Free Cell

You may have played it. I know that I have. Recently, I've been ill, and I've rediscovered it.

To describe to you just how numbingly involving this game can be, I'd have to crawl into your head, sever all of your ties to reality, and then massage your brain with a scrub brush.
I've spent perhaps 10 hours in the last week playing this game.
It tracks my percentage of wins/losses, though I never manage to keep it higher than 85%-90%.

The "Help" section of the program states that: "It is believed (although not proven) that every game is winnable."

I felt that I was getting really good at the game, and was starting to wonder just how good I could get. If I was careful enough, and only played the game when I wasn't tired, could I eliminate enough of my own errors to win every time? Is that even possible?

That bothered me, so I decided to find out. The day I decided to do so, I didn't have internet access, so I had to figure this out without research.

Hypothesis: All possible initial arrangements of the deck can lead to a win.

Ok. From that, I set out to prove how one could win every game, but that soon became a formulation of tactics, which I already know that I don't have enough of a mastery of to be able to win every time. It began to seem impossible to prove that every game could be won.
Then I remembered that there are very few situations in which I lose, and realized that it would be much simpler to imagine a game which could not be won, if that were possible.

Challenge: Find an initial arrangement of the deck in which no win is possible.

The picture at the top of this post is what I came up with.

1. If the aces cannot be freed, the game cannot be won.
2. Picking up any four cards will not free an ace.
3. Every card is at least four cards away from its top or bottom mate (the number before or after it of opposite color).
4. No more than three cards can be brought to a top mate before a no-win situation is reached.
5. The only movements that allow three cards to move to their top mates, do not free any aces.
6. The aces in this initial arrangement of cards cannot be freed, so this is an arrangement that cannot be solved.
7. If this arrangement is included as a possible game in Free Cell, then there is at least one game of Free Cell that cannot be won, therefore:

It is not possible to win every game of Free Cell.

I'm sick.

I woke up last Tuesday with a sore throat, feeling a little low on energy. No big deal, I stayed up till 2am writing and playing the god forsaken hellspawn that is Freecell (I recently rediscovered it; it has plagued me before. (I'm also reading: "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves." How's my punctuation?)).

Wednesday morning I woke up with a more painful sore throat. Nose, not so stuffy, but I felt something hibernating in the center of my head. Going outside and doing things proved to be confusing and exhausting. I left my home for only 3 hours, but when I returned home, I wanted a full body massage and mineral bath.
Instead, I played Freecell for a little while, then remembered that doing that is an abysmal waste of time and played Starcraft instead.
Later that night, I went out to the grocery store and bought a bulb of garlic and a can of cream of chicken soup. And some Ho-Hos. I was craving them.
That night I crushed the whole bulb of garlic into the soup and heated it until it was warm, leaving the garlic mostly raw. It took me an hour to eat it, so I watched a movie while I did so; "In the Realms of the Unreal". I cried afterwards.

Thursday morning, I woke up, barely. I was quite definitely sick. The garlic I had consumed the night before had had the necessary effect; it made me smell really funky. I spent Thursday in a dizzy, woozy fog. I went to an art store and bought things. My nose dripped like a little kids, though I managed to keep from tasting boogers, except for what slid down the back of my throat from constant and painful snorting. That night, I watched a movie with a friend and drank two beers and smoked. Why did I do that? I got really dizzy because my ears clogged up like thick corks. I ate another bulb of garlic that night, but I accidentally cooked it until it was palatable because I was distracted by playing Freecell.

Friday I had to go to work. I bought Dayquil. It's changed. They removed the psuedoephedrine, and replaced it with phenylephrine. Sure, if you just glance at the active ingredients, it looks similar, but my beleaguered immune system knows the difference. It was nearly as assaulted and oppressed by chemical stimulants as I had hoped. Phenylephrine is a poor substitute for the crack-esque mania of psuedoephedrine. America is a country flushing down a sewer; freedom does not exist.

I think today is Saturday. I'm having trouble breathing and swallowing.
I'm getting better.
I told my supervisor that I had food poisoning today, asking to go home early. Then I felt bad and told him that the food I'd eaten hadn't poisoned me, but only tasted bad. Then I explained that I really was feeling quite ill, and that I'd like to go home 20 minutes early if I please please may; I feel like passing out. He let me go! That allowed me to spend the 20 minutes that I might have spent drearily rasping nearly obsolete questions and statements at people I'd rather not meet, typing this instead.

