Nando Parrado

Things went from bad to worse. I'm not gonna go into the details but I was destroying myself through addiction and lack of discipline. I went out one Monday night to the pool hall and then had everyone back to my house after closing. We were up until dawn drinking and I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. People were up on the roof again. Some guy was painting a picture on the floor. I slept all day and woke up sick. I think it's starting to get really dangerous. I had to give it up. My friends are alcoholics and drug users. I had to stop taking their calls. I had to play the card of not going out anymore. I had to check myself into my own self-imposed rehab at my house. I didn't go out this weekend. Tonight will be the 2nd week in a row I won't go to pool league. I haven't had a cigarette in over a week now. Nicotine gum is key.

I finished the book about Newton and now it's on to Einstein who shows how everything relates to everything else. I don't know if I as a single man can possibly begin to comprehend the depth and complexity of knowledge already discovered, but I can go farther down the road... I should probably stick to Starport, and I have been working hard on it. In the back of my mind, I know that the programming work on it represents a very pure understanding of everything and the work has extremely broad application. Not to mention the fact that some day soon computers will make all the discoveries.

I'm sure my friends will understand that i need to take a month or two to get back in touch with the holy life, the life I know in my mind is right for me and through which I will find the real happiness.

The Hokies lost. They played a bad game. Maybe the oddsmakers do know better than me, or maybe I just got unlucky. In any event, in these tough times, I should stick to what has consistently made me money which is computer programming. Capital is scarce now and I probably shouldn't be risking it on coin-toss investments. When this economy comes back I need to be poised to take full advantage of it.

Things have been bad. I ran up to the bank tonight to deposit a midnight check from Starport funds to my personal account. The banks opens for a bit on Saturday and I had to get the money in there before things like my mortgage payment were automatically deducted. I had to funnel some money into the crashed stock market to support my margin debt. I've cut it in half. Hopefully I can ride the rest of it through the eminent recovery. The stock market will double in dollar value in the next two years without question.

I also used my credit card to buy into various sports betting sites. There is a sure thing happening tomorrow. I have a few hundred dollars on it. It's a college football game, the Virgina Tech Hokies vs. Boston College. The BC Eagles are favored by the oddsmakers by 3 points for some inexplicable reason. I took the Hokies for huge money.

I haven't smoked in two days but only because of the relentless chewing of HEB-brand nicotine-substitute gum. If you can stick to that and not smoke eventually you get over it but you have to avoid friends who smoke and places where smoking is rampant particularly bars. I haven't been to the gym or ran in two months. I lifted my 15lb dumb bells a little yesterday and strained my neck.

I named my new kitten Superkitty. Rebecca first noticed the cat's markings make him look exactly like he's wearing a cape and a mask. He is a very sweet cat. I think he will one day be president of the United States.

things are awful. like ving rames says in pulp fiction, "i'm pretty fuckin far from ok." I gave Cari another chance but then we had to break up again. the stock market has crashed. i lost thousands of dollars. i bought the previous dips of the market on margin with the idea it would recover but now i'm being forced to sell out of the wrongness of that bet. i've been chewing nicotine gum to avoid smoking but having relapses every few days and smoking into the night. How important is it to be healthy? It was part of my philosophy of a good life, but maybe i wasn't meant to run. Maybe i was meant to program computers, to solve problems. We've been working pretty hard on Starport and making some good improvements but the competition gets tougher every day. We want to make it a better and more popular game community so we don't have to go work for someone else.

