In the last two weeks I've brought a new 1TB Seagate 7200.12 HDD (my current one is failing so I need to transfer data somewhere before I get a refund or a new one) and a brand new microwave oven. The microwave oven by Sharp was a real bargain - its lowest Moscow price is currently over two hundred dollars and I bought it for $125. I tried to boil some water in it as soon as I unpacked it and washed it using hot water and soap (it's made of stainless still, so everything's just fine). However instead of boiling the water exploded two times leaving the internals of the MVO all wet and hot. I thought my MVO is broken and started googling. Luckily I found out that this problem is due to MVO design. One should never boil a purified water in a glass - there are (almost) no centers of simmering so the water can heat up to very high temperatures. Then the water may just blow up if such a center materializes.

Yesterday in one Russian social network I found my old classmate named EF. While I was browsing her profile I quickly browsed to some of the people who left messages on her public wall. Of those people was a girl and that girl had a photo album with photos of my first school graduates having party together. That party held place last year and it was devoted to the tenth anniversary of graduating. I wasn't there and no one called me to come there (at least I don't remember anyone calling me). Also if my memory serves me well there were only fifteen people on photos so half of my school class was missing.

Probably subconsciously I felt somewhat upset because last night I dreamt about participating in this party and talking closely to IO (there were three very beautiful girls in my first class EF, IO and AP). I cuddled IO closely and enjoyed that moment a lot. And her face was the same face as I saw 18 years ago. Of course, she has changed a lot and I saw her new photos in the same social network. Nowadays she's nowhere near beautiful as she used to be. OF also changed a lot, but on some photos she's still beautiful. BTW, OF married last year. She now lives in Moscow or in St. Petersburg ... I'm not sure.

K. and I have some longstanding issues with our healths and she badly needs to go to a hospital but this week her parents hasn't let her come. She will probably come next week but that's not very exciting. I will go to a doctor on Monday.

All this week I've been actively (literally) jerking off and I didn't even find time to go to a bank and move my salary savings to a deposit. My money has been laying intact in my salary account for last year and a half and I've already lost up to 40% of it due to inflation and due to a fact that there's a zero interest rate for it. Damn! That means I've been working half a year for nothing.

On this Friday morning on my way to work a SUV flung mad at me. I turned dirty from my top to my bottom, alas, I didn't even try to memorize this SUV number so that I could later find its driver and tell him what bastard he is. Anyway I came back home and washed my blazer and trousers. Then I went to my work again, I was late for an hour.

Later that evening I finally fell ill as probably in the middle of the same day I also ate an ice-cream. How stupid was I considering that for the whole day I couldn't warm and my boots were wet and cold (they are not water proof in a place where the leather adjoins the sole). They are produced by some Polish (Chinese?) motherfuckers who call themselves Ergo & Corvin (CORVIN Fabryka Obuwia S.c. Marek Kruk, Zofia Kruk ul. Banacha, 117, 26-600 Radom, tel.: 048 385 73 40). If I lived in Europe/USA I could probably sue them for this shit but here in Russia I've got zero chances.

Yesterday even with my heightened temperature I went to our summer garden. On my way there Vladimir called me and asked where I was going. During our conversation he almost insisted coming to me to have a shashlik party. I couldn't say no, so two hours later his company (his wife and four other people who I hadn't seen before) arrived on his car. We lazily spent time and around 7.30 p.m. they departed. I left my parents an hour later. Mother insisted that I took some of bliny she cooked in the meantime, some strawberries and a jar of strawberry jam.

Today is Sunday and I still feel like shit.

The fact that I lost my USB stick depresses me. I don't care about its cost but I care about its contents - there's some information I don't wanna everyone to ever see. My next flash drive will be partitioned into two partitions, where one of them will be encrypted using a high-grade encryption.

On April 7 I came to my university with an idea of finally finishing eleven years business of getting my higher education. The first person I asked if I could reinstate as a student was a secretary of my university department. He answer was discouraging - she said I was too late and suggested coming next year.

