1. “Numb” — Pink — Mis­sun­daz­tood
2. “Come to Me” — Bonnie Raitt — Luck of the Draw
3. «Ne viens pas» — Roch Voi­sine — Sauf si l’amour
4. “Can’t Stop” — Ozomatli — SXSW 2010 Show­cas­ing Artists
5. “I Turn to You” — Melanie C — North­ern Star
6. «Le bon­heur te fait de l’œil» — France D’amour — Les autres
7. “New Amsterdam” — Elvis Costello — The Very Best of
8. “Mon­day Monday” — Mrs. Miller — OMG where the fuck did I get this?
9. “Out and In” — Moody Blues — Time Trav­eller (Disc 2)
10. “Con­fide in Me” — Kylie Minogue — Con­fide in Me

OMG. I have a new e-mail domain, and I’m try­ing to set it up, and it just won’t work. I have set up e-mail accounts before, but this one just stumps me, and I’m pissed off. Much later…OK, so it’s POP, not IMAP. I’m not a techie!!! I’m a total wannabe. I swear to god.

I worked three days this week, and today I’m off. Whatever.

I woke up with V to go do my laun­dry, and 1) I went all the way down­stairs and across the street to the laun­dro­mat with­out my money (duh), so I pre­treat a few things with the soap that I brought with me, and 2) when I went back to get the money, I brought the soap back with me and left it at the apart­ment and then picked up my quar­ters, so 3) when I got back to the ’mat, I real­ized that I hadn’t put any deter­gent in the washer and was forced to buy the lit­tle boxes of Tide at the ’mat. What. The. Fuck.

I’m sick of this.

Hey Uni­verse, how about hold­ing up your end of the deal?

1. Une place sur terre — Liane Foly
2. Le coureur — Jean-Jacques Goldman
3. Adri­enne — Isabelle Boulay
4. Sur le même bateau — Céline Dion
5. Dis ce que tu as — Marilou
6. De sable et de rochers — Marie-Elaine Thibert
7. Cow­boy virtuel — Roch Voisine
8. Un ave maria — Lara Fabian
9. Je t’aime encore — France D’amour
10. Et la regarder — Lau­rence Jalbert

Et pourquoi pas ?

So, this week­end, we’re jet­ting off to the Russ­ian River to spend the Fourth of July week­end with the gays. Not exactly what I would like to do, but at this point, it’s all about com­pro­mise, n’est-ce pas? Last year, we camped, in tents, and it was freez­ing and messy with 15 other peo­ple. This year, we’ve got a cozy room in the Guerneville Lodge all to our­selves with no mess and no dirt. The group sup­pos­edly has near 30 peo­ple camp­ing in one spot. I just can’t han­dle that, and thank­fully nei­ther can V, and that’s why we’ve got a room. So we’ll spend Sat­ur­day after­noon and evening drink­ing with every­one, sleep in a pri­vate room, spend Sun­day and Sun­day night drink­ing and cavort­ing and what­ever, and then come home on Mon­day. What­ever. Compromise.

Gosh, what else. Life is soooo exciting.

1. “Starman” — David Bowie
2. “The Right Thing to Do” — Carly Simon
3. “Think­ing About You” — Norah Jones
4. “Beyond the Invisible” — Enigma
5. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” — Diana Krall
6. “Coloured Bedspread” — Annie Lennox
7. “Twi­light World” — Swing Out Sister
8. “A Good Year for the Roses” — Elvis Costello
9. “Lost of Sea” — The Bangles
10. “Incom­plete With­out You” — Swing Out Sister

Last night, we went to the Lone Star for DJ Beary­oncé, and in the process drank way too much. It was a beer bust, so it was Rolling Rock on tap, which is light years bet­ter than Busch or Bud or any other yel­low beer, but still yel­low beer, and I’m a lit­tle sore this morn­ing. I’m not tore up, but I’ve got that dull pound­ing in my head that makes me wish I could sleep all day. I just can’t do it. I’m a busy, unem­ployed per­son, and I’ve got stuff to do. Like deposit my social­ist hand­outs and such like that.

