� Vanessa, in e-mail to me yesterday afternoon (�Fess up, Vanessa, you knew you were going to get quoted, right?)

In diary limbo there is half an entry from yesterday which around 4 pm I titled "Slightly crabby entry I never got around to finishing" but then never got around to posting. Despite the lag time between this one and the last, this is for the best. Vanessa�s quote didn�t fit with it anyway. Vanessa�s quote doesn�t exactly fit with today�s, either, or with how I am feeling today but, I think, not in a bad way.

It�s 4:30 in the afternoon. This is what happens to my diary when it looks they�re going to want to hire me here full-time. Hooray, right? I have grown to be a cynic in these matters and I will believe it when I see my health insurance forms, but I have a pseudo-interview with the hiring manager tomorrow morning and she�s already let slip that Dr. Big Cheese of Gastro seems to have bonded with me in a way he never has with anyone who�s previously worked in this position. I do not count my chickens etc., and I will confess here and here only that a few days ago when Dr. BC made a remark that was at least ignorant and perhaps intolerant, I sat tight and sat cute and did not call him on his ugly attitude, because, well, I want a job. After I am drawing a real paycheck I will repair my karma by making a generous donation in his name to some local sexual-minorities charity.

The boy thing is still very good. Last night, after dinner with a passel of his friends, there was another little bobble which I�m not going to go into � because I don�t think it�s a big deal � except to say that it fell into the general department of Girl On Pedestal. Argh. But in a weird way the same old-same old of the GOP crapola was reassuring, because it makes me see that Steve is but a regular normal guy with the same hang-ups of most regular normal guys and that therefore he and I are embroiled in a regular normal situation, also because it adds a little ballast to the craft, slows it down a bit so on the one hand you are no longer skimming blissfully over the water but on the other hand you can fucking steer. And, oh wow, he was so so nice to me at the dinner-with-friends thing, he kept checking to make sure that I was all right with the social onslaught, and, I told Vanessa, touching me so that people could see, in a way that was not creepy or proprietary but just unapologetically declarative. I was happy.

By the way, no, I do not speak, read, or even vaguely understand German. But I am a renaissance chick, and if anyone name-checks the Baader-Meinhof gang at me I can name-check Gerhard Richter right back. Word to your mutter. Oh, and by the way, I�m going to start telling people, when they ask, that I was an Art History major. This is because I think I get too hung up on the English-major thing, I assume that people are going to identify me by it � which, to be fair, they very often do, making some asinine crack like, "Oh, I�d better watch my grammar around you then" � and this engenders an interesting combination of fatalistic defensiveness and reflexive good-hostessly giving the people what they want, acting like they seem to expect a former English major would act and at the same time feeling like that�s partly something to feel bad about. Not good! So bring on the Richter.

In the most recent issue of Pediatric News, an article admiringly referred to Laura Bush as having "campaigned vigorously on behalf of literacy." As if that�s such a bold and lonely, courageous stand, you know? Argh. Also, last night in Number Two�s waiting room (lobby?) I was looking at a copy of Teen People that encourages its young readers to love themselves no matter whether their body type is that of a Britney, a J. Lo, or a Jennifer Aniston. What a relief that today�s young women are receiving such positive messages about diversity and inclusion. OK, cranky media critic signing off. Sorry this entry is so stingy � in this new era of (relative) administrative dedication, I�m still working out the kinks.