yeah, martin. i know exactly how you feel. i kept meaning to say something of a similar ilk to you, but i have this thing where i have an idea and i think 'need to do x about this' and then don't do x and then immediately forget that i'm supposed to do x until the next time that the thing comes up and i'm all like 'dammit! i have to do x about that.'

but yeah, mn and i had this thing recently where the marriage thing came up and i knew that you and chow were talking about it and i wanted to know how you felt. cause getting married is something that is extremely important to her (and the rest of her family), but not of high importance to me at all. what i really wanted to know, though, is how you were feeling about marriage as an institution in general, though. i know that we've had talks before about how neither of us had positive role models (or really any at all) who were in 'traditional' heterosexual marriages and hence the idea of marriage was a bit alien and not really on the priority list.

i still feel that way, but people look at me like some sort of freak (much worse than normal) when i say that. to me it has sort of become 'there will be no difference between us or in our relationship once we are married, so what's the big deal.' of coure i'm a path-of-least-resistance sort of guy and the marriage thing seems like a lot of sort of silly work and money for no net change, so why bother. but i was posed with the question: 'if you don't care and/or it doesn't make a difference to you, but it does to me, why don't you just give in and let's get married.'

i must admit that i've been hard pressed over the past few months to find a hole in that logic. exactly like you, i'm sticking to my guns because of this feeling that marriage is not something i want to be involved in right now. don't know why, but it's not. and it's not some male cop-out thing -- on the prowl constantly or anything. it just doesn't interest me.

there's a whole collection of discussions that accompanies this central issue. i just wanted to let you know that you're not alone and that validating your feelings is not really something that you (any human, i think) can do. so you should be required no more than 7%. and if your whole relationship can be made or broken by the answer to that question before you're ready to answer it, than it's not healthy.

this is, of course, assuming a universe in which soulmates do not exist and you are not missing your One Big Chance(tm) here, because that's the universe we live in.

ps - fuck you mr. my-only-responsibility-is-to-jack-off-into-a-petri-dish-during-my-fake-job-during-summer-vacation-and-hence-have-all-the-time-in-the-world-to-write-blog-posts

Well, Martin, I will not answer you because I have plenty of opportunities to do so. Also, I think plenty of people read the blog, just no one takes the time to post. For example, I have been working 12 and 14 hours a day so that I can get this bullshit done. When I go back to the hotel, I sleep. No posting for me, no way.

My job has just become a means to an end, since my new goal is to go live in Japan for about 18 months. At the beginning of this year I decided that the next 30 years or so should mean something more than to just have a job and then retire. So I decided that I want to achieve fluency in Japanese. This goes along with my minor and I've always had a latent interest in that plus living in a foreign country for a certain period of time. But it wasnt until earlier this year when I decided to put that plan into action. I started researching Japanese language schools and I found one I was interested in. I visited the school recently and now I am more focused than ever on reaching that goal. It was pretty cool. But thats another post in itself.

So now I have this job, but right now all it means to me is a paycheck to finance other things. So now I'm worried about a couple things. First, I'm afraid that as it gets closer to the time for me to execute my plan, I wont care about my job enough. Although I think I've already become cynical for other reasons. Also, since this is such a long term goal, I'm afraid of it consuming me to the point where its all I care about. Although I dont think I'm really the type. Maybe I'm not worried at all. I'm not really that type either.

I'm sitting in a telecom room in Boise ID right now, and I'm all by myself. In fact, the entire building is vacant. I feel like starting one of those montages you see in movies like Home Alone or Risky Business where the character is all alone and just starts being themselves. But I'm afraid the police might get involved again. At least I know there wouldnt be any video.

I'm going to San Francisco in a couple weeks, I'm probably going to see Matt while I'm out there. Unless they let all of the convicts out of Alcatraz and the town is in a state of crisis. Then I'll probably just go to the beach.

Oh, and who would be dumb enough to admit they are in Biloxi MS right now?

