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somewhere around today my sister wrote me. i have three sisters actually, but she is my only full blood sister. we grew up wearing matching dresses and catching happy meals that came over the back seat of our family station wagon, hitting each other over the head with barbies, and counting the colored dots in the dark from our perch on the bunk beds. michelle had blond hair and was considered the family beauty. i was the family brains. both carry responsibilities, and both were envied. somehow i think my brains served me up only trouble while michelle lucked out by being to charm anyone with a dumb smile and her submissiveness. people were not apt to touch beauty, they were intimidated. i was perfectly available for molestation by my appearance. we were best friends our entire youth, or so i thought, right up until the day she married my boyfriend out from under me. later on she (and he) continually snubbed 'x' and i in san francisco when we were dying to share with her all the great things we had uncovered about the city. and even later on she stole my car. so i must admit after the resulting few years of silence i was perplexed at her sudden offer to come visit me in boulder. i wrote her a rather clipped response and hope she leaves it at that... secretly though i am sad to think things can never be the same between us. she was one of my first big lessons on the true essence of human nature.

i have reordered my entries this month from top to bottom, on a whim.

in the (bitter) cold of february i feel listless and alone. i miss cire, not too surprisingly, who confuses me with his distance into thinking we are not what we once were (despite the obvious). we talk long into the night on the phone and i muse that it's strange to have a soulmate with no physical connection. he responds with silence, embarassed that i have crossed some unspoken boundary by mentioning it. i wonder to myself what sort of rollercoaster ride of a future we might have together, but sleepily remind myself that things are good in the present.

xanaxed into a zombie-like state on the bus to my denver interview, i still fiddled nervously with my hands and rehearsed lines of bullshit over and over. i was met by mark, the guy i had talked to previously about the job, who was friendly enough. with him was george, a goateed, fumbling sort of lad who was sweetly appealing. the interview was simple, just some chatting over lunch, and i felt wildly positive when i left.

later i met up with my old friend chris, who has metamorphasized from a cool, alternative-y guy who smoked sweet tobacco in pipes and wore a fedora and tweed trenchcoat, into a rather dumpy, balding middle-aged looking condo owner who tucks in his shirts. he gave me the tour- showed me the new paint and moldings, the dishwasher he'd just installed, the carpet. downstairs was a pool, a fitness room and a conference center. i tried to look excited, but coaxed him all the while towards a bar down the street which had 2 for 1 22 oz. fat tires on draft. we sat making awkward conversation (having not much in common anymore) and i gave denver a looking over. decided i might as well stay in boulder if i wasn't going to have a real life anyway.

28 going on 191 is how i feel today. i am not one of those people who gets depressed about getting old on my birthday... until today. one day you wake up and everyone you know is a husband or wife, a mother or father, a sales executive, an engineer, a grad student, a house owner, a shiny new car driver. you have ghastly creased lines appearing on your forehead and shopgirls calling you ma'am. the vocabulary has changed, you need poise and seriousness, can no longer giggle when you are nervous and avert your eyes. it's time to be an adult when you feel further away from it than you ever have... and on this day you are ignored by everyone, like the insignificant, aging woman you realize you really are.

actually otto did wake me up with a perfunctory birthday call, and i buried my head in the pillow and tried to drop back off to sleep and ignore reality a bit longer. found myself instead with my camera in hand, taking photos of my face at every angle, suspiciously seeking out signs of aging. my eyes are pale, my skin less smooth, my hair is brittle, my flesh soft and pudding-like hanging from my bony frame. my cheekbones are sunken, my nose prominent, i become more and more gaunt as the years pass, and look frighteningly more like my mother.

it was in this frame of mind that i was given about 15 minutes notice to get to denver for a second interview. i groaned, prefering to stay at home and pity myself, but nevertheless hopped on the bus. i arrived anxious only to leave bewildered 10 minutes later, having had only a short, distracted conversation with the rather gruff woman and her sweetly nerdy counterpart who were to decide my fate. shrugging, i decided to let fate run it's course. i walked (froze) to 16th street mall and ran my hands longingly over the victoria's secret valentine's day sale racks. dodged putrid breath-ed homeless people and raggedly drunk school dodgers on the light rail. bought myself a $7 book as a gift and plopped back on the bus towards boulder.

