Yes, I went shopping, and scurvy has been averted. I went and got Israeli couscous and a bunch of vegetables, and I adapted a recipe from one of the magazines in Dr. Blahblah�s waiting room and conjured a salad that no brag I would be happy to eat for many days in a row, corn and zucchini and red and green peppers with parsley and yr basic summertime spicy-limey vinaigrette. Nothing fancy but so tasty and so virtuous-feeling-making, less than half a cup of olive oil in the whole bowlful and the bowl is indeed many-days� big. I brought some for lunch today and had Hoovered it all up before noon. Steve liked it too. It is in his refrigerator that said big bowl reposes, and this is big too, in a way. Also last night I ate salad and I made the Nigella Lawson rhubarb-and-cornmeal cake again, since I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand. This cake, not too sweet and not all that cakey, is superb for breakfast.

Also I did a sinkful plus of dishes, many of which had been sitting so long they had dried crud on them (I did not essay the pan that had burned dried crud on it; I have my limits). Also I got DSL running at the bacon shack and then later when it turned out that it was only enabled from my account on Steve�s machine and not for the Administrator, I troubleshot and got it fixed. Also I got into a disturbing fight-unfight with Rebecca over ownership of some extension cords; disturbing because I am a person who tends to, well, remember what belongs to me, and I cannot get my mind around/accept the fact that some people can�t and that for them ownership is often debatable (then again, I am a person who is consistently taken advantage of pretty much across the board) but it was just some stupid extension cords that I don�t necessarily need and would be cheap to replace if I ever had to. I am also a person who is so stubborn that she�d rather give up what belongs to her than allow someone else the indulgence of unearned magnanimity in releasing claim to it, so please note that I am not asking for your sympathy. I think a mercenary and a masochist can have a successful love-type relationship, but as housemates they are a less winning combination, and no one is to blame for that. You live, you learn, you move in with your boyfriend.

Bishop Allen is playing at the Tractor on July 31, opening for Leona Naess and Hem. Only problem is that I don�t like Leona Naess or Hem. Am I really enough of a scenester that I�m thinking of going anyway and ditching after the first set? Stay tuned. I am so rooting for Jan Ullrich to kick some American Armstrong ass in the Tour de, I am sorry but my sympathies are like a machine in their rejection of Lance�s brand of arrogance. My cat has figured out how to climb out of Steve�s bathroom window and, thrillingly, how to climb back in. He is a man of the world now. I think I�m going to go for the combination TiVo and satellite receiver. Virginia Heffernan, by whom I was at first unmoved, is getting better and better. My boyfriend Hugo Lindgren the sportswriter is appealingly multifaceted.

First things first, and that of course will be getting a paying job that doesn�t make me want to kill myself or others. I know that. But what about longer-term, when I am forty and fifty and will need to be shoveling many hundreds of dollars a month into an IRA? The job or "career path" that will have been a damn sight better than Gastro may not withstand ye olde test of time. So what a person has to do � ha, look who�s the mercenary now � is to figure out a sustainable strategy for making decent money and having health insurance that is neither demeaning nor requires what I wrote about yesterday, the full concentration of one�s will on making the non-work hours sufficiently comfortable as to make the hell of work a reasonable tradeoff. It sounds like "What do I want to do with my life?" but really it is more like "By what means am I going to look after myself?" Or, "What can I do that is saleable?" Always remember Rosemary Clooney on A&E "Biography," saying that before she realized she could be a singer, she always knew she would be sing. Not everyone can be a singer. Yeah it�s sad, but let�s be adults, let�s suck it up and deal and move on. I have been wondering for the past few weeks whether I could tolerate being a lawyer. I�m not serious about the lawyer thing per se � then again, in the sense of making oneself saleable, that kind of seriousness may be a liability � and the proposition is chosen almost at random, but, OK, what am I good at? I can read fast and write well, I know how to construct an argument, I have an excellent memory, I can synthesize information from various sources (words cannot express how depressed I got typing that last bit, like This is what it�s come to), I can think on my feet and elegantly eviscerate those whose argument-constructing skills are not up to par, I am trained in vocal techniques and public speaking. That�s what you need, right? You don�t *need* to want to do it � you don�t need to want to do anything � you just need to be able to be competent at it, and the "it" needs to be something that doesn�t destroy your soul one day and one hour at a time. I mean, that�s it. And when you�re done with the lawyering, when you�ve made that day�s sale, you go home and sing. It�s not mercenariness, it�s pragmatism. You have your big student loans, true, but then you make your big salary and you pay them off. Schoolteachering, e.g. = big student loans, jargon-and-theory-heavy course of study that in itself might destroy my soul one day and one hour at a time, then a small salary and getting up at 4:55 a.m. like Jerry. The pragmatist says no. Or an MPH might be cool � some statistics, some policy, some research (I can write grant proposals, I can crunch numbers), some academic credibility � that doesn�t sound like it would suck. Or maybe I should do what some people have suggested and suck it up hard indeed and go study computer science because even in a stagnant job market a native-English-speaking female with social skills and documentable documentation, editorial, etc. ditto can write herself a respectable entry-level ticket.

I am feeling sad and hopeless today, I�m absolutely miserable in case you couldn�t tell and I�m barely holding it together. People are barking at me, speaking to me as if I�m kitchen help, interrupting my conversations to ask mundane questions I could reply to as well two minutes later when I got off the phone or to which they could look up the answers themselves in half that time, not apologizing for or even acknowledging the changed specs and changed minds that will require me to redo something I put a lot of care into doing right (those chemical drawings, in case � reasonably, I will admit � it occurred to you to wonder what I could be putting care = n into), assuming that I will take responsibility for the laziness or incompetencies of others, blowing off my e-mail, yet again not inviting me to the cake-occasion festivities in the conference room at noon, not saying thank you when I catch errors in things that have allegedly been vetted by people far more senior than I am, taking me for granted� This morning when Nurse Rachel followed up her perfunctory-seeming "You look nice today" with a softer and warmer, generous "Oh, but you always do," my heart broke a little bit from the unexpected swell of gratitude � at being recognized and spoken to as myself, as a person!; this is what it�s come to � and then broke a little bit more realizing what little it had taken to break it in the first place. So thank you, Nurse Rachel, and everyone else at Gastro, thanks for a whole lot of nothing.