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I've been doing that unemployed thing lately. No, not the one where you watch all manner of crap TV that you can't even admit to the ones you love. Well, yes that thing, but the other thing too.

- OK wait, I am doing the first thing right now, the TV thing? And there is in existence, in the real world, I swear to God, a Mitsubishi truck commercial where one truck is so big and scary and testosteroney that it makes the other truck PEE. They showed a truck blowing some sort of gasket on its undercarriage, implying it peed itself. -

Anyway, the other thing is where I ration out my errands so they take up the bulk of a day, or are spread out over the week so I always have some small meaningful thing that I can accomplish every day. Glamorous, fabulous I. It has the unfortunate effect of making you eventually start believing that every simple task, like picking up the dry cleaning or going to the fish store, will take upwards of 2 hours. Then you end up with a bunch of days like:

• Get up with boyfriend, watch NY1 (if Pat's in) and SportsCenter (if it's Kristen Shaughnessy instead of Pat) with him til he leaves
• Check blogs, message boards
• 2 episodes of Roseanne on my secret favorite channel (sing it with me) WLNY TV55
• Procure lunch - leftovers or a sandwich
  • If out of crucial sandwich ingredients (pickle for the side, cheese) or diet soda, venture Outside. While Outside, consider running other errands, visiting park or museum. Realize you forgot some essential woman-about-town accessory (book, notebook, Ipod) and might as well just go home and
• eat lunch, watch Judging Amy
• more blogs, more message boards, applying for more jobs, or replying to emails about jobs
• Columbo's on WLNY! (instead of stupid McMillan and Wife, or stupider still,
McMillan sans wife - they killed his wife!)
• more phone calls, internet, job followup
• snack
• all of a sudden, it's 5pm. day is essentially over.
• 2 Felicitys on WE, 2 CSIs on Spike, then boyfriend comes home

That'll quickly drive a gal insane, so today I blew out the task budget and did 5 things in one day. Outrageous! First was just a simple dropoff of Chris's forgotten cell phone, but then the mother of all errands - renewing my driver's license. But lo, it turns out that when you have all the necessary ID in hand (including stupid social security card which really shouldn't be necessary if you have a damn passport which you practically have to hand over an internal organ to get; once you have it you should get a free pass on all other forms of ID) and merely need to turn over an NJ license in exchange for a NY one( finally after 10 years), you can go to the Valhalla of DMVs, the Penn Plaza License Xpress. Where it only takes I shit you not fifteen (15!) minutes to get your license. Seriously, FIFTEEN MINUTES. It was so fast I nearly went back in time.

That was the big plan for the day - besides "get dry cleaning and toilet paper" - so I found myself wandering into the library branch right across from Chris our apartment* because hey, the library? Gives you books for free! The unemployed person is the patron saint of the library. And in a final bit of luck for the day, it turned out I used to have a library card in NYC, and I had a charge for 3 lost books. $67. From 9 years ago. Huh. I offered to pay it, but they don't take cards so the clerk suggested I speak to the librarian. I didn't expect anything except being told to come back with cash or face library jail, but he just said eh, that's 9 years old, I'll just waive it all. Thank you, Library, thank you so much.

*my new driver's license will have the new address on it to avoid having to change in a couple weeks so filling it out was a little "aww, first thing with our address on it". sorry.

Next up, birthday dinner for Donzo. I need to get dressed and ready. Maybe I'll trip over a wad of cash on my way there or fall into a heretofore undiscovered diamond mine in the East Village. Fifteen minutes in the DMV, people. Strange things are afoot.

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