back at the hostel i had just had enough time to warm my hands on the heater grate when the phone rang. layla was calling. i have known her for about ten years. though not well. once upon a time i was madly in lust with her. she has a blond dominatrix bob and catty blue eyes lined with black. she is a theater major and a burlesque dancer, and she has always left me fumbling and coughing like a shy schoolboy. unfortunately, though she professes to like girls, she is always infatuated with one boy or another when i run into her, and tonight we shared only a glass of wine over dinner and a trip to the theater to see 'in america'. the movie (which was great) left me sadly pensive and we left with a distracted farewell.

feeling drastically lonely and apathetic all around. dreading having to stay in denver (or boulder), which is akin to burying myself alive, but you take the bad with the good don't you. i fantasized about going to new york all day. i miss the dirty subways with the shadowy talent, all of the art, the energy, the choices.

no computer means no music, no movies, no internet surfing, no job hunt, no journal entries. i fidget listlessly in my room until midday, when i shuffle down the hill in the slush with hands jammed into my pants waist to keep warm, on the way to the library to check my email. no hope for jobs is what it told me, and i trudged back up the hill home.

having to resort to reading hostel books since i owe too much to the library for books i failed to return years ago, i settled into bed with 'dolores claiborne'. i read the entire book in one sitting. stephen king is uncannily accurate with his characterizations. the book creeped me out, as i am sure was his intention. i fell into dreams of my stepfather, come back to hold me hostage with crazy, disconnected thoughts and a constantly shifting face. i woke up stifling a scream. it prompted me at 3am to look my stepfather up on the internet. i don't know for sure if he is dead or alive, but i did finally find a listing showing he was alive as recently as last year on death row in south carolina. i felt fleetingly sorry for him and wondered if i should send him a postcard.

i am not entirely sure i believe in karma, but it's a convenient explanation at times. today i fidgeted over my newly reborn laptop (which fed ex dropped off with a note saying they had basically replaced everything for free) for several frustrated hours. rebuilding my system is akin to rebuilding my life, and today is a day for new beginnings. around 3pm i finally got the call i was waiting for- the "yes we want to hire you for the astronomical 6-figures job you interviewed so hopelessly for" call. reeling from the shock, i don't know if anything intelligable actually came out of my mouth in response. i IM'd 'x' a triumphant screech, and danced crazily around the room by myself. if you put good out there, it will come back to you. (ask otto if you disbelieve).

trying to enjoy my last days to myself as an unemployed layabout, i tried to sleep in late. 'x' called at 7:30 am, when i mumbled something placatory to him as i pulled my blanket up over my head and dropped back off into road trip dreams with smiling old friends. he called again at 9, to tell me he was lonely and bored, and i grumbled a bit more, fell back into bed, and failed to sleep any longer. the rest of the day was rather frantic, shopping for valentines for ot (not because i really feel lovey towards him as much as it is fun to give), dodging psychotic jabbering by an intellectually challenged man on the 'hop' bus to the soundtrack of van morrison overhead and the concurrently whistling hippie driver, laughing at gangster kids rapping with each other under lowered baseball caps in the alley, throwing disgusted glances at roving packs of frat boys on the prowl.

i thankfully slept most of today. the first day of work is always guaranteed to suck, and it was with a great deal of apprehension towards tomorrow that i wasted most of my day twiddling my thumbs and staring wildly out the window at the sun dropping lower in the sky. thoughts of my future possible humiliation took up the majority of that time. my official title is 'Information Architect', which is a new one to me. most of my experience has been with creative media firms, in which i did mostly design for several projects at a time, and it was a creative atmosphere. this project is just one big website for a stuffy corporation, and i will be responsible for building the structure (literally an architect, blueprints and all) for the site. though i have done quite a bit of skeleton-building, it was not in this context. my focus is usually to flesh a smaller site out with pretty colors, design, and code, and make it useable. it's a little bit intimidating to have to take on this responsibility...