Well i've failed so far to turn around my life. I've been drinking and smoking more than ever. I tried the gum for a week or so with ok results but then i went back to smoking after all the partying last weekend for Cari's birthday. The only real important thing is that i improve my game service so that i can continue to live out my dreams. I'll probably go out tomorrow anyway and ruin my monday. I'm trying to teach myself to sing with this eighties songs karaoke game on the ps2. The Blondie one goes:

Once I had a love
And it was a gas
Soon turned out
Had a heart of glass
Seemed like the real thing
only to find
Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind
Once I had a love
and it was divine
Soon found out
I was losing my mind
It seemed like the real thing
but I was so blind
Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind

met up with amy at a bar. i had forgotten it was christopher's birthday celebration and he was having it at the pool hall. amy and i had a drink or two then we went to join the party at "the grand." she's really cute and all those rabid dogs up there were after her! after closing i had everyone over to my house where i drank more than my share and went NUTS. Steve and Jennifer managed to get up on my roof somehow and i kept trying stupid ways to get up there and falling on my ass. I was relentlessly flirting with every girl in attendance. One of these days i'm going to wake up in jail if i'm not careful. I feel bad for the neighbors. Amy went home after the pool hall. If she had come either i would've been a lot more sane, or, she would've witnessed crazy drunken out-of-control aaron.

last night i danced my ass off. Amy was going to come but it's such a late night thing, midnight to two, she decided to stay in bed. I think she wakes up at like 5am and goes rowing with her rowing team. I'm munching on some nicotine gum. You chew it periodically all day and that keeps the cravings fightable. I feel the energy and vitality of being clean of smoking coming on again. Cari gave me two rules for the night: no cigarettes and no brandon's house after-party. i was happy to call her and let her know i succeeded.

This morning I woke up from a dream that i was playing Starport. There were things in the dream that aren't in the game. I woke up and wrote a full page of potential improvements. I got a good amount of work done this week, most of it on an asteroid belt improvement designed to act as an obstacle to the movement of space-ships that will allow for deeper tactics in space battles.

I finished the Tesla biography and moved on to one about Newton. I'm going all the way back to the roots and fundamentals before i come all the way up through the massive leaps of the last two centuries in my quest to reach a full understanding of scientific knowledge as it is today. Newton was able to give an exact mathematical description to gravity using ideas like mass and distance, but to this day we still don't understand how this force can exist between such far apart objects without an observable form of mediation to convey the force.

Just like Tesla, Newton's life was devoid of romantic relationships and devoid of sex. I suppose it frees up your mind some for considering difficult problems, but I could never be that way. I've always had a strong attraction to the opposite sex, even when i was a tiny child. Now i just want a girl that i can have a healthy relationship with and channel all my emotional energy towards. I'm sick of being held back by the worry of a broken heart, and sick of juggling people and being promiscuous. Maybe I'm just starved for something meaningful at this point, since after all, i've lived a life so cautious about commitment that I've never had a continuous relationship for longer than a year.

I haven't had a cigarette since Wednesday morning. I had pegged the beginning of September as the time to quit for real for the second time in my life (the first was Thanksgiving 2004). Can i make it through the weekend and the tuesday after that? A week would be something. I bought some gum to help. I plan to return to the gym next week, and the track the following week. I can be more effective when physically fit.

Tesla's first great invention, the alternating-current motor, came to him while walking in the park with a friend, after months of deliberation. The vision suddenly hit him, and he stopped and his tracks with a look in his eyes and said to his friend simply and with utter confidence, "watch me reverse it." No one really knows what he meant, not even his friend on the walk, but it was probably something to do with the crux of the problem. Still, i like the phrase and I'll co-opt it now and apply it to my life and the downward spiral I've been in since March. Watch me reverse it.

I'm supposed to see this really cute girl named amy tonight. She doesn't smoke.

I went to the pool hall tonight even though its playoffs night and we didn't make the playoffs. We finished in the top half of the league though and christopher won the top gun award going 10 for 10 on the season.

I got really drunk up there and beat the crap out of Mark on the pool table. He is getting a lot better though. Then i came home after striking out with every single one of my booty-texts.

