1/16/01

Arrgh. I'm having terrible problems with my dialup service lately. For the last few days, I've been having trouble getting through, and when I do get through, it's been with a slow connection (somewhere between 12 and 31 Kb/sec, and I have a 56K modem!) and I usually end up getting bumped off 10 minutes later. I've tried every dialup number in my area, and they're all equally as bad, which makes me worried that it might be a problem with my modem.

Anyway, being without internet access might be just as well. Lately, I've been innundated with some particularly shameless spam, including this gem:

From:
Subject: I Need Your Help

Please listen to my problem, I honestly need your assistance. I have been swindled out a large amount of money by individual in Dallas,Texas. I want to the authorities without success. Do the fact is a prominent local resident of Dallas, the authorities would not give serious consideration to my complaint. I lost my credibility with my family, and had to borrow money ($98,00.00) from the bank to hide the money missing out of my savings account. It eating me up like cancer.

I'm asking for your assistance to gain my credibility back with my family. I'm not a charity and I will have to pay income tax on any that I received from you. I'm asking for donations between $3.00 and $5.00 per individual. Please mail the your check or cash to P. Perry, Post Office Box 821008, South Florida, FL 33028, U.S.A.

Pretty bad, huh? The really sad thing is that people will probably go for it.

When I last wrote, I was getting ready to go see "Traffic" with Jay, but my plans were up in the air because of the shaky power situation. Well, as it turns out, I just decided to risk it and go to the movie, but Jay decided not to go because he was "feeling sick" and I guess he thought that going out in the rain might be hard on his delicate constitution.

I got on the train to go downtown, and then a couple of stops later, a couple of my friends got on. They were headed downtown to see an art exhibit, which, as it turned out, featured art by Dan Clowes among others, so I decided to scrap my movie plans and tag along with them.

So, we walked through the rain and jumped over puddles to get to the gallery, and there were plenty of black-wearing arty types there sipping wine and sticking their faces right up against the artwork and squinting. But the exhibit wasn't too impressive. There were only a couple of Dan Clowes pieces in it, and they were all just the original art for pages from comic books I'd already read. So, after 5 minutes or so, I told my friends that I was going to go to the movie after all, and ran over to the theater. I got there just in time. I felt a bit strange about leaving the exhibit so quickly, but I definitely made the right choice. The movie was good, and I don't think I could have spent much more than half an hour at the exhibit. Plus, I was feeling self-conscious, because I wasn't really dressed for hanging out with artistes.

This weekend was pretty boring. I worked, I ran, I bought a shirt at Old Navy. On Sunday night, Alvin came over and we ate Chinese food and watched "The Simpsons" and "The X-Files." I actually really hate "The X-Files," but I always seem to end up watching it, because there's usually nothing better to do on Sunday night than watch TV, and because Fox is the only station I get good reception on, and because there's nothing else good on anyway.

My big race is only a week-and-a-half away. I'm feeling OK about it, except I keep getting freaked out about my usual strange aches and pains. And I worry about what's going to happen after the race, too--if I'll be able to stay motivated to stick with all this running. I don't really notice a huge difference in my overall level of fitness or in my body now that I'm running 30-35 miles a week compared to when I was running 15 miles a week. The real difference is that now I'm able to run 30-35 miles a week, and it would be a shame to lose that ability after I've worked so hard to attain it. But I'm not sure that'll be enough to motivate me to keep up with my current running regimen.

I talked to my parents on Sunday morning, as I usually do, and chatted with them for a while. They told me that my sister's former roommate, who I know somewhat, had a boyfriend who used to read my diary before they met. He had stopped reading it for a while, and then lost track of it, and then he wound up finding it again after Christine (the roommate) mentioned my diary during a conversation they were having. My sister then called me later that evening, and told me that Christine and her boyfriend were coming to town so she could interview for a medical residency at UCSF, and I told her to tell Christine to give me a call. An hour or so later Christine did call me, and told me that the residency was in the same department l work in, and I know several people in that program. We agreed to meet for dinner Monday evening, and I told her that I'd ask the residents I know for the inside scoop on the program.

So, last night we went out to dinner. The first two restaurants we tried to go to were packed, so we wound up eating at a middling Indian restaurant with plenty of available tables. During the course of the dinner, Christine's boyfriend mentioned that he used to go out with a woman who used to be in my graduate program, which was kind of a weird coincidence, and then it turns out that the lab he's in in New York is the lab where one of the postdocs in my lab got his Ph.D. I realize this is a very convoluted story, but the point is, it's a small world.

The forum: "Traffic" and What Motivates You to Exercise?