I am stepping into the wank tank to see "Cremaster 3" tonight, all by my lonesome because Steve is going out with the Somerset and Vanessa and Popeye are grilling and chilling. Vacation plans are afoot, they are gaining a foothold � we have a tentative ferry schedule for the Greece leg of the trip and Steve is waiting to hear back from a Greek travel agent who can allegedly procure these tickets ahead of time, and also he has done some detective work and figured out that the cheapest way to get between Frankfurt and points east may be on the Hungarian national airline, Malev, though the fact is the enterprise is going to cost a small fortune, there�s no way around that and I just have to keep reminding myself that you get what you pay for. And that is enough about that. But back to something I was addressing yesterday, sort of, over the weekend I was surprised to learn that Steve disagrees with me about e-mailed vacation bulletins, Dear Friends and Family, Well, after a long flight and some travel mishaps about which I will now go into great detail and characterize as "zany," the wonderful vacation we had been dreaming of is finally underway, and after these 17 amazing hours in a foreign country I think I�m beginning to understand what it means to have an international consciousness, I�ve learned and grown so much already that I searched out this internet coffee shop so I could spend all afternoon telling you about it. Not that Steve�s would be arrogant and idiotic like that like most people�s are, but I am guessing that in your online life you have received more than a few of those, that the genre to which I am referring is not unfamiliar to you. I am not inclined to send if-this-is-Tuesday-it-must-be-Chios notes for a number of reasons.

1. I�m on vacation and during this time I wish to be a hedonist and minimize my responsibilities and social obligations. No offense � I hope you�d do the same and forget all about me too.
2. The time I spend looking for an internet hookup and then composing and sending my mail is time that I cannot spend, for instance, on a beach or getting from one place to another so I can see as much as possible.
3. The gesture, or the product thereof, always feels inorganic and perfunctory to me. If it were you who went away, I�d be far more gratified if over the next few months of our acquaintance you busted out from time to time with a conversationally relevant tidbit that you suddenly remembered. Then I could feel good too because I would have played a role in keeping your vacation close for you, an ever-renewing pleasantness, the gift that keeps on giving.
4. What I was saying yesterday about homogenizing the way I write and the things I write about in the service of a note that�s aimed at my sister, Vanessa, some chumps I worked with a few years ago, and everyone along that continuum. Icky.
5. Who the hell am I to think that anyone gives a rat�s ass about my impressions of the Frankfurt airport? Please. This has to do with "inorganic and perfunctory" in another sense, the one of noblesse oblige. And hey, we are friends, cupcake, you and me, and I don�t want to treat you otherwise. Ask me stuff when I get back, and this way I can also do you the courtesy of responding to you as a human being, a particular human being with whom I have a particular relationship, rather than as the digital version of Occupant.

I�m rereading "Big If." Today is a high-water mark of short skirtishness as far as my hospital-professional dress code goes. The weekend had in it mildew and oysters and also swimsuit shopping; I hate to get all "Cathy" on you but man oh man do I hate swimsuit shopping. I don�t even have all that fractious a relationship with my bod � overall I would rate it as OK; it doesn�t launch any ships but it serves me fine, no one runs screaming. Yet the sight of myself in almost every item I try on fills me with suicidal revulsion. Which makes-no-senseness would be amusing, if not for the suicidal revulsion. I tend to look for a plain tank suit, navy blue or black, that feels like the beachwear equivalent of tough love, stern but for my own good, and maybe I�ll keep a bikini around for when I am feeling confidently reckless or it is dark. For years I had a gorgeous, forgiving dark blue Bill Blass number, cut very low in the back, that was just perfect, but last time I hauled it out I had to acknowledge that the elastic had gone round the bend and it was time for it to be retired. Since I hate the shopping so much and because I develop such emotional attachments to my clothes as I did to the Bill Blass, for instance, that taking up with another schmatte while still I grieve feels incorrect, I did not look for a new tank suit in March or April or whenever you�re supposed to do that. Also my sister had sent me an orange one that looked like it would fit and that I didn�t figure out until a few weeks ago did not, so without a reliable one-piece I had to suck it up and hit the racks on Sunday. Of course the first thing I figured out was that I should have sucked it up months ago. The Bon Marche and Nordstrom had taken all the swimsuits off the floor to make way for fall clothes, and at Ross I was s.o.l. even on the clearance racks unless I was at least a size 16 and favored hot pink. I got desperate and went to Old Navy, where past experience had taught me that I am exactly between S and M in their beachwear department, and I do mean exactly � I found a black tanksuit, silent in its betrayal of the desperation that had brought me to its vendor except for a weird horizontal bra-like fastener across my back, and in the dressing room I spent about twenty minutes trying on first one and then the other, debating whether slight tightness about the ass or slight bagginess about the ribcage was the bigger fashion faux pas. After Solomonic deliberation I decided on the former, the latter is just vanity (right?), and I was on my way to the next errand when it occurred to me to check J. Crew (I know I know I know), and there I found a worthier successor to dearly discarded Bill, also in black, with the low back I like and the Ava Gardnerish halter tie I like even better, and although again I was middle-sized and the suicidal revulsion was still in active play I could accept intellectually that this was as good as I could hope to find and that with swimsuits as with most other things, you get what you pay for. I had wanted a red two-piece but oh well, the orange I�ve already got is close enough, and now I have two, one that�s styley and one that I can leave in the trunk of my car for when I simply must go jump into Lake Washington on my way to brunch or something; more to the point, now the ordeal is behind me. While I was out shopping, I got so dehydrated that when I arrived at Steve�s afterwards I drank four glasses of water one right after the other, I got dehydrated because I wanted to get the revulsion over with as soon as possible down to the second so I did not pause in my endeavor long enough to bend down at a water fountain or to have to increase the apparent magnitude of the endeavor�s grimness by means of contrast to a moment of self-refreshment and pleasure. The sick part is that at the time, that degree of punitiveness made perfect sense and I believed, in a sense that was both painful and exhilarating, that I was getting my swimsuit-shopping due, that this was the way, for me, it was supposed to feel. (Draw that, Cathy Guisewhite.) Anyway. I now have a reasonable bathing suit to take on vacation, hooray.

Vacation update: Steve reports that apparently the terrific fare on Malev was, like, a five-minute internet-only sale or else a database error, and also that this Kiki person sitting on her ass in Athens has better things to do than respond to the e-mailed inquiries of commission-paying would-be customers. The itinerary, alas, remains flaccid.

Oh my god, did I just go into that level of detail about swimsuit shopping? Kill me now. Or, no, take pity on me, because sometimes all I am doing here is killing time. I swear. I am sorry. It�s a temporary condition.

(6:13 pm) Point-to-point communication to guestbook-signing John: I am astounded, do you think I was serious when I wrote that? How could you think I was doing anything other than trying to make fun of myself and my suspicion and defensiveness? What on earth is this site coming to, and what kind of nasty twat do you think I am? Or, "John," are you, cryptically, yesterday's slammer-on? Wait, don't answer that, nobody answer anything. I already have enough of this business in my real life, and the last think I want is to be fomenting it in the diary. Blagh. Fuck, fuck, shit. Black clouds blowing in, chance of heavy precipitation before midnight. Dear Diary, sometimes you are deeply not worth it.