I hardly slept last nite. Still on Prednisone. Another 5 days to go...

The stuff allows you wander off toward the edge, takes you to your physical limitations, poops you out thoroughly... Then it so kindly denies you of sleep. All you can do is lie down, in bed in the dark... As long as you don't move a muscle, it doesn't seem matter that much that you can't shut off... 'cuz you feel fine, calm and relaxed, in that state for hours on end... the time stolen from your mind like it is when you're on Nyquil. Not many worries churn in your head as they do when you're experiencing conventional insomnia... 'cept the one that you are not getting enough sleep to last you another day.

I had one of those weekends in which I feel as if I did a whole lot, when in actuality I did a whole lot of nothing. Here are the mundanes...

Friday nite. I think I am able to take hot 'n spicy foods better than most of my friends, so I was looking forward to finding out how I stack up against them and the hotwings at a little joint in Santa Clara called Cluck U. I sampled the "Global Thermo-Nuclear" sauce, the hottest on the menu. Sweated a little. No snot out the nose. Didn't cry. But I was feeling uncomfortable even before I bit into the chicken.

Before the fluorescent lights and the wooden chairs, there was the tightness and the redness, the itchiness and the ugliness. And, for some reason, I wasn't vibing well with my friends. I could've tried a little harder to... but under current circumstances, I just didn't feel like it. I felt like resorting to me ol' remedie for me maladies... but this night wasn't heading in the direction of liquor. And I was disappointed in myself for being so weak...

You know how I love the game of poker, especially playing for money. I didn't wanna be a spoilsport, so I stayed out to play for a couple hours. I shared chips with someone; we were small fish amongst the "sharks." It wasn't a horrible time after all. We played a variety of games I'd never played before. Baseball, 7/27, criss-cross, bonecrusher (w/ rollover)...

Why play poker without stakes? I don't think it'd be half as fun without real stakes. You can have some fun finding out how clever/sly you are compared to your friends. But in the end, at the level you will ever play the game, winning is just about how lucky you are. Maybe you like to check that out every now and then... how lucky you are. (I already know how lucky I am.) By nature, you really can't do anything to increase your luck. Skill game... fwhatevers. You can't create better luck for yourself by getting better at the game.

Saturday nite. Had dinner at Thirsty Bear with a motley crew as motley as a crew could get. Some friends were in from out of town. We weren't wasn't gonna last the nite. I had a cosmo 'cuz I couldn't help myself, even tho the meds were already threatening to take me out before 11pm. Post-dinner, twenty minutes on the sidewalk, under pressure to just-do-something since it was a Sat nite, trying to come to a consensus about what we didn't want to do, and where we didn't wanna go... My face hurt from fake-smiling too much. My head was throbbing from the alcohol I shouldn't have had. I, at least, wasn't gonna stick around to witness the momentum of the others fizzle into the anticlimactic end-of-the-nite...

Sunday nite. On the way to a bday get-together, I thought about how all week and all weekend I've been suffering under this stigmatized-Jennie mentality... I've been all too conscious of looking sub-par. It's been in the back, if not forefront of my mind, whatever I was doing, wherever I went, whoever I was with... I should've been trying to have a good time with people l haven't seen in awhile, or taking advantage of my chances to get to know new people. But no... what was I thinking?

I'm happy now. I have faith in who I am. And I'm lucky. Yes, yes, yes. Progress. All good things. Yet, at the end of the day, after all is said and done, no matter how much I have or how well things are going, there still remains the fact that better looking people are treated better.

That's the way the world works. It all boils down to one's looks. There's always that little bit more respect that I could have... that little bit more attention, that little bit more love. That little bit of better treatment. The better looking people are getting it. Why not go for it too?

This game goes on around me, and I'm a part of it, whether or not I choose to or want to play. This game of better treatment. I won't just sit here pissed off that boring, stupid, robotic, unoriginal, untalented, undeserving, beautiful people are being treated better than I am. I'm going to work for it.

I'll have what she's having... and just a little bit more!