i am feeling very dejected, let down...practically ashamed that not only is it a leap year, but that it's leap year and i forgot for the last five minutes that tomorrow isn't march 1st. leap years are the result of bad accounting and ill-advised standards of duration. i don't like them at all.

get a life, NIST. seriously, let's get past this damn tradition of laziness.

on our way downtown today we came across an older blind gentleman making his way up from the CTA subway, up and onto state street. a long pipe for a walking cane and a few layers short of totally warm clothing, he made his way humbly, never declining an offer of help.

it was as we followed alongside him at street level that he accepted my help. we helped him cross the street, over to the late-night McDonalds that i pass often enough to neglect. inside we helped him get a cup of coffee and find a seat. he said he would be fine, sitting there, and then thanked me for his help. gave me a blessing and sipped on his coffee as we walked back out to find our bus.

later, i walked and wondered. wondered whether he had a family, immediate or extended. wondered whether he ever wished he had a proper cane, one to fold up and extend easily, rather than the makeshift device he used. wondered how many others in this city and others went through their days with makeshift devices and accepting help from strangers, hopeful for a clot of minutes in the day to enjoy or even simply utilize a cup of coffeee.

later, at home, i dreamt that kleine_hexe and i still sat at some coffeeshop with the man, and that his son was there. all i can recall is being teary-eyed, nodding to another room, exchanging histories and stories and snippets of life not worth remembering in dreams or otherwise.

and i woke up. i was jolted enough that i woke up kleine_hexe, making her think i had a nightmare.

i don't know if i'd call it a nightmare. maybe it doesn't matter, really.

last night, a party was thrown. oh, and how it was thrown. like an indescribable bolt of lightning, hurled from godly fingers. or something.

the lovely and vivacious kleine_hexe had a birthday.  we threw a small (and situationally garish) surprise party for the lass last night (say THAT 17 times fast.  you can't, can you? it's okay, neither can i).

now, for the record, this is most likely the only surprise party i will throw for her. at least for a very very very long time. mostly because she's not a fan of surprise parties. or surprises in general. but chalk it up to that old adage, guiding me ever forward:

" don't knock it 'till you've tried it. "


the party began with several diversions and tactics, designed to deflect attention away from the party. this is known to magicians as 'sleight of hand.' it is also known to non-magicians, as well.

Step #1 - come up with an excuse for having to leave the house, well dressed, on party-night. solution? tell the lady that your friend is throwing his wife a lavish party. and that we are to attend, dressed to the nines.

Step #2 - invite those friends you know live in the area, and know well enough that you can be assured she  doesn't hate the sight of them. trolling through old evites and email for a week helps to create the guest list. as does calling up people and telling them to add others accordingly.

Step #3 - reserve the restaurant. also key here is that the restaurant be location-friendly, amenable to dressing up, new to her tastebuds, and able to accomodate the group. a bar helps, as well, in case the guest of honor is running late or the table is not ready on time.


so things look like they will roll along smoothly, right? not when the birthday girl gets suspicious; phone calls requiring secrecy, gift cards arriving in the mail, and an odd insistence on her attending the fake-friend's-wife party all begin to take their toll. oh man. time to think up a proper diversion. a new, DOUBLE sleight of hand. enter fake friend #2. i inform her that there is, indeed, a ruse being played upon her. a friend of hers, from out of town, wants to drop by unexpected and visit her. but this friend does not want her to know, and so asked me to keep it a secret.

oh, and the topper? I called the friend from out of town and asked for some help: "if she talks to you online, just drop some hints that you plan on seeing her soon." so, now, after talking online for a couple days i hear the question:

"are we really going to a party on saturday?" she asks. aha, i mentally resound. so i lay out the new tale, insisting that we are actually going to a party but that the next day the out-of-town friend will arrive, and she seems to have her fears put away.

perfect.

and so things went on, me gently prodding for her to attend the fake-party, her none the wiser. come party night i jump from restaurant back to the house, pick her up, and we arrive. a bevy of friends, all having arrived and waiting, greet us at the table as we enter.

not a fan of surprises, indeed. muhahahaha.

the postings are finally getting finished, so i'll keep this guy on top while i finish up all 7 days. bless the person[s] who invented the cut tag:

i have been breaking in my new hiking boots at work all week so that they'll gone unnoticed as i traipse through the west coast.

