1. Speaking of MFA programs, ha ha and yes, last night was in the un-KEXP ten percent and I did happen to be listening to NPR and heard the commentary by the MFA�d writing instructor lamenting her fate as an eternal Adjunct. My thoughts: (a) Lady has a point. I want to take out thirty grand in loans for an MFA *why*? (b) It went on too long. She should have taken an editing seminar while she was in school anyway. (c) But she also sounded like someone I�d want to be pals with, and I felt bad for her that no one had coached her in how to read for radio, since she had a terrific voice and good instincts for what to do with it tonally and therefore the stilted quality of her phrasing was a shame. (d) I don�t know whether or not to be irritated by the subtext of her piece or not, which was along the lines of Waaah, I got all this expensive edumacation and now I can�t get a well-paying job in which I would put it to service. (And also irritated by NPR on account of the platform-providing, because, well, why not � it�s been a while.) I mean, do the math � how many people are there entering MFA programs every year, and how many assistant professor jobs are opening up? I can�t imagine that the program advisors are promising each year�s new meat that they have a shot at Iowa or Carnegie Mellon or whatever; it�s one�s own responsibility to get informed before embarking any course of action, and if one does not or does not take the information seriously, it is most certainly not one�s province later to complain. Not that the commentator-woman, my could-be pal, was complaining exactly � it�s funny how I want to stick up for her � but there was a rueful current of woe-is-me, and I felt shanghaied by how NPR had thought it a good use of airtime, good and beneficial for me the listener, to get woed on for a few minutes when my natural response would have been something like That sucks. Can I get you another gin and tonic? People make choices. Sometimes this does not work out the way they�d hoped. (e) So I want to take out thirty grand in loans for an MFA why?
2. As regards the pun party, my college boyfriend came up with a good one too: rent a gorilla suit and strap a hypodermic needle to its head and go as a furry with a syringe on top.
3. The Costello is good not great so far. There are typos on pages 55, 69, 107, and 115. (Me, I plan to test out of the editing seminar.) The dialogue is the weakest element � too much of it is expository, and it does not reflect the way real people really talk to each other, like you often find in made-for-TV movies where the development cycle is so short and the budget limited. The mantle of tortured heroism worn by one of the main characters is too gaudily rendered. The women might as well be mannequins, and the domestic scenarios are warmed up out of a can. The plot is beefy, though, and it�s got a nice narrative undertow � you could have predicted that Costello was a guy with big ambitions for himself, and I bet you could have predicted that his second book would be much better. I give "Bag Men" a solid B. (Ha ha, I am kidding.) It makes me want to write that pop fiction novel I had the idea for when I was working at Arson. Also it gives me another one, for a dissertation topic: Pharmacology in the Postmodern Novel. Yes?
4. I said "Friends" yesterday when I should have said "Seinfeld" but you understand my error, I�m sure. Now I have embarrassed both of us, sorry, and I will move on quickly.

Rainbow doesn�t have plain old orzo anymore. Instead they have this local (?) organic stuff, Whatever Farms, that only comes in the multicolor. Which is not ideal but fine, I bought it. The problem is that the individual colors cook at different rates, so that while the regular ones are still on the crunchy side of al dente, the "spinach" ones are globular. This is what bugs me about Rainbow, the fact that they continue to sell such a product because, hey, it�s organic. Quest For Orzo II is scheduled for tonight.

Sunday hiking was to Rachel Lake, which is about 65 miles south and east of here and which was almost deserted; all day we saw maybe 20 other people. The lake is sufficiently high up that there is still snow all around it, and on the same account we had to bag our planned-for ascent of Rampart Ridge. Hiking with a botanist and environmental scientist is so cool, like the Pop-Up Video version of hiking. I learned Oplopanax horridus and Thalictrum occidentale. At the top, after lunch, we were hacking around the area between the lake and the ridge and I looked down and caught site of my sixth-grade bracelet, Lucky Charms blue against the show, and for one ripe moment I was almost overcome with a wayward strain of gratitude at how the skinny kid with the airplane earrings could never have imagined this for herself, June in Washington where you can be wearing a halter top and running around snowfields, a deserted lake at the top of a mountain and a life where someone would sit next to her in quiet and stable companionship, handing her slices of tomato for her sandwich. The wind, the deep lake, her life � you know? I used to have this long overcoat, I got it when I was maybe fifteen and my mother called it my David Byrne coat because it fit me like the suits in "Stop Making Sense," and for many winters I wore the hell out of it and since it had come from a thrift shop and seen a lot of winters before that, in time it grew shabby and frayed at the cuffs. But I couldn�t get rid of it because I felt like myself was wrapped up in the coat, myselves, each year of me from fifteen on, and when I put it on, it was a spontaneous reunion, all the different ages of me keeping each other warm. That�s why I�m wearing the bracelet, and that�s why it was so hard for me to ratchet down to two dressers. Incidentally, and back to the hiking, the least well represented nut in a can of Planter�s Mixed is not the cashew but the pecan. (Impress your friends: peanut, almond, cashew, Brazil, filbert, pecan.) This weekend Steve and I are going camping with the Robotos. I can�t wait � potential couple friends, I mean apart from Vanessa and Popeye who have been carrying more than their share of the load. Also, after I hung out with her on Saturday and realized that she is a broad with a general outlook that is congruent to mine, Judy and the Mr. A person feels grotesquely self conscious admitting this, but you and Mr. Man or Ms. Lady really do need other dyads with whom to make social, if for no other reason than that all of you only have so many hours in the week.

I read an article on MSNBC today about the importance of staying hydrated. Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45 percent. It can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79 percent, and reduce the risk of developing bladder cancer by 50 percent. Etc. Mrs. R and Judy and I saw Todd at the New Pornographers show on Saturday night. I keep forgetting to buy the new Starlight Mints album. I am losing interest in this diary entry.

Actually, and I�m not sure quite why, w/r/t the diary I�ve been feeling under some pressure lately (read: "I�ve been putting myself under some pressure lately"). For a week now or something, longer? I can�t say for sure. I�m having that thing I alluded to yesterday where nothing I do is ever good enough � about the diary specifically and only � and where I work myself into such a panic before I type a single word that in concentrating on the ramifications I divorce myself from the action, I stand too far back from it and the things I end up writing seem forced and bloodless as if an exemplification of politeness. I feel as though in reading what I write, you will have the sense of something obligatory and fraudulent, like the exact opposite of a Mountain Goats song. That is not how I feel about the things I feel, mercy no, but I�m having some kind of disconnect, I think, making feel go write. And I can�t tell whether this paragraph in which I attempt some pharmacology of my own is any better than the ones that have caused my discontent. My discontentment lingers. I�m not sure what to do.