Went with Hillary and her husband Sven over to visit Hill's family. Pie, laughter, disgusting belches and occasional references to poop and fat (not by me), cat scratching, dog petting, more pie, talking to Hill some, and yet more laughter at the ribbing antics was had.

Her parents genuinely seemed to like me a lot. Her sisters didn't seem to give a damn one way or the other. Goddamn it's funny how shit changes from when you were a teenager. I can't believe it's been almost a decade since I was getting shit from Selene or Julia's parents.

It was an absolutely lovely time with only a little bit of depression afterward for my ice-cold (literally) ride home.

Potentially more about that thanksgiving later.

- - -

Now we get to what I really want to talk about.

I feel miserable.

What a difference a day makes.

Partly it's about the lab. I found out that I'm missing some baseline blood assessment data for two of my monkeys. I know I fucked up on processing one, but I don't remember two. So I'm gonna go and check if my supervisors have a copy of a blood report I never got. It's not the end of my world if I'm missing two, but it is something I could never tell anyone about.

Searched through my office and the lengthy stack of ALL of my blood analyis reports today. Nothing. A few baselines in the past weren't photocopied and sent to me, so that might've happened as well.

I'm getting sick of still dealing with this project. Some experiments have been bigger than others, but I'm apathetic about finishing everything. Made some progress, but there's so damn much that can be done. I guess doing some correlation matrices between shit will let me know if I need to bring in regression analyses or not. Talking to myself in stats, pay no mind.

The weather has also been absolute shit. I don't mind slogging through snow, but something about today was eh.

I think part of that was influenced by a text I got from Hillary. She has this thing about playfully being a bitch, but not in a hurtful way--well usually. As background, a friend of hers, Kari, was going to drive off into the sunset with some dude she'd met. This would leave Hillary without a consistent friend to do stuff with. And so--as one of the 'many nice things about me'--I came along as Kari was getting ready to leave.

Then today I got this:

"Yeah!! karis not leaving! so i gues i dont need a replacement friend after all...sory dude position fild"

I took this good-naturedly with a "ha ha :p" back because, 80% of the time, she just talks shit for the sake of being a bitch but not really. Why I don't know, but she seems to like it so yeah.

She's played on the joke some in terms of getting me pants as a "severance package."

I know she's kidding and it's a joke, but something about it does bother me. Maybe it was the 'replacement' thing. Kinda hits too close to home. Selene once described me as her 'temporary Anthony' in a fit of being an obnoxious bitch (which is about the only time I remember her being such). And it's happened now and again: I get to be the flavor of the month (or a few months), something happens, I'm yesterdays news.

So bottom-line: the joke hurts somewhat when combined with my shitty day. I can't admit that because we have this "let's playfully abuse each other on occasion to show affection" dynamic. I act much more emotionally strong around her than I actually feel. Truth be told when I let someone in I feel like I'm at their mercy; good reason why I rarely bother nowadays. I'm sure it'll all just randomly end when she texts or e-mails about hanging out this weekend. She mentioned wanting to do that at the thanksgiving feast.

Funny enough the only thing keeping me from feeling incredibly bad/wondering if she's not kidding is something she mentioned awhile back. That her and Kari had a superficial like of each other, but Hill and I had something much deeper. That's the only reason why I kinda know she's kidding.

I just don't take rejection well, real or in jest. Probably some shit tied to my father leaving when I was 5 or 6 and the fucked up idiocy my mother went through thereafter. Not that she was a bad mom, we just got into a lot of bad situations with several bad boyfriends of hers. You could also factor in--no no, I'll delete that shit. It's enough of a fucking pity party as it is.

- - -

My apartment is about 10-15 degrees below room temperature. Just cold enough to be very unpleasant, but not so cold that it feels like being outside but with less wind.

There's a draft by the window looking out (kindof) onto the lake. I put in a work-order for it. Meanwhile I've dragged out the mummy bag/sleeping bag from storage. Storage being my giant, poorly designed closet. It helps some, but my feet are ice-cold nowadays...but strangely warm in shoes or when I wake up in the morning.

I've gotten to sleep in some. That's been swell.

- - -

Rachel keeps calling me every day. I know she's bored off her ass, especially now that her laptop doesn't work and she can't get on the 'net. But I never expected to hear from her this much. I'm used to people giving me a lot of space. For another, it's the issue of time. I like talking to her, but it's getting to be too demanding. She's called me more in the past 3 weeks than the last 2 years. More than my mother, grandmother, Hillary, and now that I think about it everyone else combined.

Hill's of the impression that it's because I mentioned her to Rachel, and that women hate the thought of other women being around. I'd have thought one being married and the other having a serious relationship would negate that rule, but 'parently not. As anyone knows who's read this thing all the way through--all of which are presumed dead at this point I think--these situations crop up now and again. I stay alone in the end, though, so it's a no loss situation.

It's funny how the same shit repeats with small variations. Hillary is a lot like several women I've dated before. There's the married thing and seeming to be a decent human-being, true, but it's almost as if I meet variations on the same person over and over again just so I can see if I've made any progress.

I can report only about two things: 1) I've never given less of a fuck about finding someone; 2) the older I get the more comfortable I am being alone. Used to bother the fuck out of me. Just read back to when I got into M-Town in Sept 2004. New place, new life, no one local to share it with. That's changed somewhat. I have things to regularly do now with, say Hillary or Brian, but we're all just satellites.

Or actually it's likely that I'm the satellite. I wrote a paragraph about that, but it sounded like asinine ego horseshit and I deleted it.

I just feel bad and I should stop writing.

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