i think i forgot to mention that i had dinner with thanh on sunday night. it was good catching up with her. i guess i haven’t seen her in a while. the last time i saw her, i think we met up in the city…but i can’t quite remember what it was that i was doing in the city, but i think that we were both sort of on foreign ground.

dinner was steak, stuffing, and mushrooms. i think that the sauteed mushrooms weren’t done very well, but it was my first time trying to make them so i won’t be too hard on myself. but the steak was good. mmmm, beef.

it was good catching up with her though, it seems that there’s been a lot going on in our lives since we last were able to catch up. why does time seem to fly by so quickly? i’m not sure. but it does make you realize what’s important in life.

never take what you have for granted. once it’s gone, you won’t be able to live with it.

—–

i went to the DMV today to renew my license. apparently california state law dictates that you can only renew your license by mail twice. after that, you have to go into the DMV to get a new picture taken as well as a vision test and fingerprinting.

i left my apartment at 7:30 this morning to get to the DMV at 7:45. they don’t open until 8:30 today and when i got there, 45 minutes before opening, there were already 25 people waiting in line at the closed DMV. by 8:30 there were close to 80 people waiting in line outside the DMV. the line had snaked its way down a full block. it was crazy!

luckily, i was in and out of there and there in 30 minutes and i know have successfully renewed my driver’s license. yay. 12 more years from now of no DMV use, hopefully.

but wow, the DMV sure has changed. instead, we had to wait in crazy long lines to get whatever we wanted. now, with the aid of technology, they have a queueing system that lets you sit and wait for your number to be called. it’s great! much more civilized. i was amazed at how cool that process is now.

but yeah, new license, new picture, it’s a new me.

—–

i’m bored, but i have a lot of work to do. it’s funny how that seems to be the case. oh well, luckily, with all of the work that i’ve got on my plate, it’s easy for me to just drown in my work and get lost for hours on end.

i had no idea that my afternoon had gone by so quickly already. it’s kind of crazy.

busy, busy.

reminds me of busy phillips from dawson’s creek. i wonder what she’s up to these days.

cup-o-noodles are very good, but also, apparently very bad for you. why is it that preservatives are bad for you? wouldn’t you think that it would be good for you because they preserve your body?

—–

[url=http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/8190100.htm]i don’t live here[/url] but i live very, very close to this place. in fact, i think i can see it from where i currently live. this was one of the apartment complexes that i was going to live at. man, that’s scary.

—–

think good happy thoughts for my DSL install. please. today is my install date for DSL. i thought that i’d be extra cute and i would wait until the minute that the day starts and i would try and setup the DSL here. but, alas, no. such is not the case, things don’t work as smoothly as one would expect. so i did the inevitable. i called sbc support to see what’s going on.

i actually didn’t wait very long (though it is 1AM) before i talked to a customer service representative. he was very nice and helpful and informed me that the blinking red light of mine means that the DSL line isn’t trained yet and hasn’t come up. that much i knew. i asked if it was reasonable for me to expect it to be working by now. this is when he informed me that the line can go live anytime before 6PM. ugh. looks like i won’t know until i get home from work tomorrow now whether or not there will be a problem with my DSL install. for now, the DSL modem is happily reporting that the DSL line is not up.

this leads me to believe that a work order must be made and people manually activate this line instead of having it run on some kind of automated schedule. sigh. why waste people’s time like this, i don’t know. but yeah. i ordered the DSL last monday so hopefully today’s activation will be done early in the day. i think it’s just wishful thinking for me to hope that it’ll be fixed before i leave for work though. oh well.

but once i get the DSL installed, i’ll happily be zipping away at hopefully much faster speeds. i’ve heard a lot of horror stories about people getting screwed with their DSL install, so we’ll see if this one is bad or not. i’m optimisitic, let’s hope that this optimism isn’t misplaced.

come on, yahoo sbc! don’t let me down!

—–

most of the time, i’m pretty ok. but every once in a while, something’ll happen and i’ll get struck with a wave of sadness. it’ll just come crashing down on me with the fury of a tornado on a rampage. it’ll cut down into me like a thousand razor blades sprung to life cutting into me searching for something they will never find…and in their wake, they leave my shredded remains.

and then i’ll find something to occupy my time so that my mind won’t dwell on such things. today, it was all about cleaning my room. nine garbage bags later, my room is beginning to look pretty decent. it’s a lot more roomy than before, though i’m tempted to go even one step farther and really start shuffling things around. i’m not sure what’ll come of it. we’ll see.

i also decided to put up some ornamental hangings in my bathroom. the bathroom walls were a little empty and so i put up some decorations that i had for a long while now. i guess it’s better. i don’t know.

i think that i’m going to do some work on the wall project tonight as well. i think that instead of going for the top trim as i had started, i’m going to do something a little more bold.

