Sunday, 24 June 2001 | Catalytic

I'm trying to be quiet, as to not wake anyone in my house up. It's so much easier to be productive when it feels like you're the only person who's awake or alive, when you can actually focus on what you're doing and you forget about appealing distractions. I'm certain that's one of the main reasons I like night so much. Right now, however, it happens to be morning.

South Carolina tried to kidnap me this weekend. On Friday I drove down to Clemson, SC, which is deceivingly far from Raleigh—it's about the same distance to Clemson as it is to Washington DC, but Clemson's close to the NC border, so I forget about the length of the drive until I'm halfway there. Anyway, I went because my friend and occasional instructor Marco lives there, and he was offering to teach a complimentary Flash course. Apparently he gives up lots of his Saturdays to teach one Macromedia course or another, which is really cool for the people who live there, and almost as cool for me (minus the drive). So on Friday night I got a little Clemson orientation, and on Saturday, a reintroduction to Flash.

Saturday evening I tried to leave, but I only made it to a town somewhere near the NC-SC border. White smoke from my muffler and a concerned stranger at the Waffle House encouraged me to pull over long before I made it to Raleigh, as did the cracking noises of the red-hot catalytic converter by my right leg. I gave my car to the tow truck with 253,001 miles on it, waking up the quiet pest in my brain that knows my car's last miles are within reach. So I had no car but still had my ridiculous luggage, and I had three hours to kill until Martin arrived to take me back to Raleigh. Fortunately, I was able to find the local movie theater, though I wasn't very interested in anything that was playing. I ended up seeing Tomb Raider, partially, I guess, for personal reasons. Now I'm back in Raleigh; tomorrow, however, I have to make the 6-hour round trip to pick up my car.