I worked on a website, I talked on the phone, I scrubbed my, I hope to sell, couch (why the fuck did I ever think I could own white furniture?), but I haven’t packed as much as I should have by now. (Although, I have packed most of my dishes. Then, I broke the small plate I had set aside as my single cup, plate, saucer place-setting meant to hold me for the next couple of weeks.)

I also sent out a massive email inviting people to any of my final festivities. It’s pretty un-fucking-characteristic of me to contact ~80 people at once. My insecure nature tells me that about 0.01 % of that number would actually opt to hang with me. Probably not true, but, alas, my natural thought.

So, yeah, to review: Feb 24, Braintree Show; March 2, I continue to age; March 3, M. continues to age; March 3, My last Cambridge show; March 4, My party for myself (I don’t think I have ever had one of those) and I HOPE, HOPE, HOPE, I am behind the wheel on March 6.

If you have been trying to read this shit and have been having problems, please let me know. I’m aiming to punch my hosting service. My email has been slightly whacked and pages haven’t been loading. Now yesterday/today my statistics indicate no visitors, but comments (including SPAM) say otherwise.

GRRR. Fucking technology.

Man, I fucking hope I wake up tomorrow alive and kicking.

I was just trying to clean up some of the dirtier corners of a white couch with some kind of upholstery whitener and brightener. The jug the shit came in mentioned goggles and gloves prominently, but it said nothing about the need for a gas mask.

It’s about 2:30 a.m., a briskly cold, New England in February, as in below freezing, kind of night, and I’m standing on the back porch wheezing and trying to get something good inside my lungs. Whatever I’ve been breathing, all I feel is the pervasive smell (despite a wide open room with a door to the outside opened).

Maybe this poisoning is a close kin to the fabled, dental poisoning of 2004.

To ward off death by asphyxiation, I’ve left the ventilation fan running in the bathroom, and I’m sleeping with a bedroom window open. I just ain’t ready to go yet.

Dropped the boyo at the airport, talked on the phone with a friend and took off to the only comedy show I’ve been making time for with all of the shit I gotta do yet.

Now, I’m home, and there is no life or sound here at all. Probably shouldn’t have killed that wee, teenie mousie back at the beginning of the winter. Then, at least, a creature might be stirring.

Even my upstairs neighbor who I can usually hear a bit when I stay up too late and he’s getting up too early (by my thinking) is away.

Yikes. Got that old kozmik, empty bed, woman left lonely Janis-y blues thing going on. Except, if I don’t go missing somewhere on the mean streets of x-country driving, it should be short-lived.

In a convention center full of stress-ball-frisbee-penguin giveaways (and goddamn goofy looking pirate hats), the subtlest and most wasted on the nerd crowd is from a Romanian company.

BitDefender, an antivirus software company, is giving away small boxes with their logo and advice to “secure your every bit.” Inside the box is a condom and a set of instructions.

The pullout information/instruction sheet for the condom is a well-written goof on their computer virus security product, indicating stuff like the BitDefender prophylactic is licensed for only one installation and for use on only one “terminal” at a time. As a extension of the virus metaphor it’s well executed (not surprising it’s not a U.S. company).

Further, on close examination of the fine print, I discovered that the condom was made in Malaysia (much like a certain man I know). At my surprise and amusement over this fact, I was informed that in fact most condoms come from Malaysia, the world’s largest exporter of rubber and latex.

You’re never too old to learn.

Turns out the boy’s visit is going rather nicely. (Well for me anyway. He’s been having some work headaches, but luckily nothing that’s run past about 5 p.m.)

If this is what life will be like when we’re together in Cali, life shouldn’t be bad at all. My only complaint is one of us should have the grown-up instinct to go to bed at a grown-up time, so the mornings wouldn’t hurt so much. Together, we’re not real “hey kids, time for bed,” kind of people. Maybe I should reconsider having a TV in the boudoir?

In the midst of his visit, I had my own little happy, proud moment. In the baby steps patheticness of my trying to be more writerly, I finally entered a writing contest in time for the deadline. 450 shitty words by me.

