Ping Pong from home. I’ll talk to him about that when I get home.

I just want to say this: I don’t live in the desert because I want 71 degree air blowing over me 9 hours a day in the summer and 45 degee air blowing over me 9 hours a day in the winter.

I guess someone’s too warm in the next building over, so I’m freezing here. I remember once, long ago, when tech support was alone in the third building, furthest from everyone else and able to control the light levels and thermostats. We kept most of the migraine-inducing lights off, and the temperature around 82 degrees, and we liked it that way. It would be that way where we are now, except that instead of majority ruling, a single voice of dissidence is enough to overrule any decision or suggestion. I think that’s a big part of the problem with the way most things are run these days; find the person who would be most offended or upset by the smallest possible change and use their reactions to create guidelines for everyone else.

If I were alone in thinking it was too cold and too bright, I would obviously be that one person I’m saying shouldn’t be able to shift guidleines by whining a little. I’m not the only one. Several times a day, every day, everyone in tech support, and often people simply walking near tech support, agree that it is too cold and too bright here. When I go outside to warm up, I am not alone, and I hear people mutterring complaints about the cold and rubbing their flesh as you normally only see in the deep of winter here. But someone thinks it’s too warm, so we all have to suffer.

Sometimes the world wide web frustrates me. Like just now when I reached the end of the content. For a couple hours there I was doing really good. I had my three browser windows open, each about 800×600, one int the upper-left hand corner of my screen, one in the lower-right, and one in the middle. A corner screen is always “primary” from which I drag links into the other windows to read after they’ve loaded and I’ve finished reading whatever gave me the link in the first place. When the web is really treating me well, I have to keep hitting ‘New Window’ and then more windows tile up between the upper-left and lower-right extremes, and sometimes long articles end up minimized to be read later. I can flip back and forth between articles or blogs, reading one entry here and one entry there that relates to it, and sometimes I’ll read a enws article and do a couple of quick google searches on topics or companies mentioned in the article. Some days, between the few sites I check regularly I can go like this all day, almost dreading the end of the workday when my chain of data finally has to break down.

Today I was done by 9:10AM. Even being interrupted by calls. There just weren’t enough updates over the weekend. Just not enough links. I ran out of web. In a few hours, I may try again, see if any blogs have been updated, see what they’ve linked to, but chances are I won’t need more than two windows at most to handle all the data. Nothing like real surfing, where there’s so much data coming down the pipe that it has to wait for me instead of the other way around.

Sometimes I read science fiction like Snow Crash where there is so much information available online that it can’t even be represented strictly in 2D anymore, where only a select few (millions) have the experience to be able to interpret and handle the intensity of information without it being reidiculously simplified for them, and I know I would be like a duck in water. Someday I hope to experience something like the Metaverse. I may need to build it myself.

I’m having a little trouble sleeping. Perhaps because it is so much earlier than I have been able to go to sleep on recent nights. Maybe it was something I ate. Or maybe there’s something on my mind. I worked on homework and watching movies all day today. Watched Forrest Gump and all the DVD additional materials (nearly two more hours), then The Game, then Time Bandits. Then I tried to go to bed because it was just after 9 and I have to wake up a little before 5 and would like to get sufficient sleep. Except that right now it’s just a little before 10 and I’ve just been … I almost want to say ‘antsy’ in bed. Tossing and turning about in the bed, not sleeping. Sortof tired, but not enough to fall asleep. Something always on my mind, but no clear train of thought to even try to get to the end of.

So here I am again, sitting in front of my iMac, alone in the middle of the night, buck naked on a cold metal chair, typing. Writing. I almost started an email to Sara instead of a post here. I have things to say, and at certain points in the past she’s been there to listen to me. I seem naturally to want to call her or write to her, to open myself up to her; I don’t feel I have anyone else in this world I can do that to, Then I realize I don’t have her to do that to anymore, either. She’s not there for me to open up to. She’s in Spain, in school, doing her own thing, living her own life, busy as a bee and half as happy. I have some friends, a couple people that don’t usually mind me calling up if I have a reason, who even look forward to the chance to spend time with me once in a while. What I don’t have is someone I can call for no reason at all, just to talk.

Last week I finally called up Melissa. I think she gave me a little extra leeway since we hadn’t spoken in more than a couple years, and she didn’t start hinting and nudging me off the line for about twenty minutes. Still, for twenty minutes I had someone to really just talk to. She sugested that we try to get together in person, and that would be great. I don’t see it happening soon, though, and I understand why. You see, she’s got this really great boyfriend now, and spends all her free time with him. Which is great. I don’t want to take away from that, I wouldn’t dare. I can’t imagine I’d want to be any other way, had I found someone to be with. Maybe in a couple of years we can talk freely for another 20 minutes.