I left the department room and called K. saying that I hadn't the ghost of a chance. She was upset too. Suddenly I saw our dean going out to the corridor and entering a room next to my department. After some time he left it and headed back to his room. On his way back I approached him and asked if I could renew my contract and finish my studies. He said it was indeed possible and told me to immediately pay a contract and do whatever it was needed. But before I could renew my contract he asked to get unqualified approval from TIK - she is a head of my sub-department. Next day I met TIK and we had rather long conversation about me and my wishes. I promised again (like a year before) this time I wouldn't fail and she agreed. Also I promised that I would pass all educational arrears before starting writing a graduation work.

Two days later I finally collected all required signatures and autographs and payed the contract. So, on April 9 I became a student again. Since the last time I studied I still had five educational debt - I had to pass an examination and a term paper in the Russian language linguistics and two examinations and one pass-fail exam in journalism.

The professor of the Russian language linguistics is the same woman whose subject was a reason of my failure six years ago. It was her subject term paper that I didn't wrote and that subsequently caused my expulsion from the university. This time it wasn't any better. She asked to write a term paper for which I only could write a theoretical part. I lost my courage again. Then K. told me she had a girl who was good at humanitarian sciences. With her invaluable help (valuable indeed but not something I care at all) I got mark four ("B" as for the US educational system). For the examination the professor put me satisfactory mark (the lowest positive mark) and that was it.

The professor of journalism was a tougher guy. At first he told me to write a news piece, an interview and a report. I made them all. Then he said the news was bad, the interview wasn't good enough and the report wasn't what he really liked. Besides it turned out he meant that I did any of these works, not all of them together. So, we decided I would write three more news pieces. That was a tough task. Everything I sent was harshly criticized (and rightly so) - but I hadn't done that ever before. In the end (around May 7) my sub-department head (TIK) probably called him and told him to have mercy. Next day he gave me excellent mark for everything.

Now that I had no debts I approached TIK again and we decided on my graduation work title. She also appointed a research supervisor to look after me. The research supervisor and I developed a structure of the work and my work turned into full swing. Everything was almost fine except my work presentation which happened on June 24.

I hadn't rehearsed my speech even once so I when my appearance time was over (8 minutes) I only finished half of my speech. Of course a head of a state examination commission asked me to conclude. I finished quickly and very roughly. Then the commission members asked me a few question and I didn't answered on one them properly. They asked if my work included the evaluation of the results I got and I said that no, it would be a topic of the future works. However, in fact, I had that evaluation. No matter what I even managed to joke once making everyone lough for the first time during the whole process (there were nine orators before me). Then everyone except members of the commission left the room.

After a short counsel everyone get back to the room and the commission read out the results. All females got an excellent mark ("A") and two males (one of them was I) got a good mark ("B"). My research supervisor looked very disappointed with my bad answer, bad speech and not excellent mark. Later that day I bought a box of sweetmeats (Rafaello) for her and delivered them to my chair. Unfortunately she was gone by that moment. A few days later I've learned that she refused to take them citing that such things should be done vis-a-vis.

At the end of a ceremony of presenting certificates of degree I met my research supervisor, asked her pardon and she agreed to take my present (which still resided at the chair at another location).

This is how everything ended.

Well, yesterday/today I've finally got my higher education.

On June 30 I lost my 16GB flash stick. It was last seen around 19:34 when K. came to my work so that I printed some of her documents. Then we went back to my home. Then I don't remember what happened. Then I delivered some of K. bags to her dormitory. Then I changed my mind and discovered I had no flash drive. It was around 21:00.

So, in this interval I lost it. It is not at home. It is not at work. People at work vow they didn't see it. I don't remember if I took it to my home. FUCK FUCK FUCK Where is it???

Yesterday it was around 30 degrees Celsius and blossoming of poplars together with a slight wind makes your being at the city intolerable. Even though I don't believe in superstitious shit at heart I asked the Gods to pour the rain on this goddamn city. Believe it or not, last night it was a thunderstorm and today there is almost no fuzz in the air. Besides day temperature fell to 25 - quite comfortable value for me.