...i have been wearing hiking boots as i walk into work, slacks and shirt and sometimes a tie.


me.


hiking boots. with slacks.


me. the guy that wants to shake young men who walk out of their houses wearing black shoes and a brown belt. brown shoes and black socks. weird ties and anything.

i've become everything i despise, willingly walking around as if to say "yeah, i know what i'm wearing. get over yourself, starbucks" to any yuppies that happen by.

i practically say it to every shiny surface, too, it seems.

so it's official. week of silence is in california.

so far the 'plan' involves flying into san diego late friday night, staying with an exceptionally awesome friend for the weekend, and starting the week on monday.

monday will involve getting a rental car, getting into said rental car, and traipsing along the coastal state along whatever path i choose at the time. i'm aiming for san francisco, pasadena, and maybe LA.

of concern is all the people i won't be able to visit while i'm out there...visitors and visitees tend to be at a loss when one of them is not talking. so sigh and move onward.

i'm packing light; clothing, food, you name it. and no laptop. i will be be as the-shirt-on-my-back as one can get with a credit card in his back pocket. and a rental car. though the rental car is really just a guaranteed roof over my head for the entirety of the trip. i intend to trek the state as much as possible otherwise.

but it's late, i'm going to be at work for many more hours longer, and i'm blanking a little on something to fill the rest of this up. so, if you have any ideas on what to see, whom to not-talk-to, where to go in california, then let me know!

so the week of silence is coming up and i need suggestions on where to go.

in essence? i don't speak, not a word, for the week of November 6th - November 12th.  November 10th - November 20th.

my intention is to fly out of philly on november 2nd, get to my location that night, crash somewhere until sunday, the rest of the week is silence, and fly back to philly on monday the 13th.


right...so any ideas on where i should spend a week not talking?

today was spend meandering about the museums of philadelphia. PA.

thing is, i have to work from 10pm-4am tonight, so i was able to take off this afternoon and get out before heading back to work later tonight. so i took off, checking into my new hotel.

first, let me explain what things are like here when it comes to hotels this month: there's more booking going on here than the library of congress. i try getting a room for this week in July and couldn't get one, so that's something. but, i managed to get into a very quality hotel for this weekend whilst my lovely love is in town, so that makes up for so very many other things i say.

so i take off, checking into my new hotel for the weekend, pulling along from the first hotel the vast teddy-bearness [check out the post immediately prior to this regarding my dave&busters winnings]. i check in, take my shower, and off i go to the franklin institute, a science museum.

and, clearly, this is my kinda place.

at first i practically run into the joint, trying to figure out where to go. on my right is the 'giant heart' room. i'm not feeling it, being more in the mood for looking at contraptions through glass, and so i move into the electricity room.

as i'm walking, though, i got to talk to a friend of mine on the phone. and it feels...blank, somehow. my thoughts mostly empty, as if there need be a thrash and fury on my pages as i write all this down, that i should have a certain understanding or epiphany after listening to the latest trials of someone you genuinely care about. but i feel...blank. as if this lack of worries or political outrage, not having a moral or idealogical stand on what's going on in her life is enough to ponder. i don't talk to her often and there is of course the ubiquitous drama to backstage any conversation, but it is still something engaging and interesting and full of good and simple time.

maybe it's just nice to know that you have friends, despite how embarrassing it may all seem. it is definitely nice to know that people are human, that humanity never fails to be human, and not matter how particularly isolated or unique you may feel, there is plenty in heaven and earth that you will never know. but, after realizing that fact, it's even nicer when you realize that, despite the insignificance you feel at this juggernaut of never-going-to-be-known experiences and knowledge, despite all the things that can only be relegated to imagination and speculation and how unfullfilling it is...despite all those things, it's nice to know that if you did have a chance to learn and experience one of those things you thought you'd never learn or experience, there's a good chance you'd wind up underwhelmed and not impressed with the having of it.

