The interview is tomorrow.

All day I have been projecting questions and trying to compose answers in my head.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about the most difficult problem that you had to solve in the last year. Did you make this decision alone or did you engage others in the decision? Why did you approach it this way?

NICOLE: Guhhhhhhhhh. . .

INTERVIEWER: Pardon me?

NICOLE: I can’t think of a single problem I’ve solved.

INTERVIEWER: (makes note and raises eyebrow) I see.

It’s going to be a full on day. 10-3. Four different interviews- one over lunch. The hardest one thank god will be at 11 so hopefully I will have enough coffee in my system to be lucid and charming but not so much that I am high strung and scary.

Going to grab a cab at 8. Thought about taking the bus but it has been 10 years since I have made that particular bus route and it isn’t the time to get lost. (I had a three month temp contractor gig with my current employer when I lived in Seattle). Wake up call for 6. I have filled out the little card for breakfast. I am about to iron my clothes. I am then going to take a Advil PM so I can drug myself into continuous sleep and shut off my tiny little brain zipping thoughts around like a laser light show.

My fears.

They will discover that I am a complete idiot.

–Update–

I think it all went really well. I find out in a couple of weeks. If I don’t get it, I feel okay about it because I gave it my best shot. We shall see!

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The other day Stuart asked me what religion I was. I was raised Catholic but I long ago stepped away from it.  I said, “I dunno. Agnostic-Atheist- Wiccan with a dash of Jewish?”

Stuart responded, “Ptthhhhhhh. . .”

I like to think of myself as a spiritual person, but not particularly religious. Religious people freak me out. They’re the sort that fly planes into buildings or start nation building neo-conservative wars. Just Ain’t my bag man.

A million years ago when I took the bus into Pasadena, there was a man that I would see nearly every day. He had just arrived from Mexico and he would strike up a conversation with me. Every flippen morning. I know I’m a bitch for saying this, but when you are on the phone all day, the last thing you want to do is struggle to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak English that well. He always ignored the fact that I had a book that I was trying to read. One morning, he tried to give me some born again Jesus pamphlets and I just had it. Weeks of him not leaving me alone left me bereft of people skills. I told him that I wasn’t a Christian (which I am not) and it was rude to give someone a pamphlet like this that he didn’t know. On reflection, it was a very American thing to do. . . push your religion on someone.
I had a mini cab pick me up to take me to the airport Monday and thirty seconds into the ride, the driver put on a tape of a woman preaching the Koran. I wasn’t exactly overjoyed. When I am going to the airport, I really don’t want to listen to any religion salesman. When I am doing anything I don’t want religion salesman- it doesn’t matter what denomination. Of course I didn’t ask him to turn it down/off. That would have been rude- even though his playing it in my book is far ruder.

Also, and I know that this is politically incorrect and more than a little terrible, but the last thing you want to listen to when you are going to the airport is how great Islam is.
We get to the airport and the driver has interpreted my silence about the sermon as subtext of my secret interest in Islam and gives me four paperback books on the subject. One is called ‘Islam and Women’. “This is for the women,” he said.

Even if I was religiously inclined, you can bet your ass I wouldn’t be interested in a group that found it necessary to print a propaganda book just for women.

I of course didn’t tell him, “No thank you, you are so kind, but you will never guess, I have books just like this at home.” I didn’t tell him that he was a rude fuck for giving me the books. I nodded and said thank you and felt really guilty that he was giving me books that I was planning on dumping even before they had my fingerprints.
I know this is politically incorrect but the last thing you want to carry into an airport is various books about Islam. I set the books down on the floor near a check in kiosk so maybe someone found them that it was useful to.

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Feeling nervous. The story at the moment is that it is a gas leak.

Not sure if I beleive that.

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I really like my engagement ring- I don’t wear a wedding band because for me I think it would just look like too much on my hand. It’s an oval ruby with four small diamonds on either side. It’s a sweet ring and it suits me.

Yesterday morning in bed I looked at my hand and gasped.

One of the diamonds was missing.

Hey it happens. And we did buy a warrantee when we got it so maybe that will cover it. . . I pull it out.

It expired May 19, 2007

Oh well. We’ll get it sorted.

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Monday I am going to Seattle for a job interview for a gig based here in London.

It’s for a position on the Learning and Development Team. Those of you that have known me for a while from the Y! days know that I have been wanting to move into this direction for a long time. There is one other person that I know has applied that would be a really good candidate as well. I am trying to be Zen about it. I’m in a good place with my current gig. It isn’t turning me quite as gray as it has in the past, but I really need to shake things up because I am floating along right now.

Another part of me is terrified of getting it because what if I fuck it all up? I’ve been thinking. . .I suspect that whatever success I have had isn’t so much from a drive to succeed as much as a fear of failure.

I guess it doesn’t matter which road you take as long as you get there.

So yeah. Think good thoughts for me.
Worst comes to worst, if I’m Seven Out, I get a free trip to Seattle to see my friends there, will eat some Mexican Food and bring Stuart back his blessed Bud Light.

