Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Bleah. Bleah, bleah, bleah. And a pfpptfptpfpt too.

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Yeah, well, yesterday kinda blew. A lot. Not quite a “terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad, going to move to Australia” day…but not exactly sunshine-n-roses, either.

Monday evening I’d gotten a call from Nate to meet him over for coffee at a place about 2 blocks down Boylston from my apartment. All fine and dandy, was a nice evening, talking and playing chess — but the coffee was a bad idea. Having dramatically cut the amount of caffiene I take in from what I used to, my system isn’t conditioned to accept a sudden influx of stimulants at 6:30pm in the evening. I didn’t get to sleep until sometime around 1am…ugh. Not doing that again anytime soon…the coffee part, at least. The talk and the chess was fine.

Also that evening, after Nate and I parted ways, I’d decided to pick up batteries for my MiniDisc recorder so that I could work on recording another mix session. On the way down the hill to QFC, however, I saw Holly and Ryan getting out of Ryan’s car. Turns out they were meeting up with a friend at the Rosebud (a cafe/bar on Pike), and invited me along. Once there they introduced me to Trey, and not long afterwards Will, a friend of Trey’s, showed up, and the five of us kicked back and had a lot of fun talking and joking around for a while. I was hoping the two cosmopolitan martinis I had would offset the coffee, as alcohol tends to make me drowsy…unfortunately, no go. It did make for quite an entertaining evening, however, and after a while I headed home and eventually fell asleep.

Unfortunately, falling asleep at one in the morning doesn’t exactly help ensure a quick up-n-at-’em in the morning. I didn’t miss my bus, but I sure didn’t hop out of bed as quickly as I do when I crash out at 10pm. Anyway, once I got to work, things were pretty crazy from the start, which didn’t do a whole lot to help my mood. I’m just glad I don’t get hangovers — two martinis probably wouldn’t be enough to trigger one anyway, but you never know, right? Lunchtime rolls around and I head down to Todays to pick up my paycheck — only to find out that it’s not there yet.

This is one of my few big beefs about my current work/pay situation — Xerox has required that rather than using their own system, Todays has to use a third-party intermediate called White Amber to handle my pay. So, each week I need to go to White Amber’s website and input my hours. At that point, an e-mail gets sent to my supervisor within Xerox, who has to approve my hours. Once my hours are approved, then Todays can cut me my check. End result — too many cooks in the kitchen, and it is causing me all sorts of headaches. It already delayed my ‘official’ payday from each Friday to the following Monday, and then there are occasional things like this, when it’s not there Monday, not there Tuesday, and I have to call today to see if I’m going to get paid or not. Urgh…things like this make it really difficult to plan out a budget and keep my money on track.

Then, just to make the day even more entertaining, once I get home and check my mail, I find a bill from GCI for roughly $400. Now I’m really ticked — before I left state, I made sure to completely pay up my accounts with GCI, and made arrangements for my phone and cable modem service to be cut off at the end of June. Last month when I’d called up and talked to Miranda and Loren (as along with Shane, they are the current residents of The Pit), I’d found out that for some reason GCI had not disconnected my service — but they assured me that bills were being paid, and it wouldn’t end up causing me any problems. Grrrr…that bill sure seemed to be telling me a different story. As it turns out, though, that much at least may work out — I’ve talked to both Loren and GCI, and it’s all getting taken care of. I was lucky enough to get a GCI person that I knew (a guy named Clyde, who I’ve known around Anchorage for a few years, and was starting at GCI just as I was leaving), so he’s going to see what he can do to get the bill knocked off — when he checked my account the notation to have my service cut at the end of June is in there, it just never happened…so at least at one level, it’s definitely a GCI screwup. I should be getting a call on that sometime today.

I did get a chance to jabber with Loren for a while yesterday evening, which was cool. After sorting out some of the confusion with the GCI stuff (some of which turns out to be related to my cable modem — I thought I owned it, so told Loren he could hold onto it, GCI thought they owned it, so were adding bills to my account to make up for a ‘lost’ cable modem), we got each other caught up on all the general day-to-day bits. Sounds like I’m missing out on a lot of drama up there…can’t say I’m surprised, nor disappointed that I’m not involved anymore, to be completely honest. While there are some disadvantages to my current living situation, one of the definite advantages is a nearly totally drama-free lifestyle.

