I’m sad for him. I’m angry at him. I’m angry at myself.

I’m sad for him because he’s staring death right in the face. I don’t believe in an afterlife. When he’s gone, he’s gone forever.

I’m angry at him because this is entirely his own fault. I’ve begged him for years to stop smoking. He always dismissed me. I knew this was going to fucking happen.

I’m angry at myself for all of the wasted time.

I’ve read that if he stops smoking and they’re able to clear some of the obstructions then he has a good chance for survival, but is he doesn’t stop smoking…

Anyone who knows my dad will know how unlikely that is.

I’m digging up hypnotherapists for him to help him quit. Hopefully, this is enough of a wake-up call that he’ll take it seriously.

I came home, presumably from work, and one of my windows was slightly open, and the blinds were all fucked up. Obviously, someone had broken in. I ran inside and looked around… TV, game consoles, even my coffee table was gone. I went into the kitchen and noticed that whoever had broken in had written notes all over the whiteboard, then on the wall around it when they ran out of room. Then I noticed that the walls of the dining room and living room were also covered in notes addressed to me. I spent the rest of the dream reading them. The notes were all very critical and personal. The thief was my subconscious, and it was speaking directly to me, which is what made it so weird. I won’t share any of the messages here. They were far too embarrassing, and I don’t remember most of them verbatim anyway.

After a while I thought I should call the cops. Then someone pulled int my driveway. I went outside to find a middle aged woman and her daughter getting out of a car and walking towards me. They had the wrong address. End of dream.

I’ve switched my hosting provider from dreamhost to slicehost, and I’m pretty happy with it. I’d been with dreamhost for 2 years. In the last year or so, they’ve been fucking up. That last one is a doozy.

Still, I’ve been willing to put up with shitty performance, random outages and cumbersome account configurations, because the benefits outweighed those issues. They oversell to the point of insanity, so I get insane amounts of (theoretical) disk space and bandwidth. I’ve been basically using my account there as a remote backup system, since, as of today, my disk space allotment is 310.37 gigs. And that grows 2 gigs every week. For $10 a month, I may just keep that account and use it for storage.

But I’m rambling. The impetus for switching to a new host was the fact that php was completely fucked on their servers for about 4 hours on Tuesday. Normally, I wouldn’t have noticed, since php is shit and I don’t use it. But I’m using a small php script to gzip all of my css and javascript files dynamically, and when php went bye-bye, ALL OF MY SITES STOPPED WORKING! That’s because I was using the .htaccess commands “php_value” and “php_flag” to make everything work magically (as described here).

Needless to say, I was a little pissed. I sent them a support request explaining what was happening. Then I proceeded to go through all of my domains and comment out those lines, so that things would start working again. Let me say right now that I have a LOT of .htaccess files, so this was no fucking fun.

A few minutes later, I try to log into phpMyAdmin, and I find that the php problem affects even their own applications. They maintain those phpMyAdmin installations, not me. So I send another support request letting them know.

3 hours later, I get a response:

“I apologize for the problem with your website this afternoon. It appears that one of our admins prematurely removed some php support for all domains on our apache servers. The admin is correcting this on all apache services as I write this, but it may take about an hour for ever system to get updated.”

Amazing.

The gravity of this problem lies in the fact that when php can’t be executed properly, it just prints out its source. So, let’s say you’ve spent several months working on the Next Big Thing^TM, and you’ve written it in php for some reason. Suddenly, dreamhost screws up, and the source to your application is available to anyone who bothers to just visit your site.

That was the last straw for me.

I’d read about slicehost a while ago. I was interested, but the hassle of moving all of my sites to a new host prevented me from giving it serious thought. They’re a Virtual Private Server host, which basically means that you rent a virtual machine on their servers. You get full control over the virtual server. You can install several different flavors of Linux, format and reinstall as you see fit, and you can fine-tune memory settings. It’s far superior to shared hosting, where you’re basically just a low-level user on a server, and you have to beg and plead to get anything fixed/changed/added.

Normally VPS hosts are somewhat expensive, but slicehost is cheap. After the dreamhost fuck-up, I was sold.

All of my sites are noticeably faster. I have tighter control over databases, cron jobs, apache performance and programming language installations. I don’t have to jump through hoops just to install new python libraries anymore, and web frameworks like ruby on rails and django work without a hitch. I can force SFTP or FTPS connections instead of vanilla FTP.

It’s pretty sweet.

It’s been kind of a pain to sync up all that data, but I think I’ve mostly done by this point. The only site left to fix is Floris’s blog and image gallery. He had a gig of images uploaded. I’ve almost got him talked into getting his own hosting, though.

I’ve dropped the ball on my “daily drawings” things. I just haven’t had the time. Work has been kicking my ass. Weekends are spent with Jenn. On top of that, I’ve been trying to cook, so that’s more time spent at home doing mundane things.

I’m lying. I sort of enjoy it. It’s weird seeing how much random cooking knowledge bubbles up to the surface. I guess I’ve retained more from watching the Food Network than I ever realized. Thank you, Good Eats.

And thank you, Joanna, for buying me a George Foreman grill 3 years ago. I finally used it.

Sandra is pregnant. This is significant for several reasons:

• It takes the pressure off of me to spawn. Mom wants grandkids badly. Dad says I need to carry on the family name, as if there aren’t enough Smiths in the world. I can barely take care of myself. Kids are out of the questions until I’m 30, if ever.
• She supposedly couldn’t get pregnant. I don’t know why, but that’s what I was told, so it’s a “miracle baby”. I put that in quotes because… well, we don’t need to get into that. Sufficed to say, I’ve heard that before.
• Of my three siblings, she’s the only one in a position to have babies. I’m fucking irresponsible, and unstable as hell. My life is a ridiculous caricature of bachelorhood. Molly is 16. Crystal… heh. Sandra’s been living with Larry for however many years. They seem stable. She’s calmed down a lot. She’s really the only option.

I guess three counts as several.

So, anyway, keep your fingers crossed.

Things with Jenn are still going strong. It’s been three months and she hasn’t gotten sick of me or cheated on me with some douche bag from Florida yet, which is a good sign. She’s started talking about meeting her parents now, which fills me with terror. I guess it’s something that needs to happen, though, since I’d like to keep her around. I just make such horrible first impressions…

I haven’t really seen any movies worth mentioning. I haven’t read any books or found any new music since my last catch-up post. Like I said, I’ve been busy. I’m looking forward to Iron Man coming out in a couple weeks, as well as GTA IV. I’ve been playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl a lot lately, mostly at Jady’s house.

