[2003.08.03 2316h]

   [vgame] phantasy star online episode i & ii [nintendo gamecube]

one of my drive partitions went crazy, and about 30 gigabytes of data got
corrupted.  i'm not sure whether i should view this as a foretelling of
the possible imminent destruction of my drive or not.  on the one hand, a
few months ago, about 30 gigs of data were corrupted on another partition
of the same drive.  however, i'm pretty sure the data corruption that
occurred this time happened as a result of an experimental program
crashing.  in any case, i'm frantically backing up data i don't want to
lose right now, and hope to eventually use the problematic drive mostly
for temporary storage.

about a week ago on saturday, i biked to a little gathering that one of my
friends held to celebrate his newly obtained driver license.  offhand, i
believe that now, i only have one friend older than me who doesn't have a
driver license.  however, she's from tokyo, where public transportation is
far better than it is here, so she has no compelling reason to obtain a
driver license.

anyway, not having one of these licenses myself, the trip to the gathering
took about an hour.  the return trip took a bit longer, as since i was
exhausted from the biking of the first leg of the trip.  i had to do some
pretty strenuous biking since i was trying to catch a bus leaving for san
francisco so that i could eventually get to berkeley for a friend's
birthday dinner.

some years ago, i discovered that, after an extended period of strenuous
exercise, my sinuses seem to fall asleep.  they seem to go cold and numb.  
but then, after i finish my exercising, feeling returns to my sinuses,
accompanied with the same prickly feeling one usually gets when feeling
comes back to one's leg after it falls asleep.  thankfully, though, the
prickly feeling i get in my sinuses is not as intense as the prickly
feeling i get in my leg.

anyway, my sinuses fell asleep as i was biking to the bus station.  some
time afterward, i was also starting to feel very weak in the head.  my
guess is that somehow, not enough blood or oxygen was reaching my brain,
but i'm no biology major, so i'm not sure.  unfortunately, i had about 10
or 20 more minutes worth of biking to go, so i was feeling pretty dizzy
and exhausted by the time i got to the bus station.

also, some time during my trip, some of the muscles in my legs started to
spasm, so i quickly learned how to bike without them.  usually, at stop
lights, i get off my seat and stand on the ground until the light changes,
but during the end of this trip, my leg muscles spasmed even when i simply
tried to stand, so i just held my body up by my arms while grabbing ahold
of the handlebar.  i must have looked like a freak, or, at least, more so
than i usually do.

alas, i missed the bus by about 10 minutes anyway.  thankfully, though, i
was able to catch another bus headed up north, so i eventually got to the
restaurant, albeit rather tardily.

the next day, i came back home for a little gathering at my place to
celebrate the birthday of another friend.  we ended up playing phantasy
star online for most of the day, so we didn't do many birthday related
things.  still, it was a very enjoyable day.  one of my friends got so
addicted to the game that he just bought his own gamecube.