Fade to Grey

The Paulitico seems to take some measure of joy in testing my assorted ailments and peculiarities, today it was parading the Ishihara color blindness test in front of me after watching Little Miss Sunshine.

We sufficiently proved that I am, in fact, still partially color blind and getting a little worse it would seem. This thought gave me something to chew on for a while, and it occurred to me that while so many seem to feel that life was more vibrant and colorful when they were younger and more hopeful, for about 4-8% of us that is literally true.

With any luck the fate of the world will never hinge upon my ability to determine if that little status LED on the cable modem is bright green or amber.

Birthday Diary

January 5, 2009

12:06pm

Woke up to the cell phone ringing. Sleep deprivation has made my hands useless so they flail at the tiny buttons attempting to silence that infernal contraption. Eventually gave up and used my claw-hands to shove the phone under several layers of pillows.

1:37pm

Emerged from a dreamless sleep yet somehow had the image of a skyscraper made entirely of faux fur stuck in my head. Cole slaw before bed seems to be a poor idea.

1:43pm

Managed to get my hands working long enough to check my voicemails. My sister wished me well and then my mother and brothers sang me a happy birthday in a different message.

2:18pm

Tore myself from the extremely comfortable covers and sought out a hearty breakfast. Settled on a naval orange instead. A childhood spent eating them on sunny California days has instilled in me an almost automatic need to peel and enjoy the orange slowly in order to savor the experience for as long as possible while staving off weekend chores.

2:24pm

Sat down to the computer and trolled Craigslist for a job. I'm getting too good at spotting the regular posters to the job boards. There's a Dakota Roadhouse that can never seem to find the right "vivacious personality, absolutely no students of any kind", they seem to post that ad every other week. At least they're more subtle than the "Looking for bartender to work and dance in two piece bikini, no experience necessary". It's almost comforting to know that there are some jobs no one will tolerate no matter how bad the economy gets.

I turned off the phone because trolling for jobs online makes accepting the well-wishes of friends and loved ones feel oddly hollow.

4:03pm

Came to the strange realization that looking for jobs online is a lot like looking for sex online. It's mostly two people hoping to find something incredible and ending up disappointed. On the plus side the job hunt has yet to result in a trip to the Free Clinic.

5:16pm

Turned the phone back on, a few more people sending amelodic love but thus far no resume call-backs. It's still good to be loved.

5:19pm

Showers are something I can never fail to enjoy. The feeling of warmth and water on my skin does enough to remind me of sunnier weather and simpler times that the lingering side-effects of short and fitful slumber finally melt away and I can feel my extremities again.

5:52pm

Plugged into the Game.

"[Zeroes]: Ding 32! But in real life so no epic lootz for me."
"[Mikey]: Happy vaginal escape day!"
"[Virgule]: I'm only 2.01 in hexadecimal age."

My fellow nerds have an odd way of lifting my spirits.

7:07pm

Paulitico gets home offering 32 kisses and promises of sushi. The mention of food reminds me that a single orange, while high in vitamin C, does not a day's worth of food make. I suspect that it's poor eating habits like this that are contributing to my growing sense of foreboding. That or it's the odd thumps and shudders coming from the ground floor that shake my apartment so hard that precariously perched items fall over. On second thought, it's probably the shakes and shudders.

8:03pm

The Japanese/Nepalese restaurant serves up some decent sushi, though the real highlight of the experience is the large flatscreen playing East Indian hip-hop and Punjabi subtitled Japanese country/bluegrass. I'm not sure what's up with it always taking forever to get a check once the meal is done. Maybe I'm just getting to that age where I start rose-tinting anything beyond the five year event horizon of experiential interpretation, but I could have sworn that when your table is cleared that generally means your meal is over. The stumble home is intense and cold, we're expecting snow tonight and that last spicy chicken dumpling is hitting my stomach harder than reality is hitting the sub-prime mortgage market.

9:13pm

Snuggle with Paulitico while he reads. We tell each other syrupy things and then I let him sleep for the night. There's something unspeakably beautiful about him when he's sleeping. It would be annoying if I weren't shacking up with him already.

9:27pm

Plug myself back into the Game. I know I should take a last pass over Craigslist but my birthday present to myself this year is not ending my day with a reminder of how sleazy potential employers can be. That and my friends on the Left Coast just texted me that they want to see me in-game so that we can talk about boys and chopping.

3:59am

After a long and bloody struggle, might has triumphed over other might. The building stopped shaking randomly about a half an hour ago and my eyes are starting to deflate into the back of my head, it is clearly time to put an end to consciousness for another day.

Happy berfday me.