So as I sit here cursing at the world for screwing me over at a number of things (most notably this summer being a near complete failure), I keep in mind the following. Life is very simple at the moment. Not much stress, except for what I pretty much bring upon myself, and not much to worry about except for the basic things.

Let's take work for instance. If I was employed, I would most likely have to get up in 3 1/2 hours, be dead tired, not want to go to work and strenuously labor away at something I have been all summer. Worrying about what I would do for winter employment, now that the summer was ending and fall is coming upon me quite quickly.

How about a license? Now having a license would be quite swell, however there are some irritating hitches to it. My most favorite of things, insurance companies. I'd have to deal with an excessive bill every month, because of my damn sex and age bracket, no matter how little horsepower my Excel has. Plus. I'd probably be at the point where I had no interest in driving to work, it was too damn routine. I'd rather drive to the beach. My car would probably be in worse condition than it is now, because of excessive driving, and thus mechanical problems would be creeping up everywhere.

How about a girl? Now girls are nice creatures when everything is working out perfectly and they actually adore you and all, but when it comes to a relationship with one, it is far more complicated. First off, the rest of money would be going to her, for who knows what. Second, I'd have to deal with whatever emotion she was going through at any given moment, not knowing what the hell was going on, being stressed to hell wondering if she still wanted to go out, or would she rather stay single and go with some other dude. And all the other garbage that goes along with relationships.

So having no car, job, or girl is pretty much a life without stress... Except that equals to not having a life in the first place. But the moral of this dilemma is that there is far more problems that come with the things that you want, when you don't have them. It may feel like a bad deal now, but soon it may be even worse with such things to have to be concerned about.

-Dan, dhurrikane@hotmail.com

I will warn you, that with the combination of the time of night, lack of recent writing, and any other excuses I can think of along the way, I am ranting about pretty much nothing in this entry. It is probably much less entertaining than any other one, but what can you do?

Well today was interesting one. And I must say I'm feeling a lot more settled than a few days ago, for reasons I'll explain later. But, it seems as though I'm in a paradox at the moment. It's weird... it truly sucks that summer is going by so damn fast and I really didn't accomplish anything yet that I had wanted to at the beginning of it. But as fast as it went by, I don't especially want it to slow down either. I can't wait until spring, and (hopefully) this week or next I get my date for my driver's license test. In the spring I hope to go to Southern Maine Technical College, and get an associate's in Masonry. I really don't have much interest in going back out to the University of Montana. I accomplished there what I now feel I needed to, and don't feel any reason to return. Once I become a mason I can get a job pretty much anywhere in the world, and you get paid $20-30 an hour, so I don't really see a problem with it. In fact it's a very good career. I'll probably change my focus somewhere down the line (probably sooner rather than later), but it's a good thing to concentrate on while I'm at it.

My dad and I basically spent the day together, which is a-typical of any Monday or Tuesday. We went to the Hiram(?)(maybe not, some Kezar public dump) dump first, and that place is too damn sketchy. The guy who runs it is the biggest scrub ever. I suppose my impression of most people who run transfer stations as being pretty damn sketchy, but considering my dad heads one, makes him one of the exceptions, so I'm always somewhat surprised at how scrubby most are. Not to mention unitelligent. It's uncanny how many towns my dad has fixed up just by being the regional waste supervisor, and running how all of the town's garbage is disposed of and what-not. It is such a large focus of a town, and it's often over-looked. He's received so many awards and plaques and what-not from all of these environmental organizations, which he finds them all to be bull-shit and he is not worthy of any of it and all of that nonsense. I personally think he should hang them up, but they'll probably always be stuffed away in the attic somewhere.

We stopped off at the Mobil Station over by Sophia's, which hasn't been open in forever thanks to a fuel leak. I don't even want to know how much money they paid to repair that whole place so it's environmentally acceptable. I tried one of those Mountain Dew Code Red's for the first time (I realize they've been out for two years now), and it was surprisingly good. I'm not a big fan of fruit punch flavored crap, so I was pleasantly surprised. I was checking out the Zippo's in there, which there was a pathetic display of randomness (Bruins, American Flag, Black, Marine Core...), I suppose the black would do just fine. It said on the case though that Zippo would fix any of their lighter's for free if it was broken. Now there is no way those things last for more than 5 years in the first place (excluding the old-school ones). Does anyone send them in to get fixed for free? Because I think that it would be a losing business proposition to offer that service. It probably has some bullshit attached to it though, like the manufacturer's parts are covered but not the labor that was put into it, so it was the laborer's fault constructing it, thus preventing you from getting it done for free, and ending up just throwing it away.

