I forget what my friends look like
And they forget why they like me
But that's old hat
and I'm so happy

I feel marginally compelled to write about the past week, as I've been in Logan, Utah (about an hour north of Salt Lake City) for the annual SmallSat conference as part of being on my school's cubesat team (aka: Polysat).  If I had to sum it all up in one word: intense.  I learned a lot, though, and it was definitely a good experience.  It gave me a great appreciation for how good my school really is, and where we stand in the bigger scheme of things.  I'll spare you the boring satellite background talk (or shove it off to another entry).  Most of the gory details about the conference are "so and so said this, and this was really cool, blah blah blah".  I can't even talk about the really cool stuff.  :(

In any event, I was there from Friday to Thursday.  The drive up was reasonably uneventful; just 16 hours in a large van.  Once we got there, we pretty much were on our feet from 8 AM to 6 PM, then partied most nights.  I spent wednesday night wrapped around a toilet due to some tequila that hit me far harder than I expected.  Oops.  This left me with a lovely hangover for the drive back, but we made it okay.  I thankfully weaseled out of driving on the way back.  We rolled back into SLO at about 5:30 AM; I ended up sleeping from ~6:30 AM to noon, then going back to the lab. 

Being around people all day, every day was a change for me.  I really don't realize how utterly inept I am at social situations until I'm thrown into them headfirst and have to flounder around like a dumbass.  It was...eh.  Not terrible, because I just stopped caring after a while, but it wasn't great.  I really don't know how to fix something like this, though.  I also pissed off half of my coworkers at some point during the week, but I think that was just part of being thrown together in close proximity.  Have I mentioned that I really don't like that?

THE DOG IN THE HOUSE BEHIND ME NEEDS TO SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE I GO DESTROY IT.

Other than that...I'm...really lonely.  The 12th was my birthday, but I pretty conciously didn't tell anyone about it for whatever reason.  I got one call which I wasn't expecting, and my mom, and that was it.  And Gadani said happy birthday too. [edit: one more just now.  this feels stupid now, but i'm leaving it for artistic integrity!  YAR!] Heh.  On one hand, I really don't like birthday celebrations, and find them rather obnoxious...plus, I am way too lazy to put anything together.  On the other hand...it's kinda depressing.  But oh well.  I can't help but feel like I should try and fix this sometime, but it's a lot easier to just throw myself at work or a game and ignore it.  Fixing it would require...I don't even know.  I can't even tell you what the problem really is, just that I'm a miserable person when it comes down to it.

I guess the thing about this is, it's not dragging me down all that much.  I'm a functioning member of society, but goddamn, when I get downtime, I just...have trouble figuring out what to do with myself.  That's when I just drive myself nuts thinking and can't stand stuff.  Put a problem in front of me and it all just fades away. 

Whatever.  Fuck it.  2 decades of failing down, who knows how many to go.