Today’s soundtrack:
Ooh, a storm is threatening my very life today
If I don't get some shelter, oh yeah I'm gonna fade away
Today at 9:02pm: Chowing down at Yuka’s and damn is it good. Mike got a pressure cooker and turned into fucking Julia Child


I go out walkin’, after midnight like the Patsy Cline song. Went out late to get a pineapple. At 12:05am on the corner of the Bowery and Bond Street I saw a man and a woman embracing.

They weren’t moving or talking, just holding each other, heads bowed, all bundled up in their warm coats against the November chill. I would have found it romantic but two doors away was the 24-hour adult video store, polluting the scene with its unflinching neon stare.

Three weekends on the road in a row is kind of unusual for me. Rather exhausting, too. Last night I made up for it by getting almost 13 hours of sleep, it was killer. I didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom. It felt so good to be warm and unconscious. Like that song by Air, “Playground Love.”

Last week I had a date, for the first time in what seems like a while, with Businessgirl. At least I think it was a date. In terms of being easy to read, this girl is like Sanskrit. It’s obvious we enjoy each other’s company, but whether or not she sees me in “that way” is not.

Anyways I thought I blew it, but it looks like we’re having Date #2 tomorrow. I think she’s still in the intelligence-gathering phase of the operation. Her satellites will make passes over my country, searching for clues, trying to decipher the terrain. It’s a good thing she doesn’t read this journal, I’m afraid it’s occasionally a terribly revealing topographical map.

I have eleven keys, thirteen counting the car & Club. How many do you have?

The nice thing about when I lived in Japan is that I only had one key. One. My apartment building had no front door, it was an open entryway. Go up three flights, third door on the left, one key would get you into my antiseptic, flourescent-lit flat.

The Japanese junior high school where I worked didn’t give me a key, and even if they had, I damn sure wasn’t even close to showing up early enough to unlock the place. I hated the job and it showed in my tardiness. If I wasn’t under contract I probably would have been fired.

That was a different life, yeah. A foreign, flourescent life. They called me “Rain-sensei,” I can still hear the kids chirping it, and I had to drink green tea instead of coffee.

Over a year ago, around the time of 9/11 a college buddy called me with a job lead. I called the number he gave me and a week later I interviewed at some design firm downtown. The streets were still covered in ash. They said they liked my stuff and could use some freelance help, but nothing ever came of it.

This afternoon I got a phone call from them, now they need me. Got a big project they need to get out the door by Thanksgiving. This gig is a stroke of good luck, and hopefully the checks will come in time to finance my Christmas gift-giving.

I’m going into their offices this Thursday/Friday. Coincidentally this will put me within Lunch Range of Businessgirl, who works downtown. I wonder what will happen. My luck is sometimes up and sometimes down.

I dislike odds; you know what they say, the house always wins. Then again maybe it’s not always about winning. Like when you go to Vegas, the casinos try to provide you with lots of other distracting experiences. I have to think about this further, I’m on the verge of forming one of my new (admittedly pedestrian) philosophies.

Last night, thirteen hours. Tonight, five or six. It’s like I have to stop the Air song in the middle.