Whacked out days.

All dressed up and nowhere to go, for example. One of those things where there are enough super-young people getting smashed that no one is able to talk to anyone else over the litany of "I'm so wasted!" The only choices are to leave or get that drunk too. And since you already survived that phase of your development, you opt to leave—because you are too busy to waste your precious time on that shit.

I have been busy, bobbing on waves of editing projects. It took two years, but it looks like the freelance lifestyle is finally self-perpetuating. I could write that it's sexy sitting here at my desk at all hours, typing away while wearing a Chantelle set and sipping from an Au Bon Pain paper cup, but it's more the cliché: the largest, loosest cotton clothes I own and a Coke from Dick's—or worse, a 32 ouncer from McDonald's.

Two important passings passed furtively.

UFS is six years old. What do you say to an anniversary like that other than how strange it is? It IS true that beginnings are more surprising than endings.

Labor day weekend marked my third year in this apartment. The anniversary was upon me before I remembered, but I did think about it the entire weekend, loving the same light, the same color on the trees, and that optimism which is still with me. Soon we'll have season-long cavernous nights. I'll retreat to watching movies, reading, and lying on the floor listening to music, relishing the darkness. I still love living here.

  

My university job moved into the new Law School along with everybody else, and I've been busy there moving things. The new building is swank, and it's hard not to be jealous. Nothing I'd ever want to study would garner such extreme benefaction. For the while that I'll visit the building for work (the program is closing), I'll enjoy full-on multimedia in every room and desks with pop-up outlets for laptops, not to mention the over-the-top quality of the materials that make the building. It is a castle.

I'm also starting another Microsoft gig. I'm just waiting for permission to dock with the empire.

I've been volunteering at a lab in the Psych department at the U, which is fun, enriching, and dangerously time-consuming. Because I am new to the lab, initially I will just run subjects, which involves administering the experimental measures along with several psychiatric screens, including the SCID, and doing an astonishing amount of administrative paperwork. The great part about doing the structured clinical interview is that you really get a sense of what constellates clinical-level psychopathology and how the features present (in the absence of dissimulation). It takes a lot of impairment to warrant a diagnosis. When you contrast that with the flippancy with which people announce that they or someone has such-and-such disorder, you find that there are some gross misconceptions about mental health disorders out there.

The lab has a de facto journal club and we have been reading The Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux. Most of us in the lab have had neuropsych classes, so the discussions about the book can be pretty critical. Overall, I think that LeDoux asks a tough question (What is the neurological basis of the self?) and takes a good crack at answering it, while simultaneously appealing to lay and scientific audiences. Also, I appreciate his balanced, practical approach, particularly with regard to the position that drug treatment alone does not repair mental health: "Drugs can induce adaptive changes in neural circuits…. But there's no guarantee that, left to its own devices, the brain will learn the right things….HMOs may not like it, but the drug, the therapist, and patient are partners in the synaptic adjustment process." I like to see this statement in a book written for mass consumption. The field of psychology certainly seems to have embraced the position, as is evidenced by the number of trials now combining cognitive-behavioral therapy with meds.

Two fun facts from the book:

1. Electrical conduction in nerve cells occurs at about 40 m.p.h.

2. At the height of neurogenesis, which occurs in the months just before birth, about 250,000 neurons are produced per minute. Wow!

And this:

Genetics account for at most, but in many cases much less than, 50 percent of a given mental and behavioral trait. This says not only that experiences (including those in utero) have a profound effect on genetic expression and behavior, but also that new experiences during a lifetime can influence mental and behavioral functioning (and genetic expression). Who benefits from you believing that your mental health status is genetic and therefore immutable? Not you.

Learning about and discussing science is engaging and interesting, but it wakes the more creative part, too. At home I find myself listening to Leonard Cohen and re-reading and re-reading Marguerite Duras and Anne Carson.

  

In between the diligence and the slack, I see that my house has developed a case of entropy like a systemic virus, the kind where you have to throw everything out and start again. Well, not that bad. I wonder if a bit of Andrew's habits are rubbing off on me. It wouldn't be a bad thing, and it doesn't feel bad to be a little easier with the clutter. Anyway, I'm too busy to care.

But some balance in the house: City Kitchens was having the kickingest-ass sale and I kind of went nuts. I bought the Rosle rail I've coveted for years, and now I have a place to hang all the Rosle utensils I bought in Korea. (Remember when the economy tanked and the bus fare went from $1.10 to 60 cents—when our income effectively doubled? Hyundai Paekwhajom carried Rosle, and I bought all the pieces there for relatively cheap.)

There have been nights out and some extravagance. Drinking much over six hours at The Third Door for Pam's birthday, on the club's first night open. We were way dressed up and spending lots of money. I was the first to order a house drink and to check a coat—the waify blonde hostess didn't know if the club even had a coat check! The next day, I got up and ran four miles, which was difficult, considering the excesses of the night before.

  

I have been running, regularly, and upping the times to see if the bum leg holds; it holds, as long as I walk a 1/2 mile before and after running and stretch like crazy on either end of that. This routine started two weeks after the RSVP, and I'm finally reaching the point where I can effectively tune out and think about things while I run. No more wondering if I won't make it the distance I need to go—I know I can make it. What a strange feeling.

To top it all off, yesterday on the way home from the bus stop, I was accosted by a juvenile foot-fetishist. He could have been as old as 13, but he looked like he was about 8 years old. The little bugger was walking a step behind me. First he whispered something about feet, then something about my painted toenails, and finally he just asked if he could suck them. I'd been doing a pretty good job of not-engaging-but-not-ignoring him, but when he said that last bit I turned around. "No, you sure can't." With that, he took off. The scariest part was letting him go. Like, in that second after I realized what the hell was going on, it occurred to me that he would do this to other people, too, and maybe more so as he gets older and stronger and more experienced, and that thought freaked me out.