My car is dead. I do not know if I will resurrect it. The expense is unwelcome but not insurmountable so I don't think that is the real reason I can't decide its fate. I have been riding my bike to work for the past two days. I enjoy it. I've had the bike for almost a month, actually, and I hadn't ridden it at all. I'm starting to think I don't do anything unless I absolutely have to...

My delightful roommates and I were doling out our daily requirement of jokes at others' expense earlier tonight. We mocked our friend for getting back together with a guy who didn't seem very nice at all. Someone said that guys never change and I laughingly chimed agreement. Now as I fulfill my daily requirement of pensively listening to Sarah Mclachlan, I wonder. There are times when I miss someone terribly and do not have the means of communicating with them. I mean, I could contact them, but doubt they would be very responsive. If someone chooses to forget you, allowing them to do so seems to be the polite thing to do. And if I'm nothing else, at least I'm polite.

And yet, somewhere there is a younger version of myself, perhaps scowling, maybe looking cold and aloof, or twisting away from an embrace. This me is locked in that moment, encased in the amber of someone's memory. I don't like it.

Not much I can do about memory. Memories can be true, memories can be false, but every memory is real, it exists, and it does have an effect. Thems the rules.

But if I can't change then why worry? Every memory of me is as good as any other. Same old Guillermo, every time. I guess I can live with that.

Netflix graced me with Joseph Campbell: "The Hero's Journey" last evening. It has been some time since I visited his ideas and it was refreshing to meet the basis for a lot of ideas I have now. I'd forgotten that Joseph Campbell had laid the foundation for the more optimistic ways I approach aspects of my life.

Campbell speaks abstractly about life, the universe, and everything, and despite my recent educational foray into the much more mechanistic chemical, physical, and environmental framework, I found no contradictions. He has ideas that could be further refined by studying biology, for instance, but hey, no one can study everything.

I'm enjoying my new position at the pet shop. A guy from the Arizona Herpetological Association brought in a gila monster. They're extremely protected round these parts, but he had a special permit to use this gila for educational purposes. Letting me hold the gila monster fell under the educational umbrella.

There is also a fireman that catches rattlesnakes that wander into homes (which is not uncommon in more upscale areas that nestle their homes up against the mountains) and he brought one in to show us. It was impressive.

I also ate a waxworm and a kingworm. We feed them to various reptiles and they're quite edible. I don't plan to make a habit of it, but I can now put worm-eater on my resume'.

Hello, Harvard.