(In the way of DP and the writing, the choosing to believe: I wished that I could tell the old conductor how wise I had grown; I thought of how much more than an almond chocolate bar he had given me.)

Thing Two that has something to do with Thing One is John Vanderslice, whom I saw on Saturday night instead of going to the Halloween party of a former TankedStock.com colleague that is traditionally one of the hottest invitations in town and I don't even care because god DAMN.

Thing Three is the race went so well and I felt so fantastic afterwards that I'm thinking about doing the half-marathon after all. Except I won't do it alone and Cheryl's still on the fence and I seem to have some flu going on with only three and a half weeks or so left to train. But even if I end up not doing it this year, I know I could.

Thing Four is I'm starting to feel better. For real.

Turns out that my sister is wanting to upgrade in the laptop department, and what she would have sold on eBay for $800 is mine if I want it for $600. On the other hand, Todd was over Sunday afternoon, and while we were companionably eating bacon and watching a Hitler documentary on cable, a Dell commercial came on and he pointed out that for the same price, I could get a desktop system that's three times as good as what I have now. I have to think about this one. Now I am feeling greedy and I want both and since I found out today that I have an income tax refund coming to me I am trying to rationalize; this is the down side of the concept of having options just like the down side of having finally spelled out the inhospitability of the office makes me even less inclined to tarry there. I swear, if I sent you e-mail today that had more than three sentences in it, you are fully entitled to get a swelled head.

No worky today. My flu and I slept in, I messed with my turntable and then got attitude from a guy in a high-end stereo store in Ravenna where I went to try to buy a new cartridge, I hung out at H & R Block, and then I got coffee with Rohm. Deal as of Friday is that there was a temp-to-perm position coming available at CTG starting Tuesday, contingent upon the person who's doing it now getting the other job she's been the front-runner for, and that I made a good enough impression last week that they were willing to let me have first crack at it. When there was no word from the temp pimp all day today, I began to fear the run-around and cursed myself for having taken her at her word and missed my chance for a possible week out via one of the other agencies, but I called her at ten to five and she told me that all of the above is still true except for "Tuesday" read "Wednesday." OK. Here's my new thinking on the job front, and see also Thing Four above: I'd probably take something office-ladyish and not particularly fulfilling as long as it didn't poison my soul, the pay was marginally livable-on, and the job provided for downtime either mental or actual during which I could work on other stuff like diary entries and various writing projects. Various writing projects, and see also Thing Four above: the reason I'm feeling like I could get out from under this a little bit � the blaming and punishing myself, the terror of talking to people at parties who are going to ask And what do you do?, the general feeling of unworthiness around any jackass with a paystub, etc. � is that I've finally got a longer-term plan in mind, or am feeling tough enough to admit that I do, and if in the time between now and when I'm able to start putting it into action I happen to be working as an office lady at CTG or something along those lines, I won't sweat it because it's not, like, my *life*, and if anybody does want to sweat it, or to tsk-tsk or think less of me, well then they can kiss my ass. (And besides, if I did get a so-so or so-what job, don't think I wouldn't be looking for a better one as soon as my health insurance kicked in.) Finally I do not have time to be tying myself in knots over what people are going to think of me if I'm a secretary or some shit like that or if I'm only making half what I used to; the money part I'll figure out when I have to. I diminish myself by making allowances for these people, and I plain old have better things to do with my time.

I'm not going to say yet what I have in mind because I told it to a few people this weekend and was hurt when they weren't as excited about it as I was or when they said Oh cool and then let the subject drop. They're not bad people � all I'm saying is that I'm more sensitive to indifference than I thought I'd be, and I want to toughen up on my own for a while, or maybe I mean earn some money to put where my mouth is. Anyway it's something I've batted around already in this forum, so you would not be surprised and therefore could not be delighted for me. Anyway it might not be possible, I mean in an institutional sense. But until I find out that it definitively is not, I would like to eat the chocolate bar with almonds of believing that if an institutional exception could be made, it should be made for me because I am that damn exceptional. I have to start studying for the GRE. No, I have lots of time.

