So Then at Mile Nine, I ...

Yeah, marathons are hard. I mean, I figured it would be hard, but this was really hard! Even at my slow pace, things hurt. There are depths to your knees you never knew existed, and they hurt.

Here are some tips from a "seasoned" marathoner (if by "seasoned" you mean "doused with Gatorade from a clumsy grab during a water stop at mile 25"):

1. DON'T do the math. Do NOT pass mile marker 8 or 9 or 10 and think to yourself, "only 18, 17, 16 miles to go." This is not an encouraging line of thought. Equally, don't get to mile 20 and think, "only an hour to go." This is “demoralizing” the same way the Grand Canyon is "deep."

2. DON'T look at the runners around you. They resemble the latter half of the Bataan Death March and so do you.

3. DON'T look at the person cheering on the sidelines who is also wearing a marathon runner's bib. Yes, they've already finished and look rested and ready to kick your ass a second time. Acknowledging this will only make you want to hurt them, and you can't raise your leg high enough to nail them in the nards. Save your energy.

4. DO listen to the cheering of the crowds. Even though it may be a mercy cheer, and you know their cries of, "you're doing great, you look strong, you're going to finish this" are optimistic in the extreme, sideline support gives a better energy boost than a bucket of Gu and a trough of Gatorade.

5. DO cheer for the Kenyans as they whoosh blurrily past you. They are a testament to what the human body is capable of, even if it's not your human body.

So, yeah, I finished. It took me 4 hours, 55 minutes and some number of seconds, most of which hurt. But I finished, and even 3 days later, I periodically find myself with an “I finished a marathon” grin that is 50% proud, 40% stunned and only 10% smug.

So here’s how it happened:

On Friday, I drove over to Toasty’s place, and we left from there. We had a fabulous meal at Burger King (2 veggie burgers, a shared fries and small salad—did you say you wanted details?) somewhere south of the border, then crossed into Canada. We were staying at the seedy but reasonably priced Bosman’s Hotel (politeness is extra) in downtown Vancouver, and we rolled in around 9.30 pm.

Toasty had—of course—brought his laptop, so I was able to check in with the Runners World forums. (I’ve been spending way too much time following threads on this forum. Lots of newbies like me and more experienced runners providing much-needed advice, support, stories and laughs.) Many of us were doing our first marys (runners’ slang for “marathons”—I’m entitled to use it now, only not too often), so there was a lot of chatter, and I wanted to hear what everyone else was going through.

Saturday was rainy and cool. We got up and trotted over to the Expo to pick up my bib and info. packet. Toasty bought me a very cool Vancouver Marathon shirt which I will wear until it falls off my body at which point I will make it into decorative handkerchiefs, doilies, lawn ornaments, whatever. I got myself a cool little bauble that very subtly says ***I RAN A MARATHON ONCE!!!*** We ate free pudding and some ghastly tofu-berry thing, got our Power Bars, picked up a lot of literature which was promptly recycled, took some pictures and headed back out again.

One funny thing was looking at the list of people registered: somewhere around 3500 people were scheduled to run the full mary. Something like 5 times that number were running the half. In fact, when we first got there to pick up my bib number, there was a huge line. Then Toasty realized we were standing in the half-mary line. The full had no line at all. That was when the first ice-butterfly took up residence in my stomach: what did all those people know that I didn’t?

We had arranged to meet a good friend of mine who lives in Vancouver, but that wasn’t until 2 pm., so we had some time. We parked ourselves in a nearby Starbucks (you can take the people out of Seattle, but…) and looked through the goody bag for awhile. I stupidly studied the course map again. This is “stupid” because (a) you can’t possibly get lost unless you’re so slow that they’ve picked up the traffic cones and the volunteers have all decamped for the night, and (b) it invites swarms of ice-butterflies to come tango on your intestines.

We spent the day with my friend, even to the point of carbo-loading on some Italian food for supper. Then it was back to the room for a last look at the Runners World forums. I laid out all the stuff I’d need on the bed: shoes with inserts, “lucky” (ie. non-blister-causing) socks, shinsplint wraps (2), shorts, shirt, cap, sunscreen, sunglasses, Gu packets (3), blah blah blah. I spent less time getting ready for my high school prom. By now, the ice-butterflies were performing aerial stunts in my tummy, like tiny, frozen Blue Angels. We were in bed by 10.

Bosman’s Hotel cleverly saves on costs by short-sheeting every bed, so that presented some sleeping challenges, and I was already pretty challenged. I got some sleep that night, but not much. Worst of all, I dreamed that the race was over, and I was excitedly telling my parents all about it. They asked, “How was the bridge?” (The Burrard Bridge is the highest point on the run, and you have to cross it TWICE, thank you.) It was at that point that I realized I hadn’t run it yet, and I woke myself up. Evil evil evil subconscious.

I had set 3 alarms, so it was quite the chorus that woke us up at 5.30 on Sunday morning. We got ready, I stuffed down a bagel with peanut butter and a cold coffee drink. We got to the start line with plenty of time to spare, so I did my stretching thing, and Toasty did his amazingly supportive boyfriend thing (lots of “you can do this, you’re trained, you’re ready, you can do this”). Start lines are always a mixed blessing. It’s fun to be mixed in at the nexus of all the buzzing energy that swirls around big events. There’s a lot of chatter between total strangers (usually of the, “can you believe we paid to do this?” variety), a lot of shivering with nerves and cold, a lot of pictures being taken and shouts of last-minute advice and encouragement from the sidelines. The half started 30 minutes before us, so there were just the 4000 or so full-mary runners, plus a nice-sized crowd of spectators. There were many garbled announcements, I found my pace bunny (the person who runs at the pace you’d like to keep—heroes, every last one of them), I handed off all the clothes I could part with to Toasty, the gun went and we were off.

It took about 2 minutes for me to cross the start line, and I was trying desperately to get keep thoughts like “26.2 miles to go” out of my head. It’s a daunting distance, no matter if you’ve trained for it or not. In my usual way, I had nerved and worried myself into a nauseated tummy that I would haul around with me for the next 14 miles. Boo.

At the half-mary mark I was running my 2nd or 3rd best half-mary pace, so that made me feel good. I was still keeping up with my bunny (I’d lose him at mile 15 or so), and nothing but my stomach was hurting. When I saw the 14-mile mark, finally everything shifted into place. I felt good enough to know that I was probably going to finish. My stomach finally settled down, I relaxed and started to enjoy the experience. Yay!

One cool thing about Vancouver is they print your first name on your bib, so all along the course I was hearing cries of, “Go, Raggs! You look great, Raggs; keep it up!” (OK, confession time: Raggedy Angst is not my real name.) It’s amazing how good it feels to have someone shout encouragement at you by name. There was really good crowd support nearly the whole course. The loneliest time was through Stanley Park where more than once I felt like the bikers and non-racing joggers regarded us as interlopers in “their” park. I still hadn’t eaten anything as I was worried that the nausea dragon would raise its ugly head again, but I did partake of water and/or Gatorade at nearly every water station. And at stations 7 (mile 13.5) and 9 (mile 17), I had stashed some Starbucks Double Shots. I was only able to take a couple of gulps of those, but I think the caffeine helped.

Bored yet?