I'm going to go home now and play some Freecell.

There was a

device that existed to send messages. Two people had helped me to create it, and were now telling me that, in order for the messages to be effective, I had to put my heart into it.
I unbuttoned my shirt and opened the skin on my chest with my index finger. I pulled my heart out of my chest, a strange sensation, an emptiness opening inside of me; though it came out easily.
I placed my heart into the machine, and it began to work. We discussed the machine, and they showed me how it could be used.
After a while, I began to feel a numbness in my legs and arms. I realized it came from removing my heart from my body and felt concerned. I retrieved my heart from the machine and looked at it. I wasn't sure which way was up. I stared for a few seconds more, chose a direction, and inserted it back into the hole in my chest.
Presently, the numbness faded, to my relief.

I'm Fucking Hilarious

My co-worker was telling me about a meal she was preparing to cook later that night.
She was asked for advice on how to cook a certain piece of meat.

"My roommate was a really good cook, but she's gone now, " she said to me.

"Has she passed on?"

"No, she just went to Bermuda."

"Oh, that's what my mom said about my grandma."

Disconnected

I currently don't have internet access, which is partially why this hasn't been updated in awhile. I'm not sure that I even want to have internet access in my home. I've noticed that I can spend hours just reading news stories, and suddenly my morning has become my afternoon, bleeding into evening, once I've showered and eaten. Maybe it's better for me to only encounter it once in awhile, then my access is short and to the point.
I'll see.

To anybody who reads this, thanks for reading.

I'll start this up again, once I absorb it into a new routine.

Rain falling on an absence

I just spent a week in Wisconsin, camping in the forest and eating cheese curds. Consequently, the time leading up to the trip, and the time spent re-adjusting to city life has put a gap into the maintenance of my blog.

So here is some filler for that gap. Think of this as the insulating foam of my sequentially arranged thoughts.

Today's foam is my first poem written in Japanese.

一番目の日本の詩

背中が痛いですから
川へゆっくり歩いて行った。
雨が降り始めた。
私は雨に『何をするか』と聞いた。
雨は何も言わなかった。

Ichiban me no nihon no shi

Senaka ga itai desu kara
kawa yukkuri aruite itta.
Ame ga furi hajimeta.
Watashi wa ame ni "nani o suru ka?" to kiita.
Ame wa nani mo iwanakatta.

(my) Japanese Poem #1 (or First Japanese Poem)

Because my back hurt
I walked slowly to the river.
Rain began to fall.
I asked the rain: "What are you doing?"
The rain said nothing.

somethings in the something... daaaa da daaa

I acquired a song today while I was working. Unfortunately, I don't know the title or artist that sung it, and it is only in my head. I'm not even sure I have the lyrics right; I only know how it goes. I can sing two lines from it:

"[Something's] in the [bedroom], where we [lay].
The [moon] is always [over], when you [go away]."

The words in [brackets] are the words that I'm not sure of. Whatever is actually sung does sound somewhat close to to these words though. I've tried googling these lyrics, but I haven't been successful. I know that the version I heard today was a punk cover of the song, with a male vocalist; slightly sped up too.
The original version was popular about 3-6 years ago, I think, and was sung by a female vocalist with a fairly high voice; at a slightly slower speed than the punk version.
I would attach an audio file, but I don't have a microphone.
I should get one.

On the shore

The city is beautiful. It is like a giant shimmering lake of light, encroached upon on one side by a giant shimmering lake of liquid and jello quaking. The buildings tower and I sit still, like a rock on the edge of it. Boats swim and stream along the edges, near the rocks where I am one, and the water rushes in their wake; disturbed like a cup of soup in a shaky hand. The wake creates waves, rushing out ponderously from the boat's path. The path can be seen in the light that the city gives off, even when most of it is asleep. The stars barely make a mark in the sky; we are turned in upon ourselves, here in the big cities. The rest of the world and the galaxy and the universe hardly exist, compared to our work schedules and alarm clocks and appointments. The water rushes outward and slaps like a friend at the rocks, where I am one. Mist hovers above the lake, a parting gift from the heat of the day; one that will last through the night till the sun comes around again, coming up over the lake like a great big friend and a great big hug. The night won't last.

