Thanks to J. Michael Strazcynski and Babylon 5 for the inspiration of this entry’s title.

I’m not sure if it’s been properly illustrated for you, dear reader, but for the past seven days, I have not enjoyed a single day off from work. My company has been in a state of movement from the old facility in Palo Alto to the new facility in Mountain View. The old facility was what came to be expected of a startup company, but as time passes and the company grows, of course, it must headquarter itself in a place where space is not at a premium.

Now, at the old place, we had so many people that literally, cubes were being placed in the oddest placest. Filing cabinets were condensed or stored and in their place, these two by two partitions were erected with small desks and called cubes. It was getting really cramped, and you could tell that with the limited space, we were going to have to buy portables or start stacking people on top of one another, were it not for the new office building. And the new building is amazing. Three floors, the cubes are constructed from actual wood and not flimsy particle board with felt coverings. It looks very swank, I must say. With my company tripling its profits per fiscal quarter, it certainly shows in the furnishings. Having worked for startups in the past, I hope that this one, while already out of its infancy, doesn’t suffer the same fate as the others.

I have finally constructed my cube the way I want it. I now have two machines on my desk, one named Mutsumi (for Otohime Mutusmi from Love Hina) which is a Windows 2000 server, and the other is named Firiona Vie (for the High Elf mage from EverQuest) and she is a RedHat 7.2 server. I’m trying to relearn linux, and use X exclusively. However, with the demands and tasks of work, Windows is an every day annoyance I cannot escape. Even so, I’m feeling very excited about going to work tomorrow, despite having an Algebra midterm in the morning.

There is a bit of irony in working in Mountain View and living in Campbell. As it so happens, my ex-wife, Stephanie, lives in Mountain View and works for my company’s competitor… whose headquarters is located in Campbell. For the past several days, I’ve been walking around Mountain View, looking for all the old places I recall from when I was married and ended up visiting this city because of her friends. And it just sort of dawned on me. She gets up and goes to work where I live, and I go to work where she lives. Of course, because of the times that we work, we will actually be in the same city at the same time. I’m suddenly a little anxious about bumping into her in the downtown area. Oh well, c’est la vie…

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Before I begin this entry, I’d like to thank Tenchi Muyo for the title. Tomorrow, or actually, since this entry is taking place after 0000 hours, TODAY I undergo the first of two midterms. Tomorrow is the second part, but even so, midterms back to back is kind of scary for someone like me, who hasn’t really done the whole school thing in over a year. In kind of a weird way, I feel as though I’m returning the state of mind I has during my high school days. I wouldn’t study, I wouldn’t do homework, I wouldn’t do anything except the day of the test. In looking back on my grades, and realizing how shitty I did back then, I’m trying to break myself of old habits to make sure I pull a 3.5+ GPA this quarter.

Japanese 3 is pretty tough. A lot tougher than I had anticipated with the near-rapid pace of instruction that is given us every day. Note taking has become something close to a martial art, with my already barely legible scrawl turning into a sort of funky shorthand that not even I can read. Between deciphering notes and trying to interact, I also work 44+ hours a week, so my free time is stretched pretty thin. They say that for every unit or hour you meet a week, you multiply that by three, and that’s how much homework or study time you should allocate each week. Fifteen units times three is forty-five hours. When exactly am I supposed to sleep? Obviously never.

I’ll put an end to that line of thought. Obviously no one forced me to go back to school. Well, that’s not entirely true. About two years ago, my mother got her master’s degree from San Jose State. After the graduation ceremony, my mom looked me square in the eye and threw down a gauntlet in the form of, “All right, now you have to get your doctorate.” Now, this really doesn’t apply too much; I had already intended to get my doctorate anyway. But even so, it sort of brought a little more pressure to bear than your normal aspiration or dream. Perhaps she was saying it in jest, even so, it still had a rather large impact on what her expectations are. As I’ve always said, there’s truth behind every joke, behind every jab.

But I’m still not going to blame my mother. In a roundabout way, though, I heard from my grandmother that mom told her that she was just waiting for me to get sick of working and go back to school full-time. Apparently, she’ll support me. I don’t right about that, though. I’ve been pretty independent and I’ve had my own income. Maybe I am living with her right now, but returning to a dependant state is a step in the wrong direction as far as I’m concerned. If I do go back to school full-time (which technically, I already am, with 15 units), I have to have some way to pay my bills and stuff. Even if I earn enough money to get myself out of debt, I don’t want an allowance, and I don’t want to feel like a heel around her. I already owe her enough, let’s not throw more onto the pile.

In conclusion, I’m beginning to feel the pangs of test anxiety. I fear there is too much to learn, and not enough time to fully digest it all. Even though I studied all week for it, I may defeat myself before the test even begins.

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