As I was running at a non-competitive pace (boy, was I), I was able to have conversations with some of the people around me, and that was fun. There were other newbs out there, and we did check-ins to monitor how we were doing: “anything hurt?” “Nothing unusual. You?” “Not yet!” Our discussions were, of necessity, pretty brief, ending with “Good luck! We’re going to do this thing!” before one of us ran on ahead.

After the first crossing of the Bridge, which really wasn’t bad, there’s a loooooooong out-and-back stretch. If you’ve done runs like this, you’ll know how crappy those are: for something like 2 miles, I got to watch people coming back as I was going out. I couldn’t see the turn-around point ahead of me, which is incredibly frustrating. This was by far my least favorite part of the race, despite finally choking down a Gu at mile 21, and having my very Irish name shouted at me by a very Irish volunteer at a water stop. But once you get back and cross the Bridge again, you hit the magical 25-mile marker. On the Vancouver course, once you reach the top of the Burrard Bridge the 2nd time, it’s all downhill to the finish line. I almost choked up when I saw that sign: 1.2 to go.

The last part of the race is awesome. You get to run through town where there are tons of spectators, all of them shouting “Almost there!” –and you finally get to believe them. At .2 miles after the 25-mile marker, there’s a “1 mile to go” sign (thank you, bloody Queen Victoria). In my head, that’s where I started to sprint. My body declined to participate, saying it was more interested in just staying assembled in the right order, but in my head, it was the music from Chariots of Fire from there to the end. That “finish” sign was like winning the lottery. OK, I’d rather win the lottery, but it was still pretty damn cool.

As I approached the finish, my name came over the loudspeaker. They try to get in a little information about everyone, which is just fantastic. It makes you feel like you’ve won the Olympics or something. I crossed the line, got my medal (I almost hugged that woman, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have been the first or the last), and heard my name from above me. Toasty was there; he’d gotten several pictures, and despite a nearly 5 hour wait, was as excited and thrilled as I was.

Then I got stuck in an airlock.

OK, it was only for a couple of minutes, but we didn’t know what was going on or why or how long it’d last. Toasty figured out later that it was because the stadium has an inflatable roof; they have to shut the doors periodically to keep the sky from falling down. My legs have never hurt that badly. I just wanted to keep moving, but I couldn’t, as we were a bit crammed into the airlock space. Toasty, a shower and my reclaimed life were on the other side—that part was a bit eternal, but it at least saved me from the emotional meltdown that had been threatening for the past few weeks.

Toasty got me a massage, which was nothing short of miraculous. This woman worked on my legs for about 30 minutes, and once she was done, I could actually stand and walk pretty reasonably. The deep muscle pain from the finish was gone. I showered in the locker room, changed into my “finisher” t-shirt and some sweat pants, then rejoined Toasty for what he thought was a prolonged celebratory hug but was actually me needing him to prop me upright.

Then we drove home. And stopped every hour or so, so that I could get out and hobble around a bit. I called several people to bore them with my mile-by-mile replay. I slept. We ate some more Burger King.

The end.

In the movie The Spirit of the Marathon, one guy says something like, when you cross the finish line, you’re changed forever. I don’t know if that’s true, being only 3 days from the finish line, which is a far cry from “forever” unless I get hit by a bus this afternoon, but the marathon is an interesting study in introspection. Marathon training made me self-absorbed to a level I would rather not repeat, but it also did teach me some things about myself. In athletic stuff, I’ve always erred on the side of quitting. It was nice, for once, to take on this genuinely hard thing and see it through, literally, to the finish line.

Marathon Update

I finshed!!!!! Epic and dull details that really matter only to me will follow soon. Thanks for all your support, folks; hugely appreciated.

rags

Is That a Power Bar in Your Pocket, Or ... ?

It’s April 19th today. That means the marathon is….hang on,….borrow ten, carry the two….15 days away.

Oh. Dear. God.

I’ve done all I can to get ready, I think. I ran the miles, I quaffed the mega-ultra-dynamo power drinks that make you pee out more nutrients than half the world’s population sees in a month; I ate Gu, ShotBloks (carbo gel snacks made by Gatorade), a host of energy bars of varying descriptions; I cramped, chafed, sweated, cursed, rejoiced, and I ran, ran, ran. Mile after thumping bloody mile.

I’m sick to death of running. Depending on how the marathon goes, I will either have my tights bronzed or burnt, but I don’t want to spend any more time actually wearing them. I calculated the number of training miles I will have run by the time I get to the start line—it’s 550. I know. I did the math three times. At my haggard 10-minutes-per-mile average, that’s 5,500 minutes (92 hours) I could have spent on my couch. Or doing pretty much anything else.

There are real runners out there. I see them all the time, wafting past me, the little wings on their shoes flapping furiously. I read their comments on the RunnersWorld forums, how they found peace, lost weight, gained self-confidence, had epiphanies, cruised mile after effortless mile, breezed up hills and over dales, even their blisters are fun! fun! fun! They gave up drugs and cigarettes, they kicked coffee, gambling, and bad marriages, they straightened out troubled kids between miles 11 and 13, solved the mideast crises at mile 18 and found an endless, clean, alternative energy source just before bursting through "the wall" at mile 21. They are slim, confident, happy people who love to run. When I see them, I push them down.

OK, it hasn’t been that bad. Actually, some of the miles have been pretty good. Probably not "good" to the point where someone wants to push me down, but at least there have been miles where I was only soggy with sweat and not with misery and tears. I think there were at least 6 like that.

As race day approaches, I’ve started making lists. I’m in the "tapering" part of the training now, which means my weekly mileage is dropping faster than Wile E. Coyote off an unsuspected cliff. Last week (the biggie), 52 miles. This week, 29. Next week, 21. During marathon week, I’ll run only 9 miles over the course of 5 days. The joy of so little is somewhat ameliorated by the massive sink-hole-of-fear-and-trembling 26.2 at the end of the week, but I’m trying to stay positive here. My lists—and there are many, mostly saying the same stuff over and over and over again—consist almost entirely of items like "socks" and "extra socks." I don’t seem to be able to think about the big stuff, so I get there in baby steps like "socks." But then, that’s how I’m getting to the start line of a marathon, so I guess it makes sense.

I’m looking forward to the race, I really am. There’ll be a big crowd, it’s a pretty part of a pretty city (Vancouver), Toasty will be there (yay!), and on Sunday, May 4, when the race is over and no matter how it turns out, I will have an excuse to eat absolutely and without question of guilt or my mom’s well-intentioned voice in my head anything I want. I’ll be able to chat with other runners at the start. I’ll line up somewhere between the greyhounds and the basset hounds, feeling the charge of all the nervous energy buzzing around me like hummingbirds on crack. I’ll lament my stupidity for signing up (a lot and loudly) and promise the Fates that if they just let me live through this, I’ll never be this ass-ignorant again.

I’m trying to have some measure of confidence. After all, I’m not running to compete, and my only goal, really, is to finish under my own power. But as I sit here, imagining the race day, the start line, crossing—for the first time ever—the 20-mile mark (should I get that far), the length, the hills, the miles stretched end-to-end, and, quite frankly, the portapoddies, my heart is beating faster and I kinda have to pee. I’ve worked hard for this, and I don’t want to choke on the day of because my head is full of I-can’ts despite all the miles I’ve put behind me. I know that race-day adrenaline is a powerful drug and can take you far; I’m hoping that training, plus adrenaline, plus some well-timed ShotBloks will get me far enough.

