12-30-99 Th 5:22 PM

I’ve just come from the market.  The last minute just-in-casers were raiding the place for bottled water in the event of some Y2K-induced catastrophic disruption.  I was there to buy cream cheese. 

I wrote one third-person page.  It was jumpy and random.  I walked down to the corner and bought a newspaper.  I read it as I walked back up to my house.  I walked right past my house and across the street to the next block before I looked up from the paper.  I couldn’t figure out where I was.  For a moment, I thought I was on the wrong street; my house was nowhere in sight. 

Some of the kids from my school came running out as I was walking back down the block.  They walked with me to my house.  I guess I better expect some egging and TP in the magnolia out front, though they actually seemed delighted to see me. 

I read the paper on the couch.  I took down the shelf I don’t like from up in the kitchen.  I hung the toy basketball hoop my sister gave me.  I cleaned the bird’s cage.  Or was that yesterday?  I lifted some weights.  I ate day-old fried chicken and some bread stuffing leftover from last week.  I ate an apple on my way to get the newspapers.  I bought a gold-framed mirror to hang over the mantel.  I’m not sure I if I like it yet or not.  I read the table of contents in my volume of Blake.  I read the jacket and forward of the McCain memoir.  I bought a bottle of cabernet-merlot, some of another kind of wine, a bottle or rum, and one of Carolan’s Irish Cream liqueur.  I might go out to Rio’s Pizza in Montebello to pick up my dope sack.  Rochelle should be home soon.  Maybe she will want to see “Toy Story 2” with me.  Or maybe tomorrow.  I should call some people.  And dig the dirt out from under my fingernails.  I called IKEA about the chair.  Their system was down.  They said to call in the afternoon.  When I called back, they said it would be a couple of weeks.  They said I should call again after the fifteenth.  Rochelle is home.  She’s singing she’s on vacation.  I took three hundred dollars out of the ATM.  The mirror cost eighty.  The paperwork came to donate the Chrysler and deduct a grand off my tax bill.  Rochelle’s in the shower.  I got the cable up in running in the parlor.