I really don't know what I'll do with myself over this four day long weekend. It's too icy to go out driving anywhere, and most of my friends have gone home to be with their families. My family is of course half a world away, so instead I suppose I'll just have to keep myself amused. Perhaps part of that amusement will be recounting what has been happening over the last week or so.
Last Friday (21st) Tiffany, Doug and I went shopping at *-Mart. The first challenge was to get Tiffany's car started, as it had been snowing in earnest for the last two days. To begin with we had to dig the car out from underneath about 6 inches of snow, and then wait for the locks to unfreeze before we could even get inside. The freezing weather (approximately –15C) meant that the driver's side door wouldn't open and the passenger's side door wouldn't close. To ad to the interest, the heating core on her car wasn't working and so once we did finally get moving, we all had to have the windows down and breathing out into the open air so that we wouldn't fog the windows up.
We finally got out to *-Mart, and we went shopping for warm stuff. We found a whole bunch of “pocket warmers” which I'd never seen before. They're a packet of chemicals, which heat up when you open the packet, we also saw the holy grail of bad ideas, the electric sock! Yep, battery powered woollen socks, this is something I'd normally expect to see in “101 Wacky Japanese Inventions”, and so of course I had to have a pair. We shopped for a bit longer trying to remember everything we needed before we headed home. Bonnie had called me earlier in the evening and had said that she was heading out with some friends to celebrate a birthday. I said that sounded like fun and told her to call me when they got back from an ice-hockey game.
After dropping off our purchases, Doug and Tiffany were going to head to the computer lab to work on their separate projects, but as a detour we went to visit Judy. It was the big grudge match the next day (Saturday) between the two Montana Universities. She was camped out at the stadium collecting parking fees from people who arrived there during the night. So we hung out with her for a few hours, as she was sick with the flu and so not really up to do much ticket collecting. After a while, Tiffany and Doug went off to study, and Bonnie came by with some friends and picked me up.
We headed out to KO's, the one place in town, which actually has a dance floor, but alas most of the music consisted of hip-hop (which I'm not much of a fan of). We danced when the music was ok and had a few drinks also. Bonnie's friend Angie talked with her friend Heidi for much of the evening, and so I talked to Bonnie. Imagine my surprise when sometime after midnight I turned around and Tiffany and Doug came through the door. They had decided to come out for a short while since Doug had finished his circuit board design. We all danced and then about 2 am the club closed and we were all herded out into the cold night air. Tiffany and Doug went home in Doug's truck and Bonnie's friends dropped her and I off at home.
The next day I woke up with a slight headache around 10 am and the football was due to kick off at noon. About 10:30 am I called Tiffany to ask if we were meeting Ryan before the game, but she was just waking up and hadn't heard from anyone. I walked over to the dorms around 11 am in search of more information, and our plans to get moving started to come together. Doug, Tiffany and I walked over to the stadium just before noon and we got in immediately after the kick off, punt return for touchdown by our side (the Bobcats). The temperature was only expected to get up to about –12C during the day, and so everybody was standing up trying to stay warm. It was a good game which our side eventually one, much to my surprise. We bumped into Ryan after that went wandering amongst the many “tail-gate” parties which were happening in the parking lot. We didn't find anyone we knew, and so we headed back to the dorms, I hung out at Tiffany's place, but she fell asleep and so I went home.
I had a wonderfully long shower and was chilling out around 7 pm when Tiffany called. She was going to a friend's farewell and she basically told me that I wasn't invited, despite the fact that I knew most of the people going. This sucked fairly badly, since that left me without anyone to hang out with on Saturday night, something that hurts a lot since it's happened so many times before. I walked out intent on going to downtown when I bumped into Ryan. He gave me a lift to my friend Laura's place before he headed over to the party to which I'd been uninvited. I was fairly upset about it all, and then when I knocked on Laura's door, she wasn't home. Depressed I walked into downtown in time to catch the 10 pm showing of “Matrix: Revolutions”. I thought the movie was fairly good, and about 12:30 pm I walked the long walk home again. After I dropped by the lab, Tiffany called asking if she could come over, at that point I didn't really care. She apologized for not being able to invite me, which made up for it a little bit, and then we talked for a fair while as she was depressed due to family events.
Sunday I stayed in bed until late in the afternoon. When I did get up, it was to make and eat pancakes. The day was rather lazy, although I did go up to the lab later in the evening. I was still feeling slightly down, but that's just something I have to deal with.
Monday was back to work as per usual; I talked with my boss, and ran some experiments. I got some clothes from Hot Topic which was cool, and then later that evening there was the regular queer group meeting. The attendance was a little lighter than usual, but I knew that some people had decided to skip classes and head home for an extra long Thanksgiving break. The meeting meandered along, and I realized that by having class at 7:30 pm, I had been spared the rather long drawn out end of the meeting. The reason why I wasn't going to class that night was because Tiffany's sister's fiancée; Brian, had invited us around for dinner and a game of trivial pursuit. I had beaten him at the same game earlier in the year and he was keen for a rematch. Tiffany and Doug dropped of their things and we rode in Tiffany's frozen car out to Tanya and Brian's place. The chilli was very welcome as I'd only eaten a bagel and some fruit that day. Brandon turned up and we had 5 people for the game, and so to speed things up we broke up into teams, with myself on my own team. The game was very long and didn't finish until after 1 am, and Brian and Brandon were the winners, but only just, since everybody else also had all their chips. Tiffany dropped me off home and I crashed out very quickly.
Tuesday was a interesting day, as the University was hosting the Montana State Science Olympiad. I have an informal arrangement with a teacher (David) from Sidney, Montana, he supplied us with one of his previous graduates who is now working in our laboratory. On Tuesday he brought some more of his high school seniors through the lab in the hope that they might decide to come to this university and work with us in our research group. I gave them a brief overview of our work in a presentation and then showed them around the lab. They seemed fairly interested, so I hope we may be able to bag them for next year. After that I talked with David for a while, and he may come to work with us during next Summer. The rest of the day was fairly quiet and I came home before it got too cold and dark.
Wednesday was very quiet indeed. It is the biggest travelling day of the year in the US, and most people were using any excuse to leave work early. I of course have no real attachment to Thanksgiving other than being far away from family and friends. My other boss dropped by and we talked for a while, nothing much of importance. I went home and dropped by to see Judy. She was still recovering from her flu, and so was stuck here for Thanksgiving also.
Today (Thursday) was a lonely day. I got up around 9 am and cleaned and tidied my place as well as doing laundry. I left home around 1 pm, intending on seeing if Judy was home. She wasn't, and since Rya wasn't either, I presumed they had gone to some Thanksgiving lunch together. That meant I knew nobody in town to talk to and I cried as I walked to the lab. Once their I felt a little better, but on the way home the tears started again. I feel I am always doomed to walk the earth without friends, knowing only acquaintances who don't really care for me. I know I do have friends, some of them read this diary, but they are far away.
I sent emails to the few people I might hope for some sympathy for, but without any reply. I suppose everyone was too busy stuffing themselves to be concerned for some young lonely Australian.