So here's the last few days, in chronological order:

    Christmas and whatnot at home was nice.  Sort of what I needed.  I was definitely not in what you might call Christmas cheer, but it was probably the best setting for me to be in.  Probably the least christmas-y christmas in recent memory.  Still i got a lot of cool stuff, stuff I really wanted but probably wouldn't have bought.  Nice to have brothers in higher tax brackets.  I, on the other hand, now qualify for welfare I think.  That's a coupla hundred bucks a month, just for sitting on my ass.  And if somehow I get a kid or two, that's even more money. I pay my taxes, so why shouldn't I take advantage of the system for a while? I might as well stop being a leech on my parents and start being a leech on society.  My dad was explaining the ins and outs of it over lunch on Saturday, and I have to say, I was sort of disappointed when he said "Greg. I'm just kidding."  Anyway, I hope to start work soon anyway, so I don't really have time to get on welfare anyway. Plus, it sounds like a lot of paperwork to fill out.
    I saw most of the gang from highschool over the weekend. Predictably, we went bowling, which was just dandy by me.  12 bucks for all you could bowl, plus free soda and pizza.  I am a happy little boy.  I rolled maybe the best game of my life, a 169, but still lost to that cursef Jason by 28 pins.  Still, I won all the money bets, so it wasn't all defeats for me.  It's the small victories.
    Anyway, I spent the rest of the time eating cheese and chips and watching movies and playing cards.  Geoff, Garrick and I played a lot of rummy and Memory, and my parents got in a few heated Scrabble matches.  I watched several sections of The Big Lebowski several times. i really like that movie.  It makes me want to bowl and drink white russians, both of which I got to do.  All in all, just a lot of quality family time.  Good meals, good snacks, and generally a warm holiday feeling around the house.

    So I came back to New York on Tuesday morning.  I caught the 7am bus with Geoff. It was pretty empty when we got on, but by the time we reached Wescosville, PA, about an hour out of Reading, it got all crowded. Geoff and i pretty much slept the whole way there, in separate rows of seats, and by the time the bus got crowded, people had to start sitting next to on another, which I hate.  So I pretended to be asleep until some women started poking me. When I looked up, all dazed, she said "Scuse me. Can I sit here? How about you move over and I'll sit here?" This ticked me off, and I didn't want to sit by the window, so I says to her as I get up, "No, I'll get up and you can sit there. I wanna sit in the aisle."  So while I'm up, she takes the opportunity to say "Is that your friend?" gesturing toward Geoff.  "Why don't you go sit with them and we'll sit here?" she said, motioning at her male companion.  Her tone and her voice and her general being made me inexplicably angry, and for a moment i would have been content to say no, why don't you sit with me and your balding friend here can sit with my "friend" over there.  But I didn't.  So I crawled over geoff and sat by the window. What I think pissed me off so much was that if geoff and I weren't Chinese, she never would have said "Is that your friend? Why don't you go sit with him?"  I mean, what, just cos two Chinese guys are sitting on a bus in relative proximity, she thinks we know each other?  If we were white or black, I doubt she woulda opened her fool mouth.  Anyway, I stewed over that for quite some time and then fell asleep until the Lincoln Tunnel.

