last night was very intriguing. one of the glen burnie articles i'm writing required me to talk to this woman who co-owns a tattoo parlor in glen burnie. it was utterly fascinating.

usually when i do interviews for articles, i'm on and off the phone like that. bam. around 15 minutes if i'm lucky enough to get an interesting subject. but this woman was so engaging and talkative. we talked for nearly an hour. my actual questions and her actual answers took up maybe 25 minutes. the other 35 were just chit-chatting. about life, goals, family, religion. it was all very surreal. at times i felt like i was being interviewed.

the good thing about this is that i have a lot of information for the story. the bad thing about this is that i have too much information for the story. it's supposed to be in the 400-words ballpark. it's a good thing i have a deft editor, because i have a feeling i am going to turn in the bible of tattoo-parlor profiles.

so eventually, when the conversation turned to me, she asked if i had any tattoos. i told her that getting a tattoo was one of the things i wanted to do this year, at which point she invited me to come down for a tour of the shop this weekend. so i told her i would. hell, if anything, it'll make me more comfortable with getting one. and while i won't get one this weekend (i gotta wait until my body is slightly, uh, tighter), it's one step closer to one of 2003's goals, as stupid as the goal is to begin with. plus, while talking to her, i had the idea that this would make such an interesting writing subject. you know, for non-sun writing. creative writing. the creative writing i used to do. the creative writing i used to enjoy to do. this has got to be a positive thing.

in other news, i think my cold or flu or whatever is drying up. now my mouth tastes like coughing. highly unpleasant, but as long as it's a sign of health, i'll just keep on popping smint.

i was looking for my tape recorder before the interview last night, and while going through my nightstand, i found two pictures that put a big-ass smile on my face. they were from my last semester at school. i had stupidly bleached my hair a few days prior, so i look terrible and terribly orange, and i wasn't in a good mental state at the time (some of you know what i'm talking about), and i hate the shirt i'm wearing in the photo. but ... they are happy pictures nonetheless.

one is of me with adam, michelle and brandon. the final four players of "office survivor." i can't believe we played that game. what's more, i can't believe we never finished it! especially because i made the damn final two! the other picture is of the drawing michelle did on the office dry-erase board of the final five (which includes owen, who, for some reason, has a thought balloon with "USA" in it).

i brought them to work and put them on my bulletin board alongside some other pictures of my friends. pictures of steph and olga and jason and tracy and deb and karan and others. what's funny is how practically all of these pictures were taken during an immensely strange and wrong and out-of-control and difficult time in my life. a learning experience, as i like to call it in retrospect.

because of the unpleasantness i now realize i was going through at the time, i shouldn't be able to look at them without projectile vomiting. and yet, when i look at them, i don't want to projectile vomit. i want to smile, and i do smile, because i see these beautiful people who stuck by me when i was being seriously ugly.

why, it's enough to give a devout cynic like me a case of the warm fuzzies.

and then i straighten myself up, dust off the full house moment and carry on.

because mistakes are temporary wounds best left to heal and not repeatedly picked open.

OK. so i just realized how pointless my job is.

wait. let me rephrase. i just realized for the umpteenth time how pointless my job is.

so i'm working on this directory of all the prisons in the country. names, phone numbers, stats like operating capacities, types of inmates, average daily operating costs, that sort of thing.

this is important presumably because people will use the information in this directory to find out current information about the prison of their choice. so why the hell am i changing data i know is somehow wrong?

example. let's say bill's prison opened in 1969. renovated in 1995. capacity is 1357. average daily population is 1357. so that was last year's data. this year's corrections have no renovation date and the capacity changed to 440 while the ADP stays the same. let's see ... if bill's prison was never renovated, how can the capacity drop that dramatically?

so obviously, somewhere, this data is really wrong. either the renovation date is or was, or the capacity is or was. hell, the opening year and the ADP could be wrong also. so why are we even bothering if this book is going to be loaded with errors? beats the hell out of me.

and can i just say i'm so glad i'm not a convicted felon in alabama? their prison occupancy rates are astounding. like most of them fall between 200% and 300%. whoa. and when your capacity is like 500, that means that between 1000 and 1500 are crammed into a space built for 500. that seems really wrong.

think of the showers, people.

quote of the day: "the notes blatted skyward as they rose over the [canadian] geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel nature's maxim, 'ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last i knew pittsburgh." winning sentence, 1987 bulwer-lytton bad fiction contest.

just a quickie because this is so funny.

i was talking to michelle on IM. i asked her if she remembered why she drew a thought balloon over owen's head that said "USA." (see two entries back if you're lost.)

"i don't remember," said michelle.

"is owen really patriotic or something?" i asked.

"i don't remember," said michelle.

i squinted and looked really hard at the picture. then i laughed so hard i almost passed my intestines.

it doesn't say "USA." it says "LISA." owen's girlfriend. (at the time?)

i am such a dumbass.

it was pretty damn funny when i answered the phone this afternoon only to hear, "this is miss so-and-so from the united states justice department." man. that cleared my sinuses up right quick. and then i thought for a moment and realized that i'm a boring cad who hasn't ever done anything controversial enough to attract the attention of the justice department. and it was kind of sad. reassuring, but sad.

alas. it was just a job reference check from someone i used to know. emphasis on used to know. and i think that's all that needs to be said about that.

OK, i will say that, at one point during the call, the investigator asked me why i hadn't talked to the person in question for almost a year. i said i didn't know. i didn't really have an answer that wouldn't lead to 512 other questions. but i did learn a very valuable lesson: don't ever apply for a job with the justice department. they are unbelievably thorough.

also, tonight i found out that brett is still my friend. i was wondering since we hadn't talked to each other for a few months. but i initiated a conversation, and within moments we were back to our old silliness and hijinks. so michelle, i officially demote you from being my most boy-crazy friend, and i hand brett the crown. (but you can still be jamie-crazy!) sorry, michelle, but we have some lovely consolation prizes for you ... like the 18 other titles i bestowed on you! and your boyfriend adam! and the sloppy movie kiss i'll give you on your birthday!

so in the spirit of the whole brett/michelle switcheroo, i must do the same with today's quote of the day. i demote the earlier one in favor of something brandon just said on IM. so screw you, bulwer-lytton.

the real quote of the day: "or african ... not that african is even a language." brandon, in response to my suggestion that his misspelling of "about" as "abotu" looked spanish.