It's 6:30am and I'm wide awake. I had another inspiration kick for my story and jotted a couple pages of notes, but that only left me feeling even less inclined to sleep. I wouldn't care except for the fact I have to go to work in 11 hours...

I went at 9 this morning to do my monthly chest xrays/blood work-- this was number two of the 24. It made me sad to see a little girl wandering around the Radiology building with her parents wearing one of the clinical gowns. The cloth had been bunched up and knotted against one of her calves because the gown was too long for her. It just didn't seem right (her being there, I mean, not the gown). When I had my xrays done the technician, like the one who took the first xrays after my diagnosis, complimented me on my "long ribcage"-- like I somehow have some sort of responcibility for this. Kinda like a dentist complimenting the shape of your jaw. But anyway, there's no harm in compliments, right? At 2:30 I'm going for an eye exam and I can't wait, because I need a stronger prescription and also want to see about getting colored lenses... maybe blue, or a nice violet...

Out of sight, out of mind?

I have been ill for a few days now and went to the doctor this afternoon; I have a throat infection of some sort and a lot of congestion, but I'm on some antibiotics and hopefully will feel better soon. I went to work Saturday night despite being ill, only to learn that the other busboy wasn't coming in because-- oh the irony!-- he said he was sick. The night got steadily worse from there, and after locking myself in the bathroom to get ahold of myself somewhere around 8:30 I vowed I would never work in that restaurant again after this summer. I will remember this when next summer rolls around! But back in the present, I am training the new guy tonight. It is my fifth night in a row of work and I am scheduled to work straight through till Wednesday before leaving for Virginia on Thursday. I hope I can get someone to cover for me tomorrow, because I really need a night off.

Got two new site designs almost finished, but am fascinated by The Divorce Project... It's so sunny outside. I feel good.

I am going to go run some errands now because I woke up to find that thanks to this amino acid test MY ENTIRE ROOM REEKS OF ACRID PISS.

To celebrate the $200 I'm getting from my uncle, and because I haven't bought myself anything except food in a pretty long while, I ordered the new Yoko Kanno and Sakamoto Maaya collaboration 23 Ji no Ongaku ("Music for the 11th Hour"), as well as Hamasaki Ayumi's new single H, which just came out yesterday. It's odd to find myself buying an Ayumi CD since I think she's generally a terrible singer, but all the songs on the single are really good and I can't wait to get it. Still eyeing that Bebop box set, though.

I have tonight off of work and Bec, Mone and Anna are at Carowinds so I will probably spend it quietly. I couldn't go with them because I have to go to the hospital for a blood test and also collect my urine the next 24 hours for a urine animo acid test Dr. Parks wanted done. And yeah, it's as unpleasant as it sounds. I am also 1/4 done with the first Harry Potter book, which I picked up again last night, and as a matter of fact I think I'll go read more now.

I got a card from Matt today and he says he wants to visit before I go to VA! That'd be so awesome. Right after my last post bitching about my money troubles, my uncle came by to pick up the five canvases I prepped for him. I spent 7 hours on them total and he's giving me $200. Two hundred dollars! For some reason I was expecting to get minimum wage and was going to be content with $30. Ha ha, no, $200 works just fine k thx. I was constantly worried that I was doing too much or too little but he said I did exactly what he wanted. Feels good to have a job well done.

And speaking of jobs well done, I need to deposit my paycheck, finish cleaning my room and vacuum the house before heading off with Beccatachi. ^_^

But first, a word with Manna!
Issei Ogi Sai: rofl have you ever spoken to me on a day when i've been rping kage?
Heavens Kitchen: Many times. X3
Issei Ogi Sai: and i'm like "<:B ? "
Heavens Kitchen: days with multiple tyops
Heavens Kitchen: *tyops
Heavens Kitchen: **tyosp
Issei Ogi Sai: and brian calls me on the phone and goes, "Quick, I'm in a hurry! 4 + 4 = 6, right?" and I go, "Yeah, right!" and he goes, "Hehheheheh. Bye." and hangs up, and then five minutes later I go "........heeeeeeeeeey."
Heavens Kitchen: That is truly amusing.
Issei Ogi Sai: :( and i was going to go take a shower right before you showed up, for the record.
Heavens Kitchen: Well I need to get back to cleaning, so I'll let you go bate. <3
Heavens Kitchen: *bahte
Heavens Kitchen: **haathb
Issei Ogi Sai: X(
Issei Ogi Sai: BYE
Heavens Kitchen: ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOFL

After working as much as I could all summer and trying to save my money and putting hundreds and hundreds of dollars in my bank account, I just checked my account balance to learn that I have $205 to my name. Where the fuck does my money go? I have no choice but to get a job when I go back to Athens.