Thanks, everyone, for support, encouragement and patience beyond the call of duty. Thanks especially to Toasty who volunteered to ride alongside me on several loooooong runs (including 2 ugly 20s). He truly is the new generation of male athletic supporter.

One thing I’d really like to pass along to everyone: if you’re out and about and a runner goes by you, particularly if that runner is a little older or slower or chubbier or more desperate-looking than the über-runners who just need to be pushed down, a sincere "You’re looking great!" or "Keep it up!" or just some well-timed applause is worth gold. Trust me on this.

Getting Your Shit Together™

One day in the very recent past, I was standing at the water cooler. Now, pardon my digression here, but where did we get this notion that the water cooler is some sort of hub of human social activity? As far as I can tell, people go there to get water, and like animals at an oasis, there's a kind of unspoken free zone that surrounds the Holy Water Cooler. Everyone must be friendly or at least polite. We stand back and wave others to the taps first; people fill up quickly, make--at best--nominal conversation about work-related issues or the recent weekend's weather and get the heck gone. Maybe it's because I was a temp and not there for very long, but I heard NOT ONE thread of gossip that I didn't start myself. It's a gossip-free area. I heard plenty of gossip launched over the tops of cubicles and toilet stalls, but seriously, it's like there's something sacred about the acquisition of water that's too serious for idle chatter, like we all had to walk miles through searing desert carrying goat-bladder canteens or something.

So I'm standing at the water cooler, waiting my turn to make tea, wondering when the alligator that is McBitchy is going to wrap her face around some cute, fuzzy, wee little mammal of an assistant that I know she doesn't like and drag them to a damp and sudden death at the bottom of the pool. I've seen her do similar things in meetings. This girl has no problems at all with lashing out at someone in front of the assembled, drawing blood with a thinly disguised joke. But not at the water cooler. Weird.

Anyway, when it's my turn, I pass the uncomfortable moment of awareness that all these people behind me are wishing--politely--that I would hurry the hell up by looking idly at the bulletin board above my head. There's a poster advertising a program for "overstressed employees." Now, I'll just mention that this poster pre-dates the announcement of layoffs, so we're not talking about especially stressed employees, just the normally stressed variety. The program is called something like LifeEra™ or similar. I didn't have much time to read it, it being first thing in the morning and the line of cordially hostile tea-drinkers behind me increasingly deep, but I went back later when the cooler was less popular as a destination site.

It's a program about all that feel-good Oprahesque crap: finding your bliss, your inner child, your hidden bitch, your childhood dreams, Jesus, your lunch, whatever you might feel you've lost along the troubled path of adulthood. It's "getting on the right track!"™ and "forging your way ahead!"™ and how to "be a fully realized person!"™ That last one always kills me. At some point, will this program provide me with a personal epiphany when I jump up and down and wave my arms and say, "Holy crap, so this is the person I am!"? What if I fully realize who I am, and I turn out to be a bit of a shit? Can I unrealize myself and go back to the foggy haze of thinking I'm generally OK? And more importantly, can I get my money back?

I think that's the part that weirded me out most. The program costs money. It's trademarked. Does that strike anyone else as a bit sinister? Your ability to Get Your Shit Together™ in life has been trademarked. Now I'm worried. This morning I tidied my kitchen -- is that copyright infringement? Will I have to pay royalties on every to-do list? It disturbs me that as a society we are so far removed from our blisses that we have to hire someone else to go out and look for them.

On the other hand, people searching for their blisses in all the wrong places means there's a lot of good second-hand camping, skiing and biking gear available, so that's OK.

Ode to a Small Lump of Silly Putty in Her Armpit

OK, as promised, stories from my brief-but-meaningful interval in the world of retail marketing. Lemme tell you about the pictures. You know how American women learn the Art of Self-Loathing from pictures of flawless women in catalogs and magazines? I'm here to tell you: those women could have arrived at the photoshoot looking like the Loch Ness Monster herself, but by the time the pictures get in print, they've been Photoshopped and Pre-Pressed, and the Loch Ness Monster has morphed into Naughty Nessie the pouty-lipped, slim-hipped, scale-free fantasy girl next door. At least the Loch Ness Monster might actually be real.

I found this out when I sat down to add copy (the words) to some pages that were due to be printed as a mailer. Most of the photos were in place, but the files weren't complete. Basically, several someones (our art directors, the company selling the clothes) go through the files and circle all the stuff they want removed: moles, birthmarks, tattoos, etc. Now, I can see taking the tattoo off, I guess. It's hard to concentrate on that darling little flouncy blouse when the model has a naked harpy astride a barbed wire snake inked on her bicep. But when they get to the point of circling for removal the invisible freckle on the inside of her left shin, well, that's when I start getting testy.

So my introduction to the wide world of fraud and misrepresentation began when I had to add some very basic copy to a page of bras. It would be bras, wouldn't it? Not socks or sandals or even flouncy blouses, no, it would just have to be bras.

I bring up the page, and there are maybe eight or ten women on the page, all of the shots very typical, just head and upper torso. But every single picture had a circle around both of the model's nipples. The instructions? A very terse, "Remove." Oh, and you're not allowed to have wrinkles at the juncture where your arm hooks to your body. There's a smoothing process to take out the "extra" folds in your skin that keep you from ripping great holes in your outer layer every time you move because those folds are apparently unsightly. And we're not talking about huge flappy winglettes of skin here, folks; we're talking about those wee wrinkles that naturally occur wherever your body has to bend and stretch. The smearing that they do to take out those wrinkles makes every woman look like she's been touched up with Silly Putty. Check it out next time you see a bra catalog. Oh, and obvious cleavage has to go too. I know, I know, it's a bra page, but no nipples and no cleavage allowed. Don't ask me.

It's got to be a relief for the models, though. They can have moles and freckles and tattoos and wrinkles and cleavage and curvy hips in real life, and the questionable magic of Photoshop can air brush them into golden goddesses, flawless in everything but attitude. They can be disassembled and reassembled, parts of their bodies traded for other body parts from a more "appropriate" model. It's like the art people have a bucket of KFC in their computers: a big bunch of breasts, thighs, legs and .... well, not wings probably. And no heads. Huh. Reach into the bucket, pull one out, determine if it's golden and crispy... ok, this is where the analogy falls apart, but you know what I mean.

Real women (and men, 'cause they do it to the guys too) are not buckets of chicken. I think I may print that on t-shirts: "real people are not buckets of chicken." I'll make a fortune.

Almost....There.....

Two more days among the fearlessly fashionable, then it's back to the world of fleece and baggy butt jeans. Have I got stories for you.

Not this year, buckaroo

Since things are sort of winding down at the place I'm working, there's less and less work to do. So they kindly offered me a day "off" (off their payrolls, but whatever), and since I'm inherently a very lazy person, I took them up on it (translation: leapt at the chance). Plus, some inspector-types are around today and needing access to each condo, so I'm happy to be here to police the kittehs. Beebs, the far twitchier of my two cats, is already aware that there are strangers doing strange, beeping things in the building, and she's hardly left my side all morning. In fact, I have to keep going back and retyping, thanks to her head-butting my right elbow.

When told that I could have a "free" day, I imagined a day of reckless abandon and slovenliness, lying on the couch, unshowered and unconcerned, setting aside the bon bons only when the big strong inspectors arrived. Instead, as I lay in bed this morning, awake even before my alarm clock would normally have gone off, I realized that it's the 2nd day of spring. An unusually warm spring, if the scientists are to be believed (and yes, W, they are to be believed, you flaming dickhead), and spring means ... ants.

