But it's thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head when you're away
When I am missing you to death.

Postal Service, "Such Great Heights"
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I wake up every morning just before 6am. They announce Head Count over the loudspeaker and roommates' alarm clocks all around me begin their beeping canon. I doze for a little while, or I might sit up and straighten out my back after another night on a spring that traverses across the mattress like a sling, rather than providing any real buoyancy. At that point I might begin folding my chamois-like blanket while I ponder which of my seven shirts to wear today.

I put on my pants one leg at a time just like the rest of you. Except when I put mine on, I'm in a correctional facility.

One of my favorite things to do in the morning is to stand in the threshold of my room (which is now a "full house", otherwise known as "five deep") and peer left and right over the empty hallway. There's an uneasy quiet in the air, not peaceful at all, but very still. No one is supposed to leave their rooms during head count, but exceptions are made for people heading to work.

The AA meeting last night went well, and the speaker was the first one since I've been here that I could at least someone relate to. He was college-educated and had a good paying job, but in his late twenties, he decided that all he needed in life to have fun was a fifth of vodka, four packs of cigarettes, some cocaine, and a hotel room. He began to describe the descent into his alcoholism and addiction, as well as his subsequent emergence. What drew me to him was not so much his background, although it was important for me to see that someone of good upbringing and intellectual fiber could fall victim to substance abuse. Rather, it was the fact that he rationalized to himself that he could quit any time he liked. But there was one instance he recalled, when a bunch of his friends would throw a big party prior to Lent (otherwise known as Mardi Gras), and then stay sober for Lent's 40 days, and then throw another big party afterwards (otherwise known as Easter). And he couldn't make it through 40 days. Seventeen and he was hitting the bottle again. The next year, he tried again, and only made it through fourteen. After that, he simply abandoned those friends.

The AA meetings continue to be a recruitment seminar, an advertisement for the Twelve Steps, and it's important for me to hear these stories and recollections to know that I'm not like that. I made it through the six months after my accident and only had three drinks: the first one was in West Virginia, when the host of a party offered me one. I've said it before: never pass up the opportunity to accept the generosity of someone else's kitchen. The second, I couldn't sleep one night and had a snifter of Macallan 18. The third, I had a beer with Jacob the night before I checked into Camp Snoopy, to go with dinner at P6.

Those are not the tired and regretful anecdotes of an alcoholic, and so I really just go through the motions of attending these meetings, if only because it puts me through one less Head Count.

I finished my eight hours of penalty work duties, and I spent most of that time helping out in the chow hall. I now feel as if I can add "food service" onto my resume. In addition to getting a lot of reading done over the past three weeks, I've managed to bolster my work experience and learned how to ride a bike with no hands. It's weird to think that I've gotten more done over the past three weeks than I did when I was on the outs, but all the time and routine forces you to refocus your mind in order to keep it sharp and sane. I'll only play dominoes in the TV room now, though, to make sure I don't get pegged again. But it's kind of nice that I picked up bones as a skill (certainly not a great one, but one nonetheless), and it'd be great to have it as a cell phone game.

I finished reading The Gunslinger by Stephen King. It's such an interesting departure from Tolkien, but certainly one that I needed to keep my mind fresh. Tolkien wrote in a way that's very lush and vibrant and vivid and colorful, even when those colors were very bleak and shadowy. Stephen King, however, spares much of the details, opting for very barren backdrops which heighten the sense of unknown. Even in scenes of great verdancy, there's a feeling of macabre and unearthliness, as if something so green and alive is out of place and alien in the context of the narrative. That, then, makes you paranoid and untrusting of even the most inocuous of scenes, feeling that it could just another step toward ruin and decay. Perhaps that's what he intended all along.

I'm still not in the clear here at work yet; I had a bug that almost halted release, and I was stuckin custody all weekend, so the credit goes to my supervisors and coworkers who had to pull many consecutive all nighters rolling the changes back (rendering the past six months of development, effectively, undone). I feel terrible about it, but it comforted me to here a similar story come from Jacob, who I respect the most of all engineers. Sometimes shit happens, but I've come to understand that reputation in business (at least in my line of work) isn't going to put food on the table any moreso than personal cleanliness. It's the bottom line. And despite the fact that I almost missed the bottom line, I really took it personally this week when I was informed that my bug almost caused the assembly line to shut down.

That led to a lot of the frustrations that culminated in me sitting in one of the alcoves outside Ixia, crying and screaming into my Guinness beanie. But tears are etched in liquid and screams of rage dissipate in the wind. I felt cold, unseasonably frozen in my own skin despite California's best efforts. Red-eyed and bundled in my jacket and head hanging down, I walked to the Company Cafe to pick my lunch. I felt better later, though; much better. All it took was chatting with Jacob and Heather, and they're just two examples, but it's times like these when I'm glad that friends are required to help you feel better, if only by mandate of the universe. The AA meetings aren't for me, but in all cases, it's nice to have somewhere to turn.