Rob and Big ended this week, and I’m giving serious thought to canceling my cable. It was the best show on TV right now, and now it’s gone, so what’s the point?

I have a lot of projects going on right now, outside of work.

• abillionthings.com - I bought this domain years ago with the intent of building a catch-all listing service. It would be free-form, so you could just create lists of whatever you want - to-do lists, favorite movies lists, shopping lists, wish lists, whatever. I love lists, and all listing systems I’ve used have been inadequate. I’ve started this project many times in many different languages and frameworks, and none have stuck. Recently, when Google App Engine started accepting beta developers, I got in and my interest was rekindled. I’ve been working on it little by little, and have a working version running locally using the SDK, but I haven’t had time to upload it and get it running.
• jennerwin.com - It’s mostly done. Jenn just needs to fill out the remaining bits. The backend works and the very, very minimalistic design is done.
• jrsmith.info - Needs to be done before June. I need screenshots, and I need to write a resume. I’ve never done that before. It’s kind of an intimidating task, since creating this is tantamount to admitting that I may be out of work soon in my mind. If I keep pushing it off, I’ll be safe. That doesn’t make any sense.
• overheardinhamptonroads.com - I just randomly registered this domain and whipped up something very, very quickly on tumblr the other day. Then I went through the entire internet and bookmarked 54 other sites that provide a similar service. My idea was to combine these bookmarks and Google Maps to add geolocation data to all of those sites, since the majority of them are focused around certain locations.
• new front page - This is an extension of the sidebar that used to be on the blog, but more advanced. It will replace the blog on the front page and work very much like FriendFeed, except it’s far more customizable. I basically set up a series of pipes on yahoo pipes to collect, categorize and normalize RSS feeds from my accounts on all of the different sites that one normally associates with “web two point ohhh”, plus a few non-standard ones. Periodically, that pipe is tapped and the output is stored in a database. Then a very simple python script allows browsing of those items by date and category (and eventually, tags). I think it’s pretty sweet. I’ve actually done this several different ways as well. Originally it was completely javascript-based, usng jQuery, and had lots of complicated transitions. I realized, though, that doing it that way would prevent search engine spidering, and that’s unacceptable, so I scrapped it. Anyway, it will be the default page for jrsmith.net soon, and it’ll make stalking me so much easier.
• recipe generator - Since I’m going to be cooking for myself in the foreseeable future, I wanted a way to take the pressure out of picking out feed to cook. I want to make a site that will maintain an inventory of my groceries (possibly synced from the ipod touch, which I use to make shopping lists). The site will have several recipe templates and will be able to produce random recipes based on available ingredients. It could then be scheduled to produce these recipes at convenient times, to take into account thawing times for meat, or whatever. It should be a simple thing to create. It could also generate shopping lists each week, which is a big bonus.

Those are just the web-related things. Jenn wants me to participate in some of the art projects she’s created or joined, one of which is the Five Five Project. Then there’s one that involves a wooden block and news clippings.

So, as I said… I’ve been busy.

Also, it makes me sad that I haven’t bought any t-shirts in so long.

Sigh.

Back to work.

Here are some doodles:

I’ll catch up on Friday, probably. Not that it matters.

Why doesn’t Chik-Fil-A have a spicy chicken sandwich?

And here’s one for tomorrow, while I’m at it:

Also:

“life will be shitty for you once again because that’s how it goes for you.”

Fun stuff.

Don’t be surprised

But anyway, I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!

I spent maybe 30 minutes on this before photoshop decided that I didn’t need to be able to save anymore, and then crashed. So this is what you get to launch my daily drawing experiment: a half-assed doodle. I’d put somewhat heavy detail into the cat and the jarred brain before it crashed. I’m pretty pissed about that.

Things with Jenn are still going very well. She’s fantastic. My only worries at this point are that she’s going to snap out of it soon and realize she can do way better than me, and her inevitable departure for graduate school in another state.

I won’t get to see her this weekend or next, though, so anyone who might have been cursing me to themselves for not being available on weekends anymore, now’s your chance to get in some quality JR time. My phone is readied for the avalanche of calls that are no doubt coming.

I was watching TV earlier while enjoying my delicious Get Up And Goji smoothie, and I saw a lame commercial for KFC, advertising some kind of wrap, or something. It was unremarkable, until they showed this wrap being “grilled”:

The grill marks on the wrap are diagonal, while the grill itself is vertical. That amused me.

My Crystal boycott continues.

I may or may not have to look for a job in the not-so-near future. Maybe. I’m not sure. Either way, I’m putting together a resume/portfolio at jrsmith.info, just in case.

Speaking of websites, I’m working on one for Jenn to showcase her art. It’s very simple and no-frills, as per her instruction, but the backend is interesting. It’s entirely fed by her flickr account using the flickr api. It divides them up based on the sets she’s created in flickr. It only displays the images she’s tagged in a certain way. It uses Lightview for lightbox-ish image galleries, and it picks up the title and description from flickr. It also gets the post date and shows an icon on the gallery and image thumbnails to indicate new content. I think it’s pretty cool.

I thought There Will Be Blood should have won Best Picture.

I still need a new car.

I haven’t yet decided whether I want to get another roommate.

I’m thinking about forcing myself into being artistic again. I know of a few other art bloggers that post a drawing or sketch every day. That might be worth looking into. What do you think?

I’m also thinking of changing the structure of this site around again. It’s progressing more and more towards a miniblog, with the use of the sidebar listing all (well, not all) of the things that I do in other places. I’d like to make these blog posts and comments just another item in that list. I’d turn the main page into kind of a magnifying glass on the current day when you first visit, with the ability to browse forward or backward as you wish.

I just need time to do it.

Pop culture: I haven’t read any books in a while. I normally read on the weekends, and my weekends have been pleasantly occupied lately. I’ve been reading Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut when I have time. I’ve been watching The Wire and Breaking Bad, along with an embarrassing number of horrible reality shows like Rock of Love, at the request of my beloved Jenn. I’m listening to the Herbie Hancock CD that won best album at the Grammys, River: The Joni Letters. I’m also listening to the new Z-Trip CD Shifting Gears and the leaked Gnarls Barkley CD The Odd Couple. Movie-wise, I’ve seen Fool’s Gold (ugh), The Other Boleyn Girl (uggh), and CJ and I are supposed to see Be Kind, Rewind at some point. I’ve watched There Will Be Blood, Run Fat Boy Run, The Golden Compass, In The Valley Of Elah, Lars and the Real Girl, Beowulf, Michael Clayton, Elizabeth - The Golden Age, We Own The Night, The Assassination of Jesse James REALLY LONG TITLE, Hitman, Rendition, Juno, Atonement, The Bucket List, The Kite Runner, and Charlie Wilson’s War.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to look up instructions for making resin jewelry for the girl that owns my heart.