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There are certain things for which I am thankful. Like, I have never, not once done the mackarena. See? I don’t even know how to spell it! That is how little I know it.

I am thankful that I now have a DVR once again so I can fast forward and rewind Ugly Betty to my little hearts content. (Can I just say- how fabulous was that series finale? Dad stuck in Mexico with bad things brewing, Betty’s almost boyfriend has to put the brakes on because his just broke up with her girlfriend is up the spout but wait! She has been having an affair with Betty’s Dentist so maybe it isn’t the love of her life’s baby who of course is doing the right thing and moving back with the conniving bitch to Tucson. Alexis rushes an ODing Daniel to the hospital in her/his (she has had a sex change you see) Father’s car.. They are travelling down a long windy road which is strange since the magazine is in Manhattan, but you think that maybe they are going to run into their mother who is making a prison break on a dark road very similar to the road that they are travelling on, but No! All is not well because THEY REALISE THAT THE BRAKES HAVE BEEN CUT! – See, the thing is, Alexis paid a hit man to kill her /his father. He/She didn’t know how, didn’t know when, (Can I just say, not a smart time to borrow Daddy’s Porsche). CUE BIG CAR CRASH. Are they alive or dead bloody but still attractive shot, which is a miracle of physics given how fast they were going on the WINDY ROAD WHEN THEY REALISED THE BRAKES WHERE CUT! The receptionist discovers she is the daughter of the murdered Fay Summers. . . not to mention the shooting of Santos. I got a bit teary, I don’t mind telling you, although that might have been the 2nd glass of wine hitting my blood stream. It was just too much along with the junior high acting scenes of ‘West Side Story’ (Okay how fucking cute is Mark Indelicato?)

The third thing I am thankful for.

No matter how sloppy I may look.

No matter how schlumpy.

I will always remember to wear pants/trousers.

I’m funny that way.

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I just saw Short Cuts for the first time, which is bizarre because in the 13 years since it has come out I have developed an affection for Altman and Carver is one of my favourite writers.

I liked it, but I wish I had watched it before I ever heard Raymond Carver’s name. I wish I was watching the characters weave in and out of the inter connecting story without recognizing the clothes that they used to wear. I normally don’t have that problem with an adaptation. Usually I am able to separate the story from the film very cleanly in my head. I get grade A annoyed at people that say, “Well, it wasn’t like that in the book.” –Not recognizing that an adaptation of a book into a film is a translation into another language. Sometimes some children are killed on the way. It’s like King Solomon, except different.

I think the problem for me was I forgot, (except for a few – ‘Small good. . .’, ‘So much water. . .’) what stories were being used in Short Cuts.

What is right and true in the film are those rhythms between men and women. He gets Carver there, hook line and sinker.

It’s silly. Ridiculous. I’m feeling annoyed with the film for being a B+. This film could have been an A. Who the hell am I to get lairy over a film being a very respectable B+.

Whatever. A few of my, why it needed oregano thoughts.

A Small, Good Thing is one of those stories that can make me cry just thinking about it, but Lyle Lovett bless his little heart sucks ass as the baker in this. That said, I still cried. . . but I’m a shill.

Jindabyne gives a lot more credit to “So Much Water So Close To Home” but that is to be expected- you can’t compare an entire film to a snippet in another one. . . but certain moments screamed false. The guy is pissing in the river. He realises he is pissing on a body and he keeps going. I don’t know about you boys, but I can stop certain things mid steam. At least aim in a different direction when you see what you are doing. The entire story didn’t have the gravitas that it deserved.

While I wished I didn’t know Carver, my jaw dropped when I realised that “Tell The Women We Are Going” was one of the threads weaved into the rug. The climax of it doesn’t work however. Maybe it doesn’t really work in the story and I am connecting dots in my head that aren’t really there.

I dunno.

However, even with my nitpicking- I liked this movie. I dig characters interweaving, big city that is really a small city everyone just wanting to be loved man, just loved- stories. . .

And Altman catches Carver’s soul in this. Parts are wonderful. Inspired. The clown cop scene. (Note to self. Add Tim Robbins to celebrity crush/fuck list.)

And it makes me want to sit down to the computer and write this play that has been kicking around my synapses for the last year.

If I didn’t have to go to work in the A of the M, I might start it now.

All I know about it? There is an Elvis Impersonator. And a cannibal.

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Stuart organised a work do at Urban Golf, which is right by my old office in Soho. Urban Golf is full of media wankers drinking Stella, paying a ridiculous amount of scratch to play a golf simulator.

It is supposed to be a lot of fun. . .

Stuart texts me.

Stuart: I’m crap at golf.

Nicole: This surprises you?

Stuart: It went backwards.

I don’t think I have wished to witness something so much, ever.

-update-

He called me and suggested we get away this weekend. Then he sounded beyond depressed. “I gotta go. I’m up.”

Five minutes later he texted me:

They fucked with me. I came back from talking to you and I had to golf over hurdles. Like real Olympic style thingies.

I must remember to buy his work mates something special.

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