The conference room at my workplace is formal and spacious. The walls are covered with dark paneled wood. There is a chandelier and an enclosed bar area. The back is completely windowed and looks out into a neat, enclosed gated courtyard in a quiet residential neighborhood. It’s in this room that I am located four out of seven nights a week at approximately 4:00am. Usually, slouching down in a soft decadent burgundy chair with my legs up on another, shrouded dimly by the courtyard lamps that sparsely light the room. Tonight I put on earmuff headphones and listened to music. I loosened my black tie and played 38 Special. Then The Evens. Then Built Like Alaska. Then Elliot Smith. Then I felt thoroughly tranquilized and nostalgic. I miss the friends I’ve left back home. I miss the friends that have left me here. I am awake at 4:19am way too often. I spend too much time at computer screens.

When my dad was a little younger than myself he had a job that I’ve been fantasizing about often. Male Gigolo! He loved it. And man, how I would love to be paid to…, and of course I am joking. He was a boat captain in the Northwest Territories for chartered fishing trips. I always picture Great Bear lake when I think about it but it was probably elsewhere. He did it in the summer straight out of high school and I picture him young with big curly late seventies hair and appropriate stylin’ retro clothes. The boat would be a comfortable twenty footer maybe. He would have a smoke or cigar protruding out his mouth (cigars work really well to keep mosquitoes away, next time I go fishing I’m bringing some sweet smelling ones.). Maybe he would have his feet up while he trolled, with a warm summer wind gently blowing. He would say to the Americans fishing from his boat, “You know, those plastic toy lures are great and all, but why don’t you give a spinner and a minnow a try.” And then the image of him is replaced by me and I smugly chuckle as they start catching big fat walleye like crazy after changing lures. I would point out a moose swimming through the reeds and eagles scanning the water from high up on evergreens… And then I snap back to reality where I am shackled to my thesis and assignments and exams and crummy job and tiny student apartment.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic Don’t panic. I wish I could behave as rationally as I tell myself I should. The challenges I have to deal with until the end of March at the moment seem insurmountable. I am attempting to keep moving forward and hoping for the best. Right now though, I feel like I have to reach the summit of Everest in a couple of hours. The magnitude of my thesis project that is due in a scant 19 days is PhD worthy. I don’t know why I chose it for my lousy undergrad project. Breathe.

Everyone probably feels similar to some extent about something I suppose. Even after March there will still be challenges. I need to continue taking time to pause, break and do something enjoyable.

As a consequence of this advice, I have been reading a lot more lately. Breaks where I just ruminate over how much trouble I’m in are not groovy. Reading works well to take me out of the whole general mish mash for a while and then I can start relatively fresh. I’ve done less reading during my University years, telling myself that I didn’t have time for it. This is a fallacy, I’m working harder now than ever.

Anyway, I am almost finished Mostly Harmless, the fifth and final book of the Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It’s a series I started way back in my first year of University at the recommendation of my roommate. I’ve held back on finishing it off though because of what he told me back in firs-year when we shared a little tiny room together, “Yeah, the books are great, funny, etc, etc. But don’t bother reading the final one in the series.” “Why not?” “Because Douglas Adams never intended there to be five books. He was pressured into it and intentionally wrote the fifth one so badly to discourage any one bugging him to do any more.”

And since my roommate was just about the coolest person I knew, I took the advice to heart. Until last week. Now, I’m finding out that book five actually might be my favorite of the series (although it has been a few years since I’ve read the first three and don’t remember them too well.). I’ve laughed out loud probably a dozen times, something I don’t remember doing at all while reading book four, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish. I guess he probably perceived the book differently because he usually only read while stoned.

The first book is being released as a movie next month, it should be fun. So much of the humor comes from the ridiculous and colourful language Adams uses to describe settings and character action though. It’s definitely worth a read.

The movie trailer.

I’m getting acclimated to living alone again now that my devil angel has left. I flipped my National Geographic calendar over tonight and deeply connected with the March monkey. He has a massive frown and big heavy lidded tired eyes. A perfect choice for this month because he looks cold and tired and knows it’s going to be a miserable 31 days. He has a look that says, “I’m so tired of this shit, I just want it to be over, for better or worse.” An old grey Japanese Macaque hot tub monkey. I would trade places with him.

I just woke up a little while ago after sleeping all afternoon due to my night job and early classes. Still in pajamas, bluish polka dot pants and a big oversized sweater that I’m comfortably swimming in. I’m cooking my puffy pancake breakfast. I’m going to smother it in syrup and it will be tasty. I won’t feel like doing anything after eating it.

