What's weird is how a student thinks of a year. When any of my friends say, "last year," I know they meant fall 1998 to spring 1999. Last year to everyone else means anytime before January 2000. I mean, all of us take it for granted. But how many of us have stopped to think of the way others look at time? Just one of those confusing things to ponder on...

And another thing! Whose bright idea was it to start the beginning of the year in the middle of winter?! Why the middle?!?! It makes no sense. The beginning of the year should be the middle of March... the start of spring. Yeah, I know it used to be, but it just seems sort of wacky now. I mean, would YOU rather freeze your buns off in Times Square in the dead of winter than?? :o)

OK, for those of you who haven't noticed my brain is super out of wack tonight. I don't really know what my deal is. I'm not depressed about the end of school this year... not tonight. I'm not stressed about my exams... not tonight. I'm just sort of hanging out with me, myself, and I (a trio that has gotten to know itself quite well this semester), watching the world go by. But tonight during Who Wants to be a Millionaire, I freaked out. See, my boyfriend and I like to log onto abc and play along with their enhanced tv. Kurt guessed on the million dollar question that Rosie declined to answer, and so did I. Only Kurt got the answer right, and I was still stuck with a measly 878,000 (you can amass lots of bonus points in the online version). So here I was, a million points behind. We don't REALLY compete... we help each other with answers and compare scores. But lately Kurt's been scoring very well. Then the fastest finger competition started... "put the following city nicknames in order from west to east." I thought that was SIMPLE! I got the answer in only a few seconds... and realized that my answers were east to west. I flipped out. My competitive streak just took over. I could not BELIEVE I was that dumb!! And being a million points behind Kurt was more than I could handle. I shut all windows and went back to surfing vintage jewelry on eBay.

But throughout this, I kept thinking of an incident between my dad and me at the family reunion in 1997. We'd all gone up to a resort in West Va. (yes, they do exist), and rented two cabins for the 22 of us -- grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, siblings, and cousins -- for my grandparents' 50th anniversary. Daddy and I were playing Kismet (a game very similar to Yahtzee), and I rolled a Kismet (same thing as Yahtzee, five of a kind). Dad got so angry. He started yelling about how he'd never win now, he didn't want to play anymore because there was no chance of his winning, and so on. I tried to explain, it's just a game. Dad stomped off. Yeah, later he realized how silly he'd been and apologized profusely.

So was my behavior like Dad's? I like to think that it wasn't. I don't really mind Kurt's kicking my ass. It's just there was NO CHANCE to even have a fair game past that point. I mean, I wouldn't play baseball against Ken Griffey Jr. (or softball against Franny for that matter! *grin*), or try to compare my code to Joe C.'s, or enter a Miss America contest against a team of supermodels. I like a fair game. I don't mind not being the best -- I never was the best at anything as a child except mental math quizzes. I just like to have a chance.

And that incident depressed me so much. I haven't done much else since then... just laid on my bed and watched tv. I did manage to post up a new 3rd place high score on my pinball game.... small victories and all that....