And that’s about it for the moment. I did manage to put together another mix session last night, which came out pretty nicely…I’m really hoping I can get a way to get the ones I’ve done onto MiniDisc (I’ve now got three or four that are MD-only currently) onto my computer, ripped to .mp3, and/or burned to CD sometime soon — at the very least, would be nice to finally put an update on my DJ Wudi propaganda page. I’ll get to it as soon as I can, though. Laters….

Just a quick word or two

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Just tossing a quick entry in before I send out the e-mail update to those few people who get it. It’s Monday morning and I’m at work, so don’t want to spend too long here, but I thought it would be good to get a little bit in here so I’m not completely out of date.

Spent most of the weekend just kicking back and relaxing at home. Saturday I was thinking about wandering around the First Hill district, and had actually made it out the door when I stopped to chat with Damon (my next-door neighbor). While he and I were talking, who should walk up the hill but Holly and Ryan — they knew I lived around that area somewhere, but were just randomly wandering through while apartment hunting for Holly when they saw me standing there talking. I ended up spending the rest of the day wandering around with the two of them, apartment hunting for Holly, some mixing with Ryan in the evening, then a stop by the Baltic Room that night for some drinks and 60’s funk/soul before we all headed home.

Sunday was entirely a day of rest — sat at home, played with my mixing equipment, read Sandman comic books, and did laundry. Whew — tough stuff! :)

And that’s the basics for the weekend. Fun fun fun….

Slow times

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Hrm…I guess waiting a week between entries isn’t exactly the recommended technique for keeping a journal, is it? Of course, in my defense, I have been making the occasional post directly to my webpage from work. Now, one could, at this point, rather easily point out that that may not be the recommended technique for keeping a job…but that would just be cruel, and besides, I do it during breaks or lunch. So there. Bleah. :)

On a personal level, there just isn’t a whole lot of stuff going on in day-to-day life at the moment. My alarm goes off at 6am, I’m usually out of bed by 6:30, showered, dressed, and out the door by 7:25, and at work by 8am. I slog through work until 5pm, grab a bus home, then kill time reading or catching a movie (when I’m feeling rich enough to afford it), and am usually in bed by 10pm.

Rather amazingly dull, all laid out like that. Doesn’t seem all tht long ago that I was getting up between noon and 2pm, going to bed at six in the morning, and spending as much time as possible out with friends or at clubs, either DJ’ing or just having fun.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Okay, so that last line was a bit of an overstatement. A big overstatement. But still…does growing up — or at least getting older — really necessitate slipping into a routine so _un_inspiring that it actually inspires me to whine about it here?

I certainly hope not. Realistically, I can reassure myself that my current somewhat boring (and, therefore, bored) existance is a side effect of the move. I’m in a new town where I’m no longer the known personality that I was in Anchorage. I haven’t met very many people yet, and those I have I don’t run into that often, as Seattle is big enough that it doesn’t have an analogue to Vinyl (Village Inn, Northern Lights), that notorious center of the Anchorage social scene. I’m also in a much different financial situation — I’ve cut my pay by $1.50/hr from TimeFrame (and by $2.65/hr from my short stint at GCI), while nearly doubling my rent for an apartment roughly the size of my bedroom in Anchorage, and adding phone and electric bills that are no longer split with roommates to my monthly expenses. I no longer have a car, so my “sphere of influence” is limited to where I can go in a reasonable amount of time either by foot or by city bus.

Suffice to say, if anyone thought I was leaving Anchorage to make things easier on myself, they were sorely mistaken.

But, of course, that wasn’t why I left, as anyone who actually knows me decently well enough knows. I left for quite a few reasons — many of which I’ve ranted about on my webpage from time to time in the past — but primary among them was just the need to get out on my own in a new atmosphere.

Well, I’m out, I’m on my own, and this definitely isn’t Anchorage. I’ve known for a while that I probably wouldn’t really be in a decent spot financially until sometime in mid-October (with my last PFD estimated at $1800, parents owing me $1400 when they can get it to me, my bribe…er…tax refund of $300 showing up at some point, and another outstanding debt of roughly $1300 that I’m hoping will show up after PFD’s hit, I stand to be about $4800 better off if they all come through), it’s this nebulous paycheck-to-paycheck scraping by that gets pretty harrowing. Heck, if it weren’t for a landlord giving me castaways and a neighbor who abandoned his belongings when he bailed state, I still wouldn’t have any furniture!

Ah, well, I’ll make it — I just had to whine for a few moments. Things certainly aren’t all bad down here — my job is good, if not the most exciting in the world, I’m a bit strapped financially, though certainly not broke, my social life will pick up eventually, as there are things to do when I can afford it, and all in all, I’m really enojoying things as a whole. It’s just the niggling little details that can add up and look worse than they really are.

