shit, man, it's cheaper than therapy.

god, what a long week this has been. yesterday was a hard, hard fucking day. the term i use for such days is "emotional marshmallow." i was definitely one. i cried probably a dozen times, most of it before work. my eyes were raw all day, but i didn't feel like buying Visine. man, it was hard. i suspect i've just been feeling terribly guilty and bad for not being out there with Pops, but he's the kinda man who's as pragmatic as i am: earn your paycheck, make sure your bills are paid, then come see me. he'd give me a royal drubbing some weeks down the line if he learned i was behind on bills just because of him, but still. i didn't expect it to hit me as hard as it did yesterday. still, i sat the hell down and bulletted through my work again.

i have to head out to surrey today to see my pops. blah, i hate the commute. it'll be great to see him, though, and this time he should be able to speak a little bit. hopefully he's doing better today. my brother fucked me up last night by telling me a few details of a humiliation that befell my pops yesterday, one i witnessed with my mother before her passing, and i couldn't get the image out of my head of my mother on that day for a while last night, and i had nightmares about that incident often in the first two years after her death. and, no, i don't want to share it.

tomorrow is A Day for Steff. and, god, do i need it. i can't believe how much has transpired this week. i can't even believe how much work i got done on the job. i'm really happy about it, what i managed to churn out. i've never been able to focus like this under duress before, so i'm pretty proud of that. i think i timed 185 minutes worth of shows in three days, so that's 60+ minutes per day, which means jackshit to you people, but if i tell you that i used to think a 50+ minute day was an accomplishment, you should have some grasp of the difference between the steff of old and the New Killer Cool Focus Steff of now. being productive is AWESOME.

i dunno where the hell the change came from, but somewhere, somehow, from last year to now, i have more focus, and probably better quality work, too. which is good. i've always WANTED to do a good job, y'know? i hated -- absolutely hated -- that i was unable to bring the kind of focus one needs for a job like this. but i'm glad to see the change has occured. i just wonder where and when it happened. weird. i ain't complaining, man. it's one thing to think you're just not built a certain way but to wake up one day down the line and realize you had it in ya all the time is a weird fucking trip. (actually, i suspect that using a PC keyboard at home now instead of an iBOOK laptop might be part of the deal, too. one less thing to slow me down.)

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i didn't eat a lot yesterday (probably because i was an emotional marshmallow). i'm going to change that this morning with MONSTER brekkie. i'll be riding the train to surrey and hanging with my pops, so i won't have much of an appetite out there, so my MONSTER brekkie will tie me over for a number of hours, i'm sure.

i'm having steak and eggs. hell, if i had a beer, i'd have that, too! but i don't, so good black coffee, a good steak, eggs, and some toasted baguette. a manly meal. hah. i haven't had steak'n'eggs for a good long time now. usually, i just have leftover steak, but today i'm having the whole damned thing, fresh-made. fuck restraint. i'd barbecue, but i suspect i'm finally out of juice. tomorrow maybe i'll do a propane run. a 20lb propane cannister on a scooter. there's a sight.

like the notorious gayboy, i take great pride in seeing just how much i can carry on that itty-bitty damned thing. i tell ya, it's like a sport. hell, i've taken insane amounts before. once i took a whole new convection oven on the back of it -- 18x24x31". fucking NUTS. it was fun, though. heh heh. i took a 5' long set of bamboo blinds, too, once, and that was a bit of a challenge. (the crazier things tend to be bought closer to home so it's usually only several blocks i need to ride, except the oven, that was about 45 blocks. ha. i thought i'd be able to ride with it between my knees, but discovered i misjudged the size when i got to the scoot. two wordz: bungy cables!)

the propane can only go in one spot, though, so i'll see if i can manage that. weight's the problem there. otherwise: shopping cart! the ghetto-mobile! makes me wanna watch Requiem for a Dream or something.

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anyhow. must get the steff show on the road. gluttony, then transit. oh. joy. at least the suspicion now is that dad will do a recovery from all this -- depends on whether they finally find the infection. should just be a matter of time now. but those infections can be a pretty bad thing. i'll know more once i'm in there today. as long as he's still in Intensive Care, there's an element of fear behind the mystery. but we're hopin' good things come down the pipes.