Over the many, many years that I’ve had to put up with this person, I’ve learned to mostly ignore her. Yes, occasionally, when I’m feeling short-tempered for whatever reason and she starts her bullshit, I’ll get pissed. I’m generally more pissed at myself for giving her the reaction she wants than I actually am at her, since it’s her nature to be a bitch, and she can’t really be blamed for that. You are who you are, and most people don’t have the ability, desire or motivation to change themselves.

This weekend, however, she went a little too far.

Saturday was my mom’s birthday. I brought Jenn to meet everyone. Two days prior, Crystal made it clear that she was going to be extra bitchy for just that reason. I tried to prepare myself and Jenn for this, but no one ever believes me when I tell them how she can be.

I did my best to ignore her. I didn’t make eye contact. I ignored her when she tried to get my attention so she could do whatever she could to irritate me. I tried not to react. But she just kept going.

Eventually I decided to fire back. I’ve found that lately, the quickest way to shut her up is to highlight how much of a mooching deadbeat she is. She’ll get defensive and foul-mouthed when I do this, but then she just gets pissed off and retreats to her cellphone, presumably to txt one of her friends and complain about how much of an asshole I am, desperate for someone to agree with her and reassure her that she’s a decent person.

That’s more or less what happened Saturday, but to a greater degree, with much fouler language, and in front of Jenn, who felt awkward the rest of the night because of it. And I’m more than a little upset because of that.

She does this on purpose. There’s no doubt about that. She intentionally and blatantly does whatever she knows will get on my nerves. I’m not really sure why she does it. Maybe she’s stuck in some kind of self-perpetuating cycle of believing I’m a dick, which justifies her offensive behavior towards me, which in turn sometimes prompts me to be a dick to her. Maybe she honestly believes that her little comments are funny, and everyone thinks she’s really clever and witty, and I’m just mad that I have to bear the brunt of her oh-so-entertaining routine. Maybe she acts out to cover up her insecurities over how her life is progressing, and since I’m arguably the more successful of her siblings, I get to be the target of those outbursts. Maybe she’s just a fucking sadist who can dish it out, but can’t take it. I have no idea, and I have no interest in finding out, because it isn’t worth the effort. She’s so over-the-top defensive that any and every bit of constructive criticism is met with sarcasm, denial, foul language and a temper tantrum. You can’t talk to her. There’s no discussion to be had here.

So, I’ve decided to boycott Crystal.

I will not be attending any family function that includes her. I won’t be going to dinner if she’s invited. I won’t be coming to the house if she’s home. Of course, certain types of events can’t be avoided, like birthdays or Christmas, and I’d rather not miss out on those things. Time spent there will be at an absolute minimum. I’ll be dropping off presents, eating a little food, and gone before she has time to open her hateful mouth.

This is a painful thing for me to do. In recent years, I’ve realized how important it is to spend time with family. It’s become a pretty big part of my life. I just don’t see any other way to open her eyes to how much of a bitch she can be.

…they’ll eat a working girl like her alive.

Today is Virginia’s presidential primary. On all sides, I am bombarded by exhortations to “Get out and vote!” since “Change is coming!” and “It actually matters this time!”

It amazes me how far people will go to delude themselves into believing they have control over their own fates.

Putting aside the questionable veracity of results produced by Diebold electronic voting machines, and the highly suspect practices being used at some polling places, and who knows how many other crooked, sketchy, or just plain idiotic things that have been happening during these primaries, the system itself should be enough to make you lose faith.

When you vote in a primary, you are not voting for a candidate. You are voting for a delegate. Your state has a certain number of delegates, which may or may not even be counted in their entirety when the time comes. In most states, those delegates are not even bound by the results of the primary. They can decide to cast their vote for whoever they want. The actual election works much the same way. Consider the disparity between the popular vote and the electoral vote in the last couple of presidential elections. Look up some information on the electoral college sometime.

In this country, when you vote, even under the best of circumstances, you’re really saying “I’d like it if this happened, but really, you guys should do what you think is best.” That doesn’t sit well with me.

What about your options? Even if the election process was flawless, look at who you get to choose from: insane Christian fundamentalists, cantankerous old men who want to be at war for hundreds of years, and a career politician who will do and say anything to stay in power and bursts into tears in the middle of Starbucks, probably just for the media attention. Then there’s Barack, who’s vaguely non-threatening, yet charismatic, and who seems to sit right in the middle on not only every issue, but also every demographic, so that he appeals to pretty much everyone. Not too young, not too old, not too aggressive, not too compassionate, not too black, not too white, not too masculine, not too feminine. Intelligent, but not so intelligent as to alienate the idiots that populate this country.

I will not be voting today. I’ll most likely never vote. I understand that people feel a need to at least pretend like they’re making a difference, but I’d appreciate it if you kept your rhetoric to yourself. I’m tired of hearing it.

Work has been increasingly unsatisfying for me. I’m completely and totally swamped by work that I find hopelessly boring. Every day is the same as the last. Endless projects, endless uncertainty. No one knows what they want, they just want it now. I’m left with a big vague project that WILL NEVER END, and more of the same lined up behind it. Every single day my brain becomes more and more comatose. It’s gotten to the point that I actually look forward to the occasional change to the website, since it rouses my brain a little for a few minutes. That’s really sad.

So then, a bright flicker of hope shone down upon me. “Let’s move to a new platform,” they said. Awesome. “Let’s hire someone to take some of the burden off of you,” they said. Even better, since there’s no possible way I could ever even begin learning something new while laboring under this mountain of work. Unfortunately, my opinion here counts for exactly zero now. I say I want to move to a decent web framework, something like django or web.py or even ruby on rails. They decide to use .net. They decide to hire a contractor to start working on converting existing apps to .net instead of hiring a perl developer to take some of my current workload.

Neither of these things help me. If anything, they make things worse, because I now have to spend time answering some holier-than-thou consultant’s asinine questions.

For the first time since I’ve worked here, not counting my years at that other place, I look forward to leaving every day. I do not check my email after hours or in the mornings. I do not work weekends. I do not feel proud or enthusiastic about my work. It oppresses me. I get headaches when I think about it.