At least I did it. The funniest thing is I set out to write a humor piece, but because of a series of unrelated things bubbling in my skull pan it came out all poignant and boo hoo fucking hoo. I think the 450 word limit kept me from veering too far into sappy, maudlin territory, though.

It’s the kind of thing coming out of my brain that keeps me from committing 100 percent to the comedy thang. Life ain’t all jokey jokey fun time.

And, from the floor of LinuxWorld, here’s what I can report: White, soft, squishy-looking, soft boys of all heights and hirsutisms. Except for the sprinkling of Indians.

I did have my uber-nerd moment, which makes me consider that in a past life I must have been all pimply and re-enacting scifi adventures in my basement with my loser geek friends, completely unaware of anything below my waist or in the quote-unquote real world, since 12-sided dice don’t factor in there. While walking across the exhibitors hall, chock full of colorful booths giving away toys and pens and keychains and software samples, I spotted a guy with a stress ball in each hand, a furrowed brow and the clear look of awkward concentration that is sign of someone trying to teach himself to juggle.

I stopped and gave him a few tips on slowing down his throws so it wouldn’t feel so rushed, and I gave him a quick demo of a slowed down three-ball cascade that was an achievable goal in learning to juggle. In response, he gave me the three stress balls we were using.

There may not possibly be a sight quite so nerdy (or sad) as the completely unsexy act of juggling at a computer convention.

Thanks to A/X at Copley Place, I was able to redeem my spastically unhip pre-birthday present.

This time, there’s black leather in a lean-looking, upscale biker style. Phew.

It was so easy finding a good replacement jacket, I’ll at least stand by my decision to buy a placeholder jacket that was fully returnable.

What a fucking awesome day, too. It was about 50 degrees and I walked around the Back Bay running errands (like returning the bad jacket) and meeting up with M. at LinuxWorld. As I walked around (listening to mostly Cowboy Junkies on my new iPod Shuffle) I couldn’t help but think about how I won’t be strolling through Boston again real soon.

Yesterday, I paid a deposit for some cross-country moving action. Unfucking real, but soon I’ll be in my car starting up a new thang.

I have a problem that I am struggling to admit. I am an addict. I love technology and have or lust after or consider every cool geek toy or gadget that comes on the market, especially if it’s Apple compatible.

Apparently, I’m in a co-dependent relationship, because M. seems to have a role in enabling this addiction. While I’m not sure that he’d ever stand on a street corner finding a ne’er-do-well willing to supply my jones, he is cool with colluding with an Apple employee to buy me the good stuff.

Last night’s birthday/VD surprise was the not easy to get, because not enough have shipped, iPod Shuffle.

I had a third gen, 30 gig iPod when we first started to get to know one another. For this past Christmas, he added an iPod mini to what I didn’t realize was going to become my collection.

And now, I can Shuffle. Sweet. (And if anyone asks, since it comes with a lanyard, he got me a necklace for Valentine’s Day, just because that’s so goddamn girlie a thing to squeal. I assume one would squeal it.)

(Of course, I fully realize that he is a student of history and of Machievelli. I enjoy these gifts, and I appreciate how they are personalized to the gadget geek that I am. But, they just might be tinged with a soupcon of selfish, self interest.

The 30-gig, it has been suggested to me, would be good in the living room of our new place as part of the stereo set up. The Mini is now my de facto car player, which adds a bit of soundtrack to our lives. And, the Shuffle has been recommended for the long walks I am very much encouraged to take, perhaps because a beer gut on a 40-year-old chick isn’t uber-enticing.)

For my part, I am an abysmal failure in gift-giving this time around. In my defense, he is a very particular (as in incredibly “picky,” but I’m trying to be polite) kind of man. The leather jacket was a good attempt in terms of genre, but the style was not good.

I had incorrectly thought his attraction to shearling collars on jackets and his love for American icons would make a bomber jacket a good choice. Alas no.

I also thought giving him something from the high end of retail would be kind of a fun treat. However, he suggested I never, ever shop in a store for old, white men if I was looking to outfit him.

I think that’s good and pretty funny advice.

