Right. So I'm obviously killing time.

The one thing about a three-week long vacation is that after one week you've vacationed all you can vacation, and you've run out of things to do.
So... I do these.

2004
1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
I asked a guy out.... I took an upper-division class... I took physics and Latin. Hmm. I should do more new things.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't make any last year, because I always forget what they are, and that makes it difficult to keep them.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes! My aunt Sara had Kyle in late May, and my seester Megan had Galen Hunter in mid-November.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope.

5. What countries did you visit?
Sadly, none. I haven't had much opportunity to travel. Money's tight. Or... Money belongs to Bank of America.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
Real love. And enough money to be able to afford turning the heat on in the house.

7. What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Umm... There are a few dates I'm trying to forget.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Taking Organic Chemistry and Genetics over the summer, while working, and gettings As. Oh, and reconstructing my identity at the same time, since it had been destroyed shortly before the summer started.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Spring quarter.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Spring quarter.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Ummm.... My biochem textbook? My tuition?

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
No one in particular comes to mind.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
The red states.

14. Where did most of your money go?
UC Regents.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The ocean.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
Mmm, Dashboard Confessional's Vindicated will always remind me of summer 2004.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? Slightly thinner.
iii. richer or poorer? Much poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Homework.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Panicking.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I'm in Corpus Christi, Texas, spending Christmas with my grandparents and my cousin Dominic. This trip was the best idea I've had all year.

Hey, where's question 21?

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?
Nope. Managed to fall out of it, though. Which was a pretty big accomplishment.

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favourite TV program?
The Gilmore Girls!

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Well, not really hate, but have a sort of strong jealous-of-and-therefore-hatred thing going on, yeah.

26. What was the best book you read?
Molecular Biology of the Gene? I dunno. Life of Pi was pretty good, but the ending weirded me out. Oh, I know, I know. The best book was definitely The Lovely Bones.

27. What was your greatest musical (re)discovery?
Radiohead.

28. What did you want and get?
My identity back.

29. What did you want and not get?
A good grade in Physics.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
Probly Spiderman 2, since it was the last film I saw in theaters. (WHAT? I'm a college student. I don't have time to go to the movies.)

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Jamie and Nick took me out to lunch. I think I had a nervous breakdown that weekend. Spring quarter sucked. I turned 19, but I've never in my life felt less my age than I have this year.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Money. So I could pay my tuition without bleeding.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
*cough* Cheap.

34. What kept you sane?
The internet, Sex God, and Ann.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Um, Orlando Bloom?

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion and gay marriage. But the red states won, so I guess those issues are right out the window.... Hello, fascism.

37. Who did you miss?
George. Everyone in Reno. My dad. My extended family.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Emily!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
Erm, be yourself. I could write a really long entry on what I mean by that, but I really don't have time right now.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog. It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log..."

Okay, that was yet another pointless waste of time. Ah, the internet. How much it benefits our lives.

Why I Doubt I'll Get To Sleep Anytime Soon Tonight

We were sitting on her bed, the one I remember from when I was little, talking about when she was a nuclear chemist. She was working on a degree in physical chemistry and she had a job designing rocket guidance systems. She was explaining the ethics of science to me—the bomb, Agent Orange, Hussein’s chemical warfare—and how science does wonderful things, but also destroys things. It’s why we have to research things before we use them. It’s why I had to take that stupid Crown Core course. She was saying all this in a sort of wheezy voice, coughing every few moments, pausing between every two or three words to catch her breath. Have you ever seen Malcolm in the Middle? You know the kid in the wheelchair, who says things like, “Thanks a… …lot,” with the big pause in the middle to breathe? It was like that, and I felt like maybe she’d been right the other night when she said God makes us deal with the things we hate most. She says when she was little she always hated how old people would cough and cough and make such horrific noises, and now she’s doing it. And it drives me nuts when it takes ten minutes for someone to finish a sentence, but I love her and so I’m patient.

And the thing that got me the most was when she stopped in the middle of a paragraph (though at the end of a sentence) and said, “I need to rest a few minutes. Go away.” I don’t think it was in so many words, but that’s what it was, and while I’d realized she needed to lie down, I hadn’t thought… I don’t know what I hadn’t thought. I guess I was shocked. She’s been so strong the whole time I’ve been down here, she doesn’t want help or sympathy really, she just wants to get better, and I hadn’t expected her to have a need to kick me out. Maybe I thought she would muster enough energy to talk the subject out… I don’t know.

But I left. I went off to play computer games in the living room on my laptop. Vacation is so lovely…. An hour or two passed. It’s 9:30 pm and my grandfather comes out and says, “Nanny’s not feeling any better. She wants me to take her to the emergency room.” Stunned, I ask, “Now?” And he says yes. While she had informed me earlier that she might ask to go to the emergency room if the coughing didn’t stop (it’s gone on way too long, and it’s not the cancer, it’s a secondary infection caused by some medication or something she took a few months ago, and she somehow contracted bronchitis), I hadn’t realized she meant tonight. She told me not to be scared, that they could treat her in the ER and that’s the only reason they might go there, and I smiled and said, of course I won’t be scared, that’s silly. But when Poopah came in and told me they were going…. My heart went kerplump, and the same feeling I get right before a test crept into my stomach and my head swirled around.

She’s going to be fine, I’m sure. She just wants them to do something about the coughing, I think. And the fever. But, while she IS dying (we’re all dying, if you want to be existentialist about it), she’s not dying tonight. They told me to go to bed; they’ll be there most of the night most likely. I shouldn’t worry.

Yeah right, I won’t worry.

And, because, as I said, I'm not sleeping, and I'm politically active...

Go here and do the whole don't-draft-us thing, 'cause I would cry if you got drafted, and the shock of me getting drafted would probably kill me, so it's really a better thing if you sign this. Besides, it has fun graphics.

And it's distracting me from thoughts of emergency rooms.