Of course, even when I claim that life is boring and I have nothing to do or say about it, I can still fill up eight-plus pages in this little notebook about my lack of anything to write about. ;) Like that will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.

Oh, well. It’s a bit after 10pm, and much as it may grate on my nocturnal inclinations, these days that does mean that it’s bedtime for Bonzo. Until tomorrow, then (or whenever I get back to scribble in here again)….

A good weekend for movies

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In the midst of more and more news about the continuing aftermath of the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and in a world where it looks more and more like the U.S. may soon be declaring war, I decided it was a good time to take a bit of a vacation and head out to the movies. My reviews for the shows I checked out aren’t the best I’ve ever written, unfortunately — I’m kinda tired and have a light headache that I’m hoping won’t get any worse anytime soon — but I at least got something up.

Thursday night I saw The Crimson Rivers (good thriller), Friday I checked out O (a decent Shakepearean update), and today I watched The Ghosts of Mars (fun brainless sci-fi romp).

Other than that, things have been fairly uneventful for the most part. I’ve been keeping a pretty constant eye out on the news, and am working on collecting at least the first week’s worth of newspapers since Tuesday. So far, Saturday has been the only day I forgot to pick any up. Got together with Chad, Don, and a friend of theirs (whose name I’m spacing on) for breakfast at Jack’s Roadhouse Cafe on Saturday, then we all checked out the Capitol Hill Block Party up on Broadway. Other than that…not a whole lot of major import has gone on.

I’d post more, but I’m just feeling kind of lackadaisacal at the moment. Besides — Dez is behind me watching Braveheart on television, so it’s easy for me to get distracted. Until next time, then….

Hollywood Squares funnies

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I found this earlier today. After days of tragedy, horror, and worry, it’s nice to find something that actually got me laughing. Enjoy.

From The Original Hollywood Squares TV show. These are from the days when game show responses were spontaneous and not scripted like they are now.

Peter Marshall: Paul, can you get an elephant drunk?
Paul Lynde: Yes, but he still won’t go up to your apartment.

Read more

It all keeps getting scarier

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My god — the radio just reported that NY Mayor Giulianni (sp?) has requested 6,000 body bags for the excavations through the rubble. Racial tensions are on the rise — there’s a report on the radio now about shots being fired into a Dallas Mosque. It was done in the middle of the night, thankfully enough, so no one was hit, but it’s still a pretty sad event.

Apparently the remains of the southern tower of the WTC, which had been jutting about five stories into the air, finally collapsed into the rest of the rubble. Hopefully there was enough warning before it fell that it didn’t land on anyone.

On a brighter note, there have been five people pulled from the wreckage of the WTC. Pentagon death estimates have dropped to between 100 and 200, from the 800 that was being estimated earlier.

Of course, that still leaves a stunning number of people killed.

Airlines are slowly being granted permission by the FAA to resume operations, though it sounds like it will be sometime Thursday before any of them actually do — and that service will be restricted at first, under heavy security measures. One of the new restrictions following the news that the hijackers had used knives to take over the planes is that no knives of any sort will be allowed onto an airplane. Apparently it had been within regulation to carry “small” knives — up to four inches in length — onto planes. Four inches? That hardly sounds very “small” to me.

Talk of war is still flying around, and seems to be getting stronger and stronger. NATO earlier declared that it would honor Section V of the NATO accords, declaring that an act against any single member of NATO will be considered an act against all, and the other member nations will stand with the U.S. should we initiate an offensive strike against those who struck at us.

That is, of course, assuming that we are sure who it was that attacked us. Osama bin Laden is definitely the prime suspect, but consensus is far from definite at this point. Senator Oren Hatch (sp?) seems to be practically foaming at the mouth in his zeal to go after bin Laden, but thankfully, there are other, calmer voices repeatedly advocating the need to hold back until we are absolutely sure.

So many things are so haywire these days. Since all airplanes are grounded, the skies above Seattle have been bizarrely clear and quiet since Tuesday. Normally I’ll see a few flights a day coming into Sea-Tac through my office windows, so seeing empty skies is a bit disquieting. Conversely, though, anytime a noise like a plane is heard — which does happen occasionally, as some military flights and some helicopters are allowed aloft — everyone instantly starts looking up, trying to figure out where it’s coming from, where it might be going, and whether it’s friendly or not. The speed that something as familiar as an airplane engine can become a trigger for paranoia and fright is just staggering.

