Lately I've lamented the lack of other people (and specifically, girls) impulsive enough for me. More and more I realize how much I love adventures. Even failures/disasters can be great if they make a good story. I love the excitement in doing something unconventional, especially on a whim, just for the sake of doing it. I think this goes along with my philosophy of "doing the thing that is hard" and never backing down or shying away from a challenge. Doing things for the sake of an idea.

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I haven't talked about what's been going on lately. Since my apartment was broken into and things have been getting stressful at work, I've been a bit of a mess. Something else I haven't talked much about is my girlfriend, Katie. I've been seeing her for about 4 months now. Things were good, athough this week was tough since the stress I've been under, and some of hers, has effected our relationship a bit. Yesterday, however, was a great day, enough to make me want to say something about it.

( If you read on, there's an explosion in this story )

I thought this a good time to talk about some of my more peculiar ideas. One great thing about Thanksgiving flights is that I can almost always count on some other college students to chat with. And chatting brought up some interesting subjects I wanted to mention. I have been telling many people lately about my restaurant ideas. I really just wanted to include that link again. I really do think at least 1 of those is a good idea and would love to see someone do it. I like having neat little quirky ideas like that.

But the real idea I wanted to metion that this flight started making me think would really be great is a "matching class" on airplanes. I mentioned it before but I've been thinking about it more. I like chatting people people on planes. I don't know why, but while traveling is my favorite time to meet new people. I often see people in the waiting area that I'd hope would be seated next to me to talk to, but usually I just get some old lady and so I read a book. What if there were a service for people like me that put all the talkers in a section of the plane for those looking to meet others and then did seating assignments based on mutual interest like most dating and other personality matching services. They're always offering upgrades to first class and I don't really care, but I'd pay real money to sit in matching class...

...Especially if I could get matched with that cute girl on my flight who was staring at me. I saw her in the waiting area and said nothing.

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Tonight I attended the After Your Bedtime party. It was a opening party for the new wing of the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. At $50 a person it didn't quite match the $250 black tie dinner preceding it, but it was still one of the more expensive/fancier affairs I've been to. I got to go the ETC dime as part of the Animateering group since the fruit of the previous Animateering project was installed as part of the new exibits. It was good to see the museum but the whole party experience was something else.

I thought, through my mom, that I knew was wealth and class was, to some degree, but our upper middle class coming from below does not compare to the true upper class who would spend the kind of money on tonight's events. As fun as it was, I don't think I took full advantage of it.

I'm speaking of meeting girls. I don't know how to talk about it even, really. I'm always on the lookout for girls. I'm really at the point in my life that it is all I need, but I do need it badly after 23 years or so of waiting.

Today was a long day, after class, and work, and a party with another masters program that was also supposed to introduce us to women, and The Incredibles which was a great movie where Pixar has outdone themselves again, I went to this party, and now I have to go to bed but be ready for an early and long day of Puzzle Royale puzzle solving tomorrow.

And so I get to the part of this story that is important after 4 paragraphs. There was a girl there. Well, there were lots of girls there, and several that seemed around my age or so.

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About half a week late, but this is something I was thinking about. I have always hated rollercoasters. Mostly I was just scared of them; the hate comes from people trying to convince me there's something wrong with that. "There's nothing to be scared of" is not accurate. Maybe most people are afraid of thrill rides based on how it looks or some abstract notion of danger. What I am afraid of is feeling that dropping feeling in my stomache. I would call it painful, although different than normal pain. Even turbulance on airplanes gets to me. I know I don't like that feeling, and I know it will happen, based on rollercoasters I have ridden, making my fear of it totally justifiable. Who can say why I feel the way I do. I could blame my parents for being timid and instilling that to me when I was little, but I don't know if that is the truth.

The thing is, if I didn't want to go on at least a little bit, I wouldn't feel so bad declining. I suppose I might feel like a wimp anyways, but I don't feel this way about free falls or log flumes which I know that I don't like. Those rides are solely based on drops. Many rollercoasters have flips, corkscrews, curves, and speed, which are all thrills I do enjoy, because they don't involve that dropping feeling. Even the downward side of very tall loops don't feel that way, for some reason. With a lot of these coasters, if I can just make it past the first drop I'll have fun. This last trip, I was convinced to go on both Dueling Dragons (Ice & Fire) and the Hulk coaster.

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The other day I was thinking about the past. I have to admit, I was taking stock of my failures with girls, from the first time I can remember having an interest in the opposite sex as such until now. I have a good memory and tend to remember a lot of small details that go unnoticed by other. I have a tendancy to make the least significant things into important memories. When it comes to people though, I also have a tendency to forget to remember. I don't actually forget but I move on, perhaps too quickly. This is all too clear in the fact that while I know much about and have met several of my college friends' high school friends, I don't think I've mentioned to them (or stayed in touch with) more than one of mine.

So, while I was going back over distant memories, I remembered someone who I had virtually forgotten. It is not surprising that I wouldn't offen think about someone I only knew for one month 10 years ago, and not even that well. It was my second year at overnight camp, just after 6th grade. I don't know if I would even call it a crush, if so the most childish version of it. But at the time I was still too socially shy to even really become good friends or stay in touch with someone who I found interesting. Even if I wasn't over idealizing events of so long ago, so much can happen in that amount of time, and people can change quite a bit. It's not often that you rediscover someone that you haven't known for a long time and really get to see the effects of time. I was curious how the years had affected someone I had known.

