magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i had this plan not to turn my computer on at all today. it was a bit tough, i kept feeling this urge to check my email, or play dumb video games. but instead i played my guitar for a bit, and read for a bit. and i was sitting on the couch actually writing something in my real paper journal (which i hadn't done since sometime in december). i was actually thinking about er!n, as i hadn't heard from her in over a week (i haven't really been all that in touch with anyone for the last week or so). and my telephone rings. i thought: that would be odd if it was er!n, but i think that we've only talked on the phone like half a dozen times ever and it was more likely george's parents or sister or something.

so i let the machine get it, and guess who it is. i picked it up, but apparently er!n's phone has been kinda touchy lately, and that little click was enough to break the connection. i thought maybe she'd call back. so i waited, but she didn't. so i tried *69, but got a recording saying it couldn't trace the number back. and at this point i figured i had no choice but to turn on my computer, 'cause the only place i knew i had er!n's number was in some old email.

so i boot up and log on. or try to log on. i get a weird error message from carrot about too many files being open or some such. when i do manage to get logged on, it takes a handful of tries to get any command to actually work. i figured that it might be a runaway web process, so i restart the web server. but it didn't come back up, claiming that it couldn't find some perl module. at this point i figure the only recourse it to reboot the machine and cross my fingers.

as i'm about to do that, i notice that there's about fifty anonymous ftp logins. from places like japan, taiwan, australia. downloading swedish warez or something. this is the second time our public ftp space has been abused by a bunch of warez kids. peril of a two letter domain name, i guess. it had only been open because one of daniel's clients needed to ftp some stuff up to carrot. so i closed it back up, and rebooted to kill off all their connections. the web server issue seemed to be just a coincidence, and i fixed that when the machine came back up.

(during this whole escapade i started feeling this sharp pain in my stomach, kinda the way i'd image an ulcer to feel. not an ulcer i'm sure, but no doubt stress related.)

i wouldn't have noticed this if i hadn't been trying to dig out er!n's phone number. but i guess it's a good thing that i did, so that i could fix it. and that done, i went back to looking for her number and gave her a call. there was a fair bit of my normal phone nervousness involved, plus actually talking to er!n for the first time in almost five months (wow, it's been a while), but a lot of my focus was still drawn up in the pain in my stomach, so it actually wasn't as hard as it could have been.

er!n and i talked for a while. i did my best to not just fall completely silent too often. she's thinking about going to a more artistically oriented school next year. and of course there was the thought that i should try to convince her to apply to risd. i mentioned risd, but didn't come out and make that suggestion.

it was really nice talking to her. although to be completely honest, it didn't really feel like talking to a long-distance girlfriend, just a close friend. which was actually along the lines of what i was thinking before she called. hexigram 21 of the i ching says: "personal relationships without defined guidelines, reasonable expectations, reciprocal considerations, and clear plans for the future are now in danger of dissolving into the chaos being generated by the current situation."

i was thinking about this all some more a little later while putting gas in van when i got a page from er!n. it is easier to type "i love you" than to say it. don't know why.