I just called and spoke with my parents until my phone card ran out. Was a nice, and very welcome, little piece of normalcy in the midst of all this turmoil. It turns out that Mom was able to go with Dad to Grandmother’s funeral, and they said that it was a very nice service. Dad said that it seemed like the entire town of Martinsville (Indiana) came out to the viewing.

They also told me that the prevailing opinion among Dad’s side of the family is that stable, boring jobs can be found anytime, and that if I can get a chance at this DJ’ing gig, I should take it. That was great to hear. Mom’s parents, of course, favor my staying with the stable, boring job — but that’s much as I expected, and while it would have been nice to have their support in my wanting to run off to sea (my, how turn-of-the-century that sounds), it’s also comforting to know that Grandma and Grandpa are still, most stolidly, the G&G I’ve known all my life. Wouldn’t want ’em any other way.

I also tried to call Miranda to find out how she’s doing, and to see if all the turmoil is affecting her husband David in any way. Should the U.S. end up entering into a wartime situation, he’d be one of the people virtually gauranteed to hit the front lines, due to the nature of his job. Given that the two of them have been working hard at getting through their differences, I’d hate to see him suddenly get called away to a situation that he might very well not come back from. Hard as it may be for some to believe, my thoughts and prayers go out to the two of them (and, of course, to their daughter Lorelei, Queen of Wozzles) as to anyone else.

That’s it for tonight, though.

Political cartoons

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Lady Liberty in distressIt’s interesting. There’s a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday’s tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes — Uncle Sam being surprised/distraught/enraged by the attack, terrorists looming over the US, and so on — but there’s one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. That is the theme of Lady Liberty in distress as she witnesses the city she stands over in turmoil.

Lady Liberty stands tallHowever, there is one cartoon that I found to be much more effective — and to my mind, a much more welcome sentiment. Simply clouds of smoke, with Lady Liberty’s torch still held high, cutting through the destruction to continue casting her torchlight across America.

I’m not normally exactly rabidly patriotic — I’ve had more than my share of differences with the directions that this country and her leaders have taken over the years — but it still stirs something in me to see expressions of hope and optimism such as this one. I only wish there were more — it may be sorely needed in the weeks to come.

Still can’t really believe it

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First off, a brief recap of life since last Thursday.

Friday after work I got a call from Alex — turns out that it was his 23rd birthday, and he invited me to go out with him. Sounded cool to me, so at about 10pm I met up with Alex and his friend Melanie (who remebered me from The Lost Abby and Gig’s in Anchorage) at The Vogue. We hung out there for a bit until Nate showed up, then we all went over to The Mercury, a tiny little members-only goth/industrial club underneath an auto shop. I’d heard about it from Chad before, but this was my first time there — turns out it’s just about three blocks away from my apartment. Cool little place, too.

Friday night Alex and Melanie slept at my place, and we ended up spending all day Saturday bumming around town. That evening we went over to Casey’s place, and while neither Casey nor Chad were home, we spent a pleasant evening talking with Dez and ended up crashing out there.

Sunday I got dropped off back at my apartment (after a wonderful waffle breakfast compliments of Dez), and spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and relaxing at home. I did make one jaunt out to a local used book store and picked up Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hoftstadter. I’d tried to read dad’s copy years ago, and it was way over my head — now I’m trying again.

Monday was fairly uneventful all the way around — just another workday.

Today, however, has been all sorts of bizarre, for reasons which should be fairly well known by now.

At about 9am EST this morning (just as I was getting up, at 6am here), in an amazingly coordinated terrorist attack, hijackers took control of four commercial airline flights. While one apparently missed its mark, crashing in the Pennsylvania countryside, one plowed into the Pentagon, destroying much of one side of the building, and the other two were piloted into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, which both eventually collapsed.

Only nine hours later, reports are still coming in. The President addressed the nation about half an hour ago — I’m not sure I’m too thrilled with his speech. While not too terribly ludicrous, it was a little to militaristic in tone, and it’s too easy for me to see this escalating until we could be looking at a major war, if not handled carefully. This whole things got me extremely worried — it’s definitely going to be fascinating watching how events unfold from here on out.

My neighbor just got home — I’m going to see if I can watch the news on his TV as soon as he’s off the phone.

