C'est la vie, c'est la mort.
Carpe diem!

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear
525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
It’s time now to sing out, though the story never ends
Let's celebrate, remember a year, in the life of friends.
Remember the love! Remember the love! Remember the love!
Measure in love.
- "Seasons of Love", Rent

( Measure in love )

What you say and what you do is a contradiction to the life that's safe and sound.
- Saigon Kick

Over the course of the last 4 days, I've had the glorious luxury of playing chess 7 times against 3 different outstanding opponents.

V: 2 me: 0
Allen: 0 me: 2
Mark (naech): 3 me: 0

I need a lot more practice. o.0

One of the patterns emerging is that once I've acknowledged 1-2 potential threats, I focus on those for the defensive part of my move and don't keep looking. I also need to develop my pieces a lot better, and have started working on that, but as can be seen, this helped me not at all against Mr. Mark. I also need to focus more on moves that allow me to be offensive and defensive at the same time. Everyone is kicking my ass at that, and I have nothing but room for improvement.

I love playing chess. Aimee (junoimelda), I miss the days of having you so nearby! I haven't been back to Drunken Knights since you moved.

V, Cyra, Mark and I played Cyra's 4-player chess set a few weeks ago, and that was so much fun. I'm hoping to do it again as time and schedules allow.

Yea! I finally had some time tonight and made some great head way on my dead language project :)

postgreSQL, ruby and quiet time FTW! \m/

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.
- Katharine Hepburn

I had a wonderful day hanging out with V and his joint-custody dog. We roamed Volunteer Park, had a great lunch on the sidewalk at Volunteer Park Cafe, and wandered down Madison Valley to Lake Washington. He's a great storyteller and good listener, and his hand lightly touching the small of my back felt nice, comforting, familiar. He got some bonus points for letting his dog obsess about fish at the pond for a long time, and for playing on the see-saw with me at one of the parks we visited. He also made two ridiculously astute observations about me that startled me into realizing he's paying more attention than I am able to catch him at. I suppose I also like to think I'm less transparent than I am ;>

I had a wonderful evening hanging out with Leslie at Cafe Flora and back at my place. Dinner was fantastic, conversation was way beyond excellent, and I've hopefully addicted her to the Liberte goat's milk yogurt that I'm mad in love with. I'm so glad I have a Leslie in my life. Conversations with her make me miss elise and so many similar conversations of yore. It is always a relief and joy to find other women who are more given to analytics than emotional antics. Girl problem solvers rule.

Emily is still in Thailand and Cyra is still in Missouri and John is still working way too much and it is Spring in Seattle and there is still no Lauren here and I'm wandering around the city rowling like a lost cat. An excellent time to get some good Linear A work done :)

Tomorrow: chess with Mark! I'm so happy that we're hanging out for a second time in a month. This beats the crap out of our previous trend to hang out once every 9-15 months.

I wore my electric blue Doc Martens today (and matching sunglasses).

On my walk to the Crumpet Shop for breakfast this morning (they will indeed make me groats with steamed soy milk and honey while I'm on this crazy diet. sweet.), a guy complimented my elephant <3 <3 bag on Pine, and when I turned to say thanks, he was a vaguely familiar rasta/hippy face from Capitol Hill. He lit up and asked me my name, and introduced himself as Forest. He asked me if I liked rock shows and invited me to a metal show at a friend's house near Neumo's tonight. I haven't been able to find anyone to go with me yet though, so I probably won't. I didn't get an even faint creepy vibe off of this guy, but there are some calculated risks I won't take in spite of very decent odds.

At breakfast, I bantered with the staff, and the white guy who isn't one of the owners who I am inexplicably and ridiculously attracted to, was there, and I said Hi to him awkwardly. Stephanie, a super cute petite white brunette, who generally plays the role of Cashier, had a great t-shirt on today: "don't trust me, i'm an actress". I wonder if she does comedy sports. I'll ask her next time when there's less of a line.

From there, I started my ritual post-Crumpet Shop pre-work stroll down 1st Ave corridor, stopping to admire all of the dress shops I like on the way. Synapse is going out of business, and everything is on sale. I might stop by tomorrow and see what's left.

