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My dog, Tiger. He’s a Chow; a fairly large dog. He’s probably about 50 pounds. He can force our gate open somehow and get out of the fenced in area. He does this fairly often and runs around the neighborhood marking his territory. Usually, when he’s done, he just comes back and sit by the gate until we let him back inside. He’s a big dog, smart, and easily noticeable.

Today, while my parents were out he forced the gate open and took the two little ones out for a run. Chilli, the smallest and youngest one, she ran out into the street and was hit by a car.

What’s really sad is Cougar, the other pomeranian (I don’t know what’s up with naming our dogs cat names…) is really codependent. Whenever Chilli isn’t around he gets really depressed. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen to him now.

So, it seems that donating blood wasn’t enough compensation for receiving an offer before my birthday. So to fulfill karmic retribution my hard drive died without warning yesterday. That’s fine though. I’m 24 today. I’m moving back to Florida. I’ll be closer to my honey bunny. Best of all, in a week or so I can go to work and announce “Screw You Guys, I’m going home!” See you August 16th!

For all of you who have prayed to your dieties on my behalf; you may now thank them on my behalf.

Let this be a lesson for women everywhere. Men have oppressed you since the dawn of time and we will continue to do it. Try to become successful in this world and we’ll pay the government to trump up charges against you. We will destroy your life, your future, and all of your hard work. This is a Man’s World, how dare you interfere!

It’s incredible how my view of the world has changed in the last 15 years. When I was young, that was my world. Or rather, that

was one bubble of my world. Other bubbles included my Elementary, Middle, and High School. Oh

yeah, where my family’s restaurant

was.

That was my world. The map above showed the boundaries of where I was willing to travel by myself. The building in the northern

portion of the intersection on the right, that’s where I went to fill up the tire on my bike. The road in the center extending

down from the upper left, that’s Greenwood Street. I used to ride down that hill for fun. The house at the tip of the cul de sac

in the bottom center, that’s where Nawal lived. The house slightly down and to the right, that’s where the Fortune family lived.

I used to play with Mindy. To the right of my house, slightly up and to the right of the Fortune’s house, was the lady that used

to take care of me until my parents could pick me up after school. She later went insane after her divorce. If you look just up

from my house, there’s a dark spot, that’s where our shed was. I can even see the dark spots where the three big pine trees were

in our front yard. There’s also the slightly light rectangle next to one of them where we had a garden. Across the street from

us was the Catholic family with, no joke, 9 kids. I don’t know how they all lived in that house.

Traveling a long distance, back then, was riding my bike five clicks right and one click up to where Adam lived. I travel many times that distance every

day now. I live thousands of times that distance away from there now.

At the time, I hated my parents for moving us away from there. Away from the comfort and safety of knowing where things are because that’s just how they’ve always been. Looking at my life now, though, I’m glad to be out of there.

My flight leaves in about an hour, I’m sitting by a moving sidewalk between concourse B and concourse C in the Phoenix airport. There is one other person here sitting at the next power outlet; an elderly guy also with a Dell computer. This is an entry I’ll most likely never post online.

This airport is really old. I didn’t know there were major airports still like this. At the other airports I’ve been to in the last year the facilities have all been fairly high-tech. I suppose as much for convenience as it is to promote an image of progress. The gates here, instead of using the usual large flat panel displays I’ve seen at all the other airports, still use printed letters on a letter board.

I’m in the process of flying back to Los Angeles from Florida. This has been a trip full of interesting activities. The most notable being my last-minute interview with Harris which has left me feeling optimistic about moving back to Florida in the near future.

At this point I should probably put in a quick disclaimer to keep from insulting Matt and Kristy. Yes their wedding was quite nice and notable, it just wasn’t most notable simply because it was very nice and flowed quite smoothly. I’ll get back to this later.

Now, back to the original topic. Ellen, it seems, has made a very good impression with the right people at Harris. So much so that she was able submit my resume to someone that was able to, within a few days, expedite an interview for me. I was, then, taken out to dinner where I was coached on how best to express my thoughts during an interview. The interview process started at 8:30am. I met with HR, Harris engineering staff at various levels of experience, security officials, and a handful of administrative and other staff. I left around 2:00pm.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I feel the interview went very well. My interviewers seemed to like me, two of them said so outright. If all goes well I could get an offer in a few weeks. I hope I do. This whole long distance relationship thing has been very draining and this last week staying with Ellen has just been wonderful. I want very much to have more weeks spent close to Ellen.

It’s going to be difficult concentrating at work waiting for a reply. I really do think, though, that I have a good chance of getting an offer from Harris. It would also be a very good move for my career. An opportunity to work in a larger more structured company with more opportunities for personal growth and varied experiences. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I really hope I get this job.

I just finished 1984 on the flight here to Phoenix. I stopped reading it a while ago because I had a feeling the ending would be depressing. It’s one of many books I’ve been �meaning to’ read. Sure enough, the ending was depressing. I’m not sure right now how I feel about it. It’s especially scary with first the old Bush declaring war on drugs, and this new Bush declaring war on Terror. Yes, drugs are bad. Yes, terrorists are bad. Declaring war on drugs and terror, however, is also bad. It is, by nature, a war that cannot be won. A persistant unwinnable war is one of the core strategies of Big Brother. Add to that the US now holding people without charges for extended periods of time, sending people to countries we’re temporarily allied with for torture, and the creation of �Free Speech Zones’ miles from the president so Bush doesn’t ever have to see protestors. It’s frightening.

Well, there’s a good chance people are lining up now for the next flight, so I should probably shut down and get down to my gate. Perhaps I’ll continue this on the plane.

It seems that video games are under attack again. Nevermind the fact that the violent video games are meant for adults. Nevermind the responsibility of parents to monitor what their children are doing.

What about the correlation between violence and mental illness? Are we going to ban mental illness? How about the relationship between violence and weapons. Why don’t we keep swords, guns, and explosives out of children’s hands? Or, how about violence and lack of parental guidance? Parents need to take responsibility for their children. Parents need to get children away from the TV, off of the computer, and talk to them. Yes, I’m proposing a bold new concept; actually communicate with your child.

Blaming the movies, music, and video games is not the answer. If video games are such a big threat to society, I think half of the country would lie in ruins now. Any male and a good number of female between 8 and 30 has spent a good portion of their time playing video games. Most of the population has watched violent movies or violent television. If there was this strong of a relationship, we’d have millions of violent crimes an hour.

Half a million people die each year due to tobacco. The number of asthma cases today is twice that of 20 years ago due to the burning of fossil fuels. Pollution output has increased for the first time in 20 years, thanks to Bush’s ‘green’ energy policy. Billions of dollars in US tax money has been spent on blowing up and rebuilding a country that did nothing to us. Millions of people around the world are starving and dying from easily curable diseases. The poverty level in the US is not much better than developming countries. Don’t we have more important things to do other than bashing video game companies?

A layer of smoke blankets the city; the first noticeable evidence of today’s festivities. The moon is stained a deep yellow-orange and clouds of smoke drift by occasionally obscuring it from sight. In the distance a few bangs and pops can still be heard. Occasionally a bright flash of light and an explosion of bright colors appear over the buildings followed by a boom and light crackling noise. An ambulance and two police cars rush by. Occasionally other sirens can be heard across the city to other fireworks accident sites. On the ground spent shells litter the ground over spots of black scaring the surface of the asphalt. Down the road three kids are speaking in heated Spanish and waving around what appears to be their last piece of firework. I watched a movie again for the Fourth of July.

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