Answer: Teddy Roosevelt.

Update: I have no more traitorous feelings about applying for the other job at the hospital. This is because, I found out yesterday afternoon, the temp agency has suddenly balked at selling my contract before I�ve worked the required number of hours and is insisting on getting its piece of me until the bitter end, which means that I will be making the scene at new employee orientation not this coming Monday but February 24. These were my thoughts, in order:

1. You bastards.
2. What, like it matters?
3. I told Steve that I would go gravity skiing with him as soon as I had health insurance, and yesterday morning over coffee, still working from the bad info, I promised him the weekend after this coming one. I hate having to go back on my word, and since I do know how to ski, it�s highly unlikely that I�d do major damage to myself, right? Right? So maybe I will re-evaluate that. Should I re-evaluate that?
4. Oh, man, the last thing I need is another excuse to slack around here. They�re going to be sorry about this.
5. (the part about not feeling guilty for putting my application in the drop box yesterday morning) and
6. Huh, maybe I wasn�t so dumb after all to spend all that time on the cover letter.
7. But then again, imagine how many other, extra-hospital jobs I could apply for with almost a month of employment limbo during which it�s no fib to say that I�m still temping. Hey hey!

I should write about Steve a little. "A little" because it�s inevitable that one of these days one of his friends, a work pal most likely, will find my diary and read it, and despite what you might think from reading such entries as the last two, I really do try to keep this in mind and not type anything that will later make anyone irate upon reading it or make me self-conscious for having written it, I apply a filter that I must remain alert to yet never resent. And "should" because I am remorseful that recently I�ve mentioned Steve mostly in the context, however comparatively favorable, of my most recent ex. I don�t want to give the impression that I define him by virtue of what other dudes were and he is not, by what he�s better than, but it�s also hard because, yeah, that stuff does come into play � how else am I supposed to know what I value except by experience of life without it, what does selection mean without an implied pool of the unselected. Also, it matters a great deal to me that my diary not be seen as a dis-fest of the MRE or anyone else. Having been charged with that kind of reductionism � when it�s so, so, so not what I�m like and is so counter to everything the diary ever was to me � still hurts. So, once again with way too much prologue, I will cut to the chase and say is that basically how things are going with Steve is that my sister is worried about my cat. It is true, Marcus is used to getting a lot more attention than he has been lately what with his ostensible caretaker sleeping in her bed � his bed � approximately one point two nights a week. (Mary is also wringing her hands with pity and vicarious anger that things are so inhospitable for me in my own rent-paid residence that I feel the need to get out of it as often as I can. I assured her, though, and I will assure you as well, that�s not the point. Steve�s place is warm and one can listen to music there and have a glass of wine and otherwise let it all hang out without intruding on anyone else�s living space, but the only thing that�s germane to the coordinates � that makes me happier there than elsewhere � is Steve himself. If I may be crude, it�s not the shack; it�s the bacon. Besides, once you�ve been hardened in the crucible of housemateship by opening up your freezer and finding a crucified squirrel in there, the smaller issues, later on and with different players, are going to faze you almost not at all.) The stage of relationships I dislike most is when one has been sloping around with a special someone for an objectively little while and there is cause to mention an event that will take place many months in the future � what do you do? Does the person doing the mentioning refer to the event in a casual and matter-of-fact manner, thus possibly causing the other person to think Holy shit and get somber about the mention�s implications? Or should he or she append a qualifier along the lines of Well, if we are still dating then? Neither one is quite right � I�ve been on the receiving end of the latter, and it�s just shitty � but there comes a time in every relationship when as much as you wish you could avoid it you have to use the word "relationship," no, I�m joking (kind of), I mean there comes a time when such a future event comes into play and you�re thinking how nice it would be to enjoy the event with the same person with whom you have lately been so much enjoying yourself, and there is no way to communicate this feeling of satisfaction and comfort and affection except by means of an implied invitation to the event itself. If I had to give this stage a name, I would call it the Implied Future Tense. Such an invitation puts on the table a sense of possibility, acknowledged possibility, that had not previously been there. You can�t pretend anymore that this category of things has never crossed your mind, that as true as your declarations are you are still partly blowing in the wind and therefore pose no threat to the other person�s autonomy. Whatever else it is, the implied invitation is the first real encroachment. And actually I�m being a total pussy going off about implied invitations and the implied future tense, because there is nothing implied about Let�s go to Europe in August. Fish or cut bait, fish or cut bait? And I�m realizing that without thinking about it � did I not even have to think about it? � I have already voted, and that is making me somberly freaked out. How did I vote? Ask my cat.

This is hard for me to write about, sorry, and I keep chafing at the filter and writing around it. I�ll keep trying.

Spain, though. I have never been there. A while back Steve and I were getting Mexican food for dinner and he walked in and started talking to the maitre d� in Spanish. I didn�t know you knew Spanish, I said. He looked at me very seriously and in a plummy British accent replied, "Bond. James Bond." I am somberly freaked out but I am also, I know, the luckiest monkey in the Pacific Northwest. Note to self: focus on monkey.

Earlier this week I learned that philosophy dot com is a site where you can buy cosmetics � the featured product on the home page was something called, I shit you not, Hope In A Jar � and substance dot com is a site where you can post your opinions about cosmetics. Modern life. Sometimes the facts speak for themselves, you know? Not that I have any room to preach. In fact, I dig what I condemn: how I found this stuff out was in the course of a fruitless search for eyelash darkener, since my brand of choice, Cover Girl, has been discontinued, and I haven�t been able to find another one; one sees mention of the elusive Max Factor product but has yet to be convinced of its existence. It�s just the tips of my eyelashes that are blond, and I don�t like to gloop out with mascara, and the Cover Girl was perfect. So, having conducted extensive research, I have determined that the next time my travels take me to a Wal-Mart, ha, I should investigate a product called Rimmel Extra Super Lash, which is described by most users as being neither extra nor super and paradoxically maybe just the thing I need. Unless, Dear Readers, you have any other suggestions? I also found out in the course of Lashquest that there is such a thing as a heated eyelash curler.

Excellent Stuever today. He�s getting better and better: "A significant part of the national lifestyle gets a little more inelegant all the time, even as it seeks elegance. It's not a moral failing so much as an inexorable loss of discernment." New York Times Arts and Leisure section, you will rue the day! (And: can you do that sort of thing with an MFA? Hmm.)

Weekend: Division Of Laura Lee and safety in numbers at the Crocodile on Saturday night, and besides that I don�t know. Steve�s going gravity skiing one day, which should make Marcus one un-neglected fellow. And speaking of substance, the real kind: She�s back.