=================================================

Location: Work.
Listening: "The Seven Year Ache" by Roseanne Cash.

Yesterday, yaga gently nudged me and mentioned that I hadn't written in a week. I replied that I'd been preoccupied. The last week has been one of the busiest I've had lately--as well as one of the most bizarre. I'm currently trying to get a little bit more work done before the Easter weekend, so I'll summarize and then have some stories saved up for later entries.

• I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights last week drinking red wine, chain smoking, and talking on the phone to coyote, Danby, Abby, and Austin until I couldn't focus on the computer screen (multi-tasking to give my hands something to do and all). Excellent conversations.

• Friday night, I had sushi at this little place in North Hollywood called Terusushi. Ben gave me Living Buddha, Living Christ as a birthday gift (he's a practicing Buddhist; I had mailed him asking about the possible intersections of Buddhism and Christianity). Seth Green was eating with friends a few tables away--my third Seth sighting in sixteen months. The boy is following me.

• Later Friday night, I joined Austin and some of his friends from the firm and "did" Hollywood Blvd. We started at SkyBar, then hit Balboa and worked our way to Whiskey Bar and several others, ending up in some place in a very nice hotel with a dance floor and a dj spinning electronic/techno-pop. Drank a bit, danced a bit, realized that I don't comprehend the thrill of bar-hopping. Had a decent conversation with a tri-lingual Greek boy from Montreal whose hostess had had a few too many to be coherent. After the boulevard, Austin and I hit Fatburger for chili fries. I fell into the guest bed, still drunk, at 5 AM.

• Spent Saturday at Home Depot with Austin--returned to his house with citrus paint stripper and loads of those paint color cards from Ralph Lauren, that I plan on pasting into my print journal or using for my website renovations. Austin set about stripping doors in the backyard and I read International Law In A Nutshell on the sofa.

• When I returned to Long Beach to feed my cat, a man called collect from Nicaragua and tried to convince me that yaga had been robbed while sight-seeing and was hurt and needed me to Western Union money to him immediately. I dealt with that.

• Returned to LA for Saturday night dinner at Austin's--roast chicken, Virtua Fighter 4 (my birthday present from A), and what ended up being six bottles of good red wine spread out over about six people. This time, I fell into the guest bed, still drunk, sometime around 4 AM.

• Hypochondriasis, hypochondriasis, hypochondriasis. It triggers when I'm even vaguely unwell or anxious. That's about all I will say on that.

• Sunday, a yaga arrived on my doorstep--sunburned, but otherwise unscathed. I was joyous. We went to bed early.

• The rest of the week has been a mess of my "coworker" being out of the office for another five days. She came in this morning, only to resign. Not that this will make an appreciable difference in the amount of weight she's pulled in the four months she's been here, but it's bothersome. The department is back to being Hitoshi and I. We're expecting a visit from Atlanta and another wonderful round of temp interviews in the next week or so.

• Peter wants to focus more on his creative work shortly. I plan to do so as well. Will keep you posted. We're also car-shopping with a Volkswagen Glf GLS in mind. Apparently, they're rare. Will keep you posted on that as well.

Damn, I'm concise.

Thanks to Abby, Mel, Kit, and Cat (I had to), for birthday wishes. In addition to the rest of my phat lewt from yaga, I received the most beautiful bouquet of Casablanca lilies, white peonies, snapdragons, and gerbera daisies at noon on the 22nd. The flowers are still blooming, and my cubicle still smells like lilies. Such a wonderful man I live with.

With that, I close for the moment. I'm off to seek red meat and some place to unwind after this surreal week. Happy Easter to some and best wishes on Ostara for others. Lovely weekend to all.