Which came first:

the cement sidewalk or chewing gum?

I thought about this this afternoon while I sat at a table outside of an ice cream shop. I was looking around at the cement and noticed oh so many irregular black stains on the concrete. Each one was unique, and represented an individual wad of spent, cast away bubble gum. So many! So much history! These smears and stains seem to last as long as the concrete does.
Was there ever a time when concrete walkways were relatively pristine, and free of gum smears? How recent is this epidemic of gum graffiti? Was there a crackdown on this sort of litter shortly after chewing gum was invented and people started to notice the problem? How quickly did it get out of hand? Or have cement sidewalks always been this way, the invention of chewing gum having preceded the sidewalk?
When I think about cement, I think about the Greeks and the Romans. I believe that one of them created it, so cement walkways have probably been around since then. As for chewing gum, I don't know when it was invented. I think in the 1900's. Maybe in the 1800's. I believe it's much more recent.

I decided to do some research when I got back to an internet connection, and this is what I found:

Concrete, as we know it today, was patented in England in 1824 by a man named Joseph Aspdin, and is called portland cement, although the Romans used something in their structures that was very similar to that.

The ancient Greeks chewed a gummy substance called mastiche, which was derived from the mastic tree. The first commercial chewing gum was not produced until 1848, in the state of Maine in North America.

Portland cement began to gain popularity in Europe in the 1850's, but was not manufactured in the US until the 1870's.

The sort of sidewalks that we have today began to appear in the 18 and 1900's.

Conclusion:
It appears that concrete sidewalks began to be crafted in the 1800's, which is also when chewing gum began to appear as a mass produced product in modern society. They seem to have a nearly tandem rate of growth. It seems likely that the occurrence of gum-spotted concrete walks grew along with the implementation of concrete walks so gradually that it was never really recognized as a problem. There seems to have never been a pristine era of gum-free cement.
Even the Romans may have faced the problem of scraping chewed and spent mastiche wads from their cement creations.
In dealing with this question, there seems to be only one apt analogy for me to use:

The chicken?
Or the egg?

Aloes

I opened a bottle of wine tonight.
I went into my kitchenette and opened the drawer to get the corkscrew, but saw the two-pronged cork puller first.
Two posts ago, I related the disastrous events that resulted from my second, and last, attempt to use that cumbersome beast of a bottle opener.
Tonight, I remembered a comment my friend made to me about that attempt: that the third time's always a charm, except that in my case, there seemed to be a negative progression, and that a third attempt would probably kill me.

I was tempted. Believe me, I was tempted, but that's why I kept the thing.
As a reminder, and as an option. It's good to have options.

Earlier today, I exercised another option that I had: to re-pot my poor, overcrowded and suffocating aloe plant.

The big mama plant had sprouted 6 babies in a six inch pot that I had let live over the winter and spring; they grew larger as the weeks went by. A month ago, I had taped a sign to the pot that read: "re-pot me please!".
The sign did not go ignored, but did remain for a month without attention. After the third week, my friend told me:
"You've had that sign up for three weeks now, and you still haven't done it. Give it to me. I've already got potting soil."

I felt badly. I already had a fern that looked like it was dying, and now my friend had berated me for not taking care of my aloe plant. I became resolved, and that resolve took tangible form today. I bought a bunch of pots and cactus/succulent potting soil (with bone meal!) and I must have been feeling ambitious because I bought myself a new little succulent to sit on my window sill as well.

I spread out newspaper over the laminate floor in my kitchenette, and took to separating the mother and babies from their pot with a butter knife. (an incorrect family analogy. doctor and clones would be more apt, but I'll stick to what's more sympathetic for plot purposes) It turned out that I had purchased enough pots for the mother and four of her babies, but that left the two measliest babies lying on the newspaper, their roots bare and unprotected, only tiny bits of black soil clinging to their bodies. I picked them up and put them in the trash.

