judgement will be made on this sacred day

This was my third night supervising at the job and I'm loving it. I haven't had any other jobs where I spent my entire shifts laughing like I do here. Jon and Julie stopped by beforehand to give me a Slayer minifigure from GGXX and a button of a dust-puff from Spirited Away that they got me at AWA. They're both so cool! Slayer is now perched proudly atop my monitor and I'm searching for a prominent place to fasten the button. Also, I am quite good at volleyball.

feeling in monocrhome

Already out of Asheville and home again in SUVburbia; came in late Thursday night and left Saturday morning. The blood work and CT scans of my chest, abdomen and brain all came back just fine, so my migraines really were just migraines and almost certainly caused by sleep deprivation, as sad as that is. The nurses were thrilled to see how healthy I am. The elderly patients (read: everyone else) still gave me these hostile "what the hell are YOU doing here?" glances like I invaded their turf by having cancer, but they did that even when I was going through chemo and looked like a Holocaust survivor. My bad, shrivs! Now that it's been a year since I started chemo I'll only have three tests a year instead of nine. It's kind of a bummer that AWA was this weekend. I probably would have been able to go, since I haven't been to a con in over a year, but I should be saving my money for my trips anyway.

maybe you'll get what you want this time around

Last night as my first night back and training to be supervisor at The Job. It went better than I expected but a lot of the new responcibilities are accounting-style number-crunching, and I'm terrible at calculating and copying numbers. I'll read numbers correctly but for some reason I often write down different ones. When people give me addresses or phone numbers I always have to check twice to make sure they're accurate. ...Five sentences and I'm completely off-track. So the job still looks like a lot of fun and I'm happy to be back. The end.

After work tomorrow afternoon I'm packing up and trucking up to Dad's for a couple days to get my periodic checkup at the clinic. After this one it'll go from six weeks to three months between visits, which will go a long way in saving me time, money, gas, pollution, car problems, stress, etc. Ironically this weekend Bec and Mone will be in Atlanta for AWA, so it looks like we'll probably just miss each other. I'll probably get in some good studying time, though, and I plan to head back early Saturday anyway.

I think I'm redesigning the blog with a layout influenced by the interface of Ace Combat 4 and Anne Carson's Glass, Irony, and God. There really is no accounting for inspiration.

The New Job's officially over, for now; I still plan to go back whenever I have the time, like next summer. I got as many life lessons from it as a Full House marathon on TNT and now I'm ready to move on. I start work at the Old Job again-- well, I guess it's just The Job now-- Tuesday night, when I'll be trained to supervise. I'm working Tuesday night, Thursday day and Sunday night, and I can't wait.

On my last day I saw that Hallmark is already sending out its Christmas gear in boxes marked "DISPLAY ON 10/4/03." So Christmas decorations and merchandise go out in early October (ahead of both Halloween and Thanksgiving) and Christmas is in late December-- that's, what, a quarter of the year dedicated to Christmas? Well, whatever. Bring on the suicide season!

it's not going to stop / till you wise up

Just one more morning at the New Job and then I'm off the hook. It's a good thing, too. I'm not sure if I'm apathetic because I'm leaving or leaving because I'm apathetic, but lately the shits I've been giving at work have gotten smaller and smaller to the point that in the past week or so, I just haven't given a shit. Deep down, though, I hate being a bad worker and I'm glad I'm ducking out now while the bridge is only a little singed, not burned. But now that I've gotten used to not being scrawny, I think I'm going to start working out elsewhere.