so it went, our conversation, and off she went to entertain her stresses. so i made my way through electricity and engineerings, through buildings and bridges and architecture. and back to the giant heart room.

the giant heart room had displays and games and little info-edu-kiosks, as well as a...well, GIANT heart that you're able to walk through. all of these things are rather underpowering to those of us who have ever seen any exhibit on the circulatory system at all, and so i make my round and start heading back out.

but then i see the video playing in the corner. it is a corner dressed up to resemble an operating theatre, with gurney and body and the tray of tools. but the video wasn't playin in the corner. it was playing in the body. a screen, built into the chest, showing a complete open-heart surgery (coronary bypass).

it was completely unlike the normal realms of wonderment or studious awe. and it affects me in the way that you know and have waited for the entirety of your young life. and i know that it leaves me markedly molded for the seeing of it. it was a tidal blow, simultaneously grandiose and powerful and simple and basic. impressive because there was so little that was efficient or mechanistic. it was the quintessential organic display.

so i leave the giant heart room a little quieter than when i entered.

the museum has a darwin exhibit through the rest of the year. the top floor is dedicated to him and his work, and the next exhibition group was being let in at 5:00 (my scheduled time, as well). so i left and waited for the exhibit to open up.

when i get into the darwin exhibit, i'm again approached by information and perspective that capture me. i rarely enjoy the didactic exhibits you find in museums; instead, show me the life of a man, summed up in a few walls of biography and imagery. show me the audacity and purity in putting someone's entire life in a room, throw it up for display and analysis. show me the best you have to offer, the cream of knowledge that will you feel will do. show me what you think can define someone with paper and pen.

and it did. i walked and drank in everything i could. fossils actually excavated by the man, plants he catalogued and pressed and sent back to england.darwin actually touched these plants, i would think. pressed them. held and touched them. i am able to touch some of the very history of modern thought and revolution. i am able to see all the work that outlived the flesh.

i left the museum shortly after the darwin exhibit since all the other exhibits were now closed. so i made my way, as planned, to the art museum. that bastion known to everyone who had every mentioned philadelphia in my presence, that universally noteworthly institution.

sounds like my kinda place, i thought.

i am a fan of particular artistry, much in the same way i am in particular history: give me your attempts at pressing soul to page and canvas, to stone and clay. give me a face, a hand, a recognizable life. give me a woman's life in sculpture, give me a man's pensive war in form. i want to see life recorded, desperately recorded in an imperfect medium. i want to see a legacy naked on the wall.

the canvas is always so cracked and worn, such utterly insistent persistence. it is depressing...but so freeing. to know that you will not be remembered. that your life is your own, a rich secret. your only last definition. i walk through the halls, smelling sculptures older than time, staring down the eyes of humanity long gone, of morals and values and beliefs and sins all washed away from home and rotting here in timeless grace. mortality gone dead, screaming out of the pain and loneliness one only finds in a gallery.

last night, i went to dave and busters. for a company 'outing' that took place inside. i spend my time idly, noticing this and that, snacking on appetizers and eyeing the bleak bridge outside (the benjamin franklin bridge, for those of us who don't live in Philadelphia). then i saw it. the ticket redemption room.

oh yes, you heard correctly...the ticket redemption room. that sweet smelling cove of childhood aspirations, the treasure chest of expensively inexpensive wares, the final resting place of hours and months and decades of dedication and accumulation and jubilation. the booty was boundless. my ambition? relentless. and so i scoured the depths of the gaming floor, the labyrinth of chance and folly.

my first seat was at the infamous cyclone, described by dave and busters as below:

CYCLONE
Test your skill on one of the most popular and successful games ever made! If you can stop the light at the right moment, you'll be rewarded with even more bonus tickets to spend at the D&B Winner's Circle.

