May 29th, 2001.  Tuesday
 

One Year Ago
Two Years Ago

   The phone woke me up today, but it wasn't for me.  But I decided to get out of bed anyway.  To check my email. Sat around in my underpants for a while, crouched on my haunches, reading email, checking the weather, reading my horoscopes, reading on ESPN.com, and checking the other two journals I read.  I've developed a pretty steady morning routine.  And routine is good right now.  Keeping a regular schedule, no matter how irregular outside of the warped sphere of unemployment, is important.  I need a little structure.  Basically, the routine, besides what I just mentioned, is as follows:  The alarm goes off around 10:15.  I hit snooze three or four times.  By the forth time, I say out loud, "Just one more time." Then hit snooze about three more times, silently, denying what I'd said nine minutes ago. Sometimes the phone will ring and break my routine.  But that's okay. Keeps me on my toes.  So when I finally decided to get up, I get out of bed, turn on the computer, go the the bathroom, pee, and get back into my room just as the G4 is about done booting up.  Sometimes I'll linger in the bathroom a while, just so I don't have to wait for the computer when I get to my room. You know, I'll wait a little longer over the toilet or something.  Anyway, then I make the rounds of email and webpages, checking my email every two minutes or so.  Then I'll play a couple games of Snood, and then more often than not call Caryn at work or at home, depending on the day and the time.  Play more snood, check email again, check the various job boards, and go take a shower.  My shower routine hasn't varied much the past few years:  Turn on the hot water. While that warms up, I go weigh myself.  Step off the scale, get back on to see if it's the same.  Turn off the hot water.  Let the water drain all the way out, then turn the water on again, and turn the shower on.   While that warms up the floor of the shower, I stand in front of the mirror, and get a good look at myself. Inspect my face, see how the gut looks, and maybe flex a little to see how much my muscles have atrophied since I worked out last.  Remove the underpants next, hang them on the towel rack.  Take off the my glasses, hang them on the towel rack over the underpants.  Get in the shower.  Stand there and get warm for two to three minutes.  Shampoo, rinse.  Add conditioner, massage into hair for about a minute, then rinse.  Then soap.  I used to do the soap while the conditioner set in, but my friend Jeanne told me once when I was telling her my shower routine that that didn't make sense, since I'd get the conditioner all over me if I rinsed after the soap.  So now I do the conditioner first.  I let it soak for less time now though.  Anyway, clean the ears, clean the feet, chest, back and whatnot, and rinse  Wash my face.  All the while, making sure the water is just south of scalding hot.  Stand there for a while longer.  Then slowly turn the hot water off while the cooler water rushed over my face, for about ten seconds. Grab a small towel, dry my head and arms, then the rest of the body with the bigger towel.  Put on the glasses, grab the underpants, drape the other towel over the shoulder, open the door with the underpants over the painted-over and uncomfortably moist and slippery doorknob. Come back into my room, throw the towel and underpants on the bed, sit down and put my contacts in, while checking the email again.  If I do have email, good email, I'll take the towel off and put underpants on.  If no real good email, I'll just read it in the towel.  Then back to the bathroom, brush my teeth, moisturize my face, and fix the hair.  There are a few trips back to my room there, to wipe my hands on my clean towel, instead of the dirty handtowel on the towel rack.  I'm very conscious of dirt and grime on my face. Another OCD thingy I guess.  Then back to the room. Check the email again.  The job boards again, and the weather again.
    Then maybe out to the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of water, take a vitamin C, then one or two echinacea, depending on how I feel the old immune system is doing.  Then either out the door, when I'm working, or start thinking about lunch.

 Whew...

    This whole process takes a minimum of 25 minutes, and can last up to an hour or more, depending on if I have to be somewhere.  no wonder I'm late getting anywhere.  This routine never ever changes.  Even when I had work to go to, every non-computer step went the same way.  The routine started fairly simple.  But I've just added steps as the months have passed, and never remove anything in the process.  So now it takes me forever to get ready in the morning, or afternoon, as is more often the case.  The mild OCD rears its ugly head.  I don't like change, and try to fight it as long as I can.

