Here is another one:

pvsleembira: have you ever had dumbo gumbo?

proreverb: is that elephant droppings?

pvsleembira: no
pvsleembira: it's gumbo with elephant meat instead of seafood

proreverb: sounds good
proreverb: prob illegal

pvsleembira: no, actually. a loophole

proreverb: cool

I get to instant message people at work all day. I can talk about anything I want. Here is an example (I am pvsleembira).


pvsleembira: do you like garbage?

horickzzounds: i've met butch vig

pvsleembira: who?

horickzzounds: of garbage
horickzzounds: ?

pvsleembira: that's a band?

horickzzounds: yeah

pvsleembira: OH.

horickzzounds: what were you talkin about

pvsleembira: you know, garbage. do you like it
pvsleembira: I hate garbage

horickzzounds: garbage sucks
horickzzounds: why do you ask

Wow. I think this was the coldest its been ever, like in the history of the earth. I rode to work this morning, listening to the Ruins, basically pumping my legs for dear life, just trying to generate enough heat to keep from freezing to death and falling off my bike. I got to work in record time, I think like 17 minutes, and just sat at my desk for fifteen minutes without moving at all. I didn't even take my helmet off.
It was even worse on the way home, because it was much, much windier and there was no sun for me to pretend I was being warmed up a little. My legs were on fire both from the exertion of riding so hard and from winburn. When I got home I burrowed under eight blankets and passed out.
When I woke up, my legs were still cold, but I felt like a hundred bucks!

Geez, I guess I kind of let this thing go. I didn't realize it had already been ten days since my last blog entry. I had to type up so many papers for school that the skin under my thumb gradually tore away from the thumbnail. It really hurt, even when I wasn't typing. Oh yeah, and it doesn't help that I have to do stupid data entry at work. I hate data entry.
Last night I got kicked out of the Bottom Lounge. I'm really not much of a dancer, but when I drink a whole lot there is no stopping me- I was flailing all over the bar like a maniac, and I ended up knocking over a table and breaking it. It was the bartender's fault for making such good Tom Collinses. Oh, well. I had some agression to work out. It was a good thing anyway because I was out of money.
I decided to go visit Anna in D.C. at the end of the month. It should be fun. I can't wait to do something illegal in our nation's capitol. She says that just about all of the businesses use the fact that they are in our nation's capitol as a selling point- Like, "The best hotdogs in our nation's capitol" and "Larry Van Pickett's used car dealership has fourteen different locations in our nation's capitol."

I can see my breath right now, even though I have the space heater on at full blast. I've got my orange scarf wrapped around my neck and I'm wearing this wool overcoat that I forgot I even had. I think I'm going to sleep in them.
My friend Matt Streets said that I could have his space heater too, because he lives in a basement apartment that has a wonderfully toasty metal pipe running along the ceiling in every room.
Last night I went to sleep at midnight, but I woke up exactly two hours later because I ate some bad leftover Christmas lasagna for dinner, and it didn't want to be in my belly anymore. Holy Jesus, I really thought I was DYING. I mean it. All I could think about was a pack of slimy yellow gremlins hacking at my stomach with little shovels.
I couldn't get to sleep for another two hours after I killed all of the gremlins, no matter what I tried to do. I tried counting popsicles- first green, then yellow, then blue... But that just made me bored. I tried doing some calistenics to burn off some energy, but after about three minutes I felt ridiculous so I stopped. Eventually I just wrapped myself up in my blankets again and planted my head about an inch away from my space heater, and the next thing I knew I was knocking everything off of my desk, blindly scrambling to find my alarm clock.

Guess what I'm doing right now. I'm smoking a cigarrette. Yes, that's right! I am smoking a cigarrette after wasting about an hour and a half playing video games. And later, when I feel like it, I think I might drink a beer. And while I'm drinking a beer I'm going to eat some nachos and say some swear words.

For about another half an hour it is going to be the first day of the year, of 2004, so...
Well, today I had to say goodbye to Anna for awhile. She will be in D.C. for three months, completing her final stretch toward becoming journalist. I gave her about fifty kisses and said some clever stuff, but when someone you love leaves for awhile you have to say goodbye to them every day that they're not with you. I like to think that it's noble to understand that two people will be separated by great distance from time to time, but I know such stoicism won't make the blankets rise and fall with her breath, nor will it play strip poker with me.
We took some pictures of ourselves this morning with her new camera. In one of them she is strikingly serene and beautiful. Maybe it is the gentle smile just behind a quieted expression she wears, as if just then coming to terms with a profound understanding of the clockwork of the universe. It’s a look I've never caught on her before. I wonder that the expressions on our faces are a way to differentiate between consecutive moments- that they are directed nigh imperceptibly to reflect an undulating soup that is our character by our hearts so multi-faceted such moments can be as different from one another as the people on a subway car, and sometimes only the shrewd, quick eye of the camera can capture a state of being that may wash over us like waves from a rare wind.
But anyway, by the time I see her again, which I think will be at the end of March, hopefully I will have huge muscles and a beard like a christmas wreath, and she will have gained two hundred pounds and gotten some religious tattoos. Man, that would be nuts.