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Nothing new to report, except:

It is a brilliantly sunny day outside – real sunglasses weather. All the windows in the apartment are "open" – no blinds in the way of the sunlight streaming in and warming my apartment.

Blacky Cat has moved his sleeping place back to his bed on my couch. He is a BLACK cat. so I didn’t see him right away and when I got up, I went to the closet to see if I could see his eyes reflecting back to me. There was a brief moment of… whatever… when I didn’t see his eyes, so I reached in and felt that the box was empty.

Huh? Where’s my cat? I thought.

I walked by the couch and saw him spayed out in the sunlight, lazily yawning up at me and looking quite well. My schedule has been "off" lately and I can’t remember if I gave him his insulin shot last night, but he had his "morning" shot today at 10:30, when I got up.

The last week is kind of a blur, but I know I think I set up Unemployment, and the food stamp card still has food money on it; I need to call that office eventually and get that started again.

Looking down off the balcony, I see it rained, kind of, and that it made splotches of discoloration on my car – I should go wash it, but… that may be quarters I don’t need to spend. I suppose I could go hand-wash it, I left a bottle of car wash soap at my friend A’s house just for that – bought him a new hose and everything too.

I get up every morning thinking "where am I going today?" Old habits. Last night I went out at midnight to get some cigarettes and I thought "I am soo glad I’m not out on my way to work", remembering the years of times I left to go do the newspaper distribution. Almost seven years of that. The job I have had the longest. I left home right around midnight for almost seven years.

Given the temperatures at night now, I’m glad I’m not doing that. Last Wednesday and Thursday, there was heavy frost on the roads that caused accidents, so I’m glad not to be driving in that, whether it’s with newspapers or people. I remember once in the step van I drove, that it was very frosty by Reed College one morning and I slid around a corner and…shhhh…. into a mailbox. The only time I hit anything with the step van. That mailbox is still there, even if the paper rack isn’t any longer, and the lip of it is still bent.

The corner store, Pinetree Market, is undergoing a make-over. New paint and siding and new lines in the parking lot. "My" step vans used to park there, when the boss’s dad owned the store. They closed it down in October – the old man wanted to retire and business was slow. That was "my" store until last year, when I stopped working for the newspaper distribution his son was running. Since I did that badly, I didn’t feel welcome in that store any more and just walked further up the street to Plaid Pantry.

Like I said though, the step vans are gone and the store is getting made-over; I wonder what will be there next?

The cold that’s been dogging me all week is hanging in there; if I don’t blow my nose too hard it doesn’t bleed.

Haven’t heard from my cousin or his wife since Thanksgiving. I have called and left messages… but I suppose they are busy, packing. As far as I know the house sold and they have to be out in a week or so.

Kind of a sucky year, I guess, ending the same way as last year did – unemployed. At least this time Unemployment is still an open question; by this time last year it was firmly Denied. Call me shallow, but I hope I can hold onto my car. Just under 40,000 miles on it and all of them are "mine" – good thing I got it serviced when I had a job. Nothing is wrong with my black beauty.

Noon news time. Let’s see if anything new has happened.

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