As I passed the Library Bistro, a mixed-race guy in what I think of as hip-hop clothing, all black and white print down to the matching shoes, staggered back first over my boots, then my body. He was moving stuff into the hotel with his coworker, but stopped everything to follow me all the way to work and spent the whole time rapping to me, telling me how sexy I was and evaluating women who were passing in the other direction. It was unbelievably surreal, like I was watching a movie of myself rather than participating. Very creative / ADD vibe. His name is Optical, he moved here from L.A. last night (according to him) and is recording a rap album (also according to him) and spent the whole time trying and failing to get my number. We finally settled on him giving me his name so I could look up on Facebook if I wanted to. He was entertaining, but omfg way too aggressive. He kept asking me to tell him about my underwear, and then at one point told me all about an all orange outfit he wears in Vegas and people just give him coins and he wins the slots. As I reread what I've written here, I'm pretty sure I was in a weird movie this morning, except that nobody told me.

Got to work. Worked.

Around 3pm, I started getting ambiguous text messages from bartender Jake, which escalated into some relatively dirty text messages (while I was at work :| ), which gave me the opportunity to address whether or not I'm even interested in pursuing anything with him. I'm not. I got about an hours worth of texting, to which I replied to very little of it, mostly involving volunteering to do lots of sexual things to and for me. It was aggressive and incredibly overwhelming, but hopefully that's the end of that, I was as clear as humanly possible without actually castrating him, and he seemed to talk himself into a place where he saved face.

Tomorrow is going to the park with V and his joint-custody dog for a bit. Whether or not I develop an interest there, it's much more my speed.

Electric blue shoes and an overwhelming state of indifference ... I wish it was easier to feel flattered with stuff like this, but honestly I just feel stressed out and like I have to defend and protect myself.

Calm, quiet curiousity about me is about a million times more appealing than frantic, loud sexual appreciation. I just don't know what to do with it.

At the end of this completely surreal oddity of a day, I wish there was someone I felt safe with to wrap their body around me and tell me they like my brain.

After I got home from work and chatted with Miss Emily who is in Thailand for a few minutes, I went for an epic Capitol Hill wander. I spoke with several cats, and 3 off-the-leash standard poodles, all separate owners, all galavanting and galloping towards me with poodle-like glee.

I eventually spied a swing set at Miller Community Center so I picked my way down. Three sets of 2 swings each. A light-skinned Muslim girl was swinging on the far right so I took one of the swings in the left when I didn't see any relevant parents nearby so they wouldn't worry from a distance. She came and swung next to me quietly, or rather sat on the swing and swayed a bit, smiling quietly at me. Eventually, 2 little dark-skinned black girls about 4 and 6, who I think were the daughter and niece of the community center janitor who was wearing safety orange and kept walking out of the basement to confirm their location, came racing up and got in the yellow chair swing to my right, taking turns and demanding pushes in a fun, jovial way. The older was happy to push the younger, but the younger wanted me to do it.

Both figured out how to twist the yellow chair as it swung so it came wildly careening into my space. I managed to avoid the younger, laughing. The older though was far more fearless and I jumped off my swing at one point and made the dad laugh very hard and shout that he couldn't blame me. ;>

When they went racing off again, my original swinging companion asked politely if I could push her too. I asked if she knew how to swing higher and she said No, so I pushed her once, not too high, and then got back on my swing and showed her how to use her arms and legs to go higher. After awhile of practicing, she asked me if I was a grown up. I laughed and said, Yes, then asked if the other 2 girls were her friends because they were all talking to each other when they were swinging with us, but the janitor didn't call her in with them. She said no, she didn't have any friends, then thought a minute and said she had some friends at school. I told her swinging was my favourite thing when I was a kid, and she said the monkey bars were her favourite, and her school had two sets.

I never caught a glimpse of any guardians, and decided not to ask her since she clearly wasn't stressed out about it. I don't think she could be much older than 6. Maybe I'll see her again. I really enjoyed swinging with her. It's been awhile since I've seen the good side of little girls. The slightly older ones that ride the public buses here tend to be pretty mean.

All the while, 2 cute white guys around my age were playing some totally Calvin Ballish combination of frisbee and football, the rules of which, as best as I could tell were, fling both and see if the other can catch both. They started flinging them closer and closer to the swing set until, at last, both landed at my feet, and I laughed, quipping, "Critical miss!"

I said "Good night" to my swinging companion and headed for home.

I walked passed an old folks home on the way, and 3 ancient white men were in the front office BSing with each other. They saw me looking in and waved. I laughed and waved back, and they laughed too. It was really nice to have a temperate blue sky tonight. It's finally been too much cold and rain, even for me.

It was a really good night. :)