begin rant

So today at work one of the girls really didn't agree with the tomato soup that she had for lunch, and afterwards she needed an unused toothbrush and toothpaste to remove the taste from her mouth. She half-jokingly asked me for such a thing, as I have in the past been known to produce rare and obscure toys and tools in a boy scout-like fashion from my desk. And of course I had both toothpaste and brush, second drawer on the left towards the back behind the burlap sack and underneath the bubble-wrap.

It was an old American Airlines travel kit from one of the long hauls between Buenos Aires and Miami.

Probably from 1992 or '93.

The brush was fine - hermetically sealed and all, but the toothpaste apparently had an expiration date on the back - for January of 1995. Jules took the brush, and went in search of someone with 'good' toothpaste to use. Lacking anything more important to do... well... maybe just lacking anything else with such high entertainment value, I called the 1-800 number on the back of the tube. Not only was I surprised to find that the line was still active, I was doubly surprised to find a human being on the other end of only four or five short robot-based menu decisions. I then learned that Colgate-Palmolive only gaurantees their products eighteen months beyond the expiration date, at which point the "consistancy or flavor" of the toothpaste may be subject to change - but the active ingredients should remain effective, although my 'brushing experience' may be subject to change.

So later tonight I will be faced with a dilemma: use this "collector's edition Classic Colgate travel toothpaste" for entertainment value and the hope of possible fluoride poisoning - or save it for posterity and possibly later sale on eBay?

Posted by Derksen at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sleep and sunlight provide me with another perspective: a day only has as much significance as I am willing to give it. Therefore, as designated by Imperial Edict, today is just another day.

Posted by Derksen at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dammit.

I meant to take today off - and I think I am probably going to leave work early no matter what, but... What an awful waste of time. I wish I could feel that I had accomplished something, but all I have ever done out here is survive. I think I am a plant for drier weather: while I loved the monsoon rains of my youth, I have never been able to set roots down here in the swamp.

If they bring me a pen for my five years of service today, I fear that I will stick it in the bearer's eye.

I stopped trying to escape two years ago - and while I was glad to make the opportunity to get to know some very good people here... it doesn't change the fact that I need to leave. I think I must be making progress, because the relative percentage of rejection letters to application/resumes has increased somewhat since the last time I made a serious effort to depart for fairer shores. Who knows?

You only need one to say yes.

Wish me luck.

I'd like to be somewhere different by this time next year.

Posted by Derksen at 2:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They say that everyone dies alone, but I am not sure that I agree.

I mean, there are times when it is good to be alone, but I'd rather be alone with other people than alone by myself. Please do not mistake this to mean, "alone in a crowd" - I would far rather be alone and by myself than trapped in a crowd of individuals whose existence or patter I care little to nothing about.

An old friend of mine by the name of Danielle Long called last week and inadvertently reminded me of this.

I'd spent the evening with my boss and a few of his friends in a bar, and while it was good to have people around... there was just no connection, and I didn't really belong. Worse still: most of them didn't really belong either, but I think they lied to themselves and said that they wanted to be there because they wanted to somehow try to connect with someone because it was better than going home alone - to be reminded of a wife who had left you, or to find their alcoholic husband that they could bring themselves to cheat on but just couldn't quite bring themselves to divorce, or to feed their dogs and finish off the last of a bottle of Crown alone, or to stagger with their intoxicated roommate home just long enough that they could close the door to their own room and actually be physically alone again for another eight hours. For all the bluster and noise of that bar, none of it meant anything - because none of it connected. It was individuals reaching out for affection and reassurance, but finding their own hang-ups and insecurities in the way.

And I went home and Dani Long called me on the phone and I wasn't alone anymore - and within five minutes of speaking to her I felt more awake and alive and involved than I had all day. I wasn't alone, and I was somehow part of this greater invisible community again. I belonged. And the damnedest thing of it all was that Dani could very well have sat on the other end of the room finishing her anthro reading while Liz Twieg stared intently at her bio homework and Jess Whipple pretended to casually peruse a comic book - all of us involved in our own self-absorbed little worlds - but while none of us would actually have been interacting with one another, none of us would have really been alone.

They also say that no one who has friends is ever alone.

I have friends.

Thanks, guys.

Posted by Derksen at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Behold!

My hand, in before and after pictures. See if you can spot the "scaphoid non-union" in the first photo - it may take a bit of a look, as it appears to be two bones to the untrained eye. I mean, I certainly didn't see anything particularly unusual until the doc pointed it out to me. Note the small segment of my radius scraped out and inserted into the scaphoid in the second photo. Really cool that you can distinguish the individual pieces of the grafted contraption, and that the shaving was significant enough to stand out as a lighter patch on my arm. Do note that the doctor chose not to wire or screw the contraption together... and that pin is eventually going to have to come out. Last and not least, a shot of the stitch-work on my arm. I am almost disappointed - it was a neat job, and it will probably leave an insignificant and unnoticeable scar.

Posted by Derksen at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Talking on the phone this morning with Elizabeth Twieg, and she complained (maybe complain isn't the right word - maybe 'celebrated' is, but since when have I been the kind of person to let little technicalities like that get in the way of my fun?) that she had not seen Derksen wandering the halls with his boxers on his head in a good many years.

Thank god for the revolution in digital image processsing.

Posted by Derksen at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)