Man, is the bloom off the office. I'm cringing even from going down there to post this. Tomorrow I'm going to have to suck it up, though � it is time for another long session of Apply For This Job. I did find my headphones so that I can use my cd-ROM drive to listen to music I like, though, and with my nose stuffed up I cannot smell. That will help.

After Rick Bragg I started "Carter Beats the Devil," and it's so mediocre I'm not even going to finish it. Part of it is Gold's bad luck to have written a sprawling novel about a magician that I would read after "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," which comparison would make anyone look like a fumbling hack, but part of it is uncommonly sloppy writing and the kind of facile characterizations you'd expect to find in a college writing workshop rather than a bestseller with three full pages of fawning blurbs from the likes of Jonathen Franzen and, yes, the Chabonbon himself. WTF, o luminous literati? The last straw for me was when Gold used the word "punk" in a way that was not in the vernacular of his 1890's milieu. And, fine, you can remember what I wrote last time about the pedantry championship and go ahead and snicker, but to me that's a big thing, to screw up like that conveys not just carelessness but disrespect, disrespect for the material and for the reader. So now I am reading Mary Robison's "Why Did I Ever" and also meandering my way back through the Brodkey. Did anyone else notice that my man Mark Costello's "Big If" was nominated for the National Book Award? (My vote is for Naomi Watts as Vi in the movie.) Did anyone else notice that in the New Yorker review of that new Rosalind Franklin biography, the author refers to her throughout by her first name, as opposed to, say, "Crick" and "Watson"? Ooh that chapped my ass.

Did you know that it's Japanese superstition that if you have a picture of a tapir over your bed, the tapir will eat your nightmares before they get to you? My own personal superstition has more to do with chamomile tea that has bourbon in it. I mentioned to Rebecca last night that I've been sleeping not so good and she went and dug up a photo she took at the National Zoo and I put it there, right next to the one of Ingrid Bergman on Stromboli where over her shoulder she is looking at the old nuns who have stopped to stare at her. Last night I tried the tapir and the Maker's both and not only slept well but dreamed that I was going to get married to a guy whose diary I read here from time to time. No, I am not telling you who. It wasn't Tom. I was going to the city where this guy lives to visit a friend of mine, and I'm not sure how we hooked up � it wasn't a prearranged thing; my dream fianc� and I are not pals � but we did and we got along amazingly well and spent every spare minute of my visit together and then the day before I was to leave, he said, "I think we should get married," and I was staring at him like surely-you-are-joking and also, in a way that felt like vindication after all the other diary drama, I was really attracted to the idea of marrying someone I'd never even kissed. Virtuous, clean. Yet wanted. And then I had extended my trip and I was calling my mother, my sister, Karen, telling them all about the guy I'd just met in person and was going to marry in a few days' time and they all accepted the news with happy equanimity, asking me what he looked like and how tall he was and what was his job (see? It is what people ask) and did he play any sports and did he have reasonable taste in music � and I had answers to all of these � and then when I wasn't making phone calls he and I were hands-holdingly gallivanting all over that other city, going to dinner or cooking it in his kitchen, seeing bands, and hanging out with his friends, who told me that I was great for him and they were so so happy for us and also that I was a good writer, which they knew because they had read my diary too. It was so all smiles it was like a toothpaste commercial, it was crazy, and why this guy? I have no idea. Maybe the idea of getting married was planted in my head in the first place because of last night's Sopranos episode, but there's a lot of stuff there I don't want to try to figure out. Oh, except that the broads were also asking me what color his eyes were and the answer was brown and the dream fianc�'s name differs by only one letter from that of Jeanne's (former) brown-eyed man, who lives in the same city and works in the same industry. Oh, I don't know.

I had a good weekend. I'm starting to feel better. Shortly I am going to take off for Vanessa's with a videotape and a six-pack and the remains of the Dutch apple pie. Tomorrow night I'm going to see Ryan Adams. Friday I'm going to a dinner thing at Cheryl's � see, just like that, a chick friend. It was an excellent weekend, actually.