� me in e-mail to my sister around quarter after ten this morning

How, by the way, do I go off and mail a package to Alan if I can�t even take a lunch, if I�m clocking in at eight and staggering out just shy of six? Glad you asked. Here�s how it works: as I�m standing up from my desk chair, below desk level I grab the mailer, which I have already snaked from my book bag to a strategic location on the floor next to me, and as I lean down as if to scratch an itch on my ankle I stuff the mailer up my sweater, which � this is strategic too � is of the baggy, untucked-in variety, and then I straighten back up, stand, and casually announce that I�m going to the Ladies�. In the lobby, I check to make sure that no one is looking, and then I tear down the street to an office building a block and a half away that has a USPS storefront on one of its lower levels. I transact, then race back to the cheese factory building, freezing in my baggy sweater because it is an especially cold and windy day. Again I keep my eye out for any factory workers returning from lunch or coffee runs, and if I see them I stay back, ducking into doorways as necessary. I arrive back at my desk about seven minutes later, and when Liz or whoever asks accusingly, "Where were you? I kept having to answer your phone," I say, "Just the bathroom. I told you, remember?" and then I sit down to return the calls. Though today I�m fighting the power, I have a baggie full of carrot sticks and some Jarlsberg and crackers that bite by bite I fully fucking intend to ingest. Also I have class at six, and I cannot stay late period, I won�t.

Also I have a few more items to add to yesterday�s list. (11) To tell the truth, the pre-Christmas tenor of this office was not a representative indicator of what it�s usually like around here. Meaning, I have often been very busy, but busy doing things like scheduling meetings and messengering documents and cleaning up conference rooms and making copies and assembling packets, which I find sufficiently degrading that I often prefer to remain in denial about the fact that menial shit like that can constitute my entire day. (12) Despite my fabled excellence at the menial, it�s also the case that somehow everyone seems to have figured out on exactly the same day that I have competencies above what I was hired to do (and, see above, beyond that which is below what I was hired to do) � collective translation: Not My Job � so all of a sudden everyone is dropping all kinds of projects on me and my task list is growing like a cancer. In addition to the database front end, I have recently done a respectable amount of editing, designed the cover of a manual, compiled some figures and buffed them up pretty in Excel, read aloud names from a list of about 500 in order to check them for accuracy (twice), and gotten hauled into two project groups. And Creepo Peepo the IT smoothie has decided that I am his own personal admin, and he has taken to calling me when he is off-site and would like to refer to something on the network, he makes me look things up and read them to him. You�ll be stunned, but this happens more often than you�d think. God, temping is so so bad that even trying to fit words to the phenomenon so I can explain it to you makes my eyes water and causes my throat to start gulping involuntarily, and the longer I do it � because it�s the only way I can make money and because most of the time though not for the past few weeks it seems like a better and more honorable option than sitting around at home mooning and trolling the alkali flats of the help-wanted sites � the more I lose faith that anyone is ever going to let me do anything else, I am increasingly terrified that as long as I�m in Seattle, and see below, this is as good as it�s going to get for me: all of the snot-sucking, none of the health insurance, for less than they pay the retarded guys who do office work as part of some cooperative social program (no joke). There hasn�t been a new job listed for which I am a suitable applicant in about two weeks, maybe more. (So far I have been able to resist the most depressing ones of all, those at Monster that solicit People wanted to WORK ONLINE using their computers. So far.) It is not acceptable to me that all I can expect is a job like this where I shuffle papers and kiss ass over the phone to people who when they see me in person before a meeting in the BB�s office will say "Shouldn�t you go fill up this water pitcher? Tsk tsk, I wish I had a job I didn�t have to take seriously" � but what if it is? I�ll tell you but what if it is, then my *life* will be the thing that is unacceptable to me. I am getting close to the good old downward spiral here, kids. (13) A senior cheese factory executive, OK, died, and since then everyone in the office has been ricocheting between tears and chaos and anger and silence. I am sure he was a nice guy � I never met him, he�s been out on sick leave since I started � but understand, there are certain practical effects for me. For the past week the BB has been in a mood I can only describe as evil, snapping at me for nothing while blaming me for everything, not telling me where she�s going or when she decides at the last minute that she doesn�t have the emotional resources to attend a meeting that�s been scheduled for weeks, and insulting me in front of other office staffers because I suppose she needs a scapegoat. And several other people have the same syndrome she does but to a lesser extent. Also, the woman who previously held this job before she moved to another office often comes by to commiserate or to make plans for the memorial service, and when she does she prefers to sit at her old desk (mine), hang up her coat in its old place (mine), and have network-logged-on access to her old computer (mine) so she can be away from her new desk and still get work done. So I don�t get work done, and because everyone who might conceivably pull lunch-hour phone duty for me is in meetings about the catering and the flowers, I don�t get breaks either. Oh, and I didn�t get to do the phone screen yesterday afternoon. I got a last-minute calendar-arranging bomb dropped on me and then the phone began to ring off the hook with people who wanted to flay me on the selfsame last-minute calendar-arranging tip, and the call went into voice mail and the phone stayed so busy all afternoon and the boss so poisonous and constantly at-my-shoulder demanding that I didn�t dare call back. I phoned the would-be screener back this morning around 7:30 just as I set out on my walk here, and I apologized and told him that there had been a sudden death in the office where I was contracting so everything was busy and stressful and I had more work to do than ever and less opportunity to take a break from it; I said that I knew he�d want to be moving through the hiring process as expeditiously as possible but that I would still love to talk to him if he could wait until Wednesday afternoon, when everyone but me will be at the service and I can remain at my desk while speaking with him privately and for however long he wanted. But he didn�t want to, he couldn�t wait. This is what I mean about temping being self-perpetuating. As a temp, you have no right to say Hey I need x amount of time off to go to an interview � and if you get a little less asky about the matter or god forbid you demand it, whoever you�re temping for will can your ass and call up the temp agency and say what a problem you are, and then the agency won�t call you for future assignments. But how am I ever going to get out of this appalling situation if on a daily basis I can�t even get away from my desk for long enough to make a phone call?

I was going to address Nils� question here but I�m taking it hard today, I am suddenly wilted and in a matter of minutes I am going to lose access to whatever makes me able to write in complete sentences. Tomorrow I guess.

Oh, but here�s the See Below part: Steve wants to buy a house or a condo in Seattle, now now now now now while the interest rates are low. If I don�t find a grown-up job in Seattle within the next six months, I can�t imagine wanting to stay here, uncertain about how often I�ll be able to get temp work and how much I�ll be able to make at it and hating my snot-sucking life, the standard of living which will also go down like a leaky submarine if instead of paying easy bacon-shack rent I have to come up with, ye gods, half of a freakin mortgage payment every month. So it�s rough.