I had a good long talk with my mom on the phone this morning, something that hasn't happened in quite a while and felt great because of that. Shadow, our cat, is still slowly fading away. In a way I'm glad I'm not there to watch it. In better news, though, mom's got her sights set on a part-time job in sales, a field she's always loved working and been excellent in. I know it'll work out well. She mentioned that I still have about $8,000 of my inheritance invested for whatever I want to use it on. (The other $2000 went to buying and repairing my car.) The rational thing to do is to save it up for when I'm through with school, whenever the hell that'll be, and by rational things-- my mom suggested furniture. But furniture is just shit you walk around or sit on. You don't get anything from furniture. I could, and am seriously considering, spending some of that money to travel more. I still need to repay Matt back for the spring break trip, and we're planning to visit his mom up north, and Charlie and Devan both live in NYC now and I'd love to visit them both, and we could go overseas again... Now's as good a time to travel as any. I wonder how long the break between semesters is.

the flagrant vagrant

A few weeks ago Jon gave me the heads up about a used videogame store in town, and Matt and I checked it out over the weekend. It's run by just one guy, and he has every game and system I ever had the pleasure of playing when I was younger-- Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis-- and of course all the next-gen pieces of bloated crap systems. The guy really knows his shit, too. We talked about SNES cartridge batteries and how they were only supposed to last around five years, but he said he's trying to find a way to pirate batteries from other games and sodder them in as replacements. It seems silly to be so caught up in gaming but I admire him enormously for chasing his passions and opening/running his own store for them. Inspired by seeing all my favorite SNES games again I dug out my system, hooked it up and was delighted to find that it still works after twelve years-- unlike my PSX, I might add, which lasted barely four. Final Fantasy III was the only game I chose to keep, so I'm going to go back today and pick up Super Mario World ($10) and Super Mario Kart ($15) and I'll then have the three best SNES games ever. Buying games from this guy's store costs a bit more than I'd have to spend online, but I really want to help him stay in business. I went yesterday and bought Intelligent Qube for the PSX for $30, in part to help him, in part because I love puzzle games and in part because, greedly little Jew that I am, it goes for twice that much on eBay with the right promotion. Insert a steepling of the fingers and conniving grin here.

This morning it occured to me just how fucking huge a whiner I am. I mean god damn do I piss and moan a lot. I was vaguely aware of it, of course, and other people have mentioned it to me, but it's one of those things that you can't really understand without choosing to discover it yourself. I do it mainly in the pessimistic, critical vein (ie. I rag on everything). I understand why-- because I think most things suck and I would rather be honestly critical instead of unconstructively complacent-- but it's silly and certainly obnoxious to listen to. I'm going to try to tone it down. Please bear with me while I try to find and navigate the fine line between discussion of unfortunate occurances and boohoocryfaceisms. If anybody reading this hears me bitching about something I have no control over, just give me five across the eyes.

ohshittimeforthebus

waving not drowning

Matt and I watched Magnolia yesterday and I'm still pondering it. I still have an urge to start a little movie reviews site, because I think I'm a decent judge of movies and I also just like to write essays, especially those based on my opinions. But this, like many things I'd like to do, has no hope of starting before I'm done with the New Job in six days (not like I'm counting or anything).

An irony--
Friday: As I walk out of the Biology building an emo kid trots out and catches up with me, saying I dropped my sunglasses. But they aren't mine.
Saturday: After being severely bent almost three months ago, I finally take some needlenose pliers to my sunglasses and fix them.
Today: I wear my swanky, now-fixed sunglasses. As I walk out of the Biology building I realize I've lost them in the building, only no one trots out after me with them. I go back to search for them but they're gone.
Shit happens I guess.

looks like we made it / time will never change it

T-minus seven days till the New Job's over, and I'm feeling every minute of it. I'm chomping at the bit to get back to the Old Job, due in part to the fact that on campus I keep running into my friends who work there, and they said that everyone's asking about me and when I'll be coming back. I did not know that my promotion was decided in a vote by our boss, the other supervisors and some other people who've worked there long enough to have some pull. In other words, they like me; they really, really like me! It makes me smile to think about it. It's a pay cut and less than half the hours I've been working at the New Job, but the money I've made there in the past two months (has it really been that long?) should help me get by. Besides, I have plenty of practice being poor-- bring it on. Man, I feel good!

Oh yeah, here's some advice from everyone's favorite online commentator, Maddox, that I plan to take.

It occured to me today that I've been feeling very nasty and pessimistic almost constantly since the semester started. More specifically, I think it's because now I don't have any time to see Matt anymore except for the weekends. I get like this whenever I go for awhile without seeing him often, and this, if anything, assures me that I'm making the right choice by hopping back to the Old Job. And I mentioned the promotion, right?

