Short entry today I am predicting with my not-much time to write, because I have all kinds of administrative shit still to knock off, some personal-type calls to make and my Inbox to check, and then my presence is somewhere between requested and required at a reception this afternoon at 3:30. I saw the menu, and this is very OK with me. Possibly in the I Have No Shame department: this morning HD came in to look over something I�ve been pulling together over the last week or so, and as he did he said under his breath, "My, we managed to do a great job on that, didn�t we." Said me in my bright sparkly half-teasing office-girl voice � oh, I shouldn�t kid myself, you know what I said, I said, "You mean *I* did a great job." And he peered at me more closely and said, Yes, that�s true, you did. Tonight I�m home all night and tomorrow until eleven or something, and by Friday morning I am going to have my application ready for another position here at the hosp � I wrote about this, right? � that would be less monkey-like and pay accordingly.

Last night after dinner with Jeanne (color me unimpressed by the new Julia�s on Broadway), we went as per plan � Steve�s plan, thank you � to meet Steve at Linda�s for a drink and ended up running into first Rebecca, then Terry, then Julian when Rebecca summoned him via cell phone. I felt like such a scenester! Sitting around a table with people I know all kinds of different ways, all the conversations splitting off and reconnecting and recombining, everyone accumulating more jokes and references to be in on, me learning a scandalous firsthand tidbit about a married and straight-acting male star of an NBC series. I had a brief fantasy that RDG and/or Tara, possibly with Billy, were going to walk in too, which if it had happened in any combination would have made our table the de facto social hub of the entire place � Linda�s! I am gobsmacked � but no, that was too much to wish for. Rebecca got a little boozy and a lot funny. Jeanne, who is going back to Africa, was talking about malaria, and Steve told us about the life cycle of the parasite that causes it, which caused me once again to get a bad case of the googlies over him. Terry told us the gossip. Jeanne had brought with her a bag of my stuff from Todd, which irritated me because I�d explicitly asked him not to use her as that kind of envoy, and then I got irritated again because missing from the bag was one of the two books that I had explicitly reminded him he had and not missing from the bag was a mix cd � I mean, I am sure it�s terrific, because he has ostentatiously good and omnivorous taste in music, but it is not a thing I care to listen to. The book that wasn�t there, I had even provided him with its precise location in his room. Grr. It�s not worth being peeved or pouty over, it�s barely worth thinking about. I do keep wondering though when I�m finally going to run into him, not so much because I�m curious as to what will happen or that I want to check out his new hotcake as that I just want to get it over with once and for all; I am starting to feel like Ahab. I thought it could have happened at the Boss Martians, at the Tractor show last weekend, hell, at Linda�s last night, and so far it hasn�t. (If the bar was so crowded that I didn�t actually see him, would I feel a disturbance in the Force?) I thought it would be a given at Slobberbone on Saturday, but I must finally concede that I seem to be in unfamiliar waters these days, and maybe I don�t have any idea.

Not that I want one, you understand.

I have fallen off the wagon about putting the old Monitor entries back up. I think my life at the other site has stalled in late November or early December of 2001. This is mostly because of my getting fed up with the inhospitability of the basement office space and not getting over that while also not getting in gear about configuring the new laptop for dialup access to my ISP from more pleasant household locations. I�ll try to get back into it soon.

I�m feeling shallow today. Shallow and rushed. In addition to the car stereo getting stolen, it looks like an attempt was made on the car as well. To the left of the gearshift there�s a little slot that says Shift Lock Release, and the mechanism below it is scratched and bent to one side, not to mention that the reason I can see the mechanism in the first place is that the plastic base of the gearshift has been bashed up and cracked through as if hit with a hammer. I was so angry yesterday morning that I didn�t notice this � I told Steve I wouldn�t have noticed, at that point, if the car had been on fire � and also what I didn�t notice is that engine problems have manifested. The car is unholy loud when I start it and when I accelerate, and acceleration only happens slowly and with much effort. I managed to get it up to 55 and am afraid to go faster than that. So, great, either tomorrow or Saturday it�s going to have to go to the garage. The new stereo is not as nice as the old one but will do, it plays cds and all, and Car Toys gave it to me on closeout plus discounted me ten percent on parts and labor for being such a sad sack to have had my stereo stolen and car fucked with (read: "for being female"). They also quoted me $310 for a complete alarm system, including installation, and finally my anger and righteousness is ebbing to numb resignation and I am starting to think that this is not such a bad idea.

I�m also starting to gain back the weight I lost last summer. So also not a bad idea: sit-ups. Um, what was I saying about shallowness? I think this is my cue to sign off.