Tomorrow I begin a brief absence from Seattle, as I travel to visit my homeland to celebrate the ... thingies. I'm looking forward to being someplace familiar and pretty and temperate. I'm not looking forward to lots of sweating and a 5 hour 40 minute flight both ways. Econo-fare means sitting in a space about the size of a guitar case trying to identify the ethnicity of the numerous colicky babies in earshot by the tonality of their cries. Maybe I'll get peanuts, or if I'm really lucky, the chicken thing with pineapple! Once I ordered the "low cholesterol" meal, thinking I would cleverly talk my way into having a specially prepared meal. You know what the low cholesterol meal was? It was the normal meal, plus a banana. I am not kidding.

At the band's house, I replaced two light bulbs, disassembled a halogen lamp and filed a bunch of corrosion off the contacts, repartitioned and organized the computers' hard drives, and helped rearrange the workspace to be more like a project studio and less like a sloppy heap of cables and devices. Hooray for me, I was there until 4 am doing it. I took the bus back home, but missed a transfer, leaving me in the middle of the U-district at 5 am. Not wanting to freeze to death, I trundled down to the Denny's that opened semi-recently, thinking I would have some breakfast and a coffee while I waited for the next bus. I walked into Denny's and stopped in the middle of the waiting area, apparently alone in the restaurant. "I don't know where my waitress or manager are," a voice piped up, and a tired looking man wearing a chef's hat appeared from behind something. "I can't ring anything up. Want some free coffee?" Free coffee was exactly what I wanted, so I said "Yes, I just need to not freeze to death for half an hour." "Thanks, dude," I added. He handed me some of the worst coffee I've had since 7-11, and disappeared, leaving me to sip my coffee and ponder the awkwardness of the word "dude". Why did I say "dude," anyway? Ed says "dude", but he lives in, like, the valley.

We need one of those... uh... what's the other word for "synonym book"? -- Brian

Man, the people who browse "am I hot or not" have some of the worst taste. Either that or "hot" means "almost naked". Also: many of the male pictures on that site are actually from gay porn websites. The male pictures are also voted on by something like one tenth the people who vote on the women. This leads me to believe that most of the people who rate the pictures of guys are probably gay males. Are you hot or not? I bet you wish you hadn't asked. Hee hee

When I'm in Hawaii, I'm going to think about how worldly I am compared to when I first moved out from mom's house (and started this web page thing, I guess it was 4 years now) and how relatively serene and supportive the atmosphere in Kaneohe is. I don't worry about getting attacked there (even though that's the only place I ever was attacked on the street) and I just barely notice where I am, the place is so familiar. Try as I might, I can not get lost in my hometown. worldly me. Duh.