Right now, I'm thinking Sirius Black transformed himself into Crookshanks, and that Scabbers is a wizard in hiding. But that actually doesn't make sense, now that I think about it. So nevermind.

I've had three nights of terribly restless sleep, and my eyes have been tired. Reading nonstop does not help.

Our friend Carly was visiting from UIUC with her friend Caitlin. They were attending a conference on sweatshop workers across the world (United Students Against Sweatshops), and since they were supposed to stay – or at least hang out – with us, we feared that we'd be snowed in and they'd be stranded.

But that never happened. We got maybe three inches – a breeze to drive through. Montgomery County schools, however, announced on Sunday that school would be closed Monday. The roads by late Sunday afternoon were fairly clear, free of most snow and little or no ice. Lame.

Asma and I were driving yesterday to pick up the lady she takes care of a few times a week, and the flurry that was falling turned into a lot of big flakes. I was worried that it'd blanket the roads. The following conversation followed:

—Oh good, big snowflakes mean that it'll stop snowing soon.
—Huh? What do you mean?
—I learned that when snowflakes start to get big, the snow storm is dying down.
—I don't get it. Where did you learn that from?
—I learned it in second grade.
—Hmm. Weird. And your teacher told you this?
—No… It was another student.

At that was where I started to laugh. My GFF is cute.

We bought Scrabble Complete from Target yesterday, and she made a copy for me to take to work so that we can play each other online. Must never lose the disc labeled ‘SKRABOLL CUMPLIT’.

I have over 200 HTML pages to edit, which will hopefully wrap up this leg of work at AARP and move me on up to the next project. Joy.

Must lose the fifteen pounds I've gained back since moving here. Bah.

The MCI center has a lot of new barricades placed on the sidewalks. There's also a new barricade outside of a restaurant called Rosa Mexicana which I would've stumbled over yesterday had I closed my eyes for several seconds longer while I walked.

DC is stuck with the $12 million security costs because the administration refuses to reimburse the city. This guy is hated enough that there are missile launchers set up, and he's sticking the bill to a city that largely doesn't support him. Asshole.

Asma went with a couple of friends to join in on the protests. I decided not to go. I think it'll be more fun to get a bird's eye view of things. And I have work to finish.

Homosexuality and abortion is more of a sin than warfare and the killing of innocent Iraqis.

Dumb people electing Bush. Grumble, grumble.

One Hour Photo is good. I was Sy in a past life.

Syke.

I get retarded creativity around my brother, so get ready for the midEast peacePlan.

Then I realized just how enormous I must've been to it, like a moving mountain. It made more sense in how to visualize Father Time from The Silver Chair (I finished The Chronicles of Narnia last week). But I can't truly imagine something living that would be so large.

So now I feel like my poke wasn't so gentle. It was still alive, and I got it to climb on my finger, and it even crawled onto my back at one point. What if a California Redwood were to ‘gently’ tap me?

Also, the basement carpet is partially damp and the bathroom has a layer of water on the floor from last night's thunderstorm. The temperature has dropped 30 degrees from yesterday and it started snowing. Winter sucks.

The long awaited moment when I would see Clutch – my only favorite musical person or group still in existence – has come and gone.

I, unfortunately, was not there.

It turned out that I wasn't really up to going out that night, having had several nights of bad sleep beforehand. Lying around watching The West Wing with my jujuloo was more appealing. And I haven't heard flattering stories about the 9:30 Club, so, next time. In another venue.

Papaya, whose name will be changed once I find a proper Bangla name, is doing dandy. She loves ripping up newspaper and enjoys a good collard green leaf. Shirin is slowly getting used to her. Instead of barking immediately, she sniffs around first before biting at the cage and jumping back while barking. Papaya jumps at her in return. What followed this particular incident was a bit scary.

Shirin went back into her cage a few minutes after her encounter with Papaya, and all seemed normal. Asma soon noticed that Shirin was crying. She wasn't jumping around and spent most of her time on the ground. We thought that maybe she had something lodged in her throat, because the wooden coaster I put in there after we cleaned the cage had a small chunk missing.

That wasn't the case, though, since she ate up the snacks we gave her. We let her out again, hoping that it would cheer her up, but she was again crying, this time under the sofa. So we tried getting her back in the cage. She was running weird, and while in the cage, she wasn't moving around much. She seemed sad, and it took her a while to respond to the snack bag.

