It's strange not to be able to come home. I can't come home at the end of the day, because I'm already home. So when most people are happy to be coming home, I want to be going out. Except I don't have any money, so going out shouldn't be an option.

It's funny; I always thought that my ideal work situation would be to be able to paint or write all day, with as little interaction with others as possible. I enjoyed my job at the Franklin Mint because I didn't have to talk to anyone and could tap into a part of my brain that I normally didn't access. (I entered orders for 8 hours straight, which required more thought from my fingers than from my head, so my brain would call up memories I had long forgotten. It was cool.)

But being alone isn't ideal. People need to interact with people. If I suddenly became the only person on earth and everything (electricity, water supply, gasoline, etc.) were available, all of my time would be spent looking for someone else. The "only person on earth" question is something I used to think about occasionally as a kid, but I didn't think about things like how to preserve meat and the inevitability of no electricity. Even now, I don't really know how power plants work. If someone isn't monitoring it, how long would there still be power? There are just so many things to think about in that situation.

Anyway, I've only been in my new apartment for a week and already I'm itchy to be able to go to work in the morning. However, I'm in New York! It's exciting. Greenpoint is great. I have friends -- good friends -- to hang out with. I still have to forge my own path, but I'm optimistic and happy. And if I do have to work at home, it doesn't hurt to be in a cool apartment.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

1. We left at 1 p.m. to drive to the Harrisburg airport. Stephen had found a cheap flight into the capital city over Halloween weekend, and it was time for him to return to Canadia. On the way there, my car broke down twice, sputtering and giving up on itself as we listened to Todd Rundgren mess around with instruments. We made it to the airport, but then:
2. They didn't want to let Stephen board the plane because he didn't have his passport with him. (He'd forgotten the passport but had remembered to bring an extra Game Cube controller so that we could race each other in F-Zero. Typical? Yes.) He had to reach his mom so that she could fax his birth certificate to the airport. But he couldn't remember her number. But then he did remember it just in time, and she happened to be close to home.
3. While he tried every permutation of his mom's cell number he could think of, I sat and thought about just how my death would play out on the Pennsylvania turnpike, secretly hoping he wouldn't be able to board the plane. By the time we parted, I was sure he and everyone else were never going to see me again. He thought I was crying because I'd miss him; in truth, I was mourning the loss of my soon-to-be-over life.
4. The car broke down just as I pulled into the first gas station I saw on the way back. After a long ride with the towtruck man to fix a flat tire at another rest area, the poor Focus ended up at a dealer in Harrisburg, and the poor Ms. S. (that's me) ended up at the local Amtrak station.
5. Meanwhile, my mom had been driving for over an hour, as I'd requested that she rescue me. She'd accidentally started going to New Jersey, and when she called me to ask if she should really be going to New Jersey, and I said something similar to, "Uh, no," she told me she was going to cry. By the time I got to the lovely train station, she was halfway to Harrisburg. I called her and told her to turn around and pick me up at the station near home in a couple hours.
6. In a not-quite-related aside, my brother's bicycle seat was stolen Monday, thus continuing the weird bike/car bad luck parallel we have been enjoying lately.
7. After the train ride (a journey longer than a flight from Harrisburg to Toronto), I got into my mother's SUV, and we both laughed. We went to pick up a pizza. It was 10 p.m. At the pizza place, the teenage employee with a grody goatee asked me if I had a younger sister. It was the first time I have ever felt old.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM