I'm going to discuss various events that have happened over the course of the past few days, which I hadn't gotten around to talking about here. Despite being unemployed (or perhaps because of it), it seems like there's so much happening in my life these days that it's hard to keep up with all of it in these writings. Here goes another attempt.

On Thursday evening, my mom stopped by. She had exchanged the birthday gift she had tried to give me back in July for one that I was able to use. Seems like that was eons ago. (Back then, she had tried to get me a game for my Cube, but had inadvertently given me an N64 game.)

So Thursday, after calling, she comes over and presents me with Burnout. A GameCube car racing game, which I could put in and play immediately. My mom is officially Cool. :)

On Friday, I got more large doses of sleep. Thought about trolling for job applications, but decided that I could put that off a bit. At this point, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go for the position at Wild Oats. (And by "go for", I mean, put my heart, soul, and spirit into getting one of the open positions there, even if I only plan to work in it for 4 to 5 months. I intend to tell these advance plans to whoever makes the hiring decisions.)

I spent the majority of Friday afternoon cleaning out my Mozilla bookmarks file. Years of legacy cruft in there. In a way, it's kind of fun, because you discover all sorts of web pages from long ago that you had forgotten all about.

Sometimes, it can also be depressing though. It's awful find a bookmark for a once-cherished page, only to try to load it and get, "404. File Not Found." Or worse, a generic company logo with the words "This domain is now for sale!"

Funny thing is, despite working through my bookmarks for almost the entire afternoon, I'm still not done yet. TONS of old bookmarks. Yikes. But I did make significant progress.

Friday evening. Went to my favorite night club hangout. Covered that in my last entry.

Saturday morning. Late Saturday morning, after a late wake up. My parents (well, mostly my mom) took me out to breakfast. That was really nice. Good breakfast. Of course, parents being parents, I think they also had something of an alterior motive: Inquiring about my future employment possibilities. I told them my plans about possibly getting a job at Wild Oats (or another service industry job if that fails), and part time contracting on the side for buildmeasite.

Surprisingly, they didn't seem particularly worried about my ability to procure employment or support myself, as I might have suspected based on past experience. They were satisfied with my response that I was absolutely burned out with the corporate software world, and wanted a change of pace for a few months. (More on that in a bit.)

I suppose the fact that I'm no longer living with my parents, or relying on them in any way for day-to-day survival, could be a factor in their lack of anxiety regarding the loss of my job.

I wouldn't move back in with them. Either of them. Even if I found the job market totally dry, I'd rather sleep on the ground next to Pearl Street. The reasons for this are twofold: (1) I don't want to mooch off them anymore, and (2) I just don't think I could stand it. They're nice people, but I wouldn't want to live with them. Not now. My self-assessment tells me that emotionally, I am much healthier now than I was a year ago, in part due to the fact that I don't occupy the same living space that they do.

After breakfast on Saturday morning, they invited me to go on a hike with them. With some degree of hesitation, I decided to accept.

We went way up, to the hiking trails near Brainard Lake. It's an awesome area. Truly.

On that hike, a couple of somewhat scary epiphanies occurred.

1. My comfortable hiking pace is now far faster than theirs. I mean, it may have been that way to a small extent for a long time, but this time, it was ridiculous. I found it difficult to force myself to slow down to their speed.

2. Their conversation reminded me of Jerry Seinfeld's parents. Truly. This may be funny, but it is also a bit traumatic. Endless discussions about the most trivial of mundane items. I'm trying to think of a specific example, but... It's failing me. You know what I mean though. At least I hope so.

(The really funny thing about Seinfeld is that everybody in the cast engages in discussions about meaningless frivolity. And I admit, that's what I'm doing now too. So I guess it's all a matter of perspective.)

After a few minutes on the trail, I decided that I would go ahead on my own. My parents are fine hiking by themselves (they're not that old), and I didn't feel like walking with them. They seemed quite content to chatter among themselves. I wanted to get a little real exercise. So I did.

I pursued a moderately vigorous pace up the trail to lake Isabella, which took about 40 minutes from the trail head. Once there, I found a rock in the mostly dry lake basin, and took a nice rest under the afternoon sky. Surrounded by the beauty of nature, I took out my disc player, and put on a little Artefact.

After about 20 minutes, I decided to turn around back down the trail to see if I could meet my parents. I journied all the way back down to the trail head, and never saw them. Hmmm...

Oh well. Still nearly an hour until the agreed upon meeting time.

So I went back on the trail, and took the loop around Long Lake.

By the time I finished that loop, it was nearly 18:00. Time to meet. So I decided to wait for them at the trailhead.

I waited...

And waited.

And waited.

I knew that if I tried to venture back up the trail, there would be a good chance that I take a different fork, and miss them, so I kept waiting.

At about 17:10, the sun was going behind the mountain, so I decided it was time to go looking. I put my shoes back on, and proceeded up the trail.