I’m offi­cially reg­is­tered for the Fall 2010 term at CCSF. Yay. Voy à apprendir español. Or some­thing like that. I’m also tak­ing an Eng­lish class, and I’m excited about that. The lit­tle bits of writ­ing I did for sosh last term (in which I scored a full, legit­i­mate A, thank you — see, I am smart after all) reminded me how much I enjoy writ­ing and how much I’ve missed it. Give me a sub­ject and I can go all expos­i­tory and turn stuff out, yo. And I’m tak­ing an Amer­i­can cin­ema class, at a dis­tance, which means I can watch TV at home and get credit for it. Sort of. I don’t know how it works just yet, but it sat­is­fies a require­ment, and that makes me happy.

I’m so excited to move on and com­plete my degree. I think my first foot­steps at SFSU were side­tracked by the whole drama with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who turns 53 tomor­row. But now that I have a sort of vision for my future and my edu­ca­tion, and now that I have non­judg­men­tal sup­port from the peo­ple around me, it feels like fun and I can’t wait to get started, I mean, really started. This GE stuff is for the birds, hon­estly. I’ve been por­ing over the IGETC require­ments and trans­fer cred­its, and it’s like an annoy­ing, drawn out puz­zle. “Will this his­tory class work? Or maybe this astron­omy class instead of biol­ogy? Oh wait, do I still need a lab?” Ugh. It’s annoy­ing. What’s even more weird, is that when I talked to an advi­sor about my trans­fer plan, I was told that the classes I took at SFSU can be used as trans­fer cred­its to go back to SFSU. That just seems a lit­tle cir­cu­lar to me. I mean, yeah, I did the work there, so I guess they still count. What­ever. My head hurts too much already. I can’t wait to get into it deep and dirty. Yeah. Il me tard beau­coup de par­ler français toute la journée, tous les jours.

What else.

Oh, I upgraded to Word­Press 3.0. All by myself.

I guess that’s all.

1. “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” — Bette Midler
2. “Home” — Sheryl Crow
3. “A Cure” — Blonde Redhead
4. “We’re Hav­ing All the Fun” — Fun Boy Three
5. “Should I Laugh or Cry” — ABBA
6. “This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave” — Pet Shop Boys
7. «C’est si bon» — Bar­bra Streisand
8. “Misfit” — Curiosity Killed the Cat
9. «Tout porte à croire» — Lau­rance Jalbert
10. “Runaway” — Deee-Lite

JS from Lon­don is here vis­it­ing. We went out last night and drank it up. I don’t do that any­more, and I’m pay­ing for it. What­ever. I’m offi­cially unem­ployed now, so who cares? I even got my EDD paper­work in the mail yes­ter­day. That was fast.

I also got my Fit­Bit, and it’s pretty cool. It’s the cutest lit­tle thing, so small it could get lost, but it’s unob­tru­sive and fun. They have a great track­ing sys­tem that is per­sua­sive with­out being preachy. It makes me want to go walk 10,000 steps a day. That’s crazy talk.

I’m reg­is­tered for three classes in the fall term. Yay for me. I am step­ping things up a lit­tle to get this shit over with. I have been string­ing it along and it’s time to make it work. I just woke up, so my com­po­si­tion skills aren’t exactly warmed up, but I have a paper to write, so I needed to do some­thing. It should be a good term, and after this one, I think I have three classes left before I trans­fer out. I should hit the CSU in Fall 2011. Wow. That’s pretty damn awe­some. When I started this in Jan­u­ary, I thought I would be stuck at CCSF for another two or three years, but since I’ve made the com­mit­ment, it will be eas­ier. More work, less time, harder and eas­ier. Whatev. I can’t wait to study French all day every day. I can’t wait for an excuse to spend six months in France study­ing French with the French. I can’t wait for a chance to live and work there full time. Go Secret, go!

Looks like I’m gonna be work­ing for RJ again soon. I e-mailed them last week offer­ing my ser­vices, and they accepted the offer. I swore off being a con­trac­tor so many years ago, but this time, I have a more clear vision of what it’s all about, and even forc­ing myself to save half of what I earn for taxes only, I’ll be able to make it work and sur­vive in the city while I go to school. If this does turn out for me, I could do it all the way through school, so I can go full time, day classes and every­thing. It’s a win/win for all of us, really, so why not?

That’s all.

