i hate coming home to an empty apartment after a long day. just got back from a day trip to chi, tired.
got a speeding ticket, spent way too much money, and i'm coming down from an alcohol high. blagh.
i sense a bout of glumness coming on...somin to do w being a completely useless person.

you can't please everybody

my parents are going to mexico. i want to go with them. alex wants me to work. skylar wants me to stay here (and work). Boy wants me to go to chi. i want to go to mexico.

tough shit.

www.le-parkour.com Le Parkour - "the art of movement". It seems like a cross between break dancing and running through an obstacle course at the same time. The goal is to run across an urban area without stopping, regardless of obstacles. i guess it's an art because you have to be creative in how you overcome the obstacles.
interesting. know what this is? this is man adapting to his new urban environment. watching a video of it really reminds me of tarzan running through the jungle.

this kid that lives upstairs won't leave me alone. i played football and baseball and then rescued a frog with him yesterday and now he's stalking me. i feel ridiculous- i just crawled around the room shutting the blinds and ignoring the banging on the door. poor kid, but i've got work to do! maybe i'll take a break later and play with him.

oh SHIT. why didn't i see this coming?


...now what?


it's not tension
just a little bit of apprehension
and if i had comprehended what i apprehended
could this be mended?

whenever i close my eyes i see beetle larvae. hundreds of squirming little wormies in giant piles that i have to count. blargh! just got back from a loooong day in the field. hands are shaking from exhaustion. three more weeks of this...crikey. alex leaving for a week, he felt uncomfortable with me working by myself; klutz that i am i might fall off a ladder and nobody would find me for days or maybe i'd get stung by something and again, my body wouldn't be found until it was a rotting mess. so i told him i have a friend who might be willing to work with me. and i called skylar. funniness. he was excited about it. so i'm working w sky for a week. this'll be interesting and fun (minus the working and sweating and being eaten by mosquitos). the Boy doesn't like it one bit. oh well. he'll get over it. it is kinda weird i'll admit, sky and i will be living together, we'll be together 24/7 for ten days....it was such an ordeal tracking that boy down. i should be a detective. haven't seen or heard from him for two months and now i'll be w him for a week...like i said, makes for interesting times...

just watched American Splendor. very good movie. counting beetles is a drag, but that was expected. alex is leaving for a week so i must carry on alone. he's uncomfortable with the idea of me being alone in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere for hours on end. oh well. work must continue...

back in alexandria, this time for a while. beetles still not out in our fields, finally decided that we're just gonna use the other fields for data. only problem with these fields is that the trees are too tall and they're gonna be hard to sample. oh well. today was looong and tedious. basically bushwacked all day. so many mosquitoes. probly lost five pounds due to sweat and blood to mosquitoes. i never want to see another mosquito in my life. but tomorrow's another day that brings more of the little bastards. just heard on the radio that pple should be aware that mosquitos in our area are carrying west nile. how exciting :)

i never knew octopuses were so smart. they supposedly have the intelligence of a 4 yr old human being(i hate the way that sounds, makes human beings seem like we're all that). the one we saw today could open up a tupperware container and unscrew a jar to get the food inside. it think human beings, in their own egotistical blindness tend to underestimate the intelligence of other animals. took aunt to mall of america today, spent most of time in underwater adventures. very cool, a lot better than i remember it. they added a turtle exhibit. saw my turtles...some day, my turtles will be that big! maybe. walked around the mall a bit, ate lunch then came home. didn't go into a single store. how many people can say they went to the mall of america and didn't go into a single store?
showed my aunt around town. it's funny seeing things you're so familiar with through a stranger's eyes, puts things in an entirely different light.

i got a PAYCHECK. for "working" from 6/20/04 to 7/3/04. funny thing is, i'm pretty sure i didn't work at all those two weeks. how great is that? i'm getting paid for doing absolutely nothing. i wasn't even in alexandria those weeks. let's see, those weeks i was in china, new york and chicago, nowhere near alex. so so so funny.

just in case i haven't mentioned it before, i love tom robbins. just finished another one of his crazy books. i guess he's so great cuz when i'm reading him, i feel like he's truly an artist, an artist who works with words as his medium. unlike other authors, you don't merely read his books for plot, most people can come up with at least semi-interesting plots, instead you read his books for his wordplay, metaphors, and his ability to make you think. not to say his plots aren't interesting, they're crazy. there's another thing i love about 'em, they're so unpredictable. and they're so full of all sorts of philosophies, ideas and wacko theories, the guy is nuts. but that's a part of his genius, anything to get us thinking.

anywhoo, back in alexandria. beetles aren't out yet. they're out in fields south of us, though. boo. T S Eliot and Bill Bob (my turtles) came with me. t s isn't doing so well. he's got no energy and keeps looking at me reproachfully. so sad! Bill bob, on the other hand, is going crazy. he's been pawing at the container walls forever. i don't think i want anymore pets, every time i look at them or play with them, i get so guilty for keeping them so confined. i used to want so many pets i'd have a petting zoo in my house, but i don't think i could handle the guilt every time the frog hopped into a glass wall or the dog looked out the window wistfully or the llama got in a fight with the iguana or the giraffe's head hit the ceiling or... :) maybe i'll just buy a zoo. or a wildlife refuge. someday...

phew it's been a long weekend. still recovering from it and its wednesday. actually, should say i've just started recovering from it today. friday through mon was in long island, new york. went shopping and to the beach w shirlee, fishing w families. was kinda fun. dad caught a shark! very cool, such a beautiful animal. makes you feel very powerful to hold a live fish in your hands knowing that you'll be eating it soon. makes me wonder how it felt to hunt, how it felt for people to depend on their hunting to survive. now that's living; working for your own survival. i spose we do that today, though indirectly. we work for money and money in turn pays for food. it's so removed from the world! the natural world, that is. heh now i've almost inspired myself to go and live out in the wild, to experience the raw struggle of life, to live merely for life itself. living for living's sake, it'd sure beat this aimless blah of a life i live. wow, time to stop blabbing. what else did i do...ah, we went to some long-dead millionaire's mansion that his heirs couldn't take care of so they donated it to the public. beautiful house, ridiculously lavish. depressing, after coming from china and seeing the little shacks that people live in.
got back from ny monday evening, next morning flew to houston to drop of an entire suitcase of very suspicious white powder (actually bacteria culture for my great-aunt's pharmaceutical company) and then flew back the same evening. spent a couple hours in downtown houston with one of parent's friends, was a nice guy. he took me to a fountain which was pretty cool, it was a giant wall in a semi-circle w water rushing down. when you stand in the middle, it feels like water's rushing at you and you're going to get rinsed away. very cool feeling. also took me to see all the medical schools i'm not going to get in to; rice, baylor, u of t houston. sigh. then went to the museum of fine arts, had some very interesting exhibits. funny, the things people consider art. i think part of art is merely being able to label something art. placing somethign on a wall or in a spotlight or just portraying something differently/in a diff context and calling it art makes people think. they had a sensory exhibit that just involved people touching, feeling and smelling; placing normal everyday sensory experiences in entirely new light...
going to see the counting crows and o.a.r. on fri and five for fighting on sat. i think. volunteering at the concerts instead of paying for tickets. genius, i know. :)

going to ny today. kinda silly to me cuz shirlee's gonna be working all weekend. so what's the point? i think it's just an excuse for my parents to go fishing...happyfrigginbirthdaytome. trying to study for mcats but not motivated enough, and have thus resorted to staring at the clinic door hoping for a patient to check in. feeling bummy got another lecture from parents, tired of hearing it.