Okay.

I haven't really written about myself in a while, and so I'ma slam this one out. It's 11:47 and I gotta be up at 6.

So.

Well, I got fired on the 3rd of August. I got hired at my new job on the 17th of August. I am making 75.5% of my previous pay. I am much happier. I'm going web design, graphic design, and a *touch* of programming. I've only been there a month, but I think I'm doing well, considering the four year gap in my web design work. My poor old PowerBook G3 (Pismo) is the only Mac in the building, so I end up looking at everyone's designs for testing. I haven't been able to convince them to buy a Mac, but it's only been a month.

Anyway, as a result of the new job, and the new pay rate, I've moved. In with friends who had two extra rooms. I'm almost completely moved, and I have to go through all my shit, now, and throw a bunch away. I know I should be able to toss a good 30% of what I have... the manuals for the tech support contract which I taught in 2000 for a company that no longer exists at a company that no longer exists... could go. At least, two of the three.

Do you ever get staring at your laptop screen while you type, and for a moment, your perspective shifts strangely and the screen seems much smaller or much farther away than it should. Everything in the perspective is wrong... Maybe it seems closer and smaller.. yes, that must be it. I can't move my eyes, because I'll lose it. It works best in a dark room. It's interesting to see your hands look like their ten feet away... they just seem so small. It's kinda cool, but disorienting, too.

Ah, it's gone, now.

Anyway, I've got plenty I can toss, but it's nice to rediscover what I have. I found the FireWire charging brick to my original iPod, and the FireWire cable that goes with it. Both had been missing for two years.

So, happy with the new job. Money is tight, but I think I'll survive. Work doesn't allow the use of messenger clients or personal web browsing during business, but I live less than a mile from work. I'll definitely be on less because work is interesting now, and I have a real job to perform. As much as I liked the lazy pace of a 40-hour work week and a 20-hour job, I was always bored, because there wasn't anything I should be doing -- that is I was expressly forbidden from a number of jobs because they were someone else's problem.

It's really good to be working somewhere were, despite no private office, the single, smaller screen, the lack of iTunes and the heavier work load, I can turn to the guy four feet from me and say, "How does this look?".

It's morning and the fruit flies are angry about political injustice in Africa. I can tell by the way they fly in complicated, semi-circle patterns that this meeting is not about the accidentally left-out slice of cantaloupe, but rather a rally for the people -- a chance to change things...

What are your prized possessions?

Oddly, one of mine is a Christmas gift from my sister that she doesn't recall giving me. It is a dressing case, or valise, if you like... a traveling bag. She gave it to me with a toothbrush, soap, and a glass bottle of rubbing alcohol. It now contains my toiletries.

My small green case contains:

• Shampoo and conditioner
• Two types of deoderant
• A Mach 3 and blades
• Toothbrush and toothpaste
• Floss
• Hairbrush
• Comb
• Nail clippers
• Rubbing alcohol
• New Skin
• Lip balm -- Blistex Medicated
• Mardi Gras beads

It fits comfortably inside my backpack with a change of clothes or my camera and lenses.

I like my new job. I'm working on dozens of web sites. This coming week I will likely get to design something from scratch. I'm not allowed to wander around online or use chat software at work, though. I'm in the process of moving, so I'm not on as much.

Will try for more later.

Woke up at four a.m.
Hard wood against my shoulder
Curled up at the foot of your bed

But there's nobody there
The sheets are cold and smooth
And the air near my fingers
Trembles as I shake

White-knuckled

Lost you last Tuesday

New job.

Graphic Design, Photo Editing, HTML, with the potential to move into web dev (ASP, maybe PHP), db, and photography.

25% paycut, until reviews at the end of the year.

I am here. Been reading, but been busy. Books, interviews, finances, probably moving soon.

Hoping better things for gmhowell.

fhqwhgads

An unhappy end to an unhappy job. Glad to be out of it, sad that it ended as it did.

As of 2006/08/02 11:00 EDT I am unemployed.

I have nearly a week of pay and a slightly over a week of PTO (Paid Time Off) coming to me. Two weeks to find a job.

Right now, I'ma run away from my problems. I had passed on an opportunity to go pick up a friend, and suddenly have free time. I likely won't be on this afternoon, evening, or tomorrow. Catch you all later.

Be well.

Turns out, death ain't no big thing. Sure, it can be somethin' painful and it ain't easy lettin' go, but once you's crossed over, it's a real trip. Seems like there's more to learn about once you're dead that when you was alive.

First, there's an infinite number of universes. We ain't each in every one of 'em, but we're in enough as makes no difference; couldn't count us if you wanted.

Second, there's only one heaven and one hell for all of them infinite universes. I thought it'd get a might crowded, but they saw we got plenty of room up here. Yeah, I made it up. 'parently not all of me did, but I fig're that's just as it will be. I ain't never seen nobody who was all good, so I guess it's only right some of me is down below.

Odds is you'll go an eternity in heaven and never see another one of you, that's how big it is. Some folks do, and I heard tell it weren't exactly comfortable -- folks get all twisted up when they don't feel unique. I went some three thousand years 'fore I ran into myself.

