Part the first: Work.

Vivek and Omi are out for Java 1 so it's been mostly quiet. I fixed a few minor GUI problems and added an enhance to one of our reports. There were other bugs which I don't remember, but I fixed them. For lunch I went to Satsuma and had sushi with Flynn, who is even more interesting in person than he is online. He's a cute redhaired guy that I met via Liralen; he's been helping me a lot with my C homework so I lured him out to lunch. Hopefully an experience to be repeated.

After lunch there was more bugs, and a phone conversation with Tim (our product manager who moved to Boston, so he's only here half the time) about how reporting should work. I told him I was happily done with classes except for finals, and he made a very Tim-like comment about how great it'd be if I could take known bugs and solve those as homework, since I was spending so much time on school. Despite wanting to know better I've taken this badly, and keep having flares of resentful thoughts. 'School is for me. Not for work.' I can't even decide if this is silly or not.

Part the second: School.

I did my final Java assignment on Tuesday and my final C assignment last night. The Java assignment was easy but long; the C assignment was complex to figure out but very short to write. I made only the usual number of stupid mistakes and turned it in on time. I'll make an A in the Java class even if I bomb the final; I'll make a B in the C class no matter what. Both finals are in the same window of Sunday morning to Monday night, but Monday afternoon I'm going to the dentist, so I suspect both finals will be dealt with on Sunday. This is fine, as there's no group this weekend and I should be able to turn my full attention to multiple-choice problems.

Once the finals are dealt with there's no more school until this fall, when hopefully I'll only be taking one programming class, and my other five-hour block will be something fun, like English or History or anything which does not involve more of what I spend all day doing anyway. Something on-campus, so that the people I work with will respect the time I spend at school instead of somehow folding it into my work life.

I guess what Tim said really upset me, hmn?

Part the third: Self-Analysis.

It continues to happen. It's going well. Insurance is paying for some of it, which is pleasant. I seem to have stopped flailing around in denial. I also seem to have 'gotten it', by which I mean I've connected the things I could pinpoint occuring to me with actual English sentences about what went on in my childhood. This should perhaps have been upsetting (and may yet be), but right now it's just relieving. Like suddenly remembering that word that's been on the tip of your tongue all day -- except in my case the word's been on the tip of my tongue for the last year.

I actually worked up my courage (via some of Ceej's old journal entries) to post a few Usenet articles to rec.arts.sf.written, where a hot debate is going on right now about MPD/DID, recovered memories, etc etc etc. I think I managed the right tone of scientific dispassion appropriate to discussing the issues without bringing in my own personal experiences. I'm glad; for most of the week I've been frothing at the mouth every time the thread popped up in my newsreader. It's annoying when people are denying experiences that you've had, and it's even more annoying when you know how incredibly outrageously careful and objective and analytic you've been about your experiences. I've earned the right to believe what I believe, folks.

Part the fourth: Leisure.

I'm currently reading Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I'm not loving it, but it's good enough to keep me turning pages. Prior to this was The Rebel Angels and What's Bred in the Bone, both by Robertson Davies. The first of these was absolutely excellent if you like books with lots of talking about theology and science and knowledge and philosophy, which I do. Plus it had a plot! The second was not so good, lingering painfully over the awful childhood of the main character and only getting to the good stuff (art criticism, Oxford, Italy) in the last quarter of the novel.

Once I'm done with the Zelazny I'll probably drift into Chinese poetry and the history thereof for a while. I went to the library a week or so ago to find some of the books AlexLit (Alexandria Digital Literature) recommended to me -- which is where the three above came from. While there, though, I ended up picking up a few anthologies of Chinese poetry, a book of Dorothy Sayers theological essays, and some random (non-recommended) novels. Libraries are dangerous places; I was late to Hebrew, but Harold and Chrisber were understanding.

I'm actually pretty delighted with AlexLit so far. Prior to the Davies and Zelazny it recommended three Sayers novels, all of which were amazing in very different ways, and Persuasion, which is by far my favourite of the few Jane Austen novels I've read. It's neat to have a good source for new things to read; most of my friends don't seem to read in quite the same way I do, so a lot of things they appreciate don't really do it for me -- and vice-versa.

Musically I'm alternating between Sailor Moon soundtracks and various instrumental stuff. Right now Jon Hassel is winning; I've listened to The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound about two dozen times so far today.

What else? Hebrew continues to be every Wednesday night, although I've had to skip a lot to deal with school and work. It's unfortunate; I tend to skip when I'm stressed to do things which will stress me more, whereas Hebrew is very non-stressful and entertaining. We have quite a few verbs now, which is exciting... I'm still a long way from being able to do a successful translation of a Sailor Moon episode into Hebrew, though. Which is a pity; I think it'd be a fun exercise and it might keep me from trying to start Japanese in the fall, which is a tempting (but probably dangerous) thought.

So there you have it. A journal entry. That wasn't too painful.