Yoo-hoo! It's me. I've almost completed Pourquoi Moi, and now I'm happy to start my newest project. It's been on my mind for quite some time. I'd like to introduce you all to Dr. Zack Addy's clinical diary.

It seems like a slow start, this chapter, but I hope that you'll have the patience to read on. And please, if you have a review, leave it. It's much easier to correct mistakes early on.


Saturday, September 24

For the first time in my life, I am writing a diary. To be precise, it is a clinical diary, for Dr. Teng. She wants me to write it so that she can go over it during our weekly sessions. She thinks that it'll help me realize how my actions can impact others.

Of course, I have always known that my actions will impact others. We live in a causal world. If I knock a cup over, it will hit to floor and break. Unless it's plastic, but that's irrelevant in my example.

However, since Dr. Teng's instructions are part of my outpatient treatment, I suppose I must continue with my clinical diary.

My name is Zachary Uriah Addy. Most people call me Zack. I turn twenty-six years old this coming March, and I have just been released from the psychiatric hospital.

In the past two years, I have had 436 therapy sessions, four roommates, and six surgeries. The surgeries are mostly for my hands. They didn't look half bad after all the swelling from the skin grafts went down, but they do look like flesh-colored Play-doh was molded over a wire skeleton. Considering that they have looked worse, I suppose I must be grateful towards the plastic surgeons at Georgetown University Hospital.

I am sitting on the floor of my new apartment. Technically, it's mine, but Hodgins paid the down payment for the lease. He says I can pay him back later, when I get a job again. The apartment has one bedroom, a kitchen, one bathroom with a shower, one bathroom without a shower (I never quite understood why realtors like to say "one and a half baths". It is not half a bath, it is simply a bathroom with only a toilet and sink) a living area, and a smallish room that I suppose is for me do work in.

He and Angela also took my old furniture out of the self-storage for me, which was nice of them. Everything is fine, except for my old mattress, which smells like mold because of water damage. I will sleep on the sofa and buy a new one once I can pay for it.

They also stocked my kitchen for me, which was nice of them, too. It's all stuff that people eat to stay alive. All crackers, ramen, microwave dinners and peanut butter. There's a chunk missing from the Skippy because Angela had a craving for peanut butter and took a spoonful.

Oh yeah. Angela is pregnant now. She and Hodgins got married; they came to tell me at the psychiatric hospital the day after the ceremony.

I think I'll go to sleep now. Tomorrow morning I will connect the TV and hope that I get cable.


Sunday, September 25

I do have cable.

I watch Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel while I eat Ritz crackers for breakfast. Jamie and Adam are dropping an old Buick from a 125 foot tall crane to simulate a real life collision. They decide that the damage isn't too bad, but I know for fact that there are several variables that makes their experiment impractical for testing real-life situations:

The Buick is an old model, and therefore was held up to less rigorous safety standards. The damage may/may not be equivalent to what was seen.

The steel in the Buick's body has gone through considerable wear. No doubt it has softened and corroded with time.

They failed to account for the basic human instinct to attempt to swerve out of the way. Therefore it is a head-on collision, while most collisions do not impact the head of the car at 180 degrees exactly.

The Buick was dropped on concrete, which is harder than asphalt. Also, the amount of deceleration on the Buick is greater because the Buick is impacting the earth, which weighs approximately 25 quintillion tons. Even an emptied tractor trailer weighs about 30,000 pounds.

The Buick is pulled to earth by gravity, which means that it has a constant acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared. This number is obviously flawed, as not only is acceleration in the average car either more of less than 9.8 meters per second squared depending on the driver, but acceleration is not constant in real life situations.

I have several other objections, but I suppose Dr. Teng doesn't care much for physics. Not many people do, which I find illogical. Everything is based on physics.

After breakfast I go downstairs to use the ATM. They have unfrozen my assets, but I still have to present three forms of identification before I can make any withdrawals. I walk for four blocks to find a Bank of America, and wait in line for 13 minutes so that I can put $250 in my wallet.

I go home and watch more TV. They have this new show on the SyFy channel called Warehouse 13. I like it, even though most of the artifacts are physically impossible. Even Star Trek was good enough to bother trying to explain warp drive. (Fact: physically impossible. No object can travel faster than the speed of light. It is like trying to reach absolute zero.) Myka and Peter, from the show, remind me a little of Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth. I wonder how they are.

I have dinner and lunch together at the diner downstairs. The waitress pats me on the back as she brings me my pot roast. I think it's because I appear to be lost, or lonely. I feel that I am quite impervious to that notion, however.

I go home. Unpack a few boxes. Take a shower (note to self: buy shampoo), and curl up on my sofa to sleep.

Before I shut down my laptop, I must remind myself to wear something that exudes maturity tomorrow. It'll be Monday, and I have to go to work. My job is at the Jeffersonian, and they like to take themselves seriously there.

*Please note that I have decided to write parts of my diary in the present tense. This is because I dislike the past tense. See, the past tense is used to tell a story of things that can no longer be altered truthfully. (unless we ever achieve time-travel, but I find that physically impossible. Wormholes pinch off in the center, for starters…)

The present tense does not lie. It states action. And that is why I choose to write of events in the present tense.


Monday, September 26

I don't have a job at the Jeffersonian.

More later. I feel that I cannot write at present.