An hour later, Asma was looking at some christmas lights she put up (we'd massively cleaned the apartment that day) and joked that maybe the lights were bothering Shirin. That made a lot of sense, for some reason. I unplugged the light and soon afterwards, she slowly began to act more and more normal.

So, do chinchillas have sensitivity to blue light? Because we don't know what exactly caused her to act weird. Shirin has always been a happy munchkin in her new cage.

Anyway, New Year was good. We spent the night at her friend Sarah's, along with Sarah's boyfriend and another friend Cameron. There was talk, Trivial Pursuit, pizza, and Woodchuck. The next day we saw The Life Aquatic and ate at Buca di Beppo. Good movie, good food.

I've started cross-stiching.

Asma and I made a pact that we wouldn't eat out for a week, since it was becoming more of a habit. We followed through pretty easily for more than a week, and broke it by ordering a pizza. And then I had McDonald's at the airport, which is becoming my airport thing to do.

I got into Springfield last night after an airline change and a three-hour wait. United Air was having a lot of delays for some reason, switching people to later flights and whatnot. I even received a call a few hours before my flight telling me that I was supposed to depart on another flight one hour later than I'd thought. It turned out that all flights from Chicago to Springfield were cancelled and that I would theoretically have to spend the night. But the lady at the ticket desk switched me to American Airlines. And here I am again, at home.

Turbulence still bugs me. It's a common occurrence, no doubt, and flights rarely if ever crash because of it. But I feel so helpless, being shaken, feeling like I might fall. I wish I could sedate myself for a few minutes at a time.

Ok, time to revise something for my dad. I apologize for the long delay. I hope things will return to a more normal frequency.

We lived in the same neighborhood for a brief period; he was my first real friend moving to Illinois. I turned him into a computer geek, though I don't quite remember how… More than likely, it was through introducing him to BBSes and warez, scamming AOL, and whatever else.

There were several occasions where we'd ride bikes to each other's place with 30+ floppy disks, filled with whatever cool game or app we managed to download that week. (This was done on 28.8k modems, mind you.)

Like I'd said earlier, Sara came along and Nick pretty much stopped hanging out with us at school, spending more time with her and her friends instead. Understandable. We didn't really talk much towards the end (unless my memory has gone blank), but we'd always say hi to each other. No animosity. Just a natural drifting away.

We began talking again through ICQ my freshman year of college, though that died down towards the end of the year. And we somehow got in touch again through AIM (through a mutual friend, Raj, who AD might've been talking to more).

Anyway, I finally met up with him in person two or three years ago when he told me he was moving out of some house and I offered to help him. He was supposed to meet up with me and Andrew last summer, but he ended up having to watch his little son longer than he expected. Neither of us made any solid plans afterwards.

AD called me several times on Thursday, which I didn't get a chance to answer until later that night. He'd asked me if I'd heard any news about Nick. I said I hadn't, but I knew what he was getting at at that moment.

Nick died a few days ago, apparently from a car accident (though I don't know for sure). I tried looking through The State Journal-Register to see if there was any news of him. Aside from the obituary on December 28, nothing.

I feel weird about it. No real sadness yet, though I was starting to tear up while I talked to my mom about it. He's the second person I could consider being close to to have died during the years in which I could understand the difference between life and death.

More than anything, I feel guilty for being stupid, for not being more aggresive in seeing him. I think he knew that it was an ackward thing for me, if not for him too, since it was almost like starting over again.

I meant to see him for sure when I go back to Springfield in two weeks. This is the worst way to learn a lesson about swallowing up fears of social ackwardness. It's a bad reason to not see someone.

Nick IMed me on Christmas day and I didn't reply then. He was online and idle for a good four days when I heard the news, which explains a lot. It was strange seeing him online today; I wanted to send a message. Maybe it would've somehow gotten to him?

Someone got into his apartment, because he's not online anymore. Last sign of his life gone. Weird how that works.

There's no real point to this, except to just say that I'm sorry? And that I hope his family can get through this. And that I hope his son Connor – if he was in the car – is doing fine, and that Nick's passing was peaceful.

He was a good guy.