And I ate it. I think I need a coffee. So stuffed (like a plushy). I enjoyed the reaction I got when I wrote that a half dozen posts or so ago. Maybe you gleaned some unintended perverted meaning from it, possibly involving stuffed animal masturbation. I complicated matters with the image of Superman and Lois as a centaur. That must have stirred the id a little.

I was a zombie after work on campus this morning. In lecture, every three minutes my head would sink, then jerk back up to mindlessly copy the formulas and scribbles on the whiteboard. Then the head bobbing cycle repeated for two hours.
I vaguely recollect stopping at the Pit Stop store to buy a Jones blueberry soda. It wasn’t in my bag when I checked tonight, apparently I did buy the new Adbusters though. I slowly flipped through it and it made me angry-depressed as usual. There’s not much fire in the belly today.

Saturday February 19:
1/2 progress report + 3 pages

Sunday February 20:
1/2 progress report + 3 pages

Monday February 21:
 -Thesis Progress report.
+3 pages

Tuesday February 22:
xxx

Wednesday February 23:
xxx

Thursday February 24:
xxx

Friday February 25:
xxx

Saturday February 26:
+3 pages

Sunday February 27:
+3 pages

Monday February 28:
progress report

Tuesday March 1:
1/2 Foundations Ass#2 + 1/2 DNA computing Summary

Wednesday March 2:
1/2 Foundations Ass #2 + 1/2 DNA computing Summary

Thursday March 3:

-Thesis Progress report #3

-Foundations Assignment #2

-DNA computing Ass#3 summary
+ 3 pages

Friday March 4:
Databases Ass#2

Saturday March 5:
Bioinormatics Tools Ass#2

Sunday March 6:
+3 pages

Monday March 7:

-Bioinformatics Tools Assn #2
+3 pages

Tuesday March 8:
-Databases Assn #2
+3 pages

Wednesday March 9:
+3 pages

Thursday March 10:
+3 pages

Friday March 11:
+3 pages

Saturday March 12:
+3 pages

Sunday March 13:
+ 3 pages

Monday March 14:
Code on Bio Tool, GUI
.

Tuesday March 15:
DNA computing Ass #4

Wednesday March 16:
Databases Test Study

Thursday March 17:
-DNA computing Assn #4 (probable)

-Databases TEST 2
Code on tool

Friday March 18:
Code on tool

Saturday March 19:
code on tool

Sunday March 20:
code on tool

Monday March 21:
code on tool

Tuesday March 22:
code on tool, finish tool

Wednesday March 23:
Total Thesis Wrap up.

Thursday March 24:
THESIS DUE
Presentation work on

Friday March 25:
Presentation work on

Saturday March 26:
Databases Ass #3

Sunday March 27:
Databases Ass #3

Monday March 28:

-Earliest possible Thesis present date 
Bioinformatics Tool presentation

Tuesday March 29:

-Bioinformatics Tool and presentation (probable)

-Databases Ass #3
Foundations Ass#3

Wednesday March 30:
Foundations Ass#3

Thursday March 31:
 -Foundations Ass #3  

********************************************************

Bioinormatics 
Thesis 460z:
OVERDUE: progress report #2
Thurs.  Mar. 3 – Progress report 3    
Thurs. Mar. 24 – Final report
Mar. 28 – April 8 – Presentation

Bioinformatics Tools 461b:
Assignment #2: March 7th
Protein secondary structure display (1 person): Project and Presentation: Late March
Exam –  Exam period.

DNA computing 462b:
Assignment #3: March 3rdth
Assignment #4: March 17th
Exam – Final Exam period.

Foundation 432s:
Assignment #2 – March 3rdth
Assignment #3 – March 24th
Exam – Early April

Databases 319b:
Assignment #2 – March 8th
Assignmnet #3 – March 29th
Test Two – March 17th
Final Exam – Exam period.

A tooth of mine has been hurting me. Extreme head throbbing agony. Unable to function type pain. So, despite having spent over two grand at my dentist during the past six months, I decided to get some more dental care. Due to financial constraints, I switched from the experienced, competent Dr. Spagnuola to the cheap and bumbling dentistry students on campus.