Maybe I’m not meant for this. Maybe I should have stuck with art. I’m kidding myself when I say that, though. I was never nearly good enough to make a living from that. On top of that, I’m horrible when selling myself or fruits of my labor. Any of you who have insisted on paying me for anything, like fixing your computer or drawing a tattoo or something, know that first-hand. I have no self-esteem, which makes it pretty much impossible to put a value on my efforts or time. This would have been a major hindrance.

I feel like I’ve stagnated. I don’t feel like I’m living up to my abilities. I see all the things being done on the internet today, things that I could easily be part of, and I feel like a monumental waste of space for spending an entire day updating calculations to fit today’s theories on how things should work, knowing I’ll have to change them again next week. I feel bad about myself for spending 30 minutes posting pictures of a Christmas party to an internal news page.

I am more than this.

If only I really believed that, I might be in a position to do something about it.

Jesus fucking christ, this is ridiculous.

It has to stop. Seriously.

In other news, I’m feeling better. The Wire is an awesome show. I need a new roommate. I’m looking forward to this weekend. I’m overwhelmed at work, and there’s no relief in sight.

I need a new car.

That is all. Back to work.

Things with Jenn are going well. Very well. I had a fantastic weekend, despite being deathly ill.

I’ve been sick since Friday night. My tonsils hurt, I’m congested and I’ve sporadically had a fever. I feel like ass. The ibuprofen isn’t really fighting the fever anymore. Thankfully, I feel much better today than yesterday, so hopefully it’s on the way out.

I’m going to buy a new car soon. To this end, I’ve decided to put myself into ultra-money-saving mode, starting today. I’m not going to go out to eat, or buy random things, or generally waste money at all, which is kind of my thing. Hopefully I can build up a good-sized chunk of change in the next few weeks and blow it all on consumerism.

If anyone wants to throw money at me out of the goodness of their hearts, like, say, my parents, whom I’ve never really asked for money, I would not complain.

I’m going to go back to bed now.

It’s time to stop bullshitting and proceed with the purchasing of a new car. Recent events foreshadow the need of a car that is capable of traveling more than 20 minutes at a time.

I’ve said this before on this very blog, but it bears repeating. It’d odd how a few words from the right person can so completely change your point of view. I just hope this doesn’t come crashing down, as is the custom here. Sigh.

Since she whose name shall not be mentioned, I’ve been very guarded. I’ve kept myself from developing anything more than a passing curiosity. I’ve limited myself to purely physical encounters. It’s easier to detach from a person when there are no emotions involved, when one of you is being used. There’s no secrecy. The nature of the relationship is made clear up front.

Since she whose name shall not be mentioned, I’ve been in something of a karmic conundrum. I’ve pursued only those who were otherwise spoken for, either as a girlfriend or wife. I’ve felt like it was my right to do whatever was in my power to disrupt the happiness and calm of others, since someone else’s actions had done the same to me.

I’ve since realized, probably way too late, that this attitude is very short-sighted and selfish. I’m moving on.

I’ve met someone special. Only time will tell is anything comes of it. Wish me luck.

What’s happened in the past month or so?

I’ve been sleeping better. A coworker recommended that I try taking melatonin and valerian root, which seems to help. Nightmares haven’t been a huge problem.

I took a ton of time off from work. As a result, I’m way behind and saddled by guilt.

Christmas came and went, and was enjoyable. Mom got a wii. Crystal had to put her cat to sleep because she had leukemia. Harley is leukemia-free and fat, weighing in at 10 pounds, 6 ounces.

New Years came and went. I was content with staying home this year, but it apparently wasn’t up to me. I was dragged out to the Wave. It was an alright time, but I really dislike going there, for reasons we’re all familiar with. The highlight of the evening, for me at least, had to be the way the gay guys swarmed around Floris, much like sharks do when they smell blood in the water. Hilarious.

I haven’t decided whether I should make any resolutions. My track record is less than stellar there. There are a lot of things I should be doing: weening myself off of fast food, exercising, working to get over my social anxiety. Drawing more. Reading more. I’d really like to fall in love again. I need new a couch. Maybe more than one. I need to cook more. I need a new car.

I bought an iPod Touch, mostly to make fun of Crystal, but partly to cheer myself up. It’s a nice little device. CJ bought one when he was overseas, but failed to utilize it to its full potential.

My roommate is moving out, slowly but surely. I’ve given no thought to replacing her. CJ mentioned something about moving in, but I have reservations about that. His family hates me, for whatever reason, so if he moved in, they’d probably be around quite a bit, and I’m not comfortable with that.

I’ve seen some movies:

• Walk Hard - Funny, but not hilarious. Also there was way too much penis.
• Alien vs Predator 2 - Entertainingly bad. I appreciated the fact that they spared no one, though. Pregnant women, kids, babies, all were fair game. And the scene when the ditzy girl got stapled to the wall by that shyuriken-thing was pretty awesome. Other than that, terrible. Here’s an example of the profound dialog you can expect: “People are dying. We need guns.”
• Charlie Wilson’s War - Very good. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I were more well-versed on the Cold War.
• The Bucket List - Fucking depressing. Maybe it’s just depressing for people who are wasting their lives and are aware of it.
• Joshua - Awesome. Disturbing. Makes me continue to never want to have kids.
• The Great Debaters - It wasn’t bad, but I feel like I’ve seen it a billion times before. It’s another of those formulaic “racism is bad and these people have overcome diversity!” stories, which isn’t necessarily bad, just done to death.
• Waitress - I liked it. Nathan Fillion is awesome.
• Mr. Woodcock - Not that funny.
• Death Sentence - Fucking terrible.

I read the book version of No Country For Old Men. It was pretty much exactly like the movie. The style it was written in, though, grated on my nerves. No quotes around dialog, no apostrophes in contractions, and no indication of who’s speaking in long bits of conversation. It shed a little more light on the role of the sheriff in the story, though. I read an entry on Huffington Post the other day that said the movie was a metaphor for America. Alec Baldwin is a douche.

I’m reading The Pleasure Of My Company by Steve Martin right now, sent to me by the lovely Meghan. I identify with the main character to a disturbing degree.

I’ve been somewhat depressed for about a week, but I don’t want to openly talk about it here. Something happened that I’d been looking forward to for a while, but I didn’t live up to my own expectations, and my reaction to the whole thing was confusing and backwards. I don’t regret it at all. I just wish it had gone a little differently, and I’m uncertain about the future, and I know I’m overthinking it.

It’s fucking freezing.

I don’t really have anything else to say. Here’s to 2007; let’s hope 2008 isn’t quite so disappointing.