An update on my current work. My job has slowed down a lot since the last time I posted. Maybe slowed down isn't the right term, lets try "changed focus." I spend most of my time with a chemist, kind of tied to the hip. He is a great person to learn from, and a good person in general. He goes about doing stuff in the lab with me watching, then next time something needs to be done he asks me to do it while he does something else. It is a style of leadership that I deal well with. The "changed focus" part comes from this guy (Boyd) being a lab technicial, and not really doing too much research on his own. The general feel that I get is that Boyd is responsible for refining the process which other researches use. So by learning from him, I have been training as a lab technicial. My training will come to a head in 15 minutes when Boyd has to go to a meeting and I am asked to plate 20 microns of copper onto these plates that we need to ship back to Dupont tomorrow. Unfortunately we don't have an accurate micron/minute rate for the bath, so I will have to pull it out periodically and test the thickness, retreat the plates and put them back in the bath. It is a tedious process, but in theory if I can get my hands on an AFM machine I will be able to run some tests and take some data. This is more exciting than the past few days, which have been filled with various tests and titrations in order to make sure our baths were up to spec. I am a titrating fiend. When testing last night I found out that it takes ~1ml of my semen to turn Matt's mom from unpregnant to pregnant.

This coming weekend Chowning and I are planning a wonderful weekend in Blue Ridge, Ga. We are renting a cabin and doing cabinny things, which includes tubing down some river. It should be a great weekend, followed by a trip back to Atlanta for our anniversary dinner and watching of fireworks. It will be a much needed vacation for us, because the past few times we have been together have involved a decent amount of fighting. Most of it revolves around the following issue: Chowning is ready to get married and I am not. When asked why I am not ready to get married my answer is that I don't feel like I am ready to get married right now. The result is Chowning not understanding why I am not ready if she is not ready and the fighting ensues. Most of the time it revolves around my attempt to explain why I'm not ready to be married, which doesn't go over very well since it is largely based on a feeling. Now, I don't want to paint Chowning in a bad light here, she doesn't necessarily want to be married right now, but soon. Unfortunately, when I say that things will happen "soon" or "in time" she doesn't believe me and feels like it will never happen.

So I pose the following question (which is likely to be unanswered since few, if any people seem to check this thing): How much should a person have to validate their feeling on whether or not they want to be married?

Martin, you are a posting fiend and I am happy to hear you're havin a rockin summer. I'm really loving this summer as well. ILM is working my arse off but it's fun work. Rox is loving working at Exploratorium. She spends most of her time in the metal shop augmenting exhibits and building new ones and is having a blast learning and re-learning all the equipment. She's right across the street from ILM so we have lunch every day. Two days ago George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppolla ate in the cafeteria. It's funny... everyone does their best to look without trying to look. They discourage us from approaching him.

Last weekend, Ian, Rick, Rox and I went hiking in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Here are some pictures. This weekend is Pride festival here in San Francisco. I'm hoping to pull myself away from work to see the parade in the morning. If it happens, I promise lots of gay pix.

While my summer days and nights have been great . . . the past two late nights have sucked. They've sucked because I'm having a bout of insomnia. I spent about 2 hours lieing (how you like that one Jeremy) in bed before I was finally able to go to sleep. It, as was already said, sucked.

With a roommate out of town, I walked down to the park in order to watch the last bit of Breakfast at Tiffany's with Mark and Shannon. Apparently they really like Matt's place, especially because it is already furnished. It was good to see them again. As I was walking back home I was again struck with the fact that I love cities. Last night it was because of the diversity that I found over a few blocks.

When I left my place it was the sort of well-off, corporate ladder climbing white people I see everyday, with a smattering of homeless . . . all black. Then, as I made it closer to 10th and Peachtree the demographic switched. We got rid of the homeless people, and replaced the white corporates with black corporates. On the walk over to Piedmont I was surrounded with other transients, noted by their various packs and beverages. By the time I made it to Outwrite everyone was wearing tanktops. Then as I passed through there closer to the park it was a total mixture of people (I assume because of the show).

The thing that struck me as most interesting about the walk (and the walk back was the same) was the dichotomy of diversity and unity that seemed to exist during that walk. It isn't so much that everyone was living happily together, but rather that there were small pockets of different cultures, so it was like walking through little homogenous areas. I think that is what we mean when we talk about diversity . . . at least the fun kind. Having everyone be the same isn't diverse, even if they all come from different ethnic, social backgrounds. Diversity is having those groups with those backgrounds coexist without losing their identity. I'm sure we've all had that thought before.