I hate this. I hate for a tiny text box on my computer screen to take the place of a human being. I hate that I need this. This false conversation. This .. I hate this. I want to have someone I can talk to instead of an anonymous public who comes to gawk at my life. I know, I know, I know, I can be alone. I can live this life. I can do this. I don’t need Sara, or Melissa, or anyone else in that way. I can get by without a real human being on the other side of my ramblings. I can jabber out into the empty rooms of my house without a reply. I can draw and draw and draw and paint and create whatever else without anyone ever seeing it, or caring to. I can write and write and write, long into the night, and I’ll get by without words coming back to me through the darkness. Without a voice washing back against my eardrum, reminding me I’m not alone.

Because I am alone. There isn’t anybody out there. Not really. A hundred peope will see this in the next 24 hours alone, but there isn’t really anybody there. There isn’t really someone who cares that way about me, who’s willing to just sit there and listen, or IM with me, for hours and hours. There certainly isn’t anyone who would actually sit next to me and talk to me in person for very long. There always must be some pretext or some expanded audience, or some restriction of subjects that maybe I’m only imagining but it still constricts my throat. Like I said, I have a couple of friends, and sometimes we get together. I am not literally alone. I just … I know what I want because I used to have it. There used to be people who would talk to me. I used to have some of the best and longest conversations over the phone, and now it is used simply for brief exchanges to coincide movie watching, a hobby I took up because it was impersonal but didn’t feel that way; I could go watch the movies without having to find a free friend, and the emotional impact of the movie was the same. The old attachment I had to the phone is still with me, and I pay large fees every month to have enough minutes available and a phone always available so that if that sort of great conversation I remember comes along, whenever, wherever, I’ll be ready for it.

But it never comes. If I didn’t spend so much time on hold, waiting for tech support or customer service to come on the line for one company or another every month, I could switch down safely to one of those 20 minutes a month plans. I simply haven’t anyone to talk to. AT&T, my wireless provider, recently began offerring a plan with 400 minutes more than mine for the same money, but I don’t bother calling them to switch since I don’t use 1/3 of the minutes I have now, and I have less people to call all the time.

Someone I used to care about called me up last week. Someone who, given anything else to do at all I would never see, call me up and asked me to go out to some remote spot in the middle of the night. I didn’t have anything else to do at all, so I went along on this little trip. Over an hour each way, and we spent less than 20 minutes there. The whole time though, I did my best to pretend I was as comfortable talking to them as to someone like Sara. It eventually became frustrating for me because I was almost there, almost talking, but there’s something about this person that I just can’t be totally honest and open around. There’s something about this person that reminds me of being physically ill, but I think it’s the way they treqat themselves. So the whole conversation ended up like this paragraph, where all the specific details left out. You get the idea, but you don’t even know the gender of the person to whom I’m referring, where we went, or any of the rest of the story. I hate this. I hate not being able to say what I mean. To say what I think.

I hate this, and I hate that I’ve had to go back dozens of times so far tonight to capitalize the letter i. I know for a fact that I tend not to capitalize ‘I’ when my self-esteem isn’t at its best, and I know that other people notice that, so I’ve worked hard to catch it and ‘correct’ it. I hate it though, because it’s like correcting capitalization in an e.e. cummings poem; it changes the meaning and the tone. It’s part of this hiding the details, though. Something I feel like I have to do except around those who really get me and have the time and energy to listen.

No slight intended to you, Zoe. I know you get me. Your wife, despite how well she puts up with me, doesn’t. I have to keep her in mind, even when she isn’t around though, because she’s your wife. I don’t ever want to take away from your relationship with your wife by dominating your time or your energy or your thoughts in one way or another. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, because you have something beautiful, and I want to see you two happy together. I have seen too much potential lost between good people to want to contribute to its loss. Forgive me.

I think I’m going to try to go to sleep again. I’ve been at this for nearly an hour, and I really do need to get up in the morning. I work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, and not again until the 30th, though I’ll only be missing classes on the 23rd and 24th, so not entirely responsibilty-free, though 11 days off work, 5 of them in Hawaii, is certainly something to look forward to. I practically feel like I’m already on vacation. Something in my mindset certainly isn’t here anyway. I hope it finds a bed soon, wherever my mind is off to. I don’t want to sleep through Hawaii.