I was really hoping that yesterday’s physical exertion would cause me to just pass right out. That’s what people always say, isn’t it? “Exercise more, you’ll be able to sleep better.” Let me say that this is not always the case. Last night, after pushing it to the limit and never giving up and keepin’ on keepin’ on and so forth, I still did not get to sleep until almost 5am. Tonight isn’t looking much better.

On the plus side, I did finish Welcome To The Monkey House which I got for $4 at Jennie’s Used Books in Portsmouth. While there, I noticed some of papaw’s little receipt cartoons at the counter. A woman who I assume was Jennie blathered on for a few minutes about how nice he was. Good times. I spent $55 there.

A lot of my dreams involve my grandparents. One of the more vivid ones that I actually held onto was a sort of apocalypse situation. I woke up outside of my house. Everything had been trashed, and the place was deserted. The skies were yellow, red and black from fire and smoke. I went inside the house, through to the back yard, where zombies started to attack me and I dispatched them in standard zombie movie fashion. After the first few, though, the zombies were family and friends. The very last one was my grandfather, and I killed him with either a pitchfork or chainsaw while crying hysterically. I think that one repeated twice.

Often, the dream is just some kind of surreal situation taking place in their house. More often than not, they aren’t even actually there, or are just a presence, never actually materializing. It’s always very dark, and kind of run-down, and there’s always some eerie noises coming from the back room, or upstairs, or the den.

I try to forget these as quickly as possible, for the sake of my own sanity, so I’m only left with pieces and impressions.

Speaking of impressions, No Country For Old Men left a huge one on me. I love movies that leave you thinking. The final scene was one of the most interesting ones in the entire movie, I think. I plan to read the book starting tomorrow.

Today, I guess.

Speaking of guessing, I guess my favorite short story from Welcome To The Monkey House is “Who am I this time?”. It kind of reminds me of myself. I’ve reproduced it here in it’s entirety:

The North Crawford Mask and Wig Club, an amateur theatrical society I belong to, voted to do Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire for the spring play. Doris Sawyer, who always directs, said she couldn’t direct this time because her mother was so sick. And she said the club ought to develop some other directors anyway, because she couldn’t live forever, even though she’d made it safely to seventyfour. So I got stuck with the directing job, even though the only thing I’d ever directed before was the installation of combination aluminum storm windows and screens I’d sold. That’s what I am, a salesman of storm windows and doors, and here and there a bathtub enclosure. As far as acting goes, the highest rank I ever held on stage was either butler or policeman, whichever’s higher.

I made a lot of conditions before I took the directing job, and the biggest one was that Hairy Nash. the only real actor the club has, had to take the Marlon Brando part in the play. To give you an idea of how versatile Harry is, inside of one year he was Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, then Abe Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois and then the young architect in The Moon is Blue. The year after that, Harry Nash was Henry the Eighth to Anne of the Thousand Days and Doc in Come Back Little Sheba. and I was after him for Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Harry wasn’t at the meeting to say whether he’d take the part or not. He never came to meetings. He was too shy. He didn’t stay away from meetings because he had something else to do. He wasn’t married, didn’t go out with women - didn’t have any close men friends either. He stayed away from all kinds of gatherings because he never could think of anything to say or do without a script.

So I had to go down to Miller’s Hardware Store, where Harry was a clerk, the next day and ask him if he’d take the part. I stopped off at the telephone company to complain about a bill I’d gotten for a call to Honolulu, I’d never called Honolulu in my life. And there was this beautiful girl I’d never seen before behind the counter at the phone company, and she explained that the company had put in an automatic billing machine and that the machine didn’t have all the bugs out of it yet. It made mistakes. “Not only did I not call Honolulu,” I told her, “I don’t think anybody in North Crawford ever has or will.” So she took the charge off the bill, and I asked her if she was from around North Crawford. She said no. She said she just came with the new billing machine to teach local girls how to take care of it. After that, she said, she would go with some other machine to someplace else. “Well,” I said, “as long as people have to come along with the machines, I guess we’re all right.”

“What?” she said.

“When machines start delivering themselves,” I said, “I guess that’s when the people better start really worrying.”

“Oh,” she said. She didn’t seem very interested in that subject, and I wondered if she was interested in anything. She seemed kind of numb, almost a machine herself, an automatic phone company politeness machine.

“How long will you be in town here?” I asked her. “I stay in each town eight weeks, sir,” she said. She had pretty blue eyes, but there sure wasn’t much hope or curiosity in them. She told me she had been going from town to town like that for two years, always a stranger.

And I got it in my head that she might make a good Stella for the play. Stella was the wife of the Marlon Brando character, the wife of the character I wanted Harry Nash to play. So I told her where and when we were going to hold tryouts, and said the club would be very happy if she’d come.

She looked surprised, and she warmed up a little. “You know,” she said, “that’s the first time anybody ever asked me to participate in any community thing.” “Well,” I said, “there isn’t any other way to get to know a lot of nice people faster than to be in a play with ‘em.”

She said her name was Helene Shaw. She said she might just surprise me—and herself. She said she just might come.

You would think that North Crawford would be fed up with Harry Nash in plays after all the plays he’d been in. But the fact was that North Crawford probably could have gone on enjoying Harry forever, because he was never Harry on stage. When the maroon curtain went up on the stage in the gymnasium of the Consolidated Junior-Senior High School, Harry, body and soul, was exactly what the script and the director told him to be.

Somebody said one time that Harry ought to go to a psychiatrist so he could be something important and colorful in real life, too—so he could get married anyway, and maybe get a better job than just clerking in Miller’s Hard- ware Store for fifty dollars a week. But I don’t know what a psychiatrist could have turned up about him that the town didn’t already know. The trouble with Harry was he’d been left on the doorstep of the Unitarian Church when he was a baby, and he never did find out who his parents were. When I told him there in Miller’s that I’d been appointed director, that I wanted him in my play, he said what he always said to anybody who asked him to be in a play— and it was kind of sad, if you think about it.

“Who am I this time?” he said.

So I held the tryouts where they’re always held—in the meeting room on the second floor of the North Crawford Public Library. Doris Sawyer, the woman who usually directs, came to give me the benefit of all her experience. The two of us sat in state upstairs, while the people who wanted parts waited below. We called them upstairs one by one.

Harry Nash came to the tryouts, even though it was a waste of time. I guess he wanted to get that little bit more acting in.

