So, a while back, I visited with a recruiter, who seemed mighty excited by the sad little document that is my vitae, my resume. One does suppose, afterall, that I’ve gained a bit of skill toward sundry tasks in my history of toil.

Today, he gave me the time and date of my first recruiter-fetched assignation. Sadly, there is a big ol’ slice of grant management within the particular pie.

Of course, I have mixed feelings.

But, here’s the twist — it’s on the grant-doling side, not the grant begging.

One of my voiced fantasies at the past employer’s, and I might throw out as well, unmistakably non-violent, was this: That I would be on the grant-giving side of my tormentors and devise wicked hoops for their leaping and my amusement.

(It’s actually a perfect bit of revenge for academic types. It has been my experience that they are not rule followers or manual readers, when, and inevitably it’s “when” not “if,” they think they have a better idea. So, it would be fish in a barrel to wait for their own hubris to create failure.)

Perhaps, I will get my chance at one of the world’s larger private philanthropic offices. Or, perhaps only, as my recruiter promises, it’s a chance to make some cake but not in an overly taxing environment. He promised me a little “life balance” afterall .

Worst case, is I will slip down a new and dank rabbit hole. He suggested I not go psycho. Perhaps I’ll listen.

My fallback is my new brilliant vision or awkward self-sabotage strategy. In every job interview I am experimenting with honesty and forthrightness. I figure that way no one can complain once they get what I already said I was.

Yesterday was dominated by my installation of Tiger — Apple’s latest Mac OS. So far, so good. The special surprise for yesterday was the sudden realization that we had leftover pecan pie in the ‘fridge from our cookout on Sunday.

I’m typing this post from a “widget” on Tiger’s new dashboard. I’ll be typing another post in the regular way in a bit, because among the things Tiger has fixed for me is total syncing of my cell phone with my computer. So I dumped some photos from my camera phone onto my desktop and plan to upload a couple.

Meanwhile, I now have my comedy performance schedule on the web, Palm PDA, my Mac laptop and my cell phone all in sync for both the address books and calendars. The Windows laptop has the same shit, but it’s all in the Palm Desktop and ain’t half as purty.

My OCD, computer geek tendencies tell me that now that all of this shit is synced up, I can schedule with wild abandon. I’m hoping that might be something like a job and something like some comedy dates.

So you’re tired from life in the real world on a Sunday, but you go to a comedy show late on Monday night, because they said they’d give you five minutes.

You swallow your shyness and act normal, introduce yourself to the guy that runs the show and buy a glass of wine. Wine not beer, ’cause it’s fucking California and you’ve become a lightweight anyway. It’s always easier for you to nurse a glass of vino over a beer that you’d just end up drinking like water.

The chick hosting is young and new and has all that young, new hip chick brashness that you find grating and unfunny. Yay. Whatever.

Stupidly, you assume the guy who runs the show will give her a nod to who you are, since, um, that’s why you introduced yourself and pointed yourself out and like acted kind of sort of professional. You’ve actually been sitting directly in the host chick’s line of vision, since mostly she’s facing away from the stage the whole show.

Anyway, dumb assumption on her figuring out, being told, knowing who you are. Whatever.

She introduces you — “Um, since I couldn’t find Denise, um, if your name is Denise…” (You’re actually standing at the edge of the stage directly in front of her and have been since she got up there, since she hasn’t been saying anything between acts other than who’s next. You make eye contact and say your name.)

“Oh, OK, yeah, here’s a good introduction, um the next performer is great and funny. Denise.”

Awkward hand-shake transition.

Fucking yay.

Mostly the show was in my unhumble opinion full of hacks and show offs. Almost everyone seemed abnormally loud. Two guys were honestly good. One chick was pretty OK. You were wholly adequate. Some laughs, some nerves, some trying to edit on the fly as a personal lesson for the day.

On the ride home, all you can think is “Why the fuck do I do shit like this?”

“Why did I leave my boyfriend, who has to get up early, and a relaxing evening to be with strangers who annoy the piss out of me?”

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, and comedy is just another word for fucking masochism writ pretty damn large.

I forgot to mention a thing about rockin’ the Cali barbeque. No matter how fucking old I get, I’m still living in a high school mindset.

So, when the neighbor looks to share some bud, I’m OK.

When a couple of folks I know from Boston, one a comic, show up, I’m (a) happy, because, like I know someone, like and (b) embarrassed when I don’t have three or four cases of beer to offer up.

And, when the neighbor leaves and one of the other guests says something like, “Man, she was offering grass, can you believe that?” I though, “Fucking dork.” And, then, I made fun of him for saying “grass.” Like it’s 1980 and you’re doing a PSA, “Why do you think they call it dope?”

How fucked up and sad is it that I’m 41 years old, and I’m still evaluating cool party shit and lame nerds? I hope all the guests think I’m cool.

Almost maybe kind of sort of, I’m starting to settle in…or it’s the wine.

We had the first ever BBQ, and it’s almost over. I’m cracking up at the mix of young and not so young, and the wacky kids M. knows from his old apartment. The older folks and my friends (I invited four and had a 50% success rate of invitees showing up) drank and all. The young folks not so much. Weird.

The introduction of some Humboldt bud, a substance of which I no longer can take part, was my California moment. Somehow, it’s wine and reefer and surf songs to me.

The difference between planning a party on my own and with M. is the ratio of meat to booze, budgetwise. My party, the meat budget was low (and I was all set for any vegans or vegetarians wondering by), but I had booze, wine and beer in abundance. In M.’s world, it was the opposite. Our neighbor came by with some red wine, and other people brought a couple beverages, so all was fine.

Unemployed and with a buzz on, I guess is my new West Coast lifestyle.