I then sent keith an email, really bad idea. Then i went out for a new pack of smokes. On the way home "Black" by Pearl Jam came on as i was pulling in and i opened the window and smoked and cranked it up for the neighbors to hear. Doo-doo-doot-doot-da-da-da. yeah.

its dawn on a tuesday morning. i've been reading all night about tesla and beginning to understand electricity at a new level. with the internet at my disposal my self-teaching can proceed at lightning pace.

i ruined a whole monday of work that should have been spent on Starport sleeping off my sunday night hangover. i was looking forward to hitting the club since diana and i just called it quits but it wasn't one of my better sunday nights in recent memory. After the club i kept drinking at an after party and i hit on some girls there who weren't very interested and to be frank i probably wouldn't be too interested in them either when sober. so why did i waste a whole night on that? good question.

now my sleep schedule is blown but that's nothing new to me. so much of my life has been spent alone at night, pursuing ideas that interest me. that's part of the beauty i find in being self-employed and i've managed that comfort through the starport project for the better part of four years. as long as i can keep it going, i can keep working at satisfying my desire to better understand the universe.

I got a new kitten on Sunday. Now we have a total of four cats here. My friend Cailin was in a car accident and had to return to San Antonio for a few months to rehab a broken leg. Her cat's litter of five was suddenly dumped on her roommates and i finally agreed to take the one i was interested in. He's a really friendly male with a white belly and a striped back.

I've mentioned Cailin before but she and I are just friends now. I've been seeing a girl called Diana. She's great.

I had to let Nathan go today. It was really depressing, but it will help free up resources and make Starport more profitable. I'll handle all the support issues again myself.

I had a birthday party and it was fun, although many of my friends were on vacation. My dad got me a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble (much better than when he buys books i'm not at all interested in). Diana and I picked up some great books on Saturday, but I'm still re-reading Harry Potter 2. I got a book about Tesla. I think he lived in Buffalo, the same city my mom is from originally.

Still not working out or running, and smoking it up, though i'm trying not to buy whole packs, especially during the weekdays, and i feel like my resolve could be building for the discipline necessary to take charge of my life again.

kitten pictures!: http://www.flickr.com/photos/toonces2/

I finally managed to flip my sleep schedule and woke up at 6 am yesterday. I felt strong. I went to the gym and did the most half-assed workout ever but i did go. I ran around the neighborhood but walked a lot. I stayed home from pool league and made it the whole day without a cigarette. Maybe I can go another day. I got a lot done on Starport. I feel like I could be on the cusp of a return to a better life. The stock market went up big today, gained 2 or 3 percent i think. It was at two-year lows. Is my life is mirroring the U.S. economy?

Last night I got in a car accident with me behind the wheel for the first time in about 10 years. I was coming downhill in rainy conditions and someone ahead of me slammed on their brakes. I followed suit but my brakes didn't work and i slid sadly and deliberately into the truck in front of me. My tires may not be at optimal pressure, and i should have tried letting up on the brakes and pumping them again, but instead i just slid there thinking "damn." It wasn't a hard hit, but my front bumper is now cracked and the hood isn't sitting quite right. Life sucks.

I finally got some work done today but at the cost of many cigarettes to blunt the pain of keith. Sometimes my to-do list seems so long I wonder if starport will ever be finished. It really helps to shut myself off from goofing off with friends so much. I just want it to be a bit more popular.

Shall we have a Nikola Tesla quote? Yes let's have a Nikola Tesla quote: "From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering but, to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves."

Last night I went downtown and got drunk at some bars with eleanor and aaron. It was everything i hoped it would be including a whole pack of cigarettes, a lot of which were given away, and casual sex with a friend.

i still find myself thinking about keith. i've said a million things to her in my mind. I've made all sorts of great appeals, none of which will ever be heard because nothing can be said to her anymore. I guess I used up whatever rope she was giving me back in quarter one when we were fucking. now every time i reach out to her she is rude and offended by me contacting her. yep. the only thing left to do is give up and go on. she said i get too serious on her. well keith, we're almost 31 now and still single. i thought girls liked serious?

when evening comes around it seems the only thing to do to have a cigarette. and so i buy a whole pack and have one, and it doesn't even make me feel that great. Within 15 minutes i want another one. Then i have a drink and I need another cig and another and another and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!! I must overcome this trick of chemicals. Get this: writing about quitting makes me want one. AAAHHH!!!

i went down to the greenbelt today and barton creek was bone dry. sad days in austin. i hiked around and got some sun. most exercise i've had in weeks.

