Well it's been an interesting day in the chat rooms.

I don't usually go into chat rooms. They've de-evolved into cybersex orgies. Somehow that doesn't interest me. Couldn't say why.

There's a place called habbohotel.com where you can make a little graphic person called a habbo and then you move your little guy around in an environment with chairs and couches and restaurants and rooms that you can create and customize and have your friends in.

I drop in every now and then but the visual setting is someone intimidating.... It's funny.... in a chat room, with just a list of people's names, I can just click on someone and start a conversation, be cheeky or sarcastic or pry into their personal lives, but at habbo hotel you actually have to walk up to people and start talking. It's amazing how different it feels.

I hung out there tonight. I went and sat down beside someone who was sitting alone, and said hi. She promptly got up and sat down at a different table. Can you imagine if that really happened? That's the realization of the fears that keep me from talking to strangers. It was so rude.

BUT it's just a chat room. After staring at the screen in confusion and uncertainty for about a minute, I decided to embrace the moment. I followed the girl, sat down beside her again, and said "hi." this time she said hi back, but then I was booted from the network. don't know why. I logged back in and tried a different room, where I quickly met a very interesting girl from calgary. That was cool. I was glad I went. Maybe Habbo Hotel can help me overcome my trepidation in group settings.

Or maybe i need to spend less time on my computer.

Or...... maybe I need to spend MORE time on my computer.

Depends on how you look at it.

Lately I've been feeling more interested in people than I'm used to. It's reminiscent of my 16-19 years. I like it. Self-centeredness is so draining. It's so easy to sink into, but it's so nice to think about other people. Along that line I've got a couple emails to write.

Our internet has been down for the last couple days, and now that it's working again, I'm too tired to think of anything to write. Every one of the last few days I've had something that I desperately wanted to write about but COULDN'T and now I can't remember what any of those things were.

My back has been killing me, so it's just as well that I couldn't sit here on my ergonomically challenged computer chair. I've been flat on my back watching tv. When I'm not flat on my back on the couch, I'm on the floor, and if not there, in bed (which is a mattress pad on the floor) still on my back. Today I can sit up without pain, but the house has been sorely neglected. I will not be working another Saturday anytime soon. I pay for it long after.

I was just watching the extra features on the "Mean Girls" DVD and everyone they talked to was able to relate some experience with mean girls in high school... it got me thinking about that hellish time in my life..... about which I could write "The Memoirs of an Invisible Loser" I was so invisible that nobody even bothered being mean to me.

Though I got to thinking about it, and I did remember one incident with a girl who was rich and pretty and who everybody hated on account of how mean she was to everybody.... my mom was in school with her mom, and my mom says her mom was exactly the same way. Anyways, I remember disliking her, but aside from her usual snarkiness, she never really targeted me. This was because I was invisible.

Except this one time. She was sitting behind me in homeroom class, I believe it was grade nine. The desk rows were all crooked, so the teacher was going from row to row telling students exactly where to move their desks to make the rows perfectly straight. He hadn't gotten to our row yet, but the "mean girl" behind me had figured out where he would tell me to put my desk once he got to me. She ordered me in no uncertain terms that I was to immediately move my desk.

Now I don't remember, but I must have been putting up with her uppitiness for some time, because my passivity had completely depleted and all I had left was aggression. I turned around and said something to the effect of "I'll move when the teacher tells me to move," and then turned back to the front of the class. She said nothing. The teacher came, and told me to move my desk, and I moved it.

I don't think that girl ever bothered me again. In fact, there may have been a couple of times she was even nice to me.

It gets me rethinking high school. Maybe I wasn't as invisible as I thought I was. I've been told by people in recent years that they were intimidated of me. I wonder sometimes if I felt invisible because people sensed that they couldn't mess with me. Kids in high school are so driven by insecurity..... I was driven by self preservation.

High School was a generally negative experience for me. I learned nothing of use, either outside or inside the classroom. I learned only how to hide myself and blend into the wall.

But the mean girls didn't bother me. I have no idea what went on amongst them. I was in the library reading science fiction and drawing pictures of castles and dragons. Had they made a movie about my high school, I wouldn't have even been a generic extra.

Guess I was just too cool for adolescence.