One girl who I convinced a lot to move out of the country, on Monday went to the US for three months - using Work and Travel program. Alas, with my ... current little business I cannot let myself go.

Last week I lost four green George Washingtons for nothing. In a usual (mobile phone) TV quiz which I never took part in a host announced a quiz which I solved in a matter of five seconds. For the first and the last time in my life I decided to call them from my cell phone and win a prize. How stupid I was. Every minute of conversation with that fuckers costs a buck, and everyone who calls them reaches their fucking robotic answering machine which feeds you with promises that you are about to hit the air. Fuck not! No one was allowed in the air, and considering 5000 idiots like me who spent 5 minutes on the phone, those scammers earned $25 thousands during ten minutes of air time.

The prize of that quiz was a mere sum of $300. Never ever call those fuckers, they will cheat you.

Today I have been fired. Or not. I'm not sure yet. Last week I was missing at work for two subsequent days and today I was faced a document jointly signed by three senior managers. In two words that decree says: due to a worker being absent at work without any reasons he ought to be immediately discharged since he/she violates the labour code (what a fucking joke). I was sorry till 1 a.m. and now at 3 a.m. I'm almost happy since if that decision is enacted I'm free to leave this fucking city for eternity.

I cannot say why I was missing past Thursday and Friday. There certainly was a reason was that. And only K. knows why I was missing. All other people should just have a rest for a while. My official explanation says that I was food poisoned (my legend) and spent two days at home (of course, not). Also I couldn't call back and announce my sickness since I ran out of money (that's indeed true - I only refilled my cell phone account by Friday evening).

Life's good. I just have to sleep!!!

There's virtually no competition between grocery stores in my city, yet in each and every one there is a never ending special offer of some items/food stuffs being sold at a great discount. And these offers never apply to more than ten different items. The funny thing is that their profit margin sometimes reaches a hundred percents, i.e. they sell some food stuffs at a price two times higher than they purchase it.

I've been using Linux for the past ten years. Alas, recently I've grown tired of it. Old problems are not being solved, proprietary software vendors still shun Linux, no games, poor manageability, etc. For three last weeks I've been deliberating on this topic and finally came up with a list of problems which doesn't let Linux become a mainstream OS. I've posted this list to slash dot anonymously. I couldn't quite believe my ears when one of my Linux mates told me that this news has been published. For a few hours this list earned fifty thousands page views. That could mean a lot of advertising money (smile). Alas, the page lacks anything but a counter.

At least a hundred thousands people have learned about my existence via my Linux reviling. However I should note that this list is what I really think of Linux. And most people seem to agree with me, even though there are hundreds who try to prove (in vain) that everything's alright or better than I try to portray/present.

Maybe that's my karma but up to ten girls want to become acquainted with daily on ICQ and Skype networks. Almost each of them start their conversation this way: "- Hi. - My random response. - How are you?".

Now I want to answer all of them at once.

"Now, girl, please, read it till the end.

Please, never ask strangers how they are. It's completely impolite, stupid and absolutely doesn't fit the first contact. You don't give a heck how I am. You won't even stir a foot if you know that I have problems. You won't be sincerely glad if you know that I feel fine and I'm really happy. So, please, avoid asking such questions.

It's deceitful and arrogant. If you want to become acquainted - say so - "Hi. My name is Bla-bla. I wanna become acquainted with you." If you have nothing to do, go read smart books. Please, stop wasting the time of hundreds of guys, who don't need you at all because due to your laziness or due to a hundred other reasons you don't wanna meet guys of your native city and spend days and nights in ICQ/Skype/etc."

I don't even know how to begin.

There are things I don't want to announce since making that in advance can spoil my little business - the whole world will know that, everyone will project something and in the end ... No, I just say no, you will know about that very soon.

However I'd be glad to announce less important events that took place recently. Around two weeks ago I was going home around 4 a.m. The first strange thing happened at my work - in the elevator I came across a 50 rubles banknote (roughly a dollar and a half). That hadn't happened to me for years.

