Well, if you're going to kill yourself, it might as well be for something you love. I haven't worked this hard since college. I've certainly worked this many hours before (thanks, Amerigon, for that lovely nightmare), but not in a long while.

Every morning I think I should walk to work. It's only three quarters of a mile to the office. But then I'd have to walk home in the dark, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of neighborhood I'm in. Hate to trip over the homeless guy hanging out at the bus station.

Sheesh, even the McDonald's closed.

Been seeing a lot of the night crew at the hotel. The front desk clerk and I are getting pretty tight. He asked me what I do that I'm out so late every night. "I'm mapping out new routes for the Columbian Cartel." I'm not sure he believes me.

A couple days ago the cleaning crew faked me out and snuck in one afternoon after I had foolishly removed the "Do Not Disturb" sign from the door, thinking the instructions, "No, do not clean my room." would be sufficient to keep them out. No such luck. The poor woman had to figure out how all the bedding from both beds ended up on one bed. Maybe if they didn't keep the rooms so cold, I could sleep without sixteen blankets on me.

That trick I finally figured out. If you want a warm room at night, you have to leave the heater on during the day. Wasteful, but it works. Now the room is toasty warm at night.

The UPA could have bought a couch for the amount of money I'm spending at this hotel. Given that I'm there more than I'm here, it would have been better spent. Of course, I wouldn't smell as nice.

Speaking of, I'm almost out of clean clothes. Two more days and I'll have to decide: dirty clothes, wash them, or just head home.

I'm thinking the latter.

Moe's for bagels in the morning. Mmmmmm!

Well, since this is, in theory, the last weekend and week I'll be coming out to Colorado (at least for free), I figured I'd best start doing all the little things I meant to do. I'm not sure I'll be able to visit either of my aunts, but all the other little things are getting done.

I'd been meaning to visit a running shoe store for new running shoes. Hit that last Thursday, after getting lost at least a dozen times (and being all of 100 yards away from where I needed to be and not aware of it, then driving another mile to get back to that spot in a long round-about way).

This morning, I decided to take those shoes for a run. When staying with Sandie, we'd pass a trailhead on the way to work every morning. I decided I wanted to run that trail. So, on went the new running shoes and after struggling to actually leave the hotel, I drove (once again, the long round-about way) to the trailhead.

Half way there, I realized I had forgotten my water.

Two thirds of the way there, I realized it was really bright out and I had forgotten my sunglasses.

Arriving there, I realized my iPod was on the fritz and wasn't playing any of my purchased music.

I had driven all the way out here, and, by golly, I was going to go for this hike.

Tragically, the only songs that would play are the songs I had ripped from the pile of CDs that sit in the garage. Each of them reminded me of both my college days, and the absurdity I used to do by buying a $16 for that one song I liked.

Foolish child.

Things I learned on the short run I did despite the lack of water, sunglasses and music that wasn't Cinderella, Motley Crue or Winger:

• Running in shorts when it's 38° outside is fairly stupid. Even if it is sunny.
• When the earphones in your ears keep falling out, check to see if the cord is caught in your necklace. There's a reason why it falls out every other step.
• If you forget your water in winter in Colorado, you could just eat the snow on the ground. If you do, pick the snow far away from the cow turds also on the ground.
• High altitude and hills? Eh, not so much.
• Bubble gum rock from the early 90s still sucks. Including Winger.

If this were the last week of your life, are you doing what you want to be doing?

This question has started to haunt me. Unsurprisingly, actually, given the relative unhappiness I had been living through. Relative because I can't say that my being unhappy with my life meant that my life wasn't good (because it certainly is). But, I can honestly say, if this were my last days, I am not doing what I'd want to be doing.

If I knew, I'd be unbelievably depressed about it. I'm sure I'd waste the first of the last days crying my eyes out. Yeah, completely wasteful. I'd then get busy with cleaning out my crap.

