1. I don�t have to take the GRE on Monday after all. But should I anyway? Ha ha ha ha ha yeah right. It is likely, however, that I will be taking it within the next few months. As for the rest, at least temporarily I�m pleading the Fifth. (Typo: "Pleading the Fight." See next item?)
2. I don�t have to break up with Steve after all, either, though I don�t mind telling you it was touch and go there for a long day or so � a thousand thank yous to my ladies for weighing in and for picking up the phone past bedtime. Sometimes I have to remember that Mr. Man and I are two carnivores in a pod.
3. Vanessa, I hear you covered my tab on Saturday night when I threw down my credit card and stormed out of Linda�s without my coat. You are a pal, yet as a state of affairs the trade deficit is not cool � I will be paying you back. (See previous item.)
4. I hit coffee-girl bottom today when I had to go to Starbucks, pay with a Starbucks card, and utter the words "venti soy chai latte."
5. I ate mayonnaise and liked it last week. I was boozing and it was homemade, with tarragon, but still.
6. I saw "21 Grams" and "In America" on Sunday. Officially in love with Naomi Watts, this despite the presence in the same movie of Charlotte Gainsbourg�s estimable legs, and am also finally warming to whatever it is that Sean Penn�s putting out there. Also � I�m a demographic-buster, I am � foaming at the mouth at the prospect of Ledger and Gyllenhaal as homos on the range. (Related: how many resumes do you think Focus is going to get from PAs who are willing to work for free?)
7. Pam doesn�t like spicy food, it turns out � curses! � and is also out of the office this week, so I�m trying to put off my Access work until she gets back and can see and overhear what a champ I am. I continue to schedule interviews for the crowd of wannabes of whom the luckiest will become my permanent replacement at this desk; I suspect I have about three more weeks here. Still no word on whether Pam made the Head Cheeses (ha) bend to her will and allow her to recruit external candidates for the new non-coffee position. Aching, mildly.
8. I�ve gone to one each of my two classes so far. The Saturday-morning one seems harmless enough. The instructor clearly models her persona and style of speaking after Meg Ryan and she kept saying "book schemata format" when she meant "book" � e.g., "Many people would rather get information online than in a book schemata format" � but it�s OK, I can deal. That one�s downtown so I can walk, which esp. when I don�t have to hurry and coffee and music on headphones are involved I think is a marvelous way to start the weekend. The other one, well, let�s just say that it was last night and I�ve already written a two-page letter to the department head saying how unbelievably bad we all thought the instructor was and what the fuck were they even thinking hiring her. (There�s a punchline here, too, but again I plead the Fifth.)

Also thinking about some senses in which my life as I prefer to live it is currently held in abeyance and how, ironically, I don�t seem to mind. Like, what are the two things I do at Christmastime? I watch "Metropolitan" and I make the compilation cd. This year I did neither. The movie didn�t even occur to me until much later. I think these things also have to do with not being at home, not being at home in my home (though that sounds so much more melodramatic than I feel), being in an extended state of logy limbo. It is a strange sensation: I am firmly committed to the circumstances but lightly held by them, does that make any sense? And I like it very much, I feel as if I�ve discovered something important.

Yes, I gave blood last week. Unfortunately I did not experience any of the dopey or drunker-faster effects about which I had heard so much. I suspect that what might have screwed me is that I was too well hydrated � the phlebotomites fussed over me for how speedily I bled and said that even as a first-time donor such a self-hydrator as I am should not expect to get dizzy. Then later three vodka tonics worked exactly the same level of magic on me that three vodka tonics always do when I�ve got one more pint in me, I mean unless you count the mayonnaise. Not that I would ever complain about drinking three vodka tonics, you understand, but the blood donation part of the day was disappointing, anticlimactic. I wanted to fall on my face or, hell, to stumble. The part of the process I had not expected was that once the needle is in your arm, you have to grip and then rhythmically release a squeezy toy so as, duh, to pump the blood out of you. I felt as if I were milking a cow, but the cow was me, I was cow and milker both. Also, in the conference room where the blood bank people had set up camp the PA system was on some soft rock station and as the needle went in and as I began to pump the song was Norah Jones� "Don�t Know Why." This satisfied my fondness for thematic coherence in the way that my slow squeeze-squeeze-squeeze in time to the music reflected the way in which that song�s insipidness and its ubiquity over several months of last year have often had the effect of a leisurely tap on my will to live. In fact, the closest I got to spaciness during the whole process was there at the beginning, where I began to imagine a video for it that featured someone lying on her back on a cot giving blood, squeeze-squeeze-squeezing in time to the music as perhaps Norah tossed her hair and gyrated ethereally in the foreground. I have never seen the real video � I�m assuming there was one � but I think my version would have been better.

This is a public service announcement: Giving blood doesn�t take long, doesn�t hurt, and then you get a cookie and people are nice to you when you get back, I suppose to discharge the guilt they feel over not having given any themselves (out of this whole big office building, for example, an hour before the drive ended the haul so far was 14 units � that�s a lot of guilt a person could be exploiting). What�s not to like?

I must stop here. The BB is in a meeting until 4:30, and I am charged with decorating her office for Valentine�s Day before she gets back. Shut up.