I just looked at myself in the mirror as I was brushing my teeth and I look like doodie. I guess I have time to be tired now that my ma is back home. My sister told me I looked even worse earlier in the day.

A friend at Portland State told me he got his car broken into. But, as he mentioned, it’s not the worst thing that could happen. Then I was thinking about all the time I spent waiting in the doctor’s office today, and in the x-ray lab, and how that didn’t bother me either. What did bother me was that my mom’s chronic cough had gotten worse, and she saw some blood in her sputum. Well, the doctor had a calming demeanor, and thought things were probably fine. Knock on wood.

I thought I was missing some of my CDs, so I finally asked my ex-girlfriend if she had them. She told me she had my Journey and New Order CDs, but denied having Rick Astley and Robbie Nevil. Let’s see, it’s now 2003, and we broke up in 2001, so she’s had them for at least two years. The worst part is, she denies having Rick Astley and Robbie Nevil!

I figured out I was missing CDs because I ripped all my CDs a second time. My hard drive was close to full and AAC files took less space. I ripped all my CDs because I’m still imagining the day I get an iPod. Ah, my fantasy world where I have a job or a rich girlfriend buys me an iPod. In the real world, I only have an ex-girlfriend who has stolen my Rick Astley and Robbie Nevil CDs.

My ma is visiting Japan and she’s bringing back presents. My sister, the favored one, is going to get a fancy digital camera, and I’m getting — wait for it — a pen. I bet I’m going to get a $5 “Hello, Kitty” pen. And from what I hear, the camera was hard to find and had to be purchased at full retail. For a Sony camera, that has to be expensive.

Why do I need a pen when I have the ultimate pen already?

So I wonder what people are thinking when they park. If you hit someone’s car, you should — at the very least — move your car away so it doesn’t look like any damage was your fault.

This actually happened on the 31^st. The kids at the grade school have a Hallowe’en parade for the grandparents and, by the make of the car, I’m guessing it was a grandparent. Oh, well. No real harm done.

My car was initially a magnet for trouble. Once I was parked on a slight incline and was hit by a pickup truck. The pickup was parked in neutral, with no emergency brake set. Later, I was hit by someone in front of a rap studio (next door to my ex-girlfriend’s place) and a crease was put in my door.

Knock-on-wood, I hope that’s all over.

I can’t believe I actually filled up my hard drive with all my ripped CDs. At the moment I’m re-ripping them with AAC because my time’s worth less than the cost of a new hard drive in my laptop. I suppose I could always buy the iPod I said I’d buy myself for my graduation present, but as I said before, no job and no rich girlfriend mean no iPod.

Most of the entry level jobs I’m looking at are really entry level and don’t require any degree. For that reason, they figure I’m just throwing in my résumé for no reason and they don’t respond. I got one response today, finally, after about twelve tries. They warned me about the pay, but I’d like to find out what the job is before I pass it by. Unfortunately, it’s another sysadmin job, and it probably entails after-hours work, keeping servers running 24×7, getting yelled at by everyone, etc. I’d much rather have one of the other two jobs I’m looking at: postal carrier and gas meter reader.

Wish me luck.

I have trouble getting to sleep sometimes. After initially falling asleep, I’ll immediately have some odd dreams and wake up. Often the dreams go awry and I’m in some nightmare that isn’t frightening from any rational standpoint, but does wake me up and keep me from falling asleep for a while.

It was worse when I was in high school. I’d have a recurring dream where there was a bright light outside my room, and I’d know it was some sort of UFO. And I couldn’t wake up right away. I’d keep dreaming that I woke up but still be in another level of the dream, with the UFO still outside the window. The worst experience was when I woke up, really woke up, and looked through the window just as LifeFlight was landing a helicopter in the park a block over. As the helicopter passed overhead, I just about jumped through the window.

I guess I’m not the only one with problems with nightmares when I first fall asleep. There are cases where people feel the Night Hag sitting on their chest and sucking out their breath. This is something that I even heard about in a psychology class.

Last night I had a more run-of-the-mill nightmare. A guy was breaking in through my window, and I had to try to convince him to leave, and to leave what he took. He had chiseled away part of the window. I remember thinking the best part was that I need to replace the window anyway. But I couldn’t get the guy to leave, and he was in my bedroom. I woke up with a stomach-ache.

Well, it’s almost time for sleep to see if I have some more interesting dreams. Like maybe a third annoyingly useless one about a particular woman who already has a boyfriend. Oh, well, too sleepy to write more sensibly.

My buddy Il and I went out to a dark area on Sauvies Island, just north of Portland to try and see the Aurora Borealis. What we saw were a lot of stars and some headlights. Not much else. We kind of gave up after discussing our mutual disappointment in viewing the Leonid meteor shower and most comets. Hyakutake kicked ass but, I’m sorry, the rest of them were lame.

Il usually tries to get me to see some naked women on our travels, which is quite easy since Portland is supposed to have more strip clubs per capita than any other city in the US. But tonight he decided he’d rather build up points on his online Star Wars™ game than see nekkid women. I’m actually a big fan of letting my imagination do more of the work and very often I’m frightened by what I see in the strip clubs. In any case, I wanted to get home and install the latest version of Mac OS X (Panther) on my computers.

So, we’re perverts, but we’re much bigger geeks.