like i said...infamous. i spend half an hour at the beast, slapping that stop button with the force of a drunken cockatoo, raising that bonus ticket counter to almost-immeasurable heights. but, as with most infamy, the fervent player inevitably crumbles into anonymity.

so, basically, i didn't nail the 'right moment.'   head hung low, i left the seat and moved onto more productive endeavors.

so after eating and drinking some, i headed back out onto the game floor. i try my hand at a trivia game, a coin-shoving game, and shooting hoops. my enthusiasm for ticket collection wanes and i am newly invigorated with a drive to shoot random fictional characters. and so onward i onward to the shooter-games.

time crisis, time crisis 2, house of the dead 2, sharp shooter, time crisis 3...the options abound. i enjoy myself, stress and bloodlust being spent on clear good versus evil storylines and subtext. plus firing at numerous forms of helicopter.

but, as with all things, ambition wins out, thrusting out the silky hand and cooing for all the joys your work will rend. and so i jump back into the breach, dear friends, with newfound vigor and all that kind of crap.

and when vikas jumps into the breach, dear friends, with newfound vigor and all that crap, he does so in a frenzy. i didn't just want tickets. i wanted all the tickets. i wanted enough tickets to buy me anything i had an inclination to buy. so back to the ticket redemption room, back to the idolatry of chintzy plastics and pizazz, back to back to back back and back.

i was going to get that bear. i'm going to get that bear, that big huge teddy bear. i'm going to get that damn teddy bear, i'm going to have it waiting for my lovely love when she arrives, and i'm going to have that bear. that bear is mine, dear friends. i'm going to have that teddy bear.

smell that? that scent in the air? that's ambition. taste that? that's my fucking ambition, baby. yeah, tastes good right? that's what it tastes like to be me all the time.

the next four hours are spent pressuring coworkers and hustling gamers. a coy eye gets me tickets from women who hear my emboldened pleas to garner stubs for my girl's arrival. a goofy smile and wandering glance gets me tickets from the boy's club, hoping to throw their tickets to a pitiful charity as a sign of their ability to stray from materialism. a pitch and a pint and i've got fully charged game cards from coworkers that have no intentions of touching a joystick or throwing a ball through a hoop.

but my coordination lands me tickets by the bucket load, trading game cards for tokens, rocking the loosest machine in the place:

WHEEL DEAL
Drop your tokens down the ramp to play this addictive game of skill. Win the most tickets by timing your drop at precisely the right moment.

if winning tickets were seduction i'd be a goddamn don juan. buckets of tickets, handfuls of tickets, more and more and more.

oh mr. attendant, i'd say
yes, sir?, he'd reply.
the machine ran out of tickets

...again. can you put some more in, i'd suggest.
no problem, sir, he'd comply.

i bled that wheel try four times, every time a little quicker than the last. if winning tickets were a crime i'd be a goddamn dillinger.

pressuring coworkers, hustling gamers. pressure and hustle, pressure and hustle. but then the real deal starts. when they know you're good.

because then they start giving you their game cards, giving you their game cards to win them tickets of their own. giving you a game card to win them 400 tickets, giving you a game card worth at least two thousand in your hands. this is wealth, dear friends; if winning tickets were magic, i'd be a goddamn houdini.

...and on it went. tickets and tickets, buckets and handfuls and pocketfuls and tickets and tickets and tickets. i closed out my five hour night with 13,008 tickets, not counting those given away.

and what did i win, dear friends, you ask? just take a look, they sit on the hotel bed.

two teddy bears, a tweety in his cage, a hello-kitty backpack, and a henson puppet (complete with squeaking sound). with 700 tickets left over.

my girlfriend's comin' to philly...
my girlfriend's comin' to philly...
my girlfriend's comin' toooooo pillllllllllIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE...