Well, things have been hectic lately and i've been neglecting this journal. i haven't done much of anything to be proud of, just been sulking around and smoking a lot. It's really addicted me again and i'll need the gum again when i quit. I haven't been exercising. I'm still obsessing over someone who clearly doesn't like me.

I did meet someone new again though, who is a stone cold fox!

Here's a copy of the email i just sent to Tim, who's in Hawaii:
Hey dude. Everything's cool here. Went to the igda picnic with Jon today catered by the salt lick. Saw all the usual convention ppl such as VIRTUAL HORSE RANCH WOMAN who i always smile at and she never smiles back. Seeing those people makes me wanna hunker down and get some extended dev time in. The cats are good but i think their begging is turning them fat on our generosity. I may have to starve them down.

Aloha, or hang ten, or whatever!

I wasn't in great condition at noon on Thursday and I opted not to enter the 1,500 event. I did play in a $350 satellite tournament. I got to play some pretty serious poker in the big room at the rio and i placed 70th out of 250 entrants which was not high enough to be "in the money." I feel comfortable with my game and maybe I'll come back next year.

It was fun hanging out with Jeff and Brian. We managed not to fight much which is better than the three of us have done in the past. I drank a lot and smoked constantly. All in all it didn't cost me much money thanks to the Boston Celtics.

Managed a run for the first time in probably a week but all this smoking and sitting on my ass playing poker is making me weak. I think I'm developing a gut. I'm about to head up to pool league and I even have my own pack sitting here, a happy little pack of american spirit death addiction sickness sticks.

I picked up Gus Hansen's book on poker "Every Hand Revealed" and it's inspired me to play in the world series event if i can register. Gus takes opponents out of their comfort zone with his aggressive style, which is critical against top players. I too am an aggressive player and have often worried that I was mistaken to play that way. But seeing how Gus plays combined with the good results I've had, I think I have affirmed and even improved my understanding of how to play this style. I leave tomorrow for Vegas.

Forced out of bed by the world around 1pm today which seems late but doesn't feel so good when you go to bed at 8am. I was up playing online poker and reading wikipedia and watching PBS. At least i didn't go out to the club. It's about time i took a Sunday night off. I've been bad this week with abusing my body. Plenty of drinking and now i'm to the point where when drinking the resistance to cigarettes is negligible.

I almost got banned from the pool hall last tuesday. After getting trounced 4 games to 0 by Toby who's a five skill level, same as me, I hung around drinking and supporting my team. I texted Cailin to come up and join me. She's a waitress there but she doesn't work tuesdays. So she came up as a customer to play some pool and hang out with me. Of course she's friends with every single guy in the entire joint and that's a lot of guys. She bought me a shot or two and things get a little fuzzy after that. It was only the second time I've hung out with her and I began acting really cocky, at one point standing on a stool, another time bragging that my mom was a high-powered attorney. I'm laughing at myself while writing this. I try so hard to suppress the douchebag behavior rampantly evident in my father and brother but it's there in me too and when it comes out it's even worse than them.

