� David E. Sanger, in "To Some in Europe, the Major Problem Is Bush the Cowboy" (NYT, January 23)

"There�s the rule of law, and there�s the rule of law in Texas," said Rob Martin, a 38-year-old resident in neurosurgery who had come to watch the trial today. "The rule of law in Texas is kind of cowboy law."

"It's a fine line between sanity and madness," Mr. Martin added.

� Kate Zernike, in "Trial Will Weigh Intent of Betrayed Wife Who Slew Husband" (also NYT yesterday)

The Sanger article is pretty scary: "Mr. Bush has made no secret of ranking his allies by their fidelity to his missions." What is this, pledge week at Deke? Thank goodness Poland is still our bitch � man, we�d sure be sunk without Poland.

I used the b-word, by the way. Tuesday morning. And thank you, Julie, for the note, because I had thought that yesterday�s entry was shite � or, perhaps more accurately, unedited diarrhea � and I was feeling like a dork about having posted it and now I do not. I wish you�d write more often. In your diary, I mean, not in my guestbook.

And speaking of diarrhea, I mean speaking of the diarrhea biz. There�s a doctor visiting Gastro from out of town, and Herr Doktor had asked me to recommend some ethnic restaurants, so last night I sent the dinner contingent to my favorite Indian place, where a friend of Adam�s is the chef and I�d go there in any case because the food is that damn good. First thing this morning, HD came into my office and said that the food had been amazing, that Adam�s friend had offered to make the party a selection of special dishes not on the menu, so they took him up on it and then he came out and told him all about what they were eating and various regional cuisines of India. He thanked me profusely for telling him about someplace he would not have discovered on his own and said that we had to put this the restaurant on the list of go-to establishments for Gastro business and catering, and also that since I clearly have such excellent taste I should revise that list in accordance with what I like. Wasn�t that nice of him? Then later we were chatting about the heath-care industry, joking about how it�s one of the few that promises job security since after all people are going to keep getting sick, and out of the blue he said, "See, and that�s why I was intent on hiring you for this job. You�re so bright and capable and such a pleasure to work with, you can do anything. And from here you�ll be able to make contacts and learn about lots of different aspects of medicine, so you can pick what you want to do and then get hired to do it." Wasn�t that *fantastic* of him? I got a surge of gratefulness that almost knocked me off my balance. I gave myself a deadline of this morning to assemble my application for that other job, but after three beers and in a fine expansive mood from meeting Mrs. R. last night, the last thing I wanted to do at the bacon shack was fill out forms and write a cover letter. (Maybe this afternoon, if I can rush through the Gastro stuff in front of me.) But I left the house so quickly this morning that my shuffle-through of yesterday�s mail didn�t register until I was on the highway headed north � what I did not pick up and examine was a large mailer from the hospital, hand-addressed to me. I hadn�t thought they�d be so formal about it, but I don�t know what they�d be sending me other than an offer letter and the standard new-hire packets and paperwork, do you? My sister called this morning and asked me to pick something up for her at a store in Bellevue that�s near nothing relevant to my life except my doctor�s office.

Tuesday night the question came up, in reference to my reference to "Lucky Jim": what distinction am I drawing between fiction and literature? I will think about this and get back to you later. It�s an interesting one. I went to the bookstore last night to get the next Book Club assignment and they were out, so I picked up the Amis and left it at Steve�s, who says it�s next on his list. I am enjoying the Tom Wolfe very much, by the way, I�m just not finding it all that epigraph-worthy, which is why I resorted to bacon yesterday.

Also from the Zernike article: "Her lawyers portray her sympathetically, saying she desperately wanted to keep her family together, to bring her husband of 10 years back to her, and to do so, had started going to a tanning salon, hired a personal trainer, renounced her career and even put down $5,000 toward plastic surgery and breast implants." (In this sentence, it�s the qualifier that I love: "But all indications suggest that, at least in Texas, Mr. Parnham might have considerably more success generating sympathy for a woman with a cheating husband.") When I was about to start college, a friend of my mother�s who was between the two of us in age was nostalgically and big-sisterly telling me about what I had to look forward to, including things I couldn�t even imagine. For example, she said, all those sexy professors in their thirties and forties who are beginning to get bored with their less academically inclined wifeys, all you have to do is sit in the front row and wear a short skirt and look at them admiringly and, who knows, you might end up as someone�s young and sassy second wife. Married to a tenured professor, she said, implying that for a brainy gal like me this would be The Life: summers off, free tuition� I thought about this, clinically, and I realized that not only could I not picture myself as the cute flirty long-legged coed lapping up wisdom from that front-row perch, what I did see myself as was the understanding and reliable low-maintenance first wife, the one whose fate it was to be deemed superannuated and left summarily behind. I�d be lying if I said this hasn�t affected me, if only in the random moments when I remember it, ever since.

I have a lot to think about, in what feels like a salutary and maybe paradigm-shifting way, after talking to that righteous broad Mrs. R. last night. I�ll write more later about the main subject at hand, after it will have been somewhat defused by the passage of time. Mrs. R. also has evidence that at least in some circumstances, after you�ve been at it for several years schoolteacher salaries are not awful. Next week I�m going with her and LL to an information session on the Master�s in Teaching at Antioch.

I invited one of the Gastro ladies to come out and rock with us tomorrow night, and she seemed interested and took down my cell phone number, asked if it would be cool if she brought her rockabilly-singing friend (no, not the Texan rockabilly singer of my former acquaintance). I hope she shows � don�t tell her about my diary, OK? And am I the only person on the planet who remains unmoved by Coldplay?

This makes four days in a row of diary writing. First time in two months. Things are good. I�m happy. I am wishing you a lovely weekend.