    I'm sort of trying to write a book about unemployment right now.  About my unemployment, that is, and how I spend my time doing things other than having a job.  I think this might make a good little passage.  I know it's terribly boring and tedious to read, but i can't think of a better personification of "time on my hands."  The chapter on Nintendo 64 is shaping up really nicely.

This differences between this and my daily routine two years ago is sort of appalling.  Curiously, the level of dissatisfaction remains, overall, about the same. Though for different reasons.
 
    So anyway, after the routine this afternoon, i had a lunch of pierogies, watched some tv, then decided i'd like to go take in a movie.  I thought I'd see Pearl Harbor.  So I woke up my roommate Dylan and asked him if he wanted to go see it.  it's sort of absurd that I have to get him out of bed to make the 2:25 show.  We missed the first minute or so.  Overall, the movie was enjoyable.  I mean, it was terrible, but it did its job, which was to entertain me for two hours. Of course, the movie was three hours long, which I didn't know going in.  Dylan and I had some laugh-out loud moments, particularly at any scene Cuba Gooding, Jr. or Alec Baldwin was in.  They just hammed it up like a mutha.  I don't know quite what's wrong with me, but it really makes me angry that I'm so easily manipulated by these Jerry Bruckheimer movies. Especially the ones that star Ben Affleck.  Don't like that guy. But I remember during Armageddon, as well as Pearl Harbor, getting sort of misty eyed at the phony uplift and terribly sappy and contrived scenes.  I get too emotionally involved in movies. In most things, actually.  It used to comfort me, that I could actually feel emotions like romantic sadness and happiness, before I never felt them in real life.  But now it's just feel like an absolute idiot.  "The thought of you kept me alive!  I came back for you!"  That Ben Affleck.  What a fucking great actor.  Can you tell why I got C's on all my movie criticisms in grad school?

    After the movie, it was just about time to start planning dinner. But I decided to stop by Dizzy's, the upscale diner down the street, for a coffee and a muffin I had seen in the window three hours earlier when Dylan was getting coffee. And absolutely scrumptious looking chocolate and cheese muffin with chocolate chips melted in it.  Talk about your delicious muffin-tops.  One of the best.  And only 75 cents.  "It's a buy.  It's a steal. It's a giveaway. It's a deal."  That's a line from an Underpants Cowboy song.  One of the few times I'd do any vocals on stage.  I'd say each line, then James would echo it.  It was rad.  Anyway, so then I came home, with the terribly them from Pearl Harbor still entrenched in my head, to find a big box in front of my door.  "I hope it's for me," I said.  "I hope it's for me," Dylan said.  We stood over it for a few seconds and let a little tension build.  Then flipped it over.  It was for me!  hooray. I love mail. Actually it was addressed to me, with "G-Rock" in parentheses.  I thought it was from James, since the Hudson Street adress was close to his office.  After some figuring, and reading the "Penguin Putnam" label, I deduced it was from Caryn's friend John.  Inside, was a curious selection of books.  A short story anothology, which made sense, since I'm trying to do some short story writing,  A Man's Guide to Sex, which made sense, since I'm a man trying to have sex; but then a copy of Macbeth, a copy of Howard's End, a Robertson Davies book, a book called Shadows on the Hudson, and a book called My Secret Life: an erotic diary of Victorian London. Apparently John'd read that I'm reading more, so he was nice enough to send some books from Penguin Putnam, his place of employ. Caryn said there was supposed to be some sort of ransom note, saying if I wanted more books I'd have to update the journal more often.  Though I saw no such note.  Of course, I'm not updating as much anymore precisely because I'm reading more, and doing other writing.  But I love getting mail.  Especially packages.  And I'll file this under "fan mail."  My first ever.  though I never suspected that my casual mention of something would result in such tangible and nicely surprising results.  How nice.
    On a completely different subject, did I mention that, um, I'm currently girlfriend-less?

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