i watched the movie 'lost in translation' before flopping back into bed for the night. the casting was great, and it made me laugh a lot since having been to japan i could relate to the weirdness and awkwardness of japanese people, but overall it was just an average movie, totally blown out of proportion by the critics.

the dreaded 1st day of work. luckily it consisted of only meetings, in which little was expected of me. i felt a bit awkward in my scruffy shoes that i've worn for the last year and a half travelling through asia (i ordered a new pair but they haven't arrived in time). i tried to go in exuding confidence and charisma, but as usual i was suffocatingly shy, which makes me come off as rather uptight, and stupid.

my coworker mark was the only person who gave me any kind of good reception. in fact he is overly friendly. i agreed to lunch with him at an overpriced "asian" food joint, with two other guys. quickly realized i had nothing in common with any of them. one, who may or may not be gay but is definitely conservative, makes rather uncreative videos of barbie and an evil skipper. he bragged all through lunch about his big house and six cars. the other talked about how he put a poor fry cook out of a job when he had failed to wash his hands before making this guy's burger. he seemed to expect backslapping, but i could only muster up a half interested half disgusted look. mark only talked shit about everyone he could think of in the company, at which point i was assured that someday i would fail to escape his list. i was happy to go back to feeling stupid in meetings.

later on i met with my agency and signed my contract, and found out to my utter horror that i won't be paid for 60 days. i explained that that was completely unnacceptable to me and the poor guy said he'd pay me some advance out of pocket. i felt guilty and embarassed but i have to take it.

on my way out mark offered me a ride home, which was rather suspicious as he doesn't even live in the same city as me, but on the spot i didn't think fast enough to squirm out of it. he has a snazzy car with leather seats and he drives fast and recklessly. i made bored conversation with him on the drive. somehow, though i have never told him, he knew where i lived and drove right up to my house...?! i gave him a weird look and hopped out, running with open arms towards my safe and uncomplicated bed.

my job seems to be going to meetings. this is good because it doesn't seem like much pressure thus far, as opposed to my usual jobs in which i am a workhorse. however i am not a good verbal communicator in the least. i thought of pleading mute, and carrying an erasable whiteboard with me to communicate, but as it is i have to get by. a sidenote to that is i look so young that people don't give me much credit, so all in all, if my job is to juggle personalities then i am fucked right off the bat. sigh. on the way home i bought a wireless card for my laptop, which didn't work. at home i found my new shoes and a birthday present from ot waiting for me. i gave them a cursury nod and passed immediately out....for about an hour and then thrashed restlessly in hopeless insomnia the entire night long.

apparently some buses take longer than others, and that combined with a trip to starbucks made me breathlessly late to my first meeting this morning. i was strung out on my toffee nut latte, my nose was bright red (a la rudolph) from my run in the cold, my shirt was a bad choice and showed a bit too much cleavage, and crumbs from my half eaten scone were falling from my coat like dandruff. i received several disapproving looks, which cheered me up right away... totally lost in the meeting, i tried to phrase a couple of intelligent questions only to subsequently realize they were rather naive, and finally gave up opening my mouth at all when i noticed that people would steamroll right over me and pretend i didn't exist. later on, after a 10 minute briefing that enlightened me not one bit, my manager george passed on his title of owner of the ordering process to me. to my horror this meant i had to lead a meeting on the strategy and process flow. i stammered out something placatory to the older man who looked disdainfully down his long nose at me and a perky chinese girl who just snatched my notes from me and started giving orders. i hovered back until it ended and ran for the door out of there.

later i went alone to mamacitas, where over a beer and soggy nachos i attempted to look busy with my laptop, trying to get a signal with my wireless card and failing. overall i felt wretched, and again, very lonely.i gave up and went to bed for another long night of no sleep.

