River City Random's Search for Meaning

Due to various political issues I have with the current leadership of LiveJournal, Inc., and because I want a more professional front to show off my writing skills and opinions, I have permanently moved to my own web server. You can now find my blog on rivercityrandom.com. I will still maintain my LJ account for my groups and to reply to other people's postings. Anyway, check it out. If you want to add the RSS feed to your LJ, it's at rcr_com. There are also many RSS feed readers available on the Internet that one can use to keep tabs on all sorts of webpages and blogs that offer RSS feeds. My favorite is RSS Menu, but that one's Mac OS X only. Have a good day, and keep in touch!

Well, after days of fretting over everything, I have made a decision about where I am going to work this summer. I am going to be a front desk agent at the Stanley Hotel. It pays $9 an hour, which is 75¢ more an hour than I would make if I came back to Yellowstone, and $1.50 an hour more than I would make in Connecticut. Plus, I feel like I would have more of a track to job advancement there, being that it is run by a big hotel group with properties in a dozen countries. Also, the hotel is right in the middle of downtown Estes Park and it would be much easier for me to get out and do things than it was in Mammoth, five miles and 1000 feet up a mountain from the nearest town and all. Also, it's only about 60 miles from Denver, which sounds like a lot less intimidating of a city than New York City. I might have had more fun and met more hot babes in Connecticut, but I feel this is the better choice for now. I start June 2, which means that I have time to go home and do everything I need to do there. Meanwhile, I have another week and a half to go here in Yellowstone, so my task for right now is to try and survive that. I hope I made the right decision. But as someone said to me once, it is not important that your decisions always be right. It is important that your decisions be yours. So I guess we will see what happens.

Not me personally though, my blog is moving. (The question of where I'm going to go work this summer has yet to be decided yet.) I've bought my own domain name, rivercityrandom.com, I've set up a WordPress blog, and I will be using it as my personal soapbox from now on. This is not because LiveJournal is now owned by the Russians, although that did influence me somewhat. I just thought that since I was spending $5 a month for Space Mullet, I would register my own domain and have a consistent place to store all my writings and stuff I want to show the world, as well as more personal information I would want to control access to. I probably won't post a tremendous amount of really personal stuff on this new website (if I do, I will do it in such a way as to avoid embarrassment later on.) If you have a RSS reader, you can subscribe to my feed at http://rivercityrandom.com/feed/, or add rcr_com to your friends list. Thank you all for your friendship and don't forget to check the website upon occasion to see what I am up to!

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:11-12)

Those lines, that I had read in the Bible years and years ago, make sense to me now for perhaps the first time in my life. I always assumed that it meant that now that I was an adult, I had to give up playing with toys and video games and be oh-so-serious and have no fun. It seems to me now that it is saying that in order to become a man, I have to give up a childish mode of thinking. The fear, the hatred, the shyness, the paranoia in my mind that I so casually splatter all over LiveJournal--those are all vestiges of my childhood, the defense mechanisms I assumed to avoid being hurt. Yet my view of the world is tainted by these thoughts and feelings; it is like I am seeing "a poor reflection in a mirror" instead of the real world. Being an adult means seeing the world on its own terms, face to face. Divesting myself of the illusions that have plagued my life will be quite a challenge. But perhaps the knowledge that these are illusions--instead of objective truth--is the first and most important step.

The second step is made clear in the context of the chapter. "The greatest of these is love." I don't need to quote the whole darn chapter--you all have your Bibles--but it obvious that the traits of what Paul calls "love" (or "charity" in some translations) are what I need right now. I have not been patient or kind--especially not to myself. Despite my views on God and religion, and the apostle Paul, I find this psychologically poignant right now. I need to stop acting like a victim of "the world" and start being an active participant in the world's healing. It's time to put childish ways behind me.

Yesterday, I read A New Earth by Eckhard Tolle, at the recommendation of a friend. It is a book on spirituality and I had an experience, what you might call a spiritual awakening of sorts. Last night I spent several hours trying to write a LJ post about that. However, I think I may have missed the point about the whole thing. You can't put a description on what is by nature infinite and unknowable. My pitiful words and language weren't doing it any credit. I can't tell you what brought about this experience, but I can tell you what came about by it.