For Harry’s pleasure, and our pleasure, too, we had him read from the scene where he beats up his wife. It was a play in itself, the way Harry did it, and Tennesse Williams hadn’t written it all either. Tennessee Williams didn’t write the part, for instance, where Harry, who weighs about one hundred fortyfive, who’s about five feet, eight inches tall, added fifty pounds to his weight and four inches to his height by just picking up a playbook. He had a short little double-breasted bellows-back grade-school graduation suit coat on and a dinky little red tie with a horsehead on it. He took off the coat and tie, opened his collar, then turned his back to Doris and me, getting up steam for the part. There was a great big rip in the back of his shirt, and it looked like a fairly new shirt too. He’d ripped it on purpose, so be could be that much more like Marlon Brando, right from the first.

When he faced us again, be was huge and handsome and conceited and cruel. Doris read the part of Stella, the wife, and Harry bullied that old, old lady into believing that she was a sweet, pregnant girl married to a sexy gorilla who was going to beat her brains out. She had me believing it too. And I read the lines of Blanche, her sister in the play, and darned if Harry didn’t scare me into feeling like a drunk and faded Southern belle.

And then, while Doris and I were getting over our emotional experiences, like people coming out from under ether, Harry put down the playbook, put on his coat and tie, and turned into the pale hardware-store clerk again.

“Was was that all right?” he said, and he seemed pretty sure he wouldn’t get the part.

“Well,” I said, “for a first reading, that wasn’t too bad.”

“Is there a chance I’ll got the part?” he said. I don’t know why he always had to pretend there was some doubt about his getting a part, but he did.

“I think we can safely say we’re leaning powerfully in your direction,” I told him.

He was very pleased. “Thanks! Thanks a lot!” he said, and be shook my hand.

“Is there a pretty new girl downstairs?” I said, meaning Helene Shaw.

“I didn’t notice,” said Harry.

It turned out that Helene Shaw had come for the tryouts, and Doris and I had our hearts broken. We thought the North Crawford Mask and Wig Club was finally going to put a really good-looking, really young girl on stage, instead of one of the beat-up forty-year-old women we generally have to palm off as girls.

But Helene Shaw couldn’t act for sour apples. No matter what we gave her to read, she was the same girl with the same smile for anybody who had a complaint about his phone bill.

Doris tried to coach her some, to make her understand that Stella in the play was a very passionate girl who loved a gorilla because she needed a gorilla. But Helene just read the lines the same way again. I don’t think a volcano could have stirred her up enough to say, “Oo.”

“Dear,” said Doris, “I’m going to ask you a personal question.”

“All right,” said Helene.

“Have you ever been in love?” said Doris. “The reason I ask,” she said, “remembering some old love might help you put more warmth in your acting.” Helene frowned and thought hard. “Well,” she said, “I travel a lot, you know. And practically all the men in the different companies I visit are married and I never stay anyplace long enough to know many people who aren’t.”

“What about school?” said Doris. “What about puppy love and all the other kinds of love in school?” So Helene thought hard about that, and then she said, “Even in school I was always moving around a lot. My father was a construction worker, following jobs around, so I was always saying hello or good-by to someplace, without anything in between.”

“Um,” said Doris.

“Would movie stars count?” said Helene. “I don’t mean to real life. I never knew any. I just mean up on the screen.”

Doris looked at me and rolled her eyes. “I guess that’s love of a kind,” she said.

And then Helene got a little enthusiastic. “I used to sit through movies over and over again,” she said, “and pretend I was married to whoever the man movie star was. They were the only people who came with us. No matter where we moved, movie stars were there.”

“Uh huh,” said Doris.

“Well, thank you. Miss Shaw,” I said. “You go downstairs and wait with the rest We’ll let you know.”

So we tried to find another Stella. And there just wasn’t one, not one woman in the club with the dew still on her. “All we’ve got are Blanches,” I said, meaning all we had were faded women who could play the part of Blanche, Stella’s faded sister. “That’s life, I guess - twenty Blanches to one Stella.”

“And when you find a Stella,” said Doris, “it turns out she doesn’t know what love is.”

Doris and I decided there was one last thing we could try. We could get Harry Nash to play a scene along with Helene. “He just might make her bubble the least little bit,” I said.

“That girl hasn’t got a bubble in her,” said Doris. So we called down the stairs for Helene to come back on up, and we told somebody to go find Harry. Harry never sat with the rest of the people at tryouts or at rehearsals either. The minute he didn’t have a part to play, he’d disappear into some hiding place where be could hear people call him, but where he couldn’t be seen. At tryouts in the library he generally hid in the reference room, passing the time looking at flags of different countries in the front of the dictionary. Helene came back upstairs, and we were very sorry and surprised to see that she’d been crying.

“Oh, dear,” said Doris. “Oh, my now what on earth’s the trouble, dear?”

“I was terrible, wasn’t I?” said Helene, hanging her head.

Doris said the only thing anybody can say in an amateur theatrical society when somebody cries. She said, “Why, no dear you were marvelous.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Helene. “I’m a walking icebox, and I know it.”

“Nobody could look at you and say that,” said Doris. “When they get to know me, they can say it,” said Helene. “When people get to know me, that’s what they do say.” Her tears got worse. “I don’t want to be the way I am,” she said. “I just can’t help it, living the way I’ve lived all my life. The only experiences I’ve had have been in crazy dreams of movie stars. When I meet somebody nice in real life, I feel as though I were in some kind of big bottle, as though I couldn’t touch that person, no matter how hard I tried.” And Helene pushed on air as though it were a big bottle all around her.

“You ask me if I’ve ever been in love,” she said to Doris. “No but I want to be. I know what this play’s about. I know what Stella’s supposed to feel and why she feels it. I-I-I ” she said, and her tears wouldn’t let her go on.

“You what, dear?” said Doris gently.

“I–” said Helene, and she pushed on the imaginary bottle again. “I just don’t know how to begin,” she said. There was heavy clumping on the library stairs. It sounded like a deep-sea diver coming upstairs in his lead shoes. It was Harry Nash, turning himself into Marlon Brando. In he came, practically dragging his knuckles on the floor. And he was so much in character that the sight of a weeping woman made him sneer.

“Harry,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Helene Shaw. Helene this is Harry Nash. If you get the part of Stella, he’ll be your husband in the play.” Harry didn’t offer to shake bands. He put his bands in his pockets, and he hunched over, and he looked her up and down, gave her looks that left her naked. Her tears stopped right then and there.

“I wonder if you two would play the fight scene,” I said, “and then the reunion scene right after it.”

“Sure,” said Harry, his eyes still on her. Those eyes burned up clothes faster than she could put them on. “Sure,” he said, “if Stell’s game.”

