The day after Halloween means that there are pathetic pumpkins sitting on front porches, with puddles of wax spilled inside and smoke marks ringing the carved eyes and noses. It means that all the little motion-sensitive chattering skulls and moaning ghosts are finally turned off. And it also means that in the break rooms of offices across the nation bags and bowls of leftover candy sit. Miniature Hershey bars. Peppermint patties. All manner of chocolate or sugary prepackaged confections sit there in brightly colored wrappers – a precursor to the excess of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

A few years ago I instituted a candy policy for Halloween. Knowing my weakness for all that is calorie-dense, I decided to only purchase candy I didn’t like. Considering how picky I am about such things, that wasn’t too difficult, and so trick-or-treaters in years past have received coconut filled chocolate bars, blueberry flavored pixie sticks, and huge gumballs painted to resemble bloodshot eyes. This year Richard bought the candy – some sort of sour gummy fruit affair – one of the few candies that *he* doesn’t like. Halloween, apparently, gets more difficult when living with someone who’s a whole lot less picky than I. Heh.

Last night Richard’s best friend had a Call of Cthulu game scheduled to start once the candy-grubbers had all retired home to count their loot and come down from costume- and chocolate-induced highs. I’d been looking forward to this for weeks. I’d only played this game once before, but I enjoyed the role-play of horror immensely, and it didn’t hurt that the host is an incredible game master. So it was with no small amount of regret that I waved Richard off to the game and stayed home instead, having already spent most of the day in bed nursing a rather nasty head cold. Today I feel nearly normal again (although it would be nice to be able to breathe normally one of these days); unfortunately a day too late. Ah well.

Midnight marked the beginning of November, and so NaNoWriMo has officially begun, after weeks of build-up involving frantic “I still don’t have a plot” and “How do I do word count again?” emails to the discussion lists. There’s a list of other online journalists located here if you’d like to see some of the other lunati…um…participants involved – some of whom are even promising to actually put their work in progress online. Alas, I’m not one of them, being neither brave (or cruel) enough to let anyone see my hastily scribbled fiction. No need to point out that I subject you to my hastily scribbled non-fiction on a regular basis; it’s just not the same. What you may get from me in the next few weeks of journaling (and I stress the ‘may’) are occasional updates on word count, or perhaps even an excerpt or two. Um. But don’t hold your breath on the last one.

So away we go. Keep the coffee pot filled, and make it extra-strong. Oh, and hands off the mini-Snickers bars in all that leftover Halloween candy. I think I’m going to need them.

There is one decidedly awkward thing about cubes. That would be the complete and utter lack of insulation for sound. I find myself whispering into the phone in order to not bother my neighbors. When they’re on their phones I try without success to avoid eavesdropping on their conversations, but it’s hard to ignore when they make no attempt at secrecy, and I’ve never been good at drowning out conversations around me.

This is nothing new. In all my projects I’ve been stuck in one cube maze or another. During one assignment I shared a wall with a woman who had almost weekly tearful phone calls with her ex-husband on the subject of their children. Another assignment ended none too soon when the woman whose cube wall backed mine installed ICQ and insisted on using it with all sound options turned on and at full volume. And lately, I’m subjected to coworkers’ financial difficulties and family squabbles, whether I want to know them or not.

I have never been one who likes to work to music, but I am getting the distinct impression that perhaps this is a skill I need to learn. The computer setup in the new cube came with speakers and a set of headphones, already plugged in. I suppose I really ought to take the hint.

If I don’t post very often next month, it’s because I signed up for this. It started out with me daring Richard to do it, and then for who knows what reason I suggested we both sign up, rationalizing that this way neither of us would plan anything on the weekends in November, and if the house was a bit messy or we were a bit grouchy from lack of sleep or too wired on caffeine, or hitting severe writer’s block, we’d at least both be in the same boat.

