Upcoming: Ellensburg tomorrow. Camping at Cape Alava next weekend. Ponys two weeks from yesterday. Fourth of July at Vanessa and Popeye�s luxe new townhouse digs. The Boyce and Karen in town for I think five nights the following week, then Catharine and Julie�s wedding the weekend after that. Weekendus canadiensis sometime in August, I forget. Mandy and Joe�s heterosexual turn to get hitched � by Popeye! � at the end of August, and there are vague murmurings around the possibility of my sister coming to visit for Bumbershoot.

� and see, blink and you�ll miss it, the camping trip is now officially postponed and I am hot on the trail of tickets to the Killers next Sat nite, which preliminary research indicates is sold out though I will cruise past Neumo�s on the way home to check that, but shh don�t tell Steve � hi, Steve � I already have two to the Friday show in Portland. My plan had been to drive there Friday afternoon either by myself or with some Craigslist monkey I�d recruit for company and road! trip! adventure! then come back after the show in time to get a few hours of sleep then wake up and head to the campsite, which engendered a small fight because Steve thought that I�d be so exhausted hence cranky and bitchy on Saturday that I�d ruin camping for everyone with which theory I respectfully disagreed but hey hey, now we never have to find out. I sent him mail, several minutes ago now which kind of answers my question, It seems that the Seattle show may be sold out. What would be your approximate tolerance level for the Portland show if I did all the driving and if we stayed over and came back the next morning? I know, I am too old for this. I am going to get into another fight about my screwed-up priorities and my ridiculous willingness to drive seven hours, wasting so much expensive gas, for a stupid dumb rock show; also my r.w. to do so (a) without Steve and (b) with whatever random goober is in possession of the quickest e-mail trigger finger. And I also know, on the face of it the situation is indeed ridiculous. I�m not even slightly cool � as I type I am wearing pearl earrings and gray summerweight trousers with a belt that matches my shoes. I have no business proposing, to myself or others, such a proposition as this. But I want to go.

I have not exchanged one word with my cube neighbor on the other side in well over a month. Do you think this is weird? When I first started here I always said hi and good morning, etc., but by and by she stopped responding, eventually just looking at me and through me, and I took that as a hint. We are all at the edge of a cube grid, and the three of us are the only ones in this row. She talks to other people. I can�t have done anything to offend her, and, duh, I can�t have said anything. In other news, the Todd-dot-doc meme is mysteriously pervasive these days. Someone in Florida or maybe Texas or NYC is sending the URL around, it looks like. I�m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I�m not ashamed of it and it doesn�t violate anyone�s privacy and, you know, this guitar kills fascists and all. On the other hand, if it handles like a Porsche and gets attention like a Porsche � and I�ll confess, I do have an unseemly sense of pride in ownership/craftsmanship about it � then maybe I�m no better than the Mr. Bald Spots I was tearing down yesterday, sublimating my hostility and entitlement into strangely expansive notice-me gestures while I�m waiting at the light. I mean, I don�t think the latter is the case, but who am I to make that call definitively. One must be vigilant, most of all against baseness in oneself.

Some hours after I linked yesterday to that entry from October of 2002 I checked to make sure I�d typed the link correctly � I had not, sorry � and since that click took me to the top of the page, I ended up reading the whole page. It�s such a peculiar feeling reading old diary entries, there�s a mix of revulsion and embarrassment and surprise and archaeology and odd moments of deep unarrogant self-fondness. (Unarrogant? Says *me*.) But what struck me about that entry, from the critic�s third-person perspective to the extent that I am able to imagine myself there with respect to such a thing, was the reflexive defensiveness in it. Parts of it seemed to exist as responses to presumed scorn or derision. It is interesting to consider the change in this aspect of my emotional perspective since October of 2002, to see from far away what made my judgment blur up close. I will say no more.

From my favorite nurse at Gastro, I got e-mail today with a total of 120 exclamation points in it. They want me to come visit sometime soon. Why am I always so dumbstruck with ecstasy to be remembered fondly by people with whom I�ve been out of touch for a while? To be remembered at all? Hell: to have been noticed in the first place. It is probably not an attractive trait. My Self-Esteem: Just How Low Is It? That is a hotly debated matter around these parts. Sometimes I think I�m no worse off than any non-bombshell, economy-pockmarked brainy female of my age and background and education level, and sometimes I could honestly cry myself to sleep over myself, if no one was looking and no one would ever know, in the sense of Oh my god, you poor, poor girl. Presto change-o, now you see it now you don�t. I was realizing while I was typing a few paragraphs ago about the Killers show that why I feel so strongly about it is simply that I do feel that strongly about it. The wanting. Oftentimes someone will ask me what I want with regard to some plan or course of action, and I know I stare at him or her like an uncomprehending jackass � and I am sorry � because I�m not good at wanting things. It�s like I don�t know how, it is underdeveloped in me. If I start to want something, often what looms up is, this is hard to explain, like a psychic embodiment of a schoolmistress, like Maggie Smith in the second Harry Potter movie for instance, and my wanting scrambles in from the ledge, horrified to have been noticed and self-hurtfully ashamed of any inconvenience it caused in having drawn notice away from some other, better thing. Was it looking out the window or was it going to jump? Excellent question. Oh, ugh, it can�t be a good idea to go this far out into the open water, when I have been on shore so long and I am out of the habit � it�s deep water here, and the revulsion and embarrassment have teeth. Maybe I�ll pick the subject up again some other time. Besides, it�s almost five.

Have a lovely weekend.

P.S. 6:10 pm UPDATE UPDATE: Hooray, Neumo�s saved my bacon. I will take ten minutes of walking over seven of driving anyday. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go make some mango chutney.