Dinner was good and I stayed faithful to my banana-and-grapefruit agenda by offloading all the leftovers on departing guests. Popeye's new tattoo is dope. Tonight it's Number Two then trivia, this time with the potent addition of Art. I shouldn�t be quoting Steve in here, since I haven�t asked him about that. I don�t think he�d mind, but I don�t want to give him, in asking, the concrete idea of my diary as a thing that has his words in it too, which � I know guys � could prove irresistibly provocative to his curiosity. Vanessa�s talking about abandoning her current diary and starting all over again with a new one (secret from me), and this doesn�t sound like such a bad plan, though I think I�m more of a defeatist than she is, and I still insist that this venture doesn�t constitute deep cover in the first place.

Here�s why I was ruled out of early consideration for the manager job, by the way. Although the responsibilities would be no sweat, and Dr. Fingers Blahblah knows that, the project involves grant money and the institutional deal is that you can�t have someone getting compensated at different hourly rates on one grant proposal, never mind that since both manager and managed would be salaried employees the hourly aspect is theoretical. When he originally talked to me about the project, I�d said that of course I�d be willing to do a certain amount of scut work to get it off the ground in return for the more interesting stuff like writing the articles and building the web site, but this is no can do according to the knit-separate-wearing ladies in the grant-refining department or whatever, and since I�m already here as the designated scut slut, they assumed that Dr. Blahblah was crazy when he told them that my abilities did not stop there; they figured that since my typing and scheduling and records-keeping were so well spoken of (and imagine what your life is like if that�s the sum total of the reputation that precedes you) then surely those things were my mission in life. Which is kind of like saying that if you have a great ass you must be a prostitute, but OK, they�re just ignorant, and bureaucrats to boot. And here�s the kicker: the Knit Separates are also under the impression that the job I have now is a 40-solid-hour beast and that there�s no way I could take on any other work; they�re talking about getting someone in to cover for me during the initial few hours a week I�d have to spend on project work.

Ha ha ha ha ha wait that�s not funny.

Anyway. Someone from HR just came by and asked if it was really true that I have not yet been given an explicit job offer. Why yes it is, I said. She�s going to get back to me tomorrow.

I think that if � shutup, when � it gets to the point where I�m having phone screens and interviews for other jobs, that process is going to remain sub rosa to some of the people in my life. I can�t stand the career coaching or the patronizing lectures, I resent the cheerleading and the encouragement that is of a type to make me feel like I�m finally getting the hang of the big-girl potty, and I sure as hell don�t want anybody else�s second-guessing about what I might have done wrong in talking to some hypothetical hiring manager. I am not a fixer-upper. I am not your project.

Oh, right, and this was the entry I was not writing today.

1. Read this. 2. Stand up and cheer.