I turned back to the empty bags of soil and folded them flat to put in the trash as well. In doing so, I saw the two leftover babies lying at the top of the can. They looked forlorn and sad; I felt really badly for them.
I picked them out and laid them on the newspaper and looked around. I still had a small pile of sandy soil from the agave plant that I'd re-potted with the others. The special soil was gone. I scavenged my studio for containers that would have good drainage, but didn't find any until I came back to the garbage and saw the little disposable container that the new succulent baby I'd purchased had come in (also re-potted; I'm a maniac). There was enough soil to put one of the babies into that pot. I used a ziploc sandwich baggy as the drain tray for it.
That left one tiny, malformed from overcrowding, poorly rooted (it had grown too close to the main stem to form strong roots) aloe baby with no pot and not enough soil left to put it in.
I felt sad for it for a moment, but nothing could be done. I put it into the trash and let go.

I looked over at the others that were freshly re-potted and felt good about them. Two are presents, but the rest are mine. Perhaps I'll try to give one to my neighbor that I so rarely see.

As for now, this glass of wine that I'm drinking (liberated from the bottle with my trusty corkscrew) is for the sad little aloe baby that just couldn't make it.
Bon voyage, my little homie!

Solstice Tooth

I missed the Summer Solstice.
It occurred last Wednesday, the 21st of June, and marked the day of the year with the most sunshine that we're going to get, unless you live on the equator in a tropical paradise (or third world nation), or at one of the two poles and desperately spend all of your time trying to stay warm.
"missed it".
I suppose I didn't really "miss it", although I didn't realize I was experiencing it. I got up early that day and actually saw the sun rise; or evidence of it rising at least, as the sky got lighter around the buildings that constantly surround me here in Chicago. After my sunrise activities, I napped until noon and then went outside for awhile.
I played soccer with an 8 year old boy who has one humorously conspicuous permanent tooth grown in in a gum line recently emptied of baby teeth. He told me that he knew how to drive a stick shift, but that he just wasn't tall enough to see over the steering well. He also told me that he knows 4 languages. I asked what they were. He told me he could speak French, Chinese, and English. Then he stopped to count and told me that he only knew 3 languages.
The disparity between this boy's abilities at the age of 8, and my abilities at the age of 8, are enough to make me question our being of the same species. I'm only 26, and I've already been left behind by evolution...
Regardless of my lack of conscious knowledge of it (which probably has to do with my inferiority to the capabilities of most children; me being a member of a receding species), I had a good Solstice, and I'm glad.

I'm not very fond anymore of most of the holidays celebrated in America. I grew up with Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, and a few others, but I've found that in recent years, even the last few that I found thrilling have been losing their glow.

Last Christmas, I noticed that the Winter Solstice was marked on my calendar. I questioned a few people as to it's meaning and then looked it up on the net. Least amount of daylight in the year (for my hemisphere) and the first day of winter. Oh... neat. It represents death, but also renewal, as the days get longer from that day forth. And it's governed by the rotation of the earth around the sun, not the relatively arbitrary date of the birth of an Important Person that may or may not be a fabrication of necessity, and whose birthdate may have also been politicked in order to better subjugate and assimilate a rival culture.
Screw that shit.
I'd rather mark my time with the planet and share that marking with countless cultures that have erupted and exploded on this globe since the history of man began.

These are my major holidays now: the two Solstices, the two Equinoxes, my birthday, and my Chicagoversary, August 1st, the day I arrived in Chicago.
I like declaring these holidays as my own. They give me something to hold onto and identify myself with when I'm feeling empty and detached from the rest of mankind. They can be cultural anchors for me, when I want them; however, I am finding that I am just as likely to ignore them as I am any of the other holidays, as evinced by "missing" the summer Solstice by three days.
In practice, a holiday is just another day to pick out of the distractions that constantly call for attention; one day is just as important as the next, really.

Clumsy

That is a cork puller. I have one just like it, and had tried to use it, just once, before tonight. I was unsuccessful at removing the cork the one time I tried. Recently, I'd found some instructions and decided to give it another go.
The principle sounds simple. The two blades are gently inserted inbetween the bottle and the cork, starting with the longer blade. When both blades are in, you then slowly pull while turning, and the corks comes out. Simple.