Sugar ants. I haven't seen them yet, but it's only a matter of time before I open my kitchen cabinets to find their wriggling little bodies writhing around in my sugar and making wee tiny baby ants in the oatmeal. I hate them. I hate them with the same passion that I normally reserve for Dick Cheney and regard them with almost the same disgust that I would feel if I found him wriggling around in my sugar dispenser. Sorry for that mental picture, folks, but at least now you understand my pain.

As I lay in bed, I could almost hear them coming, an army of tiny, marching feet, six to a soldier, all of them headed toward my syrup, my cinnamon bread, my Kashi stash. So I got up. I cleaned. I cleaned like a cleaning fiend. I stripped the countertops bare and Windexed t'fook out of them. Everything they could possibly get into was signed, sealed, delivered, it's war. There are sunflower seeds in my refrigerator. The seeds don't ordinarily go in the fridge, but just in case the ants get a hankering for some seedy goodness, ha! Take that, you relentless, multi-legged, nasty little kitchen bullies! I'd get a gecko if I didn't think my cats would try to eat it.

It took nearly 3 hours to get my wee little postage stamp condo whipped into anti-ant condition, but I reckon I've got a bit of a head start on them this year. I'm going to the grocery store later to buy those awful little sweet-poison bait ant traps that I festoon my condo with like other people do with Hummel figurines (the saccharine level is actually slightly higher on a Hummel figurine, but I want to kill the ants, not give them Type 2 diabetes). While I am both an animal lover and a green-lifestyle embracer, I will up the toxicity in my condo to Rush Limbaugh on a blind date with Gloria Steinem levels if it means I never have to flip on my kitchen light to find a colony of sugar ants copulating under the lid of the honey jar. (Or Rush Limbaugh, for that matter.)

Now, three hours and a roll of (100% post-consumer content recycled) paper towels later, I have this urge to say, a la that tiny lady in the Poltergeist movie: "This house is clean." But we all know how well that worked out.

Downtown Seattle is Like a Box of Chocolates

I'm getting hardened to it, I really am, but the guy on the bus this morning caught even jaded little me by surprise. After riding most of the way to the downtown on the OOL (Overheated, Overcrowded and Late) #36 bus standing up, frantically grasping at the slippery overhead bar which the drivers must dust liberally with baby powder each morning to ensure maximum slipperiness, I finally got a seat. (I never take a seat on that bus without a measure of cynicism, because sure as pickles will muck up your plumbing, some incredibly feeble, wobbly, exhausted, ancient person will get on at the next stop, laden until bent nearly double with a month's shopping, coughing, arthritic and 99% of the time too short to reach the be-powdered overhead bar, and I'll have to give up my seat anyway. Beacon Hill must have a wee, elderly person factory that works overtime.) So I sink into my seat, hoping I'll be able to stay there awhile. If you read my most recent blog, you know I'm doing this stupid running thing, and that means I'm terminally fatigued pretty much always. It was cold this morning, and wet, so the overheated bus is quickly degenerating into a swamp of body heat and wet-overcoat smell. Still overcrowded, we're huddled together like sheep on the edge of a cliff. At a downtown stop not too far from my own, the seat next to me is vacated. I enjoy a very brief feeling of space before today's Loony slams his body into the seat.

Uh oh, I think.

Indeed. "Fuck all dem bitches," he says, and looks to me for approval. I look at the window. (I would have looked OUT of it, but it was foggy with passenger-breath and hair oils.) The Loon adds a disclaimer: "No disrespect for wives and dat." Well, that's all right then.

At the next stop, he gets off, presumably to spread the Gospel of Loon to the next group of the unenlightened.

I get to work, ride up in the elevator to my little cubicle on the windowless floor I work on. McBitchy, this pain-in-t'arse (Happy St. Pats) little girl I have to work with, gives me a smug look which means I've screwed up and she knows about it. I stick the tip of her ponytail in the shredder and walk away.

"Fuck all dem bitches," I think.

Have Stress, Will Unravel

It's odd, working at a company that's basically wrapping up and closing down (well, not the WHOLE company, but the people around me are all getting laid off). The tone varies almost daily, from giddy gallows humor to increasing concern as the number of paychecks left hits single digits, then back to something almost like relief. But the twitch quotient is way up; suddenly colleagues have become potential competitors, and everyone's in a dither about when to jump ship and in what direction. People are re-evaluating their careers, and the "extra day to wear jeans" that was so graciously allotted by corporate, while pleasant, wasn't exactly helpful. I'm sticking it out for as long as I can. I'm getting great experience, building my portfolio, trying to keep my own adrenaline buzz of imminent unemployment at a minimum, at least for now.

So, because life isn't stressful enough, I've decided to add an extra layer: I signed up to run the 08 Vancouver marathon. I've never done this distance before. In fact, until a few weeks ago, my furthest distance run was half that. But I figure I'm right on schedule. I just turned 40, so a few months before my birthday, I changed career paths completely, and now I'm going to (try to) plod through 26.2 miles in one day. I reckon the convertible and trophy boy are weeks away. I resisted telling people for months that I was considering doing this, because I really don't want to tell people I'm going to take a shot at it, only to limp back from Vancouver and admit I got 10 miles along, then purposely shot myself in the foot in order to get Medivac'd back to safety. I will tell you now, odds are 50/50 at best for me crossing that finish line under my own power. I'm only telling now because all the books and articles and discussion groups I've been reading on this topic say that first-timers should definitely tell. It's a commitment thing, like getting married instead of just shacking up. (Tell that to my friends in their double-digit-year relationships, hardly a married pair in the bunch, but whatever.)

One advantage of telling is that now I get to request suggestions for my iPod. I'm looking at some very long, very dull runs ahead, and I NEED MUSIC. Thumping, noisy, energetic music. Suggestions, please.

I will try not to bore everyone with details of the training as it goes along. Poor Toasty already gets the brunt of my new obsession, not just in words but in biking miles alongside me in freezing weather as I rack up the slow miles and he tries to ward off hypothermia and frostbite. He's my hero, and for once, I don't mean this sarcastically.

OK, I'm outta here for today. But I have to add a note to those who know me and who suffered endless discussions of how unhappy I was as an English teacher: yesterday I came across a woman at a coffee shop, elbow deep in a stack of student compositions. I nearly burst into song.

but is it ironic, alanis?

The "president" is complaining that he doesn't have enough intelligence. As far as I know, this is the first time that idiot has ever told the entire truth about anything.

Observations from my job:

1. Would a man ever wear something called a "shootie"? Would he ever be asked to? It's a real thing -- a cross between a shoe and a boot. The cutsey ending is presumably intended to clue us in that it's for women. I think we should rename all guns "shooties." Would rednecks be so keen to collect them in vast, decorative stockpiles if they had to bring their buddies in to check out the new shooties?

2. Overheard at work: "I went to my parents' church on Sunday. The place was packed and everyone was shouting 'holy jesus' and 'praise the lord.' It was like a hallelujah palooza."

3. (Not at all related to my job, but one day I was bored enough at work to think of it.) The words I want engraved on my tombstone: "Fashionably late."