It’s almost 9pm now — about 15 hours after the first strike. I spent the past few hours next door watching the news reports with Damon. Scary, scary stuff — there was one video taken by a cameraman that just happened to be at street level and caught the second plane hitting the WTC. It’s amazing — you can watch the plane fly into the building, and at first (except for the speed), it looks like it’s just flying into a hangar as it disappears into the building. Then the explosions rip through the walls of the skyscraper and debris comes tumbling down to the street.

The video continues and cuts to the point when the tower started to collapse. At first there were the flames that had been shooting out of the floors that had been hit by the plane, then suddenly more dust clouds started shooting out as the top section of the building started collapsing into the lower floors. From there the building just fell floor by floor onto itself, sending huge roiling clouds of dust and debris into the air.

The cameraman kept filming until you suddenly saw dust clouds coming towards him just a block away, when he put the camera down and started running. The camera was still on and pointing behind him as he carried it, though, and you can see the conflagration literally chasing the camera’s view down the street. It looked for all the world like some of the destruction scenes from Independence Day — only all the more horrifying because you knew that it was real.

Current rough death toll estimates are upwards of 1300 at the very minimum — an estimated 800 killed at the Pentagon, 266 among the four hijacked airplanes, and there were around 200 fire, police, and rescue workers in New York that responded after ther first airplane hit, and were lost when the buildings collapsed. And adding those numbers up to roughly 1300 doesn’t even include the thousands of possible victims from the two WTC towers.

For the first time in history, the FAA today ordered the grounding of all airplanes within the United States. They did this as soon as it became apparent that the airplanes were being used as weapons in the attacks. It may be noon EST (9am here) tomorrow before planes are allowed to fly again. In addition to the thousands of stranded passengers across the nation, the disruption of shipping may create additional problems for the already struggling economy, and no-one seems sure what long-term effects that may have.

All and all, it’s been an absolutely incredible and tragic day. The single biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen, with repercussions that can only be speculated about at this early stage, and only the weeks to come will show where things go from here.

And on that note — it’s time for bed. I’m sure I’ll hear more about this in the morning.

How far is this going to go?

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Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now about today’s attacks in New York and Washington, so I’ll refrain from rehashing it all (though if you’d like a refresher, or want to check for any new information, here’s a link to CNN’s Special Report on the events).

What’s really starting to worry me is just where this is all going to end. Too much has happened in too short of a time, and I’m starting to get mildly paranoid about seeing it all blow up in our faces — maybe a little more literally than I’d like.

First off, the mind-numbing attack, involving coordinated hijacking of four airplanes, three of which found their targets, severly damaging the Pentagon, and utterly destroying three buildings of the World Trade Center (and a fourth looks ready to go as I write this). Then, just about 45 minutes ago, reports started hitting CNN’s TV feed (though I’ve not yet seen much mention of this on their website) that there are explosions in Afghanistan, a country known to have harbored bin Laden — the terrorist most strongly suspected of masterminding today’s attacks. The U.S. is currently denying that these are U.S.-led counterstrikes (which makes sense to me — it seems a bit soon for us to be retaliating in force, without clear and definite knowledge of who we should be retaliating against), but it’s certainly not helping the international situation in the least.

Popular sentiment is rather ugly at the moment, also. Understandably enough, given the strength of the emotional response this soon after the attack, but if left unchecked for long, it could get really frightening. I’ve been following two threads on the Home Theater Forum, and it’s taken some work on the part of the administrators to keep it from degenerating into revenge-motivated hate mongering.

Even some articles I’ve found links to around the web make me nervous — for instance, while I have no idea what the general stance of the site The Ornery American is (I have yet to dig through their site), their article Can We Win This War? starts out with statements I had no problem agreeing with (“America’s leaders are calling for patience, for a measured response to the acts of war we suffered on 11 September. They are right.”), but by the end of the article, they seem to be crying out for an all-out dive into World War III. This is the kind of thing that really starts to get me scared.

Is this the proverbial beginning of the end?

I certainly hope not, it’s just far to easy for my (possibly over-)cynical mind to see retaliation after retaliation build up until we’re far past the point of no return, never having noticed when that point arrived and we passed it by.

My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today — not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair.

More about this cruise thing

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Looks like I’ve got a couple days to catch up on here. Well, let’s see — start with Wednesday. I did call the guy from Carnival Cruise Lines — “JB” — as soon as I could in the morning. He wasn’t available then, but I set up an appointment with his secretary for an 11:30am (2:30pm their time, they’re based out of Florida) call. That was something new for me — nothing really groundbreaking, I realize, but I’ve never had to make an appointment for a call before.

