Category: Personal

The stockings were hung by the replica statue of David with care, in hopes that his nuts would not be too visible in the cold winter air.
Making sure things are hung for Christmas seems to be the easy part of things, the more challenging is arranging a holiday event that is consistent with the goals of the season. This means that I need to coordinate food, music, my mood and other things to work well with each other, as well as with some sort of “seasonal protocol”. Food is by far the hardest though, everyone has such delicate tastes this time of year. Then there are the people who are allergic to everything, certain measures must be made to accomodate them. Food seems to be such a huge part of culture. It isn’t easy to find things seasonal that taste good. The most “typical” Christmas dessert is fruit cake, but no one likes it and no one under 70 eats it (for those Alton Brown fans out there, yes it is Good Eats when it is done properly, but I mean the typical brick variety).
So far for tommorrow I have completed:
Arctic S’mores
Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies (the gooey kind)
Spice Cakes (6 pecan caramel glazed, 3 walnut caramel glazed)
Yule Log
Chilli (C/O Dad)
Bagguette (got to love bakerys :-D)
Nog (premade, yeah, i suck)
The items still to be prepared are:
The Soups (potatoe and veg)
Wassail (base only, accessories are ready)
Tea, Coffee, Hot Chocolate (to be brewed moments before guests arrive)
Warm Apple Cider
My aunt seems to think I am crazy for doing the stuff im doing, but I think I am doing quite well to this point.
One question I am still trying to answer is when I am supposed to sleep, the past few days I have already been on an inverse cycle and today I ended up sleeping on the couch waiting for my mom to be ready to help me with the Yule log, which resulted in me running to bed for a few hours. At the moment I am sitting here wondering how I will handle my commitments of the evening and still manage to sleep a sane way, since I am supposed to be functional at 6am (I should only require 4 hours of sleep since I have completed a 4 hour cycle already).
I love this time of year, I just am not certain of my physical or mental health after. Last year I did this and pulled off 40 hours of continuous up time. I am not quite stable enough to do that this year, I see napping in my futures.

My family drives me so nuts sometimes! Today I found out that there is a competetion in place between my anual Christmas event at home and my cousin’s arrival in Myrtle Beach. My event has been planned unofficially for almost a year, but officially for a few months. I have done everything short of sending out paper invitations to alert my family that they are to gather at my house on December 25th at 5:00PM. That date and time has been delegated to me for my use with the family. My cousin who lives in San Franciso, CA has decided to fly in next weekend instead of this weekend, and has also decided that he doesn’t wish to make the long trip (3.25 hours) from Myrtle Beach to Charlotte to come to my event. It is unfortunate that physically distant relatives get priority in this family (I blame it on the fact that there has never been a physically distant member before). It would appear that I have a lot of family members on my side for the event, but also some feel a loyalty towards my cousin. Some people in my family want me to move the event to December 24th at 5:00, but I am fairly decided in my time and I don’t plan to let myself be manipulated by their confusion. One of the fun things about my event is that it is my event, no act of committee can make the event float across time and space, as it can with all of the others. I suppose another factor on my side is the act of committee that is required to coordinate the pilgramige to Myrtle Beach, with the division and indecision it will not be possible for a conclusion to be reached and it is likely that either the deciding bodies will opt to remain on the original plan with my event, or a representative body will be sent to Myrtle Beach and the rest will be with me. Family politics are a lot of fun when im not involved in them :-/ I suppose its time for me to send an email to my aunt who is attempting to coordinate the Myrtle Beach thing and see if I can get her to work with me on a plan of action that will make sure that both of our events occur without a problem. I guess for once I have a reason to like the republicans in my family (primarily my aunt in Charlotte and grandfather who are strickly opposed to travelling out of state on Christmas and wish to honor their commitment to me).