The first time I tried it, I managed to get the blades all the way in, but I also pushed the cork a quarter of the way down. Then, when I tried to pull the blades out with the cork, the blades came out, and only little tiny chunks of the cork came with it. I had to rescue the bottle with a corkscrew. After finding instructions, I realized that I hadn't twisted as I pulled. That must have been the problem.

Tonight:

Firstly, I've been keeping bottles of wine on top of the fridge in my studio. It gets warm up there sometimes; I've noticed that bread molds more quickly when I keep it up there. Heat also pressurizes liquids in airtight containers.
I came home from work and took the bottle down, setting it on the counter: a bottle of Charles Shaw Shiraz. Otherwise known as two-buck chuck. I took a small white glass from my cabinet and set that beside the bottle. I then opened the cutlery drawer and removed the cork puller. I unsheathed the prongs and removed the metal foil from the top of the wine bottle. The foil came off well and neatly; I felt adept, but not for long.
I carefully pushed the longer of the two blades inbetween the bottle and the cork. A very tight fit, but I was able to get it in there. The second one was a little harder. The angle of the cork pulling blades is very strange, as they curve outward. It's difficult to insert both blades. I found that the second was having trouble, and, relying on the sharpness of the tip to find it's own way around the cork, I pushed down with a little more force.

It happened very quickly. There was a very loud popping sound and I felt wine splash all over my face and chest. There was wine in my eyes, and as I stood there, still holding the cork puller in one hand and the bottle neck in the other, I felt it burn into my eyeballs; I blinked stupidly for a moment, staring in offense at the bottle: how dare it?!
The first thing I did was turn on the water at the sink (I was luckily standing next to it) and take off my glasses to wash them, and my face. I put my glasses back on, water dripping, and looked around.
There was red wine everywhere. It was on the counter. There were scattered spots on a few of my clean dishes in the dish rack, as well as in the clean pans that I keep on the range. I cleaned those first. A couple of the drops had made it into my small white glass. There was wine on the floor too, but that was my last worry. There was wine on the white paint on my wall, and I could see it dripping down. I was surprised at how high up the streaks ran as my eyes followed them, ending at the ceiling, and a huge red splotch of wine that was up there, still dripping onto the floor, and me. I wiped the walls down with a sponge, and then dragged my computer chair over to work on the ceiling. The chair wasn't high enough, so I had to climb up onto the counter and sink rim, still wet from the wine and water used to clean it, and balance there in my socks while I scrubbed the ceiling.
I wasn't fast enough. There are faint red splotches and streaks all over the wall and ceiling in my kitchenette.
And my white shirt. It's in a bowl of detergent and hot water, soaking, but I have little hope for it.
Me, I finally came back to my bottle after all the cleaning. A cork floated at the top. I had to use a butter knife to push the cork away to let the wine flow out. I'm drinking it right now.

And I'm going to keep the cork puller. It's done me wrong, but the top portion is a really wonderful beer bottle opener. I thought about throwing it away, but no; I'll keep it around as a reminder to never use a cork puller again.

Something totally awesome

I just found that if you search for "lunatic" and "nate" in google, my blog is the third result down.

Also, a search for "nate martin" brings up a first result that is totally not true. Thanks to Kyle for first finding that. Even though he never updates his blog.

hungry?

"$8 for that. That's not bad."
"Yeah, that's a lot of peanut butter."
"Yeah, and I'm going to eat it all tonight."
"You're going to puke."
"Uh-huh. And then I'll eat it again."
"It might be good...no. That's acidic food. Pickles and-"
"My cat does that."
"It's actually a good idea, nutritionally. If you could bring yourself to eat your own feces, you'd need less food."
"That's what college was like."

My simulated life

It seems to me that I spend a lot of time trying to stay happy. Or get happy? Or not feel badly?

I have to sleep. That's first. Very few things can cause me to maintain a sense of peace if I've not gotten enough sleep for several days in a row. I begin to feel paranoid and awkward.

Eating well. I cannot live on ramen alone, and feel good. I've tried. There's got to be some variation for me to feel good. Or decent, at least.

Seeing people.

Not seeing people.

Finding things to do that I find worthwhile. Maintaining that sense of worth in those things. Continuing to do those things.

Not being a waster.

