I’m busy now through Sunday.

Today I’m having lunch with the “We Love David. Isn’t He Cute? Here Kitty Kitty!” Club like I always do on Thursdays. Then after work I’ll go home to get my makeup kit and eat some dinner, and tonight is the final dress rehearsal of Babes in Arms. Then after rehearsal Traci will arrive, and she and Maile and I will prob’ly go to Super K-mart Center to get birthday presents for Amie.

Tomorrow I’m taking a vacation day from work, but Molly Maid is coming at eight o’clock in the morning to clean my apartment. I also have to do some laundry Friday morning, and then Friday afternoon Maile and I are going to see a matinee of Monsters, Inc. (because we want to see the new Harry Potter trailer and the first Episode II teaser). Friday night is opening night of Babes in Arms, and then after the show I’m having my audience members (and a couple of cast members) over to my house for a slumber party.

Saturday I need to get a gift for Leonard’s birthday. I already got him a card, but I need to think of a gift as well. Also on Saturday, Amie’s taking her driving test, and hopefully when she’s done she’ll pick me up and we’ll go play with her new car. That night we have a performance, after which we’re going to a birthday party for her and Leonard at Dave’s house.

Sunday we have a matinee performance, and then hopefully I’ll get to sleep the rest of the day.

You know what I’ve noticed? My coworkers always stand in the afternoon. They stand between the rows of cubicles and have conversations. I have to assume that they do it because they’re tired of sitting. I know that’s the reason I go to the break room and stare at the vending machines.

I think it would be better if we had the choice of standing or sitting at our desks. I want a desk that I could raise or lower depending on whether I want to sit or stand. Sure, those are expensive (yes, they exist), but I think my coworkers and I would be more productive if we could stand at our desks when we wanted to instead of standing around the office having prolix conversations just for the sake of not sitting.

So yeah, I’m drinking a Cherry Coke, so I’m not nearly as sleepy as I was earlier today. All morning I was ready to conk out completely. But since I started drinking this Cherry Coke about an hour ago, I’ve been pretty energetic. I mean, sheesh, I’ve already updated both my journal and my website news. That’s pretty unusual for me.

Coke should be paying me for this kind of testimonial. Especially since I haven’t mentioned how jittery I am or that I’ll prob’ly get sick from drinking so much caffeine.

Anyway, now I’m going back to the vending machines. I want to get some Corn Nuts just to piss off the people around me.

I just realized I haven’t been to Denny’s in weeks.

There was a time when we went to Denny’s on Culver (which we affectionately referred to simply as “D.O.C.”) almost every night after rehearsal. We liked D.O.C. because it had the best service of any Denny’s we’d ever been to. They could do anything a customer wanted (except, of course, serving mashed potatoes after ten o’clock).

However, over the past few months the wait staff has changed. None of our favorite waiters or waitresses are there anymore; they’ve been replaced by typical Denny’s waiters and waitresses who don’t care about the customers and don’t deserve more than a fifteen percent tip.

I’m not saying they should be really nice to us, nor am I saying they have to be totally attentive. But they do have to genuinely want our business. Dee at the Westminster Cafe was a horrible waitress both in the quality of her service and the casual attitude she expressed to the customers, but we knew she appreciated our business. She was sincere. The new waiters and waitresses at D.O.C., however, treat us like an inconvenience.

I guess it’s time to find a new Denny’s.

I had a meeting this morning at work. It was actually a meeting that I decided to hold. Isn’t that cool? I called a meeting. I made everyone come to my meeting so I could talk to them. I emailed my coworkers and said, hey, I think we need to talk about such-and-such. Let’s have a meeting at ten. And they said okay. So we had a meeting. My meeting. I feel so… so… managerial.

Now if only they’d let me get a secretary…

A few months ago, I needed to mail a birthday card. In order to get the birthday card to its recipient on time (i.e., on her birthday), I had to make sure it was mailed that day. However, it was already five o’clock in the afternoon when I obtained the birthday card, and I knew that the post office near my home was closed.

I called 1-800-ASK-USPS to find out if there was a late pick-up anywhere near my home. They were unable to tell me the latest pick-up near me; they could only tell me the latest pick-up within a specific ZIP code. So I gave them my home ZIP code and they told me the latest pick-up was at five o’clock. I already knew that. Then I gave them my work ZIP code. Five o’clock. Then I gave them an assortment of ZIP codes all over Orange County, including all the Santa Ana ZIP codes I could think of since Santa Ana seemed most likely to have a late pick up. Once again, five o’clock was the latest pick-up. The woman at the USPS told me that five o’clock was prob’ly the latest pick-up in all of Orange County.

Knowing that there was a nine o’clock pick-up at the main post office in Long Beach, I got off the phone with the USPS and drove twenty miles to Long Beach to mail the birthday card.

Yesterday while driving an unusual route to work, I noticed that there’s a post office about a block away. So naturally when I had some cards to mail this afternoon, I drove to the post office near my office to mail them. The label on the mailbox informed me that the last pick-up was, and had always been, at nine o’clock in the evening.