1. Human Nature — Madonna
2. Promises Promises — Dionne Warwick
3. Easter Parade — Judy Garland
4. Fan­tasy — Apple­ton
5. Twi­light Omens — Franz Ferdinand
6. Preg­nant for the Last Time — Morrissey
7. The Voice Within — Christina Aguilera
8. Before it Breaks — Brandi Carlisle
9. Ride the Ride — The Bangles
10. By the Time — Mika

As the end draws near, I’m start­ing to close up accounts, some of which I’ve had for over ten years. It feels like I’m cut­ting out big pieces of my life. But in real­ity, it’s trim­ming the fat. I only wish I could do that lit­er­ally. Ha. Accord­ing to my cal­cu­la­tions, and if my sev­er­ance is as big as I think it will be, I should be able to get by on a min­i­mum with a pos­si­ble remain­der of about $50 a week. Granted, I’ve lived on far less for longer, but that itself was over a decade ago, and I’m afraid I’ve for­got­ten how to be poor.

And, to add to this con­fu­sion, V wants to fos­ter kit­tens from the SPCA. Appar­ently, spring­time in the ani­mal world is when cats go fuck­ing crazy — or should I say crazy fuck­ing — and there are lit­ters and lit­ters of unwanted kit­tens all over the place. San Fran­cisco and Oak­land have no-kill facil­i­ties, but they still can’t han­dle the mass of kit­tens who need con­stant atten­tion and care in their begin­ning months. So they ask for vol­un­teers to take in a few at a time to raise for a month or so until they can be returned and adopted. We’ve been talk­ing about get­ting cats for a while now any­way, and I want two, from the same lit­ter, and we’ve got names and every­thing, so this could be a great oppor­tu­nity for us. We take in two kit­tehs, fos­ter them, and then adopt them and keep them. This is crazy. I’m gonna end up the crazy cat gay. And V’s answer? “You’ve got time on your hands, you can do it.” What. Ever. Bitch. Rub. It. In. Any­way, it could hap­pen as soon as this week­end. Whaaaaaaaat? OMG.

1. “Don’t Be Light (The Hacker Remix)” — Air — Every­body Hertz
2. “Sing Me Span­ish Techno” — The New Pornog­ra­phers — Twin Cin­ema
3. “Will He Like Me” — Barbra Streisand
4. “Funky Big Band” — Janet Jack­son — Janet
5. “Ice Cream” — Sarah McLach­lan — Fum­bling Towards Ecstasy
6. “Headstrong” — 10,000 Mani­acs — Blind Man’s Zoo
7. “Brazil” — Pink Mar­tini — Sym­pa­thique
8. “Je m’ennuie” — Mylene Farmer — Point de suture
9. “Only the Wind” — Pet Shop Boys — Behav­ior
10. “I’m Not Call­ing You a Liar” — Florence and the Machine — Lungs

Today is Day 4 of Funem­ploy­ment 2010. I count Tues­day as the offi­cial Day 1. I’m already a lit­tle bored. I’ve got five toons to level to 80, and cook­books to work my way through, and I’m just all meh about it. In fact, it feels like a vaca­tion. What I said about hav­ing a pur­pose really means some­thing. This job, as much as I strongly despised it, was a pur­pose. I went there every day, did what they asked of me, took home a pay­check, and enjoyed my free time. Now all I have is free time, and I feel like 90 per­cent of my time is under­uti­lized. But then again, it’s only Day 4, and I have to get myself into a routine.

I’m not sleep­ing in. I get up with V, and I stay up after he leaves. I’m man­ag­ing to keep the apart­ment clean and tidy, although the bath­room needs work. Who wants to clean a bath­room, job or not? I’ve got loads of boxes left to sort through, and that rot­ten stor­age to empty out. Ugh. There is plenty to do in the next cou­ple of months. I just have to get past this ini­tial bit of depres­sion, and I’ll be fine. This is what I wanted, remember?

We’re going to see Chelsea Han­dler at the Masonic Cen­ter tonight. That will be a lot of fun. I could use a good laugh. I promise I’m not going to get all mor­bidly depressed and cry in my cereal. It’s not worth it, and I am happy to be out of a sit­u­a­tion I didn’t want in the first place. I know the con­cep­tion about being unem­ployed, and espe­cially “in this econ­omy,” since there are so many oth­ers who are in the same boat and worse, it shouldn’t be such a stigma, but it feels like it still is a stigma to be unem­ployed. At least I can pay my own way. I don’t need to rely on the kind­ness of strangers. I’m sure I’ll get over it.