Happy birthday to Chris. Cheer up buddy, youve done a lot this year! You are a great friend and a very talented individual. “Life wakes you up, things change”
See his blog entry to himself

Ive had thoughts of wanting to kill myself before, but usually because of stress or something else external to me, but now I feel this way for a new reason. I presently feel like I don’t matter to anyone and that all I am capable of doing is causing other people pain. This was extreamly evident tonight (this morning, whatever) when I was experiencing extreame emotional pain and when I turned to a friend to talk about it I was promptly told that he was going to bed and that he wasn’t going to deal with it. This comes after us earlier discussing some things that had occured earlier in the week and he declared that he wasn’t putting any more into the relationship because he felt that I wanted everyone to be there for me when I need them, but me never being around for others when they need me. I can’t argue with him, this has been happening my entire life, no matter how much I want to change this behavior, it is still there. I am a bad person and should not live any longer. I am a waste.

Sometimes the only way for me to define my emotions is to look at the music im listening to and try to interpret from there. In this case, my mood is sporatic, but I keep loosing myself in Celine Dion – The Greatest Reward. I feel such loneliness sometimes, but somehow this song makes me happy and I feel less alone, and perhaps even hopeful.
—
So suddenly, so strange
Life wakes you up, things change
I’ve done my best, I’ve served my call
I thought I had it all
So suddenly, so strong
My prejudice was gone
You needed me, I found my place
I’m different now, these days
Now the greatest reward
Is the light in your eyes
The sound of your voice
And the touch of your hand
You made me who I am
You trusted me to grow
I gave my heart to show
There’s nothing else I cherish more
I stand by you for sure
Now the greatest reward
Is the love that I can give
I’m here for you now
For as long as I live
You made me who I am
So suddenly, it’s clear to me
Things change
Our future lies in here and now
We made it through somehow
Now the greatest reward
Is the love that I can give
I’m here for you now
For as long as I live
You made me who I am
You made me who I am
– Celine Dion – The Greatest Reward

OK, got a truely original comment to the blog today.
[Can’t you say, “That’s so stupid,” instead of that’s so “gay?”
I mean, you use the word “gay” like it’s a bad thing.]
This is in relation to the previous blog entry about Guy’s quote. First of all, as you will see, this person was a total coward, using a fake email address as well as using the name “Me”. Second, I wasn’t using “gay” negatively, I was refering to the level of homosexual-specific activity Guy was participating. Guy is by no means stupid, he is a very intelligent person, anyone who can speak Gaelic and about 10 other lagnuages would never by considered stupid by me.
One little comment for the prick who had the need to comment with his head up his ass, “gay” was originally used to mean happy, and now is used for either that or describing homosexuals. There is more to “gay” activies than male-to-male anal sex. If you wish to communicate with me further about this topic, feel free to email me, or comment again, this time with your real email address.
I welcome comments to my blog, but only under 1 condition, they MUST be about the blog entry itself, not the title.

Happy birthday to a very good friend of mine, Oscar. Enjoy it and don’t let Rita blow you away!