Then I came up to my apartment house. I entered my porch and called the elevator. When it arrived ... the button of my storey was already pushed. I was scared to death (mind the time) and decided to go up on feet. I hunted down the whole apartment trying to find someone, restlessly switched on the lights in every room - but naturally no one was to be found.

Two days ago K. and me went to a new skating rink built by one of our oil companies. The building was modern, tidy and good looking, the skating rink was several times better than the one we visited four months ago - the ice was very slippery and borrowed skates were new and almost comfortable. Of course, if I really want to enjoy skating I'd have to buy a pair of new good ones fitting my feet.

That's all for today.

A month ago I decided I didn't want to waste $35 per month on the Internet any longer so I at the end of the month I just went to my ISP and terminated a contract. Now, a month later I'm still without the Internet but it doesn't bother me a lot. I have the Internet for free at work and that's pretty much enough. The thing which is really important in regards to this diary is that I stopped adding new entries due to this Internet cut. However there's a solution - I'll just have to put entries to a file on my HDD and later repost them here.

Approximately from March 11th till March 14th I had a kind of angina which ended pretty quickly because I started taking antibiotics (which I hate - I usually take no medicine at all, except vitamins but it happens quite rarely). Angina had a form of pharyngitis and the latter one has a long history. A few years ago three one my wisdom teeth started growing. Two of them on the right side of the dental plate has already caused troubles, but the right upper tooth started behaving abnormally a month ago. It grew so much so that every time when I chewed it slit my gum. Then one morning an inflammation began, I had a temperature around 37.3 and in the evening of the same day I went to a surgical dentist and during a short consultation he convinced me to get rid of that nasty tooth. It was a great relief. Of course, I read a lot of different forums and online consultation services in order to understand if tooth removal would be detrimental to my health and future. People's opinions varied, but most doctors insisted that tooth removal was the only way to resolve possible dare consequences. Besides, my wisdom tooth didn't have an antagonist so it could grow endlessly and the end could be devastating. What didn't turn good were my lymph nodes. Even after tooth removal they remained enlarged and remained that way afterwards.

Then angina set in. A doctor diagnosed a pharyngitis which is itself a chronic lymph nodes inflammation. As I've already said I took some antibiotics. Temperature was a thing of a past but lymph nodes were still enlarged. The doctor told me to underwent a generic blood test. I did it only yesterday ... after I became ill for the second time for this spring. That happened on last Saturday when I stayed at work till Saturday morning. I left the work at 7 a.m. It happened so probably because of my quarrel with K. or probably because I'm a sicko. I'm not sure. For the beginning of this year I've already skipped around seven full nights. It looks like I do everything to kill myself. Tomorrow I will go to a doctor again, let's hope my blood test is already ready - I wanna know my tonsils are still abnormal.

Three weeks ago my mom and dad went to a sea. Probably. Cause I still don't know where exactly they were. All I know is that they spent there roughly eight days. When they went back my brother wasn't brisk enough to meet them at the train, so they unloaded their heavy bags themselves. Of course, parents and brother quarreled. Brother had even considered moving to my apartments but shortly after the accident they reconciled.

Sometimes I hate my work. A week ago I finally caught and questioned our accountant why my January premium had been cut sixty percents. As it turned out I should have worked for extra four(!) days to get all the money. WTF? A few days ago my engineering executive made me "happy" by announcing 15 percents curtailment of March premium. Again WTF? I don't even remember anything went awry in February. Of course, I spend a lot of time at my work doing the things which are not related to my duties at all but what I do - I try to do perfectly. I don't even remember in participating in anything during February. Damn.

I have to make a choice. A very daunting choice. Either I take a two weeks holiday to ... finish my studies or I take a two weeks holiday to go to e.g. Egypt or I keep on working. I have to make this choice until the next week.

For the last month I've seen two movies in movie theaters, one was superb and had already become my favorite, another one was just shitty except few scenes. The good one is Watchmen and I am really glad I've seen it, the bad one is "The Knowing" - which was good only due to its special effects - otherwise it is boring, overly slobbery and long-drawn. For the rest of this movie I just wanted to vomit or to sleep. Also I've seen a few other movies but I don't really want to mention them. Anyway right now I have an IMDB profile where you can always see a rating of movies I've seen.

