Just FYI

I'm in California this weekend, to greet friends from China, and then we're going to New York to take my "Chinese little brother" to his boarding school (upstate, for the New Yorkers in the house; WAY upstate, for you New Yorkers who believe the world ends at the fringes of New York City). Right now we're in LA, at a very nice hotel (Hilton ain't famous for nothin', y'all) in some sort of Chinatown. Tomorrow it's road trip time: up the 101 to Monterey Bay, stopping in Carmel, and then up to San Fran, to hit up downtown and do a bit of sightseeing. Tom's Dad is in-country for 10 days, but my extremely dear friend Zhongyuan (aka Sally) and I will be traveling together for about a month. We'll see how it goes and where we end up.

There will probably be more posts when we get to my parents' place next week, but I'm not going to make any promises.

Ideally, supercool times will be had by all and we won't run into any huge transportation snafus. Keep your fingers crossed, send us happy thoughts, pray for us, whatever you like.

Oh, and since I'm hitting up Googlism.com (random reasons, long story, don't ask): here's a few of my favorite portions of the current "Julie" page:

julie is taking your name in vain over on general

julie is???

julie is hesitant to set herself up for further heartbreak
julie is known for her warm
julie is originally from quebec
julie is currently the apegga representative on the faculty of science at the university of calgary
julie is no more
julie is irate at the pregnancy
julie is forced to give it up
julie is playing next
julie is identified

julie is far from being some crass yank

julie is an innovator who visualizes how software will actually function in the real world

3 am

YouTube served me up a lovely new voice tonight, and then it suggested this, a mashup of said voice, Katie Melua, and... well... watch it. I believe it's a film called Threads, but I can't be bothered to check because Matchbox 20 is singing me a lullaby and I don't feel like interrupting. Say what you will about the pop band, and then take a look at his eyes in the last few seconds of the song. That's quality humanness.

If I'm going to be awake at 3am, I might as well be in this sort of mood. Connections, insights, a sudden view into the territory around this momentary rut my life is in. And I don't mean rut in a bad way. At least not entirely. Not that my performance this semester has been perfect, but the semester itself has been... reasonable. I'm currently walking a waiting-for-student-loans tightwire, with bad consequences for having absolutely no cash waiting just a few steps ahead. And I need to somehow kick my independent study into gear. But these are not things that are going to kill me, and I have faith that people are going to be kind to me this time around.

The work is good. The teammates are cool - tonight's afterhours movie selections were Shinobi and Shaun of the Dead, so you know the bonding's topnotch. Which, unfortunately, meant that I missed the last bus home and here I am. Fortunately for you, if you're a long-lost friend wondering what's up with Julie these days. And most of my friends are at least a bit off the radar, so.

I'm not sure whether I wish I didn't need the kindness. It would be great to do everything right and never need help, at least in theory. But maybe it would be even lonelier.