Somehow it slipped my mind to note that I trucked to the clinic on Friday to investigate those odd vision loss spells. The doctor says they're a classic symptom of migraines-- it actually has nothing to do with one's eyes. It's called positive feedback, and it occurs when the neocortex receives some extra stimulus that it doesn't know how to translate, so in effect it just creates something in your vision. (Negative feedback would be something like black-outs.) I'm relieved to know it's migraines, but then, it's not like migraines are a good thing either. My doctor here is talking to my doctor at the cancer clinic to see about adding a brain scan when I go in for my usual tests on the 26th. But, interestingly enough, this all startedsoon after I started the new job. Personally, I'm thinking sleep deprivation has its nefarious talons in this mess.

Hokay, I can stall no longer. Time to study.

And then an entire week goes by, just like that. There's been plenty going on but I simply haven't had the energy to post... Big surprise there. For starters, T-minus thirteen days until I'm done with the New Job. I put in notice on Satuday. Aside from the fact that I'm getting nowhere near the amount of sleep I need, there's the more important problem that I don't have enough time to study and it's hurting my grades. Sorry, New Job! Strangely enough, the morning I gave notice I came home to find an email from my boss at the Old Job saying that they really want me back and are ready to give me that promotion(!). I'm going to miss getting all the exercise from the New Job, but being able to sleep through an entire night, having more than one day off each week and cutting down on my work hours will all definitely boost my grades. Not to mention I'm going to see all my friends again with a $2 raise and the power to help the place run well (as opposed to my previous power to bitch about all the things that needed to be changed). I really can't wait.

A handful of notes:

Matt has started his own blog! (Blogger has no fancy Friend icons like that infernal Livejournal so a low-tech text link will have to suffice.) Matt's blog, you will see, is very intelligent, whereas mine's not. I'm honored to be doing my part to maintain our precious Stupidity Balance.

What's all the fuss over Battle Royale? Matt and I rented it yesterday and while only about half the dialogue was subtitled, it was enough to follow. It starts out as a horrifying social commentary but it's steadily diluted into a contrived love story. What the hell? And Kiriyama, apparently the fan favorite, makes the Silent Killer role as exciting as linoleum. I've had my fill of average movies for a while. Is it December yet?

Impending doom? You be the judge.

changes underway

I'm making little changes to the layout and trying to decide if I like them, like the post titles. I need to redo the layout in general, or at least rename it. purity isn't nearly as fitting as something like The Angry Buddhist.

Thanks to the New Job Friday went by with a boyfriend I couldn't see and two parties I couldn't go to. On the up-side, Matt and I drove to Atlanta yesterday to stay the night at my sister's. My dad and stepmom drove down too, and my uncle and aunt, both artists, were doing a show in Marietta and stopped by for dinner. I always love spending time with my family because we all get along amazingly well and listening to my dad and uncles rag on each other is always hilarious. Everyone's also welcomed Matt into the family even more than I ever imagined, something I'll always be incredibly grateful for. I know that with many families something like that is definitely the exception and not the rule.

This morning at lunch I had a reocurrance of that strange, glittering vision loss that happened July 29th. I'm expecting the worst, naturally, but it's not like I don't have any basis to. Without treatment, the type of testicular cancer I had systematically spreads to the lymph nodes, then the lungs and ultimately the brain. After the first few surgeries over the summer I started getting those horrible pains in my abdomen in October, and they then discovered that it'd spread to the first two. Problem is, I don't think I've had any kind of scan of my brain to check for it there. I hate to sound like a pessimist, or a hypochondriac, or a pessimistic hypochondriac, but as much as I'd love to think this is a harmless little fluke, I'd rather not set myself up for any kind of fall. Look at my track record: I've had shingles, mono, cancer and a broken back, and that's all just in the past few years. I plan to see my pals at the Health Center early this week to try to get some answers, and it's been a while since I went by to say hi to them anyway. They've kind of become my surrogate family here, strange as it sounds.

As for right now, it is very late and I am very tired.