2007-12-28 - 3:37 p.m.

For no reason, a numbered list:

1. I am back at my office, my regular job, my suburban drive, my regular coffee, my paycheck, my iPod-at-my-desk time, my LAN password, my Staples brand calculator, my PS&D Style Guide, my regularly emptied trashcan, my regular and reliable comma usage.

2. I dislike my brother's girlfriend. She is, very nearly, unbearable. She laughs at just about everything she says and just about nothing she says is funny. She is also very, very clear that she prefers organic food. As in, I get it, you like to eat organic food. She has the air of the newly converted about all of these things: organic food, not smoking, not drinking too much, baby-raising, life, and her opinions.

3. Man! The Ghostface Killah tracks "Jellyfish" and "The Champ" on Fishscale. I could, like, garden to those songs and I'd be good.

4. My girlfriend and my mom pooled money and got me a ridiculous, amazing, daunting still camera.

5. I've moved in with my girlfriend. It's pretty good. I like it. We cook dinner together and then someone does the dishes, usually. We watch movies. We read. We make out. We make jokes about people. We both dislike my brother's girlfriend.

6. To brag, to boast: If some magazine or journal editor doesn't accept this most recent thing I wrote, about middle school wood shop, then I don't know what they're looking for. Apologies for the bragging, but I mean, I've got that feeling that I've got a bright, tight, glowing secret in my pocket and that I'm the only one that knows about it and all of it is making me smile. I've got that feeling and I want to share it and I'm thinking about the looks on their faces when the time comes.

7. Just finished, finally, Ragtime today. Never read a novel quite like it. I like Doctorow, his language, but I missed the straight narrative that you get in Billy Bathgate. This one, it felt like he sat down and decided, I'm going to mess with The Novel. I'm going to paint this picture with really broad brushstrokes. I'm going to paint America. It's a neat idea. I just think that I admire it more in my head than I do in my heart. I feel that way about virtually all indie rock that isn't Sufjan Stevens, Arcarde Fire, Spoon, The Futureheads, Rilo Kiley, The New Pornographers, Death Cab for Cutie, Elliott Smith, and the two or three local bands I care about. Where's the heart? Where's the ass? Where's the strumming, humming wire that runs from neck to heel?

8. We got free tickets to the Steelers-Ravens game in Baltimore on Sunday night. Ground-level seats, nine rows back from the Baltimore bench. It'll be fun. I like the Steelers a lot: Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu, James Harrison so scary you wouldn't want to pass him on the street for fear his gaze would burn a hole straight through to your sternum.

9. Should I read Moby-Dick? It feels like homework.

10. We're having a power hour on New Year's Eve.

11. I realized last night, at Friends, that I always jump on people's accents. The Irish couple, I bombarded them with Irish Talk, and maybe I should have cooled it with that. I always feel bad when there's no talking, and I always find that accents are an easy, if predictable and maybe boring, way of getting the talking going. Anyway, they might come to the power hour. Because, I mean, they're Irish, right? And Irish people pour stout on their Honey Bunches of Oats, right? Also, leprechauns. Guinness.

12. I wish it snowed more here, or at all. I don't know much else that will change the entire world, or what we can see of it, quite like that. Snow feels clean.

13. I choose the bright side. I've considered it, and that's what I'm going with.

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