No luck finding work. But I'm gonna see the wee tot of a bobble next week for Thanksgiving, so there's something good on the horizon.→[More:]
Yesterday I almost called an ambulance for a headache that was so severe I wondered if it mightn't be an aneurysm or some other severe brain blood problem. But it dissipated as quickly as it arrived: halfway through dinner I suddenly became very hot, and then a headache like I've never encountered buried itself in my skull. All I could do was turn out the lights, close my eyes, and try not to move. The train rumbling by was horrible.

After about an hour, the fog lifted and I was left with a regular headache and twelve hours of bone-tiredness, during which I, of course, slept.

The temp agency I usually get work through is hell bent on putting me to work for JPMC in Manhattan, working with some sort of "dashboard." The pay is ten bucks an hour better than I got from Citigroup, and even though I'm a bit sour on finance, I wouldn't mind leasing my soul for a few months or years and saving up for my dream bunker in the Rockies.

Of course, I'm looking elsewhere, too; my Quaker education, or whatever it was in me that drove me to apply to a Quaker college, left me with this strange feeling that I should do something socially responsible with my life, and so I've been talking to people in different lines of work to see if a guy like me might fit in.

Last week's idleness was great. This week, I'm stir crazy. Right now I'm over at a friend's place in lower Manhattan while she's off running a cooking class, and I'm parked comfortably by a window overlooking Front Street, watching cars move along the Brooklyn Bridge, seven stories up. Jeremy's Ale House beckons, but I think I might have a kip instead until my friend gets home and then maybe go to Carmine's or the other Portuguese place on the corner. They're Brazilian, come to think of it. My friend knows the owner and the language so there's always a nice table for us in back.

Life is a pain sometimes, but then there are so many cool things going on that it's a shame to dwell on the bad.

I've been spending a couple hours a day playing guitar, a few hours working on a play script I'm writing, a few minutes of every hour dipping into MetaFilter and SportsFilter because I still can't post here from my BlackBerrry, and the rest of my time doing odd stuff like cleaning, walking around, and social-engineering my way into the new apartment buildings that are going up in Long Island City. The guys who work there are so eager to show me places when I tell them I'm looking to spend $3,500/mo on rent. I'm not; I'm not even in the market, but it's so easy to get people to let you into vacant apartments that it'd be a shame to never know what they're like and how spectacular their views are (they're spectacular). One of the buildings, a 30-story condo, has an indoor pool, weight room, 20-seat movie theater, pilates classroom and instructor, about fifty stationary bikes and stairmasters lined up in front of a huge picture window with a view of the East River and the UN from behind the Queens-side Pepsi-Cola sign, steam room and sauna, and they're finishing up a ninth-floor roof deck with a terrace garden and an 18-hole miniature golf course on it. Maybe I should lease my soul for a bit, put together some scratch, live in the lap of luxury. Wouldn't it be nice.

I miss being able to post here, and I stop by wistfully every day, press my nose against the front window, agog at all the pretty lights and confetti and conga lines and evening wear, until my nose and fingers get cold and I move along down the sidewalk, look back over my shoulder once, and turn the corner.