I saw a headline "Cuban fined $250,000" and I thought it was Martin because who would try to fine any other Cuban that much money. But then I realized it was Mark Cuban.

ESPN 2 is the station that has been showing the most World Cup games here in the U.S. Outside of Univision, I imagine that ESPN 2 has the bulk of hispanic viewers right now. I was pretty sure that ESPN was aware of this and had altered their advertising according (I was seeng a lot of boxing ads). But now I am fucking sure that ESPN is on the ball, as they have altered their normal programming to accomodate the latino audience. I just same something on ESPN 2 after the Germany game (great fucking game with a stoppage time goal to win it for the germans) that I thought I would never see: the Dominoes Championships being held in the Hilton in Las Vegas. I shit you not kiddies, ESPN has decided to air Dominoes in an attempt to hold onto the hispanic audience they have picked up for the world cup. The show looks almost exactly like TV poker, where you get to see each players hand, and much to my delight they aren't playing 5's, but real dominoes instead. There's even partners. Of course, everyone in the finals is hispanic, and a majority of the interviews were in spanish with english subtitles. Is this as obvious a ploy to trap latinos into watching more ESPN commercials, or am I just being paranoid?

Man, I feel like such a loser since I don't have a picture to post with my . . . post. Anyway, I think this has been the best summer I've had since 2003 (Colorado). The program I'm in lets me work on new, challenging problems. It isn't as much heat transfer and I thought it would be. It is a lot of quantum mechanics and then talk of how they make transistors and various other microelectronic parts and why they work. I'm walking everywhere I go. I haven't used my car since it came back from work two weeks ago. It's fucking awesome. I'm going out and doing things with my afternoons. I'm working out everyday, including getting together with Jason on wednesday for a track workout, then hitting up flicks on fifth. Other days I'm headed to the bar, or to the park. Basically I'm doing all the things I said I was going to be able to do when I moved here. And it's fucking awesome. I absolutely love living here. It is a shame that my past two summers have been marred with ACL injuries, because I've really been missing out. Just yesterday my Dad and I walked (o.k. my Dad drove from decatur and hobbled the rest of his way on his fucked up knee) to Tech to watch the last game in the super regional.

I'm working on a lab report on the Hall Effect for my class. It is due in two days, and it is part of a collaborative effort between three people. I'm doing the bulk of the work, which is fine because I need to hone my skills a bit. We're done with the class portion of the program (I took a test Friday). Next come the research part, where I'm going to be working for a guy from the MSE department: Roa Tummala. Apparently this guy is big. Big enough that I wont ever see the guy because he will be galavanting around the globe talking about physical limits on transistor size and packing. So I guess I'll be working with his students, or some shit. I don't even know what it is I'll be doing yet. When I look at his webpage all the details of his research are "electronic packaging." Whatever, it will be cool to do research again. Man, this summer is fucking awesome.

Has anyone called you a sell out from Japan?

Sell out.

i lost something

Texas. Anybody else think its funny when you see a bill board telling you to learn how to read?

I'm in Boise.

Last night, I met up with my cousin and her husband. They just moved out there because Steven is doing his residency out there at a couple of the hospitals. So we went out for sushi, then we stopped at this bar. Then we went back to their house, but on the way we passed this strip club. So after my cousin goes to bed, Steven and I go to this strip club.

First of all, it was a $3 cover. I thought that was odd. Then we get in there and theres a stage with a pole that the girls dance on. Except they dont actually take all their clothes off. Apparently that technology hasnt made it out here yet. Either that or its because of the mormans. So theres a stage, and its got a bunch of seats all around it. What you do is sit down, and put a couple bucks on the edge of the bar stage, then the girl goes around an gropes guys with her legs. It was the wierdest thing I've ever seen.

But then I was really drunk. The beers were only $3. So I thought it would be a really great idea to go into the VIP room. It was $25 a song. and it sucked. They didnt even get naked in there. All in all, I'm very disappointed with the boise strip club scene.

I did take a drive into the mountains. That was cool. at least they didnt have any clothes on.