Hi again from Dullsville Creepsville Out-of-my-mindville. I�ll tell you what, if nothing else this gig is a game of What Would Lisa Do? made flesh � best not to dwell on that word in this office, that image: moving right along! � in which everyone I encounter is yet another version of something I wish with all my heart never to become. Over to the left, Liz is learning and growing: she�s just learned the diff between "intranet" and "internet"! Liz is so happy! Behind me the data enterer is cussing hissingly into the phone while listening to 50 Cent. And here�s something else I found out about this outfit: although on the employee evaluations category scores are graded from 1 to 5, you are considered Outstanding, and eligible for all sorts of merit pay and extra vacation time and tuition reimbursement, if your across-the-board average is 3 or higher. I weep.

How was your Christmas? No, I mean it. Mine was unexpectedly good, I mean Steve�s sister and her mannfreund were unexpectedly warm and friendly to me, I mean I did not expect that. I have decided I like them. Everyone ate up my lovely meat in huge three-quarter-inch slices, which at first made me anxious and antsy � hey hey, this isn�t meatloaf, people � but then I decided not to care, because was the point of my making it to call attention to my largesse? I guess not, or not totally; the fact that people liked it and went back for seconds seemed, or could be made, enough. My mind has chosen not to dwell on the possibility that the leftovers met their ultimate fate in the microwave, so there. What the fuck, it's Christmas. Everything else was tasty too, especially the carrots, of which I may have taken thirds. There was plenty of wine and then some port. Although I don�t hate life I do reserve the right to hate myself, and one reason why is how, both on Christmas Eve when we ran into an old friend of his while out at a bar and then the day after Christmas w/r/t his sister�s fella, Steve took eager pains � does that make sense? � to tell me later what a positive impression I�d made, with what noble adjectives I�d been saluted while I was in the can or not taking a smoke break outside. Like my own personal Stuart Smalley. And being talked to by a Stuart Smalley makes a person feel like� like Stuart Smalley. I felt dumb and little and pathetic that I should be the object of these narcotizing banalities, that that�s what I was getting. And why was I getting them? Because I�d made Steve think I needed them. Eeew, what kind of person am I, anyway? How can I put people I care about in this uglifying, shuck-and-jiving position? What a bastard I am. Less rhetorically, how can I stop? In other news, I regret that I am boozing so much recently, but for the time being I will resist checking myself into rehab and chalk it up to the season, ho ho ho. Let me know if I still seem like this big a lush a few weeks into January. Lowell�s, in the Market, puts celery salt on the rims on the Bloody Mary glasses. I approve. I had never been there before but it�s so cool, just the place for killing a few hours on Saturday afternoon before your movie starts � Vanessa, you would approve too. It�s on the smoky, cheerfully scrubby side, with low ceilings and lights and a view of the bay, so as the sun goes down you can get hazy and watch tugboats do their thing, very peaceful. Then we went to "The Triplets of Belleville" and then I had to go to another bar and drink something with Boodles in it in honor of my mom�s birthday, you see what I mean about the liquor ++ these days, and then home. On the plus side of that, there�s nothing like the eight-to-five of temping in a hellhole like this to make you fall google-eyed madly in love with your weekends.

I had a dream that Steve and I went to New York in February for the art opening and met some people who, speaking of Lisa, turned out to be diehard admirers of hers, friends of DP�s, who were taken aback to learn that I was who I am and thus ensued some very awkward partings. It was at the Motor City Bar, I think. I had another dream that DP was in that I remember less well; I think New Year's is the DP time of year. Gin, absinthe, Brooklyn, Amanda, an ice storm, the spill and pool of loose change it took me an hour to sort. Cat on the phone, unmalevolent complicity, my square-necked black cashmere sweater I left behind rather than glasses on that trip, and software money to burn. I don't know what I miss most. On the day after Christmas, when downtown was pretty much deserted by the employed and walking to get coffee it felt scary and postapocalyptic, this office and its ostensible raison d�etre were also high and dry and I was so bored I resorted to the Recently Updated Diaries page, doing that thing where I click on every username that does not contain a sexual innuendo, a reference to Goth or Hobbit culture or to its owner�s hotness, or a misspelling. In one of the profiles, someone had listed "Magnolia" as a favorite movie, and in the text field following it, which seems to be intended for an explanation or justification � which class of fields by the way is one of the things that most sets my teeth on edge about Diaryland, but don�t get me started � she wrote, You�ll appreciate it when your life ends the same way. Dig it. JetBlue torments me by quoting prices that are not much less than Northwest�s, and this isn�t even for peak travel days. Discount carrier, my ass.

Argh! Why do I always sound so much more growly and embittered than I feel?

(Later:) Totally humbled. Liz is one of those office-lady types who thrives on Kremlinology and gossip, always knows who�s angling to get in where and how much of a raise the wished-for position would mean. Every damn day she�s all over the job postings site like she�s trying to hatch it. I figured she was an office-lady shark, smiling as she moved purposefully ahead through the chum, and here it turns out that her hunt has been on my behalf. She knows a job req that�s about to be posted, she says, any day now, that would be perfect for me � it sounds a lot like the Scully job � and she adds that as I walked out of my second interview for this gig she said as much to her co-panelists the Big Boss and the Little Boss. (Totally humbled, Part II: "Did they tell you you were full of it?" I asked, not exactly fishing for compliments out there but sort of checking which way the wind was blowing. "Oh no," she said with her indomitable good cheer, "they just looked at me like they thought I was insane.") Now, let's be clear that this isn�t an occasion for the thing called hope, because she points out that the bogus application calculus would apply and even though she can�t believe anyone is as perfectly suited to the job as I am they'd have to give it to any internal applicant who could correctly identify a keyboard. But here is what she said, as Carol-Brady reprovingly as I suspect sunny Liz gets: "Don�t sell yourself short." Like she�s onto me, and is she, is she? (Oh, let someone be onto me, let there be something for someone to be onto.) She told me that the position my trainer had is also available but that I�d be bored to death in it and that I am clearly destined for better and, she emphasized, higher-paying things. (So now I feel like a monster for harshing on her, and I wish I could wipe from my shamed and horrified memory the part where I let Steve do violence to the snowman thingy. Don�t ask.) She also hooked me up with a listing for a long-term temp position that I might be eligible for and to the hiring manager for which she said she�d be happy to place a deck-stacking phone call if in fact I am. I�m skeptical; I feel like this X-File or one just like it has crossed my desk before, and, anyway, you know I don�t think this is a work environment in which I could flourish. But, again, it's not nothing. Someone has noticed me.