Anyway, work went on from there about the same as the day before. Of course, by the time the tech came by, the machine that had been giving me all the grief the day before was behaving fine. Typical — they can be pretty ornery beasts sometimes.

So 11:30am rolls around and I give JB a call. We talked for about 15 minutes, and while it wasn’t a yes, it certainly wan’t a no, either. Apparently at the moment he’s putting together a list of prospects, and expects to be doing the hiring in a month or two. He did give me the basic rundown on what the situation would be, though.

The cruise lines has 16 ships in operation now, with two more being built. The two things he stressed most about the DJ position is that they need to be able to work from a large variety of music, due to the wide range of customers on the ships, and that they are comfortable relating to people and taking requests. I was sure to let him know that I’ve always been a request-based DJ — finding way to work in what people want has always been a lot more fun for me than just working from a set playlist. That always seemed a bit boring to me.

All the music and equipment would be provided by the club, so I wouldn’t have to worry about bringing any of my stuff along. From what I understand, the clubs are decked out, too — from the pictures on the website, they look to be top of the line. Lots of fun toys, in other words! :D

The clubs run seven nights a week, and all contracts are for six-month stints. The contracts can be renewed, too — he said he’s got one DJ on his seventh contract (three and a half years!). I’d be assigned a cabin, most likely with a roommate — a mild bummer, as I like having my own space, but it would be worth trying, at least. Meals are provided, too, so it’s basically room and board included with the contract. Additionally, the DJ’s get $300 a week in cash. After three months, if things are going well, it can go up to $325/wk, then if things go into a second contract it can go up to $350/wk. I’m not sure if it continues to go up after that or not. There are also occasional private parties that can pay a little extra.

As entertainment staff, the DJ has his days mostly free, and is allowed access to areas of the ship that some of the other shipboard staff apparently don’t. There are spas and fitness clubs to work out at, pools to swim in or lounge by, shows by other entertainers, bars, it’s possible to go ashore when the ship is in port somewhere, and they’re even (according to the website) outfitting their ships with internet access.

Basically, it sounds like a dream job. Get paid to take a 6-month (at least) cruise, spinning in a top-flight dance club every night. The pay is slightly less than what I’m making now, but when you factor in the provided room and board negating the need to pay rent, utilities, and meals, I’d be holding onto a lot more money than I’m able to now. Should this all actually come through, I figure I can just put all my stuff in a storage unit here in Seattle and be good to go until I’m ready to come ashore again.

So at this point, I’m just going to put all but absolutely necessary spending on hold for the next couple months and see if I’m lucky enough to get a spot. If I don’t then I’ve got a decent job and apartment already going here. If I do — I’m going to be on that ship and loving every last little minute of it.

After that call, work was really difficult to pay attention to — I kept daydreaming about opening the door and seeing a sea of water, instead of a sea of office cubicles.

Once work finally ended, I caught the bus out to Casey’s place to check e-mail and type up all my Bumbershoot ramblings and Tuesday’s journal entry for the weblog. Between getting all that typed in (I talk a lot, don’t I?) and getting the pictures sized to post also, I didn’t make it out of there about 11pm. After that it was a half hour wait for the next bus, as I’d missed the previous one by just a matter of minutes, and it was about midnight by the time I made it home. At that point I was very glad I’d decided not to start babbling about the call with JB that night, but to leave it for the next post. Went to bed, and crashed hard.

On the way to work Thursday morning, I got to chatting with the girl that I’ keep seeing every morning on the bus. Turns out her name is Kerry (Kelly? Kate? Ergh…damn my faulty memory), and she and her boyfriend just moved down here from Cold Harbor, Alaska, just a month or two before I came down. Small, small world.

Work was pretty obnoxious again, but I think I finally got caught up with things. It helped that I had another pair of hands, though. XBS keeps a supply of ‘floaters’ trained and available in case a post needs extra help or coverage, so they’d sent Loren over for the day to brush up and make sure he remembered all the procedures. Having him there helped a lot — I don’t think I’d have been able to get through everything myself.

Came home and grabbed a bite to eat, then wandered down to the Temple of Avarice (Pacific Place, an almost ridiculously ostentatious shopping center with a 2-story movie multiplex on the top floor) to catch The Others, a thriller with Nicole Kidman. Very cool ghost story — I’d been wanting to see it for a while, and wasn’t dissapointed in the least.

And that’s it up to Thursday night. Now I just have to “hurry up and wait” for the next couple months to see if this DJ position comes through. Wish me luck — I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, that’s for sure.