Monday, October 31, 2005 2:58 pm  <|>
<232> Looking Back: I'm really tired today. I haven't been this tired at work in awhile. Sure, I didn't go to bed particularly early last night, but in addition it also felt like an hour later because, well, it was thanks to daylight savings time. When most people use their extra gained hour to sleep, I instead decide to work through it. Of course I do. But I have a draft of a paper due tomorrow that I wanted to finish up last night as well as get in a few more hours of recordings for my webcam surveillance project, so at least it was for a semi-productive reason that I'm feeling it now.

It's Halloween today. Originally we wanted to be sure to find someplace to go out to, to have some fun and have a reason to make costumes. Well, we went ahead and put together (for the most part) costumes. Dan and I are being Leela and Fry from Futurama. I've dressed up every year in recent times but it seems somehow like all that is much further away than it really is. It doesn't even feel like Halloween for some reason. I don't know why really. Well, tonight maybe it will. We decided not to worry about going out, but we are going to a friend's house to carve pumpkins, watch a movie and eat some food. It gives us all a reason to dress in our costumes and at least we'll be celebrating the holiday somewhat.

Speaking of celebrating, this passed Friday was my dear friend Femi's birthday. We went out to a bar for a bit and it was the first time I've been out at a regular bar in awhile. It was also the first time I'd seen a lot of my old friends in awhile too. Seeing them all in the same place brought back so many memories. I do sometimes miss that we'd all be together at least once a week to see each other, drink, and have a good time. Those days seem like forever ago too. When some people are in the their partying prime in their early and mid 20s, we are settling down and the 'sad' thing about it is I really wouldn't want it any other way. I guess I just lost a lot of the energy I once had for such things. I still enjoy a good time, but my body can't handle all that goes with it anymore. It's not that I wasted it all partying, but with all the health junk I've been through, it's just different now. I still enjoy it once in awhile though for sure and Friday night was really a LOT of fun. Hopefully that kind of stuff can happen just a little more often... that I wouldn't mind at all.

SEPTA workers are on strike. This is important because SEPTA runs Philadelphia's subway and bus system. Although our subway system sucks, many still rely on it for what they can, including myself as I use it to get to/from work each day. What normally is a 30 or so minute trip including a 15 minute subway ride and a 15 minute walk home from the stop now is replaced with one of the following two options... walk home, which with my walking speed factored in and such, gets me home in a little more than an hour or a cab, which gets me there in 5 minutes, 10 at most, but costs somewhere between $7-$8 each way. Now I'll admit to taking this luxury from time to time in the mornings when I'm already running 'late' (though with no set hours there isn't really such a thing anymore), but to know I HAVE to take it in order to get to work in a decent amount of time sucks. Even so, getting a cab in the morning is one thing, when people are going to work at various times (and because starting at 8:30am you get ahead of the people heading in for 9am) but trying to catch a cab after 5pm and then dealing with the rush hour traffic on top of that is an entirely different matter. That I've only attempted to do once or twice ever and let me tell you it wasn't fun. I've done it when I needed to get to the pharmacy before it closed at 5:30pm, but even leaving work 15 minutes early would usually only get me there with a little time to spare. Today as we have something to do I think I might attempt the cab option, but the one time I recall taking it from work to home it took forever, stop and go, the cab driver went 3 blocks out of his way for some reason, and he still dropped me off 1 1/2 blocks from my actual requested stop. I think he just wasn't very good, but in general it didn't make for a good experience. We'll see what happens today I guess.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to moving all the files from my old server (that I was still paying for) to my current one for my very first site Meg's Place. Wow, looking through that site, now THAT brings back a lot of memories. My I was silly in certain respects, but who isn't in the years that span from 13 - 17? That was pretty much the range of my run on that site before I moved on to creating an early form of this one in 2001. It was symbolic in a way of my step from a developing teen to a young adult really... it showed in a lot of ways too. And just looking back through the immense amount of pages that I had gathered there on my old site made me realize for the first time where a lot of what I like and think now came from. It was a time when I was more innocent and more naive too. It was a time so long ago in comparison to me now I think. If only everyone had such an insight into their 'growing' years! I could write a book about this stuff... ha, maybe I will! ;)

Also just last week when going through some books and things I have still not fully unpacked from my shelves, I discovered my hoard of old journals. I flipped open one at random and there were all my entries of the early sophomore year relationship of Dan and I (which lasted just over a month). It was very interesting to read because of what it was about, but it's also always interesting to read my writing from years ago. I almost constantly was writing towards myself in the future without really knowing it and in the moments, recording down advice to myself that even now seems like better wisdom than I should have had at that point in my life. I guess I wasn't what you'd call clueless, but I still had my share of crap to deal with coming through it all despite that. Still, looking back on it all now, it's hard to describe what kind of feelings it all brings. But, what I can say is it's always good to revisit your past, even the parts that might have been quite painful, because you never know what new insight it might bring to your life now.