Basically, in a flash of inspiration I discovered that my quest for psychological knowledge was meaningless, that my anxiety and depression ultimately had no power over me, and that far from being isolated from humanity, I was intimately involved in humanity and with the universe just by being me and being alive. Therefore, I needed to take responsibility for my own growth and not just sit around waiting for someone to come rescue me from my emotions. I know this is all painfully obvious to most people, and I had heard these words before from many different sources, but I did not want to believe these ideas until this thing happened and smashed them in my head with a metaphorical hammer.

I know that singular religious experiences can't permanently change my emotions. I don't even know if this is a genuine enlightenment or just a result of over-stress and being taken in by a slick New Age guru. I do know, though, that I feel better. I seem more aware of my environment and the beauty that surrounds me. And I am not depressed out of my mind right now like I was just a few days ago. I guess I just to have faith... if nothing else but in myself.

I've been looking for a pre-paid phone service for my dad, who needs a cheap, basic cellphone for emergencies and whatnot. But I think I found a deal better than the pre-paid services I use now. Page Plus Cellular uses Verizon's network, which is the only one in Yellowstone, and its minutes are way cheaper than Tracfone's. The cheapest cards give you 12¢ minutes, which beats the 25-33¢ minutes I am buying from Tracfone. And if you buy a $80 card you get 1400 minutes--that's 5.7¢ per minute! Tracfone's cheapest minutes are 800 minutes for $140 - which puts them at 17.5¢ per minute. Damn, I've been gypped. I just wish they sold the Jitterbug--that's the phone my dad really wants. If I could only get an unlocked Jitterbug that uses the CDMA system! Nevertheless, I think I myself will be switching to Page Plus when my Tracfone runs out of minutes and my T-Mobile phone finally dies.

P.S. Actually, with a web-only $80 card, you can get 900 minutes from Tracfone - 8.9¢ per minute - but only if you buy the $50 Double Minutes card first. It's still a gyp.

I was doing so well up until 4:30 this afternoon. It was a fairly slow day at work and I was able to handle all the calls pretty well, but right by the end of the shift, I had a panic attack and got super-anxious for no good reason. Even though I was able to keep my cool over the phone, I was so nervous that I started shaking really bad. It continued through dinner and at 6 pm I just had to go to bed. I just woke up about 15 minutes ago. Apparently my body thinks this I was taking an afternoon nap instead of sleeping for the night, because now I can't get back to sleep.

I wish I knew brought on these anxiety attacks. I've heard so many explanations. Is it because I am weak-willed and lazy and trying to shirk my work responsibilities? Is it because I have some sort of chemical deficiency and I need an expensive and potentially dangerous mind-altering drug to sort that out? Is it because I am "sexually frustrated" and need to find a sexual partner in order to feel "fulfilled?" Or is it because I spend eight hours a day in a tiny, cramped, noisy room trapped with thirty other people and then go back to a tiny dormitory where I am trapped with a hundred others with no real place to be alone or be myself? I came to Yellowstone to escape having to deal with the overcrowding of city life, only to be thrust into a tiny settlement with a bunch of people who make it a point to invade one's personal privacy!

I guess the truth is that I really am an introvert, and I can't stand constantly having to be around people twenty-four hours a day!!!! But no one seems to understand this. People seem to think that wanting to be alone makes one a creepy loner with no social life. Even many of my friends seem to want to pull me into activities when I really just want to be alone, and they make me feel guilty when I don't want to participate. I mean, I can simulate social gregariousness in a work setting for the length of a work day. I can seem like a people person and be quite witty as long as the depth of the conversation is fairly shallow and is limited to topics related to the work at hand. But I can't keep it up all day, every day.

Perhaps this is my problem. I just keep trying to put square pegs into round holes under the excuse of convenience or perceived social expectations. I keep taking jobs that require large amounts of contact with people and the public not because they make me happy, but because they are easy to get and people tell me that I have a talent for customer service. Maybe my inability to handle the emotional stresses that arise from this work isn't a crime or a moral deficiency, it's just because I have different strengths and weaknesses than other people and I am not playing to my strengths.

