When I got into my car late yesterday morning for what was supposed to be a quick stint of shopping and errand-running and a trip to the DMV (that�s foreshadowing, kids), I discovered that while I was on vacation the battery died. So, OK. I revised the day�s to-do list � the stepladder would have to wait � and I walked to Broadway instead in search of a few days� groceries and also jumper cables so that Steve could charge it up, I figured, when he got home that night. No jumper cables at Fred Meyer, no jumper cables at the out-of-my-way gas station to which the Fred Meyer clerks sent me, no jumper cables at the next two gas stations, by this time I had incidentally added to the unabridged version of my shopping list some inserts for my red boots because my feet were killing me, then finally I found the jumper cables. Then to the DMV on throbbing foot and with heavy bag, where not only did I have to wait an hour and a half to have my picture taken but also had to spend the wait, in the jam-packed, no-public-restroom holding pen, getting miserable and unnerved because I was sitting next to, and could therefore observe the interactions between, a semiretarded woman with semideformed legs and a weeping psoriasis on her face and the older, toothless, filthy and booze-reeking dude with whom she is apparently in some kind of sadomasochistic relationship. I got home much later than I�d wanted to, with zero energy and in a poisonous mood, and in an attempt to stave off an ulcer I resolved to write the day off as best I could and jump into the find-a-temp-job, start-looking-for-a-real-job thing first thing in the morning. I haven�t been sleeping so good since I got back � whether this is due to the angst implied by the hyphenated terms in the previous sentence or merely to the fact of my corporeal self taking a bit to reacquaint itself with its accustomed time zone, I dunno � and when I woke up for good early this morning, I thought I�d kill the predawn hours productively by going online and reading some news and maybe catching up with the blogs and diaries I like. But there was no internet connection and nothing I tried was getting me any closer to one. I told Steve that I couldn�t sleep and I couldn�t surf � and I couldn�t turn a light on and read, you see, because the bacon shack is laid out like a railroad flat, with doorways but no doors between the rooms � so I was going to a coffee shop for a while to kill time. I meant this informatively, but over my assurances of same he felt obliged to rouse himself and thrash around with the computer for a while, which was to no avail and which perceived failure put him in even a crappier frame of mind than he might have been getting up at that hour in the first place. He had to leave early for work because he�s in the middle of a test pass so it fell to me call D-Link about the p.o.s wireless router that�s been working erratically since he bought it and that we naturally assumed was the cause of the latest issue too. As he was leaving I got the idea to phone the ISP just to be sure that everything looked fine to them and in case the chimps at D-Link, with whom Steve has grappled in the past, tried to pass the buck. Turns out that what we�re dealing with may indeed be a router problem, may be a sticky syndrome of which the lemon router is one discrete element, but whatever it is begins with a modem issue that arose overnight and with no warning, which neither the ISP tech support guy nor the DSL tech at Qwest has ever heard of before and which they both doubt that the new modem Qwest is sending � it may be here on Thursday � will address, but, hey, after going on two hours on the phone they both had other calls on hold that they had to get to, and I�m supposed to try it anyway. No internet access from home, no way to send e-mail or dig into job listings, until at least then.

Bonus points: one of the people who pulled cat-sitting duty while Steve and I were away (not Vanessa) deflowered TiVo, as it were, and now, despite the three-part documentary on Slobodan Milosevic I made it tape, the hard drive is crazy for porn. It tapes dirty movies all day long that we�d have to pay to watch, which on top of everything else smells of poor sportsmanship. Also, the post was a little loose on one of the earrings I wanted to be wearing for my driver�s license picture, so I Superglued it. I think I didn�t let it dry long enough, though, because now the thing is stuck in place in my ear.

Hi. So how is everyone?

(And no, it�s not an option to go to some internet caf� and make it my home base for the time being � though I will do a drive-by to post this entry from one later today � because I can�t concentrate and I wouldn�t have my stuff around me and it wouldn�t reflect very well on me to be making contact with temp agencies from my ISP�s unprofessional-looking web client that has recently been dropping messages and that often gets tetchy with attachments. I sound defensive when I say these things, I know, and sorry if it�s not you against whom I�m defending myself, but the truth is that maybe another insomnia factor, I will attempt to say this delicately, is a set of accusations and challenges that add up to me being perfectly content in the condition of mediocrity, in fact looking for excuses to swaddle myself in it and thereby to put my appetitive brain to dumb numb sleep. Total bullshit and what can I even *say* against something like that, how can I counter it? I�ll let you know if I ever put together a plan. But anything that requires such sustained effort, so many aspects of myself working together to lift that bale, I don�t want to do in a half-assed manner, period. Call me a perfectionist if you want to, but I need to feel like I�m in control, like it�s me at the wheel of this jobthirsty machine, the car and the driver again, and I�d rather lose a few days or a week of time than engage in the kind of half-assery that is also no damn good for my attitude and, if I may conjecture, whatever fruits it may or may not bear. Go big or go home, Nicole used to say. In for a penny, in for a pound. I am the boss of me. And besides, it�s not like I can�t make myself busy cleaning and organizing and storage-lockering and settling into the bacon shack anyway. It�s not even like I should feel like I have to defend myself, but as I say, alas, I do.)