4. I was down near the photo shop when a man rushed by, absolutely laden with bras. He must have had 10 of them draped all over him, more gripped in his hands. I desperately wanted to tell him, "You're doing it wrong," but he looked unhappy enough.

Wouldja believe it

Last Tuesday I had a job interview at the place I've been temping for the past several weeks. The interview went pretty well; I didn't say anything terribly stupid, and despite being at the start of a nasty cold, I managed not to spray the place with sneezle juice. I wanted the job but not desperately, which helps with the nonchalance. I was marginally witty at key moments, and the atmosphere was one of convivial colleagues rather than sycophantic wanna-be sucks up to potential boss-persons. A pleasant change.

Wednesday the cold could no longer be ignored, and I called in sick. Thursday I made it in, only to be told, "Yes, we likely would have given you the job, but yesterday the entire department got downsized and will be closing in the next few months."

Well, color me crabby.

Did I mention that the place I've been working at is a venerated institution, readying to celebrate an impressive number of years in business (as in "more than a century"); the kind of place your grandmother invested in in 1956 to ensure a comfortable nest egg, a place with decades of steady growth, layer upon layer of successes and quietly impressive gains? It took me less than 24 hours to close it down.

It's a family thing. We have the worst timing since that guy moved his wife and children to Pompeii so they'd "get a good view of that interestingly smoky mountain." Let me explain: for a reasonably bright and educated bunch of people, we have the worst possible luck when it comes to making big decisions at the right time. My brothers spent many years and many dollars and an enormous amount of personal blood, sweat and etc. to make a movie in which dog-fighting 747 airplanes engage in a firefight in New York City, accidentally bombing a couple of towers. When was the movie finished? September 10. 2001. Think about it.

Just about any time my father invests in a company, it’s certain to lose value almost immediately, often long-term, occasionally fatally. Recently, my parents and brothers partnered up for a little speculative property buying. Not a month later we had the crash of the housing market. Well, of course.

Operating on the belief that there’s got to be a way to turn the curse into a blessing, I give you this list of positions for which I plan to apply:

Michael Vick’s lead defense lawyer
Head of Republican National Committee
George W’s Secretary of Defense
Huckabee Hound’s Campaign strategist
Lead NRA congressional lobbyist
Head of Marketing, National Right to Life Organization
Ann Coulter’s publicist
Director, National Cattlemen’s Beef Board

I'm hoping to make appearances on Rush Limbaugh's show and celebrate the return of Don Imus. After that, I'm planning to move to either Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. It might be pushing it to see if the Raggedy Curse can shut down an entire national government, but it's either that or move to Texas, and I'm NOT moving to Texas.

Notes from the Cubicle Jungle

Seriously, folks, how have you done this all these years?

I admit it: I wanted to give up teaching. I wanted out of teaching like a butterfly wants out of a chrysalis. I wanted to expand my damp little wings, I wanted to feel the warmth of sunlight, get the antennae moving around, do some stretching, breathe some fresh air, luxuriate in all this new-found student-free SPACE. And now I'm in a four-foot by four-foot beige box with berber carpeting on the walls and not a window for three floors. What happened here?

I knew the transition would be hard. For example, in academia, I never really had anyone I could point to and say, "that's my boss." Instructors don't have "bosses," not in the traditional sense. There's a pecking order, no question, but whenever I referred to the guy that I had to call in sick to as my "boss," I always felt it necessary to qualify the term with "only not really." For many years, I had supervisors, peers-with-power, stuff like that, but no "boss." Now I have three. Huhwhat?

I don't get to dismiss myself 10 minutes early because I behaved "really well that day and worked hard and learned a lot." I can't bring in "guest speakers" and give myself some time off. There's no pop quizzing for a wee little break, no developing lesson plans solely around their time-sucking potential, not anymore, oh nooooooo. Now it's get here at 8.30, stay all day, then come back and do it again tomorrow. Really? Are you serious?

I could have taught in sweat pants. I could have worn slippers, and my students would have thought I was absent-minded, my peers would likely never have known, and I would have been comfy and content. Now I have to dress like I mean it. This sucks. I have never had a profession that encouraged or afforded decent clothes, and suddenly I have to dress like a grown up?! I sit in my beige box all day; my computer couldn't care less if I showed up with my toothbrush caught in my hair and my t-shirt so covered in strawberry jelly I had to fight off the CSI team to get to my desk. So why the dressing up malarky?

But I like it. I have to admit it. I have no idea what I or anyone around me is talking about (I giggled in a meeting the other day because these grown men were talking about "baby dolls" with great seriousness and purpose. They were talking about tops, not toys, but either way it was damn funny), but it's kinda fun. Like, they pay me to be funny. I get paid for word play. I've never gotten paid for that before, not directly. I've gotten away with it before, but it's never actually been encouraged. OK, there are issues, like when Nervous Nellie, hunched and trembling in her corner office lest someone write a joke that's not on the Permitted List from Corporate, hacks and slashes her way through my copy, but I sense that with time and kindness and maybe some snacks, I'll be able to work with her.

But the dressing up has got to stop. I've started whittling away at that: I'm already down from tights and skirts and clicky, fussy little shoes to corduroys and hiking boots and big, chunky sweaters. The other women in my office may wear sleek little tops and silky little blouses, but blue is definitely not my color -- it's frickin' COLD in there. I figure from corduroys and hiking boots, it's a mere hop, skip and wee little leap of the imagination to jeans every day and not just on TGIFridays.

I had a bad day last week in which hardly a word I'd written survived the threshing machine, but it's been better since and a few good lines have slipped past here and there. It's not the perfect job. I'm not making the world a better place -- only, occasionally, a mildly more amusing one for the very few people who actually read the text of a clothing catalog. I'm not helping the environment or setting religious nuts on fire or otherwise improving the world. That's too bad. I'd like to be. One good thing about my former profession was having students tell me that I'd made their lives a little bit easier, a little bit less chaotic, a little more sensible. Helping immigrants and refugees make a life in the strange new world of the U.S. was rewarding, no doubt. And periodically futzing with people whose ideologies conflicted with my own was fun too.

This all leads to the fact that tomorrow I'm supposed to have a "conversation" about the possibility of a permanent position (I'm a temp now). This is that moment when the Big Boss and I sound each other out for a decent fit. The great thing about ambivalence is it's so calming. I wouldn't mind getting the job, I guess; I'm sure the money's good, and the benefits, and best of all is the chance to beef up (tofu up?) the resume and portfolio. And like I said, I do actually like some aspects of the job very much. But if it doesn't happen, then I go back to what I was doing, only with a slightly chewier resume and portfolio for the experience, thank you very much.

I'll keep you posted.

I Miss You. Come Back.

I hate my keyboard. Until recently, I had a really great keyboard that even had a special button you could push to bring up the computer calculator without having to go to "Start" and scrolling through all that mess because I'm too lazy to work out my checkbook on paper. There were lots of other fancy buttons that did stuff on my old keyboard, but I hadn't had a chance to figure them out yet. I was still honeymooning with the calculator key.

So.

On my birthday, MY BIRTHDAY, I'm balancing out my checkbook and clearing off the (top layer of) debris on my desk. I'm feeding stuff into shredder and feeling good because (a) my shredder is a stripper and not a cross cutter and therefore I can recycle my shreds and (b) Discover, Geico, Clearwire and some sleazy mortgage company won't be getting any love from me. Then I hear a terribly grindy noise. Bad. Things stop working. Now let me preface this by saying that my shredder is under my desk in the dark. It's a cat-hair-lined cave under there, and no one goes there unless something computer-related goes terribly, noisily wrong. And occasionally to dump out the recycling bin which also lurks under there. What I'm saying is, it's dark. And bad things happen in the dark.