    Given my run of bad luck the past few weeks, I was quite prepared for my apartment to be on fire or burglarized upon my return. I have to say I felt what can only be described as a mild sense of shock to discover that the place was exactly how I left it four days earlier.  Of course, the heat wasn't on and the place was freezing.  So I went back to my room and went to plug in the space heater, when I noticed that the magazine on the floor was all wet.  I looked up, and the leak that the landord had "fixed" a year ago was back in full force.  Ever since it got cold a few weeks ago, I'd always hear what sounded like water dripping in my room, but when I'd get up, there'd be no leak to be found. I guess it was just dripping inside the ceiling.  I'd always freak out though, because I keep my guitars in the general vicinity of the radiator.  But I felt relatively confident in the patch job on the ceiling since there'd been no problems for the past year. Well, when i checked my acoustic guitar, i found a good amount of water on it.  I wiped it off a little, and it didn't look too bad, so I carried it to the bathroom to wipe it off.  I didn't get more than a few steps, though, when i heard the sloshing sound coming from inside the guitar.  So I went to the bathroom and poured a few liters of water out of my beloved acoustic guitar.  Clearly, I have been cursed.   I called my mom to tell her I'd made it back to NY safely, and also told her about the guitar. She said "well, bad things happen in threes."  Someone else told me that about 4 bad things ago.  "Threes?!  This is like 15!" I screamed.  Anyway, I decided to go down to 7th avenue while my apartment heated up and I cooled down.  I went to Radioshack and bought various plugs, then over to the grocery store.  At the grocery, I bought about four items. at the checkout, it said something like 4 dollars, so I started fishing out the money from my pockets.  Then i noticed that the cashier had actually forgotten to scan something, so I waited there, and when I looked at the register next it read "6.66."  At that moment, I quietly said to myself  "Okay. Now I'm going to go home, lock the doors, go to my room and turn off the lights and crawl into bed and not come out till its safe again."  Quite clearly, this has not been a banner year for me.  And the ending of 2000 has been quite a doozy.  So i'm sort of looking forward to the year ending.
    So i called Matt, since I didn't want to be alone when the next round of fucking really bad shit started, and he came over around 5.  He brought with him so Holy water, some sort of incense, and some sort of scented liquid.  He then told me he told his parents about all the bad things that have been happening to me, and told his dad to pick up this stuff for me.  When Matt told his dad about the grocery store register reading "6.66" his dad told Matt that he had checked his cell phone while getting me these items, and the screen was just flashing 6's. I'm not sure I believe that. Anyway, i spritzed some Holy Water around and some of the cologne, and burned the incense-y stuff all over the house.  I'll try any voodoo or pagan ceremony to get my luck to change at this point.

    So anyway, today I had to go to work at Parks.  I thought Friday might be my last day, but i'm way behind in my work. Plus, about 15 minutes after I left, my boss Kate sent me an email, totally bitching me out.  It's never good to be described with a bunch of words with "ir-" and "im-" prefixes.  Among those she used were "irresponsible" and "immature."  the subject of the email was "really flaky."  The whole thing pissed me off, in the same way all her fucking passive-aggressive shit has pissed me off all these months. She's a nice person, but not a very good boss. I mean, Jesus, if you have some issue with me, why don't you fucking say something before I'm out the door, instead of fucking sending me an email 15 minutes after I leave.  So predictably, she said absolutely nothing to me about it this morning and acted all friendly.  She apparently dismantled my folder with all my stuff in it too, because I couldn't find it at work today, and neither could she. When I said "Did you throw it out in a blind rage?" in reference to her email, she said said no in way that said "what the hell are you talking about?" So that set me back, since all the meager research I'd done was in that folder.  Anyway, I'm sure she's still pissed off at me, but was nice to my face. I can usually gauge how she feels by the reaction of her friends to me.  And today, i didn't think it was good.