there is a 9 to 1 ratio of meetings to work at my work. i like the fact that i can come and go as i please. i even mentioned i wanted to go to thailand in april for a couple of weeks and there was a resounding "no problem". hrmmm, i may be able to handle this job after all.

other day at the alien office, full of rubberstamped corporate types who secretly drive me up a wall, each competing to see who has the bigger vocabulary and the most toys. ugh. i did however receive my advance and was able to do a little shopping on 16th street mall on the way home. they have a big, beautiful 'forever 21' store, which i raced through, trying on hundreds of clothes, but i was sensible and bought only one outfit. i headed to victoria's secret for the valentine's day sale but all of my size seemed to be sold out to my dismay. i trudged towards the bus home, and passed a group of goth/rocker kids sitting on benches with their feet propped up on trash bins, smoking and laughing with spiky dyed hair and black fingernails. i had a twinge of nostalgia the good old days. i looked down at my boring clothes and around at my nonexistent friends, and felt sad. but then again, i patted my pocket with my week's paycheck, which is probably what they make in a month and which will eventually put me back where i want to be again, and i mellowed out a bit.

cire and i were talking on IM and he told me that PM taksin finally is enforcing the earlier closing times in thailand. meaning every venue must shut it's doors at midnight. he is on some big hypocritical moral crusade and i am disgusted by it. he is putting thousands of people out of their jobs. this includes ot. the police are re building khao san road and have closed it down for 2 weeks. they are banning street sellers from now on. i called ot to see how he was and he sounded pretty hopeless. he has no money and his friends aren't around anymore. i told him that thailand is becoming less and less appealing to me the more power their government weilds and he went off the deep end. he accused me of not loving him, of betraying him, of leaving him... argh. finally he said "just don't call me again ok" and hung up on me. i shrugged and went to bed.

valentines schmalentines. i slept in late today and curled up most of the morning in bed with a book. it was unseasonably warm outside and i ran errands in the sun. otto called and apologized, but mentioned he had had a temper tantrum last night and fought with an american guy. he spent the night in a police station. he had spent the remainder of his money on a phone card to call me. he was still very drunk. now on the one hand i feel sorry for him, he is in a bad position and when he thinks he is going to lose me (his "savior") he goes a bit insane. but on the other hand he is almost 30, and should be able to take care of himself by now. the more i think about it (with the distance a good mediator), the more i realize he is not for me. but i feel so guilty when it comes to this sort of thing. i suppose he needs to hit rock bottom alone before he will ever improve his life. i am not good at the tough love thing. i have decided not to help him anymore, and to try to wean him away from me towards living his own life, but that is not an easy thing to do.

spent the rest of the day pouting, feeling miserably lonely in this whitebread land of corporate supplicants, and trying to update my site for the last 20 days.

weekends are freedom, but knowing they are so short takes some of the fun out of things. i feel like i have to do something to make the most of my day and am consequently left flustered and floundering. today i bought some stuff i shouldn't have bought, wandered aimlessly down the outdoor mall, and watched a documentary on the legendary porn star john holmes which left me with good dreams (j/k).

felt great today... it's nice to have gotten over that initial dread of a new job. i have settled in pretty well and i even sort of have an idea what's going on. i pleased mark with some website wireframes and afterwards led a particularly successful brainstorming session for my team. got off early and ran to the YMCA to get a membership from the gruff but secretly kindly lesbi-friend at the desk... ahhhhh, the gym. how i have missed physical activity. somehow since i last went (erm... a year and a half ago) i have actually lost about 5 pounds. i weigh about the same as i weighed when i was 14. (!!!) hrmmm, thailand should really start marketing their diet plan. i did ten minutes on the hamster wheel stairmaster while i watched a stupid sitcom on tv and waved to office workers swarming like ants on the street below the window. moved on to the cybex equipment where i fear i pulled every muscle in my body. down to the steamroom where i progressed from an initial stark fear that i might drown or suffocate to hallucinatory sublimity and numbness. emerged dripping wet and bright red to jump into a cool shower and slather myself in sweet smelling soap. and out again into the cool air, where i felt like a newer, healthier elocin. i felt very serene on the trolley and later on the bus as i watched out the window as the mountains loomed nearer and nearer. finally curled up in bed with my crab cheese wontons from tra-ling's.

