I was so tired last night. Meant to go out for a bit, but could hardly even drag myself to my bed. And all this at 10:00 PM! Very sad.

I feel much more rested now. Good thing; I've slept through boarding calls at airports before, and it's not a pretty sight.

Man, I can be so stupid. I planned out my whole bus trip to the airport last night, ahead of time. Was very proud of myself. In doing so, though, I forgot that buses here have different schedules on weekends than they do on weekdays, and didn't notice that I was looking at a weekday schedule. Turns out that the route I need doesn't run early enough on Saturdays to get me there on time.

Hooray for Alex, who is rescuing me and giving me a last minute ride.

A few awesome links for those of you who missed them the first time around:

• All your base are belong to us!
• I like monkeys.
• Bunny Survival Tests, to determine weaknesses and strengths possessed by "Marshmallow Bunnies".
• PeepResearch.org, to promote the careful study and promotion of Peeps well-being.
• Oolong, the rabbit with a talent for "head performance".
• Windows Haiku Error Messages.
• Fully functional lego furniture. Awesome!
• The Hamster Dance. Remember when dancing hamsters were the shiznit?
• I Will Survive.
• The dancing baby that started it all.
• Strongbad Email. Kickass.
• Buggin' you is easy because you're buggable!
• I can smell your brains.

It's Skuld, bonding with a small flock of birds! Only those of you who knew me back in my ROM days (and know a bit about my home life as well) can understand how relevant I find this picture to be.

I have a doctor's appointment at noon, and I have to fast for the 12 hours before. Already, I am so hungry. I want food. Can't stop thinking of food. Sooooo hungry...

I guess maybe that will make the eating better when I do get to eat?

Today is going to be an awesome day. I can already feel it.

Last night was pretty awesome, too. I'm so happy that Mija came out tango dancing! She's going to kick ass. And aside from the dancing, it was nice just hanging out with her for a bit. She's seemed pretty cool ever since I first met her, but I never had the chance to get to know her too well. There's always been this sort of wall between us, ever since the whole Mike thing. Miles says that he thinks we're both over that, though.

Speaking of fire, I got this gem of an email from Steve:

From: Steve Strauch
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 11:29 AM
Subject: A new recipe

My girlfriend and I made a New Year's resolution to eat in more and as a result, we've been trying to learn to cook. On Monday night we discovered this great new recipe that I thought I would share with you. Best of luck!

Kitchen Fire Pork

1. Begin cooking this recipe only after 11pm when you are tired and neighbors are sleeping
   
2. Add 1 inch vegetable oil to Dutch Oven.
   
3. Mistakenly assume that, to heat the oil to 375 degrees you must put the burner on high for say 5 or 6 minutes.
   
4. Loose track of time preparing the pork.
   
5. Do NOT stir the oil. Allow the surface tension to build as the oil below overheats.
   
6. Place pork on a cookie sheet and walk over to the burner.
   
7. Decide that you want the cookbook with you. Put the pork plate ON TOP of the Dutch Oven, cause pressure to build.
   
8. Return with the cookbook and remove the pork plate from the top of the Dutch Oven, disturbing the surface tension of the oil and injecting fresh oxygen.
   
9. Watch as a flames shoot out of the Dutch Oven.
   
10. Scream "Fire, Fire"
    
11. Irrationally think to yourself... "Since covering the pork helped cause the problem, covering the flaming Dutch Oven will make the fire worse."
    
12. Watch your cabinets catch on fire.
    
13. Run out of the apartment without your cell phone.
    
14. Try to get neighbor to call 911 while she screams at you for making her apartment smell like smoke. Repeat until she shuts up and calls 911.
    
15. Don't notice other neighbor and girlfriend re-entering apartment to try to throw baking soda on the fire.
    
16. Notice when the baking soda causes fire to flare all the way to the ceiling and said neighbor and girlfriend scream and exit the apartment
    
17. Freak out, imagining carnage scenes from Backdraft while level headed upstairs neighbor gets a fire extinguisher from building basement and puts out the fire.
    
18. Wish you were him.
    
19. Meet some cool firemen.
    
20. Call your landlord, who you called only a few days earlier to say you'd be moving out in 3 weeks. Listen to her react calmly as she weeps on the inside.
    
21. Spend next day cleaning soot, extinguisher residue off everything in the house. Enjoy scrubbing kitchen grout with toothbrush.
    
22. Be thankful no one was hurt and damage was mostly limited to kitchen.
    
23. DON'T tell your new coop community about the incident. They can vote you out.

Yes, he did indeed set his kitchen on fire last weekend. Poor Steve! I'm glad to see that he still has his sense of humor.

Listening to tango music while working today was awesome. I loved Le Grand Tango off of Hiromi Uekusa - Cafe 1930, featuring Hiromi Uekusa on cello and Mika Sunago on piano. The cello was absolutely delectable!

I get to see Denver this weekend. Fly out early Saturday morning, fly back Monday morning just in time for work. I'll play in the snow, wrestle around with another dog, and dance lindy and tango with new people. And hang with Ben, who is awesome. And by awesome, I mean annoying and stupid, so don't go getting a huge ego or anything, Benito.

So much excitement, I'm not sure how I can handle it all!

I found a website all about Piazzolla! A million amazing sound clips -- so much good music to listen to. Pure audio goodness. I've been meaning to expand my familiarity with the music. This provides me such opportunity; work will fly by in a haze of tango-inspired productivity, I am sure.

My carpal tunnel has been acting up again. Right wrist and elbow have hurt incredibly ever since yesterday evening. Makes me sad.