—–

i met up with geoff tonight at hydration where we had some tea and chilled out. i got caught up with what’s been going on in geoff’s life. it’s interesting to see the life of a student. it’s been so long for me that i forget what it’s like sometimes.

the two of us waxed philosophy for a while and eventually got around to looking at some pictures. geoff’s taking a photography class right now and it’s very interesting to see the projects he’s involved in and some of the things that they are teaching him about. i have to admit that some of the stuff went over my head…things like balance and counterbalance and other design concepts.

it’s hard for me to articulate what makes a good image, but i know it when i see it and i know what the best ways are to have a higher percentage at making a better picture. i really enjoyed talking about photography with geoff and i really liked some of the pictures that he took.

the two of us are going to get together on monday and do some photography work. i think that it’ll be pretty cool. it’s weird but i look forward to doing geoff’s homework just for fun. imagine that. what a weirdo i am.

later in that evening, we found ourselves in a dark alley in east san jose. there was a car parked in front of us where a couple was getting it on. i won’t go into the details of why we were in a dark alley in an unsafe part of town, but that was definitely one of the last places that i thought that i’d be at on a friday night. it was an interesting experience.

the thing about me is that i try very hard to have thick skin. i try not to let other people get to me, regardless of what they may say. i think that i’ve gotten particularly good at this in the professional sense. if someone were to come up to me and professionally berate me for doing something wrong or messing up or just yelling at me because they can, well, it doesn’t really bother me anymore. it’s a lot easier for me to let those troubles go.

but i am still very easily affected when it comes to things of a more personal nature. i remember there was this one time someone had said something i feel is completely untrue about me to a friend of mine and they didn’t stick up for me. they didn’t defend me, instead they just sat there. at first i was outraged because my friend didn’t stand up for me, but then i realized that the reason that they probably didn’t defend me is because they felt it was true. that shook me up for a few days. i was crushed. i couldn’t believe that a friend of mine could believe it…i thought that they knew me better than that.

and it got me thinking that maybe that’s the way that a lot of people perceive me to be. it’s sad because i really felt that they knew me better than that…or what’s worse is that it made me sad because that’s what their opinion of me was.

i try not to be easily affected by what other people think of me, and to a great degree i feel like i can do it…but every so often i’ll hear something and it’ll really affect me deeply to the point where it’s hard to think clearly.

the moment will pass, as it always does, i’m just waiting for it to come to pass.

It doesn’t take a talent to be mean
Your words can crush things that are unseen
So please be careful with me, I’m sensitive
And I’d like to stay that way.

—–

It’s at times such as this she’d be tempted to spit
If she wasn’t so ladylike
She imagines how she might have lived
Back when legends and history collide
So she looks to her prince, finding since he’s so charmingly
Slumped at her side
Those days are recalled on the gallery wall
And she’s waiting for passion or humour to strike

What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?
All this useless beauty

Good Friday arrived, the sky darkened on time
’til he almost began to negotiate
She held his head like a baby and said it’s okay if you cry
Now he wants her to dress as if you couldn’t guess
He desires to impress his associates
But he’s part ugly beast and hellenic deceased
So she finds that the mixture is hard to deny

What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?
All this useless beauty

She won’t practice the looks from the great tragic books
That were later disgraced to face celluloid
It won’t even make sense but you can bet
If she isn’t a sweetheart or plaything or pet
The film turns her into an unveiled threat

Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they’re the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn’t even exist
It was just an ideal — is it such a surprise?

What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?
All this useless beauty

What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?
All this useless beauty

============================================

good old elvis costello. when i first heard this song a long, long time ago i thought about how tragic is sounded. useless beauty. one of the things about beauty is that it is meant to be appreciated. there’s not much else about it. it has no other real value except that…to be appreciated. it’s sad though because our society places so much importance on things like beauty, but it has no practical use aside from the superficial.

it’s tragic that there’s so much importance placed on something that…well, isn’t really that important.

—–

it’s been a rough week. i’ve been trying not to let it wear on me, but i think that with the weekend coming up, it’s finally beginning to take its toll on me. i’ve been trying to keep my mind off of things by doing this or that, but slowly and surely, like a dam under pressure, i think that i’m beginning to crack.

it’s weird, though, i know that in times of hardship, most people generally tend to seek the help of others, but i’ve never been that way. instead, i usually become more of a recluse and i generally tend to avoid people instead of seek them.

i generally don’t find that talking about my problems helps me. usually, talking about my problems just bothers me even more about it and i end up feeling worse instead of better. this is a hard concept for some people to understand.

when i’m sad, i usually tend to drown myself in depressing music forcing myself to just wallow in the sadness that i’m in. i think my approach to things is to hit rock bottom as quickly as you can so that once you hit rock bottom you can start your way back up on the road to recovery. from an outsider’s point of view, i think that this may just look like i’m more upset or sad then ever, but really, i think it’s just my way of dealing with things.

but this week has been a long, painful one. the days seem to just drag on and it seems that there’s little to rejoice about. volleyball used to be an escape for me because i can take out any agressions i had on the court, but with my recent injury, i fear i don’t have much of an option there…besides, my ankle has actually been hurting a lot more recently. not sure why, i probably should go see a doctor if it keeps up.

in some ways i’m glad this week is over, but the weekend doesn’t really look to be much better. maybe it’ll be good to just relax and enjoy some quiet time away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.

—–