I love about house parties that people show up looking all nice, like with one of their top five shirts (or equivalent; I think I'm one of the few that actually has ranked his shirts) or a snazzy dress and good shoes, or something. You know, tight jeans and what else. I think to a certain extent it's a gay and girl thing: getting ready with it in your head that, when you show up, everyone else will say "wow, look at you!" They might, but everyone has that in their heads, and not every single person at the party will receive or issue a wow look at you.

Anyway. Also, you've done your hair, and if it's a party with a few strangers or acquaintances you might want to impress, you've done it and redone it until it looks perfect. And you might even show up with a bottle of alcohol, and when you enter you smile and shrug expressively,
Kind of like what Ann Shoket is doing in this screenshot that I took a year ago for totally separate and obsolete purposes. Only instead of the papers she's holding for some reason, you have your bottle of alcohol, and you hold it to show it off but never higher than your face, which is much more important.

The point is, everyone wants to look nice and impress, I just like the thought of comparing people's appearances upon their arrival to those of their departure. Everyone thinks they look better than when they came, but hair is a mess, shirts are weirdly wet, someone is missing a bra for some reason and I don't want to put my shirt back on because someone else spilled beer all over it. Smiles are wild and weighed down by heavy bags under all eyes. I just think it's kind of interesting to think about something that started so composed, with everyone intent on things going exactly according to the plan they've set out in their head, and by the end no one has any control or awareness over anything.

Work on Thursday brought me:

to Fairfield,
to the Summerbreeze neighborhood,
directly by each of the locations of my three accidents,
to a very small town I had never heard of called Rumsey. I kept wanting to call it Guernsey, probably because the next town over was Guinda. I wish it had been Guernsey, then I'd at least have a few serfs to kick around and make do my bidding. "Peasant, go search this square mile block and tell me if 16541 Highway 16 exists."

I had to go back to Guernsey again the next day. Thursday was a nine hour day and 120 miles, which means it's my highest-earning day of this job. I think last week will also have been my highest-earning week of the job, and next week will easily be my lowest. Work is winding down now, which means it's almost time to start going to San Francisco or San Jose to party every other weekend!

They come for you in the night

I had a dream two nights ago that there was going to be a draft. Every young man was going to be drafted and, you know what? We were all excited for it. We were thrilled, we couldn't wait. I went in with about 30 men my age for training, and we spent the first few days just sitting in a classroom. It was agonizing! I wrote home to a friend that everything was going well, morale and spirits were high, we were just so slow going. When was this thing going to get started? We wanted to get the ball rolling, to start really doing the stuff we had all anticipated. I'm not sure if I was eager for the eventual war itself or just the intense training that I know was presently going to happen.

I woke up and immediately thought of ways I'd dodge the draft if it ever came to that. It was like something out of a history textbook; first they have a passage in italic script and with a darker color background, and then at the end it says what are some of things you'd do if there were a draft? Brainstorm. Only history textbooks never ask you to put yourself in the shoes of your predecessors, because then you might think for yourself, as opposed to reciting the jingoistic themes that the books have already shoved down your throat.

Radio Albania

Tirana will never quite be Durazzo but, you know what? It'll also never be hell.

This is truly my hell. Not that Vacaville is really that bad (I hate it, but it could be much worse), or that I'm depressed or anything. I am miserable, though. Yeah, lack of local friends and I hate driving and etc., but the real cause of my misery is this heat. I was in bed sweating last night around midnight. I'm not made for this heat and neither is my computer; it keeps over-heating and turning off. I thought my computer was God, but apparently even God is vulnerable in hell.

Weather reports consistently show San Jose to be 5 degrees cooler than Vacaville. Sure, 5 degrees is not that big of a difference, especially as later this week Vacaville and San Francisco will be 20 degrees apart. But that's Durazzo. I have to work my way back there. I have to be grateful with how far I have come. From hell to Tirana will be quite enough for the time being; then from Tirana I can pine and scheme for Durazzo.

huuuuuk!

I've had intermittent hiccups all day today. I've had a few strong ones while walking from house to house. But I'm really, extremely disappointed that I didn't hiccup while actually talking to someone for work. "Hi, my name is Greg, huuuuuk! I'm with the US Census Bureau and I have the hiccups..." Man, they would have been so charmed.

This house has two excellent examples of disfunctional relationships. In the first room we have my parents, who are the sort of people that should never be together. It's clear to everyone but them. They piss each other off and are unable to spend a moment in the same room without being angry with one another. They are constantly at each other's throats.

For twenty-two years I've proclaimed that their fights are none of my business (except when they're yelling at each other outside my bedroom door at 1 or 6 AM). I remember well that, when we were kids, my siblings used to sob without comfort when ever my parents screamed at one another, but I tuned it out and never gave it much thought.

But now that's over. Now I have to ask why. Not why do they fight and why have they always fought. Not why do they seem to hate each other. Not why have they stayed together for so many miserable years. I know all of those things. What I want to know is why can't they follow my example?

I know I'm not God or anything, and I certainly make mistakes and do bad things. But I really think we would all be much better off if they would take notes on the disfuctional relationship between the other two people in the house: me and Patrick. Just like my parents, Patrick and I sleep within feet of one another. However, I can't make him stop waking me up every night when he [*coughs, a lot*], I can't make him do anything about the gigantic mound of dirty clothes that takes up a third of the floor space, and I can't make him sleep in the other room when he's done something especially awful. My living situation is more intolerable than theirs, at least within the bedroom. Sure, my parents sleep in the same bed, but I've slept in the same bed as Michael after we broke up. It's not that hard to share a bed and have nothing to do with one another.

Patrick and I used to be at each others throats pretty often. I find him to be rude, abrasive and unbelievably annoying. Then, a few years ago, I decided I had had enough. I knew it would be hard on everyone, but I realized that I could not have a relationship with him. I am unable to change him, but I can't accept him for who he is. If he were not my brother I would have absolutely nothing to do with him. It sucks, but I have to accept this fact. I do not like him but I can't do anything about it. So my only solution is to ignore him completely. I try to spend all of my time in a different room from him. I often avoid activities that he's part of (although certainly not always). When he tells a story to "the room" I refrain from comment, no matter how stupid or offensive or naive I think he sounds. Because I know it doesn't matter what I say or do. I can't make him change.

My parents are certainly not happy with this, and I think my mom has subtly tried to get us to spend a bit more time together. But why can't they see that this is so much easier on everyone else than what they are doing? They should have realized by now, after 30 years of knowing one another, that neither one of them can make the other one change. They're not receptive to one another. It has absolutely no use to try. So they have two choices from here. The first is to change themselves and, I know my parents. They're two very stubborn people who refuse to ever admit a mistake. So neither one will be willing to change because each of them thinks it's the other one who will change. So why not accept that? Why not realize that they will never be happy together, so there's no point in even trying? I know they can't seperate because of financial issues, so how hard would it be to just ignore one another completely, except when absolutely necessary to make contact? I know that the answer is it would be very hard, but they don't seem to know or care how hard their abysmal failure of a relationship is on those around them. There was a time to make it better, but now I think it's just time to make do.

Stop saying 100 Days

Stop saying 100 Days.