    Before work this morning, i was awoken by a call from the 6th Police precinct.  You know it's been bad when you get a call from the police and don't know what "incident" is the incident they're referring to. This was the robbery.   So the detective told me they had two suspects in custody, and asked if I could come down to look at a few line-ups later today.  So around 4 I showed up a the 6th precinct and was directed to a little waiting room, where I found a girl, janice or something, who had just been robbed on Saturday.  She was the 32nd robbery victim they said.  So given so many counts of robbery, these guys were looking at serious jail time.  Good.  One woman who came in later said she gave her assailant more than 700 dollars. I suppose I was sort of lucky, because they took some of the people to ATMs, like the 700 dollar chick, and took their drivers licences, saying "Now I know where you live."  It was sort of interesting to talk to these other people at first.  Sort of therapeutic.  But then it quickly became too therapeutic.  I felt like I was sitting in some sort of robbery-survivor support group.  Some sort of Granfaloon party, in Vonnegut terms.    Pretty soon all these people and their parents were telling every robbery story that ever happened to them or people they remotely knew, and others were saying "well, i was just convinced they were heroin addicts and were crazy and just had to get their next fix!"  I doubt the people who robbed me were all hepped up on goofballs when they did it. they were far too calm.  Anyway, the whole thing started to get silly and it was making me really uncomfortable by the time I actually got to the lineup.  I couldn't tell you anything about what the guys looked like who robbed me. I was only really staring at the knives. But I was hoping that maybe seeing him in a line-up would trigger some sort of response.  I was nervous, because I didn't want to pin the wrong guy. But the cops told us that there was only one suspect in each lineup, and the others were people they found in shelters or on the street and had paid them all 10 bucks to be there. Apparently, some of them do it 7 or 8 times a day. It's like their job.  So knowing that, i felt better.  It really was just like on TV, except the people in the lineup were sitting down and were much closer.  So I went into the dark room, looked through a small two-way mirror, and immediately recognized the fucker who was standing on the steps of Caryn's apartment building brandishing that big fucking knife.  I knew it was him.  I was amazed with how quickly and easily I recognized him. later, another one of the girls and her dad, who had seen him in their building, told me they also picked the same guy I did.  So after more waiting, I was called again to look at the second lineup.
    I hadn't really seen either of the guys that robbed us, but I at least got a decent look at the guy in the first lineup.  The second guy was the guy standing behind me with the knife to my neck.  The cops told us we could have them come closer to the mirror, or say something if it would help.  I kept thinking of the lineup in The Usual Suspects, where they all had to say "Give me the keys, you cocksucker motherfucker!"  I felt really empowered in that room.  The girl who went in after me the first time started to lose her shit after seeing the guy who robbed her.  And I have to admit, I was somewhat shaken after I recognized the guy.  You always think all these tough guy thoughts, like what you should've or would've done, but then the moment you see them again, your heart skips a beat and you start freaking out. At least, i do. the same thing used to happen with this guy that Rodzilla used to date.  Anyway, when I went in the second time, no one really stuck out at first. Then I thought contestant number 3 looked like the most likely. I knew he was black, and there were only two or three black guys outta the five.  I knew I'd need them to say something for me to be sure, so I asked the cops if they could have them all say "gimme your fuckin' money."  My only real memory of the guy was the way he said "fuckin'."  So one by one, everyone in that room stood up, walked right up to the mirror, about a foot from my face, and said "Gimme your fuckin' money!"  You could tell, some of these guys had done this countless times before.  A couple of them were clearly having fun. And why not? They got paid ten bucks, and got to act stand in front of a mirror and act fuckin' tough, knowing full well that they were innocent.  One of them actually sort of lunged toward the mirror as he said it, as if he could see me and as actually attacking.  It was sort of funny.  He was the last guy, and the only one I really looked at. I looked away or closed my eyes when the others said the line, because i knew it'd be the voice that gave it away. And sure enough, as soon as I heard #3 say "gimme your FUCKIN'..."  I knew it was him.  I knew it.  And it gave me a sense of supreme satisfaction that it was this fuck's own fucking tough-guy words that fucked him in the end.  I loved it. Put a big ol' grin on my face.  I wouldn't have cared if they turned on the lights and he saw me.  My only disappointment would have been if he didn't remember me. Oh, I wish he coulda seen me, just so he'd know it was me.  Yeah, I'm all tough when I'm surrounded by half a dozen armed cops.  But why shouldn't I feel happy? This guy who put a knife to my neck and robbed thirty other people is going to jail.  I did feel sort of guilty though, because the police were kind of leaning me in the right direction.  The guy I picked the second time, they made him say the line twice, and were clearly much sterner in their voice when talking to him. The others just strolled up and said the line and sat down.  This guy, they were like "Get up! Say it again! Sit down!"  But I knew it was him anyway.  So fuck 'em.  With as many peple as they robbed, they could see 25 years without parole. Though I highly doubt that.

    After the lineups, I was filling out some forms, and the radio was playing the Hollies' "Carrie Anne."  I really love that song. It was a nice segue into the next stage of the day, and a nice little song to hear at the moment I was filling out the line on the form that said "did you recognize any of the people in the lineup?"

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