According to my battery indicator, I have about sixteen minutes of time left before this laptop dies. I’m going to try and get all of my thoughts down in that period. Of course, I’m in the mood to write and I could probably do so for much longer than the measly amount of time I have been afforded.

It’s currently 12:26 AM Eastern Standard Time. I have no idea what time zone I am in at this point. I think we’re less than an hour from Seattle, so I would assume we are in the Pacific Time zone now. I’m not updating this live. Not only is the wireless modem in my boss’s computer, it doesn’t seem to work from the sky. Guess the technology isn’t quite there yet.

The in-flight movie just ended. Spider-Man. God, how I love that movie. It seems silly how much joy it brings to me, as I sit here and write about it. It’s the honest to God truth, though. I get misty eyed at several points during the film. It was everything I expected it to be and more. Not just because it was a good movie. Not just because it was about a super hero. Because it fulfilled all of my childhood dreams. Because, from the time I was twelve, I could see in my mind what it would look like to see Spider-Man swinging through the streets of New York City, and that I saw in that movie was straight from my mind’s eye. Because Spider-Man is supposed to save babies from burning buildings. Because J. Jonah Jameson is supposed to be an intolerable bastard that shows a heart when the chips are down. Because Ben Parker is supposed to be the kind of man you could fall in love with the minute you hear him utter his first line. Because of all these factors and more. Yes, as I’ve said before, there were things in the movie that I could pick apart if I choose to do so. I do not. The movie was a dream come true, and there will always be a small part of me that thanks Sam Raimi for not pissing on my dreams (as if I didn’t love him enough for the Evil Dead movies).

Oh boy! My boss just noticed the battery power indicators on my laptop and gave me fresh batteries. According to the power level indicators I have almost 4 hours of time left to play. This could turn into a very large entry indeed!

I love to fly. I always have. When I was a child, it meant going to see my father. After my dad left, I would spend a month of so every summer in Mississippi with him. Every year, I got to fly there all by myself. Mom and Dad split when I was very young, so it was a pretty big deal. I think I flew Delta a lot back them. I remember that my first cup of coffee was had on a plane while flying back from seeing my father. It was a very late flight, maybe even a red eye, and I so desperately did not want to fall asleep. I asked the stewardess for a cup of coffee, and even though I think it was pretty obvious that I had never had a cup of coffee in my life (I think I was all of 11 at the time) she brought me one with plenty of cream and sugar. All of which, of course, went into the cup. Plus a bit extra that I had her bring to me. What a horribly disgusting experience. I really don’t recall many other times in my life that I drank something that tasted quite so bad. I drank the whole cup, though.

I am enjoying a cup right now, as a matter of fact. I appreciate coffee much more these days, of course. I have been drinking a lot more of it in the past few months when compared to the amount that I was drinking when I first started losing weight in January of last year. I suppose that, as I’m getting closer to my goal weight, I want to scale back just a little and not be so strict with myself. I’m very comfortable with creeping up on my target weight. It has taken me 29 years to get where I am now, so I think I can deal with a few more months. And I love coffee. Love it. I’m going to drink so much coffee while I’m here in Seattle that I’ll have to walk around with a catheter in so I can actually see something other than the inside of a bathroom. I’m going to swim in coffee. Mmm. A Starbuck’s on every corner. Paradise. Absolute paradise.

Coffee. I remember why I started drinking coffee (that’s right kids, it’s one of those type of entries. Stream of thought consciousness. Deal with it) on a regular basis. Really, the only cup of coffee I had ever drank in my life up until I was in the 12th grade is the one I mentioned above. When I was a senior in high school, however, I started drinking coffee on a regular basis for one of the silliest reasons in the whole world. That’s right, kids, I started drinking coffee because of a girl. Sherry Ellen Kupersmith. She worked at the Barnies in Tyrone Square Mall and absolutely loved coffee. I think it was part of the whole Pinellas County Center for the Arts Bohemian scene of the time. Everyone was drinking coffee and reading classic literature. We were all SO cool. I read Les Miserables that year. I suffered through all of the thousands of pages of that abysmally long book just so I could say I read it. But I digress (gee, there is a shocker). I started drinking coffee because it was an excuse to go to the coffee shop. We were also in an Advanced Placement Literature class together that year. The teacher, Mr. Lamore, was cool enough to buy us a coffee maker after we pooled the money together for it. Sherry would supply the coffee from Barnies, and it was my job to actually make the coffee before class. For some reason, I made coffee better than the girl who worked in the coffee shop. Go figure. I’ll always associate coffee with my crush on Sherry, and I am reminded of her almost every time I have a cup. Ironically, coffee isn’t the only “bad” habit that I started because of her. After she refused to return my affections (not that I ever actually said anything to her to give her a chance to do so…except for asking her once if she wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex…god, I was a slick son of a bitch back then, wasn’t I?) I decided to take up smoking. Why? Because Sherry loathed smoking. So that was how I was going to show her. I was going to smoke and give myself cancer and die a horrible death. Just to show her what happens when she spurns me. Ha!

I thought it was a good point, don’t you?

I still carry a torch for Sherry. Isn’t that funny? Eve pointed that little fact out to me the other day. She said she couldn’t understand why. I really can’t explain it myself. I guess it was because she was the first person I ever envisioned myself having children with. That was the extent of my fantasy life with her!! I actually had visions of us in the delivery room. Of her drenched in sweat and crushing my hands and cursing my name. I had visions of our children and what we would do for a living (both professional actors of course). I saw it all. None of it came to pass, of course. I never even kissed her. It was still a very potent vision at the time, and part of me will always hold on to the beauty of that dream.

Ah, speaking of smoking, the quitting campaign is going very well. I haven’t gone anywhere near a smoke since Saturday, and I’m feeling really good about it. I’m still coughing a lot – more so than when I was smoking, actually! I have to get all that crap out of my lungs somehow, so I don’t really mind the process.

I’m looking over the wing of the plane into almost absolute darkness. I can see one star out the window, and that is it. It looks like a little faerie out there floating in the darkness. I really wish that I had one of my friends with me right now. Someone I could hold hands with and talk about all of these random thoughts that are streaming through my head. My boss and I have been talking quite a bit, but of course he wants to talk about work stuff. That is our frame of reference. I’m not going to tell him stories of my childhood or my insecurities, and I don’t think I want to hear his either. He has talked to me a lot about the business, though. Given me the inside scoop on some of his business dealings. He’s even made the offer to help me in my efforts outside of the company. I haven’t hid the fact that I have been doing design on the side, and he has expressed a willingness to be part of those endeavors. I’m not sure how to take that offer at this point. It seems to be a good offer, but I really wanted to strike out on my own a bit with this. It’s hard to pass up the ability to offer a complete solution (hosting on up) to my clients, however. I have to see how my partners would feel about it. Considering that one of those partners left my boss several years ago and have a fairly bitter taste in his mouth over it at times, however, makes me not so certain that this particular suggestion would fly with him.

Twenty minutes now until we land in Seattle. That means it is now 10:28 Pacific Standard Time. We are making our final approach, so I suppose I should shut this down and get myself ready to land. I’ll upload this when I can.