(Phaysis)

(written on Thursday, 11/24/2005 23:58:55. Thanksgiving day.)

So of course the high that I’ve been experiencing the whole week would end like a car crash this morning. I got the sleep I’ve been missing, but due to the cold, the uncomfortable “bed”, and my nieces, nephew, and sister, the sleep I got wasn’t worth much, so I slept for ten, maybe eleven hours. The moment I open my eyes, glance at the blinds, and look up to the ceiling, I started seeing spots. Thanks to a casual glance while waking up, I got a migraine, first thing in my morning. On thanksgiving. So I took some acetaminophen and hoped for the best. The kids were no help, but I hung on long enough to take a shower after they left. By then, the spots were gone and the migraine was a dull throb. Picked up my mother and we headed off to my aunt Janet’s sister’s house for dinner.

Dinner was good, of course. Ate a plateful, had some dessert. Played quiet, didn’t have much to say because the migraine recovery. Some time later we all left, and I dropped my mother off back at her home and I drove on. Went to Liz and Laura’s house, hung out with them for a while. The girls went to deliver a plate to their spry 92-year-old great aunt, so I chatted with Doug, Liz’s husband, for a good hour or so. Longest chat I’ve had with him. Had a good time shooting the shit. The girls came back, Jon woke up from his nap, and we had a few laughs on the back porch. Came back inside, chatted some more, and then the television got turned on and we somehow stopped talking. Funny when that happens.

After some hour or so of my second helping of the “That 70′s Show” marathon today, I decided to head on. Went driving around, decided to plug up my laptop, get some GPS data, do a little bit of wardriving, and now I’m here again, IHOP, tapping away on my laptop again. The cashier/hostess remembered me from last night and recommended the waiter to seat me somewhere near a power outlet, just like I requested last night. Yeah, she remembered. Someone should give her a raise.

The problem I have with my time is knowing how to spend it. When I’m home for long stretches of days, my time is spent sleeping short hours, watching television, doing a whole bunch of nothing, making no plans, seeing the few friends I have, and leaving their houses so late that I really don’t want to drive around to check things out. The problem is filling my time in a memorable, quality fashion. I think, now that the holiday and my day at OBU are out of the way, that I should follow up on some plans I made, y’know, some ideas. I would like to track down my friends Eddie and Michelle. It’s been over 5 years since I last saw them, and I hear they keep asking about me. It will be really good to see them again. Also, if things get too slow, I’ll grab some of my friends and go to an empty parking lot somewhere to do the burning mushrooms floating newspaper thing I saw my Austin friends doing behind Mojo’s some years ago. There’s things to do, y’know? Hell, I could show pictures to my family. I think I’ll do that tomorrow.

Ah, yeah. Texarkana life. Some drunk dude just came up to me, asked me if I was lookin’ at Playboy on this thing. You could smell it on his breath. Heh. And…I just saw some other dude walking around with a UT Longhorns ball camp on. I just can’t escape that, not even for one weekend. And, AND, just to show how connected this town is to the pulse of the fashion nation (MTV), last night I saw some real emo kids, the kind that look EXACTLY LIKE some emo kids I saw back at Spiderhouse. It…was…creepy. Seriously, same look.

Liek omg this is so going in my eljay.

As hoped, I made my return to Austin before midnight sunday night; it was 11pm exact when I cruised into my apartment’s lot. I made decent time on the drive: 6 hours, 24 minutes. In the past, that would have normally been six hours flat; now that I had a speeding ticket, I’m paying a little more attention to my speedometer. Ah well. My goal was to leave Texarkana before 5pm, and given the early start in the morning, I was well on my way towards that.

I woke up around 9:30-ish thanks to the kids (which was fine). I spent some time with them and my sister, then gathered my things, put on some clothes (the shower could wait), and hugged everyone goodbye.

On my way to my mother’s apartment I pulled into a nearby parking lot to pull out the laptop, plug in the wireless card, and do some wardriving. No sooner did I set up the system, I got a strong hit from one of the businesses near that lot, so I pulled up to the building and did my business: checked the weather for the road, posted a journal update, and checked my bank balance. I then disconnected, put the car in gear, and drove away towards a nearby ATM to pull some gift money.

I continued to mother’s apartment to take her out for a meal and some face time. I had plenty of time to kill, so I asked her to bring out her Florida photos and I brought my ACLFest photos. It’s good to hang out with my mother, but she keeps thanking me for coming to pay a visit; I’m just stymied that she does that. She gets so few visitors, I think that’s why she does it. But we spent some time catching up; she told me all about her Red Cross volunteer trip down to Florida to help out after hurricane Ivan, and we talked about her current illness. She can’t work right now, hasn’t been able to work for 3 weeks, and I worry about her. My own mother can’t work, and I’m out buying laptop bags and car stereos; is it right or wrong that I’m feeling guilt? But I left her with a gift of the only way that I can help: cash. I can’t bring her food or drive her to the store; money is the only way I can help.

