at least the weekend got off to a good start.

it rained all day saturday, which fucked everything up. argh. i was supposed to go see a performance of shakespeare in the park with zofie and john, but the downpour led to it being canceled. so with half a saturday left, i valiantly tried to do what i was supposed to spend sunday doing -- a majority of sunday was to involve editing and tagging a health journal for my non-capital job -- so i could make up the play on sunday evening. but it was not to be. the health journal was heaps larger than it looked, and half of our client's files were corrupted, so i actually had to go into work to fix the problem. so i missed romeo & juliet. if anyone wants to go with me this coming-up weekend, let me know.

also, missy "mousedemeanor" elliott died on saturday night. pretty sad. not as depressing as when damon the diabetic daredevil hamster died last summer, but pretty upsetting nonetheless, and it kind of put me in a funk for the remainder of the weekend. i made her a coffin out of a check box and cotton balls. i buried her late sunday in the backyard somewhere near damon. it was a quiet service. no one was saved.

i think missy had been sick for a while. our vet neighbor said it was probably cancer and nothing could be done. so what is it with me and ill animals? damon dies of diabetes; duncan, the runt of his litter, lasted five post-purchase days last fall before going to that big hamster wheel in the sky (i never figured that one out); and graham, damon's brother, is unbelievably still alive and biting after a brush last month with some sort of infection that made him look like the elephant hamster. i think that when graham dies, i won't be doing the rodent thing anymore. but i kinda sorta want a ferret. i'm afraid that just by buying it, the poor thing's doomsday clock will start ticking.

today is the first day of my two-job embargo. i do the capital from morning to afternoon, and the non-capital from afternoon to night. if today is any indication, it's going to be exhausting summer, but i think it'll be tremendously rewarding in the long run.

one cool thing that happened i forgot to address in previous journal entries: the guy i contacted from the puppy web site wrote me last week. his name is nick. i like nick, as i had a feeling i would; he seems like an interesting fellow. however, i am worried that he will think i am an uninteresting fellow. and a creepy fellow and a weird fellow to boot. so we'll see where this goes.

i figured it'd be cool to just conclude tonight with some random thoughts i had today written in the style of larry king's horrific USA today columns. so without further ado ...

item: weight watchers. i think now that certain other issues are in order, it's a good time to get in shape. and this time, i mean it. it's not gonna be like all those other times i said i meant it. like, i really mean it this time. really really. and not in a i-say-i-really-mean-it-but-i-really-don't-mean-it kinda way. i think that, now more than ever before, i have the positive mindset i need in order to finally accomplish this goal after scores of false starts. i was all dancing around on the treadmill this evening. you should've seen me. i'm sure it was so hot.

item: friendly persuasion. today in the capital parking lot alone, two people i didn't know said hello to me. add that to the four people i didn't know who said hi to me on friday in the office, and that's six people total i don't know who've greeted me as i passed them by. pretty weird.

item: shut the fuck up, bitch! speaking of the new office, the woman at the ad desk about 20 feet away from me has been driving me up the wall merely by answering her phone. every 15 minutes, i hear, "capital advertising, meg speaking. *gasps for air* how can i help you?" her vocal cadence and the way she affects her words, i swear it's just like the switchboard operator from office space: "corporate accounts receivable, nina speaking. just a moment."

item: tori tori tori! noel suggested i give the tori amos album little earthquakes a spin. so i did. i know it sounds corny, but it was very strange, very cathartic, very moving. these songs i used to listen to frequently during my first year of college or so just kind of suddenly clicked: "she's been everybody else's girl, maybe one day she'll be her own." or "sit on a chair and be good now, and become all they told you." or "sometimes i hear my voice, and it's been here, silent all these years." or "when you gonna love you as much as i do?" i would sing these lines along with the song, but they didn't really mean anything to me. and now they encapsulate almost 25 years in a verse. how unexpected.

item: isn't that random? repeating in my head today, at least until meg started answering her damn phone, was the voice of patricia arquette exclaiming "i'm not a cracker!" in a high-pitched baby voice from the movie flirting with disaster. explain that one for me.