Linux is still very disappointing. At work I have KDE 4.2.1 installed I cannot work with it at all. KWin special effects are terribly slow, Konsole doesn't work nice with non-antialiased fonts, quite often keyboard completely hangs and I cannot press any button until I restart X server. That all happens with proprietary Linux nVidia drivers and 6150 onboard GeForce GPU. At home everything is pretty probably because I have 8800GT GPU together with manually compiled KDE 3.5.10 (not that manually actually - I have a semi-automatic script which does almost everything).

Winter is almost over. Over the last three days the temperature has been reaching up to 10 degrees Celsius. There's almost no snow on the ground.

Well, I keep on watching different movies from time to time, and this time I've finished watching exactly the "What just happened movie?". I can't really say it's good or bad it's just a very living movie with a lot of irony and all sorts of different jokes and much more cursing ... however who doesn't curse when the stakes are so high? Anyway I wouldn't recommend to watch this movie to anyway unless you have a lot of spare time and you think you can watch something about the real life.

Another movie I certainly would like to mention is, of course, "Seven Pounds". This movie made me sob, sob literally. I couldn't help weeping for at least five minutes straight. In my whole life I will never believe any human could do the things the main character did but anyway this movie touched me very much. Probably I'm becoming sentimental, who knows?

For the last two weeks I've seen mom three times, and one time our meeting was a complete failure - I complained that I had an allergy and I didn't know what caused it and mom said that was all because I fed myself badly. I argued that ate quite normal and good things and no shit like fat or fried stuff, etc. but that didn't convince her at all. Also I tried saying that my brother is in much better shape because mom fed him ... but in the end I raised my tone then tried to calm down but mom was really depressed, didn't want to continue our conversation and I promptly left them being also depressed. Last time I visited her a couple of days ago, she tried to apologize and everything proceeded smoothly.

Everything between me and K. is just fine no matter that none of us loves each other. At least I want to believe that, 'cause love means unnecessary complications for me right now. A week ago we wanted to do some Alpine skiing but we woke up late, then went shopping or better say went to buy me special ski trousers and bought them, but them it was too late to move out to the outskirts and we ended up going to a skating ring. We rode for forty five minutes and I almost didn't fall. In the end when a cleaning machine entered a ring I decided to skate an extra round disobeying the "Time is up" command but a supervisor started shouting at me, I felt clumsy and ... fell.

Today has been a whole different day in my life. Yesterday K. made me call Vladimir and I called him. At first we wanted to meet each other but I was too slow to make myself move and in the evening I went to my parents instead. Around 9pm I called him but he canceled our meeting saying that it was too late and he didn't want to go anywhere. Nevertheless he mentioned that next day he want to mount ski and then this morning he, K. and me on his car rode to some resort where we mounting skied. It was wonderful! alas a bit costly. ($20 for one hour - including all equipment and elevator) I skied for just one hour because my toes started freezing but K and Vladimir skied for two hours. They also liked it a lot.

Around two weeks ago I again caught something like conjunctivitis of the right eye. Yep, again. You'll get the point as soon as I say that this time I spent probably 28 consecutive hours in front of the PC. The consequences were quite predictable. I cured it in four days by taking new drugs (antibiotics).

I broke my promise and I didn't come to my parents last Saturday. Mom especially was waiting for me to no avail. I just forgot. Yesterday I finally visited my parents and mom didn't look good. If I haven't already mentioned that she cut her hair short and she doesn't look healthy. It's not news. Mom and me were talking about K. for some time. The questions mom asked about K. haven't pleased K. when I passed them to her today. Mom just wants my gf/wife to be from a good, happy and wealthy family, mom wants my future spouse to be attentive of me and to take infinite care of me. Déjà vu? I'm repeating that probably for the fifth time. However this time there's something new: mom is a libraries goer and recently she found out that I probably have an especial gene which causes a light form of autism, a kind of thoughtlessness and a frequent unwillingness to complete the major tasks. She said that was all published in the first issue of the Russian "Science and Life" magazine. Alas, I cannot check it out since the last published issue available on the net is from last year.