1. “Not an Angel” — Basia — Lon­don War­saw New York
2. “Lost Time” — Maria Tay­lor — Lynn Teeter Flower
3. “Bad” — Michael Jack­son — Num­ber Ones
4. “Stop­watch Hearts” — Delerium — Chimera
5. “Through the Glass Darkly” — Annie Lennox — Songs of Mass Destruction
6. “Honky Tonk Hic­cups” — Neko Case and Her Boyfriends — The Vir­gin­ian
7. “Let’s Go Crazy” — Prince — Pur­ple Rain
8. “Fifteen” — Taylor Swift — Fear­less
9. “Sing Me Span­ish Techno” — The New Pornog­ra­phers — Twin Cin­ema
10. “Gone Are the Days” — Mirah — (A)spera

I live in San Fran­cisco, and I work in South San Fran­cisco: one a very cosmo, met­ro­pol­i­tan city; the other the birth­place of mod­ern biotech. And yet, we have the most del­i­cate and unsta­ble elec­tri­cal sys­tem. If the wind blows just right, the lights go out. If it rains, trans­form­ers blow up, and the lights go out. One giant WTF.

1. “Overnight Obser­va­tion” — ONJ — Soul Kiss
2. “Cir­cles” — Cap­tain & Ten­nille — Why do they always pop up? As if my silly Fri­day meme isn’t cheesy enough…
3. « Juste une étoile » — Isabelle Boulay — Nos lende­mains
4. “Alright” — Jamiro­quai — Trav­el­ing With­out Moving
5. “If We Could Start Over” — Celine Dion — Uni­son — OMFG, she’s on her way back to Vegas!!
6. “Wish­ing You Were Here” — Chicago — Chicago IX — Chicago’s Great­est Hits
7. “The Cap­tain and the Kid” — Jimmy Buf­fett — Boats
8. “She’s the One” — Saint Eti­enne — Foxbase Alpha
9. “Out­side Look­ing In” — Mary Chapin Car­pen­ter — Stones in the Road
10. “Waltz (Bet­ter than Fine)” — Fiona Apple — Extra­or­di­nary Machine — Where did you go, Fiona? Come back to us!

Is it really Fri­day? Every day this week, I woke up think­ing it was another day. Today I woke up a 6:45 a.m. think­ing it was Sat­ur­day, and I haven’t fin­ished my paper for my Soci­ol­ogy class yet. My heart raced a lit­tle until I con­vinced myself that it was really Fri­day … and I had to go to work on top of that. I love four-day work weeks, but some­times they fuck with my head.

We didn’t have class last Sat­ur­day because of the President’s Day hol­i­day, so it’s been two weeks that I have had this assign­ment. These reac­tion papers are really a piece of cake to write, espe­cially since I love writ­ing and I miss it a lot. I’m eager for the next assign­ment and topic. I mean, give me a topic and I can go all nar­ra­tive on it for pages. But if it’s an assign­ment, I will invari­ably wait until the last minute to write it. I’ve started writ­ing papers early in past, but they were always strained and kinda bland. Then, as the dead­line approached, I was filled with a kind of inspi­ra­tion and I wrote some­thing infi­nitely bet­ter … and keep in mind that “infi­nitely bet­ter” is rel­a­tive. I will never be a Kurt Von­negut or a Neil Gaiman, but I know I can craft a paper when I have to. And now that it’s offi­cially rec­og­nized that I’m bored at work, I feel less guilty about using my six-and-a-half hours in the office as my home­work time.

1. “Tammy” — Debbie Reynolds — Oh my god, we’re not start­ing this way, are we? I can’t lis­ten to her any­more and not think of Bobbi Adler. “Light a match when you poopie-doopie.” Jesus.
2. “Love Will Keep Us Together” — Captain and Ten­nille — What a coin­ci­dence. You really have no idea how much I love this song. Really, you don’t.
3. « Je me sou­viens » — Lara Fabian — 9
4. “I Need More” — RuPaul — Red Hot
5. “Ashes and Wine” — A Fine Frenzy — One Cell in the Sea
6. “My Maudlin Career” — Camera Obscura — My Maudlin Career
7. “Tus ojos” — ¡Glo­ria! — Mi Tierra
8. “Mushaboom” — Feist — Open Sea­son
9. “Love Is Free” — Sheryl Crow — Detours
10. “Luck Be a Lady” — Barbra Streisand — Back to Broadway