And then, last night, I had strange, violent nightmares. Kidnapping and torture and forced mutilation, lots of running and running and running away. Not pretty. I don't know where they came from, but I wish they'd go away.

Riding back from the beach tonight on I5 South, downtown Seattle over Lake Union caught my attention. It was so beautiful. An island of lights, a graceful glittering blanket draped over the skyline. Electrifying.

At the same time, I found myself thinking of what downtown can seem up close. In the heart of downtown, up close and personal, it can be so ugly. All the dank alleys, the dumpsters, the trash on the streets, the boundless cement, the dirt and hustle and bustle of city life everywhere you look.

I wonder if many things are like that -- extraordinarily beautiful if only you can gain the distance and perspective to view them from the right vantage point.

Have you ever wondered about what you'd like done with your body when you've passed on? Ever pondered cremation?

The thought of cremation always bothered me. I've had this body for as long as I've had memory. I can't comprehend existence outside of this body. I can't comprehend an existence that doesn't include me, doesn't include my body. It's a lot to think about, to stomach, to handle.

The thought of death itself is distressing enough. And then to think the form of my body being changed after my death -- this body that I've been so attached to for all of my life -- I don't know. Somehow I always get stuck on that.

But tonight, gazing into the fire, into the flames and the coals -- watching the tree suddenly consumed, its whole being changed, passing into dust and ashes -- watching the chair burn away into nothing, this chair that meant so much and had so many bad feelings and memories attached to it -- it suddenly seemed so much easier to get my head around cremation.

Death is a change of form. The consummation of the fire... it seems almost fitting. Better than rotting away, a slow uneasy transformation. Fire is transcendent. Just watching it is breathtaking. To be a part of it, to be consumed by it, changed, transformed... I don't know. It's almost celestial, moreso than most anything else in my living experience.

You haven't seen anything until you've seen a dead, dry tree explode into flames. It was awesome. Truely one of the most breathtaking things I've seen.

And it was so suddenly hot that it melted holes in Alex's bag, sitting several feet away. Not cool for Alex, but indicative of how amazingly hot and large the fire was all at once. And the fire just consumed the tree -- ate it up. The tree was one thing, and then was transformed so quickly into another plane of being. I've never seen anything burst into flames so explosively or be so quickly consumed by the fire.

I want to burn my tree every year.

I also never want to live in a fire zone. Like in the parts of Colorado that are all dry in the summer and anything can set them off.

I think I've been in too much of a rut lately, seeing too many of the same people, doing too many of the same things. It's like my life has become a script that I've read a million times, a movie that I've seen over and over again, and I always know what's coming up and what the next person is going to say.

Heading out to the beach tonight and then hanging out with Dawn after was cool. Something different, new conversation. A breath of fresh air in a room that's gotten a bit stale.

One of my coworkers accidentally deleted a bunch of stuff from one of my servers today. Get to rebuild it now. Fun.

At least I won't be bored?

And karmicly, I probably deserve it. I did screw up someone else's server half a year or so ago when I first started over there.

It's a cold and drizzly day, but the tree burning is on. And we're going to burn a certain broken chair that's been sitting out on my balcony for almost a year now.

Yes, Mike, you know that chair. We will purge all the badness so that you can move on. Not that you haven't already. Or whatever. You know. I'll save you some of the charred remains if you like.

Yay for bonfires...

Steve says, "If it's meant to work out it will -- none of these things will matter. So don't stress over them."

Ah, Steve. Always a voice of wisdom and reason in this manic whirlwind of confusion and chaos.

I've been breaking my New Year's Resolutions like crazy.

Everything feels good right now, but I'm worried that I'm setting myself up for a fall. Second guessing myself a lot. Thinking that perhaps I need to be better to myself and make choices that, although not what I would wish, might be better for me in the long run.

I hate that. Why can't the choices that are better for me in the long run also be the choices that I am passionately drawn to?

It's settled. Tomorrow will be the Day of the Great Tree Burning.

My Christmas tree has had a lovely run, but it is time for it to go -- and ah, what a way to go! We will have a great bonfire on the beach, roasting hotdogs and marshmallows as the sun sets over the water.

Miles has to be at work earlier than normal this week, so that means we get to carpool.

Bonus! Carpool! I get a ride. Rides get me to work quicker than the bus (no waiting around at bus stops and no campus shuttles). They even get me to work quicker than driving myself (no fighting for parking. finding a spot anywhere near my building is impossible).

On the downside, if I drag my feet it affects more than just me. That means no foot dragging. And I'm so good at dragging my feet. Bummer.

Off to bed now, so that I can be ready for him to pick me up in 7 1/2 hours. Joy.

I was really on at the lindy dance tonight! The last two nights my dancing has been okay, not great -- but tonight, I was feeling it. I was connecting well, moving well, really feeling and dancing the music. It's funny, how every once in a while everything just works. I'm not sure why I can only dance like this every so often -- you'd think that if I could do it once, I could do it always.

I have a blister on my left pinky toe now and my legs hurt in places they haven't hurt in a while. I guess dancing well works my body in different ways than the way I usually dance does. Funny, that.

The tiger dress was a hit too. I like tigers.

A short science lesson for those of you who are less informed:

A sundog is a set of two short rainbows, one on each side of the sun. I used to think that they were caused by extreme cold because they only appeared on the coldest days in Minnesota, but apparently that is not the case. According to one site I found, "Sundogs reveal that the clouds are hosting horizontal plate crystals. These plates drift slowly downwards like leaves with their large faces almost horizontal. [They] are formed when light passes through crystal side faces inclined at 60° to each other."

The IRS has accepted my return! Yay me.