2001-12-20 - 10:42 a.m.

Being cut off, being a geek, being common.

I'm back, and I'm back with a vengeance. For the last two days, and seven hours, I've been without internet access. Aaaargh. Tuesday morning, I wake up to find that there is no dial tone. In my groggy, must-check-email state I spent fifteen minutes trying to convince my computer that you don't really *need* a dialtone to get to the internet. Just dial in, already. Hurmph. So I call Qwest (ride the blight) and leave a hopeless little message on their automated system. (Anyone else here thinking of Lilly Tomlin sneering "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company", or is it just me?)Finally, this morning a very, very nice man came out and fixed my phone. It turns out that someone else from the phone company, while doing something else in the phone closet, just accidentally pulled the wire for my phone. Wasn't that nice.

Anyway, I'm back. In the last three days, I've done not a lot. I read the second Harry Potter book. I went to the gym a couple of times. I found an acting workshop that I think I'm going to join. Tonight I've got my first voice lesson, so I can be a folk/rock super stah. Then it's dinner at RockGirl's place.

Right now, I'm trembling in anticipation, because in two hours and forty minutes I'm going to see Fellowship of the Ring.

I'm a geek. I'm a nerd. I'm a loser. Get over it.

I'm *so* very excited for this movie. Last night I was talking to three of my friends who saw it yesterday, and they could *not* shut up about how good it was.

And, sad to say, that's about all I can think to talk about. My life is boring as hell.

~*~

Oh, wait. I remember. I had this thought in the shower yesterday, actually more of a memory. It struck me at the time as being profound. (Although, like most of the things I get up out of bed to write down, when I look at it again, it'll likely be much less profound, and much more silly, than it seemed at the time.) My father's mother, Grandma B, once was describing some of her neighbors to me. She said they were good folk, friendly and charitable. Then she said "They're common". It took me a good while to understand that from her, that's a compliment. Grandma B, farm wife for her entire adult life, and one of the most generous souls I've ever met, put a lot of stock in being common. It's the common folk who go about the business of getting the work done, in this case, feeding the rest of us louts who dream that we're uncommon, that we're entitled to live uncommon, extraordinary lives.

I've spent most of my life seeking out, or at least gravitating towards, uncommon, extraordinary people. My friends are all just a bit out there, in one form or another, and to one degree or another.

And for some reason, I suddenly remembered my grandmother. Saying "They're common". Like it was the best thing she could think to say about them.

It made me think.