I mean, we're all different. You couldn't put, say, my dad, in a room full of computers alone by himself all day and expect him to be productive. He neither has the interest nor the aptitude to work with computers, and he needs people around him that validate his sense of self-worth. However, put him in front of a wooden piece of furniture, or a rag rug, or a car engine and he can fix it for you. I can't do that. I have other friends who are incredibly competent at working on computers but have trouble making sales calls or working on cars. This is not a "disease" that needs medication; they can live quite productive lives without dealing with those things. It could just very well be that I don't have a mental disorder, that I am just in the wrong line of work and frustrated because I feel trapped by my (real or perceived) lack of options. There's nothing immoral or pathological about it, it's just the way it is.

I applaud you if you chose to read this this far, I just had to get this out before I forgot this bit of insight. It is going to take me everything I've got to make it through the next five weeks. If you would like to read more, check out this Wikipedia entry on Schizoid Personality Disorder and tell me if this relates to me in any way. It sounds an awful lot like me in some ways, and not at all like me in other ways. Thanks again.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHILDRENS_PLOT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Wow, man, just wow. Well, at least now when someone asks me why I don't want to become a teacher, I'll have another thing to say about that.

I hate being on the emotional rollercoaster. It's like I don't even know where my emotions will go or take me. One minute, I'll be feeling perfectly fine, and then the next minute I'll be reading a jackass's comment on Slashdot about how women only want men for their money and I'll feel like I'm an misshapen failure of a man who will never get laid. Then I'll go play some World of Warcraft for a bit and feel pretty "heroic" about my ability to slaughter innocent monsters. Then someone will call someone up on the phone in the lobby and bitch about how the company is screwing them. And then I will get righteously indignant about all the "abuse" that has been inflicted on me from everyone I've ever worked for. And then someone will say something about how the government wants to censor the internet, and I will get horribly paranoid and start trying to delete my LJ articles and Usenet posts before the NSA or CIA get them first...

It's like my emotions aren't even my own. It's like they're just a mirror of everything I see around me, a twisted funhouse mirror that blows them all out of proportion. Every minor inconvenience or irritation is turned into an earth-shattering cataclysm that threatens to unravel the very foundations of my life. (The happy moments are usually discounted, ignored or forgotten.) This happens even if the inconvenience is happening to someone other than me. I can't even watch movies where people undergo serious moments of stress because I identify with the characters too much. There's no clearly defined line where my problems end and everyone else's problems begin. It's like my anxiety is like the infant that cannot tell the difference between itself and the rest of the world.

So how do I separate myself from the rest of the world's drama? How do I avoid freaking out when others are freaking out, or avoid cringing when someone is angry? How can I detach myself from the anxiety the media keeps pumping out? How can I see women as partners in life instead of parasitic leeches who just want to take advantage of my weak emotional state? How can I share my emotions with people without feeling like I have to wall myself up? How can I be me instead of what I think others expect me to be?

How can I even be me, period? I'm so cowed, I'm so submissive, I'm so afraid, I'm so manipulated by the emotions and desires of others I don't even know who I even am. I want control over my emotions, and over my life... but no religion, no psychologist, no book, no person can tell me who I am. I need to either find out who I am... or decide who I will become and stick to that.

I am horribly afraid of angry people. This fear is so bad that I get very anxious, even to the point of tears, if I even hear a twinge of anger or hostility in someone's voice. And if I find out they're angry because of something I did, I get very afraid and feel the urge to shout "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" at the top of my voice and start bowing and lowering my head at the person I supposedly wronged. And if they stay angry at me, and I can't get away or appease them somehow, I start clenching my fists and holding them in front of me like they're going to fight me or something. I know this is highly irrational, and this is causing me no small amount of emotional pain, especially at work where guests can get very cranky at times. And people are very confused, and even turn away from me, when I start going into my highly unusual fight or flight mechanism.

I've been this way for pretty much as long as I can recall. I only realized that this was the source of all the anxiety I've been having last night, when Kate and I were playing a game in the lobby and one of our coworkers started screaming horrible violent profanities and obscenities on the phone and then started yelling at us because two of our friends, not present, had done something he disapproved of. Even though he was not angry at us, the anger in his voice resonated with these deepest fears in my psyche and I broke out into a terrible crying fit--right in front of the man and my friends. I hid in my room for the rest of the night. Apparently there is some part of me that is so afraid of disapproval from and rejection by others, and so terrified of any sort of negative emotion or anger coming from other people, that even though his tirade was in no ways directed at me, I started feeling like he was going to come over to where I was sitting and beat me up. It was like I was in sixth grade again and bullies were taunting me, or like I was in a car with Dad and forced to listen to one of his raging paranoid tirades. And the whole time I felt my own rage building, and I hadn't left when I did it might have gone over the breaking point. I have no clue why I feel like any anger expressed around me at all will lead to horrible violent conflict, but it is so bad that I can't even watch movies where people get mad and yell at people, especially children.

