And what distinction am I making, exactly, between self-rationalization and the bright side? Does it depend on my frame of mind at the moment of having to call it one thing or the other, hopeful vs. hostile? Last night, in the course of what seems to have become a daily ritual of a late-night beer on the back porch � and oh man, I am not complaining � Steve said that his life had suddenly become a thing that will not require any major decision-making from him over the next few or several months and that this was making him feel uncomfortable, penned-in, panicky. I kind of know what he�s saying though I�d also kind of give anything to be put back in the condition where a person comes to know it. (And what do my question and Steve�s statement have in common that I think they cohere, that I slap them up against each other in the same paragraph like this?) I told him not to sweat it for the time being and to take all the energy he usually spends weighing options etc. and put it into some new project. That�s good advice, right?

A few days ago, the HR lady with whom I gossip sometimes guessed me at 25. And this is officially the last time I�m reporting anything in this department, because, ha ha, I�ve become so paranoid that now I wonder whether I act much younger than I am and that is partly why people are willing to think I�m such a sprout, and also whether, if I told them the truth, Well actually HR lady I am considerably older than that, they would feel sorry for me � that is to say, whether I�m such an underachiever for my age that they figure no one much older than, say, 25 could live my life and have any self-respect at all, which my competence and professional comportment seems to indicate that I do. (Ha ha again, the joke�s on them.) It�s one of those things that will make your head explode if you think about it too much, so, as I say, I�ve decided not to.

On the other hand, I�ve also decided to do all I can to keep myself in the running for other contracts when this one is up; I am running a stealth popularity contest and trying to make sure as many people as possible know me and like me (there�s no bullet point to this effect on my resume, but I have a genius for using e-mail to gain subconscious ingratiation among upper management), and if turns out that office ladies tend to like seeing the wide and winning, ingenuous smiles of 25-ish-year-olds, smiles that seem to say I-look-to-you-as-an-example, well, shit, I am not above that. Another thing I�m not above is pitching in on scut work when it turns out that, surprise surprise, the project is underbudgeted and someone needs to go around and inventory the PCs in various departments. I spent a big chunk of yesterday crawling around under people�s desks, recording asset tag information and serial numbers in the composition book I was carrying around with me and of course smiling winningly and being earnestly willing to talk about the larger project � office men, on the other hand, tend to like seeing the wide-eyed, medium-vigorous nod, which I guess conveys by its seriousness that grave attention has been paid to what they�ve just said (and perhaps, if you�re feeling cynical, that my poor little female brain was so taxed by the effort of following their thinking that there isn�t even a single brain cell left over to tell my mouth to smile) and by its enthusiasm compliance and Oh, *yes*, sir � and really it was OK, it was kind of nice, it gave me that peaceful easy feeling to know for sure the constituent elements, in this case, of a good job, and iteratively to enact them. It was like coding surveys or prep cooking or scooping ice cream in the walk-in freezer, except I hadn�t realized when I got dressed in the morning that this was what my day held for me, and in my H&M ass pants I think I ended up, as I was crawling around under desks, showing a lot of architects my thong. And then on the way home, feeling satisfied with my day�s work and reviewing it but on account of its nature really quite disengaged from myself as an intellectual being, I got an idea for a p*rno movie aimed at tech geeks based on the classic plumber-and-hausfrau trope but this time it is a lonely coder working all night and the hot chick who comes in to check his asset tags (huh huh huh huh). Maybe she�s wearing a tight t-shirt with snaps up the front and low-rise jeans, and she has to slither around so much to read the labels on the back of his hard drive that some of the snaps come undone. She can lean forward, dewy and breathing audibly from the effort, and in an admiring tone of voice she can say something like, �Wow, just how many static IP addresses are you working with here?� and then, I don�t know, I am a chick so it gets less interesting to me at this point, maybe she can put in a King�s X cd, rip off her shirt, and crush some cheese curls onto her heaving bosoms as she drags our turgid young buck away from his test plan and over to the conference table. Then as I was thinking about this, feeling weirdly stoned now that I come to think of it, there was a guy walking somewhat behind me who was performing an angry rap, very much out loud but not quite yelling except the last word of every line � which he was yelling � which was "sex." There was no one else around and it was later than I�m usually headed home and he was gaining on me and this was a block off the Harborview campus where you should not assume the best of anyone on the sidewalks, so I made a left and pretended I was going into an apartment building and took a square-block detour that put me back on the path home. It�s times like that when the thought comes buzzing into my perception, annoying me like a mosquito would, If I didn�t live in the city I wouldn�t have to deal with crap like this. Like, I was inventing a joke p*rno movie inside my head, minding my own business and taking, what, comfort in my inner life and its accessibility to me, and then I felt, what, unsafe, threatened, muggable and I had to go out of my way to get away from Mr. Sex who was nothing like a joke to me � something about it seemed both undignified and unfair.

Underneath some people�s desk you can find yourself a regular shithole. The number of hard drives bearing the unmistakable splatter pattern of dropped coffee is larger than I would have thought. I felt like a benevolent spy going around to empty desks over the lunch hour and seeing � taking note of � their screen savers or the last thing they�d been working on, observing the strange poetry of ten or twelve different bulletin-board photographs of the same uniformed girl or boy holding a soccer ball in front of some trees. It�s the same picture taken after game after game after game. If it�s a girl, her ponytail is coming undone and she looks exhilarated. Maybe you can see her, all in the same pose, age from eight to twelve. The things people keep: it felt like a responsibility, almost, to receive this information as a stranger. One woman had a Postal Service cd on her desk, and I didn�t know how else to take this but as a good-luck charm.

Class now and more desk-crawling-under tomorrow � in jeans, thank you � so likely that�s it for this week. I wish I had time to edit this beast, but alas, I do not. Stuart, a tip of the etymological hat to you! I hadn�t know that. And thanks for reading.