Problem is, I’m already doing the ‘what on earth are you thinking?’ to myself. I know that what is intended to be written in the next month will, for all intents and purposes, be nearly pure crap, but still, this means that for the first time in my life I am actually going to have to force myself to *finish* something I write, and I’m not so sure I’m ready for that. Nice thing about this journal, see, is that it’s all little chapters, and I never have to worry about coming up with dialog or of plotting out the end or fleshing out the middle. This is *all* middle, see.

So, you can either take pity on me, laugh hysterically, shake your head and call me crazy (don’t worry, I’m doing all three simultaneously. Well, except for the pity part, since after all this was my stupid idea to begin with), or you could even be so gutsy as to join in.

And come to think of it, it’s highly likely that my participation in this thing won’t keep me from writing here. I have a sneaky feeling that not only will I be posting just as often, but I’ll finally get that darn smocking project done, and the house will be sparkly clean by the end of November. I am, if nothing else, the Queen of procrastination. Only problem is, my normal tendency of doing it all at the last minute may not fly here. Not even I can crank out 50,000 words the day before it’s due. Heh.

While I may enjoy the fact that I’m within spitting distance of the coffee in this office, being this close to the break room is turning out to not be as grand as I’d originally thought.

The problem, see, is the fact that they buy us free microwave popcorn. And so at least three or four times per day I hear the click of the microwave door, followed a minute or two thereafter by the heavenly scent of butter and salt wafting over the edge of my cubicle. Oh, I come prepared with my little packed lunch all bagged and boxed and carefully counted for maximum nibblage with minimum Points. But when you are smelling freshly popped popcorn, that little bag of carrot sticks (0 points!) quickly loses whatever small appeal it had to begin with.

I am beginning to crave popcorn, and it is the deep-seated craving that will not simply be assuaged by a bag of the imitation stuff – the one that says ‘light’ on the side and is yellow only because they dumped in some food coloring (since the only way they get it to be so low fat is to simply show it a picture of the butter but don’t actually let it touch the kernels). I want a big bag overflowing with popcorn so buttered the grease has turned the sack translucent in the few minutes it takes to pop. I want the kind of popcorn you can only get at the movies, where they’ll add extra butter if you ask for it, and it’s the amazingly nuclear yellow glop you can only find in theaters and fast food establishments. And unfortunately, that just doesn’t fit into this whole Weight Watchers thing, drat it all.

And we’re just not even going to discuss the fact that not only do they give us free doughnuts and bagels and schmear on Fridays, but they also have a toaster. The enticing aroma of toasted bread is almost as bad as the popcorn.

Almost. But not quite.

One week on the new job now and things are settling nicely. My time has mostly been spent reading through the thick pile of documentation we were given last Wednesday, and trying to learn my way around the system as quickly as possible, intermixed with a few small assignments (mostly editing) and a manual on how to run a lemonade stand (or in other words, Jennifer’s quick and dirty intro into the murky world of business finance). Yesterday I got my first ‘large’ assignment when my manager rushed over with a printout of the entire directory of pages in the company website. They needed editing – and they needed it done yesterday. She wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get it done before I start training next week, but whatever I could do…

Reading insanely fast has its definite advantages. By the end of tomorrow I’ll not only have gone through every page in the system, but done the direct edits into the HTML code and written up a helpful spreadsheet of suggestions for ways to improve them even further.

Prior to the mass-editing assignment, however, I was given a research project to do. I cannot help but see the amusement factor here. Nearly five years ago I dropped out of graduate school where I was neck-deep in scientific research, and left a position where I was a Managing Editor of a research journal. It’s been second nature to me since my first day as an editor, way back when, to automatically scan anything I read for grammatical and spelling errors. (In other words, I may not necessarily write perfectly, but by golly I always know what I’m doing wrong!). So now here I am, having gone full circle. The research may be on computer programming instead of research, the editing may be in HTML instead of scientific studies, and instead of writing articles on fetal nutrition I’ll be creating technical documents, but somehow this seems so right. After so long, I finally have my missing link.

At first it just looks like a plastic bag blowing in the wind, caught on a pile of lawn trimmings near the edge of the street.

