friday october 18 2002    |    2:08 a.m.

[shaking off the diaryland dust, the proverbial cobwebs. --i learned the other day, i think from will and grace, the difference between a cobweb and a spiderweb. the cob is ethereally woven by dust, apparently, without the assistance of anything living. go figure. go will and grace.]

i need to write in here more, because it gets the gears oiled and going. i'm rusting up, big time. the last thing i wrote was a postcard to brad. that's not counting all the crap i have to sign off on at work, all the register tape inked up with my initials, all the names of books i want to read scribbled on post-it notes between customer and customer.

i'm finally getting promoted at work. i'm going to be the daytime head cashier, which means i do all the moneystuff in the store. (somewhere in a retirement home in england, my sixth grade math teacher is having a big ugly laugh.) it's a bittersweet victory. i get another piddly raise, and i get full-time, and i get health insurance, and i get a regular schedule. but i also have to be at work five out of seven days, most of them at the butt-crack of dawn. i have to handle money, which i dislike. i still have to do cashiering. and i have to work more closely with the store manager, who i strongly dislike.

oh well. i tell myself it's provisional and it'll look good on the resume and it's a step forward. afternoons off writing and resting and with the boy. i start the week after next. sigh.

brad and i are planning the takeover of a small corner of the world. (read: figurative, nonviolent takeover. geez.) details to be revealed sometime in the future.

i was taking this tenth grader around the store today, helping him get some books for school, and after a while he asked me all wide-eyed "how do you know all these writers without looking them up?" thanks, education, for preparing me for a career in retail. (read: with tone of sarcasm, please.)

I DID NOT JUST WRITE "career in retail."

i think guided by voices are playing around here on wednesday night, and i'm scared to go find out details in case they've canceled.

OH! the biggest news!

i bought a car.

unbelievable. my first car, with my own savings. it's a '92 buick skylark, red wine-colored, and i'm in love with it, although the enormity of it scares me. it has a million miles more than it should have, and the AC recently pooped out, and it's jumpy because there's no suspension left, but to me it flies like the wind and it brakes like a mofo and it takes me places i wanna go. i am referring to it as "him" and "untitled."

i am putting myself to bed now because i have to get up in four or five hours to drive to brad's and continue on the world domination tip (and make coffee and watch jerry springer and have lunch with melissa and play on photoshop and lounge -- and i have a five-day vacation! yay!). good night.