� a hotshot, in e-mail to me a few days ago

A short one, because I�m pressed with work � though it�s nice, I�m doing real editing today and the first part of tomorrow � and losing the ability to suppress realization that I have not started the homework assignment due via e-mail tonight. I�ve pretty much lost the ability to tap into patience or good will or anything but contempt as far as my classes are concerned. I took a gamble that they�d have some tangible-or-not benefit and I lost, fine, and now I just want to withdraw my troops and retreat but there are battles looming: final projects are due in the next few weeks. I think it�s going to be one of those weekends where I shut myself in a room and I�m only allowed to leave for bathroom breaks until x self-assignment gets done. How annoying. Steve thinks I�m sick when I do that, or sick to do it (I am not sure), but it�s one of the few perks of him being in Germany until next Wednesday night that he doesn�t have to find out about it. I hate my classes so much and they are so useless to me that I would seriously consider paying someone to do the projects for me, though apparently not with sufficient enthusiasm to go out and try to solicit such someone. When I go out with friends or to parties, like I did last night, and the subject comes up and someone asks me what I�m taking and I answer, that is I say the names, inevitably � inevitably, I�m not kidding � my inquisitor recoils with an expression of abject disgust and says something like, "You�re kidding me, right?" The implication being, What sane person would pay money to study those dreadfully boring subjects. (The bright side being, I am glad my friends do not feel they have to sugarcoat things and make with the platitudinous encouragement-spewing.) Then I explain the part about how I thought I�d be getting some kind of valuable professional credential, blah blah blah, coursework on my resume � though last semester�s Tuesday class was such a pox on everything I school-wise hold dear that I haven�t opened my grades yet, I don�t want one more thing to hate about the experience � and they nod with understanding and I guess I think platitudinous sympathy is better than ditto encouragement. Sometimes they feel moved to remark on the cruel irony that a smart�n�qualified professional like me has been reduced to such undignified lowest-common-denominator measures, and that�s nice too, another bright side.

It�s been interesting, though, to get anecdotal confirmation that I�m not the only person who thinks the UW is way too big for its britches about its certificate and "professional Master�s" (I think that�s what they call them) evening-and-weekend programs; just because they�re the biggest game in town for higher education and in some respects the only game, they think their shit doesn�t stink. To me it�s an abomination how generally bad the teaching and the classes have been yet how swaggering the instructors are to be attached to such a well regarded program and institution. And � I don�t know why this grates on me so painfully � how they keep reminding us how very very lucky we are to be attached likewise. Well, no. This isn�t what I call luck. In my months of whining about how disappointing my experience has been, a disconcerting lot of people have said back to me Oh I know just what you mean, the UW is horrible, they�re jackals and all they want is your money and you�re supposed to be happy paying for the privilege of getting robbed by a name-brand thief. To me � though, again, anecdotally, so please don�t be offended if you�re studying there and what I�m saying does not compute � it seems like there�s a considerable number of people in Seattle who have considered getting some kind of certificate or grad degree but decided against it because the private schools are too expensive and the UW is a scam.

This is one good reason to start thinking about getting out of town. I�ve got some ideas, I may have a plan. In broad terms, it would involve sticking it out here for the next two years or so, taking some classes � not at the UW until I had to � and acquiring some knowledge while otherwise making myself into what would be a shiny happy applicant to the best programs I thought I had a shot in hell of getting into. Then the sayonara. I suppose even receptionist-temping wouldn�t be so bad if I could see it always and truly as the means to an end, one day closer to never having to do it again, and anyway maybe I could do my homework in between calls. Steve would also like some additional schooling, and I am sure there are institutions that offer decent, future-employment-worthy programs in both of our would-be m�tiers. So that is that: a plan, I mean, and I�ll be the first one to admit I have zero credibility for the past few years on the self-rescue follow-through tip, and that�s why your skepticism won�t offend me. I�ll either prove This Time Is Different or I won�t, big deal. Also, more on certain practicalities relating to this subject later in the week or early next. Boom boom boom.

This morning a chick who works around the corner stopped by the desk of the silent unsmiling project manager who sits behind me and complimented her on what she was wearing. She said, "I always look forward to spring because I know you�re going to look so fresh and pretty in those outfits of yours." 1. Eeew, creepy. What if it were a man saying this? 2. Am I the only person who finds something depressing in that "always," both in the sense of how sad to be around-the-corner chick, so abject, and also in the implied passage of years, each one the same here at the government office where everyone�s killing time until they put in 20 of them and each demarcated by the reappearance of an officemate�s pastel chiffon two-piece dresses? I overheard this and felt partly like a vampire, because I�m wearing a rather severe (but can I say: BCGB from my same bra haunt of Value City, $140 marked down to $20 = boo-yah!) brown and black turtleneck and Ingrid Bergman pants, and partly as if revivified with the potentiality to be born again into a different, more urgent consciousness. So maybe I should be thinking about leaving, maybe it is only logical. I like the routine of work, or I say I do � hi, John; good morning, Betty; hey, Teresa, let�s get lunch this week � but something about that always I swear put the fear of god in me. For many months I have been keening for some sense of security, an anchor, but part of that I know is just willfulness about the grand Seattle experiment, I�m like the old lady at the slot machine grimly feeding in nickel after nickel because, damn it, one of these days it has to come up in my favor, one of these days I will be the winner. And maybe one day I would, and in the meantime look at me, here I am rooted to the spot and muttering as I continue to breathe in the casino atmosphere of stale smoke, flop sweat, Freon, and mildew. Gross. And it�s the fucking nickel slots � how big could the payoff even be?

We went to Portland and Hood River over the weekend. In Hood River we ate in a restaurant where the staff had masking-taped over the T-R on a "Support Our Troops" sign behind the bar and then I had a migraine while Steve watched "Blade" on TNT. In Portland Lib started lecturing me while I was still in the entry hall about how by not having gone back to school I have done my brain a great disservice and she has decided she�s not going to take it anymore, she is 93 and she knows what she�s talking about and I should listen to her. I�d been hatching my sort-of plan since I ran into Mary H. in PA, and I did listen. We went used-clothes shopping and the gods smiled on me, pointing me towards two pairs of jeans which you know is a miracle and also to a wasp-waisted strapless dress, light blue with big cabbage roses on it. The tag, somewhat inscrutably, read "Scott canvas tube," but it looks better on.

Someone else in this office has a studio portrait of four generations of her family and they are all wearing head-to-toe denim. That�s depressing too.