First, the things threatening to overflow my stack:

I'm demanding. I expect people to be able to think abstractly, and then I'm dismayed when they fail. This is the price I pay for hanging out with extremely intelligent people all the time. Still, it's annoying to ask what seem like obvious questions and get no response. Is it really that difficult for people to overlook the details and think about the underlying structure?

My life is hinging around moving. I have long lists of things to do before I move, and long lists of things to do after I move. The first list is full of things I have to get done, while the second is things I _want_ to do. My second list is much more exciting and cheering. When I'm depressed I cheer myself up by thinking about how in six months I'll be moved, and then I can do some of the things on my second list.

WorldCon is approaching rapidly. What if I hate it? Well, then, I hate it. I hope I don't, though. I really need something to shake me up a little. I need to remember who I am, and somehow spending the weekend in a strange city with minimal friend-contact seems more likely to do that than anything else. Or maybe I just envy Ceej her six weeks of paradigm-changing experience.

I'm not doing my critiques. I keep trying to get around to them, but every time I sit down to read a diary critically my pager goes off four or five times. So far nobody has yelled at me about it, but I'm writhing in so much self-inflicted guilt that their lack of yelling doesn't really matter. I don't want to suck. I don't even want to feel like I suck.

Lots of rapid-fire email is being exchanged between myself and Rick, who is this nice boy I dated my freshman year of high school. He's about six months older than me, but whereas I dropped out of college and moved to California, he stayed in Oklahoma and is happily being a theatre major.

We've seen each other exactly twice since I moved out here, both times at the Medieval Fair in Norman, in April of '95 and then April of '96. His wife was with him (yes, he got married) both times, which meant we didn't really get to talk.

I'll see him next weekend, though. He's flying out to LA to do an IFGS game, his first one in years. I'm driving down on Friday to play the same game, also my first one in years. I'll see Rick again, for an entire weekend of intense live-action gaming. We won't get to talk much, of course, but we'll get to interact, which is I suppose something.

He's not the only old friend. Steve (who I went out with very briefly right before Rick, and who put up with me remarkably well for an entire year while Rick and I were dating) is going to be on the team too -- he's actually the one who got my email address from Rick and invited me. Steve has been living in LA for years, and I keep meaning to get in contact with him, only to freeze in terror.

I'm not sure what it's going to be like, this weekend with Rick and Steve. They don't have any idea who I am, anymore. I doubt I know who they are, come to that. But the three of us will be together, maybe sitting in a car riding to some park together, and despite seven years having gone by I suppose it's possible that we'll slide back in to the old dynamics that have nothing to do with who we are and everything to do with who we were.

Or perhaps it will just be awkward. Perhaps we'll end up alone together, the three of us, and we won't remember why we used to be such good friends or what we used to talk about. Or maybe I'll remember, and they'll both stare blankly at me, having moved so completely beyond that time that they're not sure why I bother remembering it.

You see, my past is important to me. My past is vitally important to me, because I change so quickly and thoroughly that I'm not really who I was a year ago, much less seven. So I hold on to my memories and, when I get the chance, I compare what-was with what-is. Replicating situations and admiring the differences in dynamics reminds me, briefly, what it was like to be the person I used to be.

There's a third option, of course. Maybe we'll end up together and there won't be anything for me to analyse. Just three old friends, distanced now, but still fond of each other, making new connections and having a good time playing games.

I'm hoping for a fast progression, I think, from the old dynamic to the awareness of change to building a new dynamic. That would give me enough time to remember where we'd been, and give all of us time to figure out where (if anywhere) we're going.

I ought to be reading Moving Mars by Greg Bear. I tried to last night, but I ended up going to dinner and watching old episodes of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer instead.

Tonight. Tonight I'll make time to relax and read. Tonight I'll also make tapes for my drive down on Friday.

Quote of the Day:

Chibi-Fire says "We're not just Ubergeeks, we're the *Ubermenschen* of the New World Order. We eat new O'Reilly books for breakfast and that's not even the main course. We can quote entire Shakespearian tragedies from memory, we know how to perform quadruple bypass surgery and we can go from zero to sixty in one point two seconds. We are the KINGS, the BOSSES, we eat the world for breakfast and spew it back up because WE DON'T LIKE THE TASTE. We're hypersonic, wired, fired up, plugged in, chilled out, locked in and WE LIKE IT THAT WAY. Nobody messes with us because we have more guns than Elvis and more knives than a cutlery factory, and even if we didn't, we could whip Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Jet Li with BOTH hands tied behind our backs. We're not scared of the world, because the WORLD IS SCARED OF US. Ahem."

That's my brother. I'll keep him, thanks.