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Well, more than seven days have gone by since watching The Ring and I'm still alive so I think I'm safe.

I got my projector back on Thursday. The projector is still broken. They didn't fix either problem. I'm sort of pissed that they didn't call me or anything even though they couldn't find the brightness issue. But I can't believe they weren't able to see the problem with the VGA cable. You'd think it is simple enough that they'd just replace it anyway for the purpose of customer care. Promixa, where the customer is always wrong. That's a sort of inside joke and a whole nother story. Anyways, now they are going to send me a new cable, no questions asked. They are also going to pay to bring the projector back in, and if the newly reworded problem description isn't good enough, they are going to call me so that I don't get a broken one back again. If they can't see the problem I'll demand a new one. I'm not getting this back unless they see the problem and are sure it is fixed. I'm just sort up upset at this whole deal. I'm missing my whole summer with it. If it gets back and works, though, it will be worth it. That's the way it was with my DVD player, when I finally got it working, I've not had a problem with it.

Also, I got the video game I ordered. It wasn't really as bad a game as I remembered it. I kind of liked it. I played almost nonstop for the past four days and beat it this morning. Problem is that I wasn't going to work. Now I have to go to work tonight and do all the things I was supposed to do this week.

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( Preamble )
I took a walk today, sort of by accident. I was talking to Jim in the stairwell. I hadn't done much today up to that point, and I wasn't wearing shoes yet. A couple people were going to go for a walk and they were waiting for Jim. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go along, because I had some things here I wanted to do. I decided to walk a little ways to finish what I was saying and then turn back. I didn't think a block on the sidewalks without shoes would be a problem. Well, we got across campus, and I was going to turn back but we headed into the park, and a grassy hill is great to be barefoot. After that we started off on an unpaved dirt road through the part. I should have turned back but it was far and it looked like nice scenery for a walk. When we finally came out (and I was very happy to be back on paved road), we ended up in Squirrel Hill. We went a pizza place, I snuck to the table before anyone noticed my feet, and had dinner (someone else went up to get it). Then we went to Rita's Ices, since you don't have to go inside. The girl there noticed and aparently she thought it was pretty cool. "That's awesome" is what I think she said. When she asked if this was together or seperate, I replied, "together, he's paying. I didn't bring a wallet either." For that I got a high five. She wanted me to stick around for her amusement. I felt bad because I wanted to entertain her, or at least talk to her. That's exactly the type of situation I should take advantage of but I'm very shy about my lack of footwear, especially when someone makes a big deal of it. I even feel uncomfortable the first day I wear sandals to class in the spring. Maybe I'll have to go back with shoes and be more sociable. It was quite an experience. After that we walked home, because I didn't have my ID for the bus. Someone had remarked that prehistoric man had to be able to catch game for food while barefoot. My feet definately aren't that tough. Somewhere in the evolution of computer programmers we've seem to have lost that ability. Evolution, some progress, I'd say.
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I like the word confluence. It is a good word. Someone told me that it used more in Pittsburgh than elsewhere due to the join of the three rivers. However, that is not why I use it tonight. Tonight was the confluence of cute girls who I always wanted to talk to but were never able to. I ended up at the Hillel Purim party at The Attic, because a different place that I went with Alex was too crowded. There were several girls who showed up there that I had tried to talk to in the past and still wasn't able to tonight. It saddens me to realized that I truely am a loser. Not even alchohol can make me a better person socially. Therefor, I see no way for me ever to have a girlfriend or even anything close.

Booth, of course, has been my main focus over the past couple days. After what I said the other day about the protest and all, and now going to war, you'd think I'd have some more stuff to say about the war. I'm sure that I have thoughts, but just not worth getting out. Booth, on the other hand, I've been working hard on. For the past 2 days I have been building walls. I was hoping to get them all up today. I didn't but I did build them all. Now they just have to be faced and erected. I'm looking forward to working on booth over break. The booth chairs' meeting today was cool. We learned about fire safety and the correct use of fire extinguishers. Then we got to go and light stuff on fire and practice putting it out. It was fun.

Not feeling very up to the Stage3 work I have to do, which is a lot. I have to finish Project Phonebooth with Sarah, and she wants us to show Shadow Gnomes at the Beehive as part of FLUX 9 a week from next friday. I don't know if I can do it, but I think I will try. As far as 360 goes, we got the project done and I think we did pretty well. Guess I'll have to stay in the class.

Tomorrow morning we're hitting the road. Yes, it is that time of year again for my 2nd annual camping trip. Last year was great. This year will be different, not necessarily worse or better. Last time it was just the 4 of us and in terms of camping know how, I was certainly up there. This year I'm bringing along a crew of weathered outdoorsmen. Seven people this year is few than I expected but perhaps just the right amount. I spent *sooo* much money today on camping gear, but I least I own this stuff now. It will make next time easier.

I should be able to enjoy this, but there are 3 things that I'm worried about: weather, work, and women. I'm freezing now, in my room, so I can't imagine what tomorrow will be like. I heard there might be snow, right now I think I'd take snow just so there isn't rain. As far as work, I've been working so hard which would seem to suggest that I need this break, but the hard part about working hard is that I don't get time to get ahead or to work on the things I want to, or just to relax. The trip may be fun, but if I am in the same situation with work after having 3 days off as I was before, I don't know what would be the point, and I might just crack. Finally women. As fun as camping will be, the only thing I've been able to think about lately is the girl, and so 3 days without getting a chance to try and see her or get to know her, isn't really what I want right now.