My arm is painful, the same one that's been hurting, only now it has an excuse. Yesterday I got a flu shot, only my second, and the first in twenty years. (The other one was for the "Swine Flu" - look under "Bicentennial".) Like that first one, it was free, so why not? Might help, and I hate being sick, especially flu-ish. They were available on-base at the Health Unit, so in I went and after signing a couple forms they injected me, then affixed a little round Snoopy band-aid over the puncture.

I'm shipping a box of books I never read [reed] back to my parents' house on the East Coast. I took it into one of those "mailbox & etc" places in a strip mall nearby where I found the thing weighed 70 pounds, so the price was $50! Wasn't expecting that much. Turns out the guy behind the counter lives next door, in my pinhead of a resident manager's other building.

There's anguish at work, but I'm among the few unaffected. The bulk of my co-workers are employees of a government contractor, just like me; but they all for a different company. That company recently took over when their original (much nicer) compnay lost the contract. Their new company is now tightening the screws. Employees with some seniority, who get more vacation time, have just found out (Surprise!) their time's being cut back. Way back, and they're even losing some of their existing balances. This is called Reduction of Benefits, an event usually accompanied by a lecture on how you should be grateful you still have a job. Except that here, in Silicon Valley, there's plenty of other jobs. I can't help but think I'm witnessing a project's slide "down the tubes", as all the good people leave. In fact I've been thinking this very Atlas Shrugged-style ending to be probably common at Y2K, when all those savvy members of the ruling class split for their secluded ranchos and bug-out country houses next year, where they'll go to "ride this thing out". If life goes on without significant interruption, others will assume their positions. When will they come back? How will they be received?

Since I no longer work in a single-story complex, once again I use stairways several times a day. Each time I ascend on, as I stretch forward grabbing the hand-rail, I'm reminded of the horror at my previous job back East, which fueled my hatred for gum-chewers. One of them would park his used wad on the underside of the hand-rail, not just anywhere but just above one of the supports. The unaware, reaching forward, would only come in contact with the gum with their whole weight behind them - no way to shift at the last moment. Incredibly disgusting, and all of you who chew gum are guilty - don't try to explain your way out of it, you stick your used goo under tables also. Your only means of redemption is to quit chewing gum - switch to toothpicks (and be cool, like me) if you must feed your oral fixations.

Three Odd Exclamations
I saw this somewhere on a web page today:

"I don't give a mouthful of piss what you think!"

"I wouldn't fuck her with your dick!"

"You're almost as ugly as I am!"

Long chat with P on the telephone. In local news, half of their small off-season resort town's police force was fired recently, since the men involved were using their scanners for kicks - they were monitoring calls (via those stray cordless phones' frequencies) between teen-aged girls. The department only had eight men to begin with.