A couple of days ago when that Georgia chick went missing, after hearing her boyfriend interviewed on CNN or one of those stations, I turned to M. and said, “She’s not missing, she ran the fuck away from that loser.” Or something to that affect.

(I don’t know if he’s a loser, but all of the talk about love and prayer and Jesus and how close they were and talking with their minister, I thought, “Man, this guy doesn’t have a clue.”)

Then last night, as we were going to bed and she had called home to say she was “abducted,” I said something like, “Yeah, right, ‘abducted,’ which means she ran away and had a last fling of partying before marrying.” (Did you ever notice that almost all talk of “strangers” and “abductions” and that kind of thing turns out to be a lie? Didn’t Charles Stewart’s 911 call educate us?)

I dunno, but, if I were having a wedding in which the whole fucking town was involved, 600 guests were expected and the wedding party was 28-folks strung, I’d fucking run away. Throw in a groom who keeps invoking prayer and Jesus and the minister and looks like a bit of a pussy, and I would have run away well before this week.

I almost forgot, and I can’t believe I almost forgot, to post about this fine piece of journalism.

The anti-grass gardener is one of my oldest and bestest friends. Don’t let his speaking of native plants and gardening throw you. He grew up with a regular old lawn in the suburbs of Boston, far away from the sage and sunshine of the East Bay.

It’s funny reading in a paper about his garden, since it’s a bit interwoven in my head with Pat’s dying, and at the time of cultivation I missed some of the details. When Kevin was house shopping and then moving, and my mother had died, he called regularly to discuss home-owning and whatnot.

Since I know that behind his math-ish/professor-ish/repressed Boston Irish Catholic exterior, he’s actually sensitive, and, I know that he knows first hand how losing a parent feels, I suspect advice on home buying was a ruse for calling. He was just making sure I wasn’t wallowing too deeply in the abyss of mourning.

So, I’m vaguely aware that he was up at all hours tilling and weeding and doing whatever gardeners do, when he first moved in to his house. But, the details and reasons were lost.

It is a beautiful garden. I’m envious of the Meyer lemon tree, and the scent of the mixed spices of various sages is rather lovely.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to show up on the tour and mock him (or support him, depending on our moods), since it’s the same day as M. and my first ever barbeque. Ah well.

I forgot to set up redirects so that if anyone went to my old directory structure before switching hosting, they would end up here.

D’oh.

Here’s either how sick my mind is or how obsessed or nervous or otherwise engaged: I had a dream last night/this morning about hearing back from a job lead.

I’m fucking dreaming about my job search. I guess Freud was onto something with that “wish fulfillment” shit. I’m going crazy.

I hope to hear today from the assistant to someone who is looking for a one day a week project manager and who called me the other day and said we should set up an interview. That job actually seems to have potential, and I don’t mind the one-day-a-week thing. It facilitates my master plan of diversifying my soul, so’s not to be owned by one company. But, I do hate waiting for a call.

Next week, I’m having my first interview ever for a retail position since I left my 20s. I’m only applying for jobs at stores where I love their stuff. For this one, all I’ll say is I love French-milled soap, especially the stuff that is trop cher for me to buy.

As for temping, it’s bumming me out that that well seems mighty dry. Right now, I’m waiting to hear about a possible data entry stint for one month. But, they need to do a criminal background check, understandable in these bleak times. Worse, they probably will want to set up an interview. A fucking interview for one month of tap-tap-tapping in their little bits of data.

I remember the good old days of temping. When I would show up fressh-faced, clean and bright, and the clients would audibly sigh that I seemed in compos mentis and shit. I swear anything short of prison tattoos on your face back in the day, and temping was easy.

Other than that, I’m a tad mad at myself for not pushing harder to drive to open mikes and whatnot. However, it is damn hard settling in and figuring out where to go and what to do. Most especially when I want to make sure I’m in sync with M. (Not like so in sync that it’s creepy and co-dependent, but caring and cognizant.)

Right now, he’s in the middle of working out the new VC-funded version of his job and pressure abounds. He probably doesn’t need the nut-kick of my forcing him into going to late night open mikes. At the same time, if I go alone (which is the likely course), until life seems more comfortably settled, I’m not in love with the vision of my taking off after a day of relative leisure while he comes home after dark to eat Raman noodles alone and go to bed.

I’m sure it will all shake out, but I guess my big fear is obtaining the right balance of rationalizing how I’m currently spending my time and being honest. I’m impatient to get a job and get started in the “comedy scene,” but when I breathe, I realize there’s time.

Yesterday’s rationalization to stay home and work on a ton of web stuff actually was vindicated by the local news. I went outside and checked the mail in rain that poured in drenching sheets I had never seen. I thought to myself, “Fuck that, I ain’t driving to SF for a crappy open mike in a fucking monsoon. I’d start crying in fear the minute I was out and exposed and on the much-discussed and very intimidating California freeways.”

Later, I’m watching the news, and they mention that San Jose was severely hit by the freakish weather, and somewhere nearby a funnel cloud was looking ominous.

I doubt I’d be sent to Oz, if the tornado formed.

Since I’m boring as shit and discussing the weather, I got to say this — Fucking New Englanders don’t know shit about “severe weather.” Sure you got all your seasons and all, but since leaving home, I’ve seen some weather.

Hailstones battering my car in Tecumcari, snow falling so deep so fast it closed highways in Santa Fe, where 18-wheelers gave up and parked on the side of the disappearing road, rain drops so big they hurt and wind sheering so hard off the prairies, you have to white knuckle your hands at 10 and 2 to keep your car pointed straight.

Comparably, New England weather seems so manageable. You can put on a sweater and maybe light a candle if the power fails, but you’ll probably live to talk ad nauseum about that last big storm.