I shredded the cable from my keyboard to my computer.

I sat there, dumbfounded, one shredded wirey end of cord in each hand. I poked at the keys on my keyboard thinking perhaps it'd developed some sort of psychic ability and didn't actually need this cable. I considered trying to rejoin the wires like I was a surgeon and my keyboard was a drunken farmer who'd just stuck his hand in the combine. Or, alternatively, some kind of farm machinery that could take off a limb; I don't know a lot about farming. I put the keyboard on ice and wondered what to do.

Hey, that keyboard had sentimental value: Toasty bought it for me. It made the perfect clicky sounds and required exactly the right pressure to register a keystroke. It seemed to understand what I meant, even when I couldn't type the words with my fat manatee fingers. I miss it.

This keyboard, this fourteen dollar craptastic keyboard, is to REAL keyboards what Romper Room fat plastic keys are to the things that start your Jaguar. This is not a great comparison, I know. I blame the crapboard. It misses letters all the time. You have to strike the keys hard enough to cause sparks, and then you get six gggggg's or nnnnnn's in a row. This isn't just a no-frills keyboard, it's the keyboard the gods send you when you've been so foolish as to shred your last one. This one's an "Ativa." That's not even a word. It was probably supposed to be a word like "Activate," only most of the letters didn't register.

I hate this keyboard.

I'd tell you about my temp job, but I really hate this keyboard.

One of these things is not like the others

So: new temp gig. (Being a freelance writer means you get to use words like "gig." Along with the big bucks, it's one of the perks.) I'm going to be doing some writing for a major retailer. Let me say that again: I'm going to be doing some writing for a major retailer. You know those stores that OTHER people go into and come out $500 lighter but looking fabulous? Yeah, one of those places. I get hives just walking past the place. They don't even deign to spritz me with perfume when I walk past the counter, obviously thinking there's nothing they can do to improve the stench of the poor and fashionless.

I don't get it. Out on the street, Seattle is crowded with fleece and dull colors, like we all live on the Scottish moors or something. But you walk in there, and it's all these gleaming, sleek cat-people. Where do they come from? Where do they go? And how do they lick their own heads to get their hair to shine like that?

I fear for my future. I don't know what this stuff is. I only recently figured out the difference between a turtleneck and a "mock" turtleneck. (One chokes you, the other makes really bad soup). What if they hand me a pair of trousers, and I call them "pleats" when they're really "tucks" or "fat alignment corridors" or something?! I mean, I don't claim to have any expertise in fashion, nor do I really want any, but I'd rather not make a fool of myself.

So wish me luck, dear readers (both of you). If nothing else, I should get some good blog-fodder out of it. But if you walk into a major retailer's in the next few weeks to find my head on a stake and a sign around my neck warning other pretentious, ill-informed and poorly dressed freelancers to stay away, give me a pat, smooth my hair a bit, remember I've gone to a better place.

Things In Life that Make Me LOL When I Shouldn't

It's almost the end of the year and therefore time for lists. There are lots of lists out there: best ofs and worst ofs and top ten reasons to, and those terribly clever, self-referential Top 10 Lists of Top 10 Lists, blah blah blah. Since I just got to experience one of those moments when you really want to laugh out loud but oughtn't, I thought a list of things that make me LOL at inappropriate times would be good.

These are, in no particular order:

1. When you're a temp and someone comes wheeling around the edge of your cubicle, desperate to tell the funny story of What Happened to Them Over Christmas, and half-way into the first rude revelation, they realize you're not Sara or Becky or Todd or whoever usually sits there.

2. When my stomach growls loudly enough to be heard externally in a job interview because I was too nervous to eat beforehand.

3. Yesterday I was answering the phones at a temp gig, and as I answered the phone I realized I couldn't remember where I was. I was frantically scouring the desk I was at for a piece of letterhead, a business card, anything, but there was nothing, and the person on the other end was waiting for me to identify the business he'd just called, but I couldn't, so I didn't say anything at all while I was scrabbling for a clue. Then I started laughing to myself which undoubtedly came across as heavy breathing to the person at the other end. By the time I'd managed to work out the company name by reading it backwards where it was printed on the glass door in front of me, it was too late, I was laughing too hard, so I just hung up. They never called back. We must have sat in near-silence together for at least 30 seconds. I wonder what he thought?

4. Myself, jogging and falling down at that same gap in the sidewalk near Toasty's house. It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it weren't for those ads on TV for Miss Congeniality where Sandra Bullock wipes out. OK, it was funny the first time I fell. The second time was Christmas morning, and I was pissed off enough to shout curses -- "Santa is dead, you little bastards!" among them.

5. Inadvertently scaring the crap out of my upstairs neighbor (and myself). She was carrying a bunch of Christmas presents to her car and came down to our admittedly creepy parking garage in the elevator. I had a bunch of crap to carry up to my apartment, so I was waiting for the elevator down in the garage. When the door opened, I was standing directly in front of it. It briefly rained Christmas presents. Nothing was broken, so no harm, no foul.

6. This is an oldie but a goodie. Back when I was in graduate school, I had a class taught by the head of the Graduate Dept. He was a guy in his late 50s, I'd guess, and built on the Hemingway scale: big white beard, plus-size belly, generous ego. It was "presentation week," and the Prof was sitting amongst the students as student teams gave their presentations. One day, he was sitting in the back row; my friend Liz was next to him, and I was on the other side of her. During the students' talk, the Prof folded his arms across his belly and fell asleep. Something startled him, and he woke with this outrageous snort, throwing his giant head up and back. His glasses, which had been resting on his forehead, flew off and landed on a shelf behind him. There was a moment of chaos while he looked for his glasses on the floor and tried to pretend he'd been paying attention the whole time. Meanwhile, Liz, who is next to him, is struggling heroically not to laugh. I'm blocked from his line of sight by her thankfully oversized hair, laughing myself sick. The problem was that she could block his vision, but not his ears. My lungs were the size of raisins, but I couldn't re-inflate them without being heard. I thought I was going to pass out before I managed to sip in enough air to live on.

7. Same graduate school Prof., same Liz. We walk into the grad office, and the Prof is there, in one of his more expansive moods. As we walk in, his spreads his arms wide in a fatherly gesture and says, "Liz! Angst! How are things?" And Liz replies, "Great! How are your things?" There is a long, awkward moment of silence while we all evaluate the question and determine whether or not she's just asked the head of graduate studies about the condition of his genitalia. Then we all turn abruptly and flee. 

8. Teaching in the Czech Republic. A students confuses "nipples" and "nibbles" and, asked to give an example of a verb in present tense, says, "the squirrel nipples his nuts." No one else hears the mistake. I have to excuse myself long enough to laugh to the point of nausea.

9. Teaching in England. I have a class of 14 students from Taiwan. Though I know nothing of the culture, I think I'm safe to assume that belching is not considered embarrassing or impolite. We met after lunch, and I do not know what they served in the cafeteria that day, but best guess would be Cucumber Deluxe. It was like sitting in a lake full of bullfrogs. Their faces were alternately confused by my inability to stop laughing and stretched wide to allow for the next eruption. 