For the past year I have been a student at UNCC, and I have been away from my high school friends for nearly 18 months. During high school towards the middle of my senior year various teachers were telling the seniors as a whole “enjoy the time you have together, for after you graduate, you will likely never see anyone from high school again”. I originally doubted this and I guess went into a self-generated dilousion that through some miracle all of the Highland people would remain in constant contact, but unfortunately that hasnt been the case. I guess I should have realized when Mr. Hudson said it that it wasn’t bullshit. At the current time the only person from high school I really interact with is Guy Broome. Guy wasn’t really around me much in high school, but now he is, its kind of strange. I haven’t seen Matt Lamb in like forever, same with Jeff, although ive talked to him some and he still takes an interest in my life on occasion. Other than these few people, I don’t really have the opportunity to talk to any of my class anymore. Looking back on my senior year, I spent more time hiding from the fact that things were ending than I did on anything else. During senior year I spent a lot of spare time at Highland working with the network and various other things that didn’t really matter all that much, but I wasn’t with people. I spent more time saying goodbye to the building and the technology than I did to the people. In addition to spending time away from people, I also spent time in class at Gaston College, getting a jumpstart on my education, or perhaps just a jumpstart on being alone. Funny thing is, I think I spent more time getting to know the people at Gaston College more than I have tried getting to know people at UNCC. Towards the end of the last semester at Highland I decided to write lettrers to everyone I cared about, but I didn’t make it very far on my list. I only manged to get the letters to Jeff and Matt Lamb written, no one else got one, except Mr. Frost, who got one because I went back during the summer.
Now that I have been at UNCC for a year, I excepted that I would have developed some sort of social network, but I somehow managed to not do that. For the first time since I graduated from high school I have actually started making friends again, very slowly, but still, its progress. I have met one person who is extreamly interesting, but he is a lot more socially active than I am, and I feel really weird when I tell him that I don’t want to do stuff. I really wish I could be a lot more like him, but its not in my personality to be that outgoing. Hes the type of person who goes clubbing, dancing and goes to parties. I wouldn’t mind going to clubs or dancing, but I think I draw the line at going to college parties. That is just absolutely not me. I want to be more socially open, but going from anti-social to party-animal could be too much of a shock to myself, my existing friends and the fabric of space-time in general. Lewis has noted that I am a “nerd”. ok, where is the news flash item here? of course I am, I would prefer to index my book collection than go out and interact with living, breathing fleshy humans any day. For my life to be stable and happy I do need to seek the occasional additional person to add to my social network, but I need people more like me. People I frequently interact with sometimes worry that I wont have time for when when I interact with others, but the situation is really the opposite, I presently do very little with my time and am availible a lot, I just always seem busy. Adding people to my life is likely to make me more human-focused instead of being project-focused. My social network isn’t what it was in high school, and I consider this a good thing. I need people in my life who are able to accept me for who I am and not judge me based upon some sort of predisposed opinion that they conjured up through a confusing set of adolescent influences.

I don’t know what has been happening to me lateky, but I can’t seem to focus on anything. I have been bouncing between tasks constantly. I have like 5 uncompleted blog entries waiting in my content management system, the topics vary greatly, from my new friend Lewis to my decision to generate a library-like record system for my media (books, DVDs, CDs, etc). I feel like I am in a state of emotional and psychological limbo. I seem to have lost my passion for most things that I enjoy, but instead of spent hours and hours looping through various things ending up with little to no results. The one thing that does seem to calm me a bit lately is talking to my friends on the phone and focusing on the conversations. Its because of times like this that I wish I would have designed GITI with accessibility features for people with A.D.D. (Attention Defficit Disorder). In the current situation I am rotating through assignments on GITI and not focusing at all, and anything that takes any amount of focus is being put off. Last night I wanted to accomplish something in addition to my Discreet Structures homework (which I found out is now not due until Wednesday), so I started going throught he list of assignments in the list, nothing appealed to me, so I went to the expanded list and I finally ended up doing something for my web-based application development course. Part of my inability to focus is coming from a current aversion to things that are somewhat unfamilar or challenging (such as Case Study reports for my liberal studies course). I even tried working on a C++ lab, something I usually find to be a fun form of challenging, but found myself getting totally frustrated, so we background that task and find something else to do. I recently purchased a Recreational Mathematics book and found myself unable to wrap my brain around a paradoxial story of logical deduction, what is up with that? I ALWAYS love a good logical paradox! I have not been very social lately, but this shouldn’t come as a suprise I guess. I fear social interaction, I fear being noticed, I fear change.
In addition to feeling not focused, I also feel like I don’t have enough to actually do, so im having to create things to do. I dont feel enough pressure from academics and im bored with stuff I have availible to do. I love doing ceramic stuff, but I haven’t really felt much inspiration to go to the wheel to do a lot lately. I want to go back to doing like multiple pieces per week and finding ways of making each piece unique (the reason i will never make a set of something, sets are dull).