1. coughing up a lung (I’ve been fighting a cold for the past 7 days).
2. sinking up to my eyeballs in paperwork and endless tasks, getting my building reading to open for the semester.
3. trying to get my server back up and running. Everytime I try to move my server, I end up screwing up the network configuration and then have some other random problem pop up that baffles me and consumes all my time and attention. This time, I hadn’t realized that one of my partitions had gotten full, which was keeping me from being able to receieve mail (even though that gets stored on another partition) and my server logs from updating. But every time I’ve had a problem I’ve eventually figured it out and learned new mad *nix skills (this time, I learned the power of “df -h”). It’s just a good thing that I don’t do this for a living and didn’t screw up a mission-critical server.

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Back in November, our local Walmart started carrying Homedic tabletop fountains. Our dean of students has one in her office and it is very soothing. I wanted to get one for my apartment, but I decided to wait and see what I could find over break in Chattanooga. At every store I went to, they only sold the same brand of fountains — so, I figured I’d wait and just buy one when I returned to Kirksville. Of course, I went to the Walmart yesterday and they stopped selling them — driving me once again to shopping online to get what isn’t available in this retail vacuum I call home.

Rather than buying a finished product, I’m toying around with the idea of buying some kind of kit and build my own unique fountain. But then I stop and think about how hella-busy my January is going to be and I worry I’ll never get around to actually doing it.

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Real-life X-files. “Astronomers who took over an abandoned spy base find remarkable, expensive and often incomprehensible stuff at every turn.”

If the military wants to continue protesting decreasing funding, maybe they should stop buying $750 wrenches and other such extravagent purchases.

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Would you believe I had a Y2K+1 bug in my weblog code that prevented any entries from being seen? Only me.

Happy New Year!

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There is no entry #824.

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What did I do for New Year’s Eve? I secreted myself up into my brother’s room (who was conveniently out for the night) so that I could watch the QAF marathon on Showtime – ready the whole time with one finger on the remote to change the channel in case I should hear my mother on the stairs, coming to check on what I was doing (yes, I know I’m pathetic).

I was prepared to hate it. As I’ve written before, I’m often very critical of the “gay culture” and don’t feel like I fit in. I was prepared to write off the show as too narrowly focused on the buff, beautiful, bar-going segment of the gay (male) community.

Funny thing is, I loved the show. I saw much more of myself in the characters of Ted and Michael than I expected to. And I saw many facets of the gay men I’ve know in all the characters. Even if it didn’t 100% reflect my existance (how could it? Downtown Pittsburg is like a foreign country compared to rural Missouri), it felt closer than just about any other depiction of gay life I’ve even seen on the big or small screen.

I especially identified with Ted, the ordinary shlub who
had retreated from pursuing real realtionships because of feelings of inadequacy and turned to the internet. That’s a pattern I noticed in myself before I even moved to my current rurual town. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I agreed to take this job and move here? I’ve often uncomfable around other gay men, terrified about what I say or do least I embarass myself. Now I don’t have to worry about it, becaus e I don’t have have any gay friends in Kirksville.

Anway, I’m glad my mom didn’t catch my watching the show. That would have been a little embarrasing and not at all the way I’d want my homosexuality to be acknowledged. I should have come out to my parents a long time ago (if I can be out on a job interview, why can’t I be to my folks?), but part of me just keeps waiting for my Mom to force the issue, the way that Justin’s mother did.

I just don’t think I’d want my mother to watch the show, lest she get wrong impressions about what my life is like. But I guess I’d rather her watch QAF than most of the other sterotypical gay roles on TV and in film — my mom and I caught Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality the other day, which had (of course) depictions of fey male pagent consultants and militant lesbians.

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