While this is by no means a definitive list, I'll stop here for the moment and ask my commenters to include any occasions where they desperately wanted to laugh but couldn't. And we'll all try hard not to LOL because we're at work and NOT reading blogs.

Why is My Cereal Bossing Me Around?

Mr. Spock says disobedience
would be irrational.





This morning, as I'm preparing my breakfast, I read the back of the cereal box -- as you do. And I realized that there are instructions on how to save money on the back of the box. Now clearly, the producers of the cereal know their audience. This is the Safeway, store-brand version, a poor (wo)man's Grape Nuts called Crunchy Nuggets. Never mind that this cereal's name makes more sense and is a little less suggestive than Grape Nuts, it's still the dollar-or-two-less-a-box brand, and Safeway has a good idea who's buying it.

On the back it reads, "Saving Money Can Be Easy!" and there's a cartoon depiction of a "typical" American family -- Dad, Mom, one boy, one girl, all white. Dad's wearing a shirt and tie; Mom has on some frumpy housefrau dress. The kids are dressed in clothes that could easily have come from the local second-hand shop or Salvation Army or possibly the "ironic" bin at Old Navy -- hard to tell.

And the advice? Genius stuff, really: stock up on regularly purchased items when you find them on sale. Generate a budget and adhere to it. (They use neither "generate" nor "adhere," but I have more faith in my audience than they do in theirs, apparently.) Get a subscription to your local paper -- not so you can be up-to-date on news, don't be silly, white trash doesn't vote -- but rather so you can clip out the coupons for foods that are probably overpriced by at least that $0.65 anyway. Compare prices when shopping! Save money from your paychecks! Keep a "loose change" jar!

There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these ideas. I just found it a little weird to be getting advice on fiscal responsibility from my breakfast cereal.

Warning: Don't Read this Over Lunch

So, I really really need to get this article written today. It's not due for another month, but it's kind of a big deal for me, and I figure if I get it done now, I'll have time to rewrite after it's been ruthlessly edited by someone in a visor with those elastic things holding up his sleeves. The problem is, the article's supposed to be funny. And lately, when I sit at my computer, I just don't have t'funny. (some might argue that I never do, but that strikes me as a little cynical) Steve Martin's solution to this problem was to put baloney in his shoes so he could feel funny, but as a vegetarian, I have to protest this practice. Plus it's gross. And it doesn't work. And I don't want to talk about it.

So what's a writer to do? I mean, I haven't worked on my on-line novel for, like, over a month or something, and I fear losing both of my readers to frustration. Ideas are at a low ebb just now. I trust that they will come back; they always have in the past. But right now, I need a little Lewis and Clarke, a little Stanley and Livingstone of the brain to go on a trek for the source of inspiration, maybe roust up the natives a little bit, introduce gunpowder and firewater, spread a little syphillis... no. Hang on.

Fortunately, there is one huge source of inspiration that I can tap into from time to time: weird stuff that happens to me. So let me relate to you a recent-ish experience.

I rock climb at a local gym. I'm not terribly good at it, but I love it, and I'll quite happily spend an afternoon climbing up walls and occasionally falling down them. Now that BF Toasty and his kid and her husband are into the climbing thing, I have fun, safe people to climb with on a regular basis, and I've started rebuilding Tim. (For those who don't know, Tim is the name of my one muscle. Since I only have one, I named it. I thought it might encourage others.)

Rock climbing is not the hyper-macho sport some might think it is, at least not at the level I do it. There are as many women as men, and some of the best climbers are these weedy, 98-pound scrawny-chickens of both sexes who appear to be made of twine and barbed wire. They dance up the wall, all grace and monkey-skill and perfect balance, and I stand at the bottom, more manatee than monkey but still loving the sport.

Except for that stinky guy.

Seriously, this guy walks around in his own funk like PigPen from Charlie Brown. It's so bad, it's visible, you know? He wears t-shirts with the arms cut off, so there's nothing, no layer of protection, not even a thin wall of cotton between him and us, and I swear the only time I can cross my eyes is when he walks by.

One time Toasty and I were in the gym when he was there, and you couldn't walk into any section of the gym where there was no outlet like a door or window. His odor would creep into corners and lurk there, fetid and giggling, bad enough to make a German shepherd gag. It was so bad I considered asking a staff member to take him out back and either hose him down or shoot him.

But it gets worse. You know the whole Close Encounters thing, how there are different levels of interaction with aliens -- first there's the sighting, then there's physical evidence of alien existence, and then there's actual face-to-face contact? Well, here's my Close Encounters with the Stench that Should Be Forbidden by the Geneva Conventions.

I was in climbing with my friend Tom one time. We had already concluded that Stinky Guy was there, as we had had the first close encounter: the smell. It rolled like banks of fog through the gym, leaving a residue that made the holds slippery. Through teary eyes, we had the second encounter -- a visual sighting (is there any other kind?). He was climbing on the rope right next to me. You know how in movies the guy exercising has that exaggerated V of sweat on the front and back of his shirt, extending from the base of his neck in an upside-down triangle to his waist? He had that. Bits of him were glistening. Not Disney glistening with little radiant stars coming off him, but, like, Karo syrup glistening.

Just as I realized how close he was, there was one of those unfortunate series of events where everything inevitably comes together in the worst possible way. I had finished my climb, and my partner began lowering me. When I got to about the half-way point down the wall, Stinky Guy missed a move and popped off his neighboring climb. I saw it happening, I knew what was coming, I tried to holler at Tom to just drop me and to hell with the consequences, but it was too late. With a wet slap akin to a dead fish being flopped down on the butcher's block, he swung right into me.

After that, events unfolded in sickening slo-mo: first the collision (at this point, his smell was streaming mercifully out behind him) with all the sticky horror of hitting an underclothed sweaty guy. Then, the ropes tangle around each other in defiance of the laws of physics and simple decency. Then the smell catches up with its source, and I'm hit with the full tsunami of eye-watering, death-would-be-better-than-this body fug from a man who clearly hasn't showered since Kennedy was shot. John, not Bobby. Frantically, I'm trying to get myself untethered from this guy, from this wall, from this life if necessary, scrabbling at the ropes, while my lunch is threatening to untether itself from my stomach. Finally, an eternity later, we get unknotted, Tom lowers me the rest of the way, and I escape to the bathroom to breathe deeply and scour my flesh with giant, soapy wads of paper towel.

I mean, come on, does the guy have rabies or something? What makes water with a little soap such a bad idea?

What kills me is that the guy obviously doesn't think his smell is a problem, or he'd do something about it. So my reaction to being in contact with him must have seemed really inappropriate and hysterical to him. I mean, I wasn't panicking and flailing (much), but probably more than a simple bump would merit. I wonder what he thinks caused all the fuss?

The worst of it? Our mid-air (mid-fetid-air) encounter apparently makes us "buddies," so now when he sees me in the gym, he waves hello.

Waves.

I had a temp job today.....

The temp jobs do help me to support my freelancing habit, so that's a good thing, right? Yes. And the fact that I don't have to go back again tomorrow is even better. But for you in positions of leadership and authority in the corporate world, I'd like to make a few suggestions for the next time you drag in a temp:

Instructions on the Proper Care and Feeding of Your Temp:

1.) Have shit ready. I realize that I still get paid even as I sit there and watch you tear your hair out because there's no network connection for the computer and the IT guy is off trying to button his shirt up correctly, but seriously, this is 45 minutes I could have spent in bed.