This, coupled with an intense need for approval, makes me into a sniveling toady who will do or say anything to keep people from expressing their anger. I can't even resolve my own conflicts with people meaningfully without instantly taking the submissive position and burying my own anger deep inside. A friend of mine said I dealt with people in positions of power over me by alternately placating and undermining their authority. The problem is, in my fear and paranoia I've put just about everyone in a position of power over me. If any of my friends and/or girlfriends really knew that, they could take advantage of me very easily... until my suppressed rage and resentment hit the boiling point and I destroyed the very relationships I tried so hard to smooth over.

I don't know what to do. I've tried pills, I've tried psychotherapy. I need to learn how to be more assertive and stop caring what other people think, I guess. Eventually I need to learn that anger is healthy to express and that people aren't all just sacks of built-up rage just waiting to release it on the first available target that crosses them. I just don't know how to do that yet.

Yeah, I am still here. I am feeling so much better that I stopped taking the lithium, but I am still going home in May, with no immediate plans to return to Yellowstone. I miss my home and family and my dog and I need a rest after this incredibly stressful winter. I may return once I feel sufficiently rested or I may get a job in California or another national park. I don't know yet.

Kate's computer is still on the fritz. Every time we reinstall Windows, it seizes up after three or four days and refuses to boot up. Then we have to reinstall it again and all her programs (including World of Warcraft, with its 1 GB of patch downloads.) It's up and running again thanks to one of our computer-literate coworkers, but we still don't know what's causing the fatal system crashes. Is it bad RAM, a corrupted hard disk, a problem with the battery or power supply, or one of the thousands of destructive Windows viruses out there that still evade capture by all the antivirus software I can put on Kate's machine? I never had any problems like this on any of the three Macs I have owned. Oh well, computers are coming down in price and hopefully Kate can buy a new laptop soon. I hope she gets a MacBook like mine, but I doubt she will.

I've started a new project to keep me sane and distracted from all the anxiety I've been happening. I'm writing a novel. I've had these great ideas for a series of SNES-style RPG games since I got introduced to the genre in the mid 1990's, but I never wrote them down because I lacked confidence enough even to put fingers to keyboard. I thought, "It would be too hard to learn how to program, draw sprite art, compose music and write a compelling story all by myself, so why even try." Ten years later, and it suddenly dawns on me that even if I do not currently know how to program a RPG all by myself, I do know how to write, and I need to write down my ideas before I forget them or something happens to me. This was about a month ago, when I was sick with the flu and very concerned about my health and my sanity. And the unfortunate death of Gary Gygax earlier this month kicked me in the pants to get me motivated too.

Now, I have about 50,000 words in a text file, but it's all a crazy mish-mosh of backstories, prequels, sequels, character and monster stats, map ideas, magic spell data, game dynamics, etc. It's like I couldn't decide if I was writing a book, a video game, an alien world's version of Wikipedia, or the D&D Monster Manual. And my one story has suddenly turned into a nine-part fantasy epic with more characters than a Tom Clancy novel. A month of work, and I hardly have anything to show off for my efforts. However, just to get some of my writing out there in the world, here is a brief, cryptic snippet of one of my tangled plot threads:
( Read more... )

I had a very nice day today. Phones off the hook pretty much from the start, people waiting in the queue for as long as half an hour, and oh, yes, I got a death threat. Around 3 pm, some guy called in and wanted a very specific combination of rooms for a very specific combination of dates, which of course we didn't have available. I tried to offer him alternatives, but he didn't want Grant Village, he didn't want a room without a bath, and even though he only had two people in his party he did not want a room with only one double bed. I spent twenty minutes trying to find him things for the whole summer and I could not find anything he wanted. He then flew into a rage and said that he had been coming to Yellowstone every year for the last 20 years and he wasn't going to let some "nancy-ass city boy" tell him he couldn't. And he said that I had better not be lying to him, the lying sack of shit that I was, or he would come over here and kill me. He told me that he knew the reservations office was in Mammoth and everything. Then he started asking for my employee ID number and the name of my supervisor. I asked him if he wanted to talk to a supervisor and he said that he didn't have to take this kind of shit and hung up. I reported this to my supervisors and they said there was nothing they could do. Apparently reservations agents receive death threats all the time. I cried for the next hour. I can't take this anymore. Oh well, only nine and a half weeks left to go.

