• 6 : 03 A.M. PST
  It is morning

I can't sleep, I think. I haven't really tried yet - I'm mostly hanging out and reading things. I used to eat more when I was bored, but now I've got such boring snacks - oatmeal and rice. You can't really sit around reading a book, one hand in a big bowl of oatmeal. It's not that kind of food. I am avoiding sugar, so I'm not eating plastic bags of bulk candy, like the first time I was unemployed in Seattle. Eating is off my list of leisure time activities (unless someone takes me out and pays for my meal - something Helen does quite often, to my embarassment).

I've come to terms with writing rambling unmusical music when I'm not concentrating very hard. It's just like free-writing words, except with notes. It helps get the bad ideas out so you can figure out which ones are actually good ideas in disguise. This is really the most productive thing I've done tonight - haul out the marimba patches and put down 8 bars of music. I used to create entire songs using nothing but marimba noises. This is partially because it's amusing to rearrange popular music to be marimba-playable, and partially because I had very few usable samples in my Amiga days, at least before I got my sampler. (Not a stand alone sampler, an rs-232 serial port peripheral. In those days, you had to buy a separate piece of hardware to be able to sample sound.) I have shoeboxes full of floppy disks on which are many marimba versions of songs off "The Real Thing".

It's the weekend for real now - time to slack off and not worry about the mail and phone calls for two days. I now have time to do the exact same things I had time to do all week. I could organize my sweaters according to yarn color. Clean out the fridge! I could even re-wire the desks. What I'll probably wind up doing is fixing my sleep schedule. Nah, I'll do that Sunday.

Today was friday the 13th. It was also Ed and Karen's anniversary. It was also my ex-girlfriend's birthday. I spent some of tonight hanging out with Karen, Ed, and Ben on top of the Camlin hotel downtown, where a mediocre crooning dude somewhere on the Bob Dylan side of Marvin Gaye chased us out of the rooftop lounge with his rendition of "Mac the Knife". The view from the top of the Camlin is great. You'll notice from there that Convention Place Station looks just like a pinball machine.

My job situation: also like a pinball machine. I'm rolling down the board towards the big awful hole, and I don't get flipped back up towards the blinking, scoring targets until the very last second. If my timing is right, anyhow. Or in this case, if I don't seem too icky to work with. I've been told not to wear a suit to the interview, as they have a casual atmosphere. No problem there - last time I wore a suit, I was carrying a trombone.