It occurred to me last night:

1 year of Kindergarten, learning to play nice with others

6 years of elementary school, learning the basics of how to function

3 years of Junior High, learning to branch out a bit

3 years of High School, pushing myself into concepts like Calculus and Advanced Chemistry

4 years of college, learning how to manipulate electrons in every way possible, how to program in FORTRAN and C++, how to work with MathLab and PSpice, learning relativity and quantum mechanics and nuclear physics and how to design complex, robust feedback and feed-forward control systems, how to design power plants, how to calculate electromagnetic flux and how the logic of a computer chip works...

...all so I could track down pushbuttons at 4 in the morning for an ornery electrical foreman (and renowned fat fuck) named Virgil who only has a job because his brother owns the company that contracts our electricians.

If my life goes on like this for too long, I will look back wondering what the hell I did with it.

At least I got some sleep today, maybe 6-7 hours, and then lazed around in bed while watching Brazil defeat Croatia 1-0 in a surprisingly well-contested game (Croatia had several chances to equalize but just couldn't finish any of them off). I should be fairly well-adjusted to backs for tonight and at least we're progressing into checkout, so I should have a bit more to do.