Today... gosh, I so rarely try to recount what happens on a particular day. It feels like the last 5 years have been the same day. It's all the same. I snooze my alarm for a good hour, as long as possible, because I stayed up too late the night before, like tonight. I get up and start the shower and go back to bed for another 5. Then I brush my teeth because its my least favorite part of my routine so I get it over with first. I'll start singing some stupid random song I made up about how people are jerkfaces and I don't like them very much. I can't stop thinking about how my friends are terrible people and dragging me down with their negativity, and I can't purge it from my mind even if I disassociate from them. I get ready, track down all my security blankets; phone, wallet, keys, jacket, head out the door, making doubly sure to pay attention that the door is locked so I don't wonder about it. Get in the car, get the seatbelt comfortable, turn it on, turn on the heater, the stereo, then the wipers for a few seconds and back out. The commute is something I enjoy in the morning. The roads aren't empty but at least you can do the speed limit. I stop on the way to get something to eat and drink somewhere, and keep cruising, listening to the Mako City track from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core on repeat, and some old Mega Man 2 tracks, enjoying my food and drink. Traffic starts to get bunchy as I near the freeway. Time ticks on. I'm late already, but it never matters. I look out the window at the trees and the bushes, down the ravine where there is road work needing to be done even though I've seen it a thousand times. It looks like a nice place to visit in my dreams. Finally I get through and get on the freeway, and I'm free. 3rd gear, 60 mph. Blinker of course, don't be rude. 4th gear up to 75, then 5th and drop back down to 70 so I don't get a ticket. Almost there, just a few more slow pokes and I'm home free. I park, get out of my car, make sure to push the door closed extra firmly otherwise the light will stay on. Then I lock it, making sure to remember to watch myself lock it so I don't wonder later. I walk, this is the best part of my day. It's a short walk, with some stairs, and it feels good. Now it's time to work. Oh how I love to play with data and devise ways to use it to solve problems efficiently, then put it into Excel and run all kinds of formulas and neat color coding patterns and graphs to examine trends, and have confidence that my systems are humming along doing what I need them to do. Oh how I love to program Batch files to automate tasks to save myself time and effort, and to notify me when something goes wrong. All the while I am learning and expanding my knowledge and skills, adding more tricks up my sleeve. Eventually it's time to eat again, so I phone ahead and go pick up some panang curry which is peanut sauce with chicken, brocolli, zucchini, peas, and white rice, 4 stars because you never know if 5 is going to kill you. It was so delectable, I ate the whole entire thing. Then I had some meetings and did some more work, went and talked to some people I don't know super well but it felt really good just to talk to them and have some stress free interaction, and sort of let them know I care about them. Going home it was raining cats and dogs, dark out, traffic everywhere. Someone from work calls me, hey this lady wants to talk to somebody about the fax server - I put a note in the ticket that it's not a server issue - this lady just wants to talk to somebody, she says she's working overtime... but this guy is really wordy and just keeps talking. I feel like I am being really chatty too. Like we both just wanted someone to talk to. So I call the lady, she is actually knowledgable about fax technology interestingly enough, but no it's still not a server issue if your document isn't coming through clearly. The server is only an intermediary - well I talked to the sender and they said it's not a problem on their end - then it must be a problem with your printer - well I talked to the printer guy and he said it's not a printer problem, what if the trunks were full? - if a trunk was full you'd get a busy signal - what if the quality of the call was bad? - it wouldn't connect at all, the handshake would fail and abort the call, and on. And I was OK with that. I wasn't upset that she wanted my help even though I wasn't the one who could help her. She was being chatty, and I was too. I think we both just wanted someone to talk to. I never talk to people so it was kind of weird for me, especially that I was embracing it. And then an idea came to me I hadn't thought of. I'll check the server file and if the image quality is bad then it's the sender's fault, and if it's good then it's the printer's fault, and then we can get the right person to own up to doing their job. And she was happy, and I felt good about making her happy, because she was having a lot of stress put on her by other people because of it even though it's out of her control. So by then I am almost home, but today I'm not going straight home. I'm stopping by my parent's house on the way for dinner and Thursday Night Football. I love my parents a lot. They're the only people who I truly can say that I know who are really genuinely good people. Most people you just don't really get to know, and a lot people suck. That's probably the thing in my life that makes me the happiest, is my relationship with my family. Mom made meatloaf and grandma's carrots, and we like to joke that her recipe for carrots was drown them in butter and cook the crap out of them. My dad also made his own bbq sauce that we put on the meatloaf. It was super good, but I could only eat one plate after all the curry earlier. After dinner I played with the cat for a while. She is the cutest kitty in the whole world, a siamense lynx who is white with black tiger stripes on her back and black leopard print on her belly. She runs and hides from almost everybody, but she's my buddy. She likes to be pat like a horse. I got her to jump a few times but she fell asleep after likely a long day of playing outside. We all watched the game a while and talked about some things, and then I got ready to head out, we said our I love yous and I came home to where I am now. I watched the rest of the game which featured an insane hail mary finish, probably one of the most exciting endings to a game I've seen in a good while, and have been surfing the net for a while, researching, reading other peoples' ideas, trying to better understand myself and my place in the universe, trying to find out if there are people I can connect with who won't leave me jaded. The TV is still on but it's on mute. The amount of stimulus I can take for one day is waning. I don't think I've had a full night's sleep in over a week, and the last few days have been half nights, as will tonight be. I have a difficult time focusing on my goals, because their importance has diminished, or maybe my goals have shifted. I have always felt driven to find a connection with other people, but now it seems more pronounced with my having disassociated with a lot of the bad eggs. I have a hard time with wanting to do my music lately, or the dishes. I feel like I am trying to escape something, but what? Maybe that's not true. I'm trying to achieve something. It's all perspective I suppose. I want to build a better life with another person, but I can't seem to find anyone who strikes my fancy. I think maybe if I can understand myself better I can better know how to make that connection I long for with another person, but I do not have any such thing right now, and that makes me sad even though I have so much to be thankful for.