4:09 PM PST — Things to be thankful for at 35,000 feet:

• Southwest Airlines drink coupons
• A third Heineken
• Louis Armstrong saying "Swing it Ella"
• Having the pair of extremely obese guys pass by my row
• Noise-cancelling headphones
• Kissing Rich in a couple of hours

(You may retch now.)

9:45 PM CST — Have I mentioned how much I hate being back on dial up? PacBell, I promise I won't curse your DSL for at least 48 hours.

Maybe.

9:38 PM CST — Surprise post from rural Texas. Haven't done much the past few days other than relax. That's a polite way of saying I've been lazy. Cooking, drinking wine and listening to an almost endless stream of jazz has been the order of the past few days. Have I mentioned lately how much I like my parents? It's true, a well-adjusted gay man. Tour buses this way please.

11:30 PM PST — I'm off on the 2001 Family Obligation Tour bright and early tomorrow morning. February is a particularly cruel birthday month for me. Celebrations are in order for (in order of belatedness) my sister-in-law, father, nephew, brother and niece. Oy. Might be March before I'm back here.

11:10 PM PST — Unexpected treat night. Cute, young Kyle called to say he was in town for the weekend this evening. Too bad, I'm flying away bright and early in the morning. All wasn't lost though. I managed to drag him along for dinner with Brittany, whose also been visiting (admitedly for the past week). There are photos.

12:08 PM PST — I forgot what I was going to say. Damn pesky FTP errors.

How long does it take Network Solutions to process domain name change requests anyway?

9:12 PM PST — 66%! I am a slut.

6:54 PM PST — Oh my.

3:36 PM PST — A Bush in the White House. Bombs falling on Iraq. Microsoft playing catch up to Apple. It is 1991 again.

"However, sources close to Microsoft told me that the company's programmers are having 'panic attacks' about Mac OS X's new Aqua UI. Particularly troubling to Microsoft is Macintosh's new intuitive Finder (i.e., the Mac version of the Windows Explorer shell), which features several panes that simplify drilling down through subdirectories. Microsoft's UI team is suddenly playing catch-up-with-the-Mac again…"

11:37 PM PST — Impeach Harison?

9:55 PM PST — While I'm on the subject of corporate bitching, let me throw still more bad vibes toward SBC (nee PacBell) Internet. Their DNS servers were down for about 12 hours today, from early morning to early afternoon. That's bad enough. In the unforgiveable category, the morons who run the PBI call center have removed the partially helpful network status update along with all paths to technical support. The only close option is "help with your DSL self install." Of course that selection promptly leads to a disconnect.

Thank you for calling!

I dialed again and proceeded to explore every branch of the phone tree. A delightful 30 plus minutes on hold later, I finally spoke to a real live person. The billing rep with an endearing cigarette rasp took pitty on me and revealed the secret formula for infiltrating tech support. Bless her. As a public service, I'll reveal the corporate secret thus saving any fellow PacBell, Nevada Bell or Southwestern Bell DSL customers from the automated phone system nightmare I lived:

• Dial 1-800-638-4357
• Press 2 at the first prompt
• Press 3 at the second
• Press 3 again at the third
• Finally press the super-secret 128 combo at the fourth prompt

Within minutes, you too will be speaking to a friendly tech live and in person.

Enjoy.

9:18 PM PST — Momentous day. I no longer carry an American Express charge card. (Yeah, there's still a Blue in my wallet but it's technically a credit card so let's go back to the story.) Once, closing the account would have been unthinkable. Those pale blue receipts followed in my wake everywhere. I totally bought into the marketing. Sure the fee was higher than most other cards but I the lack of interest and better service made up for it. Then anyway. Lately, calling Amex or using their web site has left me spewing obscenities, not unlike the experience of dealing with AT&T Cable. Bad news for a supposedly premium service company. The Kafka-esque process of closing the account stands as a perfect illustration of what's wrong with Amex. It took five calls over three days and, ultimately, several minutes of stern nastiness on my part before a rep admitted that she could have the account closed. Grrr. No longer member since 1984. Good riddance.

9:09 PM PST — Is it possible to loathe an entire network?

10:25 AM PST — Me and My Utensils: Just finished washing up from breakfast; I'm struck by the number of utensils required to basically heat and eat a simple meal of potato pancake, smoked salmon, banana, toast and coffee.

• bread knife
• medium carving knife
• butter knife
• fork
• teaspoon
• measuring spoon

Four food items and a beverage require six implements? There's something wrong with me.

11:58 PM PST — Is it 1991 all over? It is 1991 all over.

11:37 PM PST — I've been up since 4:30 A.M. I can breath through only one nostril. Bed rest seems in order.

I'm not sure I'm that smart.