(Weirdly, I have new respect for my mother Pat and her struggles to get clothes for my brothers. Like M., when they were young, they were lean and fit and pretty much not designed for the brawnier Ls, XLs and XXLs that fill most racks of US clothes, so she would buy European tailored stuff. How did I end up with a guy with the body type that taunted my less lean, lower to the ground self all through my childhood?)

Tonight, I hope to redeem myself out there in other stores free of old, white man influence.

The funny thing I was gonna mention that didn’t fit into the stuff below —

I’ve been reading a book on career advice and whatnot. In it the author, Anne Fisher, who writes an advice column for Fortune magazine, makes a crack about office politics. She says something about a stiletto and instructions on its best use between the third and fourth ribs. Or something like that.

I mention it only because here’s a woman, one could surmise, is pretty savvy in the ways of businesses and all if she’s giving career advice for a top business magazine. She’s also a writer.

She metaphorically mentions stabbing. In fact, she very specifically mentions stabbing into a human body and where exactly the blade should slide and what type of blade it is.

And, you know what? I’m pretty fucking absolutely positively sure, no pinhead at Fortune or her publisher’s office made her go for a psych evaluation to prove she’s not a violent threat. You know why? Because it would be fucking ludicrous.

Metaphor does not equal violence.

Sometimes, I hate my life and the many adventures in which I seem to fall.

I have sooooo much to do. Or at least there is so much I would like to do before tomorrow evening, when the Boyo returns to Boston.

I did succeed in not completely wasting the time of two friends who came by with a van. A shitload more stuff was dropped off at Goodwill. The IRS is going to think I’m insane when I compile all my receipts and total the amount given to charity in goods this year.

Once again, one of my fine neighbors decided to trash pick through stuff that was this time still on my porch, as the van was brought around. Fucking no-class assholes.

I think it’s the same household of people who have ransacked my shit each and every time I’ve had anything out for roughly a minute. Rude bastards should at least give me a card.

This time they took a mirror, which kind of fucks me since that’s something I could have claimed had value on my tax returns.

They’re actually the folks that made me decide not to have another yard sale. I really don’t need people coming up to me and trying to bully me into giving them shit. Yeah, I’m yuppie scum and all that, but I’ve fucking worked hard all my life and can live with out you treating me like a criminal just because you don’t want to give me a whole, fucking 50 cents for a some designer shit candle I once got for a gift. Or sell you the Nikon camera body I accidentally put into a box of things for a buck.

People suck.

At least I came to a half-decision on some stuff. I put the old dishes that I really can’t decide whether to keep, sell, smash or give to charity in the same box. I’ll move it, and if we don’t have the space I’ll store it or decide out there.

Mostly it’s blue willow.

When I was little I was fascinated by having people and birds and houses and shit on my dishes. Over the years, my mother gave me plates and odd pieces that she had picked up, or she had gotten from her mother, or her mother had gotten from her mother. So I have pieces of unknown lineage, age or value, but they all came from my mom.

I also have blue-willow looking Wedgwood plates with historic buildings in Boston. I figure I might just need to use them or maybe hang one in the kitchen to remember my Massachusetts roots when I’m in Cali. Perhaps M. will indulge me in such things.

Maybe I’ll never take the stuff out of the box. Or maybe when I get to California the decision on what to do with the old things my mother gave me will become clearer.

Here’s a link I was sent in a fairly evil spoof of eBay.

The email said my eBay account was suspended for inappropriate activity (alarm #1, since I’ve only ever sold a box of Pez dispensers and followed the rules) and needed to log in to fix it. It was also sufficiently fucked up so that three different mail readers didn’t correctly show it’s HTML content, and it saved as RTF not HTML (alarm #2, because I’m pretty sure that eBay knows how to send HTML emails, based on ads and whatnot I have gotten).

Fortunately helping from even having to be slightly alert it was sent to a generic email address at my site, rather than the one I used for eBay (or use for Craig’s List or basically use for anything semi-public and spammable) (alarm #3).

I doubt I ever would have included my mother’s maiden name even if eBay had ever requested it. Sheesh. Criminals are tricky.