boring bored boredom. nothing here for me but money. i had a long chat with 'x' about ot, in which i vehemently reinforced the fact that people should not try to assert their american values upon the thai culture- including my relationship with ot. we also discussed how i seemingly (according to some emails i get) come across as being very negative, though i have been the happiest of my life in the past year. hrmm. my friend chris says there is no denying it, i'll always be a goth girl at heart.... i read two quotes from oscar wilde that i liked today- "He who lives more lives than one/more deaths than one must die" & "...."Yet each man kills the thing he loves".

surprisingly and gloriously warm weather. i awoke from dreams in which a nice hippie man who had picked me up hitchhiking explained the HVAC process in detail to me. which is funny because in my real life i know jack shite about HVAC. it made so much sense that i had a strange lingering feeling upon awakening that i had actually switched from a wholly separate life back to my own conscious one.

work work work. not that my mind is much on it. i'm planning a weekend in amsterdam, one in NY to meet tokyo taka (there in march) and 'x' and get my stuff from storage, and hopefully a trip to happyland in april for the songkran fest this year. today was slushy and gray and cold, which makes me even more antsy get get away, and i had to listen to two annoyingly conservative men jabber about politics on the bus. the newspaper said neo nazis are on the rise locally and a man stole 4 puppies from the humane society for the sole purpose of setting them on fire, killing 2 and crippling the others.

today i was attacked by the same dog twice in a day, which was creepy enough. on the way to get the bus in the morning i walked a bit too close to it on it's leash, and to the astonishment of the jogging owner, it lunged at me, snarling and gnashing it's chops. shortly after, i was yelled at quite unfairly by a bus driver who passed me up and forced me to chase her down... at work i lost an important file when my computer crashed... and my coworkers all joined up to go out to happy hour and left me bewildered and alone in the office without an invite (already designated as the outcast, as usual). on the way home, the same psycho dog, sans owner, chased me down the block and up the steps to my house, snapping at my heels. i flipped the world a bird and fell into a thankful sleep.

sometimes in life you have days on end of nothing, numbness, looking at your existence from the outside in. then one day something short circuits and there is a faint whisper of life in your brain followed by a lurching, heartstopping wave of nausea and regret. i realized i haven't listened to music for a very long time- i don't even own a cd player right now, just my computer... stumbled onto a leonard cohen site with his poignant lyrics and a tear drifted into the ol' eye. which led to a general reawakening- looking back fondly at pictures of my turtles, a ransom note style website i once made to communicate with 'x' who had left me in NY, letters from old friends, a description of my life in NY which made me ache with desire to get back there. i haven't had any stimulation since i moved back to the US, and i fear i will freeze in this stagnant, startled position of helplessness. i need love! sex! something to take care of! i need myself back!

alas today was not the day, instead it was tax day. i was relieved to find that i don't owe the $25,000 i thought i owed, and in fact it is much less. i can pay off my back taxes with my first paycheck and stop feeling like a criminal. though i must say i hate the fact that i have to pay my government, which doesn't represent much of anything i believe in and which has never given me the least bit of help when i needed it in my life. however, i will count to ten and try to forget those facts and stop clenching my teeth as i drop my check in the mail.

later tonight i met up with one of my asian pen pals- nate. he is small and dark, very vietnamese. we get along pretty well, but something was missing, and if i had to venture a guess it would be a passion for life that i have and seek out in others. i still enjoyed his company, though trying to find something to do in boulder without the ingestion of alcohol involved (he doesn't drink) was rather difficult. i gave up on trying and dragged him to mamacita's, where i downed a couple of beers while he tried some horrid concoction of stout beer mixed with irish whiskey, to his redfaced regret.

