june 15, 2002.

My diary is just over 5 years old today! That's so fucking weird. I still can't believe that this enduring obsession began on the front page of my Geocities site as a transparent attempt to improve my hit count. You can read more reminisces at the Diary History Project, another project I took part in to improve my hit count.

I'm so vain, I probably think this site is about me...

Updated Statistics:

(see last year for more)

• I have now written 1215 entries (not counting the pop-ups for the Convergence project)
• May 2002 has now surpassed June 2000 as Least Prolific Month Ever; although the same number of entries were written in each shameful month, May has one more day than June. One more wasted day, that is.
• Most hits in a day: on February 22 I received 84 hits when Xeney linked to me from her forum. As the link claimed that I hated her, I have to assume that most people didn't stay.
• I've had two more hiatuses (one in August, one last month), bringing the total up to 6.
• I can now say that I've written a collaborative entry with Javina and Stacy. It was kind of fun, especially when our writing prompted others to chime in. The not winning any award part was less fun.
• This year saw the first-ever period of continuous self-censorship as I redacted a series of sensitive issues concerning my troublesome field experiences. Although nearly flunking was not fun, I kind of liked the secretive mood it created, not to mention frequent use of the Secret Service Typewriter font.
• I can now consider Belphoebe one of my many pseudonyms, as even the Boy has started referring to me online as Bel.
• I've completed 7 more half-year courses, bringing the total up to 19: 23 half-years & 8 full-years. I've graduated twice.

I got my pictures of Toronto developed! This is the barbecue I threw at Dirk's house one Friday evening.

Ian & E₃ point & grin. We all liked meeting E₃, who's a tiny fun-loving dynamo. Ian, although he is neither tiny nor a dynamo, was also an entertaining guest.

Dirk treats us to some variety of happy dance. 'There are people in my house!
I am in my house! Hurrah!'

St. Jack & St. Stephen, talking and listening respectively. I'm not sure how I managed to take a picture with neither subject looking at the camera, but there you go. I am a ninja of casualness.

Dirk tires of my photographs and expresses his displeasure by grabbing the camera away, pulling open my top and taking a picture down my front. Good thing I was wearing a bra.

Stacy is so rock and roll that even eating potatoes with her is subtly Satanic. Cue guitar solo!

This is Jesse's new look, which he describes as his ticket to playing roles other than "mook 3." He's actually cuter when he's not on the phone. (Although I have to admit, he's pretty cute on the phone...)

To the unemployed, Saturday is just another day. I woke up feeling a bit depressed, as I alternate between boredom at the lack of career activities I can accomplish and anxiety at the sheer number of projects I have committed to lately. The church website will need a solid week of work before I can even start to prep someone to take over my job as mistress...all of our stuff needs to be packed & moved in 2 months, meaning that there's a hell of a lot of dross to burn through before the job will be a reasonable size...I keep embarking on long writing projects that bog me down and fill me with guilt...I'm only 5 chapters into Javina's novel, and the rest of it isn't going to critique itself...

Blah. Although it helped to make a list, I think the prudent course of action would be to forget all of this shit. (By 'shit' I refer to the anxiety, not the projects themselves.) I'm healthy, happy & able to be unemployed this summer without serious consequence. The Boy likes to remind me of the fact that, come September, I won't have a day off until July - and if I start now, when will I recharge my anxiety batteries? There's lots of frustration & anger to come; I need to stop looking for it.

I am loving the tent. Yesterday I shut down Tenty all by myself: it took a full hour of careful zipping, folding & stuffing, but at the end of it I glowed with an unmistakable feeling of accomplishment. I had reduced our lovely 5-man (no woman) tent to a small rectangular tube. The anarcho-survivalist buzz was palpable; I felt like catching & skinning something for dinner. Instead I settled for leftover chicken & mushrooms.

Because I'm still me.

Still to get: a flagpole for our standard (the apple and crossbones), a ground sheet to keep Tenty dry and possibly a double sleeping bag (those Canso nights get awfully cold). Hey! I'm going camping! Not just car-camping; real camping. This is so cool!

(Wait for my reaction after 2 nights outdoors followed by early morning visits to the Port-o-lets. Hopefully I'll be just as glowy.)

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a school in Sodom Heights. Earlier this week I faxed my c.v. to their secretary in answer to an ad for a full-time English teacher. (It was actually an embarrassing little episode - the fax machine grabbed the first three pages at once, so my transmission was sent in 1-4-2-3 order. Luckily the pages were numbered. The Boy cheered me up by insisting that a garbled fax could only give the impression of tremendous confidence. 'She's so good that she doesn't even need to fax her pages in the correct order! Let's hire her!')

When they called I was in the middle of moving my desk to another wall of the study, so I was a bit too distracted to be nervous. They'd like to interview me for the position, but obviously my location is a bit of a problem, so they're trying to work out a telephone interview for next week.

As the interview is still a tentative thing, this doesn't even count as a real nibble, but even so it's the first sign of interest all year (well, the first in my whole life if you want to be specific). I'm hoppingly excited, even though both the Boy & my mother don't want me to accept this still-hypothetical job. I have to admit, the commute would be murder. Still, at this point I welcome murder. I welcome anything, as long as it's not substitute teaching! Keep your fingers crossed for me.