social/alone. alternately, and sometimes simultaneously. i see all sorts of people, it takes little to no effort.

beautifully unexpected, dave jonas called me yesterday morning and stopped by for some orts and catchup. (i only hope we're still so rosy to see each other when it's not his only respite from nonstop coming-together.) matt "code 3" rubin met me today @ taco house; he brought my cartridge and i brought dessert, plus my own delicious orty burrito (i felt kinda bad, but i did buy an orange-pineapple juice), and he told me how he's finally getting into that '80s stuff (joy division, mbv, spacemen 3), which i guess means there's hope for me. oh yeah, and adrienne was walking out of the free library yesterday as i was walking in. and i stood on a planter with melinda at the clinton/kerry rally.

so much for my old/real friends. more interesting (for me?) is the coworkers. even though my bipartite weekend was plenty enjoyable, i rued on monday having missed a party saturday (which featured some long-discussed jamming) and the dinner sunday. there hasn't been and isn't enough time for me to really assimilate into this group. especially with the funny factor that, because of how crews are organized, the group of people i'll end up spending most of my time with on any given day changes constantly and is unknowable until the day of. (this was discussed at the bar tonight as jen, our director, whose responsibility these "random" crew assignments are, gleefully expounded her intentions of fostering as many hook-ups as possible amongst the staff in order to feed her desire for office gossip. tonight she gave some of us deadlines. talk of "age brackets." who knows but it's pretty silly. and that stuff gets meta quickly if you talk about it, awkward/nonawkward. doesn't make things clearer. some kind of triangle what?)

but i'm not a group-oriented person anyway; who only knows why i persist in devising these larger-scale events that always leave me unsatisfied and wishing i'd been able to talk to more people longer. and i'm not sure how much need i have for an active social group these days. my guess is i'll stay in touch with several of these folks post-election, which means the experience will have fulfilled a function in that way. otherwise, the crew-divvying/dispersal phenomenon, which encourages social interchangeability rather than the development of specific relationships, gives rise to tiny upsets and quashes, but onthewhole i'm decidedly not complaining to be with folks that are at least rarely unpleasant and by and large worth listening to for the duration of a country car ride.

today was the most disorganized yet by far - after a good hour in the bucks office without a clear plan of action, i was sent off with a pair of knuckleheads to some half-canvassed turfs in bensalem. it took us longer than it perhaps should to even locate the town, me navigating from a u.s. road atlas in the backseat - and longer still to try to match up reality with the sketchy precinct maps; understandably so once it became clear that we were on bristol road, not bristol pike (the maps didn't specify), and that the turfs were at least twenty minutes distance apart. with rush hour approaching, the whole proposition started to seem far less than worth the effort, and thus we were slotted in to phonebank in bristol the borough, which was neither here nor anywhere, but at least we found it easily enough. the address turned out to be a law office, but it was in fact the right place, only the wrong time - so we took the interim to wander around and find some ice cream and onion rings.

we did manage to get an anticlimactic hour and a half of phoning in (making, of course, as many contacts as we could have in several hours of door-to-door. i even attempted to make a call in spanish; i also came across a woman who was undecided even though she likes bush and hates kerry, and another who agreed to vote for kerry once i clarified that he was a democrat.) that was basically just as a lackadaisical as the rest of the day had been. it was not at all a bad one; clean-cut charlie from kenyon and plaid-plants goofball andrew (18) were aptly easy-going co-misadventurers, and we got in some fun listening (the townhall that 'drew demanded and then slept through; greendale, and some of miss e….) it's a little disconcerting for work to be so not work, but it's hard to say what we could possibly have done to improve matters.

back to base, as i mentioned i went out with the after-work gang, for almost the first time except that one extra-curricular friday. tuesdays => the fox and hound for their 2.50 pints; all was jolly and giddy. after-after, i lured a handsome handful home for some more help with leftovers (even still there's a sizable chunk o' pudding and a hefty pie sliver!) and tee: ruben (the swattie), justin (the seal?), wise gal meredith, miss. emily, and teasin' tara congregated in the kitchen, fawned over tigger, snacked sipped and chatted for around two hours, largely about work and especially absent coworkers. i know, it's inevitable and plenty understandable, but still it gives me pause, this behind-back-talk. maybe partly because to state so frankly your offhanded disapprobation of someone is basically to express the dishonesty many of us inhabit as a daily given, having to feign approval or at least tolerance in order to work and spend time with people we'd rather not. but more because it just surprises me, still, that people so readily think ill of others - and, particularly, express it without much reflection in a group (six of us in this case) that chances are might include someone who feels differently about them. tonight wasn't bad at all - these were all good-natured folks over here, in fact most of my favorite people from work if i had to choose - these comments are more generalized.

it's not clear (yet) exactly what happened vis-a-vis ive, but it seems that my efforts to avoid making this gathering a domestic disturbance failed at the last minute. well i can't tell. intentions schmintentions yeah, but well, i cautioned all to keep it down; specifically had us hang in the kitchen rather than the common room directly below hers; and (bf) tim appeared at one point and assured us it wasn't too loud. so it seemed like not an issue. then tara mistakenly bumbled into her room looking for the bathroom (blame justin's misdirections and my oblivious failure to correct, though not entirely) - and, oddly, as the crew were departing ive called my phone (but i didn't get it.) soo…dunno. i really really hate, though, feeling like a bad roommate. even though i have my own maybe idiosyncratic complaints against her, they don't really amount to bad roommate so much as weirdly non-existent communication. it's really just hard to get a read on her - possibly a majority of our interactions are non-positive, but then there are so few that it doesn't seem like an accurate reflection. anyway. i can't even figure out a good way to be apologetic.

basement update. don't know why i'm compelled - but i have been listening to it nonstop, and singing it to myself when i can't (hard because i don't know the words yet.) just want to say, getting around to consulting the crits, that i found the p'fork review mean-spirited, misguided, and just plain offensive, but happily dusted's is much more apt and apropos, although i disagree with some his specific song assessments (and speaking of dusted, when they gonna get back to me?) also, amg's take is quite perceptive and includes some interesting revelations. i'm not quite clear on just how much of the album-finishing was done after his death - my impression from some sources is relatively very little. but there's that part in "king's crossing," after the line give me one reason not to do it, when a muffled woman's voice (bolme's!?) says (a la cait's "in dusseldorf") because i love you so much… if that was added post-, i don't know what to make of it, but i don't think i approve. currently inescapable (in my brain): "twilight," "memory lane," "fond farewell" (of course), "junk bond trader."

wonder how soon (inevitable) one of them gci-ers comes upon this.

Wednesday is a hard word to type.

when you gonna love me as much as i do?