Perhaps it is a dog, rolling on the ground – probably in something revoltingly odiferous. But then, still closer, it becomes clear the movement is far too frantic to be joyous, and far too heavy for mere trash.

The cat flails, but strangely, as if the head is weighted down to the ground. As we pull our car over, finally realizing what we are seeing and still trying to figure out what – if anything – we can do, the flailing slows until the body is finally motionless.

Only then does the blood pooling out from underneath where the furred head now lies become obvious; the trail spattered beside the body giving testimony to how long these death throes lasted.

I am angry, so very angry at the driver of the car who callously caused this and then sped away and left an animal in obvious pain to die.

But I am shaking with fury at the one who opened the door to let the cat out onto this busy street in the first place.

So go ahead. You know who you are. We’ve been over and over this before, you and I.

Go ahead and tell me once again how stupid I am to never let my own cats outside to roam the streets free.

Berate me yet again when I say it’s not safe. Tell me how cruel I am to keep my cats behind glass windows and wooden doors. Toss all the statistics blindly aside and bring out all the self-righteous indignation you always use whenever we talk about this issue you’re so certain you’ll win.

Come sit in that car with me and watch what I saw, knowing all the while that even if you got out and went to the animal you could do nothing to alleviate the suffering.

Goddess knows I’ve always been unwilling to listen to your argument before. But I’m willing now.

So go on then.

Explain to me again why it is that you’re right and I’m wrong.

Saturday: We flew to Seattle this weekend – our first trip on an airplane since It. I had no more fear of flying than I usually do – and the usual is never much more than a momentary anxiety as we break through the clouds and start to land. The security announcement that plays at regular intervals over the loudspeaker at the Sacramento airport has, if anything, gotten even more emotionless and dry, and they’ve added the caveat that unattended bags may not only be seized and searched, but also removed. There are National Guardsmen and women at the security checkpoints toting rifles and their grimmest expressions (I think they may practice those behind closed doors as part of their training). And most shocking of all, in an unprecedented compromise to the gravity of the situation, they’ve even opened up more than one x-ray and people-scanner so that the line that forms there can actually move a bit faster. Will wonders never cease?

Our plane was delayed a bit over an hour due to a sticky air valve. Nothing to be concerned with, we were reassured, and the flight itself was uneventful. The sun was shining when we landed – odd weather indeed for Seattle at any time of year. Bil-2 met us at the airport and we chatted about little things on the drive to their house. We made pretzels and laughed over Fiona trying to figure out what to do with the bits of dough she was given, and enjoyed her favorite game of rearranging the small collection of tiny pumpkins on the window sill – she would take them off carefully one by one, standing on her tiptoes and reaching as high as she could, and then carry them to a chair, or to Richard’s hands, only to return for them moments later and put them just as carefully back where she found them. She got excited over my Eeyore sweatshirt and would point and squeal ‘cow!’ when it caught her eye. At 21 months, she is speaking quite a bit, but it is not always intelligible to us grownups.

Sunday: Little sis and I took Fiona out to introduce her to our traditional doughnut breakfast (a requirement when she and I get together). She gleefully nibbled on a doughnut hole, but then had more fun smushing chocolate frosting and sprinkles between her fingers than actually eating the doughnut itself. That afternoon we all piled into the car at one point to go pumpkin hunting, but the weather – cold and drizzly – made our trip a bit shorter than planned, and we hastily filled a wheelbarrow with muddy fruit and gourds before returning to the warmth of their house. Passing out hugs to the adults and kisses to Fiona, we dutifully set off for the airport to arrive two hours prior to our flight, as instructed. As one might expect, with two hours to kill, there was absolutely no line at the security gate. We got our boarding passes and settled down to await the Southwest boarding cattle call.

Three policemen showed up and disappeared down the ramp to meet the plane as it arrived. A bit out of the ordinary, but considering the circumstances, it didn’t strike any of us as odd. We were too busy making wisecracks about the fact that they waited until we were supposed to start actually boarding to even *start* doing the random bag searches.

