My parents are forever telling both myself and anyone willing to listen how “difficult” i am to get along with. There is some truth to this. I have not been at home a week and i am already tired of doing dishes for three people, cooking for more than one person, running around to get the groceries to cook and not being able to go to sleep when i want because SOMEONE is taking forever to feed the cats in the kitchen which is right off my bedroom. Have i ever mentioned that the parental homestead is not particularly spacious?

I’ve been going to the gym with my mother this week. She goes religiously on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I have agreed to go with her (in exchange for her paying for my enrollment, which i very much appreciate) on Mondays and Wednesdays. Our work-outs take almost exactly the same amount of time. In fact, she walks into the stretching room where i am doing sit-ups, push-ups and leg raises at my last exercise and times my “plank.” I am not as in shape as i was in January, that’s for sure. However, it does feel good to at least be doing SOMETHING again. Since my bike got stolen AGAIN in June i had been pretty coach-potatoey. I hate that my morning commute is in an SUV now and not on foot. Our gym is a little sketchy. There are only two cross-trainers. There are apparently never more than five women in the place at a time. No one uses the bottles of alcohol to sanitize a machine after using it (except for me, of course, who developed good hygiene habits through the frequenting of what is now four other gym facilities).

So, i decided to give my mother her birthday present a month early. Yesterday she received all ten Star Trek movies in a boxed set and we are going to watch one a week for the next two and a half months. This is the gift that just keeps on giving - and my mother is quite the trekkie. Watching the first movie last night was, uh, painful? Over five minutes of footage just of the “new and improved” Enterprise. An excruciatingly obvious plot. i missed Jean-Luc. I haven’t seen the last three Star Trek movies and am looking forward to them, but i think i am going to pay for this…

Watching the episode “Data’s Day” of Star Trek: The Next Generation, i came to a realization about my problems socializing with others. In this episode, Data documents his attempts at understanding human emotions in response to a researcher’s query.

Data has serious problems interpreting how people will react to behaviour… he cannot master irony. This led me to the realization that he would have the same sort of problem determining the confidentiality of a person’s conversation. As ultimate disclosure girl, i too have this problem. Maybe i am part android. LOL.

Another five pages of draft is due tomorrow. All i want to do is drink sangria and smoke cigarettes while chatting on a terrace. LOL.