So I went, it’s only a five minute walk from my building, I was just expecting a preliminary examination and some X-Rays to be taken. I had doubts as soon as I got inside, the medical science building really is old and falling apart. The dentistry student I was assigned to was upbeat and relaxed though. I think her name was Lisa. There was a fun moment during the medical history checklist, when she asked me about recreational drug use. The serious poker face she gave me when she said it was priceless. After she tapped all my teeth for pain (I couldn’t localize it), the hygienist/assistant (another student) was instructed to blow compressed air on my teeth. She had the nozzle turned the wrong way and instead blasted me in the eyes and nose. I survived. While Lisa chatted with her instructor, I had to endure a really painful X-Ray. All the equipment is so damn old. More modern equipment would have been more palette friendly. So, Lisa got the X-Ray back and showed me the big decayed area on my upper left wisdom tooth and after more instructor consulting, recommended pulling it. I didn’t think this was the trouble tooth but I consented since the decay was apparently massive.

They sent me over to surgery where they agreed to do it right away. I met dentistry students number two and three. Shen, an Asian guy with braces, who would be dong the actual extraction. He shook my hand and I noticed “Dentistry 2008” on his name tag. Must be a “firs’-year”, as Hagrid would say. Lucky me. Number three was supervising and was a jovial, laughing twerp who’s name I forgot but he told me the gauze was edible and I just wanted him to be serious because I’ve never had surgery before even if this was really minor. Shen agreed my wisdom tooth cavity was mammoth and did his best to anesthetize me. This was by far the worst part of the procedure. The needle on the outward face of my gums wasn’t bad at all, but the one on the inside was horrible. It had to go right at the back of my hard palette and Shen wasn’t smooth at all and I couldn’t help but twitch and my gag reflex kicked in and Shen twitched too and it was gross and horrible and took a whole minute and I hated it. The new assistant hygienist/assistant was doing a crummy job with suction too. I was gagging on what must have been blood at the back of my throat while she wondered, “Why, isn’t it sucking?” as she had the device jammed into my cheek and not the back of my fluid filled throat.

The extraction was god awful too. Shen was not good at it. It seemed like he was working really hard with the forceps or whatever it was he was using but after a few minutes he left to get the instructor. I had my eyes shut but I heard a deep commanding voice, “turn your head to the right!” and I then felt competent hands working my tooth loose with a smooth wrenching that Shen seemed incapable of. “You work it free like this, back and forth. See how it’s coming loose?” Shen took over again and it was nothing like that. More fumbling. By some miracle it finally came free and I was left sitting in the chair chewing on gauze while I listened to Shen get criticized in the Hallway. A little poetic justice for me. So yeah, that was my day at the dentist. The pain is mostly gone now. I think it might have been the wisdom tooth after all. The visit was super cheap, forty dollars or so after my student discount.

My girlfriend Merle came and spent the week with me. I just sent her home on a Greyhound a few hours ago. I wasn’t happy she came but I embraced the excuse not to write and study. I forgot as best as I could my looming deadlines. Since I hadn’t planned on her coming I hadn’t planned any special activities to do with her. Instead we spent the week going to theaters, my favorite arcade and comic book store, new and old places to eat, coffee shops and diners, book store, pet store, wherever. I would have liked to have gone out and listened to music or maybe even a club but the timing wasn’t quite right. I had a dentist checkup at which, my wisdom tooth was extracted, so after that drinking and dancing never seemed to suit my mood. When I perceive something wrong with my body I tend to move very slowly and just want to spread out on a nice cushy armrest, close my eyes, relax and sleep. That didn’t stop her from getting drunk, pestering a friend of mine on the phone, then a friend of hers and dragging me downtown though. So that’s a little of what we did. She spent today crying because she didn’t want to go and miss me. This is good for my ego but also reminds me of how rotten and cowardly I am. I like Merle. I don’t think we are right for each other though. I think we got along well this week only because we are sexually compatible and I knew she was leaving at the end of it. She looks at me with stars in her eyes and tells me how deep and true her love is for me. How she wants to marry me. To be with me forever. She wanted to go to city hall this week for a marriage license. I resisted as always. Sometimes I wish she would just cheat on me so I could break out in a righteous escape. Instead I will be forced to crush her innocent heart in my cold evil hands. Yet, even though I know I should, I still don’t break up with her. I am indifferent but I keep her because she is mine and I don’t want any other male to put his dirty paws on her. I also am scared of being a failure and alone. Hmmm, that was the most honest sentence I’ve written in awhile. I guess I’m a bad guy with a good girl. It is hard to discard a bond with someone who looks at you like you are the world. Merle’s a problem I’ll be forced to deal with, like everything else, after March along with the possible aftermath of academic collapse. I have a feeling I’ll be back home in T Bay some time this summer, single, unemployed and licking my wounds. Big dreams pathetically shrunken. On a related note, I saw the movie Closer this week end. (Also Million Dollar Baby, In Good Company and I Heart Huckabees.)  Closer was my favorite of the four. It won’t be anyone’s favorite movie but much of it rung true with sharp and vicious insight.

