Trust no clock

I have almost no idea what time it is anymore. I mean, I'm still thrown off by the fact that it's dark at five o'clock now. But that's just the beginning, these days.

The clock on my computer is at least ten minutes fast. I don't know how or why that happened, but I do know that it did something simllar a little while ago. I fixed it, but I cheated: I went into KDE, which I don't like otherwise, but I know how to change the clock. But that didn't work this time, it just crashed. And GNOME gives me an unhelpful error message. Oh well, it was a bad solution anyway; I don't like being dependent on the GUI if I can help it, but I haven't figured out how to change the time from the command line. Yet. I did try, though. Really!

(It's just as well; I learned in my CSci class yesterday that GUIs are cool and command-line things suck. Though, really, she was only talking about one of each. So basically she was telling us Windows is cool and UNIX sucks.)

As if this weren't bad enough, I lost my watch last week ... around the time I started to suspect that my computer might be more than ten minutes fast. Ten minutes is okay--I forget that it's not correct, and so it keeps me from being late for things--but some unspecified amount is bad, especially when I am lacking a wristwatch against which to check it.

So Monday, when I was in Target, I bought a new watch. I set it to the time of the clock-radio in the car I was in at the time, but when I got back to my room, I saw that it displayed the same time as the clock on my computer--which I know is wrong! I checked the clock in the next building I was in, and it was about 15 minutes behind the time on my watch. I moved the hands on my watch accordingly, and then found out that that clock was a little slow. Bah!

So, I think my computer is still only ten minutes fast. I still don't trust it, though. And I think I've got my watch straightened out. I don't know if I can trust it either.

After Sarah's alarm went off eleventy billion times this morning and we both finally got up, I wanted to know what time it was. So I pulled my clock off the shelf by our beds and looked at it. It said it was 3:20. Oh good, I thought. That's so helpful. Thanks.

I think time is out to get me. I've always been kind of suspicious of it, anyway; it passes so much faster when I'm with my boyfriend than it does when I am in class. I think it's just trying to mess with me now.

I think it's working, too.

She brings me white gold and pearls, stolen from the sea

Jenn and I went to St. Cloud on Monday. It's an hour-and-a-hal drive each way, and except for the random mix CD we played at first, we listened to The Joshua Tree for the whole three hours.

After some debate over whether or not it was playing at all, our straining ears heard the beginning guitar lick to "Where the Streets Have No Name." Jenn and I had been talking about how much we love this album--we like some of the same things, and sometimes talk about the most random stuff until we've worked ourselves up into a frenzy of excitement over something like Chipotle (which was one of the reasons we were going to St. Cloud in the first place) or The Joshua Tree (which Jenn was inspired to borrow from a friend of hers who loves U2).

So by the time the song started having words, I'd been thinking about these things enough that I was too enthralled to sing along with this song I knew and loved so well. I just wanted to listen. I couldn't help mouthing the words, though. "I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside."

Soon we were singing along anyway. One of us would randomly stop talking to sing a random line we know or like and would then return to our conversation as if nothing unusual had happened ... because nothing unusual had happened.

I noticed that the overcast sky was bringing dusk down upon us even though it was only 4:30. It wasn't raining but it looked as if it might. We left our boring stretch of highway for I-94, and our zippy car became super-zippy.

We talked about music and sex. We weren't just horny, though; there weren't any hormones involved (well, in my case anyway, but I wouldn't presume to speak for Jenn). This music isn't about sex, it just makes us want to have sex with the people who made it. The Joshua Tree gives us goosebumps sometimes.

I need that CD. I used to have it on tape (so it couldn't have been any later than junior high, back when I still bought and played tapes), and it has long since disappeared. I miss it now!