2002-10-10 - 7:40 a.m.

I had some funky dreams last night. At one point I dreamed I was fighting with Mike. Not a physical fight, although I seem to remember we might have done that too, sporadically, but a mental fight between best friends. At one point I said to him "you know that means I'll never talk to you again, like Marc Charbonneau" And I asked him if he knew who Marc Charbonneau was and he did. Of course he did, because he was my best friend :oP Anyway, that was a weird thing to dream about.

I also dreamed about seeing Michelle and sitting through a presentation she had made up of all the bad things about me. It featured a soundtrack by Avril Lavigne and lots of horrible imagery. It was kind of funny, actually, because there was audience noise in it just like a TV show.

I'm kinda tired this morning. I forgot to rinse the conditioner out of my hair before I turned the shower off so I had to start it up again. That's the second day in a row. Last night I was in bed by 10:00 but laid awake listening to the noises around me until almost 11:00. Mark was banging around in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, the guy next door was talking on the phone and he had a projected piercing voice, and the girl upstairs was listening to music really loud. It all got quiet right around 11:00 though. Hey, come to think of it, that's the way things are in apartments everywhere, as far as I know.

It'll be weird to move into a house. I can't wait to have my own, but it'll be way better to live in my parent's house than to live here. I think. It wil be different, anyway, that's for sure. I think it'll be easier to live the right kind of life there.

Work went well yesterday. I finished up that bilinear interpolation algorithm and it actually works in all colour depths and resolutions. I was worried for a while that it would only work in certain resolutions and that I would have an unknown number of days of work left to iron everything out, but I spent all day yesterday until 3pm working on the thing dilligently and got it all smoothed out. I'm not really satisfied with the outcome, though. The resized bitmaps don't look very smooth and it takes around 2 seconds to resize all the graphics on my machine for a high resolution. I was hoping it would be faster than that, and I tried to optimize the code to be faster but it didn't work. I'll try to think of ways to make it run faster yet hehe.. It's probably pointless. Anyway, the point is that it works and I can get on to other things that need doing.

Speaking of which the auto-update process is flaky. Either the manifest download fails or the registry key can't be read, or something else comes up that needs work. The latest is that if the update fails, the app gets caught in a loop trying to find out if it got updated or not and never succeeds in finding out. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything in decent working order so I can send out a test release of this new version today. Ollie sent an email yesterday asking about the new build and I'm looking forward to sending him the seed, knowing that the app will function well. That'll be a while yet though.

After work I headed home and made mac and cheese. Yippee! It's something that I don't eat too often so I still like it. I miss President's Choice white cheddar mac and cheese, though. I should go to the superstore or to the real canadian warehouse just to get that brand. The cheap Italpasta stuff I bought at Renco's isn't all that good. And I don't like the original Kraft Dinner brand, either. And Kraft Dinner is so much more expensive.. I just don't get it.

After supper I decided to drop by and visit Tanis. I was worried about her after she didn't show up at the Monday AA meeting we were all supposed to go to. It turns out that Evelyn didn't phone her about going. I think Evelyn just figured she'd leave Tanis alone because she hadn't heard from her in a while and Tanis figured Evelyn didn't want to talk to her. I'm glad I'm not sticking my fingers into this pie.. it's not my place to try and help or to think I know what should be done. So anyway, I decided to drop by there and see if she would go for a walk and if not if I could come in and visit.

It turns out she's been sick for the last three days and she looked like death warmed over when she got to the door. Obviously, going for a walk wasn't in the plans, so I asked her if she'd like some company. She hemmed and hawed and basically tried to say no, and yet was still talking to me and asked me to step inside the door because it was cold. Then as we continued talking, she went upstairs for a second to get me one of the cookies she had made. Damn good cookies, too, peanut butter chocolate chip with nuts and raisins. MmmmMm. :o)

So she was sitting there on her stairs talking to me and it had been a while since I got there, so I said as much and that I should just come in for a visit. I asked her if her place was too bare or too messy or what? I still don't know exactly what she was thinking, but she finally gave up and let me in hehehe. So I went up and lent her the CDs I had brought, and we sat and talked and read our AA big books for a while. It was a nice little 2 hour visit, exactly what I'd had in mind. I think it was really good for both of us to talk to someone different for a change, and it was also a talk among equals who understood where the other was coming from. It's nice to be able to develop an actual friendship with a girl and just leave it at that: friendship.

Neither of us needs anything more right now, and it would be a bad thing for us if anything more did happen, so we're cautious against it, but I think we both feel like it's a hurdle to get over.. making friends with someone you're attracted to and being smart and keeping it at the friend level.

We read part of the chapter on acceptance and talked a lot about things that are going on in our lives that related to the reading. I talked about Mark and Michelle and how I'm slowly coming around but not seeing as much progress in accepting new challenges as I thought I would. She talked about herself and Evelyn and the people around her in general. I tried to be extra conscious of talking too much and I know there were several times I held my tongue and waited instead of filling a gap, after which she continued what she was saying. It's something new for me to really try to listen more and not gabber constantly. Hahaha.. it's such an accurate word: gabber. Anyway, so I practised some listening skill improvement. It'll be a while yet but practice is the key.

After I got home I played my guitar, read my AA book and went to sleep. I purposely blew off working on the scrapbook project tonight. I even wrote an X in the goal checkbox on the calendar for that day. I have to admit that part of the reason is that Michelle disappointed me the last time we talked and that I'm rather upset that she's blaming everything that went wrong in the last year or so on me. Also the impression I have that she wouldn't ever talk to me again willingly is making it hard to continue to be dedicated to a christmas present for her. It's kind of sad to think that if I hadn't talked to her, I'd be all gung ho about doing this scrapbook, but since I know she's mad at me I'm not so interested. Why should what I want to do be dictated by someone else's feelings?

Well, the scrapbook is sort of a special case. I mean, it's my way of saying goodbye with a positive note. It's my way of leaving a record of better times for Kris to find when she gets older. I'm thinking more and more of addressing it to Kris because I don't feel as though Michelle would really appreciate it. I think Kris would, though, when she grows up enough. I think she would really like to have a record of her early years so lovingly produced. I'm thinking now that if I do give it to Mich this Christmas, that she would either lose it, not take care of it, or leave it where Kris could wreck it. I don't really want to hang on to it for years though. At least I have some time to decide. I should make it before I decide what to do with it ;o)

I think I'm in for a nice sunrise today. It's going to happen at 8:09 though which is getting pretty late. I wonder exactly how late the sunrise will get before it starts getting earlier? It's not so long ago it was at 7:45.. hmm.. if it's 20 minutes a month then that means by december it will be after 9:00am. That seems wrong somehow but I guess not.

Anyway, I'm gabbering :oP Nothing else to relate really, I'll just trudge to work (driving today .. a- cause I'm lazy and b- cause I have that job to do at Ardie's tonight.) I'm hoping to be able to leave the office and go straight to Ardie's. I think I'll just stay late for a while until he's ready.

I should go make a sandwich for lunch. Nah, I have my leftover mac and cheese to bring. I can stand to eat less if I'm not going to bike.

Au revoir.

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