Being a waster.

I just want to feel good about my life, but there are so damn many things crowding for attention, sucking the bad feelings out to blossom like poison fungi. It's so much maintenance.

I used to play "The Sims". I discovered that my roommate at the time had the game, and set it up on my computer. I named my little sim, picked out his look and chose a profession for him. I made him pee and clean himself and get to work on time and sleep and make friends; I even tried to set him up with a female sim that I created to live down the block from him. Then he electrocuted himself, trying to change a light bulb, and died.
I'd never even lost a pet before that.
I got over it, and moved on to the girl down the street and her female roommate. I concentrated on making them go pee and get to work on time and meet friends and dance and talk. I bought them a bookcase with the money they made from working so that they could read and become educated and not electrocute themselves while changing a lightbulb.
They advanced in their occupations and I bought them better appliances to try to make their grooming routines more efficient; it takes so much time to bathe and eat and pee (do sim's poo?). Then they needed to have more friends to advance in their jobs, so I created four more sims using KISS skins that I found on the net and moved the band in on the opposite end of the block from where my first poor sim died of ignorance. Who wouldn't want to party with KISS?
The cops, apparently.
The first time the girls invited the band over, a lady cop showed up at midnight and gave them a ticket for a noise disturbance. I was furious, everyone got upset, and my girls didn't get enough sleep, making them hell to wake up in the morning. How would my government employee ever make and keep 8 friends to fill the requirement to advance to astronaut training if she couldn't even have a small party without the cops showing up to make her feel badly? And why did the cops even show up? The only other houses in my sim neighborhood belonged to a dead guy, the empty house that the KISS guys lived in, and a rich mansion at the far end of town.

At this point in the life of my sims, I stopped for some evaluation. Six months had gone by in my life. I was drinking a lot, and hated my job. I didn't have a girlfriend and often forgot to put the garbage cans out on Sunday night. I wasn't shaving very often.

I was taking care of my sims better than myself.

Fuck.

That bitter revelation was enough to sever my surprisingly weak emotional ties to my sims, and I deleted the program from my hard drive.
A few months later, I moved to a new town and got a girlfriend. I started shaving more frequently and got better about taking the garbage out, and I feel confident that if I can make enough friends out here, I can eventually become an astronaut.

List

Here is a list of things that I keep next to my computer monitor:

Bjork movie: Drawing Restraint 9
Rockie
Die Mommy Die!
Comas + brain study
Hawking - Brief History of Time
Get incense
Draino for sink

Pearl: glass bottles?

I learned some new things

The meteor that hit the Earth 65 million years ago and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs left what is known as the Chicxulub crater off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The crater was formed by a 10-14 kilometer wide meteor impact, and set off an ice age that ruined the dinosaurs, allowing mammals to gradually take over in dominance. I remember hearing about this extinction from my teacher when I was in the second grade and we were studying the dinosaurs.

What I don't remember ever hearing about, is a greater, more complete, extinction that took place much further back in Earth's past.

Apparently, about 250 million years ago, there was an extinction event that killed off almost all life on land and life in water in a very short period of time. Various causes have been suggested, including prolific volcanic activity and a large impact from space.

Very recently, what appears to be an enormous crater has been found in Antarctica. It is about 500 kilometers wide, and would have been caused by the impact of a meteor about 50 kilometers wide. That is a rock five times the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs.
After that enormous smash and die-out, dinosaurs gradually became dominant over the next 185 million years, until they were killed off by the lesser impact, 65 million years ago.
Primates got their chance, and started thriving 60 million years ago, but didn't start walking upright until about 6 million years ago. That was a big leap, as it left our hands free to do things other than move around; things became much more complicated. Homo Sapiens have been around for less than 250,000 years.

The Earth is estimated to be about 4.7 billion years old. Life began over 3.9 billion years ago, according the oldest fossil records, but it was single cellular. Multi cellular life didn't begin until about 1.5 billion years ago.

In about 5 billion years, our sun will have used up all of it's hydrogen and have inflated into a red giant, swallowing the inner planets, including the earth, but we've got less time than that for life as we know it. The sun is gradually heating up as it burns off it's hydrogen, and in about 1 billion years, things will be too hot for water to exist in a liquid state on this planet; bad news for us.

