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February 2 1998, Monday

I

  had an odd dream last night. What was strange was my part in it. I wasn't actually experiencing the dream; I was performing some sort of extremely vivid and fantastic thought experiment involving a cadre of anonymous people. A couple guys mixed up a concoction of household materials that released an extremely noxious gas. It bubbled away and reduced what I took to be "enemies" into disgusting spongelike masses. But the the two perpetrators pulled off their homicide a little too close to home, and the vapours were strong enough to reach them and incapacitate them as well. They weren't too badly disfigured; their feet stretched to twice normal length and that was all.

T

he phone rang and I went to answer it, but I could hear nothing on the handset. "Fucking phone!" I shouted as I banged it against a table. Everything downstairs is flaky, and beating inanimate objects senseless occasionally restores their functionality. Not so this time. Upon inspecting the cord connecting the phone to the handset, I saw it had been completely chewed through excepting a strand of useless cable housing. In all likelihood, or course, Shira the Dog was the culprit. Cursing and and stomping my feet, I set off to fire up my soldering iron so I could splice the four severed wires. It seemed like a grave unjustice somehow that I should have to be fixing this problem this morning when I have so many other things I need to do.

T

he afternoon came and banking hours were drawing to a close. Today was rent day, so I needed to collect money from the housemates and cash checks. But Matthew was off at work and Angela was still sleeping off her uninspiring weekend, and they constituted a big chunk of the funds I needed to collect. At almost 2:00pm I woke Angela up to have her give me money. What did she give me? An unsigned Matthew Hart paycheck and a fifty dollar bill. This threw a new level of complexity into the already complex ordeal of raising the money to pay the rent. This ordeal already involved riding around with Deya hither and yon to places of employment and obscure banks.

But we did it. First to Barracks Road to secure Deya's paycheck, then to the C&O (three miles away) to get Matthew's signature, then to the landlord's place (another three miles). These errands completely destroyed the afternoon. Thge only additional mission we accomplished was paying off the utility bill.

S

o then I had some free time, and I decided to get my serial ports working on my Windows 95 machine (they've always been fucked up). So I tore my machine apart, made a few changes, and powered it up again. It complained and the screen was blank. Hmmm, this has happened before, so I tried warping the mother board by stuffing a plastic bottle cap under it. It booted up this time, but then hung while checking the "DMI pool data" (whatever the hell that is). Oh shit, this was starting to look serious. I could feel an unusal sickness creeping over my body. My workhorse, the machine upon which I base all my work and play, was sick and uncooperative. I found myself pricing new motherboards in my head. Worse than the money this was going to cost was the time. The precious time.

But then I took the plastic bottle cap out and powered the machine up again. This time it booted up perfectly. Hmmm, something odd was going on here. I decided that my initial expedient construction of the computer must have been flawed; the case had never fit the motherboard except at exactly one screw position. Perhaps the case was shorting against the motherboard.

So I took the whole thing apart, put down layers of electrical tape over the high spots on the case, and then snuggled the board back in place. It's been reliable ever since.

But then I noticed that my needle nosed pliars were missing. This absence affected me profoundly. As I neurotically searched for it, turning my room upside down several times and taking my computers apart on the off-chance it was entombed within, I wondered seriously about my sanity. But its absence provided yet another incentive to clean the messy crannies of my room.

N

ow, as I said in here earlier, I expected Malvernians (Jessika and Joanna) to visit this weekend. But they never came. Tonight, Peggy told me that the holdup was, as I'd thought, related to Joanna's pathological indecisiveness. But supposedly they're coming some time this week. We'll see. It would be nice if they came for the Aquarius Party, especially since Jessika is the one who insisted that I reschedule it from the 13th to the 7th.

Zachary is going to be playing with the Councelors (the punk rock band that will perform at our party), and he printed up a bunch of flyers promoting the show. I hope lots of people come (demonstrating conclusively that we're really not dorks), but I also hope Kappa Mutha Fucka doesn't become a complete madhouse. If I need to, at least I can escape to my room (I suppose).

M

eanwhile, Rory is on the road, pining for Leah (who has moved to New York, hopefully to become a full time lesbian). The writing in his journal is excellent these days; too bad he's such a dipshit.

one year ago
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