And then the first fire truck showed up outside, lights flashing. Shortly thereafter, a second appeared, and when we craned our necks to see, there were at least four police cars on the runway surrounding the plane we were all supposed to be boarding.

They closed the door to the ramp, but it didn’t block the view through the windows, of the men in their silver suits climbing the stairs to the ramp to enter the plane directly. And closing the door didn’t stop any of us from silently counting the police who continued to file through the door down the ramp in twos and threes.

It took them over an hour to finally decide that perhaps they might want to let the people waiting in the terminal know what was going on. Seems that on the way in, one of the flight attendants saw some suspicious white powder on the floor near the galleys and….well, I don’t think any more explanation should be necessary at this point. We watched the passengers finally depart the plane, taken off through the back door directly onto the runway and led to a waiting bus. Three and a half hours later, plane cleaned to their satisfaction and a new crew obtained, we finally were able to board and fly home, to stumble sleepily to our car and somehow manage to drive home and crawl into bed with less than four hours til I had to wake up again for work Monday.

But at least we got home. Somehow it’s easier to be patient about such a delay (and I’ve been in far worse during my many trips by air) now, after It. At least we had the luxury of getting to sit safely in the terminal and trade post-September 11th security checkpoint war stories, or to crack jokes about someone flying into a panic at the sight of a little spilled coffee creamer.

A tiny article buried in a Seattle newspaper the next day revealed the white powder was simply sugar – probably spilled during the rush to collect all cups and garbage before landing. Just sugar. Nothing more.

One of the perks of this new job I started is its location. There’s a bit of a commute, but that was no big deal because it ended up being just down the road a mile or so from Richard’s office. This meant, in other words, that for the three days per week he worked at the office we could carpool, and maybe even meet for lunch on occasion. Needless to say we were both rather happy about this turn of events.

We only got to carpool one day. Yesterday Richard joined the ranks of thousands of other California computer nerds when he was caught in his company’s latest round of budget-induced layoffs.

In a way, it is a bit ironic that this should happen now. Prior to my getting this new job, we were seriously discussing having me actually just *quit* the Big Fish, even though I didn’t have anything new lined up. The threat of me having to go away on yet another assignment loomed to heavy on our shoulders, but only the fear of being unemployed kept me from actually leaving. As it turned out, I didn’t have to – two very short weeks full of interviews and stressful waiting and the-company-to-be-nicknamed-later offered me a welcome way out of this particular conundrum.

The main thing, however, is that because we’d been considering the situation of my possible voluntary unemployment, we had already taken the time to sit down and ponder the financial considerations. And what we discovered is that we would be just fine – not forever, but at least for a number of months. What this means now is that we’ll also be just fine (for a number of months) while Richard hunts down a new job as well. Knowing that we’re not going to be in any danger of losing the house cuts the stress level considerably.

Now instead of him reassuring me that I will find a new job and that I’m not nearly as incompetent as I was starting to feel, I’m going to be the one doing the reassuring. I’m not the slightest bit worried. We’re in a far better position to handle this than most people would be, and I am well aware of how lucky that makes both of us.

He’s always been far more aggressive about job-hunting than I. He’s got the skills that so many are looking for, and he’s one of those rare people who makes friends wherever he goes. I’ve no doubt he’ll find something even better – something that’s a better match for his skills. If it’s in the same location as my job and we can try this carpooling thing again, so much the better, but that’s only a selfish and small wish.

When I get a new CD / tape / mp3, it’s usually something I’ve been wanting for a while, or heard somewhere and fell head-over-heels in love with, and so I end up playing it over and over until I finally get enough. This can take anywhere from a few days to weeks…and sometimes I never do get enough. I still play one of Amy Grant’s Christmas albums over and over when I’m alone in my car, even in the heat of summer, because I adore her arrangement of ‘Little Town of Bethlehem’.

My current musical love is ‘Down In The River To Pray”, from the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou. Ever since I saw that movie the tune has been fluttering around in the back of my head, creeping out in bits and pieces until I had no choice but to track down the mp3. The movie itself was a bit odd – all done in sepia tones, and a bit of a departure for George Clooney because in this film, not only was he required to act, but he proved he actually has talent beyond just looking simultaneously sexy and angsty at the camera.

