lists

i heard a story on This American Life the other day about this middle-aged dude who had kept a list of everything he'd ever done for some absurdly long period of time, 1953 to the present or something. he developed this elaborate coding system and had a calendar on his desk at home where he'd mark everything down and make little check marks next to it to signify how many times the particular event had happened each day. he had a funny, high-pitched nasal voice and a shitty sounding girlfriend named cheryl, and it was just kind of heartbreaking because he was convinced that all of his list making was going to amount to something, when really... nobody knew what half the shit on his lists was referring to, and even if they did it was all just normal life stuff, like "went to store," "talked to shitty girlfriend cheryl on the phone" etc. though he did mark down every time he had sex, which i guess could be interesting in retrospect (but probably only for him and probably only in old age). he also used colors to signify whether various events were bad, mediocre, or great. nobody could really understand his motivation in keeping the lists, but i could kind of see where he was coming from. i find it slightly freakish that there are entire months of my life that are blurry or completely forgotten, not because i was on drugs or blocking out trauma or something, but just because 28 years of memories are a lot to fit into the brain compartment, and stuff slides out the back sometimes, what can i say?

my life is (i hope?) not quite as routine as this old dude but it's still easy enough to squish the past year or so into one representative day. i'm using a hard to crack code to stay true to the artistic vision of lenny the list maker (not his real name). BUT one of the things that i'll forget should i ever feel the need to refer to this list is what the F the codes meant so i'm just going to provide details as well.

ZZZ (hit snooze button) -- x x x
GRR (yell at cat) -- x x
SHWR (duh) -- x
REE (receive enraging email) -- x x x x x x x x x x
IM (instant message) -- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
HA! (laugh at boss) -- x x x x x
ET (eat lindt truffle) -- x x x
BOOZ (drink adult beverage) -- x x x
PET (lavish attention on now well behaved cat) -- x x x x x
AWW (kiss tate) -- x x x x x x x
TPB (watch trailer park boys on DVD) -- x x
RNY (read new yorker article, attempt to remember contents) - x

umm i think that might be about it. sundays include receiving a call from my mother and let's face it, at least 2 days include more than 3 Xs in the BOOZ category. this one's for you, lenny.