...so let's go buy a hat.*






*trying to rhyme with the let's-all-go-to-the-lobby song is fun, don't you agree?

tensions run high in the terminal. purple rage oozing like a bulbous growth from random pores. maybe these selective thoughts i screen with ink result from exhaustion. or malaise.

i am falling apart, vikas. i am falling apart. i don't know who to trust. whether to trust. i am tired and waking up in a ten-foot hole, too groggy to remember what sunlight tastes like.

those times in your life when you aren't sure what to do...you have no passions or plans. which may just be the least amount of living you can ever do.

since the film is an action one, based on an FBI sharpshooter, the FBI helicopters flying overhead seem to be what is being shot, rather than aiding in what is being shot. although the obvious first choice as to the need for four helicopters, i nevertheless was uninformed that shooting was actually taking place on the roof, as opposed to the 8th floor as described by the signs inside the building (and somehow having helicopters flying around when shooting a scene inside a windowless part of a building on the 8th floor didn't exactly scream action film)

maybe it's just me.

because right now, in the very same building in which i am typing, there is a film crew six floors above me. shooting. a film.

oh but see the big deal, to me at least, is the four helicopters that have been flying overhead for the last couple hours. directly over the building, mostly hovering, periodically sweeping out and heading into the midst of downtown and then coming right back. and hovering there and back and staying that way.

maybe it's just me, to think that four helicopters overhead aren't needed because

a) it's 9am in the morning and brilliantly sunny outside, so they can't be for lighting any damn thing.

b) it's 9am in the morning and if, for some reason, they are shooting b-roll and exterior we-flew-over-the-city-in-a-helicopter-to-capture-the-fast-paced-action-sequence-transition-by-zooming-over-the-river-with-cameras-mounted-to-the-front,
 ...well it seems way too expensive to have four helicopters simultaneously recording the same stuff and stay aloft for this long to do it.

who knows.

maybe it's me, the way i seem to light up a little whenever i see grip trucks and equipment (get it? light up? because that's what grip equipment is for? for lighting the set? eh? eh?)

such a very big part of me wants to pull the savvy, wants to go out there and somehow fill a void and be recognized and somehow manage to sell myself into a gig. though i'm not sure i should call it a gig as a producer, but whatever. it's such a very identifiable part of me that just wants to go down there and talk shop to a bunch of people who probably think i'm a corporate lackey or some young suit that can't think beyond risk analysis and profit margins, daily reports and status meetings...even if i do kinda spend my own time on risk analysis and profit margins and reports and meetings. but what i do in my own time is my own time, dag-nabbit.

it's nice to know, though, that it has nothing to do with the 'magic' of film or the movies, it's so very much feeling as if i were doing something constructive and unique. it's the same feeling i'd get if there were a symposia upstairs amongst relativists or quantum theorists.

i just wanna go.

yesterday, upon leaving work, i heard the following,

"good night, vikas"

from a complete stranger. not a bum on the street, mind you, but rather a co-worker here that i have never met, never seen, and never met or seen.

this hasn't happened to me since high school, or thereabouts. i mean i honestly had no idea who this was and couldn't possibly begin to try and figure it out. there's just something about being recognizable to strangers that takes a second to get used to, i guess.

the world is a funny place. i just spent five minutes wrangling jacking and limbs, throwing myself and my meager materials all akimbo just to be able to position myself appropriately for writing. not looking up at the possibility of the other would-be travelers around me staring while i tossed and turned in an airport gate seat. i'm barely able to keep myself from turning around right now, to see if any necks are craned to look at my page and my words in fresh ink.

i can travel every day. every other day. i can dream of airplanes and various employees with those little wings pinned on their uniforms, and i would still treat each trip the same. taking my time in the lines, no matter how late i am. secretly wondering why people insist on putting their x-ray trays (full of clothes and shoes and belts and cell phones) into the machine length-wise first, keeping my tray and the trays of all those behing me at bay because of a banal choice of longest-side-first orientation.

watching that one guy - there's always that guy - who feels it his duty to describe the inadequacies of the entire airline industry as illustrated by his waiting for 'five minutes already' for a checkin kiosk/x-ray tray/kiss goodby from everyone in the building.

