I'm a Nerd. No, Seriously.

Pure Nerd
82 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.
Congratulations!

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

This Monkey AIN'T Gone to Heaven

My upstairs neighbors are fucking idiots.

They have a wooden deck that is above our enclosed patio area. Two nights ago they decided that they needed to wash off their deck rightnow. Having apparently never heard of such inventions as a broom and mop, they decided to use a hose. To wash off their two feet by five feet deck. For half an hour. Which washed off our patio as well, so thanks for that. But man am I glad we don't have patio furniture or a barbecue out there yet.

I came home from work yesterday and I noticed that our doormat was wet:

As I was fumbling with my keys, water dripped on my head. I looked up and saw this:

The stucco is actually bubbling up. The porch light is full of water. The doorjamb is swollen, as is the door. We currently cannot use our own front door, we have to use the sliding glass door, which is all kinds of secure.

I called my landlord and told him what happened and sent him the pictures. He called management the next day and managed to garble the message so much that management called my roommate to ask her about our neighbors spraying our door with their hose. She explained what really happened, and they said they would talk to the upstairs people. Dalyne went upstairs a bit later to make sure everyone knew what was going on. After knocking three times and finally ringing the doorbell twice, the mom finally answered. We knew that they were home because we could hear them.

In the course of the conversation, Dalyne learned that the dad had actually hooked up the hose to their hot water heater to hose off the deck, and, "whoops, I guess he didn't turn it all the way off", but she thought that if we just let everything dry out, it would be fine. She didn't take up the offer to come and test out our porch light though.

Stupid Girl

I've been trying to think of how best to write about what happened in the next phase of my life, and so far I've come up with nothing. A large part of that is due to the fact that my memories from this portion of my life are cluttered, unclear, and full of gaps, the reasons for which will become evident.

After Jim broke our engagement, I can now say that I was legitimately depressed. And angry. I felt nearly every negative emotion you can think of, and I desperately wanted to be outside of my own head, away from the memories and the aching pain I felt.

I went from drinking occasionally on weekends to drinking every weekend and during the week. Given the amounts of alcohol I was consuming, it's really surprising that I remember as much as I do. My tolerance was so high that I once drank a 300 (or more) pound guy under the table, and then finished the handle we had been sharing. I regularly ditched classes, mostly first period. I didn't even really do anything while I was ditching, just hung out with whoever I had convinced to come with me. Usually it was Terra, but we would occasionally bring other friends with us. I'm not sure how to broach this, because I'm not really sure how it started, but here goes. Terra's mom was bipolar, and she was on a lot of different medications. I don't know at all how it started, but we would steal pills from her and take them. I usually didn't even know what I was taking. One time that I remember, I took a Klonopin at lunch. In the next class it hit me pretty hard. I was sitting at my desk when my head suddenly felt incredibly heavy. I collapsed forward onto the desk, hitting it with my forehead. A friend of mine in the class helped me sit back up and managed to prop me up at my desk so I wouldn't fall out. He asked me what I had taken, and then looked it up. Klonopin is a benzodiazepine, used to control seizures, anxiety, schizophrenia, and a slew of other things. My friend watched me the rest of the period, even walking me to my next class. I tell you this to demonstrate how other people cared much more about what happened to me than I did. I literally didn't care. I drank whatever was in my hand, took whatever pill was handed to me, and put on a mask and pretended I was fine. I laughed and joked and chatted, and no one was the wiser.

The summer after we graduated, Terra went to Ireland with her sister, and after she got back we had a weird falling out. I started spending more and more time with Joe. He was having problems or his own trying to deal with social environments that he had never encountered before, due to his home-schooled upbringing. He drank nearly as much as I did, smoke a lot of weed (which I never did, I hate the smell), and did a few other recreational drugs like acid. I didn't really ever pay attention to what he was doing though. I didn't really pay attention to much. At some point, Joe got himself kicked out of the house he was living in. He wasn't allowed to move back home, so, having no other options, he set up camp in a trailer park. That's right. A trailer park. He didn't even have a trailer, he was living in a tent.

After a while I started coming back to myself. I had been taking classes at a local community college, mostly because that was just what you did after you graduated. I wasn't taking random pills anymore since Terra and I weren't friends anymore. I was drinking less because I had to be at work and class more, which meant that I had to drive more. But I still managed to do something supremely stupid. I convinced my mom that it would be a good idea for Joe to move in with us.

Didn't You Love Me?

It was indeed years until I saw Joe again. When I did see him next, I was getting gas at a station that I typically did not go to, as it was on the opposite side of the town from my house. Think for a minute about how much time you spend at the gas station if you are only fueling up. I had already gone inside to get my change and was getting back into my car when I heard my name. I looked around and on the other side of the pump was Joe. He had literally just pulled up. In another ten seconds we would have missed each other completely. Every time I think about it, I wonder how many times I have missed someone by that narrow a margin. I was in a rush to somewhere else, probably work, so we exchanged numbers and I went off to wherever I had been going.

I don't remember who called who, but Joe and I did start talking again. It turned out that he lived quite close to my then best friend, Terra. An interesting thing to note is that both Terra and Joe lived on the same side of town that I did, and actually even farther away from that fateful gas station. One day Terra and I took a walk over to hang out with Joe and his friends. Joe had actually moved out of his parents' house, and into a tiny house one house down from his parents. We hung out, listened to music, drank, and had a general good time. Right away I noticed that, in addition to shaving off his hair, Joe had gotten the double earlobe pierced. We continued to hang out and kill the endless hours of our small-town youth. I was seventeen. It was during this time that I started smoking. Literally everyone around me smoked, including my mom. One day I just leaned over and took Joe's cigarette out of his hand and took a drag. It is nearly impossible to describe that sensation, your first drag from a cigarette. At first, all of the nerves in your throat react, almost like getting goosebumps in your throat. Then there is a tightness in your chest, almost as though your lungs are expanding. Your heart starts to pound as you exhale, choking a little from the acrid smoke. Then the nicotine hits your bloodstream, and your head suddenly feels light as a feather. Your scalp tingles. Your eyes widen as your entire body starts to feel like you are cushioned against the very air by some strange force, almost like being wrapped in silk. Is it any wonder that people spend years of their lives, thousands of dollars, and their own health trying to regain this sensation? The catch is that you can never experience that first drag again. It remains an elusive enticement, hovering on the edge of attainment.

During this time, Jim was in Monterrey. He and I talked on the phone about two to three times a week, and we were increasingly fighting when we talked. He wanted to talk about the things that he was doing and learning, I was more interested in using what little time we had to plan for our future together. He wanted me to take care of nearly everything. I wanted him to discuss things with me. We had a lot of those little nit-picky fights that are not about what we are saying they're about. We started talking less. Then one day I walked over to my usual place at lunch and Jim was there. I hadn't seen him in months, and the last time I had seen him was very brief and completely lacking any quality time together. Needless to say, I was ecstatic about his surprise visit. Until he took me aside to have one of the most devastating conversations of my life. He said that he felt the foundation of our relationship was lacking and that we needed to work on being best friends before we could go further in our relationship. What he meant was that he wanted to break off our engagement. I couldn't do anything beyond shake my head "no" while tears poured down my face. Then lunch ended and I had to go to class. He left with his ride back to Monterrey early the next morning and I never heard from him again. Much later I found out that the girl who gave him a ride down was pregnant. As far as I know they got married.

Gouge Away

I know that I said that story would be continued, and it will. The past few weeks my life has been attacking me. My boss gave me a list of tasks to prepare for our next audit, and I am still recovering from the last one. He literally told me to take as much overtime as I need to get these things done. Doesn't that sound fun?