july 11, 2001. Day 2 of skipping breakfast because I woke up too damn late. Although looking at the Poet's wedding pictures Dirk just sent me, I rather think that I need to lose a ton of weight. Or if not a ton, than at least 20 pounds or so. God I look massive in those pictures. Anyway, to get off of my ridiculous narcissism for a moment (only a moment? -fictitious ed.), I'd like to complain about my officemate for a moment. I'll preface this by saying that I have a certain fondness for him. In a way he kind of reminds me of Stacy's ex-boy Scott...except that he's not very cool or fun. Which, come to think of it, means that he's nothing at all like Scott, other than the fact that he's the sysadmin and he has a goatee. We share a co-ed bathroom down the hall, and this would normally not be a problem for me except for the fact that he leaves the toilet seat up. Now, I realize that this is a small thing to be concerned about in the grand scale of things, but I drink a lot of water in a day, and I visit the facilities fairly frequently. 3 or 4 times a day I hmph & mutter 'put the goddamn seat down!' to myself. And it got me thinking. My brother used to refuse to put the seat down; he countered that it takes as much energy to put it up as down, and why didn't I just remain vigilant? At the time I took it for a patented Nic-style Very Foolish But Almost-Logical Statementtm (VFBALS), designed to get him out of actually taking other people into account. But now I wonder. Is the whole seat-down thing a sissification of modern culture? Are we churning out generation after generation of women and girls who habitually sit their bare behind on objects without really looking at the objects beforehand? Could we be opening ourselves to an attack of killer bottom bees or derriere dingos? Or even the dreaded ass snake? Someone has to consider these things. And we all know that it shouldn't be left up to me, a girl who thinks that the phrase 'ass snake' is both acceptable for publication and devastatingly funny. this time last year: a poorly-written entry on family memory (it's all I have today)