So my car has been leak­ing like a fuck­ing sieve lately. It’s a wet­ter win­ter than we’ve had in recent years, and I think my sun­roof is plugged up, because every rainy day has left pud­dles on the floor. I mean, real pud­dles. It’s gross. It stinks. I can’t stand it any­more. So V and I drove down to Palo Alto to a shop that he used to use for his Jetta. My god, that was “fun.” We got up at 5 a.m., drove down in the rain, dropped the car off at the shop (which had a sil­ver VW square­back in the shop … awe­some … my par­ents had a red one when I was like six and it was awe­some … I left my crayons in the back seat, and they melted, and my mother yelled at me … ah, mem­o­ries), and hoofed it to Cal­train. Any­way, V trusts the place, and the guy was very friendly, so we’ll see what hap­pens. He seemed to know exactly what was hap­pen­ing. That’s always reas­sur­ing. I can’t stand car trou­ble. It sucks ass. So, because it’s Fri­day of a three-day week­end, I won’t have a car for four days, at least. That’s OK. I cer­tainly need the exercise.

Sat­ur­day, we’re going down to San Jose to the SAP Open. Another trip on Cal­train, even though we planned to take the train when we bought the tix. I like Cal­train, it just doesn’t run fre­quently enough on the week­end. That will be fun. I have really grown to like ten­nis. I kinda know how to keep score, but I under­stand the rules so it’s eas­ier to watch. We’re going to Indian Wells in March, which will be even bet­ter. We’re dri­ving down and stay­ing at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. We stayed at the Ace Hotel in Port­land for Christ­mas in 2008, and it was awe­some. It’s a quirky and unique hotel chain with just a few loca­tions in the US. The road trip should be fun. I’m look­ing for­ward to it. And we’re plan­ning to go to New York in August / Sep­tem­ber for his Grandma’s 75th birth­day and then for the US Open. Ten­nis all year long.

1. “Mosquito” — Vanessa Par­adis — M&J
2. “Out of Time” — Melanie C — This Time
3. “The Pocket Knife” — PJ Har­vey — Uh Huh Her
4. “Last Thing on My Mind” — Bananarama — Please Your­self
5. “Alfie” — ONJ — Indigo Women of Song
6. “Shower Scene” — Saint Eti­enne — Fin­is­terre
7. “Fascination” — Everything But the Girl — Eden
8. “Nobody Does It Better” — Carly Simon — Reflec­tions
9. “Hope for the Hopeless” — A Fine Frenzy — One Cell in the Sea
10. “Stacked Crooked” — The New Pornog­ra­phers — Twin Cin­ema

So, it’s Fri­day again, and it rained all night last night, and when I got to my car this morn­ing, the floor on the pas­sen­ger side was sop­ping wet again. Some­where in that damned sun­roof, there is a leak and it’s pour­ing water onto the floor. It’s dis­gust­ing, and it stinks, and I’m fed up. I did a quick cal­cu­la­tion, and if I got rid of my car I would save over $200 a month in expenses. Add that to the rest of the money that I am going to save this year, and it will be close to $2000 a month in cash … in my pocket. I don’t really know what I would do with all that spare change, but it sure sounds nice.

I have had a headache all week. It’s get­ting kind of old by now. Don’t really know how to get rid of it. Excedrin and Advil don’t work any­more. Nei­ther does sleep.

V has a marathon on Sun­day. He’s run­ning a half-marathon, but still, that’s pretty major. He’s run the course a cou­ple of times already, and he’s been able to get it done in the same amount of time both times … less than two hours, one-fifty-something. That is pretty awe­some. I’m impressed by any­one who runs a marathon, half or full. It’s a huge amount of work and train­ing and men­tal psych­ing. I am far too seden­tary these days to even con­sider run­ning around the block let alone a race. This is the first one, he’s run­ning a sec­ond one next month, another half-marathon in Oak­land. I don’t know how he does it, hon­estly. Makes me look like a lazy slob, really.

I made snick­er­doo­dles last night. They came out look­ing like sil­ver dol­lar pan­cakes. They spread out quite a bit while cook­ing, and they’re much thin­ner than I expected them to be. I was hop­ing for a lit­tle more puffy, but they taste OK, so what­ever. Not sure I’ll do that again.

I am so over this.