Fun facts from the Economist: 1. The "level of wealth at which the demand for democracy has grown irresistible in [several] societies around the world" equals an income of approximately $6300 per person per year. 2. According to one survey, more than 1% of the population of S�o Paulo has suffered a bullet wound. Misspelling in one of the placards at the El Greco exhibition at the Met: "annointed."

We�re in the home stretch, kids. It�s Sunday morning and I�m typing from on board an America West flight to Phoenix en route to another one to Pittsburgh, which as a hub destination was about three hundred dollars cheaper than going all the way to Morgantown on a more illustrious carrier. My burden includes three bottles of Northwest pinot � though it occurred to me at Pete�s last night while I was picking them out, I�m not even entirely sure that we�re having turkey � my running clothes and shoes so I can while away some productive hours when both Catharine and Julie are at work, and measurably fewer cares than I had around this time last week. Home stretch, seriously, I mean it. I�m dunking airline-issue gingerbread biscuits in my watery coffee and wondering whether the big fellow sitting next to me is in fact my former landlady�s husband, the one who threw out all my new clothes. The New York leg of this month�s jet-setting went really much better than I�d expected it to, and even though I managed not to cross paths with anyone I�d hoped and intended to while I was there, I am a resourceful scrounger and I still spent more waking hours of my visit hung over than not. At one point, I was saved from joining some people onstage for karaoke � one word: Meatloaf � only by the deus ex machina of a sudden and severe case of the hiccups. Jesus. If you want to know how many Yuenglings it takes before I become persuadable that performing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is anything but an appalling and ruinous idea, the answer is about nine. So I�ve packed a bunch of books, too, and I am looking forward to a little less rock and roll for the next week or so, long runs and ditto talks � and, friends, I can guaran-damn-tee you I�m going to be enjoying the sleep of the just.

From the Win Some, Lose Some department: Last night Steve and I met Stephen at Shorty�s for the debrief and some Ms. Pac-Man before dinner at Brasa. The check came and I realized I didn�t have my wallet, so we went back to Shorty�s to see if anyone had turned it in, and it was right there under the table, where it must have fallen out of my purse. On Thursday night I mistakenly set the alarm for 8 pm rather than 8 am and on Friday morning woke up, yes, hung over with barely enough time to get to JFK and my plane. I threw everything into the suitcase and was out of the room in five minutes flat. I couldn�t find my glasses, though � what is it with Manhattan and my fucking glasses? This makes three times � but I wasn�t worried because I knew they were in the room somewhere and I figured I�d call the hotel and arrange to have them sent to me. But when I called that night, the maid had not found them and neither had the room�s new tenant, and the front desk guy kind of read me the riot act for suggesting that the maid had either (a) pocketed them or (b) not done her job well enough. I hated him for putting me on the stammering defensive, because although yes, I am a scatterbrain and I often put my glasses down somewhere and end up bumbling around looking for them, the fact is they were in the room when I left it and sometime after that they disappeared. Oh well, I will buy new glasses if I have to, they�re rather non-cheap but they�re not worth flagellating myself over or turning the moral of my new New York story into You dumb drunk scatterbrain. Not kidding about taking it easier on my liver for a while, though.

While I was away I got another note from someone who�d found my profile on Monster and thought I might be a good fit for blah blah blah. (Yesterday morning, blearily waking up in Seattle under Steve�s wonderful comforter, for a moment I thought that it was the first Monday in December, the one on which I�d promised to call all the temp agencies and officially put myself back on their rosters. For a moment I cursed my entire life that had brought me to this indignity, and then � wonderful comforter � I realized that I was wrong. I have one more week.) When I got back I logged on to send my updated resume as he�d requested and in response to another position I�d applied for there was the kind of rejection letter that makes a person almost happy; it was from a live human being and informed me that they�d love to have someone like me on the job but that I was way too overqualified for the position in question, I should set my sights higher. I�ve brought all the job-app stuff with me too and will spend some time on that while in WV, there are two in particular I found Friday night that seem not such a higher-sight stretch. Oh, and I think I got into those editing classes. A guy left a message on my voice mail a few days ago that as long as there was space available in the classes after all the certificate students had signed up, my application had been accepted and part of that space was mine. But when I talked a few weeks ago to the administrator of the certificate program, she said that there were 26 seats available in toto and 24 certificate students, so I�m betting that the guy, less familiar with the enrollment figures, was being considerate and hedging his bets. They won�t be able to let me know, he said, until a week before classes start, and in the meantime I should keep my Tuesday nights and Saturdays open. I realize I was spewing the bile in the last entry about my chances of getting accepted, but truly, voice-mail guy, no free Saturday afternoons until March would be my pleasure. I want to earn straight A�s again, and watch me, I will. I�m feeling less up against the wall with a gun barrel in face about the job situation, I think. I�ve gotten something like a sanguinity transfusion. It was nice, in New York, to meet people who no lie were dumbfounded that someone like me was getting thrown such brittle bones, was not in fact being recruited hard for good writerish jobs that paid well even by Manhattan standards. Some had specific jobs in mind at, say, their friends� companies, and some offered to ask around, and since I�ve been back I�ve sent my resume into the 212 area code as well as the bony old 206. The someone-like-me, though, is a touchy subject on this count, because it often is conjured in the context of theories about how for the s.l.m. there is nowhere *but* New York, how I�m perpetrating a disservice upon myself and my blah blah blah � you know what, I�m almost positive it is Charles sitting next to me here � by doing anything except moving there on faith and with finality, throwing myself on the mercy of the city and knowing that it will all turn out beautifully because for the s.l.m. how could it be otherwise. And by that logic, if I don�t relocate myself to New York, then what will have been proved wrong about me is that I was ever someone-like-me in the first place: if I had been, then I would have acted like her. If I had been, then I would have known that those who associated me with her were right, it would have been like looking at myself in a mirror. Who are those people looking at? Is it me? I don�t know. The fact is that I like quiet, I like cross-country skiing, I like going to restaurants and bars and not being crammed so tight against the other patrons that I can smell them. (Would the s.l.m. confess to such, what � spoiledness? pusillanimity? I think not.) The fact is that if I could get a good writerish job in Seattle that paid even OK by Seattle standards, I�d be thrilled and wonderfully comforted; I�d feel ratified, and who knows what now-undreamed-of things the ratified version of myself would give me permission to imagine. Listen to me, I�m writing about my self-conception as if it is clinically depressed. Which, uh, perhaps it is. And what would its therapist advise? The fact is, I am someone like exactly who I already am � I mean this not in the sense of Vanessa�s already are � and I think I know.