If you’re new to me, you can read the highlights of the past year so you’ll feel like you know me…

If you’re not new to me, I’ve been without arms for the past year, so I couldn’t write anything, but I’m better now, and here are the highlights…

• I played Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.
• I bought myself a new car.
• Olive and lime green became my favorite colors.
• Claire and I broke up. We got back together about a week later.
• I was called in by a friend to play Steve, the upstairs neighbor, for two performances of A Streetcar Named Desire.
• Claire and I broke up again. We got back together about two weeks later.
• I sang “Buddies Blues” from Follies in a musical revue.
• I finally got to play Action in West Side Story.
• Claire and I broke up once more, this time for keeps.
• My friends Maile and Amie and I became regulars at the 24-hour Super K-mart Center in Aliso Viejo.
• Our friend Traci left for San Jose State University. Jonathan, Amie, and I drove to San Jose two weeks later to visit her.
• Claire and I became friends again.
• I started rehearsing for Babes in Arms at Irvine Valley College.
• I started working full time at the office instead of at home. No more trips to Super-K at 3am for me. So sad.

People keep emailing and asking what papertowel.org is.

Of course since they’re familiar with napkin.org, they assume it’s going to have user-submitted content. I don’t want it to though. I still haven’t decided… the site isn’t up yet, so I can change it however I want. But I really wanted it to be just for me. I don’t know if I’ll be motivated to write for it more than I wrote for igno-rant, but at least it’s easier to update. So hopefully I will.

If I open the site up to submission, I’m going to obtain a major guilt complex. It’s one thing to reject seven out of eight napkins submitted to napkin.org–they’re only one or two sentences each–but when it comes to rejecting entire stories, essays, and so forth, I know I’m going to feel horrible. But of course I can’t accept everything that everyone submits; some of it will be just plain awful.

Then again, if I open the site up to submission, people will gain a greater interest in it. People always have more interest in something that they’re a part of, and the web is no exception. So of course I’m risking traffic if I don’t open the site up to submission.

I’ll have to give the whole thing some more thought before I make my final decision. I must weigh the pros and cons carefully. As time goes by, though, napkin.org users are getting anxious. Soon they’ll be revolting.

Of course, some of them already are.

My old apartment had bare walls until about a month before I moved out.

I’ve decided I can’t let the same fate befall my current apartment. I’m determined to hang photographs, posters, knick-knacks, or whatever on my walls at least two months before I move again. Hopefully this time I won’t be moving so soon, but hey, I never know where or when the winds of change will blow me.

This week I’ve been selecting, printing, and framing photographs from my collection. (If I call it a “collection,” it sounds more impressive than an “album.”) I’ve chosen quite a few pictures of my girlfriend, of course, since I think she’s beautiful and certainly worthy of framing in a gallery, let alone my apartment.

I’ve also dug up some old photographs that I’ve taken over the years, mostly black and white, that seem artsy and therefore would look good on my walls.

Of course, I had to buy some frames for all the pictures I’m framing. I actually had quite a few unused frames already since I had planned to hang pictures in the old apartment until I moved. So I only needed a dozen or so new frames.

I went to Aaron Brothers, since they’re a frame store and they’re right down the street from me. Unfortunately, someone in the photography industry decided that eight by ten inches should be the standard, but of course most of my photos were originally four by six inches and therefore enlarge naturally to eight by twelve inches. So I had to leave Aaron Brothers and go to Ikea. Since Ikea is European, their frames come in less standard American sizes. I found some excellent eight by twelve inch frames there (remember, Ikea doesn’t just sell furniture, they sell home furnishings) for extremely low prices. I love Ikea.

So now I’ve got a whole bunch of photos framed and ready to hang, and I’ve made many pencil marks on the walls where they’ll go, but now I have to wait until an opportune time to hammer nails into the walls. I always have the desire to decorate my walls late at night, when I can’t in good conscience pound on my walls with a hammer. After all, if I’m planning to stay at this residence longer than two more months, I should really not make enemies of my neighbors.

I’ll just have to push the nails in with my fingers instead.

Okay, I can’t see the keyboard at all, so I’m relying completely on my typing skills for the first time ever.

See, I never actually learned how to type. I was lucky enough to slip through the system in middle school without taking it. Most of the kids took it sometime in seventh or eighth grade, but by some fluke I managed to get away with taking other, less gruelling classes instead.

Of course, over the years I’ve had to type quite a bit (considering that I use a computer to make my living), but I learned to type on my own, without the use of the standard touch-type method. I started with two index fingers, using the “hunt-and-peck” method, but as I got more and more comfortable with the keyboard and had an instinctive desire to type more quickly, I subconsciously taught myself to type with all my fingers without looking at the keyboard.

Until now I never realized just how well I taught myself. Sure, I’m making plenty of mistakes, but surprisingly few considering my unconventional finger placement. My only big problem is going to be finding the “end” or “delete” keys if I need them. I’m using my laptop, and I still haven’t gotten used to their positions on this keyboard.

For years my father tried to force me to use a typing program, “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing,” to learn to type properly, but I always refused. I argued that I would learn how to type on my own time, when I was good and ready. Apparently I did exactly that. I think Dad would be proud.