“What?” said Helene. She’d turned the color of cranberry juice.

“Stell—Stella,” said Harry. “That’s you. Stell’s my wife.”

I handed the two of them playbooks. Harry snatched his from me without a word of thanks. Helene’s hands weren’t working very well, and I had to kind of mold them around the book.

“I’ll want something I can throw,” said Harry.

“What?” I said.

“There’s one place where I throw a radio out a window,” said Harry. “What can I throw?”

So I said an iron paperweight was the radio, and I opened the window wide. Helene Shaw looked scared to death.

“Where you want us to start?” said Harry, and he rolled his shoulders like a prizefighter warming up. “Start a few lines back from where you throw the radio out the window,” I said.

“O.K., O.K.,” said Harry, warming up. He scanned the stage directions. “Let’s see,” he said, “after I throw the radio, she runs off stage, and I chase her, and I sock her one.”

“Right,” I said.

“O.K., baby,” Harry said to Helene, his eyelids drooping. What was about to happen was wilder than the chariot race in Ben Hur. “On your mark,” said Harry. “Get ready, baby. Go!”

When the scene was over, Helene Shaw was as hot as a hod carrier, as limp as an eel. She sat down with her mouth open and her head hanging to one side. She wasn’t in any bottle any more. There wasn’t any bottle to hold her up and keep her safe and clean. The bottle was gone.

“Do I get the part or don’t I?” Harry snarled at me.

“You’ll do,” I said.

“You said a mouthful!” he said. “I’ll be going now.”

“See you around, Stella,” he said to Helene, and he left. He slammed the door behind him.

“Helene?” I said. “Miss Shaw?”

“Mf?” she said.

“The part of Stella is yours,” I said “You were great!”

“I was?” she said.

“I had no idea you had that much fire in you, dear,” Doris said to her.

“Fire?” said Helene. She didn’t know if she was afoot or on horseback.

“Skyrockets! Pinwheels! Roman candles!” said Doris.

“Mf,” said Helene. And that was all she said. She looked as though she were going to sit in the chair with her mouth open forever.

“Stella,” I said.

“Huh?” she said.

“You have my permission to go.”

So we started having rehearsals four nights a week on the stage of the Consolidated School. And Harry and Helene set such a pace that everybody in the production was half crazy with excitement and exhaustion before we’d rehearsed four times. Usually a director has to beg people to learn their lines, but I had no such trouble. Harry and Helene were working so well together that everybody else in the cast regarded it as a duty and an honor and a pleasure to support them.

I was certainly lucky - or thought I was. Things were going so well, so hot and heavy, so early in the game that I had to say to Harry and Helene after one love scene, “Hold a little something back for the actual performance, would you please? You’ll burn yourselves out.”

I said that at the fourth or fifth rehearsal, and Lydia Miller, who was playing Blanche, the faded sister, was sitting next to me in the audience. In real life, she’s the wife of Verne Miller. Verne owns Miller’s Hardware Store. Verne was Harry’s boss.

“Lydia,” I said to her, “have we got a play or have we got a play?”

“Yes,” she said, “you’ve got a play, all right.” She made it sound as though I’d committed some kind of crime, done something just terrible. “You should be very proud of yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?” I said.

Before Lydia could answer, Harry yelled at me from the stage, asked if I was through with him, asked if he could go home. I told him he could and, still Marlon Brando, he left, kicking furniture out of his way and slamming doors. Helene was left all alone on the stage, sitting on a couch with the same gaga look she’d had after the tryouts. That girl was drained. I turned to Lydia again and I said, “Well—until now, I thought I had every reason to be happy and proud. Is there something going on I don’t know about?”

“Do you know that girl’s in love with Harry?” said Lydia.

“In the play?” I said.

“What play?” said Lydia. “There isn’t any play going on now, and look at her up there.” She gave a sad cackle.

“You aren’t directing this play.”

“Who is?” I said.

“Mother Nature at her worst,” said Lydia. “And think what it’s going to do to that girl when she discovers what Harry really is.” She corrected herself. “What Harry really isn’t,” she said.

I didn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t figure it was any of my business. I heard Lydia try to do something about it, but she didn’t get very far.

“You know,” Lydia said to Helene one night, “I once played Ann Rutledge, and Harry was Abraham Lincoln.” Helene clapped her hands. “That must have been heaven!” she said.

“It was, in a way,” said Lydia. “Sometimes I’d get so worked up, I’d love Harry the way I’d love Abraham Lincoln. I’d have to come back to earth and remind myself that he wasn’t ever going to free the slaves, that he was just a clerk in my husband’s hardware store.”

“He’s the most marvelous man I ever met,” said Helene.

“Of course, one thing you have to get set for, when you’re in a play with Harry,” said Lydia, “is what happens after the last performance.”

“What are you talking about?” said Helene.

“Once the show’s over,” said Lydia, “whatever you thought Harry was just evaporates into thin air.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Helene.

“I admit it’s hard to believe,” said Lydia.

Then Helene got a little sore. “Anyway, why tell me about it?” she said. “Even if it is true, what do I care?” “I - I don’t know,” said Lydia, backing away. “I - I just thought you might find it interesting.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Helene.

And Lydia slunk away, feeling about as frowzy and unloved as she was supposed to feel in the play. After that nobody said anything more to Helene to warn her about Harry, not even when word got around that she’d told the telephone company that she didn’t want to be moved around anymore, that she wanted to stay in North Crawford.

So the time finally came to put on the play. We ran it for three nights - Thursday, Friday, and Saturday - and we murdered those audiences. They believed every word that was said on stage, and when the maroon curtain came down they were ready to go to the nut house along with Blanche, the faded sister. On Thursday night the other girls at the telephone company sent Helene a dozen red roses. When Helene and Harry were taking a curtain call together, I passed the roses over the footlights to her. She came forward for them, took one rose from the bouquet to give to Harry. But when she turned to give Harry the rose in front of everybody, Harry was gone. The curtain came down on that extra little scene - that girl offering a rose to nothing and nobody.

I went backstage, and I found her still holding that one rose. She’d put the rest of the bouquet aside. There were tears in her eyes. “What did I do wrong?” she said to me.

“Did I insult him some way?”

“No,” I said. “He always does that after a performance. The minute it’s over, he clears out as fast as he can.”

“And tomorrow he’ll disappear again?”

“Without even taking off his makeup.”

“And Saturday?” she said. “He’ll stay for the cast party on Saturday, won’t he?”

