run every kind of test from A to Z

Evidence that it's some times best to restrain oneself: by the end of the day yesterday, rumors were running rampant that a romance is brewing between my friend M and nice guy simply because they danced together in front of other colleagues. See, I have good reason for my policy! By the by, all of these past few sentences will make no sense if you didn't read yesterday's post (not that any of my sentences make a whole lot of sense anyway).

Never mind the bollocks- what really counts is this: Friday, I am heading down here to interview. I am nervous, I am excited, I am anxious, I am optimistic, I am inconsolable all at once. It seems like a lot of people I know right now are in this zone of uncertainty, where the ground beneath your feet is not quite reliable. Interesting- it's easy to write about things that don't matter, like the ridiculous thoughts that pulse through your head after a night of drinking, but almost impossible to write coherently about things that matter so so much. Is it just superstition, this fear that writing down your most secret hope might automatically invalidate it? I'm being fiercely protective of my deepest hopes and fears.

Of course, the advantage of this is the feeling of living a secret life, having a secret identity. I'm undercover. You can't help but relish the idea of the shock it will elicit if all the pieces fall into place, and you achieve your final secret goal. I'm a big fan of surprises.

An old friend wrote today and reminded me of my softball team from my first job. We were easily the most lousy team in this intramural, silly little league. We were procrastinators, so when it came time to choose a team name, we looked at the list of teams on the roster, and came up with the highly original Team 14. Three seasons later, we were still going by this name, even though there were 16 teams in the league by then. Our first season, we lost every game except one that we won by default (i.e. the other team didn't show up)- we celebrated that victory at the bar as though we were the Red Sox beating the Yankees. Our team motto was "We always win at the bar." We were threatened once by a new team member- he showed up to the game suited in a completely professional-looking uniform, brand-spanking new. He got up to the plate and struck out in three easy swings. We started to call him KC at the bat. He would not play our reindeer games, though. He didn't understand the satisfaction we derived from our mediocrity, and went on to search out a new team that understood him. But, especially because I'm probably the worst softball player that ever walked the earth, man, I loved that team.