Work tonight was a complete 180 from last night-- everyone was in a good mood, it was quick and painless and I was out around 9:30 or so. I was also informed that on Sunday I will be training a new busperson, and while I know it's really not a big deal, it might as well be my frickin' birthday considering how excited I am. Even though bussing is only one step up from dishwashing on the restauraunt job totem, it nevertheless feels like the boss respects me and my work in order to assign me this responcibility. At the same time it's kind of funny, too, seeing as how I'm training the guy who's gonna replace me in a couple weeks. I wonder if he knows what the hell he's getting into.

Bec and Mone are back and Anna is town, w00t! We drifted around eating and playing DDR today, and tomorrow we're going to spend the night at Becca's dad's house. I'm looking forward to it because the house is absolutely gigantic, sleeping in new places is exciting and we had a lot of fun exploring it last time we went. The drive there is also very winding and pretty.

In other news, I am still drawing a lot with the tablet. Here's my latest art: a little comic which doesn't make much sense unless you're familiar with both Guilty Gear X and The Sims. Despite its very narrow target audience I am nevertheless proud of it.

Fiddling with my digicam today I rediscovered all the pictures I took while I was in Athens with Matt. Most of them turned out awful, but here's a decent shot of Matt staring at the television. If you are curious why he is so fixated, it is because The Three Companeros was on.

Now I am going to listen to the crickets and write for a while before bed.

I had a terrible night at work. Just as we started to get really busy, I knocked an entree plate against the side of the dishroom garbage can to get the food off of it and it shattered in my hand. Luckily I only got one small cut on the side of my thumb by the nail, but I had to sit in the bathroom for fifteen minutes compressing the thing because it wouldn't stop bleeding. The rest of the night just seemed to go downhill from there. Everyone was in a foul mood, I left on very bad terms with one of the servers, and the best part is I work five nights this week, including tomorrow. I wish August 1st would hurry up and roll around so I can head up north and get away from it for a week. And I wish I didn't feel so goddamn lonely.

I woke up this morning with a huge burst of inspiration! I am simultaneously working on two website designs as well as a couple of drawings with the tablet. As always when I'm working on new sites, I just feel generally cheerful and excited and creative. Right now Becca and Monica are at Shoujocon up north somewhere; I bet they're having fun. I forgot to give them money to buy Tekken and GGXX doujinshi for me, but that's okay. I think I'm going to save up and buy that Bebop box set, because I know I would really love it for a long time. I spent all day today-- and will spend all day tomorrow, since he gets back in town on Monday-- copying some of my artist uncle's drawings onto canvas as charcoal sketches for him to then paint. It's very slow going, but he's paying me for it and it's really not so bad when I keep some music on. I'm on a big trance kick these days: BT, Delerium, Move... I want to find more but I know very little about trance or good trance artists. Does anyone have suggestions?

Somehow I forgot to mention that I also ventured downtown on Thursday and walked around for a while. I'd always wanted to hang out downtown but never had the motivation until now. It's a little confusing, I guess simply because it's so much larger than downtown Athens (which I know like the back of my hand now), but I liked it a lot. There's something great about getting lost in the heart of a busy city for a few hours and wandering around it simply enjoying everything it has to offer.

An interesting thing happened at work tonight. Last week one of the servers, who was pregnant, asked me if I like my name. No one had ever asked me that before and I'd never stopped to think about it, so I had to pause and consider it for a moment before telling her that I do. Last night was her last workshift before maternity leave, and tonight on the news board in the kitchen it said that she had the baby this afternoon. His name is Aaron Michael.

Fun with bumper stickers:





Despite it being my day off I got a surprisingly tiny number of things accomplished, and I won't have another day off until at least Monday. I went out to dinner with my dad, though, and we talked a lot, which was nice. Now I'm off to finish Siddhartha before bed.

Wow, it's already been almost a week. I've spent most of it working, which eats up my most active hours in the day and also makes me sleep late, both of which sap all my ability to produce any sort of coherent thoughts to post. I worked from last Thursday straight through Monday. Working five nights in a row is tedious enough, but Friday, Saturday and Sunday were also the busiest nights I've worked all summer. I was a basketcase by Monday night, but I made a lot of money, which is going to come in very handy for the coming year. I can only justify my job in terms of the money I earn from it. I really hate everything else about it. Especially the clothes I have to wear-- which, I just realized, need to be washed in time for my shift tonight.

Okay, now that my laundry's in the wash-- Besides work, I haven't been up to much. Hanging out with Bec and Mone, writing a little, seen some more movies: The Shipping News (fantastic), The Powerpuff Girls Movie (the most violent PG movie I've ever seen but okay overall), The Road to Perdition (nothing great except for its cinematography). I also borrowed my friend Stephen's drawing tablet and I absolutely love it. Here's the first thing I drew with it, Slayer from Guilty Gear XX.

And as a final note, I had the first of my 24 blood test/chest x-ray check-ups and all the results came back great. It's good news to carry around in the back of my mind.