But what almost got me banned was nearly coming to blows with Casey, the manager and part-owner of the place, when me and Cailin were leaving. Casey is pro-active in caring about his employees and customers. This is probably a good thing for a bar owner, but I took it as overbearing when he fussed over giving Cailin back her keys that he had confiscated. I said I could give her a ride home so let's go. I guess he persisted in some way and that would've annoyed me. Plus there was this other issue where Cailin was a bit upset about the first time she and I hung out there and she ordered shots for us thinking that she'd get an employee discount but did not and was hit with a seventy dollar tab. So I said some shit like "if you wanna be her daddy why don't you give her a discount on her 70 dollar tab" and he's like "don't come back here." I expressed my willingness to settle things physically (cockiness, women love that shit you know) but luckily we backed down. My enthusiasm may have been laughable because while I am taller than Casey, he's stocky as hell and works in bars whereas I'm a skinny computer-jockey who's managed to build a little bit of tone after 2 years in the gym. I then told him i was sorry and i was happy about his new management of the pool hall which has definitely been an improvement and we shook hands. I took Cailin home. It's a good thing Christopher is good friends with Casey or he might really have banned me. I wouldn't blame him after the way I acted that night.

I'm leaving for my first vacation of the year on Wednesday. Vegas, Caesar's Palace, the five-star resort! I went to the bank today and withdrew a bunch of cash. Jeff is already registered for $1,500 buy-in World Series of Poker event (there's a whole bunch of WSOP events at the Rio in June leading up to the $10,000 entry main event in the first week of July). There's a 1,500 event i'll try too, unless the line is too long or i chicken out. Lord knows it's probably a better financial decision than buying Countrywide stock last year at 15 dollars a share. We'll also be seeing my old friend Brian who's been a professional poker player for the past 4 years and is living out there now.

The summer is here. Why can't it be a healthy one? All my teacher girlfriends are free. Which one will get to go to Antigua or some other island with me? Another summer without keith. How did I become so entangled in feelings for the wrong girl. Just because she's sweet and smart, just because I could see a future together, was no guarantee she'd return me to her heart. It was a hope and a firm belief, that turned into just another lost gamble.

Sunday at the dance club was magical. I wasn't even sure why i was going there but I got introduced to this girl who was so pretty i thought she might be out of my league. Instead, she flipped out over my looks. We started dancing and by the end of night we were dancing close, hip to hip, eyes locked. It was so hot and crowded on the dance floor that my new motorola razor cell phone went loopy again from the moisture of my sweat soaking through my pocket. She started blowing on me to cool me off. I returned the favor. They played Major Tom by Peter Schilling and it goes "Earth below us, drifting, falling, floating weightless..." Near the end of the song the vocals explode in this great loud climactic howl of "AAAAHHHHHHH AAHH AAHH AAAAHHHHHHH AH" and I kissed her passionatley at the instant that note is hit and she kissed back, tongues deep in each other's mouths. It was amazing.

Of course at one point i screwed up and kissed her after having a cigarette. She doesn't smoke and she tasted it on me. I felt stupid. I'm trying to get my legs under me again and really become a non-smoker again but it's difficult to keep it up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when drunk or sober, around smoking or non-smoking friends.

I booked a trip to Vegas with my old friend Jeff who's good at cards like me. We'll be leaving June 4th and playing some serious poker out there.

Now I'm off to pool league, the summer session is already under way. We won our first round last week.

Last night was the last week of the season at pool league. We had a small chance of finishing 3rd in the standings and making the playoffs but after Heather and I lost the first two matches of the night for our team, we threw in the towel to the friendly team from the deep eddie cabaret who were also in the hunt for the playoffs.

When not out drinking i've been staying up late hiding out in my room, reading, working on Starport, following stocks and basketball, and playing high stakes poker online.

I haven't been running or to the gym in 2 weeks. Cigarettes last night, cigarettes over the weekend. It's going to take an effort to go a week without one. Writing about it is making me want one.

I don't know if I'll run the race on Saturday. I'm more excited about my friend and her roommates' cinco de mayo party that night. But i would definitely choose the healthier, non-smoking me, if it were so easy and detached a decision. I onced glimpsed my future back when i was motivated and riding high on healthiness, and it seemed so certain that i would win in life just by following the simple discipline that makes me a little stronger every day. When it seems so easy, you start thinking you can stray.