The metal yard in Portland is the same as ever, although my dad had a surprisingly concise amount of junk that was all aluminum, or some such metal. Usually it takes forever to unload all of the miscellaneous wire and metals he has in the back of the truck it ends up taking an hour. I think it only took about half of that time today, even with it being so busy. There is this one guy named Joe (who always wears a damned Yankees hat) who has been working there for over 25 years. I have no idea how you could work at a metal yard for 25 straight years without tiring of it. Hell, I don't know how anyone can live in the same place for 25 years. I'm sure I won't be as restless later on in life, but right now I can't go 3 months without wanting to move. It's ridiculous.

We got lunch at DiPietro's down in South Portland, which we always stop at for beverages or whatever, 'cause it's right next to Fort Williams. The subs (well mine anyway) was actually really good, but the damn bread was skinnier than an Ethopian on a diet. It was obscene. They basically just piled bacon, lettuce and tomato on top of it, so it was just laying on it, not inside it. Needless to say, along with the mayonaise it was one of the messiest sandwiches I've ever eaten in my life. Cape Cod chips apparently doesn't make any more Firecracker barbecue chips either, because now they have a new flavor of them that for some reason uses the "old-style" recipe, but make the chips slightly sweeter. Old-school Firecracker was the shiznit, but what can you do.

We played frisbee at Fort Williams for a considerable time. 2 1/2 hours probably. My feet were so damn sore. Fun as hell though. I'm going to miss ultimate back in Montana. The Avalanche Fury are going to be struggling this semester, I hope that they find some new people for the team, because they are going to need them. My jersey still hangs in the closet. We were so damn good the first semester, and while a lot of people blamed it on the fact that Adam went back to Kansas (the most unbelievable disc player I've ever seen), I still believe it's the fact that we played every single day that summer/fall. Fucking spring no one wanted to play. It was so damn lame. I think that's why I tended to hideaway in my room for a lot of Spring semester, because I wasn't out there every day. Dudak and I were just about the only ones who were up for it. Kelsey would play if he didn't have class (hell I'd just skip class to toss the disc), and that was about it. I suppose it didn't help that so many damn girls bailed out on our team spring semester too. We were always short girls, and I couldn't blame Blair for not playing, because she had triathlon practice practically every day. I'm going to miss those people...

Tonight was the biggest news probably though. Ever since Friday I've been fretting that Ashley just stopped talking to me for no good reason, and would end up like every other chick in this fucking area. But apparently she was stranded at her ex's friend's place for the weekend and couldn't leave, because her dad was out on a business trip. All that was done there was people smoking and drinking (surprise surprise), which she doesn't care for whatsoever, so she was bored shitless. About time I find someone who lives here, with a plan to leave here, has some intelligence, is athletic, attractive and not a whore, and all of that other good stuff. I want to try to start a relationship with this girl, but she's got five hundred other guys after her too now that she broke up with her ex three weeks ago. Kind of sucks that so many other guys have caught onto the fact that she's out here, but I'm not like anyone out here, so hopefully that seperates me from the rest. Probably not, but I can hope. The fact is, I don't want to rush things so that she will be scared off by me, seeing as how she had broken up with her ex of like six months, not too long ago. But then again I don't want some other guy to catch her before I get to it either. I talked to her sister last week, and she said to wait a couple of weeks, after hanging out a few times, and then ask her out, which I think isn't a bad idea at all. I was really hoping I could get my license at about the same time, but it's not looking good. It would make things a hell of a lot easier that way. I may just wait until I get my license to ask her out, so that way we don't have to depend on others to get to see each other. It's too much of a hassle, and 2/3 of the time a let-down. I just don't want to fuck things up for once, with a relationship and actually have something work out for once. I'm sick of being unlucky and being too nice, and just stupid bull-crap like that. I just want something to work out with no mind games, no complications... Too bad all relationships are complicated. Hopefully, I can get a hair-cut and do my laundry tomorrow so that I can actually look decent next time we see each other. We'll see if this thing actually progresses in a good direction...

-Dan, dhurrikane@hotmail.com