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I flew out of Vegas at 6:45 a.m., which meant that i had to be at the airport by 5:15 in order to get checked in and go through security, which meant that I had to leave the house by 4:45, which meant that I had to wake up by 4:00, which meant that i did not sleep at all the night before my trip. I drank coffee on both the flight to San Francisco, and the flight to Portland, but i still managed to get some sleep.

On take off, the turbulance turned the plane into a giant cradle rocking me to sleep. It was by far the bumpiest flight i have ever been on. I'm surprised that more flights aren't that bumpy. Afterall, a great big hunk of metal is bending space so that it may seperate itself from the earth. I know it's perfectly logical when you analyze the physics involved, but it still boggles my mind that it can happen. Pilots must be artists in order to draw those lines from LAS to SFO, and then to PDX without hitting a mountain.

Call me morbid, but the thought that something as small as a sudden change in wind direction or air pressure could send everybody on the plane hurtling towards death is very reassuring to me. Danger makes you appreciate how precious life is. This is why i laugh everytime the plane makes a sudden jerk. I think deep down inside i am actually afraid of air travel, which is why it fascinates me so much.

I got home around noon on new year's eve. I unpacked a little, listened to ten minutes of messages on my answering machine, got stoned, and went to sleep.

I told everybody that it was going to take some major motivation to get me out that night, and i wasn't feeling that particular motivation from anybody. my original plan was to just sleep right through the changing of the new year, and it was going acording to plan, until i woke up to take my medication at 9 p.m. there were more messages on the answering machine. one "hey there's a party" one that did not reach my sense of excitement, and then a message from nic, mostly in spanish. he occasionally broke from his energetic, perfectly accented spanish to give specific details that i already knew, such as address, in a monotone english voice. how could i sleep after receiving such an intriguing invitation? i didn't. i went straight to NE portand and proceeded to inebriate myself.

there were only a few people present, but i knew most of them and it made for good times. those who i did not know included girls who would blush when you used words like "nudity." naomi had everybody playing foozball for bets of who's buying sushi next time we go out. i, as well as alex and a girl who's name i cannot remember all owe naomi a plate or more of sushi sometime in the future. later on, the evening devolved into absurd conversation and further drinking. i put on five pairs of sunglasses and posed while naomi took pictures of me. nic asked me to read for a part in his next film project. we planned out future sketches for my radio show.

after the second or third time i fell on the kitchen floor, adam picked me up, and pointed me toward the door. we said goodbye, and three of us headed toward downtown. somewhere on Broadway we caught a cab ride to adam's place. i hadn't known adam very well until that night. we talked for hours upon stoned-out hours about music, books, relativity, fractals, calculus, and print-making.

alex seems like a cool guy too, but i can't remember anything about him other than what drugs he does and does not like. he started a conversation about the experiments where scientists gave spiders various drugs and then observed how they spun their webs. all three of us had read about the experiment form one source or another. they were all highly entrigued by the way the lsd spiderweb turned out, so precise.

i didn't come close to meeting my reading goals over break. i never got the list, and the library near my parent's house is useless. They have no selection, and none of the librarians knew who Che Guevarra is. Oh well, i'm home now, and i have Che right here.