Less than 50 meters, and there they were, walking steadily back to the parking lot.

Well, just as I thought, based on our talking, they had taken the same trail I had. They thought that maybe they would catch up with me. Apparently, they passed me without knowing it while I was resting at the lake basin. Based on the evidence, they kept going up toward the pass, while I went down to try to meet them.

I was frustrated at having to wait, but... I guess that's what I get for wandering off by myself. They assumed that since they never saw me, I must have been far ahead of them. Eventually, they concluded that I wasn't to be found, and headed back to the car anyway.

Ho hum.

So anyway, I got back home at around 21:00, answered the small pile of email that had accumulated in my inbox, and promptly went to bed. I slept like a log.

Sunday morning. Well, I woke up briefly. Then went back to sleep again. 0800 is too early. :)

At 10:00, I woke up, and found that Yanthor, who had unsuccessfully attempted to contact me about a Quake 3 match the previous afternoon, was again ready to play Sunday morning.

I logged into Chiana, we started a talk session, and after some discussion about various random things, we got a game going.

After playing a couple matches, it occurred to me that Zan Lynx might also like to play. (He is by far the most skilled Q3 player among our group.) I attempted to call him on his home and cell numbers, and reached him on his cell. He was not at home, and so wouldn't be able to join.

After a few more games with Yanthor, I got a call from Zan Lynx. It turned out that his club had been canceled, but since he was in town, he wondered if he could come hang out at the Castle Lair for a while. This sounded like a fine idea to me.

After he arrived, he gave me coaching and tips in my Q3 play, which proved to be so immensely helpful that it pretty much upset the scales during the last couple of games. I went on a rampage. Love that rocket launcher. But the plasma with quad damage... Whew! Oh yeah! Carnage everywhere.

After the Q3 session, I showed Zan Lynx the Burnout game on the cube. We played a few races. A most entertaining game. It's also amusing that the game records scores for "Worst Drivers". Zan Lynx managed to get the top spot in that list.

After a few games of that, I started to feel really sleepy. I let Zan Lynx play the one player Championship game, and declared that I would be taking a nap, and he could play what he wanted while I was asleep. (In some situations, I would consider this to be a rude thing to do with a guest present. If I had specifically invited people over for an event, for example, it would be very rude. But since he had more-or-less invited himself -- which I didn't mind, I enjoy the company; otherwise I would have declined the self-invitation -- I decided it would not be out of line for me to wander off and sleep for a while.)

I must have slept for around an hour. I woke up feeling refreshed and revitalized.

Zan Lynx was still playing Burnout. He had surpassed the first set of championship courses, opening up new levels to play. I think he had surpassed my skill at the game as well. (I had only played the game a total of maybe an hour or two prior to his visit.)

A few minutes after I woke up, at 17:00, Zan Lynx decided it was his official departure time, and left. Oh, and he repaind the $1 he had been owing me. Heehee.

Afternoon ends, evening begins.

I find myself again questioning the events of the past two weeks. I may have been wrong in some assumptions I made about certain people at my former workplace. Maybe, or maybe not. I don't know. Either way, the whole thing leaves me with a very disillusioned view of some of the people I thought I knew while I was there.

Word on the grapevine is that the person I thought I was emailing two weeks ago is again employed at my former company. That's just rumor, mind you. I don't know anything. (The last sentence is true on so many levels, you have no idea.)

I have to accept the real possibility that nobody's email identity was ever forged. I have to recognize that it is possible (again, I don't know) that the person I thought I was emailing did indeed receieve my message, and decided to turn me in, without saying a word to me about it. I never thought that this was somebody who would ever do that, but now, I really have no idea. I don't know one way or the other anymore.

Frankly, I'm sick of trying to figure it all out.

I talked to him briefly on his cell phone after I had been fired. If he had seen the message I had sent to a "yahoo" account, he gave no indication of it. But then again, I didn't ask about it explicitly. I thought for sure that if he had read it, he would have made some mention of it. But maybe not.

Regardless of what the real "facts" are, I am more glad than ever to be out of that place, even if that means it's gotten a little harder to pay the rent.

Yeah, maybe the problem is with me. I was strongly advised, shortly before being escorted out of the building, to seek help. Maybe it was good advise.

"And BTW, your health coverage runs out at the end of the month. Oh, and there's no severence pay for people who have violated company policy. Go see a mental doctor. And have a nice day."

Yick. Cry me a fuckin river. I've got all the professional help I need, thanks.

Anyway, I'm just venting bitterness at this point. I guess that's healthy up to a certain degree. One does have to get past it eventually, though.

I'm gonna jam for a little bit, try to get my apartment a little more straightened, and maybe look at one or two of those books Nemo sent me. I had been planning to peruse those last week, but.... so much happens. And so little. Anyway... At least I opened the package. :)

That's my life up to this point. Put in writing. Deal with it. Peace.