I’m an incredible sucker for accopella music, and this one has the type of lingering gospel echo guaranteed to either send shivers up my spine, or set me chomping at the bit to tackle singing it myself. Luckily Richard seems to like it just as much as I do. And at least I’ve finally finished obsessing over ‘Halleluja’ from the Shrek soundtrack.

Maybe.

********

I drove to work yesterday morning amid heavier traffic than I was used to, making the same trek for those 18 months at my last customer site for the Big Fish. I did my usual flipping-through-the-channels routine on the radio, looking for something I could sing to. And, as usual, I zipped along at perhaps a tad over the legal speed limit, until I noticed the speed trap as I was approaching, and took my foot rather hastily off the gas pedal until the speedometer had dropped to more acceptable levels.

After the brief panic over the whole speed-trap concept in the first place, it dawned on me that this was no ordinary speed trap. Normally they’ve got two or three cars out and maybe the same number of motorcycles. This morning, however, there were at least a dozen motorcycles all clumped under the overpass, and I passed more with cars pulled over, issuing tickets. It didn’t sink in to my still sleep-fogged brain until I saw yet another alarming horde of police motorcycles congregated on the other side of the freeway. And that’s when I finally started paying attention to the news babble from the radio I’d been blithely ignoring for the whole drive. The Shrub graced our capitol city with his presence yesterday, and that’s why the police were out in force. Duh!

With the addition of myself and another new hire, the documentation department at the company-to-be-nicknamed-later is now doubled. The two of us newbies were taken on a whirlwind tour of the office and introduced to everyone our manager could find. We were very nicely provided with a seating chart for the cube maze, because with the lack of nametags on the outer cube walls, and my complete and utter inability to remember names, I have a feeling I’d have spent the next few weeks wandering the aisles aimlessly, interrupting people to see if someone would take pity on me and point me in the right direction.

I have felt immediately comfortable with each exposure to this company, and today was no exception. Everyone is warm and friendly, joking and relaxed. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to discover that jeans are an acceptable part of the dress code (I have never been crazy about ‘business casual’. Give me jeans and sneakers any day over pantyhose and sensible shoes). The other two members of my team joined only a few months ago, so there is still an openness that comes with rapid growth and trying to get a handle on processes that still need to be defined.

I’ve a cube of my own, complete with the fanciest little desk organizer that came with all sorts of goodies, including a little bottle of white-out, four mechanical pencils, more paper clips that any sane person would be able to use in a year, and even a built-in tape dispenser. We’re right near the break room, which means that every time someone starts a fresh pot of coffee the aroma wafts down our aisle. I have a feeling I’m going to spend a lot of my time there highly caffienated as a result.

The five of us – myself, the other newbie, our manager, and the other two team members – went out to lunch. There seemed to be no nervousness at all, and instead we did a lot of getting-to-know you chatter, compared silly pet stories (I’m surrounded – yet again – by dog people!), and through it all there was a lot of laughter.

I arranged the cube contents (such as they are at present) to my satisfaction. I configured all the settings on my computer so it’s just the way I prefer it. I propped my feet up on the desk and then cracked open one of the (huge stack of) documents we were given to familiarize ourselves with the software. I was happily reading through all the technical details and letting my brain dive into all the little database components I’ve missed getting to play with when an announcement over the intercom requested that I come up to the front desk.

There, waiting for me in brilliantly colorful splendor, was a glass vase overflowing with flowers in every hue of the rainbow. The rest of the afternoon people passing by my cube would poke their head in to grin and ask about the bouquet sitting prominently on my desk, and then to award Richard major brownie points for being such an incredible husband to have arranged such a lovely surprise.

I left the office with a smile on my lips and a sense of reluctance that, because of our Weight Watchers meeting this evening, I couldn’t stay there just a bit longer.

I. haven’t looked forward to going to work in a very long time.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.