Yesterday K. mentioned a thing that scared me to death (since that is exactly what I've been thinking of lately). She really thinks marriage can be a logical choice, and love doesn't really play a major role in that. Marriage can go well even without passion.

Do you remember I failed last year trying to finish my studies? Well, last year through a Russian social networking website I found a girl. Probably we didn't like each other a lot since we've only met once but ... she wants me to graduate. I asked her twice if she was firm in her decision and she said yes. There are a lot of people around who want me to get out of my mental disability ... I only have to accept their help and act accordingly. Alas, the last part is the most difficult for me.

Recently, I've been watching a lot of movies and I've just finished watching "Seven pounds". It made me sob vehemently for probably three minutes. I have yet to recall a movie in last five years which provoked such emotions in me. Others were "Ice harvest" - which lacks any plot, "Night at Roxbury" which is just a silly, yet kind comedy and "Religious" which is hilarious and entertaining but there was nothing new there - a message was good (get rid of the Church and ridiculous religious faiths) but this movie will be forgotten at best or will be condemned at worst.

I haven't been here for a long time. Wow, that means almost a whole month has passed and I had nothing to post about. Does that mean nothing happened? Well, it looks like I won't overestimate anything if I say that there was nothing worth mentioning.

As you can see from the time of this post my crazy habit of not sleeping at nights hasn't gone anywhere. I'm still destroying myself. The net result is that I've already haven't slept for the whole three nights (not consecutive, of course) since the beginning of this year. This idiocy has led to two after-effects: I caught conjunctivitis of my left eye, and never-seen-before four psoriasis spots on my body - all of which I've already successfully healed. This means my medical bill for last two months equals to some $35. Due to my illness last month I received almost zero premium to my December salary - but probably my employer is right.

My wishful thinking of flying abroad to a warm country to have some rest near the ocean hasn't yet materialized. At the same time the US dollar is rapidly eating all my savings - for the last two months dollar has risen 30% in the relationship to our goddamn ruble.

K. is a frequent guest of mine and she often stays with me for nights. She likes me a lot, yet to my great pleasure she hasn't ever expressed more than adoration.

Recently I've seen three new movies. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" was a miserable, women only movie. The end just didn't cut in, actors playing was virtually non-existent. The movie is filled up with old cliché, dialogs are unnatural at best, the only person who tried to play her role instead of reading a text was Penelope Cruze and probably the sole reason of her achievement is that she spoke her native language. Verdict: shit.

Now let's dissect the British RocknRolla movie. This one is a slow paced, overextended movie, which lacks any drive, you don't really want to know what will happen next. It contains a shitload of ravings about drags, it touts (an incompatible with the real life) style named RocknRolla, everything is very twisted, it all revolves about some stupid gangster philosophy. To my mind it is even worse the the Revolver movie. Verdict: shit.

And now the winner of 2008 is the "Ip Man" movie. Even though it was a bit naïve, I liked its mild humor, real patriotism and calmness.

My new 640GB Seagate drive seems to be dying. Damn! Quite randomly is produces very scary sounds similar to the sounds of starting up and shutting down. A technician in the company where I bought this Winchester told me that I should check my power supply and cables. I can only say - f*ck them all, my previous 500G Seagate worked perfectly with the same setup.

On one side I have Mr. Dmitry Puchkov who shit on that movie on the other there's me who have quite mixed feelings. I'm now talking about The Day the Earth Stood Still movie. I quite agree with Mr. Puchkov that the young guy sucked and spoiled most of the movie. I'm also unable to grasp how that alien managed to believe our intimate family emotions when people tried hard to kill him even though not for a single time he had showed its aggressiveness or cruel intentions. In fact, being that extraterrestrial creature I would be glad to save the Earth from the mankind. The ending of this movie is the least plausible for any movie I've ever seen. However to be fair I have to admit that I mostly enjoyed the visual side of the movie, I also enjoyed its pace. Mr. Keanu Reeves fitted his emotionless role very well.