After Karen died, Mom asked me to help her and Helen clean out her office. I went with Mom to the school, with a trunk full of boxes. We started at one corner of the office and started pitching. We dumped papers and notes and stuff we deemed worthless. We gathered art supplies to donate to the school. We boxed up books. We carted away everything but the desk and the bookcases.

It was hard.

All of us were crying at some point that afternoon. If we weren't crying, we were trying to be strong for the other two. It was very difficult to look at a life's accumulation and think, "Well, she won't be needing this now."

Her house was harder.

I wouldn't want my family to have to go through my life and think, "Well, she won't be needing that." there's a lot of crap of mine in our house I don't need or want. I need to get rid of it.

I've been wondering what happens to my electronic goods when I go. Sure, I can buy a 100 year lease on this domain or that one, but what happens to the server when I croak? Who keeps that going? What a sad fact of life that when you go, you fade, and that's it. Maybe you're a footnote in the history books, but I'm sure 99.99999% are even that. How do you leave a legacy? I'm so paranoid about my privacy that what you find of me on search engines is what other people say about me or release. I'd fade much faster than most.

So, cleaning out my crap is what I'd do. And spend time with Kris. I can't possibly spend too much time with him, if I were down to one week. Or even if I were down to one decade.

And when that was done, I'd try to figure out how to find more time.

What is it about life that things are never as easy as we hope they will be? Worse, when they are as easy as we want them to be, we become suspicious of the ease, and worry until it's just as hard in the end.

Yeah, fighting with databases and the like. Lovely time this.

When I lived in L.A., and worked in the Biz, I went to Dr. Waxler at the Bob Hope Health Clinic. I liked Waxler a lot - he was easy to talk to, he explained things well, he was responsive to my concerns, and he took the time to listen to me. I often got the impression something happened at his previous employment that affected his confidence, but I liked him enough as a doctor to continue seeing him for a while after I had moved to the Bay Area ("Yeah, my doctor lives 400 miles away from me. No house calls from him.").

On Waxler's desk in his office was a fake breast. It was made to feel like a real breast, and might if the woman's whose breast was being modelled didn't have dense breasts (don't ask). I picked up the breast when I was talking to him at one point, and started playing with it. Waxler commented to me that the breast was a learning tool for helping women find cancer lumps in their breasts.

All women's breasts have some lumps in them. It's a matter of construction since there are different cell types and functions inside the breast. Most women who feel a lump in their breasts for the first time are feeling lumps that have been there all along, but have changed in consistency, and are therefore noticed.

This particular fake boob I was mashing around had a rock in it. Most (not all, mind you) cancerous lumps in breasts are hard, similar to the rock. By finding the rock in the breast, a person could practice breast examinations, and get a feel (pun intended) for the process.

A bit over a year ago, maybe more, when in the shower, I noticed something under my arm, along the outside of my breast. It was hard, but very, very small. I pondered it for a bit, it wasn't there yesterday. Or was it? I asked Kris to check it out. He didn't know what it was. I talked to Lisa about it, she said have it checked out immediately. Good advice.

After a few days of worrying about this little thing (it was about one millimeter across, hard as a rock, and near the surface), I looked at it more closely.

And realized it was a tiny stone stuck in a skin pore. I realized this when it popped out as I was worrying.

Stupid stone.

Kris and I laughed about it, and I forgot about it.

Until tonight.

On the plane heading to Colorado, I was in the restroom (toliet area, lavatory, bathroom, whatever) washing my hands when I noticed a bit of puss at the inside of my right eye. This was unsurprising, so I finished washing my hands, making sure they were particularly clean, and tried to wipe the puss out. It wouldn't budge. Okay, so it's deeper in my eye than I thought it was. When I pulled my lower lid down more and tried again. No luck. What the heck?

After a good minute of futzing with my eye, I finally got the object out. I looked at it very closely, and concluded it was a man-made object. White, with a little knob on one side, it was just over a millimeter long, and hard. When I tried to squish it, it popped out from between my nails.

So, two odd foreign tiny objects. In places where they shouldn't be.

Weird.