As childish as it makes me feel to be pining for a CD, I still really, really, really want this. T_T

Today I learned how to time-travel!

eXphaktor (2:09:38 AM): Heavens Kitchen (1:50:12 AM): eXphaktor (2:07:43 AM): My cat's breath smells like cat food.
eXphaktor (2:09:45 AM): How the hell did that happen?
Heavens Kitchen (2:09:49 AM): ROFL
Heavens Kitchen (2:09:53 AM): I don't know but it's cool!
eXphaktor (2:10:14 AM): No! Scary!
Heavens Kitchen (2:10:31 AM): Do you realize what happened?
eXphaktor (2:10:38 AM): Uh. No?
Heavens Kitchen (2:10:42 AM): I went BACK IN TIME and quoted you FROM THE FUTURE.
eXphaktor (2:11:10 AM): FUCK. That is FUCKED UP.
eXphaktor (2:11:22 AM): Do I have another option?!?! WHERE'S MY MINORITY REPORT????
Heavens Kitchen (2:11:40 AM): >O THERE IS NO MINORITY REPORT
Heavens Kitchen (2:12:10 AM): YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR THE FUTURE SLANDER OF YOUR CAT
eXphaktor (2:12:24 AM): NO NOT THE HALO

I learned today that I seem to be getting steadily worse at DDR, but that's okay. I'm 40 pages into the 120-page Siddhartha and am thoroughly enjoying it. From the very first pages there were a lot of things that rang true to me, and I can already see why so many people love it. Hesse's writing style also flows very easily and is deceptively simple. I wish I could write like that. He flows like silk and I flow like oatmeal. With raisins...

Tomorrow at noon I am trucking back to the hospital for the first of my 24 monthly blood test/chest x-ray visits, and I'm getting my haircut at 3. Tuesday I have my appointment with Chip at noon, and Wednesday I have an appointment with a doctor named Ronald Parks. From what I've been told he's a certified psychologist and a certified nutirionist specializing in non-medicinal treatment. Apparently he does an extended therapy session with you, uses that to determine dietary problems or deficiencies you may be having, runs some tests to prove his diagnosis, and then develops a custom treatment of vitamins and enzymes to correct your problems. He's pretty well-known and his treatments have made a world of difference for my sister, so I'm looking forward to seeing him myself. ...And then I work Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Look how joyful I am!

Yesterday I got all dressed up and drove to work only to discover that I wasn't scheduled to work, and tonight I clocked in at 6:00 to be promptly informed by my boss that my shift was scheduled to start at 5:30. ^_^ I'm stupid and I'm sick of my job. I'm hunting around for another as we speak.

I learned today with Bec that squirrels prefer blueberries to strawberries. The freaks!

A lot of things have been happening to me and around me since I came back from Matt's. Yesterday was my Dad's 59th birthday and a lot of our family came by to spend the day here. They came around in the mid-afternoon, we sat and talked for a while, we had a large dinner, we sat and talked for a while more, we went out to the road to watch the fireworks (excellent view up here), and then eventually they all left. Nothing special, but it was still really nice. I love my entire family a lot, although there was still an hour-long period where I had to sneak off to my room for a little quiet time. It doesn't matter what crowd I'm in; after a few hours I inevitably start getting sleepy and/or withdrawn and/or cabin feverish and have to get away for a bit to recharge. Luckily my family seems to understand this.

I have decided that I need to spend less time on the computer and as such I'm getting rid of AOL, my largest time-wasting culprit. I'll be completely off of it by the 17th (the end of the billing cycle), and in its place I'm already on a paid account with NetZero, a simple $9.95/mo ISP that I like a lot, except for the fact it fixes a thin navibar at the top of your screen while you're connected. As for my new email address, it's aaronica@netzero.com (although aaron@lerve.com still works too). I plan to tell this to all my friends personally but might as well put it here just in case. And I'm still definitely going to keep my SNs on AIM.

Now that I'm not on the computer as much I've started reading more. Right now I'm reading Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto Eco, a book Matt leant me of six very technical essays concerning the nature of good fiction and story-telling. I'm not sure how much I'll gain from it but I'm glad to be reading it anyway. I'm almost done with it and next up is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which Chip recommended to me and I've heard a lot of good things about. Right now I'm also spending a lot of time thinking about my own storylines and settings and characters and ideas which I want to develop into actual stories, and I hope to start writing them soon.

I and other people have also noticed other, subtler changes in me recently-- in particular that I'm less whiny, more thoughtful and more adventurous. And I couldn't be happier about it. I feel like I'm slowly becoming the person I need and want and have to be.

What a fantastic weekend! I got into Athens around 11am Saturday and came back here yesterday around noon, meaning I had three full days of Uninterrupted Matt Time (UMT). We saw movies (Lilo and Stitch, yay! Baraka, yay! Minority Report, boo!), we went to thrift stores and flea markets, we walked around the mall and downtown and the botanical gardens, and also just relaxed a lot and talked and enjoyed each other's company. Hopefully I'll be able to drive down again a few more times before the new semester starts. The summer's about half over now. Trite as it sounds, it feels like it's been both forever and no time at all.