Year 2009 is closing in. At the end of a year Russian people tend to look at the actions and things in hindsight and estimate their success or failure. And I'm going to do just the same right now. In essence I can say the only thing: I've skipped this year. I haven't done anything worth mentioning, nor I have achieved any goals. I have a work which I almost enjoy but this work is a dead end. I won't be able to promote, I won't become really smarter at this place.

During this year I've managed to save some mostly laughable sum of money (I'd say around four thousands US dollars) but due to a current economy crisis this money is vanishing with a frightening speed. Only during the last week Euro rose in price for 24%. And our banks keep on advertising 15% (year) deposits. That's ridiculous!

In a coming year everything can still be changed, however the hope has almost been lost. My mom is nearing her complete blindness, a cyst progressed behind one of her knees, I'm not even sure she still capable of walking for long distances - and that very thing allowed her to stay afloat (i.e. alive). Recently she called her a semi-blind semi-alive hopeless creature which didn't want to move anywhere.

Today was the last working day of this year. K. moved home (her parents live in a outlying suburb and she's here to have her degree in ... - I won't reveal this information here since it's mostly irrelevant for most readers - if there are any) so there's a great chance tomorrow's holiday will be just a usual day for me. However I'm glad she went since I don't want to give her much hope 'cause I'm afraid she's beginning to fall in love with me and I just like her ... and I'm not sure I will love her.

There's a chance for me to visit a vacation resort in the next two weeks, but I'm afraid I will give up with this idea since the earliest departure date is the 7th of January and I will not come back before the 16th of January. That means I have to skip four working days and that certainly means those days won't be recouped by my company. In short I don't want to have a three days of unpaid leave which means my travel is doubling in its price.

My right eye is stable in its disease. It's not getting worse or better. Other than that I'm almost OK.

Today mom told me that when she was young she jumped off the roof of a two storey building clinging to an umbrella. The umbrella went to pieces, she fell and hit the Earth hard. She almost broke all her limbs. She got home by crawling on all fours, bearing intolerable pain. She didn't tell her mom about that.

God knows how she managed to survive after all that had happened to her ... being slaughtered and victimized by her own mom, wearing rubber boots in ungodly cold Ural winters (where temperatures often fall below -25 degrees Celsius), trying to earn cents by working in the nights in hospitals after escaping her "home" when she was just sixteen years old ... this list is so long, so long.

I deserve no mercy.

At first around a month ago K. had conjunctivitis but disease passed nearly instantly. Three weeks ago on the 28th of Novermber, Friday, I got it too. No, K. wasn't guilty in that, I think it's just a pure coincidence. Only on Monday I went to a hospital and got a sick-list till Friday. Being over excited about the future five days of the legal leave I spent the whole Monday night playing Clive Barker's Jerico. The games is not really brilliant, nevertheless it was quite playable. So my treatment proceeded badly. On Friday (5th of December) I got released and on next Monday (8th of December) returned to my work. However the same day I felt very bad - my eye ached terribly and next day K. took me to her own doctor. He prescribed a bit different medicine which I've been taking till today's evening and I have to take them for the next three days. However as for today my eye isn't really better than it was on the fifth of December (after the first course of medicine) - even though some of the symptoms had gone, the eye in general just got worse. So, for more than two weeks straight I have conjunctivitis of the right eye.

K. is a smart, lovable girl who seem to share some of my poorest points of view. She also has never fallen in love and she really thinks it's worth having a family ... just to have a family. After all nature created us for reproduction, so why not pursue our basic mission even without such loud words like love.

Just in case she made me pass a number of tests for common STDs and I really like her for that. If you want to trust a person you'd better make sure he deserves your trust. And condoms often don't protect you from some really devastating and nasty things.

My parent's apartment is a never-ending sorrow. Mom once mentioned over the telephone (when she thought I didn't hear her) that she had the third power (triple degree?) of depression. Today when I visited my parents their washing machine started malfunctioning and father couldn't repair it since he was running out of time - he had to depart to somewhere. Mom whined that Russian equipment once broken should be disposed immediately. She told bitterly that bro and dad are losing a lot due to prices inflation and global economy crisis and they cannot make life easier for the whole family by buying a new washing machine which doesn't cost much. I suppose I will do that next week. I hope it won't stay unboxed like a new LCD TV set I bought for them a month ago. Dad said he didn't know what to do with the old one TV set, thus they decided not to use the new one. Holy shit. It all sounds really implausible.

