Typo of the week: "discrapancies." In the O Seattle How Thou Dost Mildly Vex Me department, 1. Overheard at a coffee shop the other day, "Single grande mint with four whites and two and a half inches of soy milk." I was trying to figure out what kind of coffee drink involved this mysterious jazz with the whites when I saw the barista hand the customer a big cup of *tea*. People, stop the insanity. 2. Yesterday I had to have lunch with someone I hadn�t seen in a while and we were talking on the phone about where to meet and I suggested my current favorite, the Pioneer Square outpost of that World�s Greatest Falafel place (though btw I have switched my allegiance to the grilled eggplant sandwich) and she asked, with equal parts suspicion and pride, "Is it really healthy? Because I�ve been eating really healthy lately." And truly I don�t know why that irritated me so much, I guess if you�re paying for lunch you have a right to pick where it is consumed; was it the implied distinction between "healthy" and "really healthy," the implication via repetition that "really healthy" is a discrete category that others should comprehend and show obeisance, or my paranoia that she thought I wasn�t as healthy an eater as she was? (Which (a), why should I care what she thinks, because (b) I eat plenty healthy, the occasional brownie notwithstanding, (c) it�s not a contest, and (d) I think she looks too skinny, she was prettier about 20 pounds ago.) So I don�t know. When she got there she had to use the john and because I was irritated I said something about how it might not be as spotless as the ones she was used to on the East Side, but that was a cheap shot and I felt bad about it later. She�s a good person and she can�t help it that I�m neurotic. Lunch was fine. That grilled eggplant is beyond compare, it is peerless, it feels like a mature love affair after the juvenilia of my brief infatuation with the falafel. 3. When I ordered at Tully�s, the guy made me repeat my order for the brownie and then said, "That�s what I thought you said, but I wanted to double-check because it�s awful early in the morning for something like that!" Jolly, conspiratorial � and then, ugh, he winked at me. When did it become OK, by the way, for waiters to comment on customers� appetites? Sometimes I�ve been out to dinner and eaten all my food and waitress, say, comes to clear the plates and, in the same jolly conspiratorial indulgent manner, says, "Ooh, someone was hungry tonight." It requires effort at these moments not to jump up and break my empty plate over her head.

And in the Now It Can Be Told department, here�s the development I alluded to in the last entry, and let�s be good about neither underplaying it or acting like it�s no big deal at all: a couple months ago I tripped over a bag of money, or something like that, and soon it will be officially mine. How much? No comment. It would be insignif. to our guy in Ohio, to Julian, probably to you if you live in New York, and to a lot of the software types I know, but it does not seem that way to me. In Seattle it would be enough, if a person had a full-time job and could therefore get a mortgage, to put a down payment on a house that was not a shack. But I have other plans. I am going to designate it as a safety net so that for the next two years or so I *can* take classes and study what I want to without having to cover my ass financially from eight to five. In the fall, I might take a break from temping (please God yes) and load up on classes at the community college, maybe get a part-time gig behind a retail counter or something if I feel like it and then again maybe not. Maybe I would do that for two semesters, or even three, and then maybe I�d try to get into some upper-level stuff at the UW which if I think if it were challenging material that had career-type applicability and was being taught by full-time staff instead of these bozo evening incomps [note: Pam J. excepted] would have better odds of being rewarding and anyway if I knew I needed them to make myself a better grad school candidate I would find a way to suffer through them. You see it is all very much up in the air at this point. It feels odd and treasonous to be making such plans when the flavor of so much of my last few years in Seattle has been the urgency, the necessity of buying a house ASAP to catch the market, catch the interest rates � the sense that what�s at risk is some kind of being left behind or cast out from something. The fact is that what I was trained to do is no longer much in demand and substantially less remunerative in the few positions that are available; if I went back for a Master�s in it I have real concerns about the kind of work I�d be doing and the kind of people I�d be doing it with and for various reasons my ethics are also unsettled by the prospect of a life in academia, the hallowed halls of circle-jerkdom. The fact is that money and how much I�m paid matter to me and that all other things being equal I�d rather have more than less. The fact is that, sorry, in the range of � now it can be told � $437k for a smallish bungalow within sprinting distance from juvy jail is way too much to spend in a city at which I remain constantly at loggerheads, even outside the standard-of-living hit. I want to do calculus. I want to work hard. I think that for a long time I would have been willing to do these things, the calculus part figuratively I mean, in the context of a cool job where I got to work with people I liked and respected and had stuff in common, or, hell, two out of three of the above. It would be a fallacy to say that I�ve been wanting to go back to school, because I haven�t � I have wanted and I have tried to be successful, to add value, to have my efforts count in a way that excludes book-learning; yes I am a professor�s kid but I�m also my grandparents� granddaughter and I can�t shake off the belief that the other kind of competence is purer somehow, I�m also stubborn and I know how elitist many academics are and I don�t want those motherfuckers to get the idea that I want to be like them and to be assimilated, to give them one more thing to feel arrogant about. (Which, ha, now that I think about it is just about the height of arrogance.)

But that being said, it�s a good bet that I�m never going to find a good job in Seattle unless I make myself over into something different. And here was my big breakthrough: if I did make myself over and acquire the skills to pay the bills, I would be a commodity and I would be able to pick where I wanted to live, and if that happened, would I choose Seattle? Uh � doubt it. Where would I choose instead? I don�t know, and that is the exciting part. Where would I hope to go to school? The absolute best place I could get into (in the same area where, hypothetically, Steve could also get into the CS MS program of his choice) that would not bankrupt me. And is that the UW? Don�t make me laugh.

I am speaking in declarative sentences here and in casting myself as a future commodity also implicitly declaring that I am an intellectual hot tomato, but don�t be fooled, it�s not like flipping a switch, and I still have major reservations not to mention GUILTGUILTGUILT about opting out of home ownership for the next several years � and, whoa, really not looking forward to the terrible swift reactions of certain homeowners I know who have been trying to bring me around to their way of thinking in such a disapproving-of-my-lifestyle way that I feel like I�m being recruited into a cult � and, let�s not beat around the bush, essentially depriving Steve of same. You should have heard me in the car on the way to Portland last weekend, whining about what if I knock myself out studying for two years and apply to ten different places and the only one I get into is Southeastern Louisiana Agricultural Polytech? There�s an interesting cognitive disconnect sometimes between my faith in my abilities and my distrust that anyone in a position of gatekeeper-like authority would ever, in a million billion years, recognize them as well: compare for instance the tone of my references to the UW, in the last para., and to Southeastern etc. in this one. It is a case of Secret Heart vs. whatever the Minister of Information is afraid of, no that�s not right, vs., vs., what? Blah. Here�s what else the guilt is about: I have some money and I�m investing it in myself. And the fear: what if I don�t deserve that?

My cat, who�s in love with Steve, is protesting his absence by refusing to sleep on the bed like he usually does. I�m doing that boyfriend-out-of-town thing that veers back and forth between exaltation in leisure and productive frenzy. Oh, and I found out last weekend that his ex M is not, as I�d thought, a semipro cyclist. And, yeah, it�s not a contest, but I will confess that this is still a relief. The source of my misapprehension, for the record, was his use of the phrase "made a name for herself." Isn�t conversation weird?

Catharine just called � we have a coffee date for 7 a.m. my time tomorrow. Then I am going to do my homework.

(Later: this entry is both disjointed and too tightly coiled. Sorry � nothing I can do about that for now, I'll right it when I can. And: I don't look like Sandra Bullock, do I?)