Journal entries in 'Dear Diary' for June, 2005

I just opened one of the 21 boxes of stuff that I shipped to myself when I moved down here last year. It turns out it's got all of my favorite T-shirts in it (Chroma Key, Habit Forming, Tourniquet, Gwar, Lost In Thought, Strapping Young Lad, &c). Most of my clothes came down here via Parcel Post, since they weren't fragile or anything, but I shipped this smaller box via Priority Mail, because it was the stuff I knew I wouldn't want to wait two to four weeks to have; I'd want it right away.

Funny, then, that it sat unnoticed next to my room for over a year before I thought to open it. It really highlights the way my choice of clothes has evolved since I started working full-time.

The unfortunate part, though, is that these clothes were dirty when I shipped them down here.

Today as I was getting out of the shower, I pulled the towel off the rack and was surprised when something leaped onto my body, then fell down into the water and started swimming. After shrieking like a girl, I looked down and saw that it was a lizard, who had just stopped swimming and was now floating. I pulled it out of the water and it sat on my hand catching its breath. This put me in a quandary, because I wanted to take it out to the backyard to let it go, but I wasn't the most dressed I've ever been. As I tried to wrangle my towel around me with one hand, he jumped off my hand and into the sink. He then waited patiently, eyeing me warily while I finished drying off and donned my bathrobe. Finally I scooped him into a plastic cup that happened to be there, and took him outside. But first I stopped by my room and took pictures of him. That's the fee you pay for me giving you a ride. Just like all the girls I pick up with my car late at night.

My 250gb hard drive has been having problems for a few months now. It works fine for the most part, but when I try to access certain files or folders, my computer freezes completely and I have to do a hard reboot. While troubleshooting, I discovered that back when I replaced the stupid glowing fan in my computer with a sensible black one, I apparently installed it backwards, so it was blowing air AWAY from the hard drives instead of onto them. Oops. I don't know if that was a big enough issue to cause it to overheat, but it's possible it was related.

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I'm so responsible! I had planned to watch one of my NetFlix movies today before work, but I woke up around 7pm and watching a movie would have meant not having time to go running. After a brief deliberation, I went running instead of watching the movie.

This time I made it about 3/4 of a mile before I had to stop and walk. It's nice to continue seeing improvement, but I know eventually it will level off.

When I'm really out of breath after running as long as I possibly can, I open my mouth wide to allow as much air as possible to get into and out of my system. It is effective, but I'm sure it looks stupid as hell. Today when I slowed to a walk I did that, and was walking with my mouth wide open, and then suddenly realized there was an attractive girl jogging past me in the opposite direction. I quickly closed my mouth, but I had just taken a deep breath, so I tried to exhale through my nose. However, I have a cold, so the result of this was that I blew a snot bubble for her. Awesome.

Tonight's excursion ran the gamut from relaxing to exciting. Inspired by a photographer I came across on Flickr, I set out tonight to find a dark beach to take photos illuminated by the nearly full moon. The problem is that on this crime-infested island, the adjectives 'dark' and 'desolate' pretty much by definition bring 'dangerous' in tow. I debated with myself whether someplace deserted far away from the city would be more or less safe than a beach in a more populated area ("Why would anyone with ill intent waste their time walking around on a beach far away from civilization," I reasoned). In the end, I opted for the former, and headed out to the long, dark road that runs along the beach on the way to Dorado.

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The weekend with Courtney was great. Although I only took two days off (Friday and Monday nights), it felt like a more substantial vacation. The weather was uncooperative though, so I didn't get to show her many of the cool things available here.

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When Andrés got down here last Monday, he finally convinced me to start running, and we've gone running around the neighborhood nearly every day since he arrived. There is a one-mile-long loop around my block, so for now we've just been doing one lap of that each day. I'm already noticing a difference; the first day, I ended up walking most of the way, and it took us something like 15-20 minutes to make it around the block. Yesterday, we jogged nearly all of it, stopping only twice to walk and catch our breaths, and it only took about 9 minutes. It's a challenge to overcome my aversion every day and force myself to go running, but it feels good later to know that you've done something worthwhile, and it's satisfying to see the improvement in ability. It has helped a lot to have Andrés pushing me each day when I resist, and by now I think I've got the momentum required, so it should be no problem to keep it up once he leaves on Friday. Perhaps I should wire something up so that you can give me an electric shock by clicking a button on my website, so people can punish me if I start to slack off in the future :)

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I have yet to have an easy, straightforward oil changing experience with my dealer. A previous entry discusses my last attempt to get my oil changed, requiring a total of three visits before they finally accepted my car. It seems each time you go, they give you one more small bit of information, and little by little you try to piece together all the clues that theoretically should eventually enable you to achieve a straightforward transaction. There is always such a rift between theory and practice, though.

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Last night I had made plans to hang out with Michelle, but my parents needed me to watch Natalia for a few hours, so we looked for ideas for things we could both do. Natalia mentioned that she still wanted to see Hitchiker's Guide, which I wholeheartedly support. However, the website was out of date, and it turned out that the only theater listed that was supposedly still showing it in fact wasn't. Instead, Natalia suggested we go to the little amusement park next to Montehiedra (shows who is really in charge of the evening). Michelle was all for the idea, so she came over and we headed off.

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As I drove up, the bird waited until the last minute before finally taking off in flight, and then pooping on my hood for good measure. At first I was mad, but then I realized it must have been a fear poop. Imagining myself in his situation, I decided it would probably be really uncomfortable to poop while running away from someone who has just scared me. So I felt we were kind of even.

With the resolutions of my last post in mind, I stopped and took pictures a few places on my way home from work this morning. Even though neither of them was particularly breathtaking, I figured, why not stop? I wasn't in any particular rush to get home. The first was some construction equipment across the street from the gas station where I stopped to get gas, and the second was clouds of flowers falling from the trees in my neighborhood as I drove past. It's much more feasible to stop and take a few pictures when I'm coming home at 8:30am. Back when I was getting off of work at 6am, my drive home took place mostly in darkness, which presents a twofold obstacle to picture-taking diversions; nothing to take pictures of, and interesting people to encounter.

My first NetFlix DVDs arrived today. That wasn't too bad; about three or four days. A little longer than it'd probably have taken if I were in the US, but it's something I can deal with.

The first one I watched was Run Lola Run. Oddly enough, I never knew it was in German. I knew almost nothing about it; I just added it to the queue because everyone always talks about how good it is, and Jeff had that bigass movie poster in his room. I did enjoy it. Now we'll just have to see how long it takes from when I return this one until I get the next DVD.

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