Last week I finally got my foreign passport which will surely lay unused till the next year - now it's too late to go anywhere taking into consideration that every Russian will have a leave from January 1 till January 11. Besides all tourist tours are sold at higher prices due to increased demand (yes, that's Russia - before a HNY/Christmas we enjoy an increase of all prices, not their fall like in almost all other civilized countries).

For the first and probably the last time in my life I've just talked to my cousin (a son of my uncle) on ICQ - they live in the South of Russia. In the end of the conversation (which I unexpectedly cut short) he called me a bastard. I couldn't help forgetting about him forever. I don't care that he's more than two times younger than I am. I've just never showed such an amount of disrespect to any person nor I let anyone treat me like that.

Mgirl seems to have an utter depression taking a lot of miscellaneous drugs like antidepressants, sedatives and vitamins. She is so much eager for love ... I feel like I've fallen from the Moon having much less desires ... I just would be happy if my mom became happy.

My sleeping regime went completely awry, I haven't slept enough for the last two weeks, almost all the time I feel like I'm in a fog.

On Friday evening K. and I went to a cinema ... to see the touted "Quantum of Solace" James Bond movie. Well, it left me speechless ... or I'd better say emotionless - I had zero emotions after leaving the hall of the cinema. I didn't understand the meaning of the movie, I couldn't grasp the sequence of events. It just plain sucked, "Casino Royal" was twenty times better and now I even want to see the old movie again.

There isn't much to add to the previous post. Tomorrow I'm going to spend a lot of money again. I know I know my parents do not care about that, it's just crazy me who cannot do what is expected from him and who tries to redress a wrong.

A few days ago Mgirl asked me to review her translation but the text was so complicated I got exhausted after the third sentence. Besides the text was full of turns of speech and I'm no expert in that area. So, I just gave up and inwardly endorsed the translation having not talked to Mgirl later.

Sometimes my openness becomes my worst enemy. Yesterday I told my mom a bit more that it was necessary about K., mom said a few harsh words about her. Then later I passed the contents of our conversation to K. On her turn K instantly burst a vein and half of the yesterday's evening was spoiled altogether.

Today after my work I visited my parents again (in a hope to take a flash card which I brought for my brother but he found out neither his old laptop, nor his DSLR is compatible with it) and talked to my mom. She was glad that I bought a [shitty] ultra compact digital camera [yesterday for over four hundred bucks] but told me I should not stay at home - males should be on the scene all the time. Then I told mom about my interpretation of her yesterday's words, mom bitterly resented, surrendered to her room and stayed there until I left them.

It's easy to her: two bright sons ... both without families, without wives, without any prospects of relocating abroad. Besides yesterday she told me she had a severe third power depression. She looks/ed very bad ...

Today I've once again reconsidered the possibility of getting away. Away from this life. I'm useless, mentally handicapped, and unable to socialize in this world. Most people at my work really think I'm nuts.

Two weeks ago I brought a 13.3" laptop for my brother (around a thousand and six hundred bucks). I made a major error of not testing a supplied mouse and later my brother discovered that this mouse is unusable, because it's almost impossible to left click it (probably an assembly error - some material not in its place). Besides this laptop's fan never slows down or turns off. I insisted my brother to return the unit but he declined and decided to live with it.

K. has almost fallen in love with me and I'm scared - I just like her and nothing more. A week ago when we was walking outdoors, in the middle of our walk we hit on fireworks. We didn't know "who celebrated what", but it was a ten minutes show which we both greatly enjoyed. A romantic appeal in its apex.

I hate this economics crisis. In the end of this spring spring I invested some of my savings in precious metals and metals' price fell steeply in the last six months. I've already lost over thirty percents of my money. It all makes me feel even worse.