rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

Mar:
i went to krakow last weekend and stayed with a friends grandparents. it was AWESOME. i have never eaten so much food in my life. plus, we all had beds to sleep in and passed out around 8 at night. krakow was pretty sweet. we also went to auschwitz and birkenau. ehhh.

good measure:
“protect ya neck”

they should stop all forms of transportation leaving Las Vegas and delouse any and all travelers. I feel so fucking grimy after getting out of that city, it’s not even funny.
not that I didn’t have a good time. Neil is my boy, and I love seeing him. and yeah, even in his own way, I like hanging out with Pat every once in a while. he and I, we speak different languages, but he’s still a good guy. he talks a big game, he plays up to this “living the MTV dream in Southern California,” but in the end, he’s from Indiana and he isn’t a complete tool. this part of him surfaces at strange moments.

I got pretty drunk last night, which can make a casino strip fun, but I suggest that if you go to Las Vegas, you take the time and spend money get a nice room, plan on going out, know where you’re going. dress for the occasion. or, completely cash in to whatever situation you’re in. I mean, I slept on the floor underneath the sink in a motel off of I-15 last night, for about five hours, and my back is fucking killing me. that was after I spent most of the night wandering aimlessly around the strip, while Pat’s buddy played blackjack in a string of wildly dissimilar establishments. my idea of a good time isn’t walking a mile or two between these different places to blow ten spot after ten spot. pick someplace and hunker down. or go your seperate ways. it’s not like I need to see the whole fucking strip every time I come to town.
with all that aside, I had a good time. highlights: losing petty cash to the “spin the wheel game”; Pat getting told off by the girl who caught him taking a picture of her ass on the down-low; talking about current events in east Africa with an Ethiopian cabbie; eating Burger King at 4 a.m. with Mr. Evans; and winning the petty cash back by putting ten on Georgetown. Roy Hibbert is a fucking beast. and I picked them to win the tournament, so hopefully they stay hot. regardless, that was a sick game, even with out money on it.

I finally had that typical, 8th grade moment and realized how much of an insecure asshole I sounded like when I starting writing this fucking thing two years ago, particularly the September and October of 2005 months. want to see some regret? go read through that shit. not much has changed.

got an email back from a) the editor at the newspaper in Fort Wayne. they’ve hired someone, but they’ll keep my resume on file and if I’m ever in the area, I’m to arrange an apointment for a copy editing test. okay, will do. and b) Mike’s buddy, Scott, an attorney in West by God. he knows a dude who’s on board at the Charleston Daily-Mail, and I’ve applied there, so he passed my resume along. I think I could dig that. capital of the poorest state in the country. Appalachia. Mountaineers fans.
also, the photojournalist grad student sleeping on the couch told me that a tiny five-a-week paper in Missoula is hiring, she knows the managing editor personally and I’d be the sole copy editor/design guy. which could be either an incredible burden or great opportunity. a few minutes ago I was leaning toward “great opportunity,” but I don’t know; I’m baked.

tomorrow is Las Vegas with Neil Evans and the indomitable Pat Ellison. can you say “booze soaked?” I’m trying to get myself mentally prepared for it, but it’s probably going to be much, much worse that anything I could spar with right now. I’m coming back sunday evening. I’ll probably be $150 lighter and my jaw will hurt. I’ll need an interdiction. but. before it happens, I’ll be sure to write about it.

I caught shit at work yesterday for the thursday paper. a senior Border Patrol officer was misidentified as “senior patrol officer,” and the cops blotter was fucked up after the new copy editor – meaning well – introduced a bunch of errors into it. but I share blame as it ran on my page and I did the second edit and didn’t catch everything. so goes the desk, so go I. and maybe I’m young and naive and idealistic, but that’s fucking bullshit as far as I’m concerned.
my boss doesn’t have it in her capacity to raise her voice at someone, so when she gets upset, she comes close to crying. which kind of makes me uncomfortable as she’s my boss; it’s the two of us in a conference room, I’ve got a blank stare on my face because I know all of this bullshit is coming down from our do-nothing managing editor, and my supervisor is tearing up, saying she’s not allowed to take any time off until “this gets taken care of.” I mean, fuck man. what am I supposed to say to that?
“hey, uh, Peggy, I was thinking about quitting in two months.”

tomorrow, I’m going to Las Vegas for the evening. coming back sunday night. it’s a five hour drive. that means if you read this and I have your phone number, I’m probably going to call to kill time. so get ready.

Mar, mom thinks you’re dead, so email or call her.
also, email or call me. I don’t think you’re dead, we just need to catch up.

there’s a serious dust storm going on outside. I know I’ve mentioned this; our apartment building serves as a windbreak after a vacant lot, so it’s pretty loud at my window. I left it open this afternoon when I went to work, and when I came back? thin layer of dust over my windowsill, and the computer that sits in front of it. nice.