9:58 PM PST — Seem to have found me a buddy to talk cars. (Rich breaths a audible sigh of relief.)

9:32 PM PST — I'm not one for pre-packaged traditions and holidays — Valentine's definitely falls in that category — so it should hardly come as a surprise that I had no special plans tonight. I did what I always do: I came home and spent the evening with my favorite person.

How can it get any more romantic?

3:38 PM PST — It's too damn cold. I wore gloves today. Gloves and hat yesterday. I don't like.

Of course, Darren of Michigan climes has little sympathy for my bleating.

3:26 PM PST — Managed to hang out on AIM for most of the afternoon. Feels like such a luxury on a workday. Shows you how much my life has changed, and not necessarily for the better, of late.

12:53 PM PST — I'm suffering from budget blues at the office. Meaning I'm groping my way though my first quarterly budget update for the number crunchers. Ugh. Can't I just concentrate on the pretty pictures?

11:21 PM PST — I've started the process to move the domain to a new server. Hopefully any interruptions will be kept to a minimum.

10:26 PM PST — Rich, Lance and I made a restaurant discovery yesterday. We were driving around West Portal, looking for a brunch/lunch spot. Fate smiled on us when a parking space opened just across the street from a restaurant with a simple maroon awning that said "Lunch," among other things.

Turns out it was Old Krakow, a small cafe serving untrendy Polish food. Pierogi, stuffed cabbage and kielbasa were all on the menu. Rich was delighted because he felt like he had gone back to his grandmother's house for a holiday meal. It's such a San Francisco story: Selecting a restaurant just because there's a parking space nearby.

1:56 PM PST — I loved the idea when I got the first email about 10 days ago. Now that enough people have sent in donations for Planned Parenthood to throw up a special donation site, I love it even more. Take that Shrub!

11:49 AM PST — I can jump on a trend with the best of them. Following in the path blazed by Steve, Jesse and Sparky, here's my own license.

Don't you love the demented drifter look? The picture dates from my original California license circa 1995. I suppose I'll allow the great DMV computer to keep spitting it out on renewals; the prospect of returning to their hallowed halls for a new photo session remains too frightening to contemplate. Even scarier, this one is an improvement over my previous NY-issued portrait.

Fair or not, I blame the clerk who snapped the lovely likeness above. First, she insisted that I remove my glasses then insisted I needed to look at a dot in the vicinity of the camera. I reacted as any good myope would with a mighty squint. She yelled at me to open my eyes and I obviously overcompensated.

Lovely irony though: the DMV requiring me to wear "corr lens" except in the photograph that its agents will use to identify me.

In the spirit of full disclosure that the others have displayed, I must point out that my weight has increased anywhere from five to 10 pounds depending on the day and cycle of the moon, apparently.

Not bad for an ancient one.

10:03 PM PST — What a shock.

9:25 PM PST — I wore gloves today. Bizarre. And tonight, we had about 3 minutes of sleet. Freaky. David got it right, it's too damn cold.

9:45 AM PST — I want.

10:47 PM PST — I'm ashamed to admit that I've once again been sucked into Survivor. Not much better than watching a car wreck. I'm not sure how long I'll last through this one though. Without eye-candy Kel there's not much reason to watch.

10:31 PM PST — The pain of a papercut is all out of whack to the actual damage. A little nick from paper of all things, it hardly even bleeds, yet it hangs around for days. Hurting with every strike of the keyboard, dragging across the trackpad and other forms of stroking.

Um, maybe we should just end this topic now.

8:34 AM PST — Proof that I'm way out of it department: I understand a ton of other diary/log sites linked to Straight Acting ages ago but somehow I missed it completely. Or maybe I ignored it because on the surface it's so, so, tacky. (Read that last word again and draw out the A to get the effect in my mind. Then again, I might be overly influenced by Designing Women, which Rich has on in the bedroom as I write.) I don't give a damn how I act.

Of course, I scored a big old nelly 8 on their quiz so it figures I'd take that attitude.

9:49 PM PST — I don't know what's wrong with me lately.

11:06 PM PST — Great weekend. Stunning really. Driving around the Marin Headlands. Breakfast outdoors on the edge of the Bay. Beers with friends on the beach. Yes, beach. In February.

Like I said, a stunning weekend.

10:21 PM PST — Lackstift Set. Basislack + Klarlack. Mit Rostradierer. Gebrauch: Entrosten. Gut schütteln. Farbe lackieren. Mit Klarlack überlackieren. Nicht unter 15ûC verabeiten.

10:09 PM PST — I had a Spark(y) on my floor this morning. Fun! And I've now got rare paper copies of the Rumpus Room. Double fun!!

In return, Richie got him hooked on Survivor and Judge Judy. [Groan]

January 2000