I ate a candy bar for breakfast. I�m watching a true-crime documentary. I�ll get a stepladder and a trunkload of groceries later, and I�ll get a job eventually. In the meantime, my world is going to undergo some serious shrinkage over the next few months. It�s a bit scary now but I think once I adjust I will feel exactly the opposite.

Discuss amongst yourselves: I�m wasting my time writing in this diary, writing at all and not getting paid for it, and I�m arrogant to assume that what I write and how I write it is not lousy � not mediocre. I am, in fact, in a perverse way consoled by the inexorable downward spiral of my professional life. I resist willfully both the concept and the application of ambition. I�m in denial imagining that the things I might be good at (and then again might be mediocre at), my particular set of skills and the resume bullet points that I alone can call my own, will in the post-tech-bust marketplace ever earn me adult-type remuneration or anything but a dead-end job working with callow 22-year-olds. I�m destroying my credibility. I should pick a lane � any lane, because it�s hubris to wish for satisfaction or fulfillment and besides almost everyone sells out at some point, there�s no shame in that � and stay in it. I read too much as an escape from reality. I should be studying my schoolgirly heiney off for the GRE and LSAT if only in the manner of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I should put away childish things, starting with the diary, and figure out a Plan for a-t r. and a swaggering salary and a career path and an easily distilled and sound-bitable self-rationale, and in the meantime I should be taking classes in math, science, programming, etc., to thin me out and focus me so that later I will have an easier trip down the funnel. Submitted, Dear Reader, for your consideration.

Argh. And a sigh of abjectness. I want a glass of water. Or, try this, is my resistance to all of the above a defense mechanism � said the once and future scientist? � because I can�t find a way to instantiate any of it except in the context of self-recrimination? Like: What was I thinking, I should have been doing that type of thing all along, I�m such an idiot, I�m the embodiment and result of failure � and if I thought that way I�d have to give up hope, or something, give up something that I think I have and I think I think I need. Or, wait, have I ever failed in my life to rise to the occasion of self-recrimination? Meaning, am I perhaps overeager for a new way in which to kick myself? But if that�s what I want, why does it chap my ass so mightily in this case that someone else wants to get in on a game that after all is already in play?

Water consumed. Don�t get me wrong, I�m not depressed or anything. I don�t think I am, I mean any more than I�m hard-wired for and is normal for me. I�m just thinking, and also, delicately, I am being led to think, and also I am not in the securest psychological place crash-landing back to Seattle and back to the Square One of no job in the midst of having to wrap my consciousness around the fact that there�s this new place I�m supposed to call home that � ha, this is ridiculous � is no such thing, it is somebody else�s home and I have somehow crash-landed into that too. It seems to me that there are situations for which the scientific method is not the right tool for the job. Though what do I know, I guess that�s debatable too.

Athens was gross and Santorini was vile, hilariously vile on every level, so soul-depleting that we gave up on it and on the reputedly still more disco-centric Mykonos and fled back to where we�d stayed on Crete � Matala, on the south central coast, a two-hour bus ride from the ferry dock at Heraklion. And, ohh, Matala was pretty close to perfect. We were a ten-minute walk from the regular beach and a 30-minute walk + hike from the nude beach, we ate yogurt with honey and moussaka and grilled octopus and, every day, Greek salad. I read a lot. Steve rented a BMW motorbike and we went to check out the Minoan palace at Knossos. And although there were a few minor and not so minor skirmishes, we did not kill each other, hooray. A waiter swiped my wallet but I cancelled the credit cards before anything funny happened with them. I liked Germany more than I expected to � I loved Berlin � though the food that was not pastries was generally not to my liking. In German sausages are wurst and other less processed meat items are fleisch, and since it�s the latter that gets translated, in English, as "meat," Germans are entitled to say with a straight face that they don�t eat much meat although at the same moment the table may be laden with five or more different varieties of sausage. Early in my stay I almost provoked an international incident by including sausage in the broader category of "lunchmeat" � ha ha, but seriously: don�t make my mistake. I�m never very good at talking about vacations; it all seems so presumptuous and I get bashful. Blah. The point is I�m back.

I honestly don�t think I�ll regret it on my deathbed that I spent this x amount of time, however long, too long, too much, composing this diary entry instead of doing calculus or something. Really, I don�t. Maybe that�s hard-wiring too.

Hey, I just realized: happy belated anniversary, Dear Diary! We are a year older and a year � uh, let's just leave it at a year older.