It should come as no surprise that I accomplished next to nothing on my week off. The most I can point to is upgrading my .NET knowledge from "I have no idea what I'm looking at" to "Hey, is that a clue over there somewhere?"

I'll be making the trip to WV sometime soon. My grandmother is on her deathbed. I don't believe I've spoken to her since the late 80s. We weren't close at all and I'm really only going because my mom asked me to. (And hey, an excuse to go back home is one I'll take.)

Given the way life has been going lately, it'll be hard not to feel a little envy when she's lying there in her casket surrounded by people saying nice things about her that they neither mean nor believe. Some days I think that's gotta be better than dealing with life. Not so much life, I guess, but the other upright biological lifeforms that tend to take up so much time, space and energy while you're coursing through life.

I can't tell you how many people have disappointed me. I'd have to put just about every person I ever met into that category. (Including me!) I'm so sick of it. I feel like I've lowered my standards way down, yet people still find a way to effortlessly lambada under them. If I could just get rid of that part of my brain that expects something good to come out of human contact, I'd be a lot better off.

It's funny - I'm such a hermit and so antisocial, yet there's some small part of me that requires positive human contact. I think you can lump me in with people who hate humans not just for the sake of hating them, just because they expect more from them. I don't know why I expect more from them. I can't help it. I know better than to do it, but I can't help it.

That's reason #257 why I'm trying not to be so analytical and not care so much. Giving up hope is such a neverending process for me. I think I've lost all hope, then a month later I find some behind the couch. It's nice for a minute or two, but it always ends up hurting in the end.

I try to keep things in perspective. We're only human. We're just these bags of meat and water that have somehow gained self-awareness through a very unlikely series of extremely unlikely events. We are the universe waking up, looking around at itself and saying "Holy crap!" Out of all the molecules in all the history of the universe, we have won the cosmic lottery - we get sentience. We can be conscious and awake for a brief time, capable of awe and wonder at what has happened. Sometimes I'm not sure if that's a blessing or a curse, but it doesn't really matter. It'll all be over in a moment.

And THAT is as much useless philosophy as I can muster or stomach. What's for dinner?

The Metal Refuge and Uranium Music have both (re-)published articles of mine in the last couple weeks. They like me, they really like me!

I've done away with all of the music in last week's StormClad Radio broadcast and replaced it with shiny new tunes. Over three hours of stuff you would like if you were as cool as me. Check it out. And send me money.