I no longer have PT and was kicked out of the skeleton farm today. (They stole a bone.)

edit, 2025 me: there was an image here, I really want to remember what it was.

I have a horrible headache. And her name is Merle.

I’m at work right now and I actually do have a headache. That was just an irresistible follow up sentence. Anyway, it’s now my spring break, or reading week if you prefer, and the big Armageddon fight that I was anticipating with Merle has come to pass. The crux of it was that she wanted to come visit for slack week and I didn’t want her to. There has been no resolution since the fight, no communication between us, no clue if she is even coming. If she was going to leave it would have been this morning on a greyhound bus, arriving here in London in just a little while ago. So I have a little mystery to discover in five or so hours at seven am. Will Goldilocks be in my bed? Papa Bear’s not going to be too pleased if she is. (yes she has keys to my place) If she isn’t there I would take it as a really constructive action. It would be a sign to me that she has been actually listening when I tell her I’m really worried about finishing my thesis and getting my degree, how I need the time off this week to put together a solid chunk of work. How I really need her to be understanding right now. I expect her to be there though. Her world is the only world. Merle has vacation and she’ll expect me to drop everything and spend the whole time with her. If I draw a hard line and resist, we’ll fight. She’ll cry, and I’ll melt and cave. I really don’t know though. I have no clue where we’re at. Chaos is my reality. March is looking primed to be a fun month. And by fun I mean excruciatingly painful.

Ohhhh oww ow ow. My head is killing me. The Advil does nothing! Something positive, I actually wrote part of my thesis today. 650 words. Not much, but a good, solid two-page double spaced introduction on which I can build. I would still be working on it if my head didn’t keep exploding. I cleaned my whole apartment today too. Head to toe. Dishes, dusting, sweeping, mopping, tub and toilet scrubbing, Xmas decoration taking downing. All kinds of good stuff, I did it to early 1970s funk too. I wonder if Mr. Clean has anything to do with this migraine. Ahhhh it hurts. I had more to write but I quit. I’m going to lie down in the darkness and moan.

Chicken little is back and he’s mellowed. My situation isn’t much better, my mood just naturally shifted. I was able to channel some of that nervous energy positively before coming down. I also did buy all those power bars and that case of Red Bull (which is surprisingly tasty, like cherry kool-aid.) As always, I found some solace in music. The Life Aquatic soundtrack is very calming. The new Stereophonics album is well done too. I give it a gold star of goodness. The one thing I haven’t cut back on has been exercising since I think it actually helps my energy level. I use the cardio room on campus where you have to reserve cross-trainers for use in thirty minute blocks. Everyone (except me) always cheats on the reservation sign-up sheets. Last time I went, “Bjorn” had reserved one thirty minute block, left a ten minute space and then re-reserved the same machine for another 30 minutes. There were no other time slots so I signed up for the open ten minutes and then wrote my name darkly overtop the first twenty minutes of Bjorn’s second block. So on the schedule sheet for cross-trainer #7 it was Bjorn for thirty minutes, then me for ten minutes, and then for twenty more minutes
Me darkly superimposed over Bjorn. So Bjorn was currently on his first time block on the machine, pumping away furiously. I got on an exercise bike to warm up and eye him until his time was up. Bjorn’s time ended and he got off and I took over (after I wiped his Nordic cooties off). The cardio room is mirrored all around so I was able to watch Bjorn go check the reservation clipboard and quickly swing his head around to me with an angry expression. Ha ha, that’s right, I overwrote you!

Obviously his plan had been to monopolize it for a whole hour. No one ever signs up for just a ten minute block. I could tell he was fuming. He got onto an exercise bike and kept looking over at me with a sour grapes face (I pretended not to notice). So my first ten minutes ended and if there was going to be a confrontation, it would be then. Bjorn got off of his bike and started to approach. I wanted to look as intimidating as possible so I put on what I hoped was a nasty, frightening scowl. I was listening to 1980 music. “Pat Benatar – Heartbreaker” was playing on Luna, something with at least a little edge. It would have been difficult to muster a good scowl if “Abba – Super Trouper” or “Lipps Inc – Funkytown” was playing. Anyway, Bjorn got close, looked right at me and….dropped his eyes and walked right by! Yeah!!! Woohoo! Triumph! Score one for the mean face. I wonder if that made any sense.