2.) Don't put me in a closet. I realize I'm an embarrassing temp with bad hair and that blank look of incomprehension, but if you stick me in a cold, windowless storage space, crammed in between file cabinets and boxes so covered in dust they will require carbon dating to determine their age and piles of paperwork dating back to the Carter administration, I'm going to spend the day trying to make monster faces by applying Scotch tape to my nose and adding Post-It eyeballs to the staple remover so it looks like a viper. That's just what temps do when left alone.

3.) Choose ONE PERSON to tell me what to do. Six people trying to load me down with all their crap jobs that suck the will to live right out of a person means I spend most of the afternoon trying to flush eight months of back-filing down the toilet.

4.) I require a lunch break. A real one. Not the kind where I try to eat a furtive sandwich at the piece of old plasterboard laid across an open filing cabinet drawer that you call a desk while you stare at me like every second I spend eating is stealing money right out of your kids' college fund. Give me space and time and some privacy, please. I don't want to make conversation with you. You earn a lot more money than I do, but believe me when I say that I pity you a lot more than you pity me, and I really don't want to try to explain my lifestyle choices to you. And yes, the "meat" on my sandwich looks odd because it's a veggie-tofu-fungus-wheat gluten thingy, and yes, it tastes very nice, thank you. Feel free to fuck off back to your own desk now.

5.) I leave at 5. I will not work until 5 and then spend 15 minutes "tidying up," chasing your ass down to get you to sign my timesheet, locking up file cabinets and running last-minute errands. The "last minute" that you'll get from me is the one between 4.59 and 5.00. Use it wisely; when it's gone, so am I.

6.) Yes, I am competent! I know, you're stunned that I've managed to master my own native alphabet to the level of being able to file without moving my lips, but please, try to rein in the surprise. Not all temps have an IQ equivalent to, say, a sock or the President. Applauding when I manage to accomplish a simple task like answering a phone will only succeed in pissing me off. And that's when I suddenly forget how.

7.) You are not doing me a favor. I'm doing one for you. I'm helping you out of a tight situation with grace and ability and for less pay than the guy who stocks the snack machine. Expect professionalism and competence -- not gratitude. "Letting" me come back tomorrow to do some other mindless task for little money is why I drink.

I have to say that, by and large, the people I've worked with have been extremely nice and very gracious and almost apologetic when they give me something really awful to do. But there is that odd person now and again who mourns the end of the feudal age and really just wants a scullery maid to terrify and occasionally throw down the back stairs. That's why I keep a guillotine in my car. I'm just saying.

Drama in Real Life (Someone Else's)

OK, so lately I've re-read Into Thin Air (a bunch of people get trapped and die on Everest), Into the Wild (a kid gets trapped in the Alaskan bush and dies) and Deep Survival (a bunch of people get trapped in a bunch of different situations -- most die). I'm beginning to suspect I may have a ghoulish streak.

Personally, I blame Reader's Digest. My parents used to get their wee magazine when I was a kid, and I would grab it first and squirrel it away until I could read the story about "Man Falls into River from Life Raft, Nearly Dies, Finds God, Survives" or the one where "Woman is in Exploding Airplane, Falls Thousands of Feet, Nearly Dies, Lands in Remote Desert/Jungle/Mountain, Finds God, Survives" or even "Boy Goes Hiking with Family, Gets Lost Finding Place to Pee, Falls from Cliff, Nearly Dies, Finds Dog and God, Survives." Reader's Digest taught me to be ghoulish. It's not my fault.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but the stuff I do read (for fun) can pretty much be separated into two camps: (1) survival or lack thereof stories and (2) when a good brain goes bad. Give me a story of someone high on a mountain in a snowstorm with no food, no water, only Panama shorts, a t-shirt and a pair of Converse tennis shoes and incipient frostbite nipping at his nose, and I'll happily curl up on my couch with some popcorn, root beer and a blanket. Tell me about a stroke victim who only eats from the right half of his plate to the middle in a perfectly straight line, and I'm into that book like a survivor into a sleeping bag. Synesthesia, echolalia, hemisphere neglect: bring it on!

So for the last few weeks on the Discover channel (10 pm Tuesdays), they've been showing a group of guys trying to shuffle their way up Everest. Some of the same people tried to make it up last year. They're being guided by a man named Russell Brice -- an experienced mountaineer and guide. Russell, who I believe is from New Zealand, is that odd mixture of ex-Brit Empire polite and restrained and This Is Everest, So Get Your Shit Together old-fashioned tyrant.

Last year, one guy on his team who actually seems a bit of a jackass refused to come down even though he was running too late and too low on oxygen to summit and make it down safely. Russell kept up this running commentary on the radio: "Time to come down now, please turn around, think about coming down, perhaps you ought to consider that whole coming-down-and-not-dying option," blah blah blah. I kept shouting at the TV for him to stop being so polite, for crap's sake. The guy's seriously hypoxic and not able to make rational decisions (his decision-making even when fully oxygenated seems a bit limited, actually) -- it's time to talk to him like a parent to a child. "Turn your ass around and get down here. Now." At one point, Russell even points out the dead guy just to the right of the obstinant climber. Right there. Just to your right. Frozen to the rock and left up there forever or until an avalanche brings him down. Seriously, how much more persuading do you need? Finally, after an hour or more of arguing, the guy turns around and lives to try again in '07. I won't know if he was successful until next Tuesday, dammit!

I can't stand horror movies with all the gore and grossness, and frankly last week's episode of Everest, where there's a dead body at Camp 4, loosely covered with a sleeping pad and his own backpack, was pushing even my limits pretty hard. But I'm fascinated by people who can force themselves to do these things despite all reason, despite the fact that the human body is entirely wrong for this place. Frostbite, HAPE, heart attacks, hypoxia, the fact that your brain cells are exploding like tiny little firecrackers inside your head for every minute you spend above 26,000 feet -- what compels someone to keep going in such a hostile environment? Seriously, people, we have survival instincts for a reason. Your brain cells are dying. You don't replace those, you know. You come off Everest stupider than you were when you got there. You could stay warm at home and binge on alcohol if headaches, nausea and near-death experiences are that important to you.

Anyway, I guess I'm glad people are willing to struggle to hang on to a thin thread of life 120 feet under the surface of the ocean or 29,000 feet above it, and then write about it later so I can be entertained from the comfort of my couch. Human beings have gotten rather arrogant about their ability to survive, forgetting that that survival has a lot more to do with access to things like heat, drinking water and couches with comfy afghans than with our own cleverness or resourcefulness. Maybe that's why I like to read about people who really do test the limits in hostile places: if humans win, then hooray, look how smart and crafty you are (and, by extension, me). If nature wins, then hooray, look how powerful nature is and how it'll triumph even over our concrete, our toxic fumes, our pesticides and smog long after we're gone.

Or maybe I'm just ghoulish. Yeah, that's probably it.

Am I a Writer Yet?

Must just do a quick plug for myself -- I got a story published in a new literary ezine, woo hoo! If you're interested in reading it (it was briefly published here, so some of you have already seen it: "Boat Weather"), you can check it out here. You have to download a PDF version, then scroll through quite a lot of other stuff (or read it -- that's also an option) to get to mine. Yay!