It weren't no big thing at first. I was at the grocery, looking for the brightest, shiniest apple they had. In heaven, the pickings are always good, so it can take some time to make a choice. Don't matter none, 'cause you won't ever be hungry less'n you want to be. I'd been shopping nigh on three hours when I look up and see another me lookin' over the pears in the same exact way. I caught, well, my eye and we waved at each other.

Some weeks on we was both at the grocer's again, and we exchanged pleasantries. Turns out we both been visiting this same grocer for nigh on five hundred years off-and-on, and only twice seen each other.

After seein' each other at the store some several times, I offered to treat myself to dinner. We had a pretty good time, and started making somethin' regular of it. Seems we had a lot in common, and just enough not to keep conversation fresh.

We met an' talked a couple or nine times over the next few years -- seems like we might've stayed in touch more regular, but there ain't no rush in heaven; we ain't got nowhere to be. One of us -- don't rightly know which one, now -- got it into our heads that we should try to meet more of us. Seemed a real interestin' plan, so we set about it.

It ain't easy trackin' down more of yourself then you ever thought what could exist. You might think forever would be plenty time for such things, but there's also a forever or two of land to cover. Turns out they got more newspaper companies in heaven than every paper ever printed on earth. It took some time to put out the ads.

Also, it ain't like you can just put a note if for a name. There's more of me in heaven than all the people in any one Creation, and I ain't the only ones who's got our own name. We had to get right specific with our ads, and I don't mind tellin you it took well on six decades to pare down the wordin' to cut out most strangers and we still ain't cleaned out all the close relations. Seems ours is a family name, and in those worlds what didn't have us, plenty got different folk with the same name.

That ain't to say we all looked alike. We ain't even all the same gender, turns out, which makes it all the harder to take out an ad, believe us. But, we kept findin' a few more each year, and after a century or two, we thought we might all have a little get together.

Turns out we found a lot more of ourselves than we ever thought we might. In two century's time, we was nigh on six thousand strong. Folks up here say it's right impressive, what with how many of us we found so quickly. Some of the administrators say it ain't normal, and say things like "statistical anomaly" but it don't bother most of us... not as still show up, no ways.

There ain't many places what can serve dinner to six thousand people, so we ended up makin' our of society and buildin' a meeting hall. Weren't no simple feat, neither. Good thing between the six thousand-so of me I knew some of the right people.

Well, we surely had a time once it all came together. We still meet up 'bout every hundred years or so, and some of us meet more regular. It ain't never boring in heaven -- 'less you want it so -- but havin' a friend just like you makes eternity just fly right by.

Last week, an old woman came and sat and talked to me for hours. I think, maybe, she thought I was someone else, for I had never met her. She wore a pale blue kerchief tied over the silver strands of her hair, and her hands trembled slightly. She spoke about the weather and friends and grandchildren, and how hard it was, now. She wept for a bit, then; dabbing her eyes with a gleaming white handkerchief, and I wished that I could comfort her. After a time, her tears stopped, and she sat and stared out in the sunshine, watching the rustle of trees in the wind. She dozed for a bit in the afternoon sun, and woke to gentle birdsong. She smiled warmly at me and I listened to the diminishing grating of gravel as she walked away.

It's always so peaceful, here, in the graveyard.

Each time I put my earplugs in
It makes my hairs all twist and spin
And makes my head want to give in
To soothe my suff'ring brain.

While crinkled up they do no harm
But while expanding cause alarm
It's then I wish I'd bought the farm
To rid me of this bane.

For once inside they start to itch
My jaw and jowl, they start to twitch
My eyes move 'bout ev'ry way which
To end the frightful pain.

And though it is I hate them so
Each day faithfully do I go
To the same box in which they stow
And put them on again.

'Cause if I don't I would, I fear
Be deaf as hammers in a year
So 'stead of deaf each day, my dear
These damn earplugs remain.

I am roommateless.
I am the possibly-permanent new owner* of two cats.
I am slightly sunburned from a beach trip, Saturday.
I am concerned for a friend.
I am out of touch with too many people.
I am sorting out my finances.
I am working on my motivation.
--
* Staff?

The air is cool as it passes over my outstretched fingertips, lifted and pulled in the currents just above the mirror. Work is out; it's after seven. A yawning orange sun is nestled in the clouds, slowly turning the sky oozing shades of pink and amber.

It's warm and dry -- or at least not raining -- for the first time this summer, and people are out mowing their overgrown lawns. A weathered man on a tractor haying a field mistakes my hand in the wind as a greeting and waves cheerfully from across a jumbled plane of cut and drying grass.

As I round a curve nestled between a slanting field and a young wood, the air smells of cinnamon and silage, sharp and pungent in the humidity.

Music blares from the radio, and I sing along to the too-loud, upbeat noise pulsing from my speakers.

Aces & Eights
Mossy
Singing Falls

eighty-five
swimming pool air
palpable haze

cinder blocks
condensation slick
concrete floors
slippery with sweat

The whole world perspires.