You ever feel like your head's goin'a pop? No, not your mind. Your head. As in, not an emotional or mental state, but a physical sensation. Of pain.

I mean, I don't smoke nor drink (occasional beers at the bar or Hooters watching the game excepted). Still I get hangovers.

Hypertension, Hyperthyroid, Hypoglycemia, High Cholesterol. Sedentary lifestyle? Relatively speaking, perhaps. Poor diet? Oh, yes. Bad genes? Yes, that too, but apparently it doesn't affect our longevity. Oh well, I'm tough, I can handle it.

Man, the light on that stupid answering machine is so bright. I'm sticking with the default message for now. I recorded some messages, but the mic is so lo fi it was almost unintelligible so default it is.

Man, short posts kind of suck. I'm already halfway through. :(

This is a long night, and I have an early day tomorrow.

See, I carry pieces of paper in my pocket for writing 'topics' on. And I have a file on my desktop as well as on my take-with-me floppy for jotting ideas. But I have too many. And they sort of blend in together and you get monsters like the previous post or half the posts from 2001. My ethic for the diary this year is readability and returnability, I didn't want it to be massive missives every day. Short and frequent, although I try not to care who reads. And judging by the sparseness of the feedback (by the way, notice I changed my email address--alot of people are in my Address Book but if you aren't, you won't reach me through the old address, you'll have to use the new one) this year, compared to the amount I got last year, not many are reading. My own family stopped reading.

Of course, I'm not on the net as much now. And I don't advertise as much. Who cares about feedback anyway, really?

My lab partners are an odd couple. We had to examine owl pellets, which are basically hairballs with bones. The one girl, age ~18 wouldn't get near it. I said it was just like a hairball from a kitty and she said she hates animals. Meanwhile, the other girl, who I can't decide the age of (she's either about 22 or in her late 30s) happily ripped the thing apart with her bare fingers and seemed genuinely interested in what each minute shape of bone was.

I've only been able to beat the computer one time on Starcraft. And even that was just outlasting him while he sacrificed hundreds of units against my defenses. Usually I die in the first 10 minutes. And why is it 7 against 1 if you play the 8 team map? I'm sitting there doing okay thinking I might not be the FIRST team destroyed, when suddenly 'Toss, Zerg, and Terran soldiers of different colors (all working together) all flood into my town. Does that seem fair?

Something I worry about: that I've been a 'loser' for so long that it's become a way of life, a habit, a virtue. By 'loser' I mean I've become used to being in my mid to late 20s, not having transportation, not eating much in the way of healthy food, not doing laundry very often or ironing my stuff, living in an apartment, not having 'normal' things, not doing things... Watching the movie trailer but not the movie; collecting the magazine but not the genuine article, reading about 'it' on the net but not doing it... Money can't be all this is about. Can it? Or is it true that money (and the obvious lack of it) colors everything here?

I remember I was probably in 2nd or 3rd grade when I first remember my father saying 'you're not going to get very far on looks alone, so do your best in school and you'll succeed', or something along those lines. Well, I didn't. Woops.

But I think I could re-up that in this way: 'YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET VERY FAR'. Parenthesis. Colon. (:Because of your looks). Now THERE'S some true wisdom.

I often wonder where it went wrong. Besides Steve Molepske, I was chatting with a guy recently who's 22 and just bought a house. Not a small run-down student house in the bad part of town with a couple of roommates. He bought a nice home. And he's got two cars. And he JUST bought his second motorcycle. As a matter of fact, here is a picture of it. It's the new R1, just delivered to dealers this week, the closest thing to the racebikes in the video I posted last time. It's gorgeous. It's a dreambike. At 22.

Do I sound jealous? Envious? I'm not. I'm in awe. And very, very dissappointed in myself. It can't be said that I'm not taking steps to correct what's gone wrong. I am in school. I'm out of trouble (imagine what Hells would have befallen me had I married that twisted bitch M; and another thing, why is it people look at me incredulously when I mention that episode in my life? She was in it for the money, okay? You want pictures?). Things could be a lot worse. I'm not addicted to any illegal substance. I haven't committed a felony, or a misdemeanor for that matter. I don't live in Afghanistan.

I'm just one of the kids Mrs. Nix had in her 3rd grade class one year who she knew would go far and be successful. Somewhere along the way I stopped cold though. It is quite possible I've underachieved every single other person in that 3rd grade class.

Even the biggest dipshits online who have trouble stringing correctly spelled words into coherent sentences are bringing in enough cash to live very comfortably. And many of the college students I know believe it's a given that they will graduate at 22 or 23, find a great job, and be able to afford a house, new bike, cars, etc. by 24 (this is more a phenomenon with people online than fellow students attending the hallowed halls of this grand institution we call UNT). And I can't say I doubt them.

Alrighty, I had better stop this at this point.

But one more thing. Was it my moving to Denton way back in 1994? See, I would have been in Denton anyway going to school but because of... circumstances, I moved out here and DIDN'T go to school. And didn't go to school for a long time. And was equally cursed and blessed. And it took hitting rock bottom (my relationship with M) for me to pull out of that dive and get back to trying to earn an education or learn a skill. But habits die hard; witness the ENTIRE YEAR of 2000 which I spent out of school. Another hypothesis (untestable) is that my trust fund may have had something to do with complacency. Hey dummy, 15 years is a long time. M was certainly attracted by the idea I might have access to that kind of cash. Another might be that my over-generous father gave me a false sense of security. Alright, now it sounds like I'm trying to make excuses for choices I and I alone made.

Don't worry about me, I'm not 'depressed', I'm just trying to figure this out. I do enjoy the day to day and the simple things and school. It's just that simple things are all there seem to be sometimes.

I'm hoping to head out to Grand Prairie this weekend to see this bike. The pic isn't much I know. Better pictures of that model can be found here and here. It's the same kind of bike I tested in late 2000 (see my newbie riding impressions here). I liked it then, but that one was in poor condition externally. This one appears to be intact.

I'll end with Nerdgirl's advice for finding the right girl: 'You could bring prospective girls home and ask them to help you change the oil in your bike. If they look at you like you have spiders crawling from your eyeballs, move on.'