The Diary of Antoine Roquentin

The power was off for three damn days. And the most annoying part of it was that it wasn’t completely off, it was a brownout, so we got like half lighting and appliances would make noises but not actually work. It would take like 45 minutes to boil water, but somehow miraculously my computer would charge. I’m sure I’ve completely destroyed the battery by running it for three days on brownout power.

I’ve actually been having a lot of fun, the weekend before the storm I went over to Mari (Zero’s roomate)’s birthday party. And I as you may know, I’m not really a party person… but I had a whole bunch of fun. Whenever I’m a party I go into that “how will I write about this” mode, but the party wasn’t compelling enough to write out scene by scene.

The part that was totally awesome was when Mari got out this bottle of absinthe that one of her friends had given her. So basically, that shit is awesome. One glass and everything is AMAZINGLY GREAT. It’s that unshakably certain feeling that no matter what happens, you are going to be in a great mood.

The wormwood is supposed to make you hallucinate, but I read online that that’s a myth. And with first-hand evidence, it is definitely a myth unless you drink a whole bunch of it. And it’s 120-150 proof, so ‘d like to know what kind of alcohol that strong won’t make you think you’re hallucinating.

Anyway, Zero and I had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, the morning after, he ended up accidentally taking my keys so I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with Mari watching Doctor Who, which I had never seen before. It was pretty awesome. She got a pizza and some breadsticks and we lounged around until Zero dropped off my keys later.

Zero has been helping his mom move for weeks. And she is so rude to him!

So I’ve been getting up ridiculously early… this morning I got up at like 7:40 or something like that. My coworker gave me a ride home today ’cause it was raining, and she’s going to pick me up at like 7:30 tomorrow. Needless to say, web development at the job is going at breakneck speed with all these hours.

If I keep up these hours, I should be ready for a launch by the end of the week.

But yeah…no social life until then.

The house still reeks of smoke from the fire that’s been burning in the fireplace for like three days. The dishwasher won’t work for some reason… I’m going to flip the breakers tomorrow morning and see if that fixes anything.

One of my coworkers lent me this really interesting novel called Griffin and Sabine…it’s this book that has all these letters that you take out of their envelopes inside the novel and read them…it’s half plot, half art…really awesome.

I’ve been talking to Aaron and Mario on AIM…I swear, all my friends are gay guys. Aaron is actually a round character instead of Brian’s cardboard representations of him. We talk about how much we love Star Trek and Sci-Fi. I hella got him into Firefly :). It’s strange how people can completely surprise you. Mario, however, continues his old cycle. He is going on a date with somebody in Davis… someone that goes to the university there. He has already dated five people in the graduate program there… I don’t know how I resisted making some kind of dark joke about it. Maybe I didn’t resist… I don’t even remember.

But zomg! I totally went out for breakfast with Christen last weekend… it was really awesome, we were kind of on this retro theme and were talking a lot about Kelly, which rarely came up, even when it was happening. And as much as Kelly thinks that we sit around and “talk shit” about her, I have to say this: “Bitch, GET OVER YOURSELF.” I told my dad the whole saga on our way back from Placerville. After the story, he was silent for a few minutes, then said “Kelly was always a spoiled brat.” So yeah. Even my dad agrees.

I like to think that I don’t know why Kelly and I stopped talking. But I do know why. I’m willing to apologize for everything I’ve said…she takes everything way too seriously…but the thing that I can’t do is keep putting in effort when she doesn’t.

Yes, I didn’t call her for ages. After trying to get ahold of her for about eight months, I just stopped. She kept standing Christen and I up. We’d call, and Jesse (the boyfriend) would answer the phone and say she was in the shower or something and didn’t know we were hanging out. Of course, since Christen and I were already hanging out, Kelly would never feel like showing up. Because obviously all we did was “talk shit” about her. It’s not like we’d lost one of our best friends. Nah, nothing like that.

Christen was living with her, and couldn’t take the daily bullshit, so she decided to officially end the friendship that had already been over for a while.

I, of course, was stuck in the middle. I tried to be friends with both of them… and it was really awkward… but I rarely saw Kelly unless I was over at the house. She kept telling me to break up with Adrian… I remember on our trips to see Massive Attack and Ladytron pretty much all I could talk about was how much of a douchebag he was.

But I had to let that relationship play out to the bitter end, or I knew I’d be calling him up again. And trust me, it’s over. Have you seen his Facebook pictures lately? He needs teeth, hair, and a 24 Hour Fitness membership. *shudder*

Anyway, I don’t know whether that was really the wedged in between us. I think the Jesse served as a wedge just as much as Adrian did.

This one day Kelly called me out of the blue, I was so surprised and glad to hear from her. 10 minutes into the conversation, she tells me that her Power Mac is broken, and could I come fix it? So, like a fucking idiot, I hopped on the bus. I didn’t have a drive to back up her stuff on, so I couldn’t fix it. It took a while to diagnose though, so I thought she’d come in the room and talk to me. Nope. Watched TV in the other room with Jesse. She actually left for work 30 minutes after I got there. So I got to sit in her room alone and do shit for her. This is the kind of feeling that typifies being Kelly’s friend.

So basically, we hung out a few times over that year… going out for coffee and having nothing to talk about. I would just babble on endlessly like an idiot, afraid to ask her the tough questions.

Because with Kelly, you must understand that you are either with her or against her. You can say things like “you know, I don’t think going to L.A. and fucking some forty-year-old guy that has fucked a million girls is a good idea.” Becky, Lacey, everyone was totally into that. “Yeah, do it, that’s so hot! Fuck your rock star! Get AIDS! We are such great friends!”

Kelly keeps friends around that will never say no to her. Becky, the penultimate fair weather friend, goes along with whatever kelly wants. Lacey is too into herself to really care about anything or anyone, but keeps Kelly around for some reason, after fucking both Christen and Kelly over for hundreds of dollars in utiliities that she accepted their shares of but never paid (she really spent all the money on clothes and alcohol). But wait…

OMG BEST FRIENDS FOREVER! PS: I TOTALLY SPENT ALL MY RENT MONEY ON VODKA!!

I mean, the kind of soul-searching that’s required when your best friend doesn’t want to talk to you again is a little beyond Lacey’s abilities at this point.

You know, even after all of this I would probably forgive her and say that I was at fault (just like everyone always does) except for this one thing that Christen told me.

It was Christmas of some year… the year that they were living together. Kelly was supposed to come over and we were supposed to do our normal Christmas thing. Hang around and make fun of everybody, shake our presents, chill in the hammock.

But it was about 2 p.m. and she hadn’t shown up yet. I had been calling her wondering what was up.

Christen was at the house while I was calling. She told me I’m that Chris who was visiting from Denver asked Kelly why she wasn’t going over. “Is it a long way?” He asked. ( I’m maybe two miles from her old place.) She just kind of grimaced, and said something to the effect that she doesn’t know why I kept calling her all the time.

So yeah.

Kind of bitter.

Nah, I think we need another classic shot:

ZOMG KELLY I LOVE YOU ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE POT!

I should try to sleep, it’s 10:30 and I have to try to wake up at six. The only way I’m getting through this is to think of it as some kind of sleep triathalon. Which it damn well is going to be. I’m finishing the website this week, and nothing’s going to stop me.