I hugged her goodbye around 4:00 and went to a nearby quickmart to fill up the tank, get some road snacks, and went next door to pick up some motor oil. I reached the edge of town around 4:30pm. The trip home was smooth sailing.

Today, I got up and was late to work as usual. I took a shower this morning, but by noon I felt like the shower was completely wasted and negated. I think it might be best to take a shower after work. I spent most of today at the saddle-stitch end of the collator, away from everyone, so I had my laptop out and in jukebox mode; played mostly a random playlist. Got both of the book jobs done in good time. Had enough time afterwards to go sit at the table and do a sitdown job, so I checked print. Didn’t get to chat much today to catch up on Things, but that’s fine. There’s tomorrow.

At day’s end I left and got some food. With my belly full, I felt fat and bloated (it doesn’t take much these days), so I went home where I fell into the trap of doing absolutely nothing at all but play solitaire and listen to depressing ambient music. Finally got my ass moving at 10:30pm, and now I’m drinking coffee late at night and filling the intarweb with more drivel.

I keep having ideas about my programming projects, and about my music, and about my other creative outlets. But I can’t do them. My projects have become a serious hassle to me, a burden. They’re all in a “started” or “underway” state, and not one of them is finished. The desire to finish them, the need to finish them, is great and heavy, but it’s in that crush that I just can’t finish. The whole programming thing, I’m completely fried out, and this burnout is coming much too often. I go away for half a week, and nothing has changed. The Fire is just not there. My muses have let me down.

So. I’m home, I’m here, and I’m back to more of the same. Welcome home.

My trip to Texarkana for the holiday was good.

I left a day later than I had wanted; got out of here at 10am wednesday morning and arrived in Texarkana around 4:30pm. Neverminding the smooth traffic flow, the two traffic jams (on a highway, no less), the torrential rain for 30 miles of the trip, the slowdown caused by accident rubberneckers, and the 10 miles stuck behind a 20-wheeled crane moving along at a leisurely 55mph, the drive up there sucked. The drive was around 45 minutes longer than usual. But I got there.

But for the visit, though, I got to see more of my family, buddies, and friends than I usually do on my typical two-day whirlwind weekend. Got the chance to help my sister and her husband with their “new” computer. Oh my god that piece of shit is ancient. After dealing with cleaning the dust out, upgrading the OS from Win95 to Win98, trying to get them online, installing more ram (it originally came with 16 megs of ram), and dealing with a new video card, they finally have a new computer and are now able to go online and check stuff out. So, to them, I say, “Welcome to Phaysis. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

I managed to eat quite well the entire weekend. The dinner was at my sister’s in-laws’ little shindig. Was nice to see them all again. Afterwards, I left to go see my own friends for the first time since getting home. Hung out until the wee hours of the morning, then went home. Friday, same thing — go out, come home late.

I managed to borrow a pc-card modem from a friend of mine, and was able to get online on friday nite. That was cool, kinda. Dialup sucks. (I’m so glad to be back home on my cable modem.)

Thursday night, though, I was so bored that I decided to indulge in my new hobby: wardriving. I was under the mistaken impression that Texarkana residents are still in the internet stone ages, unlike Austin, which have businesses that advertise free wireless access as a major selling point. So, on my drive, I found a ton of wireless hotspots in this one corner of town, and surprisingly enough, 95% of them were encrypted and secured. I did find three spots, though, that were wide open. That wasn’t so surprising.

I drove by this one hotspot and whipped into the parking lot to examine my readings. Found out it was open, and the major street that I was on was deader than a doornail, so I zeroed-in on the access point, picked up my laptop, and proceeded to associate with the node and I browsed for a good five minutes, tittering like a little schoolgirl. All the while, though, I had my eyes flashing between rear-view mirrors on the lookout for cops, guards, feds, whoever. A couple of times I had to do “turnarounds” in parking lots when the security guards in their nice trucks started coming my way, but not with this hotspot. I did my (mostly-legal) business and cruised on through the neighborhood and out of sight.

My little experience there gave me a few important survival tips, which I’m still compiling. But I had fun.

Ah, :sighs: work today, coupled with the long weekend and the tough driving, has left me tired and in need of some sort of energy or something. I want to write a journal entry detailing what all happened this weekend, but you’ll have to excuse me today. My writing sucks. Ah well.

Anyway, I got to have lunch with my mother sunday, and I hung out with her for the rest of the day until I had to leave for home. I left Texarkana around 8pm and got here at 2am. Total time for drive home: 6 hours and 57 seconds. I loaded my stuff into my apartment, unpacked, and got ready for bed. Let me tell you, sprawling out on my own big bed, with soft sheets, after that long drive, is a helluva lot better than trying to catch catnaps on my mom’s couch. Damn straight.

Ok, time to go kill some food. I’m starved.