“Harry never goes to parties,” I said. “When the curtain comes down on Saturday, that’s the last anybody will see of him till he goes to work on Monday.”

“How sad,” she said.

Helene’s performance on Friday night wasn’t nearly so good as Thursday’s. She seemed to be thinking about other things. She watched Harry take off after curtain call. She didn’t say a word.

On Saturday she put on the best performance yet. Ordinarily it was Harry who set the pace. But on Saturday Harry had to work to keep up with Helene. When the curtain came down on the final curtain call, Harry wanted to get away, but he couldn’t. Helene wouldn’t let go his hand. The rest of the cast and the stage crew and a lot of well-wishers from the audience were all standing around Harry and Helene, and Harry was trying to get his hand back.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to go.”

“Where?” she said.

“Oh,” he said, “home.”

“Won’t you please take me to the cast party?” she said. He got very red. “I’m afraid I’m not much on parties,” he said. All the Marlon Brando in him was gone. He was tongue-tied, he was scared, he was shy - he was everything Harry was famous for being between plays.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll let you go - if you promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?” he said, and I thought he would jump out a window if she let go of him then.

“I want you to promise to stay here until I get you your present,” she said.

“Present?” he said, getting even more panicky.

“Promise?” she said.

He promised. It was the only way he could get his hand back. And he stood there miserably while Helene went down to the ladies’ dressing room for the present. While he waited, a lot of people congratulated him on being such a fine actor. But congratulations never made him happy. He just wanted to get away.

Helene came back with the present. It turned out to be a little blue book with a big red ribbon for a place marker. It was a copy of Romeo and Juliet. Harry was very embarrassed. It was all he could do to say “Thank you.”

‘The marker marks my favorite scene,” said Helene.

“Um,” said Harry.

“Don’t you want to see what my favorite scene is?” she said.

So Harry had to open the book to the red ribbon.

Helene got close to him, and read a line of Juliet’s. “‘How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?’” she read. ” ‘The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here.’ ” She pointed to the next line. “Now, look what Romeo says,” she said.

“Um,” said Harry.

“Read what Romeo says,” said Helene.

Harry cleared his throat. He didn’t want to read the line, but he had to. “‘With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,’ ” he read out loud in his everyday voice. But then a change came over him. “‘For stony limits cannot hold love out,’” he read, and he straightened up, and eight years dropped away from him, and he was brave and gay. “‘And what love can do, that dares love attempt,’” he read, ” therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.’”

“If they do see thee they will murther thee,’” said Helene, and she started him walking toward the wings.

“‘Alack!’” said Harry, “‘there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords.’” Helene led him toward the backstage exit. “‘Look thou but sweet,’” said Harry, “‘and I am proof against their enmity.’”

“‘I would not for the world they saw thee here,’” said Helene, and that was the last we heard. The two of them were out the door and gone.

They never did show up at the cast party. One week later they were married.

They seem very happy, although they’re kind of strange from time to time, depending on which play they’re reading to each other at the time.

I dropped into the phone company office the other day, on account of the billing machine was making dumb mistakes again. I asked her what plays she and Harry’d been reading lately.

“In the past week,” she said, “I’ve been married to Othello, been loved by Faust and been kidnaped by Paris. Wouldn’t you say I was the luckiest girl in town?”

I said I thought so, and I told her most of the women in town thought so too.

“They had their chance,” she said.

“Most of ‘em couldn’t stand the excitement,” I said.

And I told her I’d been asked to direct another play. I asked if she and Harry would be available for the cast. She gave me a big smile and said, “Who are we this time?”

• Juno
• No Country For Old Men
• Atonement
• Delirious
• Starting Out On The Evening
• The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
• Dan In Real Life
• The Good Night
• The Darjeeling Limited
• Eastern Promises
• In The Valley Of Elah
• Once
• Black Irish
• Trade
• Hitman
• Tetsuo The Iron Man
• When The Wind Blows
• King Of California

I had a terrible dream last night. This is the description I cobbled together when it forcibly ejected me from REM sleep at 6am this morning:

Nightmare 11/27

I was at jady and kelly’s, hanging out and talking shit as usual. We were going somewhere. We get in kelly’s jeep and drive somewhere. On the way we pass my house (which was the old house in churchland). It was raining pretty hard and not quite dusk. when we pass the house we see that one of the front windows is wide open but no one is home and all the lights are on. Jady says “uh ooohh” and we decide to go see if i’m getting robbed or something. As he turns around a woman pulls up in an old white custom van and gets out. She was black and slim and had purple flowers in her hand. Jady says “fuck, not her again” and she walks up to the house and puts the flowers in the front flowerbed and seems to be praying. I walk up and say something like “just in the nick of time, right?” as she’s knocking on the door, and she smiles. I pull out some keys and try a couple before finding the right one. Inside i can see there’s water all over the floor. When i get inside i call out for lacy and i can hear her in mom’s room start to wag her tail and run for the front door, but immediately i hear molly start to scream this blood curdling awful scream from upstairs and i run to the door to the stairs, and i wake up just as i’m opening it.

It was pretty disturbing. There weren’t any fantastic elements to the dream. Everything was very plausible and realistic. In the dream, I was txting people (Christa), as usual. The top floor of mom’s current house and the stairway leading to it were part of the old house in Churchland. The woman who brought the flowers refused to actually look me in the eye…

And that scream… Ug.

Forgive the spelling errors and generally blah nature of the description. I was half asleep and typing on a phone.

I’ve been to Jacksonville several times for work, but, always with someone else. This is my second time here on my own. The first, I was so engulfed by anxiety and uncertainty, I didn’t spend a lot of time observing my surrounding. This time, I’ve paid more attention and noticed several interesting things.

• The people here drive SLOW AS FUCK. Several times I’ve been stuck in slow-moving pockets of traffic doing 5 under the speed limit, AND I WAS STILL PASSING PEOPLE! Never have I experienced such road rage before.
• There’s an inordinate number of wing joints here. You’d think I’d be in heaven, but they all look shady, and I have an irrational fear of going to restaurants alone.
• The oceanfront area is almost completely comatose. The sidewalks are empty, the parking lots are empty, the restaurants are empty. I guess that’s why they drive so slowly: they aren’t actually going anywhere.

Speaking of irrational fears, I went to a restaurant alone for the first time tonight, and it wasn’t bad. Quickest meal at Carrabba’s I’ve ever had.

I’m flying home tomorrow night. Keep your fingers crossed that I don’t die in a fiery plane crash.

Also, I deserve a raise.