Yes, I've gotten so far behind that now I'm posting letters in my journal. This is probably going to be a bit boring to you since I'm writing another day-in-the-life narration, and I see that it's going to follow another such narration. Such is the way my journal sometimes, as I try to fill in the holes. Anyway, Kooma (aunt in Chinese) is the only person I write to, either regularly or irregularly, via paper mail. She's the only adult I write to and there are times when I tell her things I wouldn't tell my parents. This is not one of those times though so I felt it's a safe letter to post.

March 22nd, 2001

Dear Kooma,

Well, it's been a few months again and I just noticed that your birthday is next week. Darn, I forgot to have my calendar program remind me sooner so this letter is going to get to you late; the same as last year if I remember correctly. I'll be at mom and dad's on Sunday and Monday so we'll probably call you to wish you happy birthday. But just in case I'm not on that call -- Happy Birthday!

The last few months have been quite a time at work. One word to describe it: busy. I've been very busy doing things at work, so much so that I'm getting behind on me journal and the role-playing campaign I'm running for my friends and a bunch of other little things. Nevertheless, it's a good time for me. I'm doing a lot of good work that is going to be used (unlike my last project which is thankfully dead). It does hectic around here though.

Take today for example. I woke up at 06:00 because I had to get to work by 09:00 to receive a phone call (which I never got). Traffic is bad that early in the morning and I really hate waking up early and my body hates it too but I left at 06:30 and started driving. At that time the sun was coming up, though there was some morning cloud cover -- enough light to drive by but everyone still had their headlights on. Lots of traffic, starting not three blocks away as all the cars wait for the light to change so they can get onto the freeway on ramp. Then it's a slow merge into traffic and slow, though always moving, traffic.

Staying in the right lane is a bit of work, as cars are constantly merging into the freeway from the right or merging from the left so that they can merge out of the freeway. There's the occasional Rambo driver that swerves in and out of traffic trying to make up five minutes on an hour commute. Me I'm just cruising along, not really paying attention, listening to a Melissa Etheridge CD and singing the lyrics. Sometimes I get to the point where I'm just so into the music that I don't even remember the last 15 minutes of driving. Harder to do that when traffic is this heavy -- I do have to pay attention to the other cars.

At this time of the morning it's not too bad a drive. Lots and lots of cars but it moves at almost normal speed for the most part. I drive down the 24 to the 980 to the 880 and then get stopped at the 92 on ramp, some 30 miles from home. Now it slows down to a crawl, as we're going from two lanes to one lane to merging into the 92 while cars try to merge out. And traffic on the 92 is moving at a few miles an hour, more or less backed up from the toll plaza about four miles away.

Deep in that mire my first CD is done so I pop in the next one, the Pretty Woman soundtrack. I have a portable CD player and a car tape adapter so I can listen to music through my car's speakers. It makes changing CDs a bit of a challenge, but years of practice and I can do it with one hand without taking my eyes off the road, though it's still not easy if I'm in the middle of a turn. Anyway, it's taken a little over half an hour to get to the 92 and another 40 minutes to travel the four miles to the toll plaza. A $2 fare and then some more merging and we're on the San Mateo bridge.

The San Mateo bridge is two lanes for about four miles and three lanes for another three miles. There's work -- started a few months ago -- to add another lane to the west bound side. So on the right I can see the work going on, making good pace since they started. It may be wide enough for two additional lanes, and then they'll have to tear down the center divide if they want to have three lanes each way. Me, I'm not sure I care enough one way or the other. The extra west bound lane will help the morning commute, but an extra east bound lane won't help much since the choke point in that direction is the 92 to 880 ramp -- one slow lane.

(continued)