I don’t like the term quarter-life crisis. I think it’s too cute for the turmoil I’m going through. I’m experiencing pressure from too many different sources. I’ve been flirting with the idea of quitting my job. Forty hours a week in addition to full-time student commitments is an obstacle. It is during nights too. I am always run so ragged. I am meeting the most minimal of obligations right now. I don’t know if I will get my honors degree. My parents would still be proud if it was just a general BSc. but I would feel ashamed. So today, in my zombie like state I was thinking about which movie characters best represented certain people in my life. For Merle I settled on a cross between Butch’s girlfriend in Pulp Fiction (who ponders her pot belly) and Glen Close’s Fatal Attraction character.

For myself I had a hard time. It is difficult to pin down my personality. I consider myself an introvert, however if you posed this question to a few people who knew me they would laugh and disagree. Growing up, I didn’t have anything that really defined me but I floated between many worlds. I played hockey and soccer in organized leagues; football, golf and skiing for fun. I camped, rode my dirt bike and did lots of fishing. At the same I played tons of Role playing video games, was a precocious and frequent reader, did well scholastically and hung out with some pretty “nerdy” kids. In high school it was more of the same, seemingly half of the time I would sit with the dorkiest clique and talk about Universities, software programs, school marks, scholarships, anime, comic books, science fiction, rpg’s etc. Then the other half of the time I would sit at the other table and it was always girls, sports, music and snowmobiles. I was always the quiet guy at either table, contributing now and then, just happy to be around and included. I didn’t hate high school, I don’t look back with any nostalgia though either. I skipped a ton of class. I’m still proud that I was able to do that and make high marks.

In University it was more of the same I suppose. I played less sports, had a social awakening and marks that oscillated year to year from excellent to really barely hanging on. My transcript is hilarious. I have years with failures and prevailing mediocrity back to back with years filled with eighties and nineties. Coming off two of my excellent Dean’s list years, I returned home to work in a paper mill on a rewinding machine with guys who didn’t have their grade eight education. I received a different kind of education there. One of the guys was so perverted, weird and sexually… aberrant. Still I worked hard and got along great with everyone there and it was a lot of fun.

Even now at my job as a concierge, I feel like an odd gateway between two classes of society. The residents see an up and coming young man, studying exciting topics and seemingly full of optimism and drive. I often have long conversations with professors and big cheese investment guys. I sometimes chat with an MPP and the publisher of the National Post too. At night, I also talk with the guys who deliver the papers, the cab drivers and tradesmen and delivery people. They see just another schmoe working the nightshift for peanuts. I feel at home in both worlds. Duality seems to be the ongoing theme of my life.

My marks were so hideously bad in my first year of University I only had one viable choice for major, Biology. So I took it. In what was supposed to be my final year of undergraduate, I realized, “I don’t like this. I want to do something else.” So, I evaluated my options and asked myself what I would prefer and I thought maybe programming was it. Something that should be a big future industry with much opportunity. And now here I am again, three years later repeating to myself, “I don’t like this. I want to do something else.” The point being that I don’t know what the hell I want to do with my life. What I would really enjoy. What I would have passion for. Seven years of undergraduate allowed me to sample widely from many disciplines. Philosophy, psychology (child and abnormal were fun), history, english and of course all the sciences that made up my major focus. So I am not a science student that is ignorant of the arts and social theory. I don’t devalue these disciplines, a tendency I occasionally notice in my peers. Objectively, I would have to say I enjoyed history the most. Too bad I didn’t discover that until my fifth year.
I guess here is where I should tie it up with a profound statement of how there is no place for a non-specialist. How I need to find a specific talent and latch onto it instead of the drifting search I am perpetually afloat in.

Oh yeah.. I settled on John Cusak in High Fidelity as the closest match to me. I identify with him, maybe that’s why it’s one of my favorite movies. I know I didn’t justify this, I didn’t even talk about my character, mostly just social roles. Oh well. Right now, I feel like watching Drugstore Cowboy. Actually I feel like living Drugstore Cowboy.