noting that i never tire of traveling so much as i am tired when traveling.

noticing stewardesses, the occasional steward, and wondering what sort of lives they lead. staring, like a child at a circus, at the sheer number of middle-aged white men streaming out of one plane, into the next. wondering what a fat albino looks like. a very fat albino, a king edward VII or hagar the horrible albino (minus the facial hair, of course).

it's nice to be able to let my mind out to play again. i think he missed the fresh air.

so out of sheer curiosity, that and only that, i found myself wondering what i would take in at a bachelor auction.

what do you think?

i'm not sure whether it's just the ambient rat-race of everyday bambling-about, but as i walk around downtown streets i find one thing startling in its preponderance:

people run funny.

you know it's true. how the arms can move with more vigor and ferocity than the legs ('running' as they are). how the arms can move nary a hair's breadth, as if a centaur with only two legs was galloping down the sidewalk. how it seems almost appalling in the amount of effort clearly put into the motion. my guess is that these runners are trying, very hard, to maintain a proper running form but are either blind or unaware because it just looks so unnatural.

but this, also, begs the query as to whether running should look natural. maybe it isn't, if you were doing it right, if you were doing it so as to reduce the risk of injury and longterm impact. and so on.

numerous things have been going on at work today. for one? i brought down the house.

no, seriously. i brought it down. don't compile code while they are running batch in a mainframe environment. just a heads up.

so, while we waited for everything to restart because of my horrendous timing, i checked email. of note? everyone is getting promoted on the 1st. well, everyone meaning alot of people on the team, whom i know. they're all up for promotion this year and a lot of them nailed it. i salute them, and yet feel somewhat smaller because i haven't been here long enough.

but then i go outside and realize that they probably run in proper form. so that evens it out.

push and push and shove and shove and love and hate and love and hate and KABLAMOO!

it says much about person, lack of sleep. with regards to endurance, it is a prolific novelist, a stephen king of describing a human being's inner depths and secret dreams. with the pinpoint accuracy of caffeinated thought, lack of sleep drives homeward all sorts of self-awareness and assurance, while playing out the obvious shortcomings of any prince or pauper.

oh, and the jolts and bouts of wake-ed-ness are also great for making you think that you're perfectly capable of staying awake even further go self-aggrandization.. woo-hoo.

so basically today has consisted of :

- sleeping in one hour intervals for approximately 3 hours
- waking up
- using coffee as a crutch
- realizing i have a very tasty crutch
- having mountains of work and no sherpa
- being drowned in a horrible stench that engulfed the entire office out of nowhere
- not having my phone calls or emails returned by about four people who suddenly are nowhere to be found
- playing with miscellaneous little goo-gaws that i have recieved from work the last couple of days (koosh-dolls and the like)

so the other day i was working on the weekend and we had an hour in which we held 'mock' emmys to commemorate our having worked while they aired (it's ironical or something, it seems). during this mock affair, several of us were awarded with, you guessed it...awards.

did i win one? yes. what was the award? "most likely to have his name mis-pronounced in meetings."

how apt.

otherwise, i'm struggling with the self-indulgence of a new blog and enough liquid courage   {read: caffeine}   to keep my typing away like a typing typist...when i can manage to keep my hands steady enough to work coherently.

i am stupid.

...i choose to ignore the stunned gasps, cries, and silence that just issued.

no, it's true. sure, i can drum out pi to 18 digits {3.14159265358979323, in case you were wondering} but i can't calculate it that far. well, not without sitting there, sticking fingers in and out of the air as i count decimal places in my head.

i'm an idiot. for a thorough examination, here is a brief listing
so there you go. all i need is a big cone hat and a dictionary to make sure i can spell d-u-n-c-e correctly.

* the irony was not lost. it's just not obvious if you're as stupid as me.

I just got a new WATERMAN pen!

It's a fountain pen!

It's in a box!!

With BLUE INK!

IN A BOX!



...my girl is super awesome.