Continuing with the theme of my last post.... One of the crappiest aspects of having a normal 40-hour-a-week job when many others do not is that when it comes down to it, no one gives two shits about what you do (yep, today I am cranky). Especially in this town, where much of the work is seasonal. Full-time unemployment is both exotic and completely disregarded. Thus you get one of my boyfriend's friends dismissing me for having a "Joe job."

I swear I'm an accounting job away from becoming a middle-aged suburban male boob. I come home from work and I resent the neighbors who have been socializing on their stoop all afternoon. I come inside and I resent my boyfriend for having had the free time to go to the movies during the day and secretly wish the house was a little cleaner. I long for a drink or two before dinner and tend to sack out in front of a ballgame for hours if I can get away with it.

I guess an impulsive Porsche purchase is in my near future.

I want to be unemployed. Or rather, I want to be unemployed and collecting unemployment, something I've never done. Among those I know who are on the dole are my sister and my boyfriend, and I could probably name 10 more friends and acquaintances currently being sugar-parented by the government. Neither my father nor my mother work full-time anymore, and one of my best friends works for herself out of her home. When I whine about work to most of these people, they listen with concern and a total lack of empathy. I feel like the lone drone. It's such a drag.

I was so overwhelmed by the charms of Kansas/Missouri that I was rendered speechless for five days, thus my blog silence.

Yes, no, well, not really. But Missouri (or was it Kansas?) was quite charming. They irony quotient was negligible -- locals were open and friendly and pleased as punch that we had come to their home state. And giant turn-of-the-century Victorian homes run about $180,000, according to signs I saw at a local realtor. Polluted, stressful, overpriced cities can seem very silly sometimes.

Hey, Nomar just lost us a game with his throwing error! Good for him!
(Despite my weekend away, my own sense of irony is alive and well, thank you veddy much.)

For some reason, the movie "Short Circuit" is airing regularly on one of the HBO channels. Who makes these programming decisions? Although it's bringing me back to the days of cable yore, when maybe three films would play on endless loop. That's how I came to memorize most of "9 to 5" one summer without even realizing it.

Off to Kansas City tomorrow for another wedding. The wedding is in Kansas and the reception in Missouri -- two more states I can knock off my to-do list.

There seems to come a time in life -- when most of your friends are married or in long-term relationships, and when gatherings are more of the dinner-party variety, and when Friday and Saturday nights are spent in as often as out -- when salaciousness levels tumble.

Or maybe it's me. Maybe it's just my life that's become a fat honking bore. All I know is that I am craving dirt. I want scandal and heartache and gossip and backtalk and fallouts and breakups. No more weddings and babies. That stuff's getting old.

Dan and I have swtiched bed sides, and my cat Trout has not adjusted. She used to sleep squished up against me every night, but she can't seem to wrap her walnut-sized cat brain around the fact that I am no longer on the left side of the bed. She'll jump up and stare at Dan for a while, then start muttering to herself. I am officially the parent of a slow child.

Actually, I myself am feeling quite slow of mind lately. I've started ending muddled monologues with an "I'm not explaining myself very well" disclaimer. I've also started pausing about 10 minutes between written sentences. Like just now, for example.

Perhaps I'll try to rack up a trillion dollars in debt over the next eight years. Then my postmortem adoration will be assured.

Whine whine, I have no substantial summer travel plans this year. As one or two of my one or two readers already know, I have a big ol' surgery coming up that will rob me both of sick days and vacation time. Right now I'm not dwelling on the pain, suffering and inertia that will arise from the procedure, but I am pretty pouty about being stuck in the city all summer. Pout pout.

On Monday I was quite bored and so began to compile a list of my supposed talents. I thought that, during the process, a new career path would maybe present itself.

Here's what I've got: quick reader, good ping-pong player, decent mathematician, hearty eater, loyal friend to cats and dogs. I don't really know what to do with this.

Why can't I ever get sick at the beginning of the week? Sickness ruined my weekend, and today I am almost completely well.

Saw a well-received movie that I thought was a loaf of crap. 28 Days Later. It actually worries me that so many people hailed it as ushering in a new sub-genre of horror movie. It was boring, unscary, lacked any scientific thrill and derived heavily from Alex Garland's earlier stuff. Crapola.

I really have nothing more to say today. I am but a bore.

In keeping with the scattered state of my Sudafed-riddled brain, I offer some spacey musings:

1. There are days when I absolutely cannot believe I live in Los Angeles. Currently I'm shaking my head over the fact that I pitch my tent in the hometown of the Lakers. A pre-teen Celtics nut, I loathed the hell out of the Lakers and had a hard time believing there were true-blue Lakers fans in this world. Well there are, and I've met them, and they suck as much as you'd think.

2. I finally watched The O.C. finale on Tivo last night. Someone in TV land needs to ban the accidental pregnancy as plot device from all teen dramas. Not a single television viewer out there gets excited when an unwanted pregnancy plot is introduced in their favorite show.

3. It's unfortunate when you procrastinate at work and then finally get up the energy to tackle a project, only to be felled by the legitimate excuse of illness.

4. I wish I owned a beagle-labrador mix.

5. I wish I didn't have to drive home in Friday evening traffic.

I've caught Dan's cold. My right nostril is both clogged and runny. Lovely. This condition compels me not to write anything more.

I re-realized something at the wedding this past weekend: I hate to dance. I have reached the same conclusion at many formal and semi-formal occasions over the years, but a little time had passed between my dancing engagements and so I'd forgotten how much I hate it. But I do! I hate it. I am not a good dancer -- that's one thing. And I never managed to shed my self-consciousness about said fact, which makes my moves even stiffer. Then, the whole derivativeness of event dancing depresses me. How many times in one lifetime should someone have to position herself amongst a large circle of fellow revelers and dance to '80s music?

I'm an anti-social cad, I know. Really, all I want is the ability to avoid dancing situations, but the wedding era don't seem to allow this.

All day I've been putting off making a phone call -- a phone call that I put off making all of last week. I have to conduct a follow-up interview with this sales-y wanker. He doesn't deserve the press but is getting it for political reasons, and congenial me is stuck with the assignment. Last time I spoke to this man he yakked my ear off for at least two hours and yet somehow managed to give me nothing useful with which to wrote a 450-word profile. Argh. Aieee. Ugh. Oi.

Back from D.C. Or rather, back from Arlington, Va. I know there exists a nation's capital, but darn it if I've missed it the last three or four times I've visited. Wedding weekends don't allow much time or space for geographic exploration. Save for a few WWII veterans on our plane and a few flag vendors next to the hotel, I never would have even known there was a memorial dedication going on this weekend, our area of operation was so tiny. Hotel room to hotel lobby to mall connected to hotel to hotel room again.

D.C. living fascinates me. Everyone I've visited there in the last few years has lived in an apartment building resembling a Ramada Inn -- large and sterile, each floor replicating the next, with the only decor variance occuring in the lobby. I don't consider this a bad thing -- having lived in charming but overpriced and dilapidated apartments in cities like Boston and San Francisco, I appreciate the cleanliness and uniformity of such buildings. Still, they're not what I typically associate with city living.

I won't add to the reams of cicada press here, but my god, I've never seen so many squished bugs in my life. They littered every conceivable walkway.

The best part of the D.C. visit to me was the humidity. I haven't been back East in a few summers and forgot what moist air feels like. I really do love the weightiness of it, in both the literal and figurative sense. It was overcast for much of the weekend, and I loved sensing the possibility of thunderstorms in the air. L.A. weather can be so perfectly boring so much of the time.