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4-10-03 // 2.10 pm and we will carry war no more NP: Tears for Fears - "The Seeds of Love" This album always reminds me of sitting at Lambert airport in St. Louis two odd years ago, waiting for my flight to go to Dave and Steen's wedding. Since I was frantically alternating between going to work and trying to finish up all of my coursework for various professors, I'd had like three hours of sleep in two days, and I hadn't slept at all the previous night, having left Cape at like 2.30 or 3 o'clock in the morning for my 6.30am flight. It was miserable, especially when that distinctly eastern Missourian fog/mist/haze thing decided to descend on I-55. Between the lack of visibility and my extreme fatigue, it took everything in my power to keep from running off the side of the road. I thought about stopping at a rest area and having a nap, but I feared I'd sleep far too long and miss my flight. So I grabbed a can of a random gross, caffeine filled beverage from a very uncooperative rest stop vending machine and kept on my way. After getting lost in a mess of labyrinthine access roads trying to find a cheap place to leave my car for three days, I was finally in the airport terminal. It was only like 5 in the morning at this point, however, so there wasn't much doing. A Burger King was open, so I scarfed a random breakfast sandwich and some orange juice. I wandered down from the check in area to the general area of my gate. At this point I still had over an hour to kill before I could even get on the plane and get a few moments of shuteye. So I killed the time by listening to this LP several times in a row and by eating a scone and a coffee from Starbucks, it being the only establishment in that entire wing of the airport open that early. Speaking of Starbucks, what exactly is the deal with their coffee? I realize this is generic stand-up comedian fare, but what is their regular, no-frills, no whipped cream, no espresso, no vanilla flavoring, non-fancy coffee called? I occasionally end up trying to buy a cup of regular coffee from a Starbucks and not once have I succeeded in determining which menu item is the plain cup of coffee. So, exasperated, I without fail end up asking the vaguely annoyed looking person working behind the counter "er, I'll just have a, uh, regular coffee, whatever it's called". This is accompanied by me looking sheepish and silly, looking down at the ground while coffee people look down at me. It's embarassing but it gets the job done, and I'm presented with a cup of standard issue black coffee. Anyway, moving on. Today started out as One Of Those Days. The alarm woke me up, and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I was so slow moving getting ready for work, and to top it all off, I checked the balance on my checking account only to discover that due to my own miscalculations last weekend, it was overdrawn, complete with a series of escalating overdraft fees. Those sorts of things always have that terrible cascading effect. Ugh. It'll all be taken care of tomorrow morning, but still, it's annoying and it's basically like wasting money. Then once I got to work, I had to attend this review of someone else's code. It's my job and all, but not something I particularly felt like doing this morning, you know? It's an incredibly nice day out, the kind where wandering back into the office after a lunchtime spent wandering around out amongst the green grass and blue skies feels like volunteering for an extension on a prison term. I'm exaggerating, of course, but I'd love to be outside this afternoon, driving around or something, rather than sitting here at a computer. There are currently two gigantic boom trucks sitting across the street from the front of my office. You know, they're those huge flatbed delivery truck things with the gigantic crane arm attached. I only know what they're called because Ryan S's family owns the local lumberyard in the village where my parents live, and once in a while Ryan and his brother have to drive the things around making deliveries. But yeah, there are two of 'em outside here right now. They always make me think of the time when I was 10 years old and we'd just moved into the house in the aforementioned village, and one of those trucks parked itself in our driveway to deliver roofing tiles, and by the time it pulled away, it had left these big impressions in the blacktop. They're still there to this day, countless resurfacings later, all bumpy and ridiculous to drive over. Erin called a little while, and I think I came off a bit "blah", despite the fact that I was overjoyed to hear from her. Not that I was trying to be low key or whatever, but it was the combination of me being at my desk in the lab (I usually go outside on one of the little patio things to take cell phone calls) and having to be a bit quiet, and my brain just not firing on all cylinders today. Talked to Ryan S at lunchtime, thinking about maybe getting together at some point this weekend, but I'm not sure if our collective schedules will allow it. Oh well, I'm sure if they don't, we'll meet up next week. I'm glad that for the rest of today (and this week, for that matter -- my tech lead will be out of the office tomorrow which translates into a laid back day for me) I won't have much to worry about. Which is good, because I want to get out of here.
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