Here is something I forgot to tell last time: Sunday night, after I had written about my Franzen dream, I fell asleep and had another one like that where I was a player in the narrative. Steve and I were here in the bacon shack, and he was going around picking stuff up and putting it into boxes. He seemed very un-Stevelike in several aspects of his behavior � his deliberation, his mien of what seemed to me somberness, his new appetite for this kind of household organization � and I also seemed unlike myself. I was acting like a whiny little kid, trailing after him and chattering and demanding attention and trying to preventing him from doing his work. He barely noticed me, and I was angry that this stupid thing with the boxes was preoccupying me. Then it occurred to me that everything he was putting into the boxes was mine, and that he was doing it because I was dead and wouldn�t be needing it anymore; I realized that I was dead, I was dead and I wasn�t really me at all.

I know: whoa, dude. Also, Monday night Steve said he might like to read the entry with the New Yorker bitchery in it, which gimmick I had mentioned I was working on. "That would mean I�d be reading your diary," he explained, and if I was ever gladder already to have a drink in front of me I must say do not remember it. Yes, I agreed into the liquor as my life flashed before my eyes. Steve: "And I might even want to read some other entries besides that one, you realize." I know: WHOA, dude. He didn�t raise the subject again that night and, ha ha, you can bet your sweet ass I didn�t either, and maybe he didn�t actually mean it and maybe SMcP-like he�ll forget all about it and maybe he did and he won�t and the tourist population of my own little corner of mediocrity is about to go up by one. During the same booze stop, talking about the publishing company, I realized that from many years ago I have another story about a place where I killed at the interview and I never got a callback, a story that�s better because it involves the receptionist transferring my calls to the recruiter�s desk and the recruiter hanging up on me. Steve liked that one and was the right combination of amused and sympathetic, and it�s still the case that the publishing job would have been slumming and I do suspect the Assistant, whom I�d bet money is the one who scuttled me, would have cast herself as a combination of Anne Baxter to my Bette Davis and Jennifer Jason Leigh to my Bridget Fonda � there was a central issue to the dynamic between us that I�ve been dancing around because it�s not polite to imply certain things about oneself even if they are undeniable facts � but none of it alleviates the deep bruise to my dignity that I evidently don�t merit a courtesy call.

I�m finalizing travel plans for Thanksgiving week to go visit Catharine and be in a position to take side trips to visit my sister and some other people too. I have my flights all picked out and have planned the trip for months � and holy cats, how amazing is it going to be to take a year off from hostessing? � but the reason that I�m having trouble pulling the trigger has to do with temp agencies. I�ll explain for those of you who have never had the pleasure of working with one, calls for temps during Thanksgiving week are by far the heaviest of the year; something like 90% of companies who ever ask for temps need them then. (When I first moved here, I worked at a temp agency.) And the agencies want to be able to give the companies what they ask for or the companies will take their temp-seeking business elsewhere, so if you rely on an agency or agencies for work, you must be available during Thanksgiving week or chances are you�ll be dropped from their active roster. So if I started taking temp assignments now, they�ll dry up after I get back; if I might need to rely on them for a few or oh god several months after I return, I should not allow myself to be placed on the active roster until the beginning of December. Which means another month-plus of not much at all. Catharine asked me what I was going to do with my time, and I liked that, I mean the implication that there ought to be an answer. I guess I should study Latin, spend a lot of time in libraries. Yes, Latin. I don�t know, I�m trying not to dwell on the surface parallels between my state of mind last year around this time and now, I�m trying to force myself to realize that it�s not the same at all.

Right?

Of course. For one thing, ahem, I am talking about it here. I�m also in a bad mood because I think my short bangs look dumb and my teeth are yellow and I am loooonely and I�ve become convinced that overnight, middle-age spread has hit me without mercy (hey, what about Latin + gym?) and I�m also stuck in one of those funks of mine where I compare what I�m doing to what other people are doing � glittery and snarkful media-monkey blogs or else the kind that are full of My Readers portent and info on their authors� pharmacological prescriptions � and even though I don�t want to do the other kind I still can�t help beating myself up for not doing it anyway. Is that totally fucked up? Why is it so easy to second-guess myself?

I�ve been watching the World Series of Poker on ESPN2 � I was boycotting, and as far as I�m concerned, Limbaugh quit just in time. Norman Chad, a football columnist I like, is one of the commentators, and the coverage is great, though I could have done without the hokey Asian flute music accompanying the profile of Scotty Nguyen; did Phil Ivey�s feature hip-hop? At what they call the featured table, there are cameras set up so you can see what cards each player has in the pocket, and then the network updates the onscreen odds that each one will win as the community cards are revealed. I swear, it�s hella suspenseful. Today an amateur player, an accountant from Knoxville, took out his idol Johnny Chan, and then later, ill-advisedly betting big with eights against a Costa Rican pro whom he didn�t know had aces, the same guy came up lucky as hell on fifth street and won a couple hundred grand. It is thrilling. There are a lot of commercials, but I kind of need them, just to regulate my heart rate. I will not be making any bets like that at Julian�s tomorrow. I TiVo�d the coverage and I was going to put it on a videotape so that I could loan it to people I know who might be interested, but then it occurred to me that not only would none of them ever make a gesture like that on my behalf � see, this is one of the things that Steve is finally getting through my thick hostess-martyr�s skull � but also that anyone who�s interested would be someone I play against. So ha!

Greyhound wants $160 and eighteen hours to get me from Morgantown to Allentown. That�s not going to happen either. Ha again!