So.

Our kind of life form has been around for 1.5 billion years, and only has another 1 billion years to go. We're over the hump. This is Thursday in the week of perfect evolutionary conditions on this planet. It doesn't get any better than this! We're, "it", as far as this planet is concerned. I suddenly feel much more important.
I need to go to sleep now.
For all I know, tomorrow could be a very big day.

Junk

Tonight, I had a craving for junk food.
I walked into 7-11, thinking about ice cream, and saw nachos.
I grabbed the large container of nachos, and thoroughly drenched them in cheese and chili from the mechanical dispenser.
Then I got a strange snickers brownie ice cream thing, as they didn't have my favorite ice cream cookie sandwich.
I came home, knowing that I needed to do my laundry and go to sleep early, but dug into the cheesy nachos immediately. I began eating them ravenously, but settled into a languid motion of picking and chewing as I finished. I then got my laundry together and down to the machines, came back and ate the ice cream thing.
It was ok. Not wonderful.
Now, my laundry is in the dryer and I feel like junk. I need to suck water and sleep.
Urgh, my freakin stomach feels like lead.

Heat and paint

I noticed that my vinyl shower curtain was limp today, it's plastic slightly warm, a little more pliable in my hands. I intended to take a cool shower, to alleviate the heat of the day, but the water pressure in my building denied me my desired amount of cool water, leaving me with a quite warm shower instead.
I went to the craft store today, so that I could buy materials to paint with. I was recently given three tubes of acrylic paint, and have been itching to use them.
At the store, the woman at the counter where the bags are checked was busy with another customer and told me to check my own bag, pointing towards a free clip with two identical tags locked in it. I felt a small thrill of freedom as I stepped behind the counter with one foot, and attached the clip and one tag to my bag, taking the other tag to put in my pocket.
I shopped for awhile, thinking about the four things I knew I wanted. The first item, they were out of, and the second item, a new pen, they were nearly out of as well. Actually their selection of pens is diverse, but the brand that I like was mostly gone. I settled on blue pen.
Next, I needed a cheap palette and a brush.
Found the palette easily. $.49; I bought two.
The brush took longer. Their brushes cost from $4-$60 and I took awhile finding the cheapest brush that I liked. As the act of painting came tangibly closer to occurring, I decided that I wanted some more color too, and bought two more tubes: ivory black and cobalt violet.
I went back to the counter to pay, and an oriental man was buying a few things. His facial features, hair, and accent seemed Japanese to me, but I've often been wrong before. I watched him pay and thought about asking him. I thought about what I would say to him. Atsui desu ne? (It's hot outside, yes?) Or: Hajimemashite. (Pleased to meet you.) Perhaps he's in a hurry, and I'd put him in a situation where it would be impolite to rush off, but would make him stressed and quick to end any conversation we might have. There's always something to worry about, isn't there?
I felt hungry, and opted to not attempt waylaying him.
He left, nearly forgetting his change, and it was my turn to pay. My bill came to $20, twice what I planned on. Next time, I won't plan.
I accepted my things, declining a bag, as I'd brought my own that was waiting for me behind the counter. I moved to retrieve bag myself, but was disappointed as she beat me to it.
I thanked her, left, and rode the train home.

Hot

It's become hot, here. Very hot, and all at once, coupled with a thick and cloying humidity. I have been dripping sweat for days now. Summer has ensconced Chicago in heat, and I welcome it.
I have a cold beer and a glass of ice water in front of me. At a BBQ last night, I made tequila sunrises for people and napped on a porch after eating a huge meal.
I've been reading Raymond Carver and Stephen Baxter and I just finished an amazing book about pygmies.
Sleeping has become a strange and warm affair since the weather lost the humility that it maintains through the chillier parts of a Chicago spring. My dreams have turned sweaty, and my mornings have been sunny, disconcerting things; my alarm buzzing rhythmically from the direction of creeping sunlight. My dream state has been interrupted too abruptly, two mornings in a row now. The heat slows my mind while the humidity fogs it. I cannot say right now, with exactness, where the dream ends and reality begins. I don't mind it, though. The days and the nights continue. I'll write this and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will wake without an alarm. Good night.