I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line I got to the point where a night like last night--a night spent surrounded by my stacks of old New Yorkers clipping out the articles I still want to read and the ones I want to keep so that I could save some space in the apartment--is a stellar night. A glass of cheap wine, a sappy movie on TBS and a two-hour project. It's the formula for an A+ evening. I am getting old I think.

N***, my writer-friend at work hears the daily updates of my latest project "Operation: To Do List". In the hopes of clearing out the final cobwebs from my year-of-depression and getting back into the full-speed swing of things, I made a list of all of the non-emotional things that are keeping me from coming out swinging. Stupid things--things like how I have let everything get so messy and disorganized because I haven't had the energy or motivation to do anything but stare at the ceiling--things like organizing my New Yorkers and cleaning out the coat closet and shredding my out of date invoices. I made a list of twenty things on Friday and have four things left. I am a machine, and my boasting about the whole thing is N***'s easiest artillery for making fun of who I am. I mean that in a nicer way than it sounds. I like people who can make lighthearted fun of the way I do things without diminishing me, because I do realize that I am a walking sit-com, and it means that they are paying attention. And I like attention.