I taught the new guy how to use Quark today. whatever else happens, the new guy is still friendly enough, and I’ll recognize that.
but jesus. fucking. christ. I hope this isn’t what it was like with me.
also, while I’m writing this, I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that the newspaper I interviewed with and its more-interested affiliate are checking this blog to see if I’ll write anything incriminating or derogatory.
I’m probably just being incredibly paranoid. but, well, okay.
today at work, my phone rang, while I was in the middle of teaching the hire how to put together a wire page about Anna Nicole Smith (yes). when I picked it up, it was none other that the EIC at this other paper. he proceeded towards an interview, you know, while I was at work, then stopped shortly when it became clear that I wasn’t having that. I have to call him tomorrow morning. seriously. jesus fuck. I feel like this is my dad.

during my lunch break, I talked to Alisha, who is back from a shade-under-two week trip to Europe. that’s a long time for me to go without talking to Alisha. seriously. say what you will.
it was a short conversation, as I had to go back to work, but she said at the end that she felt there was distance between us. and I said, not really. just I hadn’t spoken to her for a few weeks as she’d been on another continent, and my Taco Bell was getting cold, and I had ten minutes to eat it.
and that was legitimate, so I got off with it. but I didn’t tell her the third reason; that I think it was an expensive and bad idea to go in the first place as she should have stayed in Bloomington and studied math for a week. I can recognize that she had a great time, and I want to go overseas myself, Mar, but if she manages to fail or drop out of this class and burn another semester, I’m going to be pissed. pissed.
I didn’t say any of that. don’t want to jinx her. she’s capable of passing that class anyway, I think. so hopefully this never comes up and she’ll never really know why I felt distant in a phone conversation in March, 2007.
and though she doesn’t read this, I know I’m tempting fate by writing it out on here. it was just the first time I’ve been inspired to write something in a week or two. so, you know, knock on wood.

don’t fuck about with the People’s Ants.

and I read about this at work.
the Annabel Chong story is becoming a play in Singapore. that’ll go over well.

nothing much is rolling. I applied in Sandusky, at Roll Call. heard back from Port Angeles. did I mention that already?
this weekend, I’m heading up to Las Vegas for a day or two to hang out with Pat and Neil. Pat is a self-described “party” guy, and Neil likes booze. and it’s Las Vegas. so it should be, uh, interesting. the way I see it, though? college basketball to bet on. what’s ten bucks, anyway?
speaking of which: this tournament never works out the way I hope it will. it’s always the good and the bad; Texas loses, but it’s at the hands of USC, which can fuck off back to football, as far as I’m concerned. Wisconsin loses (fuck them), but that means it’s just down to Ohio State (fuck them more) for the Big Ten. cause IU and Purdue lost. shit.
IU basketball, for the last five or six years, always seems to be another year away. I guess that’s alright; the Bears have just about spent my goodwill and turned into some other professional team cliche that I’ve always been happy they weren’t. now I can focus on the Indiana Hoosiers. great. a BA in English gets you a couple thousand in student loans and loyalty to a team that is a fading glory. totally. worth it.

had my job interview yesterday in Escondido.
it went alright. I thought I was crusing, until I said something crushingly stupid. to the effect of, I believe, “copy editing is a means to an end.”
didn’t actually say that, but you get the point. not something your boss wants to hear.

that’s true. sincerely, it’s true.
I work in a field that I’m halfway interested in, but not something I’ve devoted myself to doing for the rest of my life. I’m looking for something better. someday, I hope to find it. until then, I’ve got a sort-of-unique skill set that allows me to travel, if I may please. kind of how I found myself out in the California desert.
oh well. I’ll try it again. I applied at the Charleston Daily Mail in West by God. a paper near Cleveland. and the San Diego Union Tribune, cause it’d be foolish not to. you never know; they call you back, and a year later you’re fucking set, as far as a resume goes.
I’m also applying at a paper in Sandusky, Ohio, another in Little Rock. oh, and Roll Call.
that’d be pretty fucking sweet. we’ll see.

meanwhile. Greg has apparently invited a photography grad student he met down in Calexico to stay with us. she’s in town for a few weeks doing some field project, and she needs somewhere to sleep. met her tonight. seems pretty nice. she’s also cute, so that’s an added bonus. either way, I hope she likes Nintendo and pot, cause it can get kind of slow out here.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me and the blog recently. I’ve fallen off. the last month, it’s been hard to get myself to write it.
like right now, I don’t know what to say.
just watched some of “the Oustsiders.” that movie is boss. Swayze, the Karate Kid, one of Martin Sheen’s sons, Matt Dillon, a scientologist, C. Thomas Howell and Rob “I fuck hookers” Lowe. and Diane Lane is hot. oh, and Tom Waits has a part, get the fuck out. send me my album, Josh.
I did laundry and went grocery shopping today. both needed to be done; I ran out of socks on monday, I think, and drawers pretty soon after that. I’ve been freeballing it since Thursday.
that sounds bad, I know, but I was busy. but I don’t like sitting at a laundromat in the middle of the night after work.
the groceries, by all estimations, are pretty sweet. I got the necessaries. Ramen noodles, couple different kinds of juice, english muffins, tomato sauce, bag of potato chips, cereal, frozen pizza, half a gallon of milk. kind of a spur of the moment shopping spree.
alright. now you know what’ll be in my stool for the next week. what else?
interview is coming up. I checked the readership of the web log – something that, yes, I do habitually – and someone read it from Oceanside. which doesn’t mean anything, necessarily. but you hear horror stories about people checking my generations Facebooks and MySpaces, and yes, blogs. sad, true.
fucking gestapo; I’ve never done anything wrong, ever, and I’m a model citizen and employee. hire me.

I have tomorrow off. I have absolutely no interest in going into work on tuesday, and it’s already gnawing on me. I got to get me the fuck up out. today was six months, and I need to start weighing my options.
let’s say I get the north county job. that means I’m out here for at least eight months, a year. right, fine.
if I go to Europe with Big Mar, I’d probably have to quit this job. straight up, quit it. I’d go fuck about, have a good time, la dee da, and come back to either Virginia or Indiana. probably Indiana.
then I’d have to start looking again, immediately. during which time I’d probably be shit out of money and living at home. and it could be a while before anything solid is tied down.
the answer to that, I think, is I’d be back in the midwest or on the east coast. it would be a lot easier to get a job there if I was within range, I think.
but then I’d have to explain why I decided to leave a job at the spur of the moment to go fuck about in Europe.

this shit is too complicated.