i think that years are entirely unsatisfactory as a method of measuring time. they don't seem to pass at a constant rate. they imply length, but in fact are very very tiny. for instance: today is the retirement party for one of my former journalism teachers, ms. swan. she's worked in schools forever and ever, but she's finishing today her 10th or 11th year at lowell. so i go ahead and think, "wow, that's a pretty good length of time," and then i think about my short three years there, and then, then i'm forced to confront the fact that my short three years there began almost eight years ago. what?! eight years... a period of time that, when i started high school, was more than half my life-span, and now is just over a third of it. okay, so my mathematics may be meaningless, but goddamn!

i've started writing my spec script for "grey's anatomy..." and let me tell you that it's very strange. it certainly is not as easy as i was anticipating it being, which is fine. i've spent the last week or so figuring out what's going to happen, and i'm hoping, now that i have an outline, that it won't be quite the same labor to put it into actual writing. but if it is, i guess that's okay. right?

i got a call from park and rec this morning saying that i already have a paycheck. i was confused for a second, because i haven't started work, but then remembered that we're getting paid for the orientation, which is nice. it won't be much... less than a hundred bucks, certainly, after taxes, but it's the first money i've earned on my own since being back from france, and it's nice to feel self-sufficient. of course, then i remembered how i have another €150 in my french bank account, and how nice it would be to have that here, and feel like an idiot for not just closing the damn thing. money sucks.

i was panicking about being a bad son, by not being with my dad on father's day, and not having got him a gift, when i remembered that barnes and noble does this crazy thing where they'll deliver books the same day you order them, but only in manhattan. anyway, i tried to call home in order to set up the reception of these gifts, and my dad answers, so i had to pull a "just wanted to see how you guys are doing" kind of thing. i was pretty bad at it. i finally got anna on the phone, and tried to clue her in onto the plan, except she told me that she's going to be away this weekend, too (in addition to myself and bernie)! if i didn't know my dad thought of father's day as such a fake holiday, i'd feel like the world's most terrible person. but he does, and i don't.

all right, well, happy father's day to all those dads reading my blog. oh, and, dad, if you're reading this, pretend you didn't read the last paragraph. Cool.

hasta mañana.