a sunday trip in the cozy dark weather to the boulder gym, which i have been looking forward to since i got back. in addition to the well-muscled desk clerk who flirted with me as he checked me in, i was able to enjoy a free racquetball court. i have no idea how to really play racquetball, but i am really good at hitting the ball against the wall! :) actually it is the best stress reliever ever, and i can lose myself in it for hours in my isolated box. afterwards i did some halfhearted exercising and ran for the hot tub. then practically had to crawl home sleepily to my bed and dvds.

work was rather uneventful as usual, with the exception of the fact that i had to work side by side with my coworker dan, with no break to myself all day. after work i met up with my good pal dimitri, another of those i haven't seen for 6 years. previously he had been my most hardcore friend. he and i were joined at the hip at one point, and together we would do anything on a dare. mostly that entailed drugs at the time, and we got pretty self destructive for a 3 month period. the craziness got to be too much at about the same time i met 'x' and moved on to my new & improved life with him, but dimitri's jealously at that fact left a bit of a rift between us... today though, i was surprised to find that he is the one friend i have met since being back who doesn't disappoint me at all. he is working in a bookstore and he has a steady girlfriend, true, but he is also working on his phD in philosophy, has lived in spain and travelled around europe the past couple of years, and has cleaned himself up so that he is now a sleek, sexy intellectual. he and i understand each other really well and communicate as if we are feeding off one another. i had to physically restrain myself from falling into a big fat crush on him again... which is a good thing because he is loyal to his girl. i left it at great conversation and a bit of silly drunkenness and walked away at the bus station with only a fond goodbye.

dead tired all day, which belies my age perhaps :). completely useless at work. IM'd 'x' most of the day, surreptitious behind my laptop in meetings. he is feeling self destructive and frantic with boredom i presume, but he has found a place in the east village which should improve his situation a bit (and makes me jealous as i miss NY like an appendage). i debated on going to see the suicide girls' burlesque show tonight, but not wanting to hang around the city for 4 hours after work, i went home and to bed early instead.

horrific, rageful asia withdrawal today, which prompted some emails that freaked out a friend or two. i wallowed in self pity as 'x' hit me with a barrage of disgust, telling me i am in a great position. he's right, however i can occasionally miss my other real life can't i?

to make things worse, on the bus home i got a call from the head of my department, and some jealous bastard (or bitch as the case may be) had complained that i wore a shirt yesterday which rode up if i raised my arms to the point where they could see my belly. shock! horror! what is this, junior high? what a bunch of conservative idiots i am surrounded by. i do own clothes that would completely offend them, and i am considering wearing them from now on, but i have made a concerted effort not to wear them to work thus far. there must be someone out to get me- already.

work was ok, 'x' is happier, i had a nice conversation with one of my hostel mates today. he has found some inspiration after a long depression and decided to take off to live in seattle, where he has never been, and he sold me his tv and cable box for $25 (yippee!). i haven't watched real tv for over 2 years, and really have no idea what is going on in the world. thus i spent the rest of the evening letting it suck my soul out through my eyes. it was a jimmy stewart kinda night.

um, what happened today? work i guess... a day like bland milk, nothing interesting, the trend these days. i need to get a hobby.

i told otto on the phone today that i planned to meet up with gorgeous tokyo taka in NY this coming week, which was obviously a mistake. he has since called me every few hours, with needy, dripping sweetness. i don't want to hurt him but it's hard not to in this situation. taka is a runway model for 'god''s sake. and the japanese are free to fly to america on a whim, where ot, no matter how passionately he might want to, never will be able to do so. i miss the kid, in a maternal sort of way, and as usual he makes me sad. it's strange, especially for the me of no ties, to not be able to escape this guy even from across the world.

must....get...through...this...month...of...entries...!!!! argh! this must be my least inspired update yet. i haven't picked up my camera since the last update so i don't even have pictures. february has been mood-swinging, frantic frenzy from day one. and it unfortunately has an extra day this year. good riddance!

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