a day late and probably more than a dollar short: the winner of the "redesign bipolar before we do" contest is…jessie hung from scenic hong kong (no shit!). you'll be able to see the winning entry up here soon, we're just gonna iron out the needed css and javascript issues. all of the entries were awesome, but this one really stood out. keep your eyes open.

i've been listening to lot's of weezer lately. mainly because i'll be venturing back up to the windy city to see them the weekend of march the 9th. i guess i'm just getting into that frame of mind, right? best part about this whole renewed weezer kick? my renewed vigor for the awesome weezer offshoot, the rentals. seriously good stuff.

so i have a million things to do before my trip tomorrow. considering my plane leaves at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow, i better get packin'…

wow. i wrote a pretty sizeable post earlier, only to have it eaten by the beast which is blogger. it's okay, though. it probably wasn't that good anyway.

i'm almost done with a work day that's felt a lot longer than it has any business to. i only got about 3 hours of sleep last night, after talking to guy for the majority of the night. guy and i have had quite a few issues that have apparently gone unaddressed since he's been back, and it was nice to get most of it out in the clear. i wish it just could have happened a little earlier in the day…

so i'm flying out to the north east next week. i'll be seeing my good friend jack, which is always a bonus. i've got a few other things percolatin', but nothing i think i'll bring up just yet. big developments, to say the least. stay tuned for the good dirt.

on that note, i'll probably not post too much next week. i'll be too busy seeing new cities and such. i'll be wide eyed, asking about that whole "tea party" thing, buying records at completely new record stores…all the important stuff.

and this post is really starting to suck. lame lame lame. adieu.

so after a night of moderate drinking and a late night, half-drunk visit to twig and leaf, where i sampled my first hot brown…i finally went to sleep. and then i woke up. sounds exciting, huh?

i got up and wandered around sleepy-eyed until i called paul for our usually late saturday lunch. it was officially, as paul dubbed it, "cute teenage girl day" at the mall. we opted to go there for our favorite greasy sandwich depot, the steak escape. paul and i then decided that the "big pimpin'" portion of the day was now complete…now into the "big chiefin'" stage…

the contest is officially over. expect a winner to be declared soon.

gotta go. more chiefin' to do.

wow, is it that time already? time for the weekly post from matt? oh, how far i've fallen.

thankfully though, it's nice to see that my sister, my best friend, my partner ( over there my favorite girl are all better at this than i am. despite my sister's newly overbearing workload (and the fact that she doesn't have access to the net from her home in the suburbs of Paris) she still manages to post on a regular basis. paul, despite his new computer and subsequent addictions to OmniComics and instant messaging, is still managing to post almost every day. brian, despite numerous hours doing those things that brian does, posts practically every day. and sharon (who's name i can now use, with her blessing, since she's decided to forgo the whole anonymity/hiding behind a persona thing), despite her apparently constant need to change her site's design and where she's hosting it, is also posting on a more frequent basis than yours truly. and she's also baking me brownies. did i mention that i'm still completely in love with this girl?

but it seems like, between busy times at work, fights with webcams, system wipes & reinstalls, and extended hold-out-until-my-eyes-dry-up-from-lack-of-sleep battles with House Ordos and House Harkonnen, i should be able to find some time, somewhere, to update this blog. it seems like it, but it's apparently not true. "we try to resist keptin… he put creatures… into our bodies… makes us do tings." but not "tings" like updating a blog.

i'm not exactly sure why that star trek reference is relevant, but i've not made one in years, and somehow felt it would fit. so sue me.

anyway, so i did finally manage to reinstall windows on my machine at home, get it back up and running, and "glory be!" the webcam seems like it may actually work correctly this time. i hope. of course, i forgot to take it to work with me today, so you don't get to see my practically immobile self sitting in my cube for 8 hours today.

and finally, today is the official last day of the redesign bipolar before we do! contest, so if you're working on an entry, you've got until 12:00 AM tonight to get it in. we've got a couple entries so far, and they're both pretty durn good. i can't wait to show 'em to ya. i think we'll have a few bugs to work out before we get the things up (after judging is done), but barring unforeseen circumstances or acts of god, we should at least have screenshots of all the entries up by the "no later than" winner announcement deadline of 9:00 PM on Monday evening.

