Nine: Teeth and tongue

I'm wearing this silver-gray shirt I really like. I'm not sure why I like it so much but from the second I got it I took a liking to it. Maybe because it wasn't yet another blue shirt. Not plaid. Just a nice silver-gray collared shirt.

But strangely enough, you look at it, and notice that it isn't gray at all. It's actually made of alternating white and black threads. I smirked when I noticed this and thought about it; that was one of the first things I learned two years ago when I started at Sheridan, the little black dots on white pages. There's a technical name for it but damned if I haven't forgotten!

Some guy from Sheridan called this evening. I think I had been ducking the call for days, seeing the number, a 1-866, and thinking it was a telemarketer. He asked me about what I'd been doing since and whether I'd recommend my program to others (I would, and have, twice.) Although I didn't care for him occasionally being short with me.

What I'm getting at here, though, is that it's been such a boring few days that I actually began to stare at the fabric of my shirt. I don't know where things took this turn but I've settled into an even more rotten version of my summer routine. It's been really hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit, feeling kinda morose and listless. I've got free time for the first time in months and I just vegetate, or read Bret Hart's book (good read though it is.) I've told myself over and over "I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that" but for the most part I don't do it, whatever it is. Little things in need of taking care of. Like the dishes. The sink has developed a disgusting pink scum that may or may not have attained sentience.

Well, there's one thing I've done. I caught up with Kyle over MSN. We don't talk very often, and there's no real reason for that (although there is a reason we don't hang out as much as we did 2 years ago.) I had to ask him the timeline of his breakup with Steph, which I'd figured, accurately as best he could remember, happened in mid-Grade 11. It was an odd question, but I wanted to know as a matter of semantics for a brief passage in the book I've been writing since November's NaNoWriMo. My autobiography. I'm not writing as furiously fast as I was last month, but the fact that I've gotten back ot it suggests it might eventually get finished someday. When I explained it to Kyle, he seemed supportive, and I joked that it would be handy to have if I ever got amnesia.

I wouldn't go around publicizing the project, but it gives me something to do and isn't hard (since I know how to write the story of my own life.) A few people have claimed they'd want to read it, which is flattering but weird. Given I haven't led the most interesting life, it's less about what I've accomplished and more about the setbacks, the weird way things sometimes work out, for better or worse. There's a lot of laughs, a lot of love, and probably an inordinate amount of vomiting.

We've been keeping up some Christmas shopping, with most of it taken care of by now. We're notorious last-minute shoppers, but we're pretty far along. We'll probably still be shopping on the weekend though. Eric just got a gift for Gail today, a boxed beer set in the vein of what she'd asked for, but not exactly, so hopefully she likes it.

Things are getting a bit tense around here. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the boredom or cabin fever or weather or something, but Eric and I were sniping pretty heavily yesterday for no good reason. I don't know. He was being weird about something and I teased him aobut it too much and he took exception, then I took exception to his exception, and it ended in one of those tense silences you hate being part of. It blew over, but not without the knowledge it could probably happen again. Things used to be like that a lot more before he was in school, yet not so much over summer or anything.

In any case, it may just have been a one-off thing. I'll have to be careful, because lord knows he won't be discriminating when it comes to getting set off. Not that this is a nice thing to say about one's own brother.

Most interesting thing I've done all week was last night, getting very suddenly asked to run a *(technically illegal) errand with Lauren before the place closed. Other than that, the week is stagnant. Tomorrow, though, looks promising.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto