The clouds grumble and grow dark as currents push them along. They refuse to promise rain. A black beanie with "nintendo" stitched on it is a decent surrogate for the hair that I won't allow to grow. The earbuds of an MP3 player are still cold inside my head as I twine through the pastel towers of this mock city. I'm unaccustomed to shutting out the sounds of the world as I travel through it. I often hear possible threats before I see them. I am reluctant to provide the soundtrack to any blundering mishaps.

Inserting only one earbud tricks my brain into believing everything in the world is happening to my immediate left. Even more confusing. I considered using electric fields to try to detect the movement of living things around me but a bit of research on sharks revealed that the sense would be almost useless outside of water because air doesn't conduct electricity very well at all. I immediately resolved to stop attempting to grow electroreceptor cells through intense meditation. All the science classes I've taken said it was impossible anyway since the instructions are not in my genetic makeup and no amount of meditation is going to change that.

But science doesn't close a door without opening a window. I have no basis for making the previous statement as if it were true.

It's too late for me to be genetically engineered, but not too late for gene doping. All I have to do is make friends with a virus and get it to insert the DNA I want into my cells instead of all the harmful stuff viruses usually stick me with. This time will be different because this virus will be my pal.

The clouds grumble a bit more as I pick my way through the litter that accumulates in the bend in the service road. I have learned to avoid Styrofoam cups because they sometimes contain splashing liquids or boba teas that spawn little gelatin eggs when aroused by a falling foot.

My mind wanders off to find the sounds in my ears and my eyes are left alone to guard me. The wind dries my contact lenses and my vision blurs. My surrogate hair sits patiently and beams its Nintendo smile at all the other students that aren't walking this way. The ear buds are warmer now, at least. I blink furiously, stop trying to hear my own footsteps, and listen instead to the soundtrack without a story.

I define a good day as one in which I get full points for sticking it to Carolus Linnaeus.

Also, we may soon have bathrooms that clean themselves. Cleaning up after your drunken friends throw up all over the place may become a thing of the past.

Although I do worry what would happen if I were to pass out on this kind of surface for hours at a time. Not that I'm planning on doing that anytime soon. BUt as my fortune cookie said, "In life and in love, it never hurts to have a spare face."

Chemistry is tearing open parts of my brain that have long been boarded shut with scrap wood and stolen nails.

I found myself staring at a spot of rust on the washing machine and imagining the electron exchange in an oxidation. I don't like chemistry but it makes so much sense while still keeping me on my toes.

A sugar glider is an arboreal marsupial native to Australia, Tasmania, and Indonesia. It is related to the kangaroo, opossum, and Tasmanian devil. It looks like a big-eyed grey squirrely-monkey thing with a black stripe down its back and it's about the size of a rat.

Some people really like them.

I'm entering into the fourth week in which I haven't had a day in which I don't have work or class. My drinking has suffered terribly. Even yesterday during the Superbowl, the one time everyone puts aside their differences and drinks on a Sunday afternoon, I was only able to flirt with drunkeness.

It's been difficult. More difficult than the time I didn't drink for three months. That was actually easier because I think I was motivated by some foolish idealism. Now my hold on sobriety is mainly cirucumstantial.

I'm still reading about Miyamoto Musashi. He wrote a short work titled "The Way of Walking Alone." Some of the things he says are "Do not ever think in acquisitive terms. Do not harbor hopes for your own personal home. Do not be intent on possesing valuables or a fief in old age." This is in reference to maintaining a life free of obligations and in the context of feudal Japan but it still applies. I do worry, however, because these tenets can provide the basis for a life in which a person can focus on self-improvement and understanding the world by maximizing freedom in terms of mobility, at least, but this also seems to be a recipe for becoming a real asshole.

I'm going to try to get Fridays or Saturdays off from work.