12:00 AM tonight, Friday night, the 23rd. remember. and if you've got an idea but haven't even started on it yet, no problem, we're accepting any entry, from the most fully developed online bipolar "portal" site to the most hastily-drawn badly-scanned concept sketch you can come up with. so do it. 12:00 AM. that's midnight. Friday. don't forget. 12:00AM. twelve-o'clock. when the big hand and the little hand are both pointing up (for you analog people) and the sky is dark. that's the deadline.

ouch. this is officially two days without a post. i can't believe i didn't even say hi. what a bastard i am. oh well…get over it.

twice now i have turned down a return visit to fazoli's to gaze upon the aforementioned beauty from a few days ago. yep. opted out. not interested anymore. got bigger fish to fry. what does any of this mean?

it means that my job starts to feel like it is actually removing the life from my body. minute by minute, i'm dying in that hole. i took lunch way too early today, forcing me to sit through a huge eight hour stretch of the day with very little break time. this is not what we would refer to as a "good thing." hells no. this is, as they say, simply hell. i ended up bailing out of work a half hour early just because i couldn't stand being there another minute. i grabbed a coke out of the machine and trucked it home.

the house was empty when i got here. matt and brax were at band practice, and jess was nowhere to be found. this only became an issue when someone actually called for her. i know she's going out of town this weekend, but i don't have a clue when. things like that tend to happen around here. i can't say i don't enjoy having the house all to myself for a little while. it's peaceful. until i start blasting music.

so here it is, late as hell. the music is off and everyone is in bed but me. i've still got some email to write, but after that i'm thinking i'll head off to sleep, myself.

have a good night.

it's official…we've got some seriously good entries coming in for the contest. we've just received our first international entry, so everyone here on the home soil better get macking on this thing. enter, you fools!

i didn't do much yesterday. i worked. i left work. i ate some kickass spring rolls with jess. the crazy thing about me and jess is that we dated. we dated for about six months. things didn't work out. probably mostly my fault. we all live together in the same apartment, and i'd have to say that there were some seriously uncomfortable times right off. but jess and i are now closer friends than we've ever been. we've even decided to keep the apartment for a while, just her and me, if matt and brax move in with paul. so i'd have to say that this is a first for me: a non-homicidal ex-girlfriend. things are looking up. hooray for me.

i think i hear some food calling my name…

so i went to work today. i slaved away. i sat there, working for the man. i ate lunch. i came back from lunch. then in the mid afternoon…

i found out a guy i know killed himself. i had to find out in the coldest way possible, via aim. i'm not mad at guy for telling me, but i was quite shocked, and none of it seemed real at the time. my head was swimming. i was stuck in a rat box, trying to make sense of what was being told to me. i tried to remember the last time i saw him. amazingly enough, my antisocialism has kept me insulated to the fact this has happened. it happened exactly a week ago. and then i found out the hard part…

he killed himself in the exact manner, in the exact place that his girlfriend did a couple of years ago. i knew her from a long time ago. i used to work with her at a local bar and grill type restaurant. we were friendly. i thought she was cool.

and now they're both gone, wiped from the face of the earth by whatever forces motivate people to do things like this.

i don't think i have anything intelligent to say about this. i am completely at a loss.

well, this past week has been a big pile of crap. i still haven't managed to get my sleeping schedule into any kind of reasonable order, and my entire life seems to have been suffering. i can barely stay awake at work, my productivity level has dropped considerably, and i've just generally felt horrible the entire time. why do i always do this to myself… i mean, it's not like i've never treated myself this way before. it's cyclical… i'll do well for a while but always eventually end up running myself into the ground.

to top it all off, brian bought Dune 2000 last weekend in hopes that he & paul & i could play some networked games, and the damn thing has sucked out my will to live. for the last four nights, this game has contributed significantly to my loss of sleep. combined with the fact that the nice new web cam i bought has been fucking up since Tuesday night and i've been spending several hours almost every day since trying to get it working again. hopefully i'll be able to spend some time on it tomorrow so that you can all watch the exciting events a casa de bipolar.

speaking self-referentially of bipolar as i was, i should now point out that we now have our first official entry into the redesign bipolar before we do! contest. i've sworn to both paul and brian that our first contestant (who's apparently in the process of moving her site again) will not get preferential treatment from me. but it looks really nice, so anybody else planning to enter better have their shit together.

we went out to eat at this fast-food italian place called fazolis tonight. while i was waiting in line, i was quite taken by this tallish girl with these amazing eyes and short, amazingly black hair. she happened to work there, so when we were getting ready to leave, i thought "hey…this may be my only chance to ever say something to this girl." so i plodded up to the counter, with full intentions of saying something. here's how the encounter went down:

Me: excuse me…
Her: yes?
Me: … (totally paralyzed by her beautiful eyes)
Her: yes?
Me: uhhh…do you think i could have some more breadsticks?

ABORT! ABORT! OUR MAN IS GOING DOWN IN FLAMES!

god damn it…i am so fucking stupid…i got lost in her eyes…

i did get the breadsticks, though.

after work. want to die. cold ones, guide me through. totally drained after what seems like an eternity of nothingness. i'm going to pass out and have an existential dream…

participate in the contest. you won't regret it.