I'll never take sickness lightly again. This is the third major flu I've had this winter, and it totally knocked me on my ass for the last three days. Thank goodness two of those days were my weekend. It really sucks when you have a sore throat, a sinus headache, an ear infection, nausea, and muscle weakness all at once. This was not psychosomatic. This place is the perfect environment to get all sorts of diseases. A hundred employees living in cramped quarters, in close contact with not only each other but thousands of hotel guests from all over the world who bring their germs with them. Obviously, if a disease does emerge, it is going to spread like wildfire among the employees here, like this flu that came here a few weeks ago and decimated our workforce. I am merely its latest victim, as is Kate.

I know now that I can't just leave my health to luck and the will of God. I never want to feel as sick as I was on Wednesday ever again. Once I can get to work again, I am going to start exercising in the gym. I'm going to try to watch what I eat (easier said than done in the employee cafeteria, where the diet is based on what is the cheapest and most filling), and I am going to remember to take my Vitamin C regularly. And if I end up working in a similar situation next winter, I am going to get a flu shot. Those things might not stop a determined virus, but they'll certainly help my ability to cope with it better.

As for the depression? I have decided that the best course of action was to withdraw my application for this summer. My last work date is May 10. I think that I can cope until then. When I go home, I'll be able to rest a bit and talk to the psychiatrist at the county clinic and get on a therapy/medication program that would work better than this quack at Mammoth's wild guesses. I would miss my friends and I would be restricted to dial-up internet and I would be unemployed, but I think it's better this way. Once I'm feeling better and have a driver's license I will start applying for other jobs. I hope this works out.

I feel normal again. Yesterday morning, I was as depressed and anxious as ever, and then around 2 pm, it stopped. I was able to get my job done for the rest of the day, and today I feel fine, except for a little stomach upset. I wish I could figure out why. Am I just cycling back that way? Or was I just able to talk myself out of being depressed? At any rate, it's great to be back in the real world. I still need to talk to a psychiatrist though, because I'm not naïve enough to assume this problem is done and over with.

Meanwhile, there is a virus going around on most of the computers in the dorms. It corrupted all the data on Kate's computer (again!) and it completely bricked another resident's Dell laptop. But one of our friends, who knows Windows systems like Jeremy knows Macs, managed to track the cracker down, find out his methods, and provide the park rangers with his IP address and a good deal of data about his location. If I am to believe him, that kid will be spending a very long time in federal prison (because he hacked a federal installation, i.e. a national park.) In the meantime, Kate now has to reinstall Windows, re-convince Microsoft that she's running a legitimate copy, and download all her drivers again as well as all the updates for WoW and LOTRO... I guess I'm flying solo down in Azeroth for the time being... that is, if Xanterra doesn't respond to this attack by completely shutting down our wireless access...

I'm in trouble. I just keep having anxiety attacks every day. Sometimes they happen completely at random. Other times the slightest discomfort will trigger them, like having an angry caller or having someone push me in the lunch line. I'll start crying, and shaking, and sweating, and feeling paranoid. I'll want to run and hide somewhere for the anxiety to pass, but when I'm at work I need to be on those phones 100% of the time and when I'm not at work there's nowhere I can be alone. So then it builds and builds and soon I can't hold back the tears anymore. I called in sick today after lunch because I didn't want people to see me crying. This can't continue.

I don't know what causes it. Is it because the simple, stupid minimum-wage reservations job I have is too stressful for me? A monkey can do my job. Why can't I? Am I just weak-willed or neurotic? Or is it a "chemical imbalance" beyond my control that I have to medicate for the rest of my life? Nobody can tell me. The clinic here in the park has shown nothing but unbridled incompetence with psychiatric matters. They have free county psychiatric clinics in Livingston, but that's 60 miles away and I would have to get a co-worker to drive me, who would then know about my psychiatric condition. (The general consensus around here is that "crazy people" belong in the "nut house.") I could go home and see the county behavioral health clinic there, but I would have no job and no ability to get one unless I got a driver's license and ponied up thousands of dollars I don't have for a car. Plus I would totally burn my bridges with Xanterra in doing so.

Everyone tells me that I have to do what's best for me, but neither option looks good. Either I work at a job that's very literally driving me crazy until I can afford some means of independence, or I go home and be driven crazy by my parents--in the process losing access to my friends, my sister, and the Internet. There's always the nut house--but they'll only hold you for 72 hours unless you have absolutely no grasp on reality, and if you even go into one of those places you're branded a "nutso" for life. The streets of every major city are overflowing with homeless guys who "couldn't hack it in the real world." Oh god, I don't want to be homeless!!!!! Especially not in Montana in the winter. I am very quickly becoming desperate. I need help.

A new idol has replaced making a fool of myself on YouTube. It's called World of Warcraft. Kate and I have been playing a bunch with a number of different characters. I just got Level 10 on my human rogue character and that's opening up a good deal of interesting rogue-specific quests. I also have a gnome warrior who I am quite fond of too. I can see why people think these games are addicting now. I'll know though once I start buying game items with real money, that it will be time to quit...

Meanwhile, I don't think that bipolar disorder is my problem. I never had manic periods before the one I had a few weeks ago. Likewise, the lithium is doing me no good with the depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and random crying fits I am still having now. I also think it is making me nauseous on a daily basis. I wish there was a pill just for anxiety that wasn't addictive. Hell, I don't want a pill, I just want it to be gone. All I know is that if I were going to go into things like Xanax or Seroquel, I would want to be treated by a qualified psychiatrist and not this quack at the park clinic who prescribes first and asks questions later.

Well, I spent the last 36 hours downloading World of Warcraft, and then it tells me to install it. I hit the button, activate my 10-day Free Trial, and sit through the awesome opening video. I'm all hyped up to play, but then it tells me I need to download 700 megabytes more updates. And dang it, I got to go to work in 15 minutes! Grrrr!

Okay, it seems that I have gone demented from my isolation and sickness. I have posted a video... of myself... on YouTube. No, not that kind of video, something much worse. You can check me out in the process of making a fool of myself here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1jtThcYmTc

I figured that I had a webcam just going to waste on my Macbook, and I had to put something on my YouTube profile, so here it is. Maybe next I'll redub some Transformers episodes. Or He-Man episodes. Or swing a lightsaber around. Or something.

I've always been worried about privacy and security on the Internet. I don't open any spam, and I scan all attachments for viruses before opening. I always choose reasonably obscure, hard-to-crack passwords. I never volunteer personal information to websites if I can avoid it. I have my hard drive encrypted and I never run as an administrator. I tunnel my Internet traffic through an anonymizing SSH proxy and use Tor for all non-speed-intensive communications. I'd even send all my email via public-key encryption--if anyone else would use it too.

However, recent events in my life and things I've read on the Internet have led me to discover that my privacy is in danger, not from hackers or the government, but from myself. Apparently, people are being fired from their jobs, bullied by classmates, denied scholarships and worse because of blog posts or seemingly-innocuous photos and videos posted on social networking sites. I realize that I have said many things on this journal and others that might come back to haunt me some day, that would be difficult to explain away to an employer or a client or a potential romantic interest. And my pseudonym "River City Random" is no protection at all; I've left enough clues of myself around the web so that a particularly determined person could connect the dots. And even though I love the ability to get feedback on my thoughts and feelings from my beloved friends, I can't just leave this diary unlocked on my desk for my enemies to discover.

Therefore, I am making all my previous entries private, and any personal news I divulge will be made friends-only. Public posts will probably be short and innocuous, or discuss current events or projects I'm working on, I mean, that River City Random is working on. I know that no one cares around here--but if anyone did, it might mean big trouble for